Marvin's Room

Marvin's Room (1996), Jerry Zaks' family drama, is ready to watch online on iFILM. Two sisters haven't spoken in twenty years, and what finally pulls them back together is grim: Bessie has leukemia, and her best hope for a bone-marrow match is the family she's been estranged from.

Bessie (Diane Keaton) has spent her whole adult life in one Florida house, nursing her bedridden father Marvin and an eccentric aunt. Lee (Meryl Streep) walked away from all of it long ago and now turns up with two sons in tow. The older one, a volatile teenager played by a young Leonardo DiCaprio, recently burned the family home to the ground. Put all these people under one roof and you get strangers who used to be relatives, fumbling toward something like reconciliation.

Adapted from Scott McPherson's play, the film lives entirely on its performances rather than plot. The Keaton–Streep pairing is worth the runtime for the quiet kitchen scenes alone, and Keaton earned an Oscar nomination for Bessie. Small, hushed, and unsentimental about forgiveness. Stream Marvin's Room (1996) online on iFILM.