Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy (2020) is Ron Howard's family drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A phone call drags a Yale law student out of a career-making dinner and back to Ohio, where his mother has relapsed again.

J.D. Vance grew up among people who left the Appalachian hills for a struggling Rust Belt town with thin jobs and short tempers. His mom Bev (Amy Adams) swings between getting clean and falling apart. The one holding the family together is Mamaw — chain-smoking, blunt, a pistol in her handbag. Glenn Close vanishes into the role under heavy makeup. Three generations, one argument stretched across thirty years.

Howard adapted the film from J.D. Vance's bestselling memoir, a book that set off a national argument about poverty and whether anyone really escapes it. Adams and Close both drew award nominations, with Close's transformation singled out on its own. Stream Hillbilly Elegy (2020) online on iFILM.