Labor-Day-UK-PosterJason Reitman is unstoppable. In his first three features in the director’s chair, he didn’t take a step out of place. And returning once more to the London Film Festival this month with his fourth, Labor Day, he has truly outdone himself, bringing yet another spectacular drama to the big screen.

After watching it at its UK premiere last night, I literally sat in my chair for a full quarter of an hour or more, until the rest of the cinema was empty, just to fully appreciate and digest what I’d just seen – and that is something I’ve never done before.

The film had its debut at Telluride and then TIFF a few weeks back, launching its first clip from the movie out in Toronto. And whilst we wait for that first trailer to land online, Paramount has released the UK poster, with Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin front and centre.

“Labor Day” centers on 13-year-old Henry Wheeler, who struggles to be the man of his house and care for his reclusive mother Adele while confronting all the pangs of adolescence. On a back-to-school shopping trip, Henry and his mother encounter Frank Chambers, a man both intimidating and clearly in need of help, who convinces them to take him into their home and later is revealed to be an escaped convict. The events of this long Labor Day weekend will shape them for the rest of their lives.

Gattlin Griffith is fantastic alongside Winslet and Brolin, completing the leading trio, with great support from Clark Gregg, J.K. Simmons, Brooke Smith, James Van Der Beek, Maika Monroe, Tom Lipinski, Dylan Minnette, Alexie Gilmore, and Tobey Maguire.

Reitman is once more directing from his own script, adapting Joyce Maynard’s novel of the same name for the screen.

Labor Day will be given an award-qualifying release in the US on Christmas Day (which it really deserves), before opening wide in the States on January 31st, 2014, followed by its UK release date on 7th February. I can’t wait to see it again. Truly, it is a masterful piece of cinema; a masterpiece that resonates.

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