“Junebug” is a movie that understands, profoundly and with love and sadness, the world of small towns; it captures ways of talking and living I remember from my childhood, with the complexity and precision of great fiction. It observes small details that are important because they are details. It has sympathy for every character in the story and avoids two temptations: It doesn’t portray the small-town characters as provincial hicks, and it doesn’t portray the city slickers as shallow materialists. Phil Morrison, who directed this movie, and Angus MacLachlan, who wrote it, understand how people everywhere have good intentions, and how life can assign them roles where they can’t realize them.
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