Nominated for Best Actress 
Content Warning: dead baby
After a home birth gone wrong, Martha (Vanessa Kirby) struggles to cope. Her partner (Shia LaBeouf) and mother (Ellen Burstyn) want her to prosecute the midwife (Molly Parker) in criminal and civil court. Nobody cares what Martha wants, even if she were capable of articulating it.
So I get what the movie is trying to say. I understand on an intellectual level that grief affects everyone and what a crushing blow it would be to lose a child you wanted only to then have people turn around and blame you for surviving that loss and tell you you're doing it wrong. But all I felt watching this was disgust at every single one of these characters. I just hated these people and I didn't care what happened to them. I was actively rooting against them succeeding. And it reminded me of the (only) psych class I took in college, which was Psychology of Good and Evil. On the nose, I know, but how am I not gonna take a class called that?
Anyway, the salient point is that you can actually push too many emotional buttons and people will refuse to empathize. The example my professor gave was the Sarah McLachlan dog rescue commercial. The combination of that sad fucking song with images of brutally abused pets caused the opposite intended effect. People didn't donate, they turned it off. It literally made them feel too bad to be helpful. That's what this movie does for me. Your mileage may vary. It's currently streaming on Netflix. Hope you have a strong stomach.
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