For Ellen

Joby Taylor is a struggling rock musician who is traveling to a small town to divorce his estranged wife. In the process, he grapples with the possibility of losing custody of his daughter Ellen, as well as the realities of his foundering music career and being a father. ==Cast==

So Yong Kim called the film her "most personal" up to that date, saying “When I wrote the film, I was filled with doubts about my ability as a filmmaker, a loving partner and a decent mother to our daughter. I took all these emotions and tried to investigate what they meant to me. Making this film was something of a therapy, yet also a torture because it was inspired by a distant memory of my estranged father visiting me and my siblings for one day." Kim, who wanted to do something different compared to her first two films, which center on young girls, initially wrote the script centered on an Asian man in his sixties. Paul Dano, a friend of Kim's, read the script and decided he wanted to play the lead character. ==Reception==

Release The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2012, and nationwide through VOD on September 19, 2012. Critical reception On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 67% based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Acclaim was given to Paul Dano's performance in particular. Writing for The Guardian, Andrew Pulver called Dano's turn as a rocker "self-obsessed and heartbreakingly vulnerable all at the same time." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film three and a half out of four stars, praised Dano's acting, and wrote, "This performance, unlike anything Paul Dano has ever done, must have required some courage". Alison Willmore of The A.V. Club wrote while the film is "built around a strong turn by Dano", it is "sometimes at odds with the naturalism the film aims for with its grubby settings, loose camerawork, and tendency toward inquisitive close-ups." Ty Burr of The Boston Globe said the film "tries one's patience", citing the film's open-endedness and commenting there's "no weight to [Joby's] fury," but praised the father-daughter scenes and said, "What works, works for keeps." ==References==