Lonesome Jim DVD, 2005

Steve Buscemi directs and Casey Affleck stars in this comedy drama about a failed novelist who returns from New York to his dysfunctional family home in the small Indiana town where he grew up after he runs out of money in the big city. He doesn't really get on with his folks and he has no interest in the family business. But after his depressed, older brother Tim ends up in a coma, he is forced to help out at his parents' ladder factory as well as looking after his two mischievous nieces. At the factory he meets his Uncle Stacey, aka Evil, who is using the plant as a front for his drug dealing business. When Jim's mother is mistakenly arrested and jailed for narcotics smuggling, it looks like things can't get any worse. But between his budding relationship with his brother's nurse Anika, and coaching a junior basketball team that includes Tim's daughters, the perenially glum Jim concedes that there may be a chink of light at the end of the tunnel.