Thank You for Playing

A documentary that works as both an emotional portrait of a slow-motion family tragedy and a slippery inquiry into the therapeutic properties of making art.

Make no mistake: This film is a tear-jerker, taking an intimate look at one family's heartbreak and how their art moves people.

If nothing else, it's evidence that the digital age has opened up new ways to work through grief.

By turns touching, funny and sometimes strangely existential.

Grieving father Ryan Green may be aware that he's performing for the cameras in the moving documentary/character study Thank You for Playing, but his self-conscious behavior never cancels out his apparent sincerity.

Every conceivable thing is done to replicate the feeling of navigating the game short of placing a controller in our hands.

In that final, gracefully handled note, the film again proves itself a mature meditation on the ordeal of tragedy, and art's capacity for helping us process it.

The documentary falls under the weight of its own despair, repeating this same solemn note, succeeding in honoring a boy's memory but unfortunately failing to move.

Thank You for Playing also takes the experience of Ryan, Amy and their family and artistically expands it out to a universal audience.