Film

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Name: Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Genre: Drama
Released: 2020
Cast: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin, Ryan Eggold, Sharon Van Etten

Coming-of-age

A quiet film about two teenage girls from rural Pennsylvania who travel to New York City seeking abortion care. It's tender and unflinching, intimate without being invasive, shaped by long silences and the texture of ordinary moments. For anyone who values cinema that trusts its audience to feel without being told how.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want patient, observational realism that trusts silence and small gestures, where the quiet between two friends says more than dialogue ever could.

Skip it if you need a plot that escalates or a score telling you how to feel; this is restrained and bleak, with little warmth or release.

What it asks of you: Running just over an hour and forty minutes, it moves slowly through long takes and held silences, and it rewards sustained attention over quick emotional payoffs.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Certain Women2016

Reichardt's meditation on female lives in rural Montana—quiet, patient, observant. Like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, it finds drama in small gestures and the space between words. Beautifully composed and deeply humane.

But Deliberately slow and withholding. If you need clear narrative momentum or explicit emotional climaxes, this will feel glacial and remote.

The Florida Project2017

Captures childhood and poverty with such tenderness it breaks your heart without sentimentality. Sean Baker's eye for authentic detail and his refusal to pity his characters mirrors Reichardt's approach to her teenage protagonists.

But The ending is devastating in a quiet way that some find unsatisfying. Doesn't resolve so much as stop, leaving you with the weight of what you've witnessed.

Wendy and Lucy2008

Reichardt again, examining survival and small decisions with extraordinary empathy. Michelle Williams' barely-there performance captures the kind of emotional restraint that Never Rarely Sometimes Always uses so effectively.

But Extremely austere. Long stretches of watching someone navigate bureaucracy and hardship. Some find it depressing rather than moving.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Never Rarely Sometimes Always

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Gidget1959

Both are fundamentally about a girl claiming the right to her own choices despite pressure to be otherwise. Just one got Cheerios and a beach blanket.

A teen girl claiming agency in a male-dominated space—the beach and surfing culture. Like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, it's about a young woman navigating desire, independence, and adult expectations, but wrapped in bubblegum and sunshine. Seeing how differently the same struggle was filmed across eras is revelatory.

But Tonally, it's a world away: bright, romantic, eager to please. If you're watching for Reichardt's ascetic style, this will feel frothy and dated. The gender politics, while surprisingly progressive for 1959, are still 1959.

First Reformed2018

Schrader's aching portrait of spiritual crisis and moral paralysis. Like Reichardt's work, it's serious and slow, finding profound questions in mundane moments and uncertain faith.

But Deeply bleak. Ethan Hawke's priest is drowning in despair, and the film doesn't offer easy comfort. Requires patience with sadness.

The Farewell2019

Lulu Wang's film about a family keeping a terminal diagnosis secret shares the specificity and emotional intelligence of Never Rarely Sometimes Always. Warm, funny, and ultimately devastating—it honors contradiction.

But The tonal shifts between comedy and grief might feel uneven. Some viewers want films to pick a lane and stay there.

Moonlight2016

Barry Jenkins' three-act portrait of a Black man's interior life. Like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, it's built from silences, glances, and the things characters don't say. Profoundly moving without manipulation.

But Fractured structure across three time periods. The lack of conventional plot propels some viewers, paralyzes others.

Never Goin' Back2018

Augustine's rough-and-tumble comedy about two young women navigating poverty and friendship. Less restrained than Reichardt, but it shares the same refusal to condescend to its characters or apologize for their lives.

But Loud and chaotic where Never Rarely Sometimes Always is quiet. The scrappy energy won't work for everyone, and it's genuinely crude in places.

La Haine1995

Both films see their young protagonists' journeys—one inward, one increasingly outward—as political. Both refuse to make their characters sympathetic in conventional ways. Both insist we take their stakes seriously.

Mathieu Kassovitz's black-and-white fever dream about three young men in a Paris banlieue. It's raw, observant, and structurally daring—a day compressed into 91 minutes of mounting tension. Like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, it treats young people's struggles as serious moral questions.

But Bleak, propulsive, and aggressively stylish. Reichardt's aesthetic couldn't be more different. Also, the ending lands like a punch and doesn't let you recover.

The Karate Kid1984

Reichardt's film is a work of art about an experience; this is the experience itself. Watching them together—one fictional and carefully composed, one documentary and raw—expands what you understand about how art and reality frame the same event differently.

An unscripted documentary about a teen abortion in Mississippi. Raw, uneasy, and utterly non-judgmental. It sits beside the actual thing Never Rarely Sometimes Always dramatizes, showing what it looks and sounds and feels like without interpretation or camera tricks.

But It's real audio and video of real people in real crisis. That directness is its entire point, and it can feel invasive or exploitative depending on your relationship to the subject. Also genuinely difficult to watch—no film craft to soften it.