Vince doughnuts and Kentucky Fried Chicken in order for the actor, who was not remarkably overweight at the time, to rapidly gain weight before filming commenced. Release Heavy premiered in January 1995 at the Sundance Film Festival, where Mangold won the Special Jury Prize for directing. It subsequently screened at the Cannes Film Festival Directors Fortnight, where it was nominated for the Caméra d'Or award. The film's distributor, Cinépix Film Properties, released the film theatrically in the United States after Tyler had received recognition for her starring role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996). Cinépix released Heavy in the United States in the summer of 1996, premiering it in New York City on June 5, before it opened in Los Angeles on June 28. The release was limited, expanding only to twenty-two screens nationwide. The film concluded its domestic theatrical run on November 28, 1996. Critical response Following the film's success at Sundance, it garnered generally positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, and remarked its sense of realism: "You've been in places like this. You linger over a second cup of coffee and people-watch, trying to guess the secrets of the sad-eyed waitress and the drunk at the bar and the pizza cook who looks like he's serving a sentence. You don't guess the true horror of the place, which is that there are no secrets, because everyone here knows all about everyone else, inside and out, top to bottom, and has for years." A decade later, Ebert — reviewing Mangold's 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma — called Heavy "extraordinary." Jay Carr of The Boston Globe praised the film as a "small gem [that] specifies a world and populates it with unerring authority and a sure instinct for character." The Statesman Journals Ron Cowan similarly lauded the film for its deliberate lack of dialogue, writing that Mangold "often eschews" it, "detailing his story with gestures, glances and touches. There is no sex, violence or clichéd action or plot twists, just a sense that you're listening in on real life." The New York Daily Newss Jami Bernard described the film as a "slice of life" mood piece, praising Tyler's performance as "forceful," adding that "the film moves as carefully as Vincent [sic] himself, as if afraid to displace too many molecules at once. It's a welcome respite from the crash-bang movies of summer." Barbara