hughman55

Work on your taxes. Clean house. Paint the room the tv is in. Better yet, paint a room other than the one your tv is in. This dull lackluster confabulation sucks the life out of a really great story by Patricia Highsmith. The B&W cinematography, while beautiful, is used like a series of photos in an album - static. And speaking of static, the acting... I'm a super fan of Andrew Scott. From his great subtly (Foyles War) to his great overacting (Sherlock Holmes) but even he couldn't find the way forward in the straight jacket he was jammed into by this screenplay and at the hands of this stilted director.

I've now met the character limit required in order to post this and I'm done.

This very compelling story has already been told, to great effect, on one or two of the true crime shows like Dateline, etc. I can't recall which ones, but it done MUCH better than this was. This Netflix version attempts to hype something that is already a "truth stranger than fiction" story. It seemed to me that the director strained to elicit "f" and "s" words from Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn that they MAY use in their everyday lives, but seemed really out of place here, and borderline inappropriate. They certainly have never presented that way in any of the other formats I'd seen. I know, those were network television... all the same, though. Then, there was the unbearably annoying background music, particularly in the first episode. It just amounted to distracting noise and didn't enhance the story/drama one bit. Huskins and Quinn have no control whatever on how something like this gets produced so there's no fault on their part. I just think the the producers delivered well below the subjects and their unbelievable, but all too true, story. So, 10 Stars for Huskins and Quinn, Zero for Netflix and their contract labor production team.

I'm not even going into the ridiculous, one after another, plot holes because numerous others here have.

I would happily listen to ANYONE who could explain to me how this title made it out of script review and onto the screen. Is it simply that there is a demographic of women, I guess, that find the main character, David, so dreamy that they overlook how ridiculous the story is? David accidentally runs down, with his car, and kills a cyclist whom, it turns out, he'd just met and flirted with at a bar. With him at the time of the accident is his new next door neighbor, of about 24 hours, Robert, who has developed a massive crush on him. Never mind that they don't even know one another.

As this becomes increasingly more ridiculous, David , the guy who actually drank, drugged, drove, and killed, is portrayed as a victim who wouldn't have been in this mess if the cyclist had used a light, not worn such dark clothes, and the country road they were on in the middle of nowhere had had a bike path??? Ok.

But he does have the dreamiest eyes, which brings us to Robert. Apropos of nothing, no background, no motive, no establishment of psychopathy, nothing, Robert has become a serial killer in the quest to keep he and David together, except they're not together. But you know, Robert is "gay," so you know... He has sunken the killer car into a lake, killed a witness, killed David's boss, killed David's real romantic interest, the dead girl's sister (don't ask) twice!! Don't worry, she comes back to life both times because, you know, suspense.

I found the comfortable ease with which the actual killer was repeatedly rehabilitated: he almost turns himself in, he rebuffs Robert, sort of, he's got super dreamy eyes, and he's straight. This film would propose that even if his actual actions are reprehensible, his inner intentions are good. And don't forget the super dreamy eyes. Then on the other hand, Robert is just as easily and comfortably villainized with no pretexted or context, other than him being "gay." As in: "gay" = murderous psychopath. Welcome to the cinematic return of the 1950s pro-forma "gay" villain.

In any other film, a guy who drinks, drugs, drives and kills, is the villain who's only just outcome is to be tried, convicted, and in prison. Here, he's the love interest. And by comparison to the "gay guy", soooooo much more preferable, because of the dreamy eyes. I'm guessing the demo for this genre is the prison pen pal, soon-to-be bride, of an incarcerated murderer. Even so, I would hope that they would be put off by this hash of a script/story/film.

Ok, that's not fair to comic books. They often do have dramatic tension and suspense. But this film has none. And to make it worse, the ending is so ridiculous that the indifference I felt for the first hour and a half turned to insult at the end. Two cops are tailing a serial killer. One cop goes for coffee or something. The serial killer approaches the remaining cop, Malek, and promises to take him to the burial site of his last victim. Does that cop say, "let me get my partner." No, he says get in and let's go. In the middle of the night. With the serial killer. The killer brings him to a deserted area, what else, and tells the cop to start digging. Which the compliant stupid cop does. After digging about five holes, no body, he kills the killer with the shovel. Unreal....

I found out about this documentary after meeting one of its executive directors three years ago. It's taken me since then to bring myself to watch it. That, despite the fact that I knew it would be a worthy story. More than worthy, actually, more like heroic. But having seen some of the horrifying youtube videos that came out of Russia in the early 2010s, taken by the torturers of gay men, I knew that this would be hard to stomach and so I put it off, and off, and off.

The procrastination ended a few nights ago and it was both more horrifying and heroic than I thought it would be. I saw young men and women fleeing for their lives to escape being sadistically raped, murdered, and beaten by their government, the police, people on the street, and their families. And I saw others who didn't escape who were sadistically raped, murdered, and beaten within an inch of their lives by their government, the police, people on the street, and their families. These monsters video taped their unspeakable crimes, in order to continue enjoying them, and they're shown briefly here.

I was expecting to be a little shellshocked after seeing Welcome to Chechnya. It didn't disappoint, so to speak. It's brilliantly and heartbreakingly done - and stomach churning. The heroic young gay and lesbian people were the only thing that made it tolerable. But they were nearly offset, completely, by the mayhem happening around and to them. And now there are images and scenarios that I will never be able to unsee. I watched this film because I thought that if they could endure these nightmares, I owed it to them to see what they endured, or how they died. Now, I have only my nightmares. Small inconvenience compared to a life of nightmares or no life at all. I recommend Welcome to Chechnya. It's important that we see that the monstrous inhumanity inflicted on the Jews by German society, more than 80 years ago, is still alive and well with a new target and a new nation. Documentaries about the Holocaust tell us what happened. Welcome to Chechnya tells us what IS happening.

I love Adelaide Clemons and Patrick J Adams, and now I love Douglas Smith. But I don't love this film and I wanted to. The dialogue is overwritten and wordy, and unnatural. And then there's the halting and stuttering style in which it's delivered. It makes for overly long and tedious scenes being stretched beyond their meaning. It was really annoying.

These are such terrific actors but they seemed manhandled by the writing and directing and therefore constrained or trapped in what could otherwise be a very compelling story. Only Patrick J Adams seemed to be able to get beyond these shackles. He's natural and engaging and able to allow his quiet subtext to roar without drawing attention to it. I wish his role had been larger. And I wish the other two very talented actors could have done the same. It's my impression that they weren't allowed.

Adelaide Clemons (and I didn't know this) has a beautiful singing voice and her songs, sprinkled through the narrative, are effective even when the narrative isn't. There are a few really strong moments but they're just too few to elevate this film to the "must see" level. Most of the scenes are just way too drawn out and just have way, way, too many words in them. The script seems like something that sounded really good in the writer's head, or looked good on paper, but does not sound right on people. They just don't talk this way in real life.

Several reviews here have spoken well of the total failure of this film. I'm only adding my voice here to amplify how poorly it is written. Though the directing is equally bad, it might have overcome both of these obstacles had it not been also cursed with a seriously weak performance by one of its leads, Zen McGrath. One wants to give a young performer a chance, and the benefit of the doubt, but this kid is so bad that it can't be overlooked. He's just not up to this, and may need to look at other careers.

The writing... holy cow, this script is so OVER-WRITTEN as to be comical. There were literally times when I inadvertently laughed out loud. The most egregious moment being the gunshot, which I saw coming twenty minutes earlier, as the young teen was begging his parents to take him out of the the psych ward. And worse, in the fake "dream" scene. The whole time I was thinking to myself that this might have been written by a marginally talented, but inexperienced, teenager.

Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman give solid performances but for no purpose. They are lost in this mess of an over-written, overwrought, screenplay. It's kind of curious how on earth this whole mess came together. I'd love to know the inside baseball on that. THAT would make a good film!!

Don't let the terrible title and misleading trailer dissuade you from watching this fantastic movie.

This film kept populating in my Prime account. Because of the way it's being marketed I've avoided for at least a year, but finally got bored enough to give it a five-minute chance before tossing it for good. Instead, I was hooked as soon as the dialogue between the two characters began. What I realized immediately is that Sodom is well written, directed, and acted.

I couldn't disagree more with those who think that Pip Brignall is miscast as the "straight" footballer. Far from it. His character, Will, comes off as "gay" - because he is gay. What we see here, mainly, is the "gay" Will - his persona when he's not faking who he really is. There are some minor flashes of the "straight" Will when appropriate. And I won't mention where, here.

Pip Bignall constructs an amazing portrait of Will as a confused and tormented man who's yet to come to terms with who he is. His face is clownishly contorted at times which reflects his great struggle from within. He often draws out the vowels of a simple word (weeeeeeeeeeell..), torturing their pronunciation as if to road-test them before fully committing to them (a theme). THIS is the Will that has rarely been seen by anyone, other than the four other men he's been with. He himself doesn't know who this Will is and is discovering him in real-time in these encounters.

So, no, Will is not a butch he-man of a footballer. Thank God. He's a gay footballer with a butch facade - most of the time. All of this added together is a compelling and heartbreaking portrait of someone who most gay men can relate to in some significant, or minor, way. It's the lack of confidence, because of society, to explore the unknown. The crippling need to fake our way through the familiar and approved path that ALL people have to navigate. It's just that for gay people, with regards to an opposite sex partner, it is an impossibility with a fuse. That, is who Pip Brignall brings to life beautifully and in painful detail in this stunning film.

Everyone seems to agree that Jo Weil is fantastic here, and I do as well. His Michael is patient, seasoned, and knows of love and loss. His years of doubt are decades behind him. His Michael establishes a perfect polarity to Pip Brignall's Will. I hung on their every revelatory word. The evolution of their evening rang true and never felt to me as gimmicky or artificial. Granted, it is not a run of the mill date, as dates go. But I couldn't definitely see this one as something on each of their horizons, somewhere, at some point.

With all that out of the way - the writing and directing by Mark Wilshin is wonderful. The atmospherics breathtaking. That dance!!! It made my heart beat faster. I can't recommend this film highly enough. It is unusual, compelling, and expertly made. I have one small quibble with it that I won't bother with, and, that doesn't prevent me from giving it a 10 out of 10. Enjoy. You won't regret it.

I would very much welcome a talk by the director/writer, Charlotte Wells, about how this film speaks to her and others. For me it's like a dogwhistle that I can't hear, but others clearly can. The Power of the Dog is a similarly styled film. And its fragmented narrative, which seems to be a theme with female directors/writers, was just as unenjoyable.

I read several reviews here in the 10 and 1 categories just to get some disparate views and insight. They were all compelling. I mostly agreed with the 1's, however, one of the 10's made a case for the fragmentary style. Where I come down though, is here. I had a forty-five year career as a ballet dancer and choreographer. Early in that career I was speaking with another choreographer, a female, I'm male, and she said this to me nearly forty-five years ago: "It doesn't matter whether the audience likes or understands my work. It only matters that I'm creating." Her career did't last a minute. "This" feels very much like "that." To Leslie is meaningful to the writer/director - and that's all that matters. Or, it communicates with a largely female audience and I'm not getting it. Both are possible. Either way, I didn't care for this loosely-strung-together series of anachronistic vignettes/images. It came off as a jumbled mess of memories - oh, was that the point? If so, it was a miss.

I'd had this in my Netflix cue for months and finally found the spare 2 1/2 hours to watch it. About ten minutes into it I just got a funny feeling. So I came here to check out its score, pretty high, and a few reviews (which I didn't read but only looked at their ratings) also pretty high: 8s, 9s. And 10s. So I thought, "oh, this is one of those films that just takes a while to get going.

Several reviews here remark that this film doesn't follow the book, the Oscar winning film from 1930, or even the inferior (their word) 1979 version with John Boy in it. I've never read the book or seen either films. Too bad I had to finally jump aboard with this mess. I'm sure the criticisms about its failure to follow the source material is spot on, but I come from a more pure perspective in not having been tainted with any expectations for that. I merely watched this for its value as a "film" who's only responsibility was to communicate to its audience.

This film is a parade of horribles. It is a grocery list for every possible way to die on the battle field - for 2 1/2 hours... As with anything that gets repeated WAY too often, it just gets boring after the first 20 or 30 scenarios, and you still have 2 hours to go. There is no acting here because there is no character development or dialogue to act. The main character emits wordless grunts a lot. I mean A LOT. He comes off more as a truffle pig than a soldier at war.

As these soldiers died off throughout the film, I got the uneasy feeling of not caring. It bothered me until I realized that 1) I was bored, and 2) I had no clue who any of them were because their humanity had not been established - even after 2 1/2 hours. Rather than developing characters that we can bond with and follow, this film is a long video game of explosions and death. It's characters are two-dimensional and cartoonish. When they're gone, it's just on to the next, and then the next, it's just monotonous.

There is one astonishing self-inflicted wound here by the production crew. Makeup. Twice "Paul" falls into a muddy swamp, face covered in WET mud. Seconds later he's walking away with dried, caked, mud covering his face. It's not just dried, it looks as if it were applied with trowel to his face and then baked on in an oven. It is inconceivable that a director and makeup artist could do this and not realize what a huge mistake it is. We're only left to conclude that they had an outcome in mind and didn't care, because they think their audience is stupid, that what they were doing didn't comport with the physics of water evaporation - which is not instantaneous.

Finally, and I could go on and on about just how. Bad. This. Is. Rather than a musical score, symphonic or electronic, someone came up with the genius idea of using a drum trap set for the entire underlying music bed. The action is punctuated with rim shots and paradiddles. And at the oddest moments. Rather than enhancing the action and drama, this only serves to make the viewer jolt and ask, "what the hell was that". Even after you've settled in to what it is, you never stop going, ????, when you hear it. The only reason that this is not the worst aspect of this terrible mess of a film is that it doesn't really detract from the film because you just don't care.

I really don't get the 2's here... Anyway, this film is Fun with a capital F. It's only 90 minutes long but a lot has been packed into that short run-time. The two leads, Gaffney and Held are excellent. Held especially has range and great comedic timing, and despite being handsome, a funny face when he wants. Together, they are a great team and I would love to see a sequel. Also, the parents played by Laura Wernette and Chopper Burnet (their last names rhyme. Was that intentional?) are very funny. There's no point in going into a lot of depth here as this is just a funny film designed for fun. Done! But I will mention that Jason Gaffney has a scene at the end which did, surprisingly, bring a tear to my eye. And then I went back to laughing. This is well worth anyones 90 minutes.

I knew nothing about this film or any of its participants when I decided to watch it. I don't even recall why I chose it. The first half-hour frustrated me because it is exposition that repeatedly tells the same plot-line. Fortunately, for me, I have patience with slow films/stories. It's my nature to hold out hope that some justification for such a slow pace will appear. In the case of The Blonde One, it certainly did.

You can't not (double negative, I know) feel, in your gut, the hurt and disappointment of Gabo, the blonde one, as Juan repeatedly back-benches him, without warning, for other affairs. Both of these men are late in dealing with their sexuality. Neither understands, yet, that the relationship they have with one another is subject to, and guided by, the normal constraints that most humans operate from. There's no carveout for gay guys fumbling in the dark, so to speak. Juan doesn't know that it's wrong for him to treat Gabo like dirt. And Gabo doesn't know that he doesn't have to accept it.

That is the journey of this story. And like so many excursions in life, it's the excursion itself that is compelling. In this case, the journey is nearly voiceless. The drama is conveyed by glances, posture, simple gestures, and any other wordless manner of communication. Sound boring? It's not. It is, rather, very powerful - to the point where one wonders whether or not more dialogue might have actually weakened the film. Personally, I think it would have. This film is only "silent" in the sense that it is nearly wordless. It is without words, however, that it communicates volumes. And loudly.

The main characters are played by Gaston Re and Alfonso Baron and they are nothing less than gobsmacking in their intimacy and power. Their awkward and unexpected relationship teeters on a knife's edge like a high wire act in a hurricane. You can't not watch. And as transcendent as these two actors are, they are able to succeed in this story because of the brilliance of their director, Marco Berger. Berger is the genius that has this story in the palm of his capable hand. He knows what the story is and what it isn't. He never strays from his vision. He knows how this will be told, where it will start, and where and how it will end. This is remarkable because his method of story telling is so unconventional. There's not too much of a roadmap for this unless you go all the way back to Ingmar Bergman and others from that era.

It's not often that my patience for slow films pays off. But it's for films like The Blonde One, where it's a huge lottery win, that makes it worth all the others that didn't. Quite an achievement for Berger, Re, and Baron. The Blonde One is probably not for everyone. Which is too bad. For me, it goes into a category with other greats such as Rear Window, Bicycle Thieves, or even Midnight Cowboy, in that it is a standout in its genre, if not the best of its genre.

The first 90 minutes of this film is a nonsensical montage of behind the scenes glimpses into the hidden lives of unimportant spoiled rich Italian boys at an all-boys Catholic school. Your entire attention is wasted on trying to figure out why you're being shown this. How is it important to whatever this story is. The answer is: about 5 minutes of this would have been plenty to establish a context for what the final 30 minutes is actually about.

I'd never heard of this crime before. And in this film the final half hour is a horrific ringside seat to the sadistic rape/murder of two young girls. The women are beaten, raped, drugged, and thrown into the trunk of a car. The scum that commit these atrocities parade around naked in between assaults. THIS IS A RAPE/PORN/SNUFF FILM. It is nothing more than that. The writers/director should be ashamed. It is every bit as vile as Funny Games... If you haven't seen that one, it's just like this one only more.

And the writers, and the director, and myself for watching this piece of crap all the way to the end. It is one of the stupidest movies I've seen in a while. Point of personal privilege here: I'm going to focus on the gay couple. Not because it's worse than the other storylines. They're all equally AWEFUL!!! It seems that a lot of gay storylines lately center around whether or not to turn your relationship into a three-way. Ok, I'm gay, in a relationship for a while, know lots of other gay people, single and coupled, and literally NOT ONCE has that topic ever surfaced personally or through any of our friends. Not once. And yet, if you go by the latest films released, with gay characters, you'd think that that is the driving tension for all of us... Also, anal sex has to figure in prominently in our every day discussions about anything. And last, and then I'm done with this drek, the writers think it's hilarious that the main female's "boyfriend's" last name is Bottoms. Get it, bottoms??? Like anal sex bottoms??? That is SOOOOOOOO funny.... One can only hope that this mess sinks to the bottom (hahahah) of the sea and disappears forever.

Oh. My. God!!!!!!!!!! This is possibly the most overwritten screenplay ever. I watched all the way to the end, which wasn't easy. The exposition never stops. It just goes on, and on, and on - amazing plot twist when the young mother stabs the old mother with a hatpin. Like every other plot point here, it leads to nothing.

I'm a huge Maggie Gyllenhaal fan. It broke my heart at the end when I saw her name come up as writer/director. She's a terrific actor though.

This film is told in a non-linear mess throughout the first half of of the this film about loss and grief. It's confusing and ineffective. Somehow, though, I kept watching into the second half as it unfolded into a raw and gripping portrait of a family struggling through the worst possible situation. Matthew Goode and Bojana Novakovic are finally freed from this messy screenplay in the second half to give compelling and effective performances. I don't need to say much more other than it's worth gritting your teeth through the first half in order to experience sad beauty of the second.

If I can save one person from throwing away one hour and fifty three minutes of their lives watching this drek, then the ten minutes I'm going to take to write this review will be worth it. First, I've heard of this play/film nearly all of my adult life. Slow night. So I watched it. It has been pejoratively re-titled "Screamers" by many I've heard talk about it. I knew it had a gay theme and so I thought that "Screamers" referred to another pejorative phrase, "screaming queen", as in a very flamboyant gay man. THAT, even done badly, would have made for a more interesting film than this piece of junk. "Screamers" refers to THE FACT THAT THEY SCREAM THEIR DIALOGUE FOR THROUGHOUT MOST OF THE MOVIE. Dialogue that, by the way, has never occurred naturally anywhere. So, if you like hearing actors SCREAM dialogue, that more resembles refrigerator poetry than it does any naturally occurring human communication, for almost two hours, then have at it.

Don't believe a word of this crap. Oh, you can believe the part about how the world economy collapsed in 2008. Let's call that the forest fire that burned down the world economy. Now, how did the fire start? Camp fire? Lightening? No. It was deliberately set by arsonists. Now imagine all those arsonists getting together and talking about how bad the fire was. And how they saved so many of us from being engulfed by that fire. What balls...

The first match that was lit for this economic inferno was the passage of the Graham/Leach/Bliley Congressional Bill of 1999. You know who didn't suffer one penny during this financial meltdown? Bankers!!! This may not the the first time a bank robbery was committed by the BANK against citizens, but it sure was the biggest and most egregious. Make a documentary about that HBO!

This film is a warning shot that there will be hell to pay for religious institutions and the "conversion therapy" community who emotionally and physically torture innocent children and adults in a misguided mission to make them "right". According to this film, they literally have blood on their hands.

There have been a few other films dealing with this subject matter that, while not having the star power and budget of Boy Erased, do fare much better both as films and the message. I would offer, "Save Me" (2007) with Judith Light and Chad Allen. It is minute for minute a much better film - that no one saw, unfortunately.

My opinion of this film as a "film" is not very high, I'm sorry to say. But its message is important and its use of big named stars will amplify that message. The screenplay is pretty terrible. The pacing the director uses is grindingly slow. I actually like a movie that is paced slowly. It's a good device to build tension. Its use here, however, creates a dragging sensation. When you have a cast with Joel Edgerton, Nicole Kidman, Lucas Hedges, Xavier Dolan, and Russel Crow it's really hard to take a swing at this very relatable story and then miss it. But they do. And they did. Regardless, it gets a 10 from me for the lives it will save and the societal course correction that it could bring about.

I came out in the mid 70's. If someone had told me then that in 45 years we would still be debating "conversion therapy", much less implementing it, or that films like Boy Erased would still be relevant, I would have called them crazy. And while we continue to debate it, and make films about it, lives are being ruined and ended. Gay people don't kill themselves because they hate being gay. They kill themselves because of the familial, religious, and societal cruelty inflicted on them. Perhaps this film will do something to reverse course on that. One can hope.

I can't believe that I'm only just now finding this 10 years after it was made. It is a very revealing and humanizing documentary about the gay reparative therapy community. And it so subtly walks you through, by way of the five main characters, what an injurious and inhumane practice it is.

The film opens with the marriage of Ana and Brian - two "repaired" homosexuals. Attending their wedding are two former members of the reparative group, Jonathan and Darren. They figured out how misguided "Christian" reparative therapy was and got out. When reflecting on their time with that community they are far more benevolent than I would have been. They speak candidly about the suffering they endured growing up in evangelical families, and all of the disapproval and self loathing that included. It is heartbreaking. Darren, remarking on Exodus in particular, observed that all of the speakers and leaders recount their miserable lives of promiscuity and anonymous sex. And how Jesus then saved them from that. And he asks the rhetorical question: "Was the healing in your life about promiscuity, or about homosexuality?" I never personally interacted with conversion therapy but I've lived long enough to know that those stories are nearly always full of promiscuity, drugs, and misery. And that straight or gay, that's going to make for an unhappy life. What these "ministries" have done is conflate injurious life choices with a person's fixed, predetermined, sexual orientation. It was a great observation.

The documentary concludes with the revelation that Jonathan has fallen in love with a man named Chris. And after nearly forty minutes of getting to know all of these people we get to see them having dinner together in Brian and Ana's home. Despite the different directions each couple has chosen they are amazingly supportive and loving towards each other. But the contrast between the two couples, Jonathan and Chris, and Ana and Brian, is uncomfortably revealing. Brian and Ana show no signs of being in love with one another. Their bond seems only to exist in their heads. Ana, in describing her marriage to Brian, refers to him as a "permanent roommate". Wow... Jonathan and Chris, by contrast, are what any sentient being would describe as "in love"; the human romantic kind that is undeniably real. And after what we've heard describe by the survivors of this medieval leeching practice, it's much needed breath of fresh air.

Homophobic religiosity and "reparative" therapy is being judged and it's not going well for them. There will be a reckoning one day. What these religious leaders and families have done to their gay children will be atoned for, and this barbaric practice will find it's way onto the trash heap of history along with witch burnings and exorcisms. And the sooner the better. One of Jonathan's closing statements is this: "I love my family. But what they believe about me is wrong. They're just wrong." And about that, he is right.

After my first viewing of this film I was struck by two things; 1) the poignant and restrained performance by Chase Connors, and 2) how weak the overall quality of the film was; overwritten screenplay, choppy editing, unimaginative scene blocking, and a serious lack of chemistry between the two male leads, most of which was not their fault of the actors. The screenplay had so many subplots that were unsupportive of the main storyline that, as it pertained to developing the arc of their story, these two guys just got left in the back seat of the car. We're shown their story. We're, at least I, just not given enough of them to buy it.

Then I rewatched it and picked up on some really good aspects of the film that were overshadowed by its weaknesses the first time. The cinematography; no, not the easy layups of the Virginia landscapes in Fall. That's the easy stuff. Instead I was more drawn to some of the angles and mixtures of straight on shots with blocked shots within the same scene. It's really well done throughout. As well, the film has a beautiful, and simple, musical score. It is just enough to propel the story; and just as importantly, fill in when the story is becomes unfocused.

Chase Conner's performance stands out but other supporting members are excellent too. Carol Marie Rinn, as the unlikeable girlfriend of Lee Darcy (Chase Conner), finds angles and levels of a fairly simple character, enough to keep you wondering just how much, or whether, you'll end up disliking her. Ethan Sharrett as Ben Bennet gives a wonderfully endearing performance with complexity. His facial expressions reveal myriad competing thoughts as they ricochet through his characters mind. For me, though more than equal to the challenge, he was miscast.

However, the strongest aspect of this film is the performance by Chase Conner. I would love to see him in a better version of this film doing this role just as he does it here. With very little dialogue he embodied the conflict and brokenness of Lee Darcy. He knows how to be on the periphery of a scene, and without saying a word, reveal more of his character to the viewer. And the dialogue he does have - I can't imagine it delivered any better. He's an enormously gifted actor with that rarest of acting skills; the ability to pull away from the camera which pulls you, the viewer, further into the story and closer to his character. Why is he not in more films? I would love to see what he does with other material.

This film opens with a harrowing recreation of the Tsunami that devastated Indonesia in 2004. Then for the next hour and forty-five minutes it just circles the drain. What bothered me most though was the bastardization of Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto (second movement) used as a motif for the boy's story. The intro is a note for note copy/plagerism of this famous composition; then an altered Rachmaninov melody wanders around aimlessly until the boy's scene is over, which ultimately ends up nowhere; much like the rest of this film. On second thought, good match Clint!

Before I eviscerate this giant bag of dumb, it's worth pointing out that Ryan Reynolds, Rosario Dawson, and Scott Speedman, give really good performances. Mireille Enos plays the same catatonic depressive that she plays in everything else. Actually, not worth the time to take this mess apart. They already got 1:50 of my time. That's more than they deserved. Cliff notes screed: stupid storyline, pointless chronologic leap frogging in time, TERRIBLE screenplay. Don't. Just don't.

Not being a fan of gratuitous violence I avoided this film because of something I read about it. But the subject matter, or what I thought the subject matter to be, had me curious. So I spent a whopping $4.99 at iTunes and rented it, ready to pull the plug at any moment if necessary. It wasn't at all what I've heard described here or elsewhere. And if it were I would be writing a very different one star review.

To begin with, the writing is excellent. This film delivers an authentic, and uncomfortable, small town "church voice" through the characters and their interactions with one another. The pastor, Eli (played by David Rysdahl) has inherited a small church from his deceased father. He hears his father's sermons through cassette tapes he plays in his car while driving around; and in his head, perpetually, everywhere he goes. We hear them in voice-over as a viewer. They're hateful, cruel, and for him, inescapable. At a potluck lunch after service one Sunday, a homeless man, Daniel (Zachary Booth), shows up for the free food. Eli, desperate for any new attendees to his failing church, tries to welcome him but Daniel never looks up from his food. Not even when he tells the preacher that he has "pretty hands". Let the creepiness, and it's unexpected origins, begin.

Like any stray, if you feed them they'll come back. And Daniel does. This time Eli gives him the brown bag lunch his wife made for him; and a place to stay. It's a small cabin in an isolated area that was used previously to hide Eli's mother from the public when her drinking became an embarrassment to his father. Apparently his mother is also deceased so there's room now to hide someone else because what Eli subconsciously has in mind needs to be hidden from everyone he knows. Especially his wife and congregation.

Daniel has a slightly predatory air about him. By contrast the waifish, terminally unsure of himself man of God, Eli, comes off as the weak, and easily overpowered, one in the heard. It soon becomes clear that he may not be as devoted to his church wife as he should be and that he is getting in way over his head. His interest in Daniel is carnal; not "Christian"; even as his father's angry words blast through his mind on a continuous loop.

This is a small budget film but this is not small budget acting, directing, cinematography, or writing. The leads, Zachary Booth, David Rysdahl, Lucy Faust, and Raymond McAnally, give impressive performances that will leave an impression on you. These are the church people with their church faces and their real faces. And those two faces are at odds with one another. Without getting too specific I'll just say that the Snow Owl story, as told by one fo these characters, is chilling.

The crux of this story is that of a an inexperienced preacher trying to hang on to what's left of his father's congregation even as his personal life is unravelled by a homeless stranger, a pregnant wife, and the emergence of feelings he's kept buried his entire life. Despite all of this, his desire to lead people in a new and better way is genuine. In a moment of frustration he rails at one of his flock saying, "People have personalized their God to the point of becoming their own God". No truer, or more cautionary, words were ever spoken. But he doesn't even realize how cautionary his own words are.

The conclusion of this story advances incrementally in a way that I did not see coming. By the last frame I was a little bit in disbelief of what I had just seen. It's not a film I would watch numerous times but it is a film I would recommend that everyone watch at least once. And I will say that, on this subject (see for yourself what "this" is), it may be the best made film, and most powerful in terms of message, I've ever seen. Which is even more amazing given the small size of the production. I am gay and I understand the revulsion some may have towards this story. To that I would say, you're not picking up what they're putting down. And what they're "putting down" is a powerful message. And an indictment of homophobic religiosity.

There will be a reckoning one day for those who try to "fix" gay kids. Though this particular film doesn't delve too deeply into scars left by those efforts it does provide a window into the families who wake up one day to find that their child is gay and then ship them away to a stranger to "fix" them in the name of Jesus. I have two words to say about that practice - Jesus wept...

OK, now to the film. It's good. It's worth your time. The actors are excellent. The script they're working with doesn't help them much though. Michael Grant, playing the main character, James, renders a thoughtful and moving depiction of a young man torn by what he believes is true for him, but against what the world at large would prefer for him. Lily Anne Harrison, who plays his girlfriend for a brief minute, makes an endearing impression with very little screen time. And Josh Green, playing Jame's former boyfriend, is equally engaging. Tom Wopat, playing a grieved and confused father, is heartbreaking and sympathetic even when you'd like to throttle him. Director Kirsten Karlhuber uses long pauses implying deep reflection. I liked it. Sometimes saying nothing invites the audience to sort out the narrative for themselves. It works well here. The flat cinematography is most likely due to the very tight budget of this film. It's as if the cameras were bolted to the ground and the actors just told to run around in front of them and deliver lines. It's unfortunate because there was a lot to work with here; Vermont landscapes, cool farm house, and some very touching performances.

This is a good film about a terrible thing that some churches do. They take vulnerable children and then emotionally and spiritually abuse them by making them believe that they are mistakes. It is hideous. Note that no film has ever been made about the gay person who found Jesus and lived happily ever after as a heterosexual. No one has ever stepped forward and said, "please make a movie about my life as someone who was gay and is now straight, married, and very happy." Why? Because that has never happened because THAT person doesn't exist. The Ex Gay movement is littered with the tortured souls that tried to be THAT person only to realize that they were wrong. I can't wait for the day when the "Ex Gay" movement finds its rightful place in history with the crusades and witch burning.