LoraceDem

I love the way the film is framed, as an outsider, a flawed person entering this toxic family looking for the truth. Melton really nailed the portrayal of someone stuck in life, unable to process the trauma he lived through. The only adult in his life he could turn to as an adolescent, young adult was his groomer, a delusional woman who projected ridiculous, unbelievable things onto a child and took no responsibility for entrapping him.

The scene when Elizabeth/Joe briefly hookup just displays the ludicrous nature of an adult claiming they were overpowered by the seduction/prowess of a 13 virgin boy or girl. No, you weren't!

I read the books and the 90's film was a huge part of my teen years. I'm blown away by how powerful this telling is. Anderson and Reid brilliantly capture Louis and Lestat, and their chemistry together is through the roof and hot AF. Sam Reid is even wearing his own lovely, silky hair as Lestat, not a dry old wig. The changes are earned and well-written: this is true to the spirit of Anne's novels and is the openly gay version of IWTV I've been waiting for all these years.

Anne Rice wrote Louis' fake dead wife into the 90's film and suggested Cher play a female Louis to market the film to homophobes; she retconned ITWV in her later books many times. This shows she understood adaptation and that it involved making changes. She updated her works to include cellphones and internet and rebooted her series with a young black protagonist in 2001. So I don't believe this show is beyond her or against her or an affront to her or her work in any way. It's beautiful, and I'm sad she isn't around to see it.

This was a really captivating documentary. I believe Eileen Franklin, and I think she could have continued to do great work on behalf of survivors of incest and child sexual abuse. I think it's so sad what happened that made her want to disappear from public life. Repressed memories are real.

George Franklin's defense attorney was quite ridiculous and clearly biased in saying that he instantly believed him to be innocent because he asked if Janice, not Eileen, was the witness that got him arrested. He likely asked this, not because he was confused about which daughter was with him, but because he was aware that Janice herself had reported him to the police for the murder of Susan Nason years before Eileen came forward.

George Franklin sexually, physically, and emotionally abused his own children, he possessed graphic child pornography and 'sex abuse toys' meant for children when arrested, and I have no doubt that he also murdered Susan Nason. That he only served a few years for all of this is really unfortunate.

A young person takes a break from college (so no degree,) is able to spontaneously move to NYC and not only lands a paying job (not an unpaid internship) but one that sets her up for a serious career as a literary agent? The 90's was certainly a different world.. This is a sweet film, but an extremely dated period piece that delves into high fantasy.

It seemed very promising that the film would feature figures such as Karl Marx, novelist George Gissing, and Douglas booth playing a drag queen. But, the former two are just there to take cheap shots at.

George Gissing fell in love with a prostitute when he was a college student, and he wound up going to jail because he stole things from his campus in order to keep her afloat financially. After leaving prison, they embarked on a very unhappy marriage together. So, no, George Gissing was not a 'virtue signaling' "white knight" going around bragging about his past and wife. In one of his best novels (which deserve adaptation into film,) 'Born In Exile,' he describes some of this history and the impact it left on him.

So no, I don't appreciate the detective sneering at him because he was so swayed by sociopathic lying serial killer murderer of children Lizzie (borden.) The screenwriter also seems to wrongly believe that destitute, homeless working class boys in the era didn't experience similar abuses. A cheap, empty film issuing blind polemics that tries and fails to make it's main character, a user and abuser, sympathetic, or interesting.

It occurred to me after watching this film that the strange dance that Leo and Yoan do through each others lives, as well as their strong physical resemblance (Leo looks Yoan with his age doubled) that this narrative is a meeting of the central character with his younger self. Leo is very interested in Yoan, while the latter seems to utterly hate his older self just as much as he enjoys flaunting his bad choices and desire for all the things that Leo has thrown away--i.e. his relationship with Marie as well as an affair with her father. Ultimately this ends for Leo when his younger self manages to steal from him the thing he loves the most--his own child.

This film was really rather pointless and predictable in the end. If it wasn't so suffused with obvious religious morality (since the movie assumes it must be absolutely wrong to get a divorce, get promoted/make money at work and start a new life) it could have been an interesting drama. I think it's actually insulting to people with disabilities to present the idea that if they became able they would be 'superficial' and 'mean' as a result.

This film has nothing whatsoever to say about bullying, kidnapping, assault and battery committed against boys. It also has nothing to say about boys being shamed and mocked for their penis size, called homophobic slurs, being hit by their parents and older siblings, or the real traumatic, life-long consequences these events leave on the human psyche. It merely shows these things happening without consequences, while smirking in the process.

An opportunity to revel in white trash abusive parenting and the outdated "honor code" where if you are physically assaulted, it's wrongly implied that it's your fault because you were "weak" "not tough enough," and definitely not the fault of the violent scumbag who beat you up to satisfy his own ego, or the dozens of onlookers who did nothing to stop it.

It's also portrayed in the end as 'humorous' that the titular character refuses to report his attacker who nearly killed him to the police, thus ensuring that the cycle of bullying and violence will go on forever.

Truly, this is a film for people who don't bother to stop and examine the injustices, abusive relationships, and trauma they've experienced, but rather to mindlessly celebrate it, normalize it, and depict it as being o.k. A film made by a mind who is equally immature as the subjects he's filming.

I'm really not a fan of Todd Haynes's drab, dull, ugly brand of period 'realism.' The cinematography in this film is horrible, and the characters never leave this dimly lit, grey, polluted cityscape throughout the film (their 'roadtrip' consists of only grey roadsides and fugly motels, it's also not clear where exactly they were going or why.) The relationship and overall storyline takes a long time to break through the muck, and even then it remains subtle and flat, not particularly memorable. As I watched the divorce proceedings, I couldn't help but think how, if these were homosexual men who had been filmed at the time, the threat would not be taking away the custody of children, but jailtime. I read people comparing this film to "Brokeback Mountain," but I don't think it should be.

This is a very riveting documentary that tells the grand story of the rise and fall of Atari via highlighting it's worst game. I remember playing Atari as a child, and some of my favorite atari games, such as Adventure, are featured in the film. I almost wish it touched further on some of the good atari games, such as pitfall.

I also played the E.T. game and unlike the lionizing voices at the end of this doc, I do still think it deserves to be called one of the worst ever. That I can now empathize with the game's maker does not diminish the fact that the game was overly simplistic, boring, and one-note. That is the major weakness of this film, as it attempts to redeem the game itself and even bring up insulting explanations about the game not being liked on account of being 'too difficult.' As a young child I usually could beat it in about ten minutes, but there were no additional levels to explore afterwards. It wasn't difficult, but just bad.

This is basically the French version of a lifetime made for TV movie, about a Robert Durst style case. It is however not anywhere close to the caliber of 'All Good Things,' since the main character in this film is the mother, not the actual murder victim or the alleged killer. And the film doesn't attempt to present a theory of how the murder happened, it just leaves it in the dark, exchanges it for pathetic scenes of Catherine Denevue with aging makeup, hobbling around a barren apartment talking about the loss of her daughter.

I was unaware of this when I began watching the film, and found the events incomprehensible. The motives of the characters, be they the mother, daughter, or their attorney seemed quite murky to me. My initial reaction was to like Maurice, and become confused when his behavior started to change. The character on screen was poorly written and acted. We are apparently supposed to believe that everything Maurice did was a criminal, sociopathic act, including his desire to move up in the world and all of his professional decisions.

Was Renée Le Roux actually good or bad at running the casino? The film gives us no clues whatsoever but insists that she is either way the real victim/martyr in this story. She denies her daughter an inheritance, and their relationship ends badly. I didn't really sympathize with her at all, she was a controlling parent, trying to run her adult daughter's life, but now we are supposed to view that as perfectly o.k. given the tepid courtroom soap opera that this story ends in.

I really liked Jeremy Jordan in Smash, so I was looking forward to this. Until the opening credits ended with Anna Kendrick singing in her screechy, ultra-high pitched voice. I had to stop, though I gave it another try a week later. Beyond her horrible voice, I found many of the songs to be cliché, obnoxious and not the least bit modern. Honestly, that stupid song at the beginning where Jamie is singing about how his grandmother will hate her because she isn't Jewish, and doing it while they have sex...who the f' cares what your mother and grandmother think? If they are so intrusive to believe that it is any of their business who you're seeing then you need to set boundaries. Or was this written in the 1950's? It's all so archaic and ridiculous, especially given the way the publishing industry works today. Jamie's constant jubilation regardless of what he's singing is just as annoying as Cathy's screechily whining her way through the film. Spending five years with these two is just too much to ask.

I didn't like the 90's grunge aesthetics (was Sherri based on Courtney Love?) of this film or the borderline soft-core porn sex scenes at the beginning. I get however that the scenes are there to show that both of the main characters are still acting out sexual dysfunction from the central traumatic event in the film. Owen prematurely ejaculates due to the trauma and has trouble getting close to people because he was sexually abused by his much older brother. Owen was just a child when they physically dragged him into the room, assaulted and threatened him into sexually performing against his will with this girl they were raping. As he says, his body betrayed him, and it is a common reaction for boys who are scared or nervous to get an erection; it is something many male survivors deal with.

Yet Own is treated with contempt in the film, yelled at, hit, and people act like he deserves to have guilt. But Owen was also a survivor, suffering from PTSD and he deserved closure and healing just as much as Sherri did. He was not responsible for what happened but he did a great thing by coming back and trying to make some of it right. It's too bad that the film couldn't lend him a more sympathetic ear but rather uses him as a scapegoat for the anger the other characters feel about what happened to her. No one feels angry about what was done to him. There is no comparing pain, there is no hierarchy of trauma that justifies everyone self-righteously dismissing people like Owen.

I only watched this film because I follow Gabriel Mann and because I am also a male survivor of sexual abuse, and child pornography where I was forced by adults to act out scenes with other children. And I'm certainly not partly to blame along with the child pornographers for that.

This film wastes a potentially interesting subject (an abusive mother who intentionally sabotages and destroys the life of her daughter and friends) by falling into lifetime movie clichés. It was actually disgusting to see all of the shallow, unbelievable and lazy plot points that come up, for instance someone emails a blurry picture of a girl drinking a wine cooler (but it could be a bottle of lemonade for all we know) to admissions at Yale, and they not only open the email and read it, but they revoke a student's admission as a result? It's so bad, though maybe there was some amusement in seeing what actors agreed to slum it for this production; such Rachel True's role as a (vice principal? teacher? counselor?--apparently all three) which she didn't even bother to phone in, and it's always fun seeing Tuvok from star trek voyager. But not only was the depiction of events unbelievable and impossible, so was the end scene ultimately infuriating. Her daughter tells her she's not responsible for leaking naked pictures of her daughter online, drugging her, physically assaulting people and slandering, defaming dozens of students at her daughters school, and she replies that "I know, that's what my therapists told me too, it's just a chemical imbalance." When no, it isn't; you're a criminal and should be in jail, you don't have a right to abuse your daughter or other young people. This kind of abuse is a deep seated pattern that you do need to take responsibility for in order to change. No qualified therapist or mental institution would say "it's not your fault" after all of that. I hate lifetime!

The main character is a sensitive young man unsure what to do with his last summer before entering university. What mars the film is the utter hate and lack of sympathy which the writer and director seem to have for him. Instead, we watch as he is put-down by his friends, and gets roped into an abusive relationship with a girl who disrespects his boundaries, his intelligence, and verbally abuses him at every turn. She doesn't understand him but tries to convince him and the audience that what he "needs" is to be led around by a leech who her uses her sexuality and stupidity to control him.

And at the end, this is somehow viewed as "growth." If the situation were reversed, and an intelligent, sensitive, educated young woman was dragged around all summer by an abusive, cheating man this wouldn't be viewed as such a good thing. But no, this double standard suggests that there is nothing with abusing young men and trying to stick them into a box of a restrictive male gender role, laughing at their pain all the way. This reactionary message follows until the end, where he decides to pollute his body with a cigarette (cancer stick) just because his abusive girlfriend smoked them and thought she was so cool and people who don't smoke just need to "loosen up."

The final scene in the film shows him trudging through the snow with his head shaven and a military uniform on--there is a choice to refuse conscription in Finland, but the culture (as epitomized by his abusive girlfriend) looks down upon males who don't do it. This film is one of the most disgusting things I've seen in a long time. Look elsewhere for a coming of age film that isn't so utterly condescending and hateful towards youth itself.