Reviews

An achingly beautiful tale of a young woman torn between two lovers. She finds in each what the other doesn't provide. Gorgeous cinematography, top notch acting. And authentically captures the emotional seesaw of being a young adult, wanting safety/security but also wanting to explore the new and different.

It's nothing new but it is exceptionally well done. It takes place in rural East Germany, just at the time of reunification. Maybe that's symbolic, as life is about to change drastically but in the moment, the East was still 40 years behind West Germany.

I have not read the source novel, so I cannot compare-contrast the film to book.

This is a very stunning debut film. The authenticity - the atmosphere, the acting - is stellar. The small-town teenage malaise is palpable. Lily McInerny is amazing, her portrayal of a doe-eyed adolescent longing for love but completely naive to life is excellent. Jonathan Tucker is completely believable as a charismatic "bad boy with heart."

My only gripe is that the story turns a bit fast and kind of strains credulity. Grooming takes time. And the situation would've been much more believable with drugs, which so often help people dissociate and bury trauma. But overall, an excellent take on a tough story.

I swear Amazon/Netflix just use an algorithm to come up with new shows and then feed similar scripts into a Markov Chain Generator.

This is an absolute joke of a series. The dialogue is absurd, like people aren't even having conversations, they're just reading lines. If it makes sense, great! If not, just keep it moving.

Whatever good bits are here could have been made into a 90 min B-movie. But 10 episodes??? Torture.

This is pure propaganda from The Church. It's sub-Lifetime Movie tripe. I guess it could somehow end up as a comedy like "Reefer Madness" but I would advise you simply avoid this dreck.

A very moody, well-done film about how teens don't understand the consequences of their impulsive actions.

Let me cut right to the chase - this movie is a disaster. There are some good scenes within it, but as a whole, there is no cohesion, there is no flow. Some of it seems to aim for comedy, some of it aims for seriousness, and there are scattered homages to much, much better films. Some of the acting is quite bad. Some of the dialogue is ridiculous. And worst of all, the attempt to frame it within the current sociopolitical problems in the US right now is not only ridiculous, but offensive.

Another "Lifetime"-esque version of prostitution with a PG13 level of nudity. In other words, a complete waste of time. But, wait, will the tattooed bad boy be her saviour? Lead actress is good, but the material is ultra-weak. There's plenty of sex scenes, but no skin. And almost all of them involving a stereotypical misogynistic old man. It's not engaging on any level whatsoever. I'd highly recommend "Student Services" or "Young & Beautiful" or even the TV show "The Girlfriend Experience" as far better material in this genre.

Typical French "coming of age" story about Iris, Lola Créton, and which of her 3 suitors she will lose her virginity to. And while, Iris is nice to look at, it unfortunately all adds up to naught. It is boring and ponderous, a study in useless verbiage and teenage indecision leading nowhere in particular. I like many films in this genre, but I just felt there was no payoff in this one. You keep waiting for it to turn sexy but it remains platonic.

A slice of life tale of three sisters who are languishing in the summer heat after being left on their own. The youngest sister is beautiful, the middle sister a bit cute and the oldest very plain. They sit around in various short-shorts, underwear, etc, while the camera lazily captures the overall mood of depression. The young one is seen in underwear, the middle one has a nude scene and the eldest has a sex scene. Hope this helps.

This was an okay low-budget documentary about brothels in Cambodia, specifically the Svay Pak village. It would've been much easier to swallow if it wasn't for the self-righteous Christians who run AGAPE/ARC and used this as a propaganda piece.

Bad enough these girls have been preyed on by pedophiles, then to get taken in and converted to Christianity, one can't help but feel it's just exploitation under a different guise.

For a better view, check out the movie Holly, which has no religious agenda behind it and is much more satisfying from a story-telling perspective.

I've very much enjoyed Brit Marling vehicles like Sound of My Voice, Another Earth, and The East... unfortunately, this one boils down to the old' science vs religion discussion but doesn't move any further down the line than the philosophy 101 level. Yawn. Also... you don't need a visa to get into India? Mine took 3 weeks. And less than 1% of that mostly Hindu nation is Buddhist. Brit Marling is a scientist specializing in the biology of the eye but 2/3 of the way through makes the mistake of saying the biometrics of matching eyes would be the same color? Just sloppy, amateur filmmaking. I would highly recommend the previously mentioned films, however.

The premise looks funny. The trailer is mildly amusing. The final product is lame. Unfortunately, the funniest parts are all in the trailer, so after about 30 minutes it just felt like I was sitting around waiting for the next scene I had already seen in the preview.

Some of the scenes seemed like first takes. I felt like I was watching DVD extras. I highly doubt they had a completed script. It felt like they were winging it half the time, which basically means Seth Rogen playing Seth Rogen, which was old ten years ago.

Skip this and go find yourself a midnight screening of Revenge of the Nerds.

There's a lot of good in this movie, but unfortunately, I just could not get past the lame choice to make Julianne Moore's character a "rock star." I just found it totally unbelievable and it served no purpose toward the plot or story arc whatsoever. She has made a career of playing high-strung, dysfunctional characters, so no problem there. But rock star? I don't buy it. You can't just throw on a bad tattoo and expect it to work. She has no edge at all. Was Betty White unavailable? And plus, she's not so dysfunctional that she's a druggie trainwreck, so why even bother? What she does is insignificant to the overall story, so why make such a wild leap of logic? I just found it totally distracting and annoying. The rest of the cast does fine, although the messages are a bit obvious and they beat you over the head with them while feigning subtlety.

The topic at hand is certainly worthy of being heard. Although nothing new, corporations are alleged to have done horrible things in the name of profits. The problem is, there's just no way around the poor filmmaking. I understand there was a limited budget and limited resources, but there's no flow to the editing, the narrative gets lost, and there seems to have been little forethought to the way in which this story was told, so that not just as a topic but as a FILM, it is engaging to the audience.

For a much better documentary on atrocities in Burma, I recommend Burma VJ.

Yet another coming of age movie. Young teens Laura and Christine have been friends forever, but new girl Maria is wild and the curious Laura ditches her old friend to explore new territory. Drinking, partying, sex, parental tension... it's nothing new but it is surprisingly well done.

Beautifully shot, it really captures the sensitivity of being that age and the confusion and melancholy that come with it. Julie Brochorst Andersen is excellent and I expect she'll have a great career.

The only complaint is the copy I viewed had atrocious English subtitles. Otherwise, I'm a bit surprised this hasn't found international distribution.

Horrible, just horrible. I rented this because it was mentioned in the same sentence as "Donnie Darko." What a disappointment. The characters actions/reactions make little sense and the actors obviously have a hard time with the material. May is so over-the-top with her dysfunction that she seems to have all the social skills of a 3-year-old. It made no sense for this fella to even get as far with her as he did. The nympho/lesbian co-worker provides a semi-humorous thread, but again, it is so over-the-top that it is just campy. I won't "spoil" the ending, but I will just say that it is ludicrous. The problem with over the top, for me, is that it then takes the movie out of the realm of "reality" and thus is not scary or creepy because I am no longer taking it seriously. This movie may have had tongue firmly in cheek, but regardless, just came off as very poorly executed.

The original movie was about cars, pure and simple. It was not a great movie, but it had a 40 minute (no joke) car chase. That alone makes the 1974 version worth seeing. This "remake" has little in common with the original. This movie shows very few cars, wastes all of its time on uninteresting characters, and ends with a LAME 4 minute car chase. Meanwhile, the cast plays their roles like a bunch of cardboard cut-outs. This was a TOTAL waste of time.

On paper, this movie looks like it would be good, however it never gels. The secret of Butterfly is no secret to anyone except Irons' character. There are huge holes in the story and I never felt connected or got a good understanding of any character. Though Irons, a top rate actor in my opinion, does as good a job as possible, it isn't enough to make this at all involving. For Cronenberg, who also directed Irons in the magnificent, Dead Ringers, this is a low point in his career. Irons, on the other hand, went on to do Die Hard 3.