Reviews

I was going to be all apologetic for praising this film, but if you look at the ratings for this in detail you'll see that the MAJORITY of people give this film a rating of 5 and above. So how does IMDb arrive at its "weighted average" of 4.4? Ridiculous. Lots of '9's and '10's--and are we to think that all of those '5's, '6's, '7's, and '8's are put in to 'game the system'? Puh-lease.

The only thing that keeps this movie from being a '10' for me is the fact that it's crazy plot developments keep coming and coming and coming, with a ton of false endings. It gives you a headache.

But the utter brilliance of so much of this film--Deborah Rush as Trish the embezzler is, all on her own, worth the price of admission! The surprising twists with the Mary-Louise Parker character? The brilliant art direction, with its warped vision of our heroine's world as a winter wonderland in a snow globe gone mad? The plain old beauty of Stephen Dorff? There is A LOT to love about this movie. If you love movies, if you care about and are interested in movies as an art form, you will want to see this movie.

It's incredibly funny, it's beautiful, it's strange, it's wearying. It's not for everyone, but I wouldn't want to be everyone. If you're thoughtful, intelligent, and patient, you will appreciate the superb acting, film-making, and atmosphere this film provides.

I have FINALLY seen this movie, having desperately wanted to do so since I first heard of it 15 or 16 years ago. I like it very much, but it's not what I expected from the name and topic of the movie, or from the glamorous-looking still I saw of our heroine and two men in a bar.

I pictured a story of a woman chasing men in bars, living an empty social life with men who could never love her. Instead, it's all very small-scale and real and domestic, like other Japanese films. Think of that 1960s film where the elderly parents have to be dealt with. It's all small, delicate dramas between family members, in domestic settings.

Yes, there is very sexy and romantic footage at the beginning of our hero and his male lover. But as the film goes on, struggles are introduced and the world conspires against them.

Our heroine, as you have probably heard or would imagine, is still, yes, a confused and deluded woman, scarred by her early experiences and afraid of men. The film actually does explain the meaning of 'okoge,' but I think the implication of saying a woman is a 'fag hag' or like 'burnt rice' is a lot more severe than the film suggests. I think the name doesn't just come about because gay men are called 'okama' or 'rice pot.' I mean, have you ever seen burnt rice in a rice cooker? It's useless! Troublesome! Gross!

But our heroine is very beautiful, and charming, if misled. And we also wish the best for our hero and his boyfriend.

The last 30 minutes of the film had so many soap-operatic elements, and one very, very unbelievable scene of violence, so I have to downgrade the movie to merely an '8' while I would otherwise give it a '10.' I like the fact that film doesn't use stereotypes like pretty much every other American or English film that deals with homosexuality. Yes, there are drag queens here and they're somewhat outrageous, but pretty much everything else here aims not for comedy but truthful and simple acting.

A QUESTION: WHO IS THE WESTERN ACTOR shown in the bar scene at the end of the movie?? He's just an extra, but he looks SO FAMILIAR. Is he Australian? Is he famous? Do I just think I recognize him just because he's so handsome it's playing tricks on my mind??

MY VHS TAPE: I watched this on an ancient used VHS tape I just bought. The trailers for the distributor Cinevista after the movie are OUTRAGEOUS!! Campy, campy cornball stuff I've never even heard of. 'Black Lizard'? 'I Am My Own Woman'? 'Zero Patience,' a low-budget, glitzy AIDS-awareness musical? It's a pretty funny world where the low-budget, outrageous Alexis Arquette offering, 'Jack Be Nimble,' is, like, comparatively 'straight.' (He was kind of good-looking once. Sad.) Also, Cinevista apparently introduced the (American) world to Antonio Banderas in three early movies. Some super-gay stuff, apparently. And he was so exquisitely lovely in his 20s!

I immediately liked this movie simply because our hero is very handsome and poetic, and his best friend is even more handsome, but I wondered how the movie, all supposedly filmed by our hero and those in his milieu, would fill an hour and forty minutes. Have no fear, I was drawn into it and the leisurely pacing simply added to the poetry and visual beauty of the scenes.

It's a lot like the movie "Garcon Stupide" in its cinéma-vérité feel, but the simple, straightforward journey of one year in this boy's life makes for a more cohesive movie, I think.

The grandmother is reminiscent of Gena Rowlands. I don't know if that's good or bad, it just is. Most people would say that's good.

I enjoyed the travelogue aspect of the movie, the interesting bits and pieces of Rouen and other places that you're never going to see on the Travel Channel. But the heart of the film is the relationships between the characters, and the way those relationships are ruled by our hero's desires and obsessions.

For most of the film, everything is a matter of suggestion. Our hero is screamingly gay, but only his camera-work screams it out loud. He yearns for his teacher-cum-mother's-boyfriend, who sees this and maybe even likes this a little, but we never see anything come of this on screen, if anything happens at all.

His happiness will probably have to take another form.

I wanted to watch this because I like science fiction, writer Russell T. Davies is the best (the new "Doctor Who" series and the English "Queer As Folk"), and I was curious about the young Kate Winslet.

The series basically concerns ordinary children who face two separate pretty self-contained hideous, evil plots in episodes 1-3 and 4-6. Both plots involve monstrous computer shenanigans, but you'll have to watch the series to see how that all plays out. In the second plot, there are various indications that the evil is ancient and that one or more of the characters is somehow immortal, but that is never made concrete and is left more in the realm of suggestion.

The first few episodes are somewhat lackluster and are definitely more for children, but the series picks up with over-the-top derring-do and adventure in the last three episodes, which are definitely more in the "Doctor Who" genre.

The children are typical middle-class children at a comprehensive school and wear hideous clothes and hideous haircuts. It's so incredible that Kate Winslet, who in a few short years would be so pretty in "Heavenly Creatures," is so GINORMOUS here. She wears light blue mom jeans, weird layered vesty things, and has garish hennaed hair pulled back with barrettes.

In the first few episodes it's interesting to see the memorably dour character actress Rosalie Crutchley, whom you've almost certainly seen in other things. And there are several other good people here. Of the kids, Kate Winslet is definitely the best, but she's still just a kid and it's amazing the way she has since grown as a truthful actress, living in the moment.

I watched this because I'm a fan of Luke de Lacey, having enjoyed his work in "A Dance To the Music of Time." He acquits himself well here, and is as likable and sensitive as always. It was a surprise and a delight to realize that the cast of actors playing characters in this murder mystery also includes the elderly but dazzlingly beautiful Rita Davies, of whom I'm a big fan. Her face and her voice and delivery are riveting.

The show is quite different from American reality TV shows in that the real people chosen to act as investigators here are all basically decent. In America, the whole point is to pick mean-spirited egomaniacal narcissists, feed them tons of alcohol, and watch as they tear each other apart. I much prefer to see nice people being nice, even if they're not always perfect. Of course, I shouldn't exaggerate the nobility of English producers. I've seen an episode of 'Bad Lads Extreme,' and I don't think even America's Spike network, devoted to all things laddish, would ever show such a crew of sleazy, dimwitted, criminal scoundrels. So in England, I guess you have generally higher standards, which then veer away with some deviations lower than anything that would be tolerated in America.

The show's murder mystery is your classic English-manor affair, and I suppose some of the ways it resolves itself are a bit pat, since the case has to be solved and it has to be shaped into the nine episodes of the show.

Of course, if the point was truly to pick the 'best' amateur detective, you'd keep all of them through the end of the series, and have all of them try to solve the case. But as pretty much always with reality television, there's a weekly elimination element, and, again as always, it's handled pretty arbitrarily. The professional detective chooses the worst detective of the week, then the lead investigator chooses another person, and then each of the two grab one of a pair of envelopes which will direct them to some eerie, isolated site. At one site, there will be a clue. At the other site, your hideous fate at the hands of a murderer.

Why is the Industrial-Video Complex so cruel, denying me the chance to buy this on DVD, and in the United States? I saw the first series of episodes in England in the fall of 1988, and I have just now seen 8 episodes from the run of 13. Terrible copies, but it's great to see again this show that I loved and adored.

I can't watch 'Last of the Summer Wine' at all because it just seems to be a bunch of tiresome old farts and their cutesy high jinks, but the minute this show starts and you hear a crooner sing 'Sweet & Lovely,' you know that the show will be an evocative and nostalgic look at the vanished late 30s. But what makes it is the solidly delightful cast, every one of which is charming and superbly well chosen.

Maybe you'll think I'm insane, but I think that David Fenwick as Norman Clegg is, at least in this, exceptionally dreamy. Maybe it's the voice, the lively facial expressions, the sense of independence and irony and secret rebellion, and, oh gosh, the fact that he's so pretty (I think).

I don't think they have it in the pilot, but the inappropriate and overbearing laugh track is really offputting and the show doesn't remotely need it. The characters are lovable and the action and humor are naturally delightful. I don't need a Trademarked Automo-Laff Trak breaking in with plastic guffaws.

If I win the Powerball lottery prize, I'll buy the show and issue it on DVD (laugh track free).

Like other people, I was fearful this might be some primitive low-budget movie, but it was delightful. It's a good-looking movie, and all of the acting is extremely naturalistic and believable. There isn't a false note in the work of any of the actors. All this, despite the multitudinous examples of wit in inherently ironic and humorous scenes and dialogue.

I loved the unexpected bits of humor with the great Maury Chaykin, who was much the same, and equally delightful, in his roles in "Due South." And when Brendan Fehr is giving people the lines of bull they want to hear it is so funny and such a treat. I love the role-playing scene with all the dialogue about sports practice.

This has the edginess of Bruce La Bruce's own films, but, thankfully, this never crosses the line between transgression and disgust or repulsion. It's full of scenes and images I would never think of seeing or putting on screen. It's like seeing Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," for the first time. It's a new world, all fresh.

I had to turn the volume way up and rewind in order to catch some very quiet, very important bits of dialogue. This movie certainly combines the boisterous with the poetic.

And, yes, Brendan Fehr is insanely attractive and mesmerizing. I was worried whether I would like this for the first couple of minutes of the film, and then he came on screen and was there for most of the film, lifting the whole thing up. This is a real actor, bringing presence and intelligence to a role. He is, in every sense, magnetic.

The best part of 'The High Life' is the theme song, with elaborate song and dance sequences at the beginning and end of the show, rather Busby Berkeley style. High energy, silly fun. And Forbes Masson looks wacky and adorable. He looks like he must be a genuinely sweet person--a quality I value highly, even if I am, alas, not sweet myself.

So the theme music gets a big '10' from me. I would give the rest of the show a '6,' but instead go up to '7' because Forbes Masson and Alan Cumming are pretty memorable performers.

The pilot episode (never officially aired?) has the same plot as episode 4, and most of the same guest stars. It didn't have the heavy-duty laugh track--had no laugh track, in fact--and Alan Cumming's pomaded hair was less extreme and bizarre. The official episodes obviously benefit from a larger budget, but the whole series is still clearly 'low budget.' With the thick Scottish accents, subtitles would often be helpful. I pride myself on my ear for British accents of all sorts, but sometimes it's all too much. It's kind of like one of those cable documentary shows where you can basically understand the foreigner attempting to speak English, but you still appreciate the extra input from the subtitles.

Despite some stabs at surreal action and plots, this is a very sitcom-y sitcom, but with a not-to-miss theme. I especially adore the ending theme music segment.

Who would think you could watch an amazing film like this and then find, gosh, that it has a G rating? Even Disney cartoons these days include untoward allusions. This movie has all the spunk and charm in the world, and absolutely nothing offensive. It really is for everyone.

It helps a great deal, of course, that it gives prominent place to one of my all-time favorite songs, La Mar by Charles Trenet. (The whole soundtrack is full of great songs, I want to get the CD.) But this movie is so involving, you care so much about the characters. Who would think something with Mr. Bean could so draw you in? How does producer Tim Bevan keep coming up with great projects? And I'm so glad to see that Simon McBurney, one of my favorite actors, provided the story. I guess big kudos also go out to director Steve Bendelack—it looks like this is his first major motion picture.

I really wasn't expecting much of this. A family member brought home a DVD of this and a DVD of 'Waitress.' I watched 'Waitress' first because I figured it might have sad elements, and I wanted to leave Mr. Bean for later, because that would have to be 'light.' I didn't care much for the first Mr. Bean movie, didn't think it was very good, but you have to watch all of these, if only from a sense of duty, because Rowan Atkinson is undoubtedly a genius and Mr. Bean is a unique, amazing creation.

But this movie was from beginning to end a real joy. It's so much inspired by all of those old French comedies and the work of Jacque Tati as Mr. Hulot, but it rises way, way above them. I have always disliked the films of Tati: the cold, icy satires on modern life, the over-rehearsed, over-analyzed nature of each movement, each shot. There are elements of wit, but it's like you're being dared to be so low, so uncouth as to dislike it, and the films are patronizing in their emulation of the old silent masters like Charlie Chaplin. 'Look how daring and intellectual we are, we're inspired by a comic everyman.' Every moment of this movie feels fresh and lived. It feels fresher than Tati, more like 'Le Million' by Rene Clair or 'Drole de Drame' starring the immortal Michel Simon.

As the starlet Sabine, Emma de Caunes is the ideal ingénue, pretty and charming, très sympa.

But the kid, played by Max Baldry, is a revelation. The movie is as indebted to him for its success as it is to Rowan Atkinson. He is so utterly believable as a Russian boy used to life in France. He is totally unpretentious. I think he will be a major star one day. He has to be.

I can't of course spoil the ending for you, but the payoff is BIG, hugely big, and wonderfully emotionally satisfying. I watched it over and over again.

You might not do that, but you will laugh and you will cry. I did.

From the poster art and what little I knew about the film, I expected a low-budget film with lots of wandering from house to house by Mormon missionaries. I didn't realize, for example, that there are so many incredible people in the cast. Jacqueline Bisset, for example, is her usual riveting self. There's Mary Kay Place...and, hey, if you love "Buffy," there's Amber Newman. He doesn't have a huge role, but I was delighted to see Rob McElhenney as a young Mormon missionary--he's one of the dissolute crew from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn't get much of a chance to break out of the strictures of his character, and I find it very, very difficult to believe that a homophobic Mormon missionary would actually be so free and easy about using words like "homo" and "fag." That would have to be pretty unusual.

The best part of the movie is definitely Steve Sandvoss, not just because he does a good job of embodying the role of a basically innocent missionary struggling through the situations in which he finds himself, but also because Sandvoss is so insanely, insanely beautiful.

A lot of the action and situations seem rather forced dramatically, but this film is definitely worth watching. It's a good looking, handsome film with a talented cast.

Yes, this is not politically correct, but it is so funny and has so many incredible, delightful actors that I've seen elsewhere. The fact that it's not politically correct must be making people give low grades to it, but they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Our two heroes face insurmountable odds and have their lives turned upside-down when they're mistaken for gay.

I didn't exactly understand the last few seconds of it, but that doesn't take away from all of the depth of comic talent in the cast of this short film.

I'm particularly glad to see a couple of the talents from the TV show "Significant Others" here.

I hadn't seen this movie in years, and I was so lucky to see it by chance on Comedy Central this morning. This movie is a charmer.

Set in 1955, it covers some of the same nostalgic territory as "A Christmas Story," but it does so beautifully, with very accurate and attractive art direction.

Chris Young, Keith Coogan, Danny Nucci, and John Cameron Mitchell are all at their most attractive and charming youthful best here. The fact that the film has all of them doing good work, as well as a lot of other talented character actors, is an indication of the craftsmanship that went into this picture.

It's a portrait, a slice-of-life of our hero's last year of so of high school.

The very last minute of the picture, seeing Michael McKeen as the hero grown up, just doesn't mesh with what came before, but don't let that keep you from seeing and appreciating this film. It's a delight.

This is a pretty darn clean and wholesome picture. There may be some understandable sexual, hormonal aspects and humor here, but pretty much anyone age 14 (or 12) on up will be mature enough to enjoy this film.

It's just too bad there aren't more recent credits for Chris Young. He's sweet, charming, and sensitive here. Surely there's a place for that among roles for character actors in their 30s.

While there is delicate humor here, as in the movie's satire on the twee reassurances and stereotyping of an English soap opera's portrayal of homely English village life, this movie is in the end an unsettling portrait of the human condition, of the ugliness, the uncontrollable and incendiary nature of our sexual and emotional longings and need.

I spent years wanting to see this movie, if only because of its legendary nature and Coral Browne's presence in the cast, and it's nothing like what I imagined. Given the title and all the talk in books about scenes set in a dark and intense demimondaine world of lesbian bars, I pictured some sort of police procedural about lesbians being killed by a serial killer, a Sidney Sheldon-type story.

Ostensibly a portrait of an aging actress's dying career, the heart of the picture is the competition among the characters for love, for the ruthless quest for success and the money and companionship that go with it.

There is constant sado-masochistic emotional gamesmanship here, with characters playing roles that are alternately passive and active. One character pretends to be not much more than a slip of a girl and sits by and watches as others compete for her attentions.

The sex scene in the movie, while ugly in the extreme, is vital to the film's message. (I'm amazed that this aired, even late at night, on Turner Classic Movies, so that I, thankfully, got a chance to see the movie.) Coral Browne's face, stripped of its mask of demure self-possession, exposing the animal (the monster?) that we all are at the core of our being--that's something to see. And unsettling.

I'll never particularly care for Susannah York. She'll always strike me as a bit of an over-praised, over-successful relic of the 1960s, a kind of prissy relic, but what a film, even with some longeurs. And the towering--both literally and figuratively--Coral Browne: what a presence.

I was so incredibly lucky years ago when I was home one weekday morning and saw this on the USA channel. The low rating is definitely a hit job. (Hundreds of people type in low scores for an obscure, little-seen film that other people consider superb, delightful, refreshing?) As the hero's quest goes on, there may have been some longeurs, but the wild and wacky original humor of this movie makes this a small classic.

Everyone with taste and insight loves Frank Whaley and he is at his Frank Whaley-ist here: vulnerable and funny, tender and oppressed, buffeted by forces he cannot control.

The characterization of the girlfriend is bizarre, to say the least--for reasons you'll have to watch the film to see. And the film also reminds us that the late Sheree North was a delightful comedienne, not just a onetime starlet.

This is perhaps the best, most worthwhile comedy that almost nobody has ever seen. If MTV can show a crappy movie like "Rolling Kansas" over and over and over, why can't they show this?

I know some idiots still want to criticize this show for even having the temerity to exist, but the scripts and the characterizations on this show are such gemlike delights from second to second that I feel a need to comment on it all.

First of all, thanks to Julie White for existing. Her work as the snobby, clueless, effortlessly immoral and cavist mother of the girlfriend of one of our boys (and his co-op manager) is INCREDIBLE. She was superb in the original unaired pilot that you'll have to search out, and she's superb here. What line readings, what a comedienne.

(BTW, the original pilot was somewhat more of a conventional sitcom. This tweaked version is definitely better, but they're both great. I just wish everyone could have seen the boys' Comedy of Embarrassment trials in that pilot. When they got stuck at the cavist country club and our hero accidentally falls into the fire pit and brandishes a branch like a club and is reduced to hideous grunts like, you know, a caveman--it's hilarious.) The other actors are each so distinct and so insightful in their delicate characterizations of each caveman. It's ironic that 3-episode guest star J.P. Manoux is back to his nerdy "type" here when he was so funny as a caveman himself in "Phil of the Future." I think the best caveman here, by a nose, is actually our boys' friend Maurice, played by Jeffrey Daniel Phillips. He was so funny in some of the Geico ads and in the cavemanscrib Web site. There is just something so incredibly caveman about him. He's a rebel, a hipster, a righteous dude, and assuredly one for the ladies, if you get my drift. It's like his eyes have seen everything there is to see and he's back for more.

I've caught the storyline of this show that involves the character played by Guy Burnet and t'other male character and enjoyed it very much. As an American, my reaction is probably a bit different than that of people over in England. The regional or working class accents, however real they may be, sound put-on, like something that upper-class actors like the Redgraves use for a stage performance. And then you have the relentlessly mundane, everyday settings that you just don't find in American soaps. It's like this "Coronation Street" / "The Archers" self-mythologizing view of England, where it's all real, see?, and true and gritty-like, see? Sort of an imaginary world of pure-hearted common folk, salt of the earth, and all that.

But that Guy Burnet, oof, he is exquisite. I don't typically look upon delicate, elegantly slender people with such favor, and I'm sure he's straight in real life, but my gosh he is good-looking. Thank god he's cut his hair--he looks a zillion times better with it short.

Bring him back for further story lines, or give him other movie and television roles!

I bought the DVD of this because I'm pretty sure I went to graduate school with one of the minor, minor actors in this. While the film did have certain longeurs and I'm not sure the conception or its execution completely gelled, there were clearly many talented and charming actors in this movie. The casting director couple were very funny, and the DVD includes an extra showing their expanded and unexpurgated "interview;" it's maybe the best part of the whole production.

If you watch this because you're a rabid Rusty Joiner fan, you should know that he's only in the film for about a minute, but his bit is very funny and he does it well. Personally, I'm wondering about the incredibly handsome actor Christopher Showerman who plays "himself" in this. None of his credits on this site jump out at me and say "this is why you recognize him," but he is SO-O-O hot. Someone should tell him to get rid of his present IMDb headshot because it doesn't remotely do him justice.

Lots of fine comic work by a bunch of the actors here.

Odd, odd, odd. It's a little like watching Ken Russell seen through a prism of Alain Resnais. And the "wolves" of the title are not exactly "wolves" and not exactly "werewolves." You'll see what I mean when you see their costumes. Being a wolf, or becoming a wolf through inborn genetic or infectious disease or "contact" is a metaphor for homosexuality. (No, I'm not dissing what I am and what you probably are--it's just part of the film's wackiness.) Once you see it's from a play by Charles Lambert, it all makes sense. But it beautifully translates to film.

I love the old lady, Fanny, who despite myriad lines and wrinkles on her tanned old face still retains the remains of great beauty. Hearing the actress adopt a cockney or regional accent, puckishly enunciating her saucy remarks, is a delight. (She also played the incredible beauty at the end of "The Da Vinci Code.") This film is also a satire of the class war, reminiscent of Mike Leigh's "High Hopes." Catch Polly, a member of the Biffen family, with her ludicrous "county" accent as she wears her quilted jacket and complains that the minister won't allow her dog Parsnip into church.

A delightful film, helped by the fantastic beauty of the English countryside and the fantastic beauty of the lead Gabriel, played by James Layton. A melange of humor, beauty, and oddness.

A lot of reviewers here and elsewhere will feel the need, for obvious reasons, to go through the conventional pieties about abuse, but this is not some conventional "issues" film. You're not supposed to watch it and leave the theatre and then write a sternly worded letter to the editor of the local paper or send a donation to a charity group. It is called "Mysterious Skin," right? This movie looks at the ambiguities of our inner and outer selves, and at our confused or unconfident sexuality, our "mysterious skin." There may be victims here, and there may be victims here who play more of a role in their own victimization, while others are more "innocent," but, often, bad things don't just happen to people out of the blue, but because of character flaws and inner needs and drives.

As always, Gordon-Levitt is a very brave actor, and his acting is very raw.

This is a beautiful movie to watch--visually sophisticated, and with erotic and comedic elements that let you know this is a Gregg Araki film.

I'm very glad I watched this, because I had been somewhat leery due to the premise. I expected a low-budget alternative movie with strained, over-the-top comedy, and that's not what you get. This is a good-looking, sophisticated movie with an incredible depth of talent in the cast--virtually all of whom are people you've seen and enjoyed in other projects. The movie is not about the wild and wacky results of taking a "straight pill." It's a portrait of straight men and women seeking to connect and having their hearts broken. I felt most moved for our hero's straight friend. This movie still qualifies as a comedy due to the overall atmosphere, the dialogue, and the actors' comedy chops, but it's also a character study.

While this movie has comedic elements, it's the sort of thoughtful, high-class Canadian art-movie drama that you'd expect Daniel MacIvor to be involved with. Despite the somewhat fey cover art on the 2 different versions of the DVD that I've seen (I bought the somewhat less fey and definitely less expensive version I found at amazon.ca), the movie is not a winsome comedy, nor is it especially light. This movie is not "Election" and it is not the revenge comedy that you might be led to expect. It's basically a realistic tale of pain and emotional growth on the parts of everyone involved, whether they're confused, arty, and ignorant kids, or whether they're confused adults still seeking to connect. Fortunately, the movie ends with signs of hope for everyone. You shouldn't miss this, because the human observations and characterizations are so true.