Reviews

I just saw this movie at Sundance, and afterwards I wanted to brush my teeth, take a shower, and get a lobotomy. The movie starts with two characters. One is the main character, a chain smoking agorophobe who lives in abject squallor in a basement room of a Manhattan tenement. The other is a woman upstairs dying of something, we are never told what, but she is bed ridden and morphine addicted. She calls him and announces "I'm sh***ing blood". Thats the opening scene. It only gets worse from there. It suggests a once medicated agorophobe with terrible personal hygeine could be the object of fascination of all of the women in the film. As though his offensive behavior was irrelevent and women will do anything to fix him because he really is all that and more. The film is little more than the sex fantasy of an adult who never made it past the 13 years old pimply geek stage where he sits there and cannot understand why women dont love him and if they just saw the beautiful guy within then they would see how great he is...and then have sex with him. Whatever. Its ridiculously demeaning to women to have such an offensive character be the object of all the female character's desire. Very little is explained in the movie, and the few attempts to explain things just don't ring true. The idea that agorophobia can be cured by forcing the person outside and screwing them is just ridiculous. The sex scenes were poorly done and some were pretty gross, one scene made me gag. After the screening was over the applause was tepid and few if any people stuck around to talk to the Director, who was present for the screening.

I just saw this film at Sundance and was favorably impressed. The audience vigorously applauded it afterwards and the vast majority stuck around for the Q&A session with the writer/director afterwards.

During the Q&A session the writer/director said it wasnt really his intention to deliberately get into theology, but that is one of the major themes that runs the entire movie. All of the characters dont want to believe in God because they have all done things they feel are really bad and they dont want to be judged for it, but they all fear God is really there, and that influences their behavior. They all want to be good and do the right thing, but they feel their past has made it impossible for redemption. Psychologically, the treatment of the characters is quite good. Once scene where Thornton is throwing chunks of snow down onto the street below is visually stunning and reveals what he really believes about God even though he keeps saying he doesnt want God to exist.

Thornton's performance as a murderer who has effectively killed himself as well as the victim is impressive. Freeman's performance is likewise quite good, how good is only revealed towards the end of the film. There is a lot of high priced talent in the movie, and they all deliver very believable characters in a well done film. During the Q&A session the writer/director said the film was done for 5M, so I would take it all of the actors involved did it gratis.

The film is a sadly predictable chick-flick which follows all of the basic formulae of the genre. The actors do well, but the screenplay could have been written by anyone. I was hoping for a movie that focused more on the music and less on the characters, instead it was the other way around. The setting and music were merely a backdrop for yet another predictable chick-flick. Yawn.