Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

SnoopyStyle David (Jonathan Groff) takes a break from his ivy league world for an apple picking job. He's a spoiled, self-assured bookworm. His Mexican co-workers don't understand him. His boss Hobbs (Dean Stockwell) barely tolerates his lack of work ethics. Jon (Denis O'Hare) is handing out religious flyers titled COG. His friend Jennifer is suppose to join him but she leaves the job for a new boyfriend. Curly (Corey Stoll) drives the forklift at the apple plant. After an awkward night with Curly, he abandons his job, somebody steals his money, and he only has Jon to help. He stays with Martha (Casey Wilson) and her family. His atheism, his lack of a love life, his sexuality, and his attitude are all challenged.I think the story is meant to be quirky comical. However that is not the prevailing sense from director Kyle Patrick Alvarez. Groff's character is too much of an annoying know-it-all. After all, that is the character as written but it would be more effective if he does what he does because of clueless kindness. The one great character is played by Corey Stoll. He does a fun disturbing performance. It's too bad that he's only a supporting character, but he's a good one. This never got funny. Sometimes it got disturbing. It may have even gotten profound although that could argued either way. The ending is somewhat truncated which is problematic for some people. I'm not one of them. Movies don't have to be about resolving something. I just didn't get involved in David's journey.

MacTheMovieguy Congratulations to Kyle Patrick Alvarez for writing the least likable protagonist of 2013! Much like the brain dead teenagers in Spring Breakers, David (Jonathan Groff) is painful to watch on screen. Like, banging your head against a wall bad. He's so incredibly pretentious, so incredibly above his experiences, and totally out of touch. He's a preppy rich kid "slumming" it by picking some damn apples. How this movie got made is beyond me. David Sedaris should have said No to this adaptation.David, as I said earlier, is now picking apples. His friend (Bellisario) was supposed to pick apples with him, but blew him off. He refuses to talk to his mom. And he keeps telling everyone he went to Yale and traveled to Japan, while looking down at them from his throne on Mars. Eventually, he moves from picking in the field to working in a sorting factory. There he meets a crabby woman (Dickey) and what would seem like his only friend in the world (Stoll). That situation goes awry, and he finds himself living with an interesting religious "cult", led by Jon (O'Hare), a man so crazy he might be wise.If you've made it this far, you should get a cookie. I literally wanted to rip David/Samuel from the screen and throw him into oncoming traffic. I love Jonathan Groff as an actor, but this is like his uppity character from Glee taken into a movie, and amped up a thousand percent. He is actually READING Darwin's ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES. Just in case you didn't think this kid could BE more pretentious. He insults everyone around him, and it is never funny.What an incredibly talented cast, led completely astray by their director. Groff, O'Hare, Stoll, and Dickey all deserved better than this film. Hell, even Casey Wilson deserved better than this film. Even Troian Bellisario deserved better, and I have no idea who she is. Apparently she's on Pretty Little Liars. Well, even she deserved better. I hated the direction. I felt like we had scene changes just to have scene changes. At one point, David is in town calling someone to pick him up, then he's off at a farm when he's actually being picked up, only to be taken back into town? Stay in town, jerk. Don't make people drive out to get you when you're already almost at your destination.Awful film. Awful lead character.

dansview I expected to last 10 minutes and then click off. I thought it would be a comedy. I wound up mesmerized. I approach all films with extreme caution, because I expect either a liberal message, or a Christian one, and I don't want to be manipulated.This one offered neither. One reviewer mentioned a "nihilist" viewpoint, but I'm not sure about that either, because there were some good people depicted in this film. Hence the world is not hopeless.The young actor and his older "mentor" were equally great. I rarely say that about anyone. No one could have played their parts any better.The Oregon scenery was breathtaking, and the music was effective in creating a sense of bewilderment. The decay of the human soul was set amidst the purity of pristine farms, pines, and fog.The world is a dark place. That doesn't mean everyone is dark and everything is hopeless and doomed. I guarantee you that some factory workers are decent normal people who take pride in their work ethic.Having said that, the types depicted here were real and do exist in abundance in the real world. That comes as a tough pill to swallow for idealists. We want to believe that the poor are humble and sweet. Actually, many are trash, which is why they stay poor.And yet we need their labor and their bravery in battle. It's twisted and ironic, but so is the world.I was expecting this film to trash Christians and Christianity and call them all hypocrites, but that's not what happened. The couple that housed the boy were lovely people, and the church congregants appeared genuinely peaceful and loving.I could have done without the gay thing, but I think I get it. His mom probably shunned him when he came out, and he felt guilty about who he was, so maybe he thought going out west would change him. Especially with his female friend.But the gay thing just added a layer of awkwardness to an already awkward situation. Even straight, he would have been a fish out of water.The final scene was brilliant. His mentor had good and bad within his soul, but ultimately arrogance took over. Christianity often attracts lost souls and sinners, and it's very hard to keep their true nature from rearing its ugly head.It was a terrific movie. Check it out if you have the patience for character/dialog-driven plots and can tolerate the bleakest view of human nature.

TheInbetweener The instant I saw the boy from Glee on the screen with his college sweater, against a score of staccato claps, I knew this film and the word 'Pretentious' were already entwined till the credits with the muted plucking music.So as the Backlash B-tch I am, I decided to watch the whole film just to spite that particular stereotype.God, I'm glad I did! I was born in a religious cult...called C.O.G. So it's kind of unsurprising that I resonated with it. But this film has so much that is human, and raw, and true about it that it has to have some impact on the rest of you. Groff's performance goes from cocky and superior in the most honest portrayal of the usual American postgrad I've seen, to so vulnerable and naive and yearning that my heart felt like it was being crushed. He's as lost, disenfranchised and confused as every other 20-something I know - but it seeps out of his pores and swims in his eyes in a way that's very hard to watch. I guess that's the Millenial Generation, stripped bare and made fun of, yet not looked down on. David is just a boy, not a polarising symbol of a Lost Generation, and the film knows this.Just a boy. That's why it hurt to see him be taken advantage of, time and again. It hurt even more, for me, to watch him try to find himself and cure his sexual 'sickness' in religion. I have known people like John. They exist. Everyone in this film exists.I'm not being coherent. This film impacted me that much.I think you should watch it.