Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

silentlvr What good is a movie about DEAF people if it isn't captioned? I was really looking forward to seeing this documentary as it presents a view about a particular group of individuals that are hidden behind the scenes of the issue of sexual abuse within the church. I could not watch it. At first it shows students in an oral/aural setting in school so I waited to see if it would then go on to interviews in ASL (American Sign Language). Indeed it did, the individuals who were interviewed used ASL but if there were questions being asked, the interviewer was not on screen signing the questions to them. Then it goes on to show interviews with another individual and church scenes and there is no open or closed captioning. This is an important issue that needs to be seen/heard and is finally brought out into the open audience and yet without captioning, it is closed to the very community to which it is addressed. I am very disappointed that I was not able to watch this documentary because it has not been made accessible to the Deaf community by providing captioning for us. This is 2015, there is no reason why captioning could not be provided for this documentary.

bob the moo I only heard about this film recently, although at the time of his resignation I had heard that the Pope had gone in relation to revelations within a film. This was just a suggestion of course and it may not even have been this film but what made me come to this was mainly that I heard it mentioned in a list of documentaries from Gibney. His documentaries have been well worth watching and on that basis I wanted to watch this one. The film looks at the child abuse scandal within the catholic church, focusing specifically on a handful of cases involving deaf children and slowly working its way up to the highest positions within the organization of the church.As a journey it is one that is hard to watch from start to end. The details of the abuse are very difficult to listen to – not just the words but the realization of how completely alone these boys were, how utterly predatory their abuser was; we all know it occurred but to hear it from these victims made it all the realer to me and all the more sickening. As the film goes on we continue to get details, not so much over the abuse but over the action (or rather, inaction) of the church. It moves key players into the frame, discussing the structure of treatment centers, protection of priests and really doesn't leave much doubt about how much was known and by contrast how little was done. It is very hard to watch and it is mostly structured very well to not only build the story so effectively but also to shock and upset even after so much of this issue is known.It doesn't totally manage to close the loop and once it reaches the top and loops round to the original story again, it doesn't quite have the structural impact as a whole that it did in specific moments. This is a very minor failing in comparison to how effective it is for the majority of the running time, but it does leave the film feeling that the final knockout punch is missing – which of course it is. The footage is well edited together and Gibney's narrator is mostly restrained and well pitched. It is a very hard watch at times though, but the subject matter is well worth the feeling of anger, injustice and sense of total exploitation that it will leave you with.

paulvcassidy Firstly just to express total solidarity with the deaf men of Milwaukee Wisconsin who suffered at the hands of serial child sex abuser Fr. Laurence C. Murphy. Secondly to say I'm an Irish Catholic and knew the singing priest Fr. Tony Walsh - 'Fr. Elvis' - as a boy. A number of pedophiles accessed my family, sexually grooming and serial abusing and in the Dublin of the day the culture of pederasty was pervasive. Thirdly allow me open by asking people to consider Fr. Murphy's excuses - offered in therapy:A). 'There was rampant homosexuality amongst the boys. I fixed the problem'; B). I thought if I played around with a kid once per week they would have their needs met'; C). I thought I was taking their sins on myself'; D). It was self-education for them they were confused about sex'; E). Would feel penis. If erect would masturbate them'; F). Afterward I prayed and went to confession'.The man felt he was doing good not evil. How then was his moral compass so distorted and disorientated? Would cyber porn producers and users of child porn today offer better excuses? - we've heard them and know them to be equally self-serving and delusional. Being homosexual was universally taboo up until the 1980's and it was considered better to be sexually disorientated or sexually dysfunctional with a view to a life of celibacy, secular or priestly. But for all their crimes no perverted Roman Catholic priest that I am aware of was ever charged with the crime of rape and murder common enough among pedophiles and rapists. Now this may be difficult but consider modern porn and its rapaciousness. Consider the fact that most porn is not only about the objectification and exploitation of women but also about their brutalization. Pedophilia is rampant and causally peppered through main stream cyber porn which rapidly descends from relative eroticism to utter abomination.So what has happened is that consent is all that's is required to make sexual abuse permissible today even if the person is a minor; even if the woman simply signed up for sex and not the brutalizing desecration of her body; even if the sex was consenting but the permission to broadcast & circulate was not. Cyber porn is so controversial that Google maintains it is not responsible for acting as the international traffic cop and seemed curiously resigned to compromising its own browser Google Chrome with its competitors search engines. Because Google understand the corporate tornado on the horizon, cyber porn being a record - in most instances - of sex crime, knowing that many of the victims will sue. It makes me feel like signing up for a course in Swedish rape law because this makes the Juliann Assange case - which involved the charges 'Sex by surprise' and 'Sex with too much asking', - seem like a great idea. How about 'Sex with brutalizing & degrading consequences'; 'Sex for the purpose of making porn without consent'; 'Sex with adolescents too stoned & too immature to know the implications of what they were doing', and 'Sex for the purpose of sexually re-orientating and dis-orientating the victim'? So what has happened is that we have simply changed the definition and function of sexual terrorism from repression to 'sexual liberation'. The Catholic Church has stood up to the plate, paid the price and yet the accusatory finger still points towards the past. But the Church must reform the celibate model of priesthood which according to former Benedictine Richard Sipes 'Selects, cultivates, protects, defends and produces sexual abusers'.This is a marvelous and sympathetic movie about a wonderfully courageous group of deaf men who show us the meaning of the word solidarity. It provides a valuable and necessary understanding of the errors of the past without seeking to agitate, animate or radicalise. But one must ask the Director Alex Gibney to consider the far more perilous issue of cyber porn and modern sexual values and just where we are heading with the rate of homosexuality rising towards 25% in Cosmopolitan & Metropolitan areas where stable 'straight',and monogamous family units are rapidly becoming vestigial. Judging from cyber porn there are those so liberated that it is a wonder they are not permanently incontinent. Can a woman really have animalistic sex with two men hung like donkeys and ever hope to function properly again; and why do women cast themselves in the role of sexual gladiators? In terms of the police phrase used in the documentary to describe pedophilia in the Catholic Church 'Noble cause corruption', might not those advocating the GLBTQ, Libertine and Hedonist agendas consider whether the term now also applies to their sexual crusade?At the Sea of Tiberius as Jesus watched St. Peter leap from the boat with almost nothing on he knew St. Peter had sexual issues and was at least immodest in that most sublime of Biblical scenes from John 21 titled 'The Restoration of St. Peter'. He had also chastened the Disciple Nathanael at the time of his recruitment, three years earlier, for spending too much time under "The Fig Tree", (John 2: 48). And yet Nathanael is at the scene at the Sea of Tiberius to witness the risen Jesus prepare a meal for his followers and take St. Peter aside, to chasten and prepare him for the way ahead. Please God Pope Benedict XVI's successor Pope Francis is up for a restoration of the priesthood. And as a secular adult community surely we can also rise to this debate given that we see fit to rise to just about every and any other kind of bait? Let me conclude by offering a quote from the retired gay Archbishop of Milwaukee Most Reverend Rembert Weakland (1977-2002) for this is by far the wisest statement to emerge from this challenging documentary:We're a Church of imperfect people. Jesus wasn't afraid of humanity and we shouldn't be either'

Frances Farmer This film does a fine job of documenting the groundbreaking, courageous and tenacious efforts of a group of deaf men to expose a pedophile priest who ran a school for deaf children and preyed on those children for many years.The nature of the crimes and the pervasive lack of action by the catholic church to discipline the criminal priest and aid his victims is truly disgusting. Similar circumstances in Ireland are also reviewed where priests were well known to have abused children in their churches and yet they were never appropriately disciplined either by the church or turned over by the church to the civil authorities. It is extremely important that these heinous crimes and the institutional resistance in the church to deal with them are made known by films such as this one. The story of how these men who courageously pursued their search for justice prevailed despite tremendous church inaction and resistance is inspiring.My only quibble with the film is when it uses contemporary dramatizations to give viewers a feeling for what it would have been like to have been a child in these environments. These are not so much dramatic re-enactments as brief glimpses very much at the periphery of the actual abuse. Still, I thought they were unnecessary as the testimony and documentary footage provided ample information and were more than enough to make my blood boil.Do see this film and support it for the important work it does in exposing a very serious abuse of trust by an institution of tremendous power that still doggedly refuses to hold itself accountable for so many horrendous crimes.