TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Michael Ledo PLOT SPOILER REVIEW...if I understand it.The story is about a precocious, insolent, young American boy Prescott (Tom Sweet), growing up in France as his dad (Liam Cunningham) negotiates the Treaty of Versailles, which many say lead to the second World War. H.L. Mencken claimed the Second World War was fought because we backed the wrong side in the first war.The film is organized as a musical opera, implying there is a conductor over us and history is set whether it is Hitler or Prescott, the wheels are in motion. The dialogue about history "It happened before" shows that things go in cycles and nothing really can stop it.The picture is nearly half in French. It is slow and boring, even the groping parts. The parents gave Prescott far too much freedom, although that is certainly not the case of evil dictators making me question what was the whole point? And the gap between the childhood and the last 8-10 minutes of the film, I would consider more important than Prescott dressing up as a girl, groping his teacher and screaming he doesn't believe in prayer. Yawn.The film has won numerous awards and is critically acclaimed. I think everyone is out of step, but Johnny.Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

bseaman-20248 This movie wasn't such a turgid, loud blast (as others have suggested, why the need for such cacophony in the sound track?) that I shut it off to view something else. The scenes with a gorgeously, icily charismatic Argentinean actress named Berenice Bego were enough to keep me watching. I also found the depiction of the stilted and repressed manners of that era to be fascinating. Finally, the film was well-shot, creating a moody and foreboding sense.However, if you are less of a film buff and simply want a 100 minute escape from reality, let me sum the film up for you and gently encourage you to find something else on Netflix. Here's the synopsis. A girlish-looking boy of about 10 who for some never-really disclosed reason is always dressed in skirts tosses some stones at people outside of church, pees the bed, is churlish toward the hired help, locks himself in his room in a temper tantrum, and throws another tantrum by standing on a chair at dinner party and yelling that he won't say a prayer. Cue discordant, blaring music. Then we see an apparent 30-something dictator being driven through throngs of cheering people. The director asks us to make the leap that we have just seen how the dictator's upbringing as a child has made him a dictator. It's a bit of stretch.

zacknabo Brady Corbet has assimilated many wonderful visual styles which he has picked up over the past several years working with master directors such as Von Trier and Haneke, but this is all Corbet has accomplished. Reappropriating stunning visual film language does not a good director make, because used haphazardly the images lose their ominous, dark tone and are instead replaced with empty somewhat pretentious images that have nothing story or acting wise holding it up. So all we are left is a misfire. While Corbet is similar to another young director, Xavier Dolan, in that they are trapped exercising their personal influences, Dolan has more innate talent. I would say that Corbet's command of the camera at times is promising. The sad part is he has a great skeleton but no meat and few functioning organs. The performances are a bit flat, though they are only working with what they are giving. Bejo is tiresome and Pattinson is...Pattinson. The best scene is in the beginning where the young boy gets in trouble with snowballs, a possible reference to Abel Gance's Napoleon. Corbet like Napoleon is undone by his ambition. But I do wish more directors were this ambitious in their debuts. If nothing else Corbet swung for the fences...and he should know better: nobody does Haneke better than Haneke.

rhoda-9 You're led to expect something really powerful and frightening by the opening shots of World War I and a nerve-jangling, portentous score. And, indeed, your expectations are well rewarded when the child of the title...wets his bed! plays an angel in the church Christmas play!It's hardly a bold or singular premise that a disturbed childhood will create a damaged, perhaps dangerous adult. But the movie's portrayal of cause and effect is so simplified as to be ridiculous. Plenty of neglected children--the condition is hardly the rarity the filmmakers seem to think, especially among wealthy people 100 years ago--grow up to be normal adults. Some become nasty ones. Some, in reaction, become humanitarians. If the cause and effect are so cut and dried, why don't we have 50 million fascist dictators? Could it be because a great many emotional and intellectual attributes, a great many factors of class and opportunity and geography and history are necessary for someone to become a fascist dictator? An unhappy childhood is hardly the only qualification!The script and director also ignore the most basic rules of portraying an unhappy childhood, rules that have been followed by every writer and director of merit. First: If you cry, they won't. Kipling, Graham Greene, Henry James, Dickens--everyone who has done this well has shown the mistreated child suffering in silence or near-silence, so that the reader or film-goer supplies the emotions of sadness and anger and indignation. In this film, however, the child is constantly outraged, insolent, aggressive, at times violent, so he pre-empts all our emotions. It is hard not to regard him as simply a nuisance and a bore. Second, feeling sorry for a character is not enough to make us like him or even be interested in him. The boy is front and center in almost the entire film. But he never does or says anything interesting, charming, sweet, selfless, funny, quirky. All he does is throw tantrums. Kids like this are one of the things I go to the movies to get away from!