Very rarely does a movie leave me speechless. Believe me. I'm usually full of rants and raves and rambles about everything I see, which annoys my friends...they were all relieved when I got this gig writing reviews for movies at this website, so I could spooge my ideas all over here and not irritate them with my incessant discussion. But after seeing this movie I ran to the computer and opened this Word document because I just HAD TO talk about this movie RIGHT NOW and somehow convince all of you to see it, but more than that, I JUST HAD to somehow find words to capture everything that makes this movie an unbelievably great experience.

And then I sat here for like, ten minutes maybe, staring at the blank screen with the little cursor blinking on and off, reminding me that I hadn't typed anything yet, and I sat here with my fingers frozen over the keyboard and my jaw kinda hanging open with this look of concentration on my face, and I'm sure if I had a camera trained on myself it would have made a hilarious You tube video (now why isn't life equipped with a third-person camera angle?) This frustrated me. Hell, it nearly made me have an aneurysm, because all these thoughts and emotions and ideas swirled in my head, and I kept thinking "what do I say? How do I convey how great this movie is? What if I say it wrong and it's all stupid and people don't see the movie because of me? What if I say too much and the review suddenly becomes like an episode of Dr. Phil (too late, right?) and what if my boss doesn't want to print it because it's a worthless piece of crap and oh my god it's been ten minutes and I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ANYTHING what's HAPPENING to me I'm a BRILLIANT WRITER!" Or something like that. Finally I calmed myself down and started writing this, but I hope you allow me this bit of personal insight simply because it shows what spectacular power the movie has to be able to fuck with my mind that way. To date, only one other movie has ever done that ("Requiem for a Dream," in case you're curious). I love movies, and when they can transport me like this and consume my mind for a little while, it's powerful and magical and it's a big deal.

So what's the movie about? I have to provide you with an adequate summary here somehow so you don't go hunting on Amazon.com and reading the description there like I did, because that doesn't do this movie justice and it will just make you have preconceived notions that will taint your perception of the movie when you see it. I'd been hearing about this movie for months, and everyone was saying how great it was (which usually means it's terrible, but happily there are exceptions to that rule) and I was desperate to find out anything about it, but don't you make the mistake I did. You read my review and my boss Felix's review and then see the movie for yourself, ok? So yeah, this movie is about two boys who come from very different families and lead very different lives. Both boys narrate the movie from somewhere in the future, since the movie begins when they're both eight years old but their voices tell us that their narrator selves are older. The boys clearly come from the same neighborhood and catch glimpses of each other from time to time because the movie jumps back and forth between the two boy's stories, but each narrator's segment tells a very different journey story.

Brian is the polar opposite of Niel. Shy and geeky, Brian is a mama's boy who doesn't seem to remember what happened to him when he was younger (though we the savvy viewing audience figure it out right away). Instead, he has blackouts where he "loses the time" and doesn't remember what happened to him ad a boy, so later he becomes obsessed with UFOs and the thought that he was abducted by one and that this is what he doesn't remember. His ideas seem to be reinforced by a shy young woman he meets, and the way they reach out to and relate to each other is riveting, as are the moments when Niel begins to sober up to the negative affects his lifestyle has on him and the things he can't escape; the way the events of his past haunt him as much as the events of Brian's past affected Brian. When the two boys finally meet their collision is devastating. I couldn't speak or move or even cry watching it (and it's rare I don't do these things during a movie...typically I do all three at once).

Mostly I sat there because the movie isn't just A story, it's MY story (and the story of a lot of other people too, I'm sure, though not one we tell at parties). The details are different as they always are, but the past abuse and the confusion and the search for meaning and answers, they're the same, even if we take different roads we're all heading the same direction. I've just never seen anyone capture it on film this way before. I find myself leaning more toward Niel's journey than Brian's, but like Niel I've found that I can't pretend my past doesn't affect me or that there are any easy answers to this kind of pain. The movie doesn't try to offer any answers (trust me, I'd lose respect for it if it did) and it has the balls to show what most people won't admit, the big journey of admitting what happened in the past and facing it as a step in a journey, not a precipice at the end of a journey. Facing and finding truth doesn't mean everything is going to be all hugs and puppies and rainbows. Most movies don't dare to say that, they know that pain is hard to watch and they want to wrap healing up in a pretty bow and give it to viewers as a reward for watching the pain, it's gone now, it's over, the people face the past and they move on and get closure and it all looks so neat and tidy in the movies when they wrap things up in a conclusion where people face the past and move on, marching to the beat of inspirational power chords. Movies like that go to dark places for a second, but they don't like to stay there. They don't dare. And that makes them safe.

This movie is anything but safe. Few movies dare to explore the dark terrain where sexual desire and abuse intertwine because it isn't black and white, it's a scary, milky gray, and people don't like gray because it's harder to define, and that's why the character of Niel and his story are so amazing to me...he lives in the gray. Brian was harder for me to watch than Niel, because Brian wandered into a fantasy land and dealt with things by making up a story so the bad things didn't exist and I've never understood how people can do that. I think some of that is jealousy on my part, some of me wishes I could black out and pretend the past didn't exist even as the rest of me wants to be cool and detached like Niel, not feeling much of anything. It all stems from and ends up in the same place though, this muddled land of confusion and searching for answers, and that's where the very different characters of Niel and Brian intersect in the end. It's brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I don't mean to gush, I've just never witnessed that before captured on film and it's enough to make me pee my pants and run out into the streets dripping with pee and insist that everyone else watch this movie and be amazed right along with me.

This jumpy, erratic, colorful, gut-wrenching story fascinates and repels me at the same time. I plan to read the book when I get a chance so I can compare the two mediums and how they each tell this story. Trust me, this movie is rewarding in a million ways and definitely worth seeking out and experiencing, even when it's painful and you want to look away.

[   Link to Us   |   FAQ   |   Top^   ]
All written reviews material and content are a copyright of Felix Vasquez Jr. and Cinema Crazed.
Content borrowed without written permission will not be permitted.

¤ ¤ ¤