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jean-suchard
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A Dog's Best Friend (1959)
A Dog's Breakfast.
This low-budget movie has the look of a TV picture with such a simplistic drama of a boy and his dog. Shot in black and white with cheap sets and even less competent direction than a children's show of the time. The script is clunky and unnatural just like events during the movie such as the foster father sending his older son to disarm the troubled child who is guarded by a dangerous German Shepherd. Actually, thoroughly corny just like the rest of the plot involving murder, child trauma, and violence. The orphan boy, Pip, carries the movie as he appears in almost every scene and the boy actor (Roger Mobley) does a good job of acting sullen and angry at the world and everyone in it except his new four-legged friend. It was good to see Harry Dean Stanton in a very early film for him looking the same as he always did. The movie is a turkey in the end.
Battle Force (2012)
Killing lots of Germans again
This movie looks like it was written, acted, and filmed by high school students who like to dress up and play soldiers to post on YouTube. It is all bang bang and since none of the Germans can hit the side of a barn at 100 yards while all the Americans are marksmen with the exception of missing the Nazi SS officer who stands still while all his men run for cover, it has to be wondered why it took so long for the Americans to cross the Rhine during WWII. It has all the hallmarks of an amateur production. One's reaction to this movie can be summed up in one sentence; Do yourself a favor and give it a miss. I give it one star because it is as bad as it can get. Were the schoolchildren to submit this to their drama teacher it would have to get an F.
Ken Park (2002)
Controversial American Dysfunctionality
Although this film was made in Visalia, California with all American actors it is quite controversial by using unsimulated underage sex scenes with several of the cast so much so that the film was never released in the USA and other Anglo-Saxon countries such as Britain and Australia. So, it is understandable that the production was partly made through facilities in The Netherlands and France where attitudes toward under-18 sex is more realistic than in the USA or England. The teenagers in this film all seem to have dysfunctional lives with equally psychologically unbalanced adults. Just what the moral of the film is attempting to be is unclear or whether it is merely meant to entertain by shocking. If you like watching schoolboys getting erections, sucked, masturbating, erotic with schoolgirls and women, then you will like this movie. I really enjoyed every minute.
Attached: Paranormal (2021)
The Mystery of the Missing Money
I enjoy a good ghost story with frights and eerie mysterious happenings but the only mystery about the waste of video is how it could have had a budget of $10,000.00 unless the writer/director/protagonist gave it all to himself.
Teenagers (2011)
So weird to be worth watching
This is perhaps the oddest film I have ever seen and I wager this would be the case for many. The question is why was it made and the answer has to be because the director likes boys, especially when naked. In particular Sandy who is tall for his 12 years and his penis is shown most of the time he is on film. Yes, it too is big for his age. Various excuses are made to show Sandy naked such as him inviting a smaller swarthy Arabic boy to have a bath with him. This boy contrasts well with the tall blond protagonist. It is unbelievable that the Arab Muslim was sent to murder the Catholic boy. Most of the film consists of sado-masochistic punishment of the blond angel by a 15-year-old who even rapes him but afterward the blond asks the teen if he would penetrate him again because he loves the teen and he is full of Catholic affection. What a joke! It played in a Los Angeles theater for a few days before it had to be withdrawn on account of the child nudity. The angel is played by a young teen later who masturbates a boy while he is giving him a massage. Please! If you are attracted to nude prepubescent boys you will love this entertainment. Yet it is so weird that you must see it.
The Island on Bird Street (1997)
It Really Happened
I did not mean to watch the whole movie when I turned it on with the intention of pausing it until I had caught up on some sleep. As you might guess, I was riveted to the story. I remarked to myself with astonishment toward the end that the boy who acted as the protagonist, Alex, had been in every single scene. The young actor, Jordan Kiziuk, carried the entire film. He gave his all to produce the emotion that each scene demanded. The story is semi-biographical based on the novel by Uri Orlev. I might have guessed it as I had read his other book with similarities of a Polish Jewish boy who was also in the Warsaw Ghetto titled Run Boy, Run and it too was made into a film Lauf Junge, Lauf. Other parts were supporting although with big stars playing some roles, Jordan Kiziuk did not even get top billing. Can you believe it? The Danish director held everything together and had a genuine feel for the time, place, and drama that was playing out as young Alex tried so hard to be a survivor. Jordan Kiziuk sounds English but like the character he plays his name is Polish, not a coincidence then that the boy who played the protagonist in Run Boy, Run, Andrzej Tkacz, was also born in Warsaw. What am I trying to say? Well, if you saw Run Boy, Run you will like The Island On Bird Street and vice versa. Oh! And I just realized that by telling you this story is semi-biographical I have included a spoiler because you know the boy in each movie survives.
Pourquoi mon fils? (2015)
Forgettable -- That's what it is.
I found the film implausible and the cliché of coming out to a hostile father is jaded. That a father would go to such an extreme in his reaction is really corny. It simply was not believable and the lesson on Plato was stretching it a bit. I understand this was a labor of love by Lucas Morales but he failed to get my affection.
Second Coming (2014)
A film about Nothing
I am angry with myself for watching this pointless movie. I had been listening to the BBC critic, Mark Kermode, interviewing the director of the movie and I was unimpressed with her refusal to divulge much about the movie but he was so full of praise and repeatedly asked her questions which he had asked before and got no answers. He praised the movie so much that I thought I should watch it because it was, at any rate, supposed to be a Christmas movie according to the critic who kept confusing the virgin birth with the birth of Mary without the stain of original sin, the Immaculate Conception. He must have had in mind a miraculous conception. This should have alerted me that the praise was coming from someone who did not know what he was talking about.
Well, I kept waiting for something to happen but the only action was a trip to the hospital and some fisticuffs in the school playground. Part of me was saying, "Turn it off!" and at the same time I was hearing, "The BBC thinks this is brilliant. Wait." What a dope I was. All the actors did was eat and mumble unintelligible text in broken sentences. I thought maybe I need my hearing examined. But No; I need my head examined for wasting so much time watching, Second Coming.
TommyTeen18 (2017)
Where should the line be?
The age of consent is drawn at different ages throughout the European Union. Are boys of 14 in Austria where this is the age of consent really more capable of making a responsible decision to be sexually active than a 16 year old in Ireland where the legal age to be intimate is 17? How come? Although countries criminalize sexual activity below various ages, people are more complex than this. The hard fact is that emotional needs cannot legally be met for Tommy without risking incarceration for his partner. Tommy does not live in Austria so he must wait another year. He can be glad he is not Irish or Cypriot. Is This fair? No, of course not. It is time to the EU to have one standard.
Treasure of Monte Cristo (1949)
Jetsam
Life is too short to waste any time watching this piece of cheap junk that I would have thrown overboard from the vessel before it docked in San Francisco. I confess it was impossible for me to continue watching this turkey before it got half way. There is not a single redeemable item in this movie. It has the look of a low budget, rushed production, with a cast who hammed it up all the way delivering a poor script and directed without any merit. Never have I given one star to a movie until now. The plot is nonsense. It is a good thing TV was invented and people did not have to waste their money on something like this for entertainment. No stars, not a studio of note, and no talent anywhere.
Lucas (2012)
A Cautionary Tale
Lucas was suspicious of the man who approached him on the street asking for him to agree to model for him. He even took out his knife when he entered the man's apartment and asked for an explanation, wondering if he wanted him do porn. This was a problem I had with the story because such a good kid, a needy boy, looking for affection from a girl who plays hard-to-get, an abusive father shoving him into the arms of any man who cared, and bullies at school who mock his handicapped leg who lower his self-esteem. Why then agree to meet with an obvious creep who wanted him to be everything he was not. It was an interesting idea and the acting and production values were top-notch as is often the case with this short movies. Would Lucas do it for money? Was a motorcycle that important to him? Could a scruffy weirdo be a surrogate father even when Lucas is drunk? It was a scenario which did not completely work.
L'Échappée sauvage (2017)
Class Taboos Turned Upside-Down
This city boy is from an upper middle class family and is being educated and brought up to be taking his place as a responsible leader in society in one of the professions. He is dressed in the uniform of his private school and when the chauffer-driven car which is taking him home on summer vacation breaks down, two rural children about his age but of working class stock make themselves known to him. The boy is already haughty. We have noticed that he will not return the gaze of the driver when he looked in the rear view mirror. The chauffer does not even dare speak to the boy to tell him he is off to the nearest village to get something in a can to get the motor running again. In the same way he attempts to ignore the country children. They are in the middle of nowhere, a Belgian movie filmed in Brittany. Yet, this nowhere is where the poor brother and sister live. This country is their home. The snobbish boy is about to do some learning that he never got from his family nor from his private school. He is about to learn the freedom to be himself. Because the country siblings befriend him, he learns to return that friendship just as he is going through puberty and that impressionable time in a boy's life is about to be imprinted with acceptance, equality, and affection. Alien concepts between the European classes in the middle of the last century. The film is only 16 minutes long and cost a mere 6,000 euros to produce. As we have come to expect from this European art form, the photography, plot, and acting are all perfect. It is well-paced with the transformation of the well-to-do boy made complete as he casts of his air of superiority just as he gets rid of his stuffy uniform to go for a swim. The girl shows her affection by bandaging the boy's foot but her brother thinks this is too girly like kissing and stuff. So he grabs their new friend by the arm and makes him walk to the lake for a real boys' activity that is swimming. The two attractive boys strip down to their underpants while their clothes dry in the early summer heat. What a nice touch at the end where we see a boy who was sullen at the beginning has been transformed into a smiling boy with two new friends and as the car is driven away, the boy's legs hang out the window of the front passenger seat. All the class taboos have been broken. This is a lovely film, made with such skill that not a single word is spoken.
Happy Birthday (2013)
A Moving Story
This is a well-crafted little film with all the right touches to give us an understanding of how the characters feel about themselves and their circumstances in life. At the beginning we see the Gentle Man visiting a grave. Later we understand by a photograph that it was where his partner was buried. We know this man is lonely and is looking for sexual intimacy with another man. Thomas is a boy who has discovered at the age of 14 going on 15 that he is gay. He too wants sex and by chance they meet on a website. The man is honorable and does not want to take advantage of the young teenager but agrees to be his friend. Soon the boy will reach the age of consent and on that evening the man invites the boy for a celebration, just the two of them. The boy is hoping that the evening will become a sexual encounter and as the man helps him tie his necktie he tells him he is a real gentleman ... Gentle Man. Perhaps the man did find company after all and maybe the boy got to have sex too. We are left to wonder. The use of music helped in the different scenes when there was no dialog. The script is laconic but everything is explained. Of course, as we have come to expect from small European art films, the acting is flawless. I found it to be a moving story and give it 10 stars.
After School (2015)
And so?
That a boy can be gay and have a crush on a brat is not a plot. Nothing happens in this well-photographed and sensitively acted drama. That a young teen can be gay is no surprise to most of us. Someone should tell the writer.
Crazyhouse (2015)
Not the story I would have preferred
It was a little spooky. Unfortunately, it did nothing for me as I am not turned on by looking at boys wearing lingerie and dancing. I'm glad the young actor, Connor Jessup, does not smoke in rea life. I would have preferred to see the story that led up to his friend's suicide, what it was like between the two who might have been lovers but that is not the story we got and I found it profoundly disappointing that the protagonist after his friend's suicide compensated for not having a deeper sexual relationship with the boy his own age by asking a hairy older stranger to come and do him so that he might have known what it might have been like. Nope! This did not work for me on any level.
Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)
The danger to be different
It is difficult for 13 year-old Logan to come to terms with his transgender sexuality as he cannot come out to sexy and popular Rodeo a year older but when he does, his attraction appears to be rejected. Or is it? Twenty-five minutes is missing from this movie and I found myself wondering whether Logan's invitation to Rodeo to do him in the cave might actually have been taken up. This would help us understand that the director's vision and message was totally altered by the editing. It is dangerous in the minds of many to have our middle school kids exposed to the possibility of a boy who would be a girl, as dangerous in a middle school campus as a wild puma. In the end, handsome photogenic Logan runs away and waves goodbye to us. We know what he was running from but what was he running to?
The Scarf (1951)
Words Aplenty
It is the dialog what ruins this movie. In what way? There is too much of it. This motion picture strikes me as a mite to philosophical for its own good. From the very beginning the two characters are loquacious and each with plenty to say in a vocabulary no-one has heard spoken in real life ever by anybody and hardly by a desert hermit and an escaped ex-con whom we are supposed to believe has almost died in the Sonoran Desert. It must have been inspired by Franz Kafka: "If I have no sense of guilt, and I haven't, then maybe I didn't do what they accuse me of. Maybe I'm innocent" (12:20). Three more characters enter from stage left and the play continues with, not one but, two quoting a Harvard medical professor. ... Sorry, I heard enough of this in Metaphysics 101 every Monday and Thursday morning in the Aula Maxima. I'm outa here guys. Life calls.
Bait (1954)
Short and boring
It surprises me that this is classified as a film-noir because it is not dark. Most of it takes place in the daylight. It also happens in the wilderness (on an obvious studio sound stage). It is not lit with shadows and no venetian blinds. No femme fatale. There was very little tension and the story is corny. I cannot believe adults paid to see this as recently as 1954. I'm glad it was a short movie (79 min).
The Flame (1947)
A sow's ear
I could not believe how this script could have been accepted by Republic for a movie until I read that the female lead was a favorite of the studio's founder and owner. He actually married her a few years later. Need I write more? It is one of the worst scripts ever to make it to celluloid. Here are a few lines:The doctor says, "You see, I watched him grow up in this world and now I'm faced with the unhappy task of supervising his departure from it." or the brother saying, "Her smile when she gives it is an instant of complete happiness. The touch of her hands is a lifetime of pleasure. Make her my wife will be achievement of all the beautiful dreams I've ever known." The Chinese servant opines on love, "The better she is, the harder to lose. ... Some day everybody lose everybody. That is why Chang never fall in love with girl again. If she mean all the world to you and you lose her, then you have lost the whole world world. If she mean more than life to you and you lose her, then you have lost all of life. But if she mean more than your soul to you and you lose her, then you have lost your own soul." And as a final example, the females exchange words, "You mean George McAllister? -- I don't mean George Washington." No-one ever talked like these people.
The plot is convoluted with Broderick Crawford in a trench coat looking like wandered in off a different sound stage as if he were in another movie, just to complicate matters. It is difficult to care about any of the characters because they appear so unreal. They are all saying lines that are stupid and none of them are acting much as there is no call for them to show much emotion. How could they? They story is too bizarre. You cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear, as the Chinaman might say.
Ben (2017)
Neither here nor there
This is a rather confusing little drama as it is unclear why or to what extent the boy is disturbed. There is an indication of possible gender dysphoria, a father who might be distant, a missing mother who might be a ghost, and wanton animal cruelty. Unfortunately, the boy actor was wasted as he has some range and ability.
Sinner (2009)
Based on true events
Meni Philip who is the writer and director of this film gives us an exact and complete synopsis of this short subject with one omission that could easily be missed because it appears for only a few seconds on an opening credit, namely that this story is based on true events. Forgetting this, we find ourselves shaking our heads and hoping this is not happening while feeling helpless as the boy experiences confusion, desperation and hopelessness. We do not want this to be true.
The Last Days on Mars (2013)
F for Fail
Absolute junk. I wondered who was responsible for selecting such a bunch of misfits to be in charge of a mission to Mars. Temperamentally, the women were all neurotic and the men were thick. The script was adolescent and, without question, any high schooler could have done a better job. Various characters do the stupidest things and this was before anyone was even infected. I could hardly believe that the Los Angeles Times critic thought it was good but he was not typical.It was not a patch on the movie it failed to copy, Alien. Crying women and shouting men. Fail.
The Conrad Boys (2006)
Nothing Right
The Conrad Boys is a bad movie for many reasons. Some reviewers remarked how brilliant it would have been had another actor been cast as the main protagonist, Charlie but it is more correct to state that none of the actors were any good, including Nick Bartzen who is singled out for praise even by critics who deplored everything else about the movie. Someone wrote that they felt disconnected from all the characters and this is understandable since all of them were unbelievable. As I watched the incongruous affect which was supposed to pass for emotion, I found myself completely puzzled.
The scripts was juvenile. No one talks like these people in real life. I found myself looking at a scene and wondering where the heck this dialog was coming from, certainly not the plot. Even the younger brother who was supposed to be 8 spoke as if he were 5 as another reviewer remarked and playing in a fort of cushions is not believable either with a sword and shield. Please, am I writing this? The movie is so badly written that it amounts to junk.
The outdoor scenes have the look of homemade super 8 film made by high school freshmen or 8th graders. The production values are rock bottom. There is so much wrong with it that I hardly know where to stop.
The scene where the father acts as a cop was ridiculous and must be an embarrassment for any of the 'actors' who participated. Total rubbish. Not only are the audience disconnected from the characters, the cast were disconnected from each other. There is nothing more to be said as there is nothing right about the production.