Here

I met the filmmaker once at a party. He was a cool guy and I am happy to report that I am also very impressed with the movie that he made. I think King is primarily a cinematographer, and visually this is often quite stunning. The story, such as it is, follows a young American mapmaker as he travels around Armenia, working on a project. While there, he meets a local woman, an artist who has some issues with her traditional family, and the two of them hook up and travel around together.

That ubiquitous narrator Peter Coyote shows up to do the voice-over. There are some exciting, fast collage sequences and beautiful shots of the Armenian countryside. At the end, Will expresses his love for Gatarina by making a map and leaving it for her, which is interesting. The loose plot reminded me of some classic road movies of the 1960s and 1970s. I hope to see some more films by Mr. King.

Here is different in many ways. Too many to really outline in a review... and different and great in one spot is really really hard to find in cinema these days...

I would say that it is a very refreshing, meditative work of art for those of us who seek more in life. If you are into self awareness and philosophy in life and can open up to it, Here will take you on a journey that is very interesting in a unique way.

A lot of films over the decades have attempted this, in spite of the virtual business suicide that they are, but Here presents it in a contemporary, realist, utilitarian view that is so new.

Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal are two very good actors who get to shine in subtlety... I really wish Ben got more big roles and especially that Lubna was better represented in American / English speaking roles....

Braden King struggled to make this and from looking at the website did some unusual fundraising to get it over the finish line.... he ended up with something well worth your time, I hope it gets some recognition for the top flight, non standard fare it is....

How do I get it all into just 1000 words? Having read some negative reviews before watching the movie, I set out to prove them wrong. I can't. This is a TERRIBLE movie! I'll just list a few of its most glaring flaws:

(1) The dialog is about half in unintelligible English, half in Armenian; the DVD subtitles translate Armenian into English but leave us to struggle alone through mumbled English and VERY heavily accented and garbled Armenglish; the closed captions do the opposite, giving the English dialog ONLY; all through the movie I had to switch back and forth between subtitles and closed captions as the characters switched between Armenian and English; it was infuriating.

(2) ALL of the dialog is stilted, pretentious, moronic crap, but EVEN WORSE than the dialog is the mind-bogglingly stupid pseudo-mythological narration read by poor Peter Coyote, who must be desperate for work.

(3) In some scenes, extremely shallow depth of field and oblique angles caused the camera to have to shift focus constantly, which completely ruined whatever was going on and gave me a headache; it was most noticeable when Will was writing an email, but the focus shifting happened pretty often; maybe it was supposed to be artistic, but it was just distracting.

(4) Ben Foster is TERRIBLY - and I do mean TERRIBLY - miscast in this movie, and he seems to be angry about it all the way through. I have never seen such obvious discomfort IN EVERY SCENE from any actor in any movie. It's like watching him sulk for two hours. Besides making the whole movie irritating, his extreme discomfort kills whatever chemistry there is supposed to be between his Will and Lubna Azabal's Gadarine.

(5) Braden King is an untalented narcissist. He should NEVER be allowed to make another movie! Maybe he can get a job at Burger King in some small town I'll never have to visit.

I'm not a harsh critique when it comes to slow, beautifully shot romantic films and I grew up with Iranian cinema and the utterly slow movies of Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, but 'Here' is slow for no good philosophical, metaphysical, spiritual, or even sensual reason. The cinematography is lovely, and the production value is good, but the script could have had a couple of rewrites. The acting is okay and what makes it okay is not the work of the actors but the weakness of the script and the lack of enough tension or conflict for the actors to deliver their best performance possible. Despite the slowness and the rawness of the script, I did like the setting, Armenia, which we don't get to see very often in non- Armenian cinema, and how life is like there.

This is one of those movies that let one wander ones own masochistic tendencies. There are some interesting premises, the exotic allure of the Armenian location, known and usually decent actors, a background of a complex and modern conflict and the human interest of a different culture. All is wasted. From the first moment of the movies one realizes that it is an exercise in narcissism. All unveils on incredible slow pace, with the long shots of landscapes, glances and a mostly discontinued episodic narrative. The type of film you can leave for coffee and return to without missing much. At the end it boils down to the story of a rather uninteresting romance interspersed with insufferable dullard voice-overs and tedious pretentious imagery. Avoid.