Nathan's Kingdom

Yup, it's one of them, terrible acting, turgid dialogue and pointless scenes. Two stars for having a pop.

Please take no offenses. I have my greatest sympathy to patients with autism. However, what the movie showed to us was disturbing and misleading. For a child with autism, the caregiver should help the patient seek proper therapy, not playing pretend or following whatever the patient wants to do. The main character just completely lack the knowledge and ability to take care of her sick brother. Love is cheap. Love does not treat autism. Science does.

The story potential itself was beautiful and they completely wasted it. As the Autistic character himself is in fact Autistic, I didn't judge him on his acting...but if he had good director, a better script, a better coach, a better acting cast and a better editor - his character would've come across more beautifully. Because, he is in fact, a beautiful person and the movie totally missed the potential of exploring his mind in the film.

The cinematography, the acting (from other actors), the score...just awful. It was painful to watch. And as an Autistic surrealist professional artist, I saw so much more that could've been done. It could've been like Eternal Sunshine meets What Dreams May Come. The location was too bland. Whoever the scouts were didn't do a good job. Should've picked the Northwest, Montana, or the high desert (totally different than lower desert). I lived in the desert, and while it's beautiful, you can only handle so many brown colors and rocks.

Professional filmmakers know how to make the desert brilliant without boring the viewer.

Tent Rocks in NM would've been an easy drive and an amazing surrealistic place to film for interesting rocks to lay out as a surrealistic landscape. I get the low budget, but the people who made this just didn't see far enough into what it could've been and it's really unfortunate.

And why was the sister obsessively being shot checking her makeup and herself in the mirror in the truck? Were they just trying to fill in time?

Why did the sister say "when I get gas" when the truck already had gas?

I think these guys spent all their money on the CGI in the first 5 minutes of the film and on the art scenes and then failed the rest.

The beginning scene and the art scenes were the only good parts because it wasn't messed up with horrible actors and music.

Stop giving this film 10 stars just because it's about an Autistic young adult. It failed.

• An Adult on the Spectrum.

The concept had potential. The cinematography was relatively good and the artwork in "The Book" was incredibly good-- and was the part I found most fascinating about the story.

However, the actor playing the autistic brother wasn't convincing in the part, his characterization very wooden. The actress tried to pull off her part well but she wasn't given much to work with.

Which brings us to the story line. It's more of a long, drawn out slice of life film without much in the way of point or purpose. There's no real plot, no climax, no evident point to the ending. It's not that it wasn't interesting; it did hold my attention all the way through. All through the story I was expecting it to make some kind of point. But in the end it just didn't deliver much of anything.

I've seen several films like this. Potential... potential... potential... fizzle... thud. Roll credits. I've said it before: Start with a good script, or don't make the film.

But again, kudos to the artist on the book. I kept thinking all the way through the film: if this were real, with a manager the guy could make a living in the art world. Evidently the actual artist does. For me, that book was the redeeming factor of the film. The rest of it... 5 star mediocre (barely).

Reading the critics reviews one gets a wonderful perspective of autism, but not a lot about the movie. This is a review of the movie and not of autism. Overall, a good concept and a fair indie movie. However, low budget is no excuse for poor directing, poor editing and allowing lame acting to pass as final product. The visual effects and stylistic elements are excellent. Really good work there. But sadly it cannot carry the movie. I just feel that there was so much more that could have been done to make it better. It's as if someone's "good enough" bar was set too low. I did manage to get to the end of the movie, which took some effort. But the effort wasn't really worth it at the end.