Beauty & the Beholder

Thus film is fairly on point with narcissism. It speaks volumes to about how society is so focused on perception and not what's inside. I will admit I was a bit thrown off when I saw straight snorting coke scenes but other than that it was a decent movie.

Okay. This movie.. It actually really does have a great message. If you are going to watch it, I recommend you ignore pretty much all of the first act. I spent the entire time watching the first 20 minutes or so, rolling my eyes and "ugh"ing. BUT, the second half left me pretty invested in the main characters growth and the love story developing. I wish we had a lot more of this in the movie. The movie is very very VERY low budget. But I think it was done okay.

Critiques: I don't think the movie needed the vulgar or soft p**n scenes, it added nothing to the story. I skipped them actually. I didn't care for the twist at the end. I would have rather the story just went on as it was going.

Other than that, I felt that the main character went from very hated in my mind to rooting for his growth and change. And that's a very good thing. I just wish he would have been better to the people around him. Especially Alana. And that we had more closure than what was given (his addiction, why did he receive the glass, what now for Lana and him?, what are the details of his life now?)

Dr. Joseph Nieman the central figure of the story and its narrator is a plastic surgeon of great acclaim but has toxic beliefs about beauty that he sometimes (most of the time) carelessly unloads onto his patients. As the movie proceeds he realizes his insecurities caused by his childhood and proceeds to work on them when he meets a woman who refuses his sales pitch of plastic surgery and stars to like her for showing him a mirror and making him reflect about what he is doing wrong. He works on his insecurities and hopes that with her by his side he can battle them with ease ,but all too soon realizes that life is never that easy.

One of the main themes of this movie is beauty and how toxic it has become in the view of society feeding on the insecurities of individuals and how this has become a profitable opportunity for a few. I personally come from an environment where natural beauty is very valued but people around me are of various cultures and beliefs so everyone around me holds a very different perception of beauty from each other. The only reason I find any one around me is unsatisfied with their looks is because they get easily influenced by social media etc. And are unable to realize that no one other than themselves in real life really cares about how they look, the movie made me realize how deep a persons simple insecurity can run if they are not made aware of this fact like Stella.

The movies end is quite ambiguous and as I didn't quite understand it iIinterpret the movie in a light I want to see it in which is, optimistic.

Reading the bright reviews is shocking. The acting is very awkward and flat where the dialogue could have been light and charming. There's no personality and no real grasp or connection the audience can make with the main character due to his monotonous tone. The first-person narrative is laughable. The audio is outright awful at some points. Aside from how it was executed, the plot was interesting-- but again, the acting is a huuge turn off.

Movie has an overall score of 4.5 (160 votes). 16 out of 17 reviews are expressing great praise. All were written ON 2 NOVEMBER 2018 by accounts created in NOVEMBER 2018 who have NO OTHER RATINGS. Are you kidding me? They didn't even try to be discreet about it.

And yeah, this movie was utter rubbish. Not even LAUGHABLY bad, just totally terrible. (Admittedly, I didn't finish watching it, but I doubt there was any improvement.) As if a horned up teenager saw American Psycho and thought to himself, I can do something like that, but better and with tits!