pcarlson-2

This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen - even "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is better than this. The story is unconvincing. The screenplay seems to have been written by a 10-year-old kid and the acting reflects it. For some unexplainable reason, the main characters - the priest and the girl - always seem to be right there whenever something happens, no matter where, what or time of day. It's also very unconvincing that Eva Marie Saint would give up her schooling - that her father scrimped and saved all his life to make it possible for her - to stay on the docks with a punk kid who was part of the gang that killed her brother.

How this movie won any Academy Awards at all is a puzzle to me.

My rating: 4/10 (only because I'm a nice guy)

One word sums it up: boring! The dialog is too pretentious, i.e., people in real life don't talk like this. The scenes are incredibly long and trying; nothing happens. And the acting is shallow. During the entire film I had the impression I was watching actors act rather than identifying with the characters they were supposed to be portraying.

Don't get me wrong. I love independent films - far more than your standard Hollywood productions, but his one was one big waste of time.

The idea for this film is so promising - villagers on the outskirts of civilization experience the outside world through films that have been cut ut, respliced, etc. and behave in accordance with the results - yet the result is so mundane, yes boring. I would like to see how a master filmmaker - Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, for example, come immediately to mind - would realize this film.

All in all, boring and a big disappointment. I left half way through it.