Deran_Ludd

I am lucky enough to get the CBC out of Vancouver down here in Seattle. Da Vinci's Inquest had much better writing generally then we get in American TV dramas. It may be just me, but I love how mostly each episode drops in to a story, the story develops, and with each ep we get more and more character backstory and ongoing story. And then the ep ends with a suggestion (or several possibilities) of how that eps plot might wrap up, but with out our being burdened, like American TV, with the simple-minded requirement that with each ep everything has to be completely wrapped up. And the acting is top notch. And of course Vancouver is a tremendous location, and I am so glad to see it used as Vancouver, and not just a as a prop to pretend to be some US city.

Firstly, the film is as much about the characters as the plot, and that is always hard for U.S. movie goers to handle. But, if you can just get your head out of the television this film is well worth the viewing. The plot is simple, but the characters make it more complicated, because the characters are complicated. The central theme is desperation, each individuals desperation and how it plays out when fate brings together a series of events. In this case criminal activity. Again, the crime isn't so much the point of this film (although crime is always a fine cinematic filter for human interaction), it's how these various people, with all there personal demons and angels that they carry around interact with the crime.

A beautiful, powerful peek into the real lives of the kids around us. Complaints about this movie being different from the book have to do with the nature of adapting fiction to film. Larry Clark has a sensibility and eye for bringing out the less than sweet side of American youth. To me "Bully" was like another chapter in the same study he began with "Kids". The acting is painfully realistic, and the manner and attitude of the youths in this film clicks so real it hurts. I am always amazed at how Clark can get young people to open up so much on camera when most of them won't even talk to their parents. Some of Clark's other cinematic efforts don't work so well, I really think he should take on the task of bringing to the screen the lives of kids in latter day US of A.