Agostino-1964

I give the filmmakers credit for tracking down and interviewing dozens of former employees and administrators of the hospital. The problem is that they seem to have used everything they recorded, with no discernment whatsoever. There is no evidence of an organizing or editorial principle. It's just a collection of dozens of stories and remembrances of things that happened, or that people heard had happened. No independent verification of anything.

The Crownsville hospital seems to have been exactly like every other state hospital in the country. There may be a story here, but this wasn't it. Interminable.

When FTB came out, I was in High School- moreover, I was in high school in southern Indiana, just a few miles from the setting of "Breaking Away." And to add one more notch, I was just beginning to figure out that I was gay. All that meant that I had a little crush on Dennis Christopher, and open to some of the gay-coded references in Fade to Black. I thought it was a fantastic movie, and Christopher the next Anthony Perkins.

Now it's forty-four years later, and I convinced my husband to watch this on Amazon Prime. To be kind, it doesn't hold up well.

The setup is a mashup, and is completely predictable from the first few minutes. D. C. Gives it his all, but the Zimmerman seems to have told him to turn it up to eleven. Linda Kerridge has a natural charm. Tim Thomerson seems to be in an entirely different movie, or maybe a Mod Squad episode about a hippy-dippy psychologist. In fact, if you pay attention, I don't think Thomerson is ever in the same frame with Christopher, as though perhaps his scenes were all shot in a day (clearly a day when everyone was high).

It also makes me wonder why Dennis Christopher didn't have more of a career. Even though he didn't have traditional leading-man looks, he is a talented actor and should have been better utilized.

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" meets "Brideshead Revisited" meets any number of homoerotic class-struggle prestige pieces. Given the advance press and buzz, I kept expecting something more, something better, but this movie doesn't go beyond the cliches. Even the "shocking" scenes that everyone talks about feel un-earned: gratuitous flashes of fetish in the middle of an otherwise paint-by-numbers exercise.

Jacob Elordi is pretty. Barry Keoghan does his deadpan thing, which was disturbing and compelling in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," but here just feels blank. Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant are fun as stereotyped daffy British aristos, but the other supporting characters make no impression whatsoever.

The storytelling telegraphs every reveal in the first few minutes, and then feels the need for a "Sixth Sense" style flashback at the end to say, "Look! We surprised you! Bet you didn't see that coming!"

Pointless and disappointing.