Has anyone seen this film?
I watched it last night and thought it was excellent. Scary but believable
I loved this movie! It got nearly no press that I know of, but the word of mouth is spreading like wildfire. I thought it was great both artistically (loved the camera work) and damn, but the woman who played the girl was one helluv an actress. I definitely recommend it.
Ellen Page (best known as Kitty Pride in the most recent X-Men movie) is fantastic in the film and helps bridge some of the larger suspension-of-disbelief gaps. The “procedure” business is particularly effective, but the shifting dynamics between the two (Patrick Wilson from Little Children is also quite good) are nicely modulated throughout. Sometimes a very tough film to watch but well worth it.
It kept me interested.
That’s not high praise, but it’s more than I can say about a lot of movies.
I also watched it the day I had a vasectomy! That was a queasy time.
That whole scene made me squirm, and I’m a gal!
Very tough film to watch, but quite well acted, provocative and obviously I am recommending it.
Meh. There wasn’t enough back and forth for me. The girl had the upper hand 99% of the time. (Not at all similar to the movie, but it’s more interesting when it’s more like the movie Stepmom where you like one person and hate the other and then you switch sides, then you switch back then you’re confused.
Besides, it got me in trouble on another message board, but that’s for another thread another day.
Slight hijack…but this DVD is haunting me.
Got it from Netflix a couple of months ago and it sat around for a while since it wasn’t so easy to convince my boyfriend to turn off Grand Theft Auto so we could watch “the pedophile movie.” One day on a crowded subway I mentioned to him again that I wanted to see it. When I said the title, the woman seated next to me said: “*terrible *movie.” OK. Thanks for that. So another week goes by and one lazy weekend the boyfriend agrees to watch the damn pedophile movie. So I put it in the DVD player - and it’s an entirely different movie! Netflix put the wrong disc in the envelope, and it sat in my living room for months before I even bothered to look. :smack: :smack: :smack:
Anyway, I trust Dopers more than a random lady on the subway, so I’ll probably try again with Netflix.
Like you say it got no press. I hadn’t heard of it until a pal loaned it to me.
The woman scared the shit outta me, so clinical when performing the “operation” and so matter of fact about everything leading up to the end shots.
I found it exploitive; torture porn.
ETA: Just went and scanned this paper’s critic, and he felt like I did.
I’m with lissener - I found it to be basically a self-indulgent film satisfying the whole “child molesters/pedophiles should have their balls cut off” vigilante justice fantasy.
Frankly, I wouldn’t feel sorry for a molester who did get his equipment cut off, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch a movie acting this out.
Exploitative.
Checking my Netflix queue, I see I’ve already got this movie on order. Now I’m not so sure I want to see it.
See, I guess for a while, I thought that whether she was “right” or not was kind of ambiguous, and while she had the upper hand, that ambiguity kept it interesting.
When I mentioned that to my wife, she said, “There’s nothing ambiguous. He’s already taken home a 14 year old and given her alcohol!”
While that doesn’t exactly rise to the level of deserving castration, she’s still probably right.
I know that some people praised the girl’s acting, but I found it really annoying after a while. It was a real one-note performance, like the director was standing there going, “more nonchalance. MORE!”
But did you like it?
There simply has to be a sticky that says, “before you tell someone that something isn’t a word, first check at least one source.”
Ellen page was only 18 or 19 when that was filmed. The kid has been working on Canadian TV since she was about 10 years old. She reallly is awesome. I think she was also Kitty Pryde in the last X-men movie.
She’s only about 5’ tall or so, so she can “play young” for awhile still.
Exploitative is the correct word; that doesn’t change because some whorish online dictionary .
I’m not even sure if I want to see the movie, now. Sounds kind of dreary.
Make that “because of some whorish online dictionary.” Little slip of the fingers there.
Whatever anyone thinks of the film I can see Ellen Page becoming one of the most sought after actresses of today.
It’s very intense and provocative (in the “provokes discussion” sense). Therre is a bit of back and forth because the guy is a child porn conoisseur (and possibly produces it too), the girl is a vigilante. Sometimes you agree with her basic position, on the other hand there is a lack of truly concrete evidence of the scope of his wrong-doing, and she is practically a sociopath. Alhough she has the upper hand 99% of the time, you’re still waiting for her to either screw up and get herself killed, or her to show some way shape or form of mercy.
There’s also a very subtle battle of wills that you wouldn’t get if she didn’t have the upper hand. The guy can only rely on his wits if he’s going to get himself out of the situationn he’s in.
Trunk my girlfriend and I had a similar discussion about the ambiguity. She said there’s nothing ambiguous about a guy giving alcohol to a 14-year-old, but then you consider the kid had an agenda, and helped herself to the booze. He didn’t give it to her (he gave her juice, but we were never told if there was booze in it or not), but he didn’t stop her either when she opened vodka to put in her own glass. The guy was clearly making questionable/irresponsible choices, but nothing overtly criminal in his behavior.
The whole movie there was a lot of tension, I was waiting for the big reveal, where as the audience we get to see the proof of his depravity that justifies the girl’s actions. You sit there wondering “Is he really the rat bastard she thinks he is, or is she fabricating it all?”
Don’t do this.
I got into it yesterday with someone in MPSIMS about the word “summonsed”.
Exploitive is a word. It’s a synonym for exploitative, and it’s been in usage for a LONG time.