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L.I.E. Reviews
L.I.E. wasn't as good as I was expecting, the subject material definitely won't be for everyone, it's very taboo but In my opinion a lot of it is mishandled, I have some issues with the way certain characters were written but I understand what Michael Cuesta was going for. The movie is elevated by phenomenal performance from Brian Cox and a great early performance from a very young Paul Dano.
One of the few films to discuss the taboo subject of pedophilia. Long Island Express is a coming of age film with a dark twist, the content is sure to disturb many.
What may come off first as another gay movie or a disgusting pedophile flick, L.I.E actually tells a compelling and beautiful story of the human emotion and exploration of sex. It has a certain off-beat charm to it that most films only dream of touching. I was crying near the end. I was a little grossed out by the pedophilia, but it wasn't present really, and the pedophile was a very likable guy. All in all, L.I.E. is a beautiful and meaningful film that leaves you heartbroken, but you're glad you went on its ride.
I never thought I'd say these words when describing a film, but this movie has the nicest pedophile I have ever seen. I don't mean to say that the film makes you think that Big John's actions are ever ok, in fact, far from it. But I will get to that later. This film could certainly be seen as controversial, but I'm not even sure why it got an NC-17 rating to be perfectly honest. Maybe it's the nature of the friendship that develops between Howie, a 15-year-old who's been stuck out in limbo since his mother's death, and Big John, a very obvious 50+ year old pedophile. Maybe it's just based off of that. There's one scene where, I'm assuming, Big John shows Howie some child pornography and you get to see some of it, I mean cut off of course, you get to see part of a person's head, for example, as they're performing a blowjob. Maybe that was it, I don't know. Personally I found the film to be quite compelling and the dynamic between Howie and Big John made for a very interesting movie. Because it's obvious that there's some part of John that would very much like to have sex with Howie, but there's also a part of him that wants to take care of this kid, for whatever reason that may be and that dynamic is really what carries the film. It's also a bit fucked up in the sense that Howie, in the emotional absence of his father since his mother's death, needs a father figure in his life to look over him and the only person FOR that is a known pedophile. Howie doesn't really even care about John's perversions and in many ways he'd like for John to do what he does. This is a story about a kid finding acceptance in all the wrong places, but John really is the only one who genuinely cares for him, in a strange way. John never takes advantage of Howie when he very well could've multiple times, he's always honest and upfront with him, doesn't try to force him to do anything he doesn't want to do. Big John is an honest man, for all of his faults and his perversions. Again, that dynamic is incredibly makes for an engrossing watch. You never really know what's gonna happen or what to expect form John, or even Howie for that matter. The film, very obviously, covers issues such as sexual identity and discovery. It's clear that Howie is a homosexual and John, while in no way taking advantage of him, makes Howie realizes what he really wants. The film lacks technical prowess but more than makes up for it with its scripting and strong acting from Brian Cox and Paul Dano. Let's just say Brian Cox could've played the character as detestable as humanly possible, he's that talented, but he makes the character a little more complex than that. Again, the film doesn't try to justify his behavior, but it does somewhat humanize a character that most would want to look at as a monster. That's another thing you struggle with, as a viewing audience, Big John, while at his core he's a bad man, he's also a man with a lot of good in his heart as evidenced by his friendship with Howie and how he grows to care for him in a genuine manner. Really good movie here, not perfect, but a thought-provoking and engrossing coming-of-age story.
Agonizing to watch, it carries its own weight with such a topic you keep asking yourself, what is the outcome?
It reflects what is happening nowadays in this cruel world. Some parts are disturbing but it okay. This is a good film, I like it.
Loved it since I first saw it. So many complications!
Amazing storytelling. Bleak but brilliant.
an amazing movie about a young boy/mans life growing up in a large family trying not to disappoint his father
an extremely disturbing movie about a young man and a pedophile. This movie is very hard to watch but if you get through it itl move you in ways uv never even imagined. close to a perfect movie
It was ok, sad but true the things that happened in this movie happen eveyday to kids, because parents decide NOT to be there for their kids! This is why I choose to be there for my kids, if they like it or not! $ may buy a lot of things but not their love!
I'll tell you like I tell those drunk Queens College kids. "Stay clear of the L.I.E."
This film reminds me of a Larry Clark film -- if Larry Clark was actually a GOOD filmmaker. Like Clark, this film tackles adolescent angst, sexuality and delinquency. However, the potentially sensationalistic and/or exploitative storyline that of a troubled young teenage boy coping with both the tragic death of his mother and his relationship with a local pederast is given a very tasteful treatment. The film is further boosted by the wonderful performances of Paul Dano and Brian Cox who give their characters numerous wonderful dimensions.
Interesting idea, but I was bored.
Brilliant coming-of-age story, but really quite shockingin places. The acting gives it the full five stars it deserves though.
Disturbing, yes...Brian Cox is so real in this film. Perhaps I like this flick cos it treats the "villian" in human terms...
L. I. E. (Michael Cuesta, 2001) There are some movies that are just guaranteed to piss Hollywood off. That usually happens because someone tackles subject matter in a more realistic, complex way than Hollywood, as a culture, wants it treated, and the outcome of such films going up against the machine is inevitable no matter the quality of those films: they open very small, disappear from theatres quickly, and are then relegated to obscurity. We saw it in 2004 with the excellent The Woodsman, a movie that should have been a blockbuster indie drama, with an all-star cast, pitch-perfect direction, and a great script, that ended up opening on just six screens solely because the film was about a pedophile struggling to keep his urges in check while trying to adjust to life outside prison. Go back a few years before that and you find Michael Cuesta's first film, the brave, beautiful L.I.E., which deals with ephebophilia (attraction to teens, as opposed to pedophilia, attraction to children), but does it in an even more confrontational way: it's form the point of view of the teen in question, Howie Blitzer (Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano). The movie-which contains no explicit sex whatsoever, and its violence is mostly suggested-was slapped with an NC-17 rating (unsuccessfully appealed by the studio), opened on just twelve screens, and yes, faded into obscurity relatively quickly. This is, to put it bluntly, a crime, and as the studio argued during its appeal, the arbitrary nature of the MPAA, who can stick an NC-17 on a film with no explicit sex and less onscreen violence than one sees in most PG-13 films because of its subject matter, is far more shocking than anything portrayed on the screen here. Plot: Howie Blitzer is fifteen, bored, and living on Long Island with his workaholic father (Glengarry Glen Ross' Bruce Altman) and dad's new squeeze (Tatiana Burgos in her only screen appearance). It's been a few years since Howie's mother passed on, but that doesn't make him feel any less that his father's actions are less than honorable. As well, Howie is coming of age very confused; he and his friends wholeheartedly buy into the stereotype of the nihilist/ultra-machismo manly-man (when bored, they pass the time by breaking into rich peoples' homes, and one of the movie's more amusingconceits is that Howie is incapable of seeing how much like his own those homes are), but Howie feels a growing attraction to his best friend, Gary (The Battle of Shaker Heights' Billy Kay), though whether Gary returns that affection or whether he's just stringing Howie along is a question that (spoiler alert!) remains unanswered throughout the film; one gets the impression Gary doesn't quite know himself, but he's bought so much harder into the stereotype that he's even more conflicted than Howie. In any case, one night, the two of them break into what seems to be a random house where John Harrigan (Manhunter's Brian Cox) is having a birthday party upstairs, and in the process of lifting a case containing Harrigan's Vietnam-era pistols, someone makes a wrong move, and Harrigan comes down to investigate the noise, almost catching the boys in the process. Turns out that the house wasn't quite as random as Howie thought, but the end result is not at all what he expected-Harrigan befriends the boy, and while there is an obvious element of lust involved (Harrigan lives with a much younger male paramour already), most of the movie's tension comes from whether Harrigan-or Howie-is going to take their relationship in a sexual direction, or whether Harrigan really does love Howie as the son he never had. This is tough stuff indeed, and that Cuesta (Tell Tale), who also co-wrote the script with his brother Gerald (an AD on Abel Ferrara's King of New York) and Stephen M. Ryder (South of the Moon), is capable of pulling it off with the honesty and forthrightness he does is praiseworthy in and of itself; even if the resuting movie had been less accomplished, the script would be a strong recommend. But as Cuesta's directorial career since has borne out, this guy is no slouch in the canvas seat, either. Cuesta is a very bleak director, and both his film and 온라인카지노추천 (Dexter, Six Feet Under) choices bear that out. This is a guy who deals with ugly subject matter, and knows how to make an ugly film to couch it, but to make that ugliness compelling indeed. One cannot understate, especially in this film, the contribution made by Cuesta's cinematographer here, Romeo Tirone, who aside from his collaborations with Cuesta (he's the DP on both Dexter and True Blood, another series where Cuesta drops in to direct on occasion) was also involved in Cry_Wolf, about which the cinematography may have been the only noteworthy thing. Tirone knows bleak. The two of them are a match made in... Siberia, maybe. The movie's one real weakness is in its ending. Now I grant you, given the setup (and especially the climax, which is perfectly Hobbesian: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", the movie's final shot could only end in one of two ways, and whichever option Cuesta chose, I'd be sitting here telling you it's facile. Which may point to some subtle flaws in the movie's construction, but I'm not willing to dig that far into it to uncover them. There is too much honesty, passion, and downright substance here to dig so far into it I could be accused of being a deconstructionist in order to figure out where the film goes wrong (if, indeed, it does, and I'm not overthinking this). Crappy ending or not, I still love it. I will warn you, like The Woodsman, this is not in any way a fast-paced film; like that movie, it should have been a blockbuster indie drama, the kind of thing that gets huge word of mouth to compensate for the complete lack of publicity from the Hollywood machine. But when your movie opens on just twelve screens, and in its biggest expansion plays in thirty, how many people can you really get to spread the word? The critics did what they could (and they were effusive in their praise; the movie has an 83% at Rotten Tomatoes), and the movie gained a solid core of fans from the outset, but here it is over a decade later and the movie has barely cracked five thousand ratings on IMDB, where it has a more-than-respectable 7.1 rating-the public likes it too, in general, those that have seen it. Well, it exists on DVD, pops up occasionally on Netflix Instant, and is very much worth your time to seek out. One of the greatest film works of the twenty-first century thus far. **** 1/2