mysterious skin

i have to say i was quite shocked with this one. normally i'd do my research first when watching an "unknown" movie, but i failed to check the trailers and read the synopsis for this movie, so yeah, i was pretty much taken aback by it.

the film starts off with a boy in a dugout of a baseball game and it rains. it's a narrative, so it's the boy's POV. the boy then says that his coach takes him home and proceeds to molest him. yowza, right? yeah, me too. shoulda read up on this movie. ehem. so yeah, we go through the journey of actually two boys whose lives don't exactly intertwine until the very end of the movie. neil is this "teenage hustler" as imdb.com describes him, and the other boy, brian, is this nerdish one who becomes obsessed with alien abductions.

it's a parallelism of their lives, but not. it reminds me of the music video "closing time" where there are two POVs, but the end result is one.

i have to say that for a film that was cut using final cut pro 4 on a mac computer, this looked really good :)

brady corbett, the actor who played brian kinda portrayed him one-sidedly, i couldn't see a depth of character or something that i always look for when i watch movies like this. though if he was aiming for that, well, congratulations then!

the surprise came in two: michelle trachtenberg and jeffrey licon. trachtenberg was awesome - though she was barely in the movie, she was in it maybe a total of 10-15 minutes, but her scenes were unforgettable. then there was jeffrey licon - he played eric, the "queer" friend. i loved that he was sweet, sensitive and loyal. he wasn't in the friendship with neil and wendy for kicks - he was truly their friend.

it kinda felt like a short film too, i was hoping to have gotten more from elisabeth shue - she's an admirable actress and has a lot to give.

then there's regular joe himself. ok, i'll try not to get biased, i love him, after all. anyway, to quote brad pitt in describing angelina's performance in changeling: "it was a blistering, raw performance". same goes for joe's unnervingly good acting chops in this one. i saw a few minutes of manic, and i can't wait to see it because it looks so damn good, but JGL was just awesome in this. i was shocked, i was scared, i was mortified with all the things he had to do in this movie, but it kinda harkened back to one other actor's movie choices and strong career path: leonardo dicaprio. there must be a pattern here. i gravitate to guys like these, i'm afraid. the brooding, sulky, cutesy, intense types but are also pretty smart and funny and can be aloof at times.

i just saw an interview that JGL did for this movie and he said that he was told that he was swallowing his words in this movie, which i did notice too yeah, but it wasn't a big deal for me, i thought it was the character speaking. anyway, he says that it doesn't matter what his character was saying, it was the actions, the emotions that's important. it reminded me again, eerily enough, of another performance that didn't need a lot of words: heath's character in brokeback mountain. *goosebumps* will somebody just come out and say that JGL's the new joker already????????

sidenote: i have to checkout JGL's other movies. can't wait to watch them all: manic, uncertainty, stop-loss, havoc, killshot... hopefully i get to buy them in a dvd store - i hate watching movies on the internet, it's so confusing and time-consuming just looking for the one site that wouldn't "buffer" on you. haha. good luck with that.

anyway, this movie kills. again, it's not a "happy" movie, but if you feel like not sleeping, this is the movie for you. ciao.