L.I.E. | | Cast : | Paul Dano, Brian Cox | | Director : | Michael Cuesta | | Studio : | New Yorker Video | | Format : | Color | | Released Date : | January 01, 2001 | | DVD Released Date : | June 04, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 15, 2005 | | Summary | This movie rocks. | Content
 | The boy's cute as pie and his friend's not bad either. The musical soundtrack fits like a glove. Actor Brian Cox is perfect as the villain/hero. Sexy, intelligent, and real. Delivers the goods.
The only sour note is...not to reveal a plot element, but... let's put it this way. Near the end, there's a drive-by that fits more in a hood movie than this one. Dullsville-dude never had it in him to do the deed.
Incredible that this is an American movie. Can you believe it? Better than any of the European peers. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 14, 2005 | | Summary | Think before you rent | Content
| This movie ask way to much of its viewers. I knew what the movie was about before I rented it and I honestly tired to approach it with an open mind. I failed miserably in that regard because the movie didn't give me the chance.
I can feel some sympathy for Howie and Gary and their friends who have I guess been abandoned by their parents so they have to cope in other ways. Then I remember that these kids are most likely upper middle class and should really not have to lash out in this way. This is where the movie gets stupid. The audience has to feel sorry for Howie that we can say to ourselves. Ok they are not loved by their parents so they engage in petty crime. I might have been able to do that much but then the movie progresses.
We are also asked to feel Sympathy for Big John a Hurley-Burley macho ex-marine pedophile stereotype. We are supposed to feel sorry for him because he feels conflicted about what he does for sexual recreation. Well, (and I'm speaking for myself here) with all due respect to the actor (who is a great actor) who the hell cares? Obviously the people who made this movie do. While I can respect the statement that they are trying to make I honestly don't care.
Then there are the plot holes that audience is just asked to ignore.
1. Where did Gary go? He just ran off and disappears no one seems to notice.
2. Where did Howie's other two friends go? They to vanish halfway in never to reappear.
3. What boob just leaves his ATM card lying around the house while he is in jail? While we're on the subject does Howie have any living relations other then his father? No one seems concerned that a 15 year old kid is now living on his own and growing closer to his new "friend"
Overall-I do respect the actors involved I think they are great people who do the best with what they have. I do think they were total idiots for getting attached to this movie in the first place.
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| Rating | | | Date | April 04, 2005 | | Summary | A movie you won't soon forget | Content
| Big John is a retired marine homosexual pedophile whose Long Island doorbell plays "From the Halls of Montezuma..." when rung. He is a guy who has lived a James Bond kind of life who likes to... Well, I can't say, but it should be obvious what he likes to do.
Howie is a 15-year-old boy who has lost his beloved mother and has a father who is too busy for him and hasn't a clue about what is going on in his son's life. Howie and his friends are into breaking into the mini-mansions on Long Island for fun and profit. One night they break into the cellar of Big John's house and steal his prized set of handguns. Big John goes looking for the perps and what he finds is true paternal love.
What makes this an outstanding movie is director Michael Cuesta's relentless and uncompromisingly realistic treatment of what is essentially a taboo coming of age story. I can tell you that if the theme appeals to you, you will be completely captivated by this movie. And even if such a tale is not your cup of tea, you might want to see this anyway because it is so very, very well done without a hint of contrivance or pandering. It is beautifully acted (Paul Dano playing Howie is outstanding, as is Brian Cox as Big John) and beautifully directed and cut. The script by Stephen M. Ryder, Michael Cuesta and Gerald Cuesta is replete with precise and totally authentic dialogue. The characters are nuanced and faithfully realized. The theme of love over predatory sexuality is convincing and worthy. Furthermore, the sexuality depicted is just vivid enough to make sure we understand what is going on without resorting to anything graphic.
(I saw the R-rated version, but I think it is the same as this one, which Amazon says is unrated. I understand there is an NC-17, but I don't think it matters. For those who are going to be offended, I think a PG-13 version of this movie--were it possible--would offend them.)
I think the resolution of the film, both in terms of what happens to Big John and to Howie was exactly right, but some may find it a little too neat. Certainly the ending as done does not leave any ambiguities lying around, although I suspect there is a scene where Howie's dad accuses him of stealing his hundred dollar bills somewhere on the cutting room floor, and really that's okay, since it wasn't needed. Or maybe I missed it.
Bottom line: something close to a small masterpiece: the kind of movie that tells us some truths about life that cannot be expressed in so many words--in other words, a work of art. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 16, 2005 | | Summary | L,I.E. | Content
| L.I.E. is a landmark in American movies, it has the poetic intimacy of Pasolini's `Mamma Roma' in its portrait of disaffected petty-thief teenagers who are deeply wounded. The first scene marks the violence of the emotion: the boy stands above the highway after which the film is named, `you've got the lanes going west and you've got the lanes going east, you also got the lanes going straight to hell'. It's this hell of unexpressed emotions and quick deaths, that's what this film is about. There is feeling in this film, an almost musical sense of emotion that reaches into depths that might have been explored only by a Ferreri. The director, Michael Cuesta has made an astonishing first film, one that goes to dangerous places and the entire film has this feeling of seeing moments so real that they rise to a new level of intimacy, one that has rarely been explored, the intimacy that Breillat had when she made her `Real Young Girl' or '36 Fillette' or later in `Fat Girl', it's something that comes spinning out of the heart, pissed off and ready to explode. It takes a remarkable auteur to make a film of such overwhelming force. When the boy, puts on the perfume and lipstick of his mother who has died on the Long Island Expressway (which provides a metaphor for the entire film, it's also the setting for both the beginning and ending of the film) in order to be reminded of her only to quickly wash it all off is a moment of pure, violent emotion, comparable to Marlon Brando's scream of agony in Bertolucci's `Last Tango In Paris' or James Dean mourning Plato's death in `Rebel Without A Cause', it goes beyond what film can do, what film should do, it transcends and amazes and takes off to another level of feeling. This film was made with two things, a fist and a heart with something to say, something the director couldn't contain, something he couldn't take, like Ferreri when he made `Bye Bye Monkey' or `La Derniere Femme' or `Tales Of Ordinary Madness' or like Abel Ferrera, Catherine Breillat or Larry Clark's cinema, watching any given film of these directors, one feels that they would have died had it not been for the cinema. `L.I.E.' is intensely and fiercely personal and it goes deep inside where not many have gone, inside the hell of adolescence, but also inside the uncertainty and sexual isolation and the illusions, and in the end, what is cinema but an illusion? |
| Rating | | | Date | February 02, 2005 | | Summary | A lesson to everybody | Content
| This movie deals about the strongest taboo so far and it does its job well showing the human face of things. Very well-acted and never overly acted. It doesn't have nudity but has some "teaser" scenes that leave you wanting to see more.
It deals with many situations a boy has to deal in real life such as confusing feelings, misuderstanding from his father, problems with bullies at school, homoerotic romance and intergenerational consensual seduction.
On the other hand, it shows the human side of a paedophile in his search for ephimeral beauty that lasts short time. L.I.E. gives a strong lesson to everybody, specially for boylovers as if asking them: "Will you love your boy even after he has grown?" |
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