Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

donwc1996 The reviews here have been uniformly negative and in some cases even nasty and although I would like to understand all the negativity I really cannot. I thoroughly enjoyed this film because the male lead really had me going and frankly I did not give a hoot how many holes there were in the script and there were plenty because I just could not stop looking at this guy he's that incredible. The story, let's face it, is far-fetched but hey it's the movies folks and we don't go to the movies to watch everyday life - we want to see something new and different and this film stretches the point almost to the breaking, but even still it works for me because I just could not take my eyes off the male lead. Even the ending which most here found absurd worked for me because it showed exactly what happens when a straight guy thinks he has been screwed by a gay guy and this is just what the straight guy here thought - and in fact he had - not literally but mentally and that was just as bad.

yawnmower1 This is surely one of the nastiest, most misleading, films ever made.The only redeeming factor is handsome John Shepherd who plays David, a very closeted London construction worker. Secretly in love with his life-long mate Theo, David's covert problems escalate when Theo announces he is moving in with his girlfriend. Unable to share Theo's time and attention, David will do anything to undermine the couple's relationship.David, with a misguided fantasy of 'sharing', gets the bright idea to come out of the closet on a talk show. An unwitting Theo joins him and is utterly embarrassed when he is told, in front of a national audience, that David is in love with him.That the plan backfires goes without saying, and the pretense of light comedy ends abruptly. David's ghastly father pronounces him sick and summarily tosses him out of the house. Theo hates him and, to show him just how much, beats David senseless with a lead pipe. I kid you not.It seems that Theo and his girlfriend are a perfect match after all: they are equally smug and hateful. Looking back with pity and loathing at the wretched, bleeding David, they walk off into the sunset together. A perfect ending for a mean-spirited film that gay-friendly TLA should be ashamed to have produced.

cpto I enjoyed watching Steve John Sheppard and John Simm in the lead roles. They handled their parts as competently as the script allowed.The script, unfortunately, is the problem. It appears that homophobia is alive and well in the UK, as is the convention that gay romances must end in violence to show how unspeakably nasty the gay character is.Boy comes out. Admits to his best friend of 14 years that he loves him (on a Jerry Springer type of show, no less). Father throws boy out of house. Ex-best-friend assaults him with a pipe. End of movie.This is formulaic to the point that reactions are not developed. The scriptwriter assumes that the audience will use their own prejudices to help advance the development of the story and, thus, things occur without background exploration. They just happen, in a typical homophobic way.The mother makes a homophobic comment about an ex-schoolmate, but it's she who supports her son when he comes out. The father--for no reason we're given--throws the boy out of the house. The best friend of 14 years seems to have ignored the signals that must have come from a close relationship of that length. If this is typical of UK television, I'll stick with HBO and Cinemax, thank you.Rent the movie if you must, but don't buy it. That will just encourage more of this type of tripe being produced in the future.

graham clarke With the amount of gay writers, directors and actors (openly out or not), it's remarkable that there exists something of a dearth of really high quality gay themed movies. While it may be too much to expect Hollywood to come to the fore, the independents too have been surprisingly poor in this area. European cinema has dealt with gay issues in a far more successful manner. Faced with this situation, gay movies are often over praised simply because they've been made rather than for their intrinsic qualities. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" made over 30 years still overshadows just about any other gay themed movie made since then.While "Forgive and Forget" certainly does have much going for it, it remains not entirely successful. What it suffers from is a certain pandering simplicity that has been so rampant in British movies for too long; the worst of these (despite their commercial success being "Billy Elliot" and "Full Monty"). "Forgive and Forget" has scenes which teeter on the brink of this ultimately insulting approach of the depiction of complex emotional states. (In all fairness I should mention the winning coming out drama "Get Real" as an outstanding exception.) What saves the film and really what makes it a worthwhile experience are the two central performances by Steve John Sheppard and John Simm. Both give fully convincing, committed portrayals, despite dialog which is at times less than credible. The force of their acting compels one empathize with predicament of these characters.Despite the flaws, "Forgive and Forget" is a memorable movie , well worth making the effort to seek out.