Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Reno Rangan As far I know, there's a thin difference between Canadian films and the US. Just like the Hong Kong's Cantonese and the Chinese Mandarin films are. They exchange starts and crews, but most of the Canadian film I've seen were French language. Those English films are not as popular as the Hollywood's on the world stage. Lots of good films go unnoticed like the recent film 'The Confirmation' I reviewed a few months ago. If this same film were made in Hollywood, would have been considered an average. But for the Canadian standards, I mean they usually won't make the big budget fancy films, hence it is so much better.This is a coming-of-age thriller drama. Revolves around two teenagers as they run away with a bag full of cash from their parents. It all begins with a girl, who arrive in a small town with her father. Soon she makes a friend with her neighbour boy. His parents are neglect kind when it comes to him, and her father is an alcoholic, abuser, as well as a dirty cop. One day her father comes standing between them, that's the opportunity they were looking for to run away, since being with their parents has not been any good. But her father is not in the mood to let them go as his money was involved. So the running and chasing game begins.You might say, you have seen this story in all the similar themed films, no matter its Hollywood, European or the Korean. That's what I thought too, but still it is a very good film. I'm not expecting it to impress you as well. If it does, then that's great. But it all depends on your taste in films, quantity of films you watch regularly and most importantly your expectation from it. It was like another 'Cop Car', but there's no car involved in the core of the plot. It's all about the money and the mad-cop father. It looked kind of western style, or the tale that very much suitable for the humid California settings.❝It's no ocean, but it's ours.❞In this, it was always cloudy, wet and chilling moisture atmosphere where all the chase takes place. The great locations that avoids to get in any major town/city. Other than 3-4 main cast, there's no one else. Because most of the scenes are between the boy and the girl and sometimes her cop father in isolated places. There's a dog in the film, but not focused enough to classify it as a dog film from one of the angles. The pace of the narration was so fast with not too long or very short overall runtime. It had many twists and turns, yet definitely you would predict most of them.Nice performances, by both the youngsters. As usual Bill Paxton nailed it in his negative role. It was one of his final films before his death early this year. It was a small appearance, but a prominent role that I surely would remember it for him. I was not anticipating anything extraordinary. But when I learnt about its synopsis, I thought I understood everything about the story there itself. Though watching it in the film was a different experience and one of the reason was, it is a different cast and atmospheric setting.I felt they should have improvised in some of the parts, but at the end I'm satisfied being what it is. Especially in the initial stage, the intro was so simple and skips fast to the next stage. I did not fully understand any of the characters about their earlier life events to the point where this story commenced. But going forward, I started to have an idea, seeing how the tale has progressed. That really helped to come to the point directly.There are no smart scenes like the film characters to take measures to counter the threats in a fancy way. That's done mainly to impress the viewers. This screenplay tried to be realistic as much as possible, but there's a couple of scenes that could only work in cinematic. I think that's sometimes necessary for a film. After all it is a film and made for entertainment purpose, not a documentary feature. But overall film was much better with enough tense moments and interesting developments. Lots of good films released in the last 12 months and this is not one of them, but considering it is from Canada, surely it is. Because I've already given the reason for that in the very first paragraph. So thumbs up for it from my side.7/10

redeaglela No spoiler here. Actually not much about the movie at all accept that what ever you do don't pass it up. Everyone does great jobs with their roles and what can you say about first love. We have all had them, they are special and seem to mean everything, life and death, the world. We older folks forget that is what our young people are going through today just as we did once.... we hard on them, most of the time pushing them away. Yea, I am guilty too lol... Remember that...But mostly watch this movie for good old bill. for my money one of the most consistent, brilliant method actors ever. He took a role and lived it, made it his own. He did this for every role and was putting on a fantastic television show. I can't even get up the energy to watch it now that he is gone, it won't be the same and not sure what they will do with it. He was making a great character there that had some great depth and he seemed to be enjoying that. Bill was not your normal mammy whiny Hollywood type, he was a good man that might say what was on his mind but He always knew where his money came from, us.....will miss you bill

me-589-145643 On the whole, this is a very good movie all round. The four main cast members are superb, and the story is heavily character-driven, with no ridiculous stunts and special effects present to drown the characters out at any stage. The lean score and graceful cinematography allow the story to be told at an ideal pace, and aren't used to lift the intensity as one would expect with this genre because the story is good enough to take care of this on its own. I never felt as if things were dragging or being rushed, and things were largely unpredictable aside from the ending, which was satisfying nonetheless.For a good vs bad theme, the story favors neither side over the other in terms of skill and resources. So often the bad guys are made to look like fools but this isn't the case here, which I found to be quite refreshing. The teen romance side of things is handled better than almost any other examples I've seen. There aren't any cringe-worthy moments at all.In all, Mean Dreams was much better than I expected, and well worth the time I spent watching it. If you're after a low budget thriller which is well made, character-driven, and intelligently written, you could settle for much worse than this one.

djangozelf-12351 I really liked this thriller/drama and kept being surprised by it thru and thru.The set up just felt superb and every aspect of film making is so well handled it all just seem to fall in place in this movie.It's got a good story ,well directed,beautifully shot and a cast of natural feeling actors and with dialogue that felt very fresh to me and really added to the movie and made me laugh and even cry thru out.The violence and sex is very moderate and was very reality based but handled well enough to keep the tension going.The 2 young actors had a nice chemistry and I especially liked the quite moments between them in which they still seem to have a connection.Some backstory on the girl was given by herself during dialogue in the middle of the film and it show cased well that this girl has acting chops.Bill Paxton played the father of this girl and also a corrupt cop and I think it's one of his best roles and it was sad that he died with still so much greatness in him.In this movie he's a bad guy and a bad father but there is still something in him that you sympathize with and that is hard to do.This is a great movie,I highly recommend it.Enjoy!.