Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Elain-ee Ah, I thought about five minutes after the film ended, so THAT'S why they put a picture of the World Trade Centre attack on the cover! It's not immediately clear why, but I appreciated being allowed by the director to puzzle it out on my own. I suspect that's the whole point of this film?There's almost no mention of 9/11 in 'Sorry Haters', a fact that I appreciate, because I watch movies for the drama and not for the cold, hard facts. But in the tradition of all great dramas, the makers of 'Sorry Haters' have managed to make a total fiction tell us some hard truths about 9/11.This story is one big metaphor for the dynamics between the West and Middle East. The West is embodied by Phoebe and the Middle East, by Ashade. On the one hand, Phoebe goes out of her way to stir sh*t because she's brimming with inner tension. It turns out that she probably got this way from a lifetime of being casually tormented by people around her who got what she wanted to get, but was too 'civil' to fight for. Even Phoebe's so called best friend snipes, "I wasn't an accountant, I was even WORSE: a sales rep!" (Oh how nice Philly, you shouldn't have!) The hyper-successful and outgoing Philly practically oozes a constant stream of subtle insults like this, all meant to put Phoebe in her place. Whether she's doing it consciously or not is another question. It's obviously a very ingrained habit, though. Having been forced to compete brutally with her peers, and even her best friend, Phoebe seemingly doesn't know how to stop until she's clawed her way to the top of some sh*t pile, somewhere in the city. And she's willing to go to desperate measures to do that. It looks like all that competitive spirit has wiped out any trace of sympathy or humanity in her. It's The American Dream gone oh-so wrong... as it increasingly tends to do, these days. I kept asking myself throughout the film why Phoebe was so bonkers: it was her single minded obsession with, 'I want what she has'. It does make you ask questions about how much you really need any of the things you want.There's a pretty clear connection between the rise of Islamic terrorism and the invasions of the Middle Eastern by Russia, the U.S., U.K and France over the last few decades. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq were once more progressive places than they are… before the West started to get antsy about how much oil they were sitting on (or near). Every time we withdraw our troops, having failed, yet another chunk of Middle Eastern progress crumbles away for good. And the likes of ISIL and the Taliban spring up to funnel people's anger and pain into fundamentalism or civil war. Or terrorism. Of course, the problem could be solved (or at least lessened) if the West would just STOP messing about in the Middle East, but why do that when the weapons industry's making a killing from it all too...?That's not to excuse terrorism - one attack is as bad as the other - but Western nations do like to play the innocent victim even as they go on doing things that they KNOW will add fuel the terrorists' fire. The western world's compulsion to invade and manipulate the Middle East to enhance its own bank portfolios is very clearly mirrored in Phoebe's compulsion to violate Ashade's personal boundaries. She infiltrates his mind and controls him for the sake of saving her ego. It's insane but she's just like some of the more cutthroat businessmen I've met. She goes to radical extremes because she's bored with her routine, and exists in social isolation. The one-track mind she possesses isn't inherited, it's earned, and the business she works in rewards it. Just like the Western world, Phoebe seems to 'have it all' but having it all's not enough. She's obviously just broken from living in her cut-throat object-obsessed world for so long. Again, the American supermalls full of dead eyed shoppers come to mind. (Sorry Haters might be interesting companion film for Dawn of the Dead or American Psycho for that reason!).I also felt that Phoebe's character was strangely sympathetic... which is a real feat considering her actions. Bravo to Ms. Penn for sustaining that balancing act. Most western people will have felt as enraged about the unfairness of capitalism at some point, so it would have been bad to alienate all those people by making her too 'evil'. Many other actresses would have taken an easier route, but Penn keeps you guessing and wondering whether you should take her side. I agree with the other reviewers who commented that Ashade is a little bit TOO good, though. After all, fundamentalist forms of Islam have always existed and have almost always been quite hostile toward women. It would be silly to dichotomize the Muslims as wonderfully good & pure people, just as it would have been a bit silly to turn Phoebe into a purely heartless killing machine. No one is totally good or evil. So as far as a realistic drama goes, it's a bit of a push... BUT seeing as this is a metaphorical drama, it worked out okay. While the film opens on a city that's clearly still a bit edgy after 9/11, the ensuing tale neatly answers the question of who planted the insane IDEA of 9/11 in the minds of terrorists in the first place. Maybe it was someone like Phoebe who took "my family, my whole world" away from a stranger. Most acts of war and terror are like that, when you think of it - they're all just an externalization of the sound a mind makes when it pops.

rangerthehorse It has been years since I first saw the brilliant Robin Wright in this performance; the film, I find, never quite left my subconscious. Every once and again I dream about it and, more often than not, the dream is a nightmare.I will not bore you with a plot synopsis here; I'm sure that has already been covered. I will, however, summarize Sorry, Haters through the words of a good friend to whom I showed the film, with no plot setup:"Dude, that was one of the most f****d up things I have EVER seen."I would have to agree. A class act from principals to supporting cast and everyone in-between. This is a triumph not just for indy film but for the art of film at its fundamental best.

Karen Dallas Hartig *** any spoiler will be designated with the ***.either whoever wrote the story line needs to change it, or the movie itself needs to clarify the time in question as to when the movie takes place, which is in post-911 NYC, and why the characters are interrelated. i'd prefer the latter, since the fact that it's done after 911 is only apparent in one VERY brief 3-second time spot, i.e., when you see the view of New York's skyline from Battery Park, which is where you'd see the WTC towers that are now gone. (we have a plethora of unread, stupid and/or careless, ignorant young citizens in the US today--in 2012--who would not recognize Battery Park or have one inkling that that is where you'd plainly see the WTC in the past).the plot is confusing if one does not realize that it all happens in post-911 NYC, i.e., not far distant from the time of the attack on our soil. the interrelationship between the main characters, a taxi rider who is a very messed up, lying, scheming, psychotic Caucasian female who at least works in NYC (because it is not clear that she lives there or if she herself saw or even, in her psychosis, remembers the attack), and Muslims--particularly the Allah-Akbar-praying taxi cab driver--he, himself and his also confusing family and their plight--does not clearly spell out why the woman has the driver going on wild goose chases both in the city and outside of it, in order to get her to the places where she does her dirty deeds and in so, ends up stealing money from the cab driver that is truly part of the plot, but it is not clear as day, and it should be.the reason that the cab driver so badly needs the $500 that the psycho-woman stole from his glove compartment is to cover legal and other related expenses to help his brother, whom he genuinely and earnestly explains is in Syria and who is at great risk of torture. you see, the rider, the psycho-woman, uses that knowledge as the reason behind her theft. she also uses the knowledge to create and to maintain her grandiose characterization of a highly-paid and powerful executive of a TV station in NYC with a stupid, vapid name that tells the viewer nothing at all other than to reflect upon our times and our high school graduates with who-knows-what-fires synapses in the layers of gray matter hiding out in their craniums.the worst thing about this movie is that it's not clear that all that happens in it, as well as why the characters do what they do or else are who they happen to be, relates to 911. so then, if one of the multitude of rap-taught MP3-playing-loudly-through-the-earbuds HS graduates (that should have dropped out of school when they were 10 years old, so that they could become crop pickers to replace illegal Mexican aliens in CA), watches this movie, they will not know what it's about or why the events unfold the way they do. they just will not understand it. and neither will you, if you don't realize that there is no longer a World Trade Center made up of two skyscrapers that just are not there anymore, and so far, at the time that the movie centers on, have not yet been rebuilt. because, as indicated above, the only time in the entire movie that you know it is when you can see, for too short of a time, from Battery Park, vacant ground where the towers stood in Manhattan. in other words, it is presumed that you KNOW that the motivation behind the woman rider's actions and the family ties that are shown to us, those of the Muslim cab driver, have a legitimate place within the movie. otherwise, the movie cannot stand on its own. nothing would make sense if you do not know the time frame. even the characters' interplay would not make any sense.*** SPOILER: the ending of the movie, when the taxi cab driver carries a bomb that explodes in a subway station and who he realizes too late will kill innocent passengers, as well as himself (thanks to the psycho-woman and her hatred and delusions) cannot be understood unless one knows the time and context of this movie.*** END OF SPOILER.all in all, i think that this movie is vague. the most i can say for it is that it reflects the hatred one feels creeping under their shirt collars as they walk about the massive, darkened cities of the USA that have become too dangerous and depressing to live in. it shows madness. it proves that manipulation and crime pay (theft) and that keying cars pays as retribution (for imagined deeds done against you, but which are not factual and are imagined). it shows that America has turned upside down in madness, as well as that it shows the life that Allah-fearing Muslims live (insanely, as is their choice, in the 7th century rather than in the 21st), what with prayer to Mecca required five times a day, even if they live in Egypt and happen to be rioting in the streets for democracy. ("prayer break! then we go back to the shaking of fists as we run in crowds in the street, into the view of the ABC, CBS and NBC World News TV cameras").i tend to rate movies, particularly indies, higher than one usually finds here on IMDb. but in this case, for this movie (the title of which is also confusing), so strange if one does not know CONTEXT and the TIME it happens in, the maximum number of stars i can give it is only three out of ten.3/10 by karen dallas hartig, chicago, may 2012

Al Rodbell An excruciating film, one that should be preserved to give future generations a glimpse of the underside of American life in the first decade of the 21st century. It depicts the effect of the disaster of 9-11 on those for whom it provided a fleeting moment of release from a life that was inescapable silent suffering.Robin Wright Penn, became such a person, as Phoebe, whom we are introduced to as a successful creative director who connected with the most unlikely of persons, Ashade, a Muslim cab driver who was caught up in the national fear of people just like him. His gentleness, erudition, kindness and industry was of no meaning when the Government had decided that his kind was a pressing danger to the country.Phoebe exposes herself to Ashade in a way that is true to what we are to learn she has become. Only by the genuineness of the developing relationship are we transported inside the soul of Ashade, brilliantly played by Abdel Kechiche. As he learns that this kind powerful woman that befriended him is something quite different, his impotent rage struck a personal chord of truth never before realized in a cinematic production.The key to the film was Phoebe's describing how only in the chaos, the fear that followed the destruction of the nearby World Trade Center was she important, only then did her friend who had it all reach out to her. In chaos there is community for those who have never found one.A magnificent work of art will always transcend any attempt to describe it, any review falls short for the very reason that success is making a medium do that which can never be achieved outside of the arts being applied. It transcends mere description.And so this film, by use of a script, cameras, directors and actors, creates something so much more. These people, these characters, are now part of my life, and have given me understanding that otherwise would have been absent.