Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

aimless-46 Before her "Juno" fame Ellen Page was willing to take all kinds of chances as she followed the career path of Thora Birch from mainstream family entertainment to more cutting edge stuff. "The Tracey Fragments" (2007) was her last film before "Juno" and was like appearing in somebody's limited budget student film. Imagine your basic ahead of the curve student writing a somewhat "bent" screenplay, an inexperienced director turning Page loose to interpret her character without the help of acting for the camera direction, and the entire film class piling into the computer lab to slice and dice the thing in post-production hoping that thousands of hours of digital editing can add some value to the minimalist production.If the idea sounds like fun it probably was; and the end product should please its narrow target audience of film buffs, Page fans, and assorted off-kilter types. "The Tracey Fragments" is a blend of "Ghost World" (2001) and "Gummo" (1997), imagine a dumbed-down Enid (Birch) transplanted to Xenia, Ohio.This coming-of-age story is self-indulgent; with a screenplay chock full of symbolism, a chopped up time-line, and frame-in-frame effects (can you say "fragments") that call attention to themselves. But in this case it is not a bad thing; if you don't find the whole package entertaining you can just focus on the inventive style and on what it tells you about film theory and how viewers expect to read a film.Tracey Berkowitz (the slack-jawed title character) has a secret. She seems to have misplaced her little brother Sonny and the film elliptically reveals the story of Sonny's disappearance and Tracey miserable existence; with the disparate story fragments connected by Tracey's odyssey around town in a bus. But film conventions are not followed and it is impossible to tell which segments are real and which ones are figments of Tracey's imagination. Ultimately the viewer is left to wonder if there ever was a Sonny; that he may simply represent Tracey's loss-of-innocence in what may otherwise be a very traditional coming-of-age tale. By the end we see that her coping mechanism seems to have worked and they go out on a character who probably has come to terms with her reluctant nudge into an adult world; a world that she already finds disappointing but one which will be tolerable because of her low expectations.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. Comment

TxMike I watched this on my computer monitor, a streaming movie from Netflix.Ellen Page was 18 or 19 when this was filmed, playing 15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz who gets teased at school constantly because she is underdeveloped, while the other girls her age are buxom. She has strange parents, and a little brother who barks like a dog and wags his tongue. When dad insists that someone tell him why the boy is barking Tracey says she hypnotized him.In much of the movie Tracey is trying to find her little brother. We never know quite why he is lost, except maybe as a "dog" he has wandered away.At one point Tracey is sent to a psychiatrist, played by a man dressed up as a woman and with a wig.There really isn't much of a story here, and it is told in fragments. Maybe that is why it is called "Tracey Fragments", maybe it is a glimpse into the fragmented mind of a teenager trying to figure out what life is like.Her mind fabricates all kinds of stories. A girl may die in a swamp, no one knows where the body is, it decays and flowers grow from it. Bees make love to the flowers to produce honey, and eventually the parents of the dead girl buy the honey and eat it, so in the cycle they eat the girl. She also does one about horses, glue factory, kids making things in school, eat the glue, eat the horse.If this had been edited in a conventional fashion it would have been perhaps the most boring movie of the year. But the editor had a new toy, and the film is presented in multiple fragments, sometimes with as many as 12, or even more, different segments on the screen. This adds confusion at times, and after a while it becomes more annoying than interesting, but still makes the movie a visual experiment not quite like any other.Interesting to view, but not greatly interesting. Ellen Page is good.

Sophia H Admittedly, I was a bit put off by this film during the beginning five to ten minutes. At first I found the fragmented screen shots during the opening to be a clever play on the title, but when I realized that this was going to last throughout the entire movie, I seriously considered turning off the TV. "Oh great, another one of those laughable, 'uber-artsy' wannabe films." All of those flashing images and spooky voice-overs was like a sensory overload. But once I understood a little more about the characters and what was going on, I was immediately drawn to it.The Tracey Fragments is about a 15 year old girl caught in a struggle between her childhood innocence and the adult world that she will inevitably have to live in (I think everyone can relate to this at least a little bit, and that's what makes this story so interesting). Dealing with parents that don't understand her, feeling self-conscious at school and trying to understand the reality of her emotions is very confusing and overwhelming for her, which is beautifully illustrated by the disjointed, dream-like sequences that show us little pieces of her world.This isn't one of those "sit back and watch" kind of movies-- the twisted plot line and abundant symbolism requires real participation on the viewer's part. I think that's what gives this story some of its magic... you don't just observe the character, you actually get to experience her thought processes. The images can be shocking and disturbing, but it's all done with taste thanks to Ellen Page's phenomenal acting.All in all, I'm glad I suffered through the first few minutes because I came to really enjoy it in the end. I would recommend this to anyone who liked Requiem for a Dream, Thirteen, Memento, and other weirdly awesome movies.

frankenbenz http://eattheblinds.blogspot.comYou can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. As of late, this phrase has been front-page headlines for all the wrong reasons, but regardless, the meaning behind it stays the same. For all intents and purposes, Bruce McDonald's The Tracey Fragments is a melodrama of After-School Special proportions, regardless of how hard the director (and his editor) try to dress it up as something more profound. Fragmented images act as multiple windows, forming an endlessly elaborate collage, peering into the dark recesses of 15 year-old Tracey Berkowitz's life and mind. This technique has been around for decades, it's origins forever tied to the annals of experimental film-making. Long before Bruce McDonald, the work of Stan Brakhage (the most prolific and famed of all experimentalists) was co-opted by music videos directors who made famous the disjointed, stylistic flourishes common to MTV in the 1980's. TTF looks and feels more like a music video than a conventional narrative film and since most kids who grew up on music videos have come of age, stylistically TTF cannot define itself as anything new.But amidst a mine field of cookie cutter Hollywood films, TTF does manage to distinguish itself as something more than the melodrama it merely is. If you can make it through the first 20-minutes you'll be rewarded, since at this point there seems to be a departure from the conventions of story telling into the hyper-personal, interior realm of a 15 year-old kid struggling with herself, her family and the unforgiving world around her. This portrayal may be framed within the plot driven melodrama, but McDonald reaches beyond plot by emphasizing the impressionistic quality of the visual collage he has painstakingly cobbled together. This is when the film becomes interesting, when the visuals take over and expand the film watching experience into something haunting and poetic. The dreariness and drab of Tracey's lower-class life transcends into something beautiful as each frame of her collage acts as a window into her soul. Ultimately, TTF's greatest asset is it's ability to effectively portray the mixed up mind of a teenager who is desperately trying to make sense of her world. We've all been there and we've all lived it, now you can relive the experience only this time, without the acne scars.