Felicia's Journey

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing
Review: I have not read the book.
I have seen some other of Egoyan's movies.

I find this movie disturbing.
Rather, I find the obsession by our society with killers and death to be disturbing and the way this movie/story panders to it the most disturbing aspect of watching it.

Egoyan seems to be particularly intrigued by the macabre and the sick. The fact that he was attracted to this movie is not surprising.

What I find more and more disturbing in our American society is our obsession with death and murder.
What is happening in Iraq is bad enough. What we see on network television about Crime Scene Investigation and all the other sick network programming that uses the common theme of Death and murder is more disturbing.

We are a very sick society. Our American society is based on Fear, the fear of Terror and our obsession and trivialization of Death and Murder, our incomprehensible schism regarding Death and Murder and Terrorism and how we think it's ok to impose out political agenda on other countries, while we profess to abhor violence?!

Like Al Quida, we are hypocritical: it's ok to kill and murder if it matches the political aims of our despotic leaders at the Pentagon and the White House: or for Network Television or because it would make a good Hollywood movie.

But we profess to be peace loving while we kill.
We wallow in this type of sick victimization of a poor innocent while we watch as voyeurs to some perverted spectacle wondering if the main character will get away with it or not.
I'm sorry to say I watched it to the end to find out.

As long as we view this type of film as entertainment, we will also have the blood of the innocents on out collective hands in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the ghettos of America. And politicians like George W Bush will find a way to rationalize it in the name of freedom and God and Country. What is most sick is not that we are now torturing prison detainees in Iraq, but that we as a nation condone the fraud and lies and the corruption of our President in the name of Democracy. We buy into the lies, just as this girl bought into the lies of Bob Hoskins character in this movie.

This is why I don't care to see the trash that is most of the standard Hollywood fare these days. I don't see this movie as a complex psychological thriller. It's just plain symptomatic of our very sick society.

Rating:
Summary: Felicia's Journey
Review: I like this film because it's lovely.I like Elaine Cassidy,Bob Haskins perfonmance.Felicia is a teenager girl in Ireland.She has fallen in love a boy named Johnny.But Johnny lived in England,he was worked there.When Johnny went in England,she learned she was pregnant.She was went England.Soon after,Felicia a place to stay.Then she stayed with Joseph Hilditch.They soon become friendly but Hilditch was a perverted.If u like this film,you can read William Trevor's Felicia's Journey..

Rating:
Summary: for movie sophisticates only
Review: I really think this is one of the best movies to come along in years. It is mysterious, creepy, and alarming but somehow it is also funny, endearing, and charming. How did the director combine so many different moods in one movie? This movie is a character development and mood type movie, not a plot type, so don't expect your typical American blood and guts killer type movie! Many people will not like this movie because they are so conditioned to nonstop action. This movie gives you time to reflect and enjoy the intriguing vivuals and eerie sound track. I loved it!

Rating:
Summary: worlds better than The Sweet Hereafter
Review: I've got no quarrel with people who don't attach to downbeat films with characters they can't relate to. They won't like this film. Neither will the Silence of the Lambs Crowd--Felicia's Journey IS NOT a thriller--it's tied with The Daytrippers as the most mismarketed film of the past five years. It's a story about misdirected love and trust.

If you like movie moments, when there's something onscreen that's so moving or electrifying that you forget you're in a theater watching light move across a screen, well, this film has two of them--one with about 20 minutes to go, and one at the very end. Two three minute stretches of camerawork and writing that are as good as anything I've ever seen in the medium.

Watch this film. And then go read the book, or anything by William Trevor, who's as good as it gets in fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent performance by Bob Hoskins; truly fine story
Review: If you aren't already delighted by Bob Hoskins's versatility, by all means see this film. The man who interacted so well with animated characters in "Roger Rabbit" scores again as a brooding, lonely single man whose character was mis-shaped by a domineering, non-maternal t.v. personality mother.

Under Atom Egoyan's superb direction, the complexity of the characters and their situations unfolds so slowly and subtly that the collision course they are on is not immediately obvious. One wonders why Hilditch/Hoskins is so obsessed with the t.v. French chef, Gala, to the point of owning films of all her shows and a good many food processors she endorses, until one realizes that the chubby boy in the black and white films is Hilditch as a frustrated child. The child abuse caught on camera makes one wonder what childhood was like in the spacious, empty house that Hilditch has always called home.

It is almost possible sympathize with Hilditch's sad attempts to bond with various females, all clearly too young and too street-hardened to be good partners for him, until it becomes obvious what their fates have been and what fate awaits the tragic figure of Felicia--whose pregnancy causes her to be rejected by the child's father, his mother, and her own father. It is a very interesting twist that the unwanted pregnancy is ultimately what buys Felicia the required time to save her life.

I would give this movie five stars but for what I perceive as a couple of minor flaws. Sometimes I thought Hoskins had a bit of a problem maintaining his English accent. Also, I am not altogether convinced that releasing his last would-be victim and committing suicide was a totally believeable reaction by Hilditch to his encounter with the born-again oddballs who came knocking on his garden gate, even if they did seem to pose some threat that his homocidal proclivities might soon be revealed. But then, it could be argued that a man who spent so much time insulating himself with walls (the garden wall, his house, the building in which he worked, and his car) might just feel he had nowhere to go but out when it appeared that those walls had been invaded.

Viewing "Felicia's Journey" is a most worthwhile experience. It seems that Hoskins just keeps getting better with every performance. I personally can't wait to see what he does next.

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing, Stupid, AVOID!!
Review: Okay let's see, a girl goes across sea to find her boyfriend, meets an older man while walking on the street, then get's in his car and let's him drive her across town after only meeting him once before, then STAY'S with him at his home and not only that she let's him take her to get an ABORTIAN so he can kill her. She obviously doesn't know he's planning to kill her, but how smart can you be in the first place to trust someone that much after only meeting them once or twice before. I'm sorry, but after the abortian that's when the movie got to disturbing and ended for me, I couldn't stand watching another minute. Not only that, but it was slow and boring. I was expecting a thriller, but instead I just ended up waisting my time. Avoid this movie, don't waist $3.

Rating:
Summary: Warning: Will put you to sleep.
Review: Okay, now I'm one who loves a good story. Even if the storytelling may be a bit slow, it's all about the message the film is trying to convey to its audience. But this movie? This movie is an UNBELIEVABLE borefest. I kept waiting and waiting for this movie to pick up from its sedated state and it never did. All that happened was me falling asleep. About an hour and 20 minutes into the movie I found myself wanting to stop it, but a part of me made me finish watching. I told myself "something is bound to happen, the ending will be shocking!" But then once I realized that would never happen, I kept it running because I figured "I've gone through so much, I have to finish this, or else it will all be for nothing." Nothing about this is shocking. Even if should be remotely shocking whatsoever, that aspect of it gets lost in the fact that it is so BORING. Slow movies are great, as long as they have something entertaining in them, or build up to something. This movie had nothing to offer and one of the most dull climaxes I've ever seen. I gave it a chance, and Felicia's Journey feels more like a Wisconsin Death Trip. Avoid, unless you are an insomniac and want to go to sleep.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing Thriller Stays With Viewer
Review: Seductively filmed in rich detail, with a steady, even pace, this psychological thriller has a plot which becomes deeper and stranger with every scene change.

It begins simply enough, with the journey of a young Irish woman to an industrial English city. I cannot say much more, because the viewer must experience the unfolding of this strange tale in the manner which the director intended.

Egoyan shows the viewer that, as in life, appearances can be deceiving... a theme that recurs in his work. There is a feeling of being an intruder in the lives of other people, much more so than with the usual thriller. Brilliant acting from every performer. I do not particularly like Egoyan's endings, and this one is not exceptional.

This film contains several disturbing scenes of degradation and cruelty. It is not a cheerful movie.

Rating:
Summary: The big bad wolf and little red riding hood?
Review: The big bad wolf and little red riding hood? Perhaps, but only after both characters have been sat down upon a couch and had their brains analyzed by a shrink. Mr. Hilditch: A lonely, pathetic, deranged older man, forever trapped in the mind of a pre-pubescent boy still under the spell of an oblivious mother completely pre-occupied with a French cooking show she hosts. Felicia: A "deer in the headlights" Irish girl, disowned by her father after getting herself knocked up by Johnny, a British lad who after having slept with her, takes the first bus out of Ireland. Even though Felicia's off to visit the elusive Johnny instead of Grandma, the big bad wolf could care less. As soon as he spots her his taste buds start performing a ritual dance and our little miss mistakes him for a puppy dog. Fortunately, it's not so much the story as the storytelling that makes FELICIA'S JOURNEY so mesmerizing, and both director Egoyan and writer William Trevor are excellent storytellers that have the uncanny ability at finding the macabre in the mundane. Egoyan also has an incredible talent for taking a popular tune and putting into a specific context thus allowing it to work in unison with the images to tell the story with much greater depth. In making this film so effective, Egoyan owes much to the performance of Bob Hoskins who manages to take a character so despicably horrific and infuse him with such a tremendous sense of loneliness and isolation, that we actually feel sorry for him.

Rating:
Summary: Egoyan in his top form...
Review: The Sweet Hereafter is Egoyan's best movie so far. There's no doubt about it. However it's unfair for some people trying to compare Felicia's Journey with the Sweet Hereafter as they involve different genres, stories, protagonists and places. Every Egoyan's filmmaking is a masterpiece and Felicia's Journey is no exception. There's not any other director who can make a film which is scary as hell as Felicia's Journey while the audience can't even see a drop of blood within the 116-min runtime. It's also a luxury sitting through the film when you see the unique way Egoyan moves the camera. Mychael Danna's music is superb as usual though a little bit more experimental than in pervious works. FJ is another Egoyan's masterpiece and I award it 5+ stars.