Frailty

Rating:
Summary: Shocking and yet curiously enticing
Review: Extremist's at their worst! The first scene when Paxton calls his sons into the shed, although not graphic in an indulgent sense, is gut wrenching to say the least.
The movie is about a lonely small town mechanic and his two young sons and centers around some apparent 'divine revalations' that literally scare the "mind" of the audience by simply leaving so many interpretations open.
Not just a simple horror movie, Frailty, as the name implies, touches some major moral questions. My favorite line is,"we destroy demons son, we don't kill people. Killing people is BAD, destroying demons is good."
Halarious and very unnerving.
5 STARS - up there with Memento, Rob Roy, Gladiator, Braveheart, Legends of the Fall and Unforgiven!!

Rating:
Summary: Just what exactly is going on here?
Review: Frailty will leave you with an uneasy feeling. You'll ask yourself, "What just happened here? Are the characters just crazy religious kooks? Or is there much more going on under the surface?"

The ambiguous ending will not answer that question for you, rather, instead it will allow you to draw your own conclusions. It's a powerful directorial debut by Bill Paxson, who is also great in the role as the father. There is hardly any gore. Much of the violence that takes place is off camera. Yet the horror is even worse than if you would have seen it. Just the anticipation and the facial expressions of the children will cause you to cover your eyes.

There have only been a few movies that I almost couldn't finish watching because they disturbed me so much. "Boys Don't Cry" and "The Deer Hunter" come to mind. Because of the tension, anticipation and dread involved. "Frailty" is one of those movies.

Rating:
Summary: high hopes
Review: A motherless family whose widowed father goes insane and gets his children to help him kill in the name of God. Needless to say, I had high hopes for this movie. The true horror in the film is the repeating of the word evil that makes me think of G. W. Bush. I have been told that this is what his childhood was like minus a few blows the head and the occasional line of coke. They must have cut that part out. The producer couldn't get the rights to the Bush story so they changed the names and released this. The similarities are undeniable. If you like disaster stories like Armageddon or the current administration you will enjoy this.

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful Mind Twister
Review: I admit I was skeptical when my husband brought home this movie. I had never heard of it and at first glance it looked like a low budget art house film, but this film was one of the best films I have seen in years. The twists and turns of the plot will keep you guessing. This is one of those films that will keep you talking about it long after it ends.

Rating:
Summary: A good movie, worth the time/money to watch.
Review: This was one of the better movies that I have seen in a while. It was a good thriller, although I thought they could have added a bit more to it to make it a truly great thriller.

Matthew McConaughey plays a man who goes to the FBI to tell them that he knows who the "Gods Hand" killer is. This killer has killed 7 people and left notes for the FBI about each of them.

McConaughey then starts to tell his tale in flashback mode, going back to when he was a small child in Texas. All was well with his family until one night when his father, Paxton, wakes him and his brother to tell them that an angel had visited him with a sacred mission. From there their lives swirl into a pit of evil.

The movie was fast paced and fun to watch. There was very little blood/gore despite the pretense of the movie. The acting was surprisingly good, especially for Paxton, whom I consider to be a mediocre actor at best.

I was pleasantly surprised with this movie, and would recommend it to friends.

Rating:
Summary: Gloom and Doom
Review: Frailty is a movie with a nice hook, and a kind of epic story. But it gets lost in its own self-importance. The ending especially, which undermines the entire film if only because its so easily telegraphed if only by the format the film takes from the beginning. If you've seen The Usual Suspects, you'll see it immeadiately. But other than that, people got all worked up about the atmosphere of which there is little. A few scenes like the discovery of the ax, and the relevation underneath the car are quite effective, probably because you can imagine the character narrating thinking that is how it looked. Anyway, the acting is pretty superb all round, Paxton is a touch disturbing, which is better, thank god hes not in Nicholson mode. The children are played well also, the screenplay lets them down, the sheer nonchalantness during the graveyard scenes was awful, although maybe I missed the point. I respect Paxton's direction which plays it straight the entire way, but I'll go back to the ending, which I predicted about half way through, I wanted something a little more interesting, instead you get this gaping hole where an ending should be. It ties up nothing and really just makes you think why did I watch this. Or maybe the writer and filmmaker wanted you to be awed at their audicity, either way its just plain ineffective. I'm always drawn to a good and evil, black and white battle, the shades of gray tend to bore me. Everyone knows the good guys don't always win, all we need is September 11th to show us that. So this story was inherently interesting to me for the first hour, I liked it. But in the end, it falls underneath its own ambitions.

Rating:
Summary: If Hitchcock Had A Dean Koontz Script...
Review: I rented this film after listening to a local radio interview with Bill Paxton on my way to work. The deejays compared Paxton's directorial debut with Spielberg's "Duel", in the sense that FRAILTY is a low-budget thriller with a new director that has the potential to be among the greatest. I agree. This film was better than I expected. But to be fair, my harshest criticism is that FRAILTY will be one of those great thrillers that will slip under the radar because of its deceptive title, and will be lost among imitators who have huge Hollywood budgets and big-name stars.
One of the scariest ironies I discovered was the similarity of this film to the case of Oregon City serial murderer Ward Weaver, whose father and brother committed a double homicide several decades ago. That was very disturbing to me because I was exposed to the media coverage firsthand.
But FRAILTY is still a work of fiction, and adapting the FBI method of investigative interviewing, Paxton delivers the goods chapter-by-chapter. The style of storytelling is a beautiful touch, and the last interrogative question is answered with a twist that could make an athiest believe in the power of God.

Rating:
Summary: Best Horror movie in years
Review: I have seen just about every horror flick out there and had lost hopes for anything new to come along. Then, right alongside a Japanese flick I watched recently called "My Blue Weapon" (only a guess, as they were the only English words on the case), FRAILTY comes along and is easily categorized (in my opinion) as the best horror movie to come along in a good long time. Congratulations to Paxton and all involved. Chilling and unrelenting, FRAILTY is a true classic in a genre that needed some proper attention. No pun intended, but Bill Paxton delivers in spades. Wow, what a film.

Rating:
Summary: Astounding and incredible.
Review: I watched this for the first time on DVD a few nights ago, and to be honest, it's been hard to stop going over it in my head. Not just the story, mind you, but the whole presentation from beginning to end. I'm sure many of you have read the other reviews, so I won't repeat what's already been said, but this is a movie that is a definite classic and will hopefully be re-released at full length.

I've recently been going over the whole genre on film with notables like 'The Exorcist - The version you've never seen', 'From Hell' and 'Near Dark' (another Bill Paxton masterpiece), 'Frailty' is quite possibly the Exorcist of this decade. I say this for the following reasons:

1. As dark as the movie was and shocking in places, after listening to the writer's commentary and Paxton's commentary (something I've never done before), they actually cut a lot of footage out that might have sent it to the outer bounds of Film Noir, which is actually something I would've liked to have seen, but was cut for the concern of it being "too shocking." A movie that's too shocking?, wow! The commentaries are excellent and well worth the multiple viewings and give so much insight to this movie that it's astounding.

2. The responsibility of thinking is placed in the viewers lap and is not drawn out for you as though you were a simpleton and couldn't grasp basic moral and story / plot concepts, I really appreciated this. It's very evident in watching Fenton become more and more like a demon.

3. The narration by Matthew McConaughey is very worthy, unlike many other film narrations.

4. Bill Paxton's characterization of the 'Texas father' is dead on. It's jaw dropping to watch him carry on like that. Anybody that knows a Father from Texas, as I have, knows this to be true.

I seriously recommend this movie for purchase if you want to watch it more than once. If you're a writer and like good study material - this is it.

Rating:
Summary: Shockingly Good
Review: When I saw the preview of this movie, I just thought it was just another wannabe thiller. So then it came out on video and I watched it and I was blown away. This is Bill Paxton's directorial debut and he also stars in the movie. The plot of this movie is about a single father with 2 boys living in a small town that seems pretty normal but in the middle of the night Paxton's character gets this vision from an angel saying that he must destroy these demons in which he will have "weapons" and a list of those people. He runs and tells the boys but the oldest is kind of skeptical about the whole thing while the younger one believes him. The plot may seem dull but once you watch the first 10 minutes, you'll be hooked. The movie also stars Matthew McConaughey who plays the older son at the beginning and throughout the movie. The ending will get you by surprise, I had to rewind it just to make sure what happened actually happened. Each time I watch this movie I find out something new about this. The DVD has all the basic features and a detailed look at certain scenes and more good DVD junk. You must buy this DVD. This DVD is one of my top ten best movies.