Rating: 
Summary: Good movie, not-so-good DVD
Review: This is a great family film, a lot of fun sing a longs and smiles. Make sure you watch it with your little daughter or little boy and a couple of aunts and uncles. Dont forget to sing a long! : )
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is an excellent movie that has tons of intrigue and blattent violence to depict what really goes on in the mind of this down-and-out butcher. Cest merveilleux, un vrai oeuvre.
Rating:
Summary: Soul shattering
Review: When I recently viewed Gaspar Noe's film "Irreversible," I noticed with interest a scene at the beginning of the movie where an elderly man waxes philosophic about the various problems in his life to another poor soul while both men sit in a filthy, cramped room. I chuckled inwardly about Noe's in joke since anyone who has seen "I Stand Alone" recognizes the elderly gent with a bad attitude as none other than the suicidal butcher, the main character in this gripping film about the psychological free fall of a man with nothing left to lose in life. If I had to compare "Irreversible" with "I Stand Alone," I would definitely pick "Irreversible" as the better of the two in nearly every aspect of filmmaking, but "I Stand Alone" is a memorable experience nonetheless. If you thought watching Monica Bellucci suffer indignity after indignity was bad, you should watch the last twenty minutes of "I Stand Alone" for a whole knew outlook on what constitutes "disturbing." Gaspar Noe is quickly turning into my favorite "foreign" film director. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.The plot of "I Stand Alone" is frighteningly simple. The main character is an unemployed butcher, middle aged, whose life is one long series of disappointments. We learn he is the son of a French communist executed by the Nazis who eventually married, had a child, and lost his business after he killed a man he mistakenly assumed had brutalized his daughter. The incident sent his young child over the edge mentally, requiring her to check in for a lengthy stay at the local mental motel. The butcher, now on the ropes emotionally and recently released from prison, leaves his child behind to take up with an obnoxious woman and her overbearing mother because of a vague promise made by said woman to set our hero up in the meat business again. Sadly, this woman becomes pregnant and begins to berate the butcher about his taciturn nature, using the excuse of being with child to get what she wants from the relationship. The constant pressures of unemployment and the nagging from his woman causes the butcher to snap; he beats the pregnant woman viciously, and then flees when he worries that he has killed his unborn child and could again end up in prison for his actions. Heading back to Paris and points north, the butcher wanders through the blasted landscapes of a France never seen in travel brochures. As he roams around with a diminishing supply of money and no job prospects, meeting old friends that refuse to help him and sleeping in pay by the day rat holes, the butcher engages the audience through a largely internal monologue that wallows in misogyny, racism, nihilism, and general misanthropy. This guy hates everyone and everything; he feels that the whole world is out to dump on him and seeks to pay back all of his enemies in the most vicious of ways. When he procures a gun with a few bullets in it, he begins formulating elaborate plans for bloody revenge. He'll kill the smug jerk that refused to give him a job, the man at the bar who gave him some grief over the tab, and anyone else that gets in his way. The butcher finally decides to pay a visit to his daughter since he hasn't seen her in ages, and it is during this visit that "I Stand Alone" enters its final, most horrific stage. Nothing will prepare you for the terrible final moments of Noe's movie. It's deeply disturbing, sick, morally reprehensible, and just plain nasty. Come to think of it, the whole movie is an exercise in depravity virtually certain to give most mainstream viewers conniption fits. The best elements of "I Stand Alone" have little to do with the lengthy dialogue of the mad butcher or his rambling journeys through Paris. After awhile you get used to the run down buildings, the litter clogged streets, and the redundant blatherings of the butcher. You probably won't feel too much pity for the guy after awhile anyway, seeing as how he's such a sick, hateful soul full of loathing for his fellow man (and women, especially women). What does strike a chord is how Noe portrays this unpleasant chap. Noe rubs your nose in this guy's misery to such an extent that you shudder to think there are people like the butcher around us every day, adrift in their frustrated lives and ready to explode at any minute. In an effort to bring home the gut wrenching stresses in the butcher's existence, the director employs an unusual but very effective extreme focus camera technique--accompanied by a dramatic thudding sound--at certain important points throughout the film. There's even a flashing sign towards the end warning the viewer the movie is about to take an extreme turn just in case you wish to switch the whole thing off. Brilliant! A few caveats are necessary with "I Stand Alone." The conclusion of the film, with its graphic violence and whirlwind dialogue, will upset viewers unaccustomed to such things. Moreover, at one point in the movie the butcher sits in an adult movie theater to be alone with his frustration. That's not too bad in and of itself since we already know the thought processes of the butcher, but we get an eyeful of the definitely XXX rated movie playing on the screen. If pornography really bothers you, take a pass on "I Stand Alone." I, however, thought Noe's a film a brilliant piece of cinema exploring the dark recesses of a man on the verge of a suicidal breakdown. If that sounds appealing to you, certainly give this one a glance. Then watch "Irreversible."
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