Rating: 
Summary: Totally great
Review: The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys is kind of like a cross between The Virgin Suicides and Stand By Me. Set in the 70's (featuring many cool 70's haircuts) in small town Georgia, the story focuses on Francis, a 14-year-old dreamer and troublemaker. He and his pals, Tim, Wade, and Joey cope with life under the oppressive rule of one-legged nun Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster) at the Puritan Christian high school they're unfortunate enough to attend. One of their methods of escape is the 'The Atomic Trinity' comic book. Each of them have their own character with superpowers (such as The Muscle, Captain Asskicker and Skeleton Boy), battling against the tyrannical regime of Nunzilla/Pegleg (a gross caricature of Sister Assumpta). These fantasy stories make up the terrific animated sequences of the film. The cool thing is that they are not so totally removed from the reality of Francis, Tim, Wade and Joey. The boys soon find their way into a lot of trouble though. After stealing the school's nun statue mascot the quartet plan to steal a cougar from the zoo and put in Sister Assumpta's office. A mad plan yes, but their determination and invention behind it is very clever. Some scenes of the film are very emotional, so if you have soft spot you'll find it tough to get through the scene where Tim finds a dying dog by the side of the road or Francis reading a poem at the funeral. Francis' relationship with Margie (the very cute Jenna Malone) also takes many curious and unique turns. The scene with the ghost watching them sleep was pleasingly weird. Taken from the one and only book (posthumously) by Chris Fuhrman (a book I must get as soon as I see), The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys is attractively shot, wonderfully acted and definitely worth getting. The DVD is in 1.85:1 widescreen (strangely non-anamorphic, though the region 2 version is) with Dolby 5.1 sound and a mild bunch of extras.
Rating: 
Summary: Watch this movie!
Review: I loved this movie. The story focuses on a group of 4 friends who study in a catholic school and are troublemakers . they are in constant fight with the school nun (jodie foster)and plan on some mischiefe against her.
Along the story we get to know Margie (jena malone), who fransis falls in love with and we get to know what secret margie hides.
The boys also write a secret comic book in which each one of them is a hero, fighting against nun-zilla (the nun). THe movie has anime parts in it which show the story in the boys' eyes.
The main plot is that the boys want to bring a cougar to the nun's office and try to break in the zoo, which leads to tragedy.
There are various mentions of William Blake in the movie as the boys are Blake fans.
The acting in the movie is great and very realistic, except for Jodie foster who doesn't give a real feeling of the character.
But in whole its a wonderful movie you should watch!
Rating:
Summary: Thank you Shawn Watson for warning about non-anamorphic
Review: Really loved this movie when I saw it on Showtime-3 in January 05. Almost hit the buy button on the DVD before seeing Shawn's warning that this is letterbox, but not anamorphic. This means that the black bars at top and bottom of picture are hard encoded, so that remaining image is only approx. 270 vertical pixels instead of the full 480. A big disappointment when viewed on a modern 16:9 screen, and thanks to Shawn for helping me keep this DVD out of my collection.
Rating:
Summary: ANGST, ADVENTURE, ANIMATION: COMPETENT BUT SCATTERED BLEND
Review: Interesting theme: a group of four boys who go to a Catholic school are tired of squirming under the unflinching tyranny of Nun-zilla, their rigorous nun played by Jodie Foster.
With whom they cope by expressing their frustrations through comic-book sketches and imagining themselves as superheroes. The film uses this excuse to smoosh in some fascinating animation sequences illustrating emotional aspects of the story through the eyes of these kids.
This includes several sub-plots and sub-sub-plots: first romances, coming of age, friendship, control versus freedom, even hints of touchy issues like pedophilia (although no, there is nothing creepy actually manifested), etc.
The characters are convincing, and the performances are quite taut all round, so I've had a hard time putting an exact pulse on what the problem is with Altar Boys, because I liked many of the big picture things about it. Perhaps the film took off in too many directions at once. In bringing up all these themes and tropes, several topics are introduced and then frittered away for lack of time. Others are dwelled upon longer than they should have.
Yet, on the whole, Altar Boys works well as a well-done tale of baffled adolescents for whom imagination is not merely a dangerous diversion feared by conservative religious folk, but a veritable cathartic tool.
One minor annoyance with the DVD: the sound of dialogue is about 2 million decibels lower than the sound of the soundtrack that accompanies the animation interludes.
Recommended rental.
Rating: 
Summary: Jodie Foster - how could you?
Review: This was one of my favorite books growing up. Chris Fuhrman died of cancer at 31, and his brother found his final copy of it and got it published. It's moving and interesting and the characters are great.
This movie doesn't do it justice. Jodie Foster took parts from different characters and combined them into one--which is usually interesting, but it sort of fails here. Theres a funny moment here and there, but Emile Hersch lacks any depth and let's a good character down. Only Kieran Culkin and Jena Malone make it worth anything, as they are both tremendous for actors of their age.
This movie left out so much of the characters and the controversy of the times, it was boring, and jesus- the anime idea they decided to add in was just tacky and pathetic.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining
Review: I'm not Catholic nor a teen, but I found this movie very interesting and entertaining. The interaction between all the kids was pretty real and the dialog did not seem juvenile.
Although not normally a fan of animation, that portion worked OK in this movie because it was the outward expression of the kids' imagination.
Of the 7 primary actors, Jodie Foster had the weakest character as "nunzilla". Perhaps it was just the nature of the character. Vincent D'Onofrio was entertaining as the smoking, swearing priest (and apparently in the book he was a womanizer, too.) The 4 boys were all pretty good, but Jena Malone probably had the toughest role as the girl with a secret, and she was very good.
The whole cougar plot-point was a bit much, and the dog scene came from nowhere, but the rest was very satisfying.
The extras on the DVD were good, too.
P.S. Originally I could not get this DVD to play in "widescreen". Sony said it was a known encoding problem and to change the DVD player setup for TV to "normal letterbox" instead of "normal pan/scan". Worked like a charm.
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: I liked this movie. I'm not saying it's brilliant or life-changing or even a contender for My Favorite Movie, but I liked it. It's worth a rental.
Rating:
Summary: Charming, but unexpected
Review: This was an interesting flick that tells the tale of growing up in a catholic school. It uses an interesting method of storytelling, as it interweaves cartooning and live action drama to tell the story of two boys growing up, causing mischief, and just being boys. The animation is done by McFarlane Studios, who, if you don't know, produces/produced the cartoon series Spawn. Personally, I didn't really appreciate the animation scenes as much as I could have because I almost felt they took away from the drama of the movie, but the QUALITY of the animation was still top notch. The story was interesting, at the very least, humorous at times, tense at times, and even sad at times. It's a good film to watch, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to everyone to buy. The acting is great in this one, with standout performances by Jodie Foster and Vincent D'Onoforio (sp). As I said, I don't think I'd recommend this film to EVERYONE to buy, but I enjoyed it and it was well worth the $8 I paid for it, though I wouldn't give it "rave" reviews either.
Rating:
Summary: From charming to moving
Review: I don't think I'll do the film justice, but here goes: The young cast in this film is very talented and give great effort in bringing their characters to life. They do an especially good job depicting the obstacles of adolescence. The experimenting with drugs and alcohol, friendship and trust, love and sex for the first times in their lives, were protrayed very realistically. Sometimes the dispositions of the characters seemed off beat, but it was an exaggeration needed to impress the gravity of the scene. Kieran Culkin as Tim is passionate in his love of language and words if tragically flawed. The animated intermissions serve as a look into Emile Hirsch's / Francis' head, translating what happens around him into something he can relate to and digest through his imagination and love of comics. Jena Malone has a great performance as Margie and is vaguely reminiscent of Kirsten Dunst in The Virgin Suicides for some reason. As a coming of age movie though, this one is MUCH better. Malone also reminded me of a young Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls. She has a 'thing' about her, a hint that says she's destined for greatness. What a talent. Jodie Foster is Jodie Foster. She and Vincent D'Onofiro do a great job, but the adults in the movie serve mostly as placeholders. If you are a fan of bang up performances in coming of ages movies, this one has the potential to replace your current favorite. This movie resonated with me personally because in a offhanded way that WAS me and my friends. We had the same love of comics and disregard for authority. We dreamed big and played hard, but we were always able to keep our grand schemes in check. It did a good job of putting me back in that place, in that time.
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