Review of Mysterious Skin (2005) by Chris V — 19 Jul 2011
This film is beautiful, painful, exciting and compulsively watchable. Kind of like a train wreck from which you can not turn your head, but you wish you could. Images from the film will haunt you after it's over, so ghostly is the production design.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is revelatory, so subtle, you'll forget you've ever seen him do anything else. It's as if he was born to play this role. Reminiscent of a young River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho".
His Neil makes your heart ache. The rest of the cast is perfect as well, but Gordon-Levitt is the stand-out. It's a scary, sad, funny, lovely film. I wish more movies made today were this good. Perfectly captures the suffocating boredom of a small town, all the while illuminating the hidden dark crevices that make it interesting, make it real.
Highly recommended.
This review of Mysterious Skin (2005) was written by Chris V on 19 Jul 2011.
Mysterious Skin has generally received very positive reviews.
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