Absolutely Fantastic

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

As a person who had checked ratings for this movie in advance I didn't have high expectations, however I was pleasantly surprised :D.To summarise without giving away too many spoilers, it's about a girl called Dot who's deaf yet still manages to observe so much about the world around her. After some unfortunate events in her childhood she has to go live with her Godparents and their peppy blonde high-school cheering daughter. Pretty normal... It would seem. This movie contains plot twists, and I'm glad to say it wasn't all annoyingly given away in the trailer as a lot of movies are.This was a dark adult film, but I'll assure you it wasn't one of those films that left me dark and depressed afterwards- it really made me think about things. Saying that, I still wouldn't recommend it for those who are too light-hearted Although it wasn't amazing, I would still recommend watching this film to most people if you have some spare time. Well worth your while!

This is another one of those movies that's all about how life in suburban America isn't as perfect as it seems, with cruelty and brutality and degeneracy seething under its placid surface. There must be a lot of filmmakers who had awful suburban childhoods because they keep making this same story over and over again, even though it ceased to original or shocking when Knot's Landing debuted on TV back in the 1980s. They can still occasionally make a good one, like American Beauty. The Quiet, however, is a fairly lifeless entry into the genre.Dot (Camilla Belle) is a teenage girl whose parents are dead and has ended up in the custody of her godparents. This suburban family has all the requisite pieces. There's Olivia (Edie Falco), the pill-popping mom. Nina (Elisha Cuthbert) is the hot and bitchy cheerleader daughter. Paul (Martin Donovan) is the enabling dad who has to parent both his manipulative daughter and his drugged-out wife. There's also Nina's best friend Michelle (Katy Mixon), who is like a trashier, bitchier version of Nina. Connor (Shawn Ashmore) rounds out the main cast as the standard issue handsome high school athlete.The Quiet does throw three new wrinkles into this set up. The expected love triangle isn't Nina-Connor-Dot. It's actually Michelle-Connor-Dot. That's because Nina is having an incestuous relationship with her father Paul. Oh, and Dot is pretending to be a deaf-mute to whom everyone spills their secrets because they think she can't hear.You can probably guess how the script of this film goes, with people discovering secrets about other people and then pretending they don't know them. Dot's supposed deafness is the excuse for character monologues that are supposed to be provocative but are really quite wooden. Nina and Dot are enemies, then they're frenemies and then they're friends. A teddy bear gets his face burned off, Edie Falco walks around topless, somebody dies and the movie peters out after that.The Quiet isn't a bad movie but it isn't much of a story. It has the setting and the pieces of a story, yet they never come together in any meaningful way. It never gets much into why Dot is faking being deaf and dumb to isolate herself from the world. Sometimes Nina is a bitch because she's compensating for her own anger and self-loathing, sometimes Nina is just a bitch and the film never differentiates between the two. Olivia could just have easily been a cardboard cut-out with the words "absent mom" scribbled on it. Paul swings from someone way too passive and well-adjusted to be having sex with his teenage daughter to a violent brute straight out of a woman-in-peril movie on the Lifetime channel. The only intriguing aspect of this script is the relationship between Nina and Michelle. You can see that Nina connects with Michelle, even though she's a disgusting skank, because Nina feels comfortable being with someone worse than she is.To sum up, The Quiet is one of those independent movies that's more concerned with being artistic than entertaining. It almost entirely succeeds at not being entertaining. To the same extent, it fails at being artistic. Edie Falco's also the only one who gets naked in this film, so unless you've got a hankering for middle aged boobs, there's little else here.

So I'm shopping for a new set of PC speakers to replace my old Labtec pair that have been loyal to me for nearly 20 years, grab a cheap pair and stroll down the DVD aisle. Comedy? No. Sci-fi? Maybe. TV shows? Nah. Action or drama? Possibly. Then I see an Elisha Cuthbert special. An erotic thriller. Cool! I think. Some hot babes and probably a big shootout at the end after some criminal strangeness or something.Err, no.The film wasn't all that surprising, but nor was it too predictable all at once. There's a very nice melding of style with the true-crime genre, giving us a very stylized noire like presentation for a story of abuse and revenge.There's a real twisting of emotions as we look at the perversion of a family gone awry. It's a hard film to watch at time, however well shot. It's not a story for the feint of heart, but nor are there any real B- movie moments where we see Hollywood marketers interfere with the film making process; i.e. a boat doesn't explode on page 58 or some nonsense. One wonders how a family goes down this path. The film never addresses that. Was there a miswiring in the character? Something genetic? A "family tradition" that he inherited? Again, we never find out. What we discover is the undercurrent of the facade of portion of mainstream America. But the truth what's portrayed here undulates in all cultures, not just the suburban US.If I had one criticism it's that it's not my kind of film. I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure it's a film I can really recommend unless you're really into the whole crime drama scene. There are some great extras on the DVD to help explain the film some.I'm glad the film is what it is, and it's a very honest story, but like I say, it's not a film for the feint of heart. No gore, just some very hairy situations.Welp, back to watching "The Wind and the Lion" for me :-)RESCREENED MARCH 19th, 2015 Okay, I'm close to saying forget what I wrote, and am tempted to delete what I had written, because I feel pretty idiotic in my initial analysis, but, here goes the apology.When I screened this film I wasn't sure what to expect, and got a different movie than I was expecting (such is the danger of the blind buy). But viewing it thoroughly once more I can see why some of the professional reviewers panned it. As I stated in the comments section on the BBS dedicated to this film, the premise doesn't hold up very well.The film posits that a kind of addiction to enable the father character to exact his desires on the family. According to a study that was tossed my way there's no linkage in what the film states is its core argument.The situation presented in the film is more or less a product of character behavioral makeup, a good portion of which is dictated by genetics. I'll also add that I've actually known a couple of females who were in Nina's situation, and the way they handled it was far different from what's portrayed in the film. I feel like I've done the casual reader a disservice by not remember that.Either way the film is factually inaccurate in spite of some first class production values. Take that for what it's worth. I can't think of any alternative titles on abusive households, but I'm sure there are better offerings out there.

Recap: Having lost both her parents, Dot moves in with her godfather and his family. They live in the suburbs and everything seems to be perfect. Father Paul is a successful architect, mother Olivia an interior decorator, and daughter Nina, who is of the same age as Dot, is a popular cheerleader at school. Dot however, is not popular, she is both deaf and mute, and has no support from Nina at the new school. But behind every façade there are secrets, some worse than others, and what would you do if somebody learned yours? Or you learned someone else's?Comments: A psychological thriller that has it's real strength in its air and emotions. It plays very strongly on feelings and does it very well. There is a very uncomfortable, disturbing feel about the story, it is in the essence of the movie. And that feeling, that it very aptly conveys, is the real strength of the movie. That feeling is what builds suspense, and it manages to build a good amount of suspense. It kept interest and put the story, and hence me as viewer, on its edge.It is good that the movie is strong in its emotions, because the story is a bit predictable. It is fairly easy to reveal both Dot's and Nina's secrets. So the suspense and thrill in this movie is in the psychological approach.Both Camilla Belle and Elisha Cuthbert acts very well in their different roles. As the movie builds on emotion, their performance is crucial for the movie. Fortunately they succeed. Especially Camilla impresses me, though I'm not really surprised since I thought she has performed very well in other movies.From some reviews I have gathered that this is almost a movie you either love or hate. I'm not sure I can say I really love it, but I thought it was very good and enjoyed it much.7/10