Mysterious Skin (2005)

just watch it!

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This film portends to break new ground but falls into exploitative trash within an hour. The first boy as a prepubescent learns gay sex from a coach, then becomes a whoring teen; meanwhile, the second nonsexual boy becomes a weirdo with alien- abduction theories. You can maybe guess the "twist" already! What a waste of time, this shallow and predictable film, bent on a pseudo- intellectual audience. (Gordon-Levitt was a TV sitcom actor for a reason -- he works well in 2 dimensions, not 3! Too bad about his co-star having to ride in the passenger seat.) Extreme poser-lit-as-cinema, promising untold truths yet delivering nothing but the PC police. My guess is that the writer of the novel on which this movie is based was sexually active as a kid and wants to cash in on the latest trend by being a mouthpiece against underage sex and sexuality. An unartistic attempt at metaphor (some cereal/serial and a sexless cow? Pathetic as the snow falling on cold-hearted teens). Skip this piece of propaganda because it's nothing more than an adult saying: do as I say, not as I do. At least the corny director always has a future in kiddy porn... For a serious and fair film with a sardonic sense of humor on this same subject please do watch "L.I.E." instead.

Sensitive and unflinching, a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt is on early peak-form as a victim of the advances of a paedophile and later on becomes a prostitute. Brady Corbet plays a UFO enthusiast and paranoid youngster, also a former victim to the same sex offender. This indie adaptation of Scott Heim's hard-hitting novel is quite brilliant in its approach to tender issues, however the film does fall short at times as the tone is often inconsistent and the film appears plot less at times. It annoys me how this film is often categorised as an LGBT film, when its really not.. It draws no attention to any LGBT issues, except a brief reference to the AIDS virus but apart from that its a film about child-molestation and the affects it can have on a fragile child.

A sad and disturbing film by Gregg Araki, "Mysterious Skin" stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet as Neil and Brian, a pair of boys who are sexually abused by a football coach. This abuse psychologically affects both kids in vastly different ways.A frail kid, Brian's early life is shaped by a father who deems him "pathetic" and "effeminate". When he is finally abused by his football coach, Brian thus finds himself unable to reconcile the "love" of his distant father with the supposedly "loving" acts of a paedophile coach. He responds by erasing all memories of his abuse and eventually becoming an asexual teenager.Neil, however, progresses differently. A homosexual boy, Neil is confident in his sexuality precisely because his own potentially judgemental father is absent. When he is sexually abused, Neil thus idolises his abuser and views his abuser as the epitome of traditional, Western masculinity. Believing abuse to be "true love", and seeking more of it, Neil then descends into a life of increasingly violent prostitution.Fittingly, "Skin's" aesthetic veers from the innocence of childhood to the nightmarish world of sex crimes and paedophilia. Both worlds are constantly clawing at one another, Araki's leads frequently resorting to fantasy in an effort to restore lost innocence. Strange coming from a homosexual director like Araki, "Mysterious Skin" reinforces the myth that child abuse "causes" homosexuality. Anticipating these misreadings, Araki stresses that Neil was "proudly homosexual" long before being sexually abused. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excellent as Neil, a kid who perversely pines for love, his attractive brand of doomed romanticism drawing others toward him like a vortex. Elisabeth Shue co-stars.7.9/10 – See "Capturing the Friedmans".

I couldn't find any fault in this film at all. The acting, characters, storyline, directing, cinematography, soundtrack etc. were all fantastic. I was surprised to be so convinced by Gordon-Levitt's performance as he is not someone I am very keen on.It's very engaging, interesting, though-provoking and (despite the tragic subject matter) enjoyable.It reminded me a bit of Bully in the sense that it has very realistic and meaty characters in desperate situations and suffering from inner turmoil.It's been a while since a film has engaged me enough to score it a 10 and I am very pleased to have discovered this one.