Burning Man (2011)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Dreadfully Boring

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

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

The film starts off with Tom (Matthew Goode) masturbating while looking at a naked girl (Rachel Griffiths) dressed as a nurse. We then see him bleeding out from an auto accident and the 90 minutes later we are back to where we started with a seriously disjointed film with flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. Not too terribly hard to keep up, it just didn't add anything to the film. We find out Tom is a successful chef whose wife Sarah (Bojana Novakovic) has died from cancer, but is alive for half the picture. They have a son Oscar (Jack Heanly) and Aunt Karen (Essie Davis), who wants to help out while Tom grieves and has sex with his therapist and then later we see him meet her for the first time.The film is about Tom dealing with grief in his own disjointed way.Guide: F-word, sex, nudity.

Seriously. This movie was beyond bad. I understand that some movies are non-linear and do that whole fragmented thing, but this literally just was so embarrassing to watch. It was like it was trying to be Adaptation or P.S. I Love You but it just failed miserably. And there was an incessant and unnecessary amount of nudity. Everything about this movie sucked - the acting, the cinematography, the scriptwriting, the directing, the music.... I couldn't find one good thing about it. The storyline went nowhere and the characters were extremely annoying and unlikeable. Just don't waste your time. I have no idea how this movie got a 6.something on IMDb because it is honestly one of the most badly executed movies I have seen in my entire life.

"Burning Man" is one movie which can be tagged under Art-house. Stories about grieving men ain't that novel nowadays, yet Burning Man slaps at the very thought of giving us yet another clichéd piece, this one with all its brilliance is indeed refreshing a watch for the story it deals with.The drama which unfolds in reverse chronological order - just like in "memento" - goes deep into the lives of the characters, all shown so roughly with incoherent fragments from the story that we feel like watching digged out incidents from the protagonist's memory. It did irk me at first, and i really had to be patient to get the hang of it. Its awfully slow at times that you would start hating it or, the worse, might stop watching it just like my cousin :D - I hate to stall in between. After I finished watching the movie, was amazed by the simplicity of the plot, which was fed to the viewer in a rather unconventional but powerful manner.The pain the characters go through was brilliantly acted and shot. With some absorbing performances - my first Mathew Goode movie and am already a fan - amazing locale and soulful background score, this drama easily gets into my top Art-House Movies list - stressing on the term "Art house", for it might not be enjoyable outing for all. A good watch for serious movie buffs. 7/10

I love Australian films and I usually try and see as many as I possibly can as the Australian film industry is a struggling industry, usually Aussie films are either good or bad, no in between, and this is a good one. Matthew Goode puts in a rather excellent central performance as a man struggling to overcome the grief of a loved one passing, I'd love to know what attracted him to an Australian project, whatever it is I'm glad because he is a very fine actor and very nice to watch.The way the story unfolds is non linear and at first it takes a bit of time to get your head around it but once you get the hang of it it's easy to keep track of, and when everything comes together in the end it all makes sense. :) The city of Sydney is used expertly in this movie, so many times I was trying to guess where it was filmed, it's always fun trying to guess, and the cinematography is terrific.Bojana Novakovic is exceptional in the later parts of the film, she is simply amazing in her portrayal as a woman loving life but facing death, just exceptional, i put money down that she's nominated at the afi's next year.The only criticism I would have is that Matthew Goode's character come so close to being hated so many times, I kinda had to stop myself from hating him, and also it's about 15 minutes too long, but it all pays off, its certainly worth seeing. Let's hope lots and lots if people go and see it, I would certainly recommend it.