Protraph Lack of good storyline.
Beanbioca As Good As It Gets
AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
tankgrrrl13 Just a note of clarification. Brandon, did not lie about his gender. Brandon lived his short troubled life trying to express his gender the way he saw it and wanted others to see it. What he did however cover up was the truth of his biological sex. I tend to agree that full disclosure of these facts to his sexual partners would have been just. However, people are often not understanding of issues of gender nonconformity. Nor, have many people been equipped with the language, self-understanding, support, safe-space, and confidence to speak about these things without fear of being met with fear, ignorance and hatred. Our society has a strictly enforced binary gender system that is extraordinarily hard on those who do not conform. This is so entrenched in the sub-conscious of most everyone from such an early age that sometimes it seems that only those of us who do not fit in that system know that it is there and has been constructed by a society built on easy answers and small thinking that limits so many of us in numerous ways. It is so ingrained in people to believe that woman = feminine / man = masculine and all the stereotypes and behaviors that go with these two choices that they think these unwritten (and sometimes written) rules are natural. Therefore those who do not, nay, cannot play by these rules are unnatural, sick, sinful .. etc. So while I was disgusted by the behavior of the local authorities (including the civil court judge) I was not shocked. Serious deep changes need to be made to the way we as the human race see sex and gender or this type of appalling hatred will continue.
jennbru83-1 I thought that although the movie was somewhat amateur, the vein of Brandon's story was tapped into. I really liked the fact that the filmmakers went out and found and interviewed people who actually knew Brandon and that we as the audience were able to learn more about him and his life. I also can appreciate that the movie at least gave mention to Phil DeVine and Lisa Lambert. "Boys Don't Cry" never even mentioned Phil and that movie also made it seem like Lana Tisdel was the one and only true love in Brandon's life. This movie minimizes her role in Brandon't life and eventual death. At least this film didn't just use the really "interresting" aspects of his life, but it used the real aspects of Brandon's life. There was one main thing that did bother me in this movie though. The use of long, drawn out music that seemed to have very little to do with the film itself. I think that if that had been cut back a bit, I personally would have enjoyed the movie far more. This was definitely worth watching if you are curious about the life and death of Brandon Teena.
tyler_smith1826 i am somewhat like Brandon. i know a little how he felt. and it wasn't right that he left this world the way he did, left it without having a family of his own, having someone to be there with him for the rest of his life, or living as long as he should have. but this i will say tom and john, you two are the most horrible people, taking a innocent life for what, living the way that made him feel good, that gave him happiness, i think you killed him because you were jealous,jealous that he was happy and was in love. and to those who loved Brandon, and were close to him i am sorry, and i think that because Brandon was taken from us, it gave us more, it gave each of us a little piece of him to carry on through our lives, to keep him living through us. to keep him as not a past memory, but a moving remembrance of a brave young man a fighter, and a man we will all remember. BRANDON TEENA(TEENA BRANDON)(1972-1993) WE WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU!!!
gerdur The material in this film is so good that it is almost impossible to destroy it - these filmmakers almost did it. They did worse job than a three years old on a home video. The film was more or less out of focus, or the focus was on something beside the person interviewed. It was very un-original. Endless filming out of car windows, and the old trick of having photography in the foreground and moving landscape behind.But the material was fascinating and it revealed very well the prejudges of people, especially the conversation Brandon had with the police when he reported the rape. I just wish that someone had made a better film about it.
