Who payed the critics

Great Film overall

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

If you think Henry Fool is one of the greatest characters in cinema history, you might (and I emphasize MIGHT) be able to tolerate Fay Grim. If you're unfamiliar with Henry Fool or are unimpressed with Hal Hartley's creation, watching this film would only be a waste of your time. This is an artless art house film where ostentatiously affectless performances parade through a willfully obtuse story. Fay Grim doesn't work on any level, except as a love letter to a movie most people have never seen which gets sidetracked into a limp wristed take on the politics of global terrorism.Fay Grim (Parker Posey) is the wife of Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan). Ten years after her husband vanished, Fay is recruited by CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) to go to Paris and retrieve Henry's notebooks. A great deal of this film is consumed with various and sundry characters talking about those notebooks and then some other characters shoot each other over those notebooks. There are different ridiculous reasons offered up for why everyone is so interested in the writing of Henry Fool, all of which amount to pretentious twaddle. There are also a bunch of plot threads that either never go anywhere or never add up to anything, such as Fay's poet brother getting out of prison, Fay dating her brother's publisher and Henry's involvement with an undefined terrorist. There's also a pornographic Viewmaster and an ending so embarrassingly trite I hope Hartley was being sarcastic with it.There's really not much more to say about this movie. The actors wade through Hartley's self reverential dialog as best they can, giving artificial performances that get about as close to genuine humanity as Jesse James can get to Sandra Bullock nowadays. Hartley's direction is competent, given the slack and lifeless script he wrote, but it's very mannered and feels quite dated.Fay Grim is a movie made by and for people who think a sequel to Henry Fool is a big deal. If you are one of those people, you're welcome to this film. The rest of us have all got better things to do.

Ostensibly a sequel to the 1997 semi-serious black comedy "Henry Fool" (a "10" in my book), the first twenty minutes had me thinking it was just a horrible screen writing, bad-acting and terrible cinematography job. For one thing, the frame in every scene - and I mean EVERY scene - is "Dutch- (Deutsch)-tilted". There isn't a level shot in the entire movie.When I involuntarily started to guffaw, I realized that this was the intent. I restarted the DVD, and viewed it with entirely different eyes, ears and attitude. This film is a laugh-a-minute farce. Jeff Goldblum (not a player in the original Henry Fool cast) is a fabulous deadpan farceur contributing mightily to the general insouciance.Parker Posey displays a delightful and heretofore unknown penchant for comedy - comic timing, facial expression, and body-language - closely akin to Sandra Bullock's.Highly recommended!

I've read a lot of comments about the film and how it's so hard for people to believe that it is a sequel to Henry Fool, and even though it technically is, I think that Fay Grim needs to be looked at as an entirely different film. Just because it is the sequel doesn't mean that it has to be a direct continuation of the first, and I enjoyed that so much about it. The whole point of the film was to change direction from the first, which makes sense because the movie isn't called Henry Fool 2, it's Fay Grim. All that aside, the film, I thought, was so well made and thought out that it actually surprised me. I was expecting to rent another nearly-released-straight-to-video film and have to endure 2 hours of bad editing and an almost hard to follow story-line (aka parker's last direct to video feature the Oh in Ohio) but this was so surprisingly well focused that it almost doesn't seem so, which I absolutely loved. There are so many nuances in the film making and writing that I crave to see in films, but never do. The cinematography was brilliant due to it's simplicity and truly making the film seem 'Grim' throughout - in terms of setting. The writing was so well put together as well, whoever said this movie isn't as witty as Henry Fool needs to watch again and actually listen; I almost can't even begin to explain how actually hilarious it was, and pertinent. And well, Parker Posey, who could complain? The scene in which Fool and Jalal were talking in the dark was so captivating and emotional. And I thought the spy-ness throughout the film was just so hilarious and spot on (in hindsight because i do agree that at times during you kind of felt lost). The main thing that struck me so powerfully about the film, and i believe the point of the film, was Parker's love and naivety about Fool, which was so endearing and turned, yes very quickly, from denial to outright passion. The last five minutes of the film were perfect. Obviously there were things that weren't excellent, but nothing is perfect; some of the acting was poor, and at times I did think that some of the new back story and dialogue about terrorism got a little hard to follow and out of hand, but in the end you got it and didn't even mind that at the time it may have slipped from your comprehension. (This may also have to do with Goldblum's tendency to talk extremely fast) On the whole I would say that it was probably one of the best films I've seen this year; stylistically pleasing, clever and witty writing, performances that were so impressive I now have gained new respect for some of the actors, and a truly touching film, and don't forget, a complete departure from Fool. Which was the point.

It's hard to believe that this is a sequel to Henry Fool. Hard to believe that the same director and actors were involved in both movies. While Henry Fool is refreshing, witty, comical, Fay Grim is slow, boring, and doesn't go anywhere. Where has the wit gone? I am baffled.It is 10 years since I saw Henry Fool and many of its dialogs and scenes are still vivid in my memory. Fay Grim is painful to watch. This is no fault of the actors, who are good (Parker Posey) or great (Jeff Goldblum) -- the blame lies entirely with the plot, the dialog, and even some of the filming (low budget is no excuse). A huge disappointment. Sorry I couldn't pay attention to the plot, I was so bored, so disappointed... if you enjoyed this one you might not enjoy Henry Fool so much... the two movies have absolutely nothing to do with each other... there is no continuity in the characters' personalities... it's all a fraud to entice fans of Henry Fool to watch the sequel.I'm switching this off now -- Henry in some sort of jail with a Taliban?!?!