Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

One of the poorer films I've watched this year. From the out-of-place soundtrack, to the nonsense decisions of the main character, and finally the ham-fisted 'emotional impact' the movie so desperately wants you to feel, I did not have any fun watching this movie. They would have had to have added an 'aww' track to make this movie any more obvious. The only saving grace was Brendan Fraser's surprising performance. If the movie had been about his characters conflict with his estranged former family, I'm sure this would have been a recommended movie. Instead you see a good fifteen minutes of him, and close to two hours of a pregnant hobo crying.

"I'm just asking you for a little time."Vanessa Hudgens' latest film, Gimme Shelter, is based on an inspiring true story in which she plays a pregnant teenager named Apple, who has been abused and felt unwanted all her life. I'm sure the true story is an inspiring one, and I admire Apple's strength to continue fighting despite all the hardships she went through. I also admire those people who took her in and helped her, but just because the real life story is inspiring that doesn't mean I enjoyed this film. The story has several flaws and feels very manipulative. It never felt authentic and I really had a hard time believing Hudgens' performance. An inspirational film should try to be less manipulative and feel more authentic and real, but the characters in this film never felt real. The dialogue in the film was weak and everything felt rushed in such a way that there was no time to delve into what led to some of the characters changes in behaviors. It seemed like director, Ron Krauss, was rushing the story to its feel good ending without really stopping to analyze the pain and hardships Apple went through. These films are usually hard to make and very few are able to succeed in feeling authentic and this wasn't the exception. I wasn't sold by Hudgens' performance and that also hurt my appreciation for the film. It's a film with good intentions and an inspiring tale, but they failed to transmit it in a compelling way.Brendan Fraser plays Apple's father who she has never met because he was only 19 years old when he left her mother, June (played by Rosario Dawson) pregnant. June hasn't been a good mother figure for Apple as she spends her time getting high so Apple has been in and out of shelters and foster care all her life. She has been abused several times, so she finally decides to leave her violent mother and find her dad. She finds him and discovers he's a big shot in Wall Street. Stephanie Szostak plays his wife and together they have two young children. They take Apple in, but have trouble coping with the fact she is pregnant. When they try to convince her to have an abortion, Apple is back in the streets again. After an accident, a nice Priest (James Earl Jones) visits her and convinces her to go to a shelter run by a nun named Kathy (Ann Dowd) who specializes in treating pregnant teenagers. This is where Apple finds a loving family for the first time in her life. The performances in this film were all hurt by the weak script. I didn't understand Fraser's character very well either and the story failed to transmit why he and his wife had a change of heart. Ann Dowd plays a very different character here than the one she does in The Leftovers so it was nice to see her in a much friendlier role. Rosario Dawson was convincing as a junky and abusive mother. There is not much more I can say about this film, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either.

The star of the movie is Vanessa Hudgens who is hardly recognizable as teen Agnes 'Apple' Bailey, living in New York with an often drugged up, abusive mother. Apple suspects she is pregnant, is fed up with her situation, and heads out for New Jersey to find the dad she never met.But she plays a fictional character, perhaps a composite of sorts from the many pregnant teens that have been sheltered over the years by Kathy Difiore. Part of the reason for making this movie is to raise the awareness, and perhaps some additional funding, for her shelters. Kathy is very well portrayed by Ann Dowd.The abusive mother is played very authentically by Rosario Dawson as June Bailey, seemingly wanting her daughter to stay with her mainly for the additional government support she gets. Brendan Fraser is Tom Fitzpatrick, Apple's father who had been rejected by June, but who had gone on to get an education and now was a wealthy Wall Street professional, married with two smaller children. Fraser is good as the father who eventually does what he can to help Apple towards a better life. James Earl Jones is good as the priest Frank McCarthy who helps Apple gain some understanding of her situation and perhaps a path towards a better life.Much of the story is very emotional and hard to watch, because these things do happen. But overall it is a very worthwhile movie. Hudgens is superb.

Written and directed by Ronald Krausse, "Gimme Shelter" proves that good intentions and earnestness alone can't guarantee the quality of a film.The screenplay is based on the true story of a 16-year-old girl who goes by the name Apple (the talented Vanessa Hudgens) whose life could easily have served as the basis for a Dickens novel had it been set a century- and-a-half in the past. Born to an abusive, drug-addicted single mother (an uglied-up Rosario Dawson) who wants her daughter around only for the welfare checks she brings in, Apple has been kicked around from one foster home to the next, when she isn't trying to re-connect with her uber-rich biological father (Brendan Fraser) or living on the streets, that is.Krausse sure pours on the pathos and the suffering, but the movie as a whole isn't as compelling as it should be, partly because, while there is a certain grittiness in the look and feel of the picture, the episodic nature of the tale doesn't allow for any real development of the secondary characters, leaving them stereotypical and flat. They simply remain off-screen for too long a time to register much of an impact on the audience. Apple's absurdly callous "step-mother" (Stephanie Szostak) and a kindly priest (James Earl Jones), who offers the hand of friendship to Apple in her time of greatest need, feel particularly two-dimensional and under-developed. Moreover, the dialogue frequently undercuts the naturalism of the piece by having the characters spell out in words rather than through indirection and action what it is we're supposed to be taking away with us from the movie. All those who made "Gimme Shelter" definitely had their hearts in the right place, but I think this is one of those instances where a little less fidelity to the actual story and a little more focus might have resulted in a more effective drama.