Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is NOT a 'bio-pic' of the legendary director James Whale, but rather a fictional imagining (i.e. based on a novel) of the days leading up to his death. Seen as such, "Gods and Monsters" spins an interesting, if somewhat implausible, story, with Ian McKellen outstanding in the role of Whale. While there are some 'flashbacks' to earlier events in the director's life (e.g. fighting in the trenches, directing his classic "Bride of Frankenstein"), most of the film takes place in the late-'50s, and focuses on the relationship between Whale (who was openly gay) and his gardener Clay Boone, a fictional character played by a very buff Brendan Fraser. Whale had suffered a series of strokes and was on medications for depression, so some of the film plays out in his mind as he begins to see long dead friends from his youth or places himself (and Boone) into scenes from his films. McKellen plays the role of an old reprobate to the hilt, flirting with the very straight Boone, shocking and disappointing his staid and religious housekeeper (an accented Lynn Redgrave), flaunting Boone at a posh garden party given by fellow director George Cukor in honour of a visiting Princess Margret, and eventually making aggressive sexual overtures to the shocked ex-Marine. The core of the story is the nature of the friendship between the two desperate men, and Whale's darker reasons for cultivating it (leading to his violent assault on Boone). I would have preferred to see more re-creations of his glory days as a director but never-the-less enjoyed the film.

The last days of Frankenstein director James Whale (Ian McKellen) are explored.The focus on homosexuality is perhaps what earned this film an Oscar, but it seems a bit forced. I have understood elsewhere that Whale was not someone who made his sexuality the issue, although here he seems to have it front and center. Is it fair to put him in a story where he seduces awkward and annoying young men? Why is this the plot? I really could have wanted any actor except Jack Plotnick. A dorky journalist who only wants to know about horror films is bad enough, but then to make him so ridiculous? How would such a person ever have even gotten to Whale's gate? Brendan Fraser does a surprisingly good job here. Not known for his acting chops, I am a bit surprised that he was cast. But he does alright.

Sometimes, great quality films don't take too much money to make and don't require a lot of star power. Here, we have Sir Ian McKellen CH KBE CBE in an Oscar nominated performance as the late great horror director, James Whale, who was also gay, artistic, and a genius. The film is based on a fictional novel about his life towards the end. In this film, James Whale is elderly and frail who encounters a handsome gardener, Clayton Boone (played wonderfully by Brendan Fraser in his best performance to date or since). Ian McKellen masters the role of the late director. They form an unlikely friendship. Clayton is oblivious to Whale's homosexuality or his film history at first. They become unlikely friends during their conversations. Whale knows his time is running out. The title comes from a line in his famous film, "Frankenstein." I don't care much for James Whale as a person. He seems too self-involved and cruel to his interviewer. The film also carries a Golden Globe winning performance from the late Lynn Redgrave OBE as his Hungarian Catholic housekeeper, Hanna. She is unforgettable in this role and her loses herself in developing her to be believable. Hanna is still devoted to Whale despite his sexual orientation. Still, the film is a character study. I loved the moment where Whale is reunited with Elsa Lancaster and Boris Karloff who was the Bride and Frankenstein at the Garden Party.

Gods and Monsters begins with a rough and grizzled looking man occupying a rather dingy little trailer out in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. His living conditions are small, enclosed and his general living area is messy with an array of scattered items such as beer bottles lying loosely around the place. The man's line of work is that of a manual labourer, somebody whom journeys from place to place in a truck which is tatty and unspectacular but does the job so as to get him there, enabling him to carry out agricultural work on the gardens of community higher-ups. He is in stark contrast to that of an elderly man with whom he shares the film's opening, a man whose garden it is the manual labourer eventually comes to maintain; a former film director approaching his seventies, the elderly man occupying living quarters that are elegant and lavish as he spends most of time in his study overlooking a swimming pool battling his serious ill-health, while the man himself is generally of a highly educated, highly informed and rather rich background. The two couldn't be any more different to one another, and yet Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters maturely and engrossingly brings the pair of them together as they appear to find common ground in the one thing they share: isolation which, you feel, leads on to further feelings of loneliness.The gardener is Brendan Fraser's Clayton Boone, a young but relatively introverted male living by himself whom often frequents a local bar for drinks and casual speak with friends and ex-girl friends. The space is the epitome of manliness, neon signs and bottles of beer and young barmaids occupying a space in which laid back attitudes and indulgence in laddish heterosexuality is the predominant order to proceedings. The film is effectively Boone's story to tell, the fact that a certain Sir Ian McKellen is playing a certain famous and once more true-to-life British film director named James Whale is beside the point; Whale often coming to merely compliment Boone's gradual arc of coming into contact with finer things of a cultural nature in life and gradually rejecting the above characteristics or ideals.And then there is Ian McKellen's Wale, one might even say that McKellen is perfect for the part, in that he is playing a cultured; British homosexual whom has reached somewhat of a peak in an audio/visual medium with a tale of how he got there as rich as it is. McKellen provides a stupendous performance detailing the ailing figure of the famous film director of various features Whale, and acts as a fascinating ingredient to a dramatic story about these two men which teeters between moving friendship and immense situ of discontent. Condon paces the bond either man share wonderfully, beginning with drinks on hot summer days in-between sessions of gardening and going on to cover passages of sketching Whale does of the man privately in his office.Condon has Whale act as more than mere supporting act to Boone's tale of how he once knew somebody famous; a telling moment comes during a very early exchange that Whale has with a young student interviewing him at his residence, the nervous and somewhat twitchy young man coming off as not particularly interested in what it is Whale has to say and is more inclined into veering the interview towards Whale's exploits as the man whom brought to life the first two Frankenstien films besides anything else. Such a sequence passes onto the audience similar sentiments which they may echo; how much about the man might an audience member watching know outside of the Frankenstien exploits? Condon's awareness of the item here rearing its head, McKellan's disparaging reaction at having to deal with such a response within the film going on to resemble Condon's own in relation to what it is people might commonly know about Whale, the film going on to explore his fading physical and mental health and somewhat deconstruct the man, not always in a particularly positive light, but a brave and confrontational one none-the-less.Following this, Whale's literal and verbal establishing to that of the young student interviewer of wanting to take everything from "the top" only echoes precisely what it is Condon does in the film in regards to Whale; a warts-and-all look at how somebody came to be how he was in the final stages of his life. As a character, an early visit to the doctor and the confirmation of serious illnesses which will affect him and deteriorate his overall health establishes the delicacy of the man and the severe health problems Whale has. Boone and Whale come to bond, the overhanging item throughout the film lingering in the form of Boone and his marital issues that he has with an ex-girlfriend in the form of that earlier bar's barmaid juxtaposing with the initial problems he has with his friendship with Whale which comes to form that of a steady going partnership.There is a telling moment much later on in their friendship, a moment that sees Boone admit to having lied about serving in the Marines in the recently concluded Korean War, itself an item Boone may well have used to infer 'manliness' or characteristics of an immensely heterosexual nature that being in the military and fighting in a war would be perceived as 'manly' and have those he's speaking to impressed by it. Here, none of it eventually comes to matter and speaking man to man with Whale eventually sees him shed those respective faux-attributes thus becoming a more rounded, more methodical man; feelings symptomatic with his reaction to the barfly's own reactions to one of Whale's films playing on their TV one evening following a deeper understanding of its creator. All of this and more combine resulting in a thoroughly competent, thoroughly mediative piece on the friendship two men forge.