A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

...but useful for understand the perception about reality of a young man who use his sexual orientation, the nihilism and the friends as instruments to explore it. a film about frustration. and about freedom. and one of the most impressive roles of Alex Dimitriadis who mix the bitter humor, fury and fear to create a character who gives new perspectives about every day challenges. one of films who use a sensitive subject as way to wake up. and the gray tone becomes a tool for describe long slices of disillusion, fights and need of sense of life. maybe not great. but sensitive trip in heart of forbidden subjects. more actual today than in 1998.

Why does everyone want happy lovey dovey gay movies with a positive ending? This film plays with all the stereotypes, raising your hopes and expectations and then keeps dropping you back where you started. Ari meets Sean, but misses the opportunity; Ari is drop-dead gorgeous, but still will choose the quick w**k with an older guy down the back alley. What a change from other gay movies, where two beautiful people bore us to death for an hour and a half. And the film moves so well between comic and tragic: from the taxi driver scene to the police station, while Alex just shrugs it all off with that winsome uninvolved smile knowing nothing is ever going to save him. Ari is so self-absorbed and self-destructive that he is one of the great anti-heroes of cinema. And his self-recognition when he says while cruising at the docks "I am a sailor and a slut and shall be to the end of time" is one of the best endings of any film ever. Gay life can be harsh and brutal so you'd better get used to it! But at least it is always edgy and vibrant ... and kudos to Alex D for carrying this film so well! Being good-looking alone would not have made this character so memorable.

In Head On, Alex Dimitriades plays a troubled young gay Greek-Australian man who has LOTS of anonymous sex and takes LOTS of drugs a LOT of the time. Be prepared for lots of explicit gay sex scenes, not to mention violence and drugs. But I really did not enjoy this film on the whole. The character interaction is very over the top. Characters fly into fits of rage without explanation, people break into fights without warning, and the dialogue is completely stilted and unnatural. I can see this film's basic message, of a young man trying to come to grips with his heritage and also find love and happiness in a world of parties, drugs and sex. It's a dreary procedure, however, that portays Greeks as hysterical violent thugs who dance, literally dance, all day in any situation, even while in the middle of a fight! There are many incomprehensible decisions, actions and the film goes absolutely nowhere. Yes, you feel for this young man who just can't find his way. But it's like this filmmaker is trying too hard to make an "oooh-shocking!", "hard-edged" indie film. It just doesn't work.

This film is basically a Saturday Night Fever re-tread. Yeah, the family is Greek, no, there isn't any disco dancing or Bee Gees, but there is a dark, brooding magnetic lead trying to break out of his family's traditions, expectations and the hedonistic culture around him. It's his ethnic culture that prevents him from being his gay self, distorting his view of what that means (very funny that the Greeks, of all people, should be so adverse to homosexuality) and a drug culture that pulls him downward.But it's a bit of snooze. Sure, there are bits of raw sexual activity but they aren't very well integrated into the rest of the film--like his main character, sex and drugs seem to be the only thing that excites this director, as the rest of the film feels flat and arid in a way that disengages the viewer. The narrative is as confused as the lead, Ari; in fact, this film ends where it really should begin. Instead it just meanders about; all we know is that Ari wants to "move out" but we never see what that means or what influences him to be at all aspirational. Sure, we see the push but what's the pull? Since it's obvious to the viewer from the start that Ari is in a confused state about things, how interesting is it for us to watch him over an hour and forty minutes learn what we already know? Well, since the handsome, well-built Alex Dimitriades is playing Ari, fairly interesting at that, but even his committed, intense performance begins to loop back on itself--and it's clear, as an actor, that he is capable of so much more. He's boxed in by repetitive writing--Ari is frustrated, he's frustrated, he's frustrated--get it? Yeah, got it. In the first scene.The best scenes are between Dimitriades and his friend Johnny/Tula, excellently played with and without drag, by Paul Capsis. It would've been better if the film focused more on this relationship, foregoing lengthy and obvious sequences about Ari's Greek heritage. Though revealing, unresolved, under-developed subplots about his friend's engagement and his younger sister go nowhere and make the film lose focus; these characters only exist to say something about Ari. An attraction between Ari and a very pale-featured man named Sean is unconvincing; the director takes for granted that because they're gay they'll get together when the viewer can see that they are clearly chalk and cheese--though this is obvious, their relationship, rather conveniently, isn't really explored which makes the final denouement unsurprising. It should've been the first scene. (In fact, Ari's attractions make this feel, at times, like a gay Breaking The Waves.) Dimitrades is too likable for us to feel critical of his behaviour; instead it feels more like he is let down by the people around him (save Capsis) and should really be mixing with a better grade of people that he has more in common with. Sometimes it's that easy. But the film doesn't go there.Ultimately, the film doesn't go head on with anything, though it can be credited with some subtlety and one can easily admire the work of Dimitriades and Capsis.