That was an excellent one.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

It's 1978 Azusa, California. Rocky Dennis (Eric Stoltz) has massive facial deformities. His biker single mom Rusty (Cher) registers him into the 9th grade. He's a happy well adjusted teen who dreams of riding motorcycles with his friend around the world. She's a force of nature. He excels in school academically. The surprised principal notices his tutoring jobs and gets him a counseling job at Camp Bloomfield for the blind. He falls for blind girl Diana Adams (Laura Dern). Gar (Sam Elliott) is a fellow biker who is in love with Rusty.This is a wonderful feel-good movie. Eric Stoltz is utterly charming. Cher is a great momma bear and Laura Dern is angelic. The puppy love is heart warming and heart breaking. The story is an inspirational tale and the actors make the movie even better.

I saw Mask because I like Peter Bogdanovich's films, and also it was on a subject that I identified with. I had been told so much about Mask, how moving and how great it was. And after eventually seeing it, having been behind with my movie watching, it fully lived up to expectations. Mask is a wonderful movie, very moving and Bogdanovich's second best movie after The Last Picture Show. Mask is beautiful to look at, with crisp cinematography and evergreen and autumnal images. The soundtrack is memorable and is careful not to be overpowering in key moments. The scripting is touching and honest, and the story has a subject that will resonate with anybody with a disfigurement, knows somebody with one or neither. More importantly, none of the film feels forced or in your face. Bogdanovich's direction is superb, and he sensibly focuses on mother and son's strengths and weaknesses. The two leads are superb. Whether it is her best performance or not is up for debate, but regardless Cher's performance is wonderful. That's not to dispute Eric Stoltz either, he is just heart-wrenching as he struggles with his disfigurements and faces death. Overall, Mask is such an achingly moving movie, and sadly one of the the 80s most overlooked films. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Right up front: I had to give the ending away, okay.Some roles are born for actors. The role of Rocky Dennis was most certainly "born" for Eric Stoltz.I once read that actor Eric Stoltz had been cast to play the role of Marty McFly in (yeah, you guessed it) "Back to the Future." But, for whatever reason, Michael J Fox was given the honor instead. Fortunately, all of us now have the honor of seeing Stoltz in this film, which was released the same year. MASK is based on the true story of a young man with a rare facial deformity in which calcium deposits formed on his skull and grew, causing his scalp and face to stretch and become elongated, while putting pressure on his spinal chord, and giving him massive headaches. It's the story of Rocky's struggle to be "normal" and fit in... when he was born to stand out.This is a movie that I will always watch again and again...strictly because of the incredible, endearing performances by Stoltz, as well as Cher,Sam Elliot, and a young Laura Dern.While Rocky is trying to find out who he is, he actually has a bigger problem: his mother. As his school principal points out: (Rocky's mom) "never gives the impression that she cant take care of herself." But it's only an impression. One scene in the film depicts an argument between mother and son. Dishes are shattered and Rocky tells his mother that he hates her going out all the time and coming home wasted. His mother fires back, saying that her son tries too hard to control her life, by strategically placing pamphlets about a "chemical dependency" center around the house. The two go from explosive arguing, to his mother stroking his hair the next morning and telling him to "pick something." Rusty comes home in the wee hours, this time to discover that her son has one of his headaches. No medication is used to help them go away...it's more like visualization. Rocky "picks out" something peaceful and calming in his mind. He describes to his mother what he's seeing (he and his best friend on a boat).The next morning, Rusty makes a promise to her son that she will "cut it down;" a promise that is soon broken when Rocky's grandparents come to visit. The three return from a Dodgers game to find her so wasted that her parents have no choice but to drive back home, leaving Rocky to once again take care of his mother. Rocky decides he needs a break, and takes his school principal up on an offer to go to a summer camp for the blind. This will be a much needed break.This movie's about bikers: their vests, their jackets, their protective loyalty, their fights, their drugs, their motorcycles. The film also depicts a rider being buried with his Harley. The soundtrack brings this to light perfectly, with artists like Steely Dan and Little Richard.Now, this movie also has some alarming inconsistencies... and I am unable to point them out without giving away the film's ending. In fact, I'll start there. Young Rocky succumbs to his illness one night in his sleep, and at the very end, his mother and her now love interest Gar (Sam Elliot) go out to the cemetery to place flowers (and a few cherished baseball cards) at Rocky's grave. On the gravestone, the year of death reads 1980. However, a record of Rocky's death I discovered over the internet had the year of his death listed as 1978, and there was no location of a graveside listed (findagrave.com). Instead, the record reads that Rocky's body was donated to UCLA medical research. Is there a grave somewhere that reads "1980"? I don't know; but the impression given is that we are looking at Rocky's real graveside, which (in the film) reads "Roy L. Dennis". The film also depicts Rocky as being an only a child, but biographies of the famous teenager do reveal that he had a brother. This is mentioned nowhere in the movie. Understandable, since Rocky himself is the main focus, but as to it's biographical accuracy (??)There are also two different versions of this film. One of them depicts the death of one of the characters, Red, (Harry Carey) while the other...does not show us that he died. The original 1985 release lets Red live through the whole story, and there is no burial of the bike with the biker.Then there's the odd issue of different soundtracks (??). The original release, has a rockin' Bob seiger soundtrack (which I personally prefer). The DVD release of the movie (somewhere around 2004) has a Bruce Springsteen Soundtrack instead. The extra's on the DVD reveal that director Peter Bogdanovich had originally wanted a Springsteen soundtrack, and permission had come from Springsteen himself to use his music in the movie. But others who worked on the film decided that Sieger was more appropriate for the story (apparently), and the film was released with a Bob Sieger soundtrack(without Bogdanovich's knowledge).DVD extras also reveal that Bogdanovich and Cher got into continual disputes during filming as to the character of Rusty Dennis. Bogdanovich was said to have not been thrilled with such an edgy, mouthy, portrayal of the boy's mother. But Cher said that having met the real Rusty Dennis, she knew that her portrayal of the character was accurate

Ugh, what a gut-wrenching movie this is.Peter Bogdanovich avoids the maudlin histrionics that could have marred this story about a young man suffering from a fatal disease that leaves him horribly deformed. Eric Stoltz is remarkable as the young man, Rocky Dennis, and it's entirely thanks to him, and to his charm as an actor, that we fall in love with Rocky and are heart-broken to see him die at the end. Cher is equally as good as his mom, who sees nothing ugly in her son and feels nothing but ferocious love for him.I will always remember a wonderful scene in this movie, in which Rocky is trying to explain colors to a blind girl (played by a lovely and young Laura Dern) and does so by giving her items to touch -- a hot potato for red, cotton for white, ice for blue.Grade: A