What a beautiful movie!

A Disappointing Continuation

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

About: Prejudice, isolation of the unique and different, and all sorts of effects of the human condition come out. Highly inspirational.For an emotionally mature audience. If you want fast paced action, please skip. No covering up by flashy CGI. Real acting.Storyline: Powder is the name given to an albino kid named Jeremy Reed. The story of the strange case of Powder unfolds naturally, artfully. And what a story it is.What if? What if there was somebody who was more advanced intellectually and emotionally sensitive than all of us? The movie Powder helps you imagine what that would be like, and what we would run into. Powder shows us the best and the worst of our humanity, our limitations and our potential. And it does so beautifully, with appropriate drama. Questions about the meaning of life. It has a strong believable spiritual dimension without any fluff or bullshit. It shows the depth of compassion, and the shallowness of fear.Cast The acting is exquisite, very believable. Sean Patrick Flanery powerful performance of the tender and awkward Powder. Mary Steenburgen plays the social worker that finds him. Jeff Goldblum's character says "when technology surpasses our humanity". Upon seeing the movie a second time, the power of the music to move you and me becomes more obvious. Subtle, gentle, moving.Partly in the line of The Green Mile, a story about strongly evolved human empathetic qualities.For those who like to be stimulated to think and wonder about a possible future, and the shadow side of your collective fears, an absolute must see. This is not an SF movie, but like good SF, it asks the pertinent questions and it makes you think.

This is a pretty touching film about a young, bald albino boy named Jeremy 'Powder' Reed (Sean Patrick Flannery) who has special powers that bewilders his community.Flannery plays Reed pretty brilliantly, generating the audience's sympathy as he deals with his special condition and deal with adversities coming from members of his community, who ridicule him for his looks and unusual abilities. The plot may not be fast-paced but it's a film that doesn't rely on the cliché Hollywood formula, instead, provides a unique story-line with a does of reality, despite its sci-fi elements. The acting was quite good, with a supporting role by Jeff Goldblum. Not a bad film overall. Grade B

Look to the skies, especially for lightning bolts which appear repeatedly in Powder. The name is used on a high school aged boy to describe his pasty white skin. Jeremy(Sean Patrick Flanery) is an albino who has a magnet in his brain which causes strange things to happen when he shows up. His mother died shortly after his birth during a severe thunderstorm. His father left him with his grandparents and he did farm work and lived in a basement, reading every book available to him. After grandpa dies, the boy is taken by the state. He is placed in a high school and the physics teacher, Donald Ripley(Jeff Goldblum) tests him and is astounded that his i.q. is off the charts; a teenage Einstein is in school. The other students quickly resent him as an oddity. Jeremy hears a gunshot and when he goes to investigate, sees a doe on the ground, wounded and dying. Powder places his hand on the animal and his other hand on the deputy who shot it and his body sends the emotions of the deer into the officer. His perspective on hunting are forever changed. Word spreads through the town and another cop asks him to use his telepathic ability to communicate with his wife, who is close to death. He helps them with valuable insight.His schoolmates continue to taunt him and before it ends Powder delivers an important message in humanity. Flanery shows great range as the title character; hard to believe that he later played a vigilante lunatic in Boondock Saints. He makes this film work.

This movie holds a very special place in my heart since I was young. Victor Salva, it seems, had at least one good story in him and this, though in some ways sappy, was certainly it. The treatment of the main character makes it hard to watch at times because it can feel very bleak and hopeless, but it is balanced out by the tenderness of the characters who do accept him and offer him hope and kindness. The acting is excellent in this film and the cast is to be commended for not turning the script into something sickly or too predictable. The ending brought me to tears and maybe felt like an easy way out, but it did feel appropriate. All in all, I'd suggest that anyone watch it at least once.