It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

As Good As It Gets

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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

well, actually i had big hope for this movie. but, unfortunately this movie out of my standard of "gay themed movie". as far as i watch this movie was really sucks. I can't even imagine why the director (and the writer) makes this movie being cheaper than should be. So many "minus thing" in this movie. but one thing that make me annoyed is the story. the story was made me felt uncomfortable. perhaps because this movie portrayed about betrayal. and i don't like that story.if you compare this movie with "Brokeback Mountain" i thought that would be BIG MISTAKE. This movie is really out of standard. so i just give 3 out of 10

I watched this movie on my Android phone while waiting on a plane. So, I'll give you it was likely not the most flattering environment. That being said, I have always enjoyed TLA movies and have come to expect a high quality product from them. Redwoods started out looking to be consistent with that expectation. However, not too far into the movie, I realized that this was going to be an exception as this was a gay setting of "The Horse Whisperer" Evidently, TLA has a requirement that includes showing some frontal male nudity (I don't mind), but in this flick, it seemed to be so show "D-word" for the sake of "D-word". Neither of the actors who showed all were that inspiring naked. The love scene between the two main characters was built up nicely and some gratuitous frontal nudity would have been perfect, but alas we weren't so treated.There were a few scenes that left one wondering "WTF". An example was the father/son moment in the antique store. I can only assume that the scene's cliché dialogue was inspired by the antique store itself. Mercifully, however, the editors did spare us the moments of possible redundancy by cutting into scenes where other characters are being let in on the story. Through most of the movie, we were led to believe that Evrett was caught up in a bad relationship where he and his partner stayed together "for the children". By the end of the movie an amazing and unbelievable transformation seemed to occur.I realize that these movies are low budget and in this case, the score (which was nice) featured solo piano and synthesized instrumental tracks that sounded like they were taped on a 1980's K-mart Casio keyboard. I think they could have put out money for a bit better quality of instrument, if not a real orchestra.Lastly, the story (a gay version of "Horse Whisperer") was a nice love story. It was a bit slow, but held my attention and I honestly was interested to see how it all ended up. The ending was sweet and pleasantly unexpected. The only thing I would changed would be to invest in some footage showing the changing of seasons to help the audience understand that years were passing.All in all, this was a nice movie and worth a watch.Tony Carson

Once again I feel somewhat cheated by a story with so much potential - like a baby in saddling clothes this team of actors with the complicity of the director slowly drowned whatever genuine motivation and progression in the story on a number of fronts: dialogue, camera shots, pregnant moments of stillness turned in to thundering lead weights that smothered. There was a belief stated by Montgomery that his partner in the story had immediate chemistry - I would suggest that this was perhaps misplaced - and in fact there was a little but they were such good actors they managed to act it out of every scene. Everyone in the film seemed to be 'straight acting'- even the father and brother...they all seemed to be closeted in their roles - I would suggest that the two brothers had the best chemistry and one of them was miscast - they both would have done a better job as the two lovers. Montgomery is an appalling shallow actor of limited ability - unable to display emotion or sensuality - and when he does it has a sleazy whiff about it. Brendan Bradley has a great camera presence and if given stronger direction would produce great work - sadly the potential he shows is patchy and uneven - further thrown into horrible relief by the other supporting 'actors' - the most notable of all was the son - who I thought might be the best of a bad bunch. All in all I am sad to see the American Gay Film tradition is being flooded by this type of low level production, poor scripting and equally incompetent directing - it denigrates our stories and apes historical cinema graphic archetypes too Closely - whilst our stories have common threads and motivations of 'The others' there is a dire need to ensure that they are performed and directed by skilled technicians who know when they are not up to par and all the main actors making a real effort to fill in the space with real depth of charaterisation that sits around and beyond the words on the paper rather than just 'acting'and sleep walking through their parts. There was a real story here - when did they make the decision not to give it a real voice? It all seemed rather rushed, unrehearsed and worst: cheap - do better next time. When I see another effort by this director I hope I can be bothered to watch.

This is a well-made and sincere film that avoids pat answers or schmaltzy sentiment in favor of asking interesting questions everyone faces in life - what makes happiness and what is its price - without relying on melodrama or exploitation. The story is very simple and the presentation very low-key with subtle, convincing performances and great chemistry between the leads. One of the things I realized after seeing it is that the story could very easily be about heterosexuals. It in no way looks to the gay community to provide some unique positive or negative trait. Lots of films make the festival rounds relying on stereotypes to carry them along but this is simply about people and love and I think anyone can connect with the themes it presents. Highly recommended to anyone interested in a touching story regardless of orientation.