Thanks for the memories!

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Tilda is superb as always and the one real reason to see this. She colors the space around her with profound tensions. She's like Brando, able to improvise a whole sea of shifting emotions in the space between the outskirts of her character and innermost soul, but whereas Brando struts in that space in capricious absent-mindedness, she surfs on what flows from inside her, letting float inside but balancing on the out.The film needed this same ability to color narrative space.It needed for us to not be in full control of the facts and stumble through what floats inside to color the out. It would have benefited from threading early for example the son's suspicion that she might be having an affair while their father is out at sea instead of inserting it late in the story when we know she's not. It needed for her relationship with the mob guy to be ambiguously defined from afar. It teeters in silly sentimentality shown as it is.Check out Bastards (the Claire Denis film). It's also about a mother being profoundly torn by what she believes she couldn't prevent, also noir about reality becoming cursed and devious because she couldn't face it clearly. But it takes place in that space between eye and inmost soul that Tilda anxiously inhabits here (and gives us the most advanced logic of perception since Lynch). This one just embeds her in a plot of to and from.Noir Meter: 2/4

The Deep End is a rare event: a touching thriller that is based more on relationships and personal growth than on plot, a film on a tight budget ($3 million) that is completely captivating, a remake of a film (The Reckless Moment (1949)) that really works. Many critics gave the film a top rating, and a few did not like it much, but most agreed that Tilda Swinton was superb. My own opinion is that everything works: the superb acting, the suspense, the finely detailed direction, the beautiful cinematography, the masterful screenplay, everything, even the melodramatic parts. Margaret Hamilton (Tilda Swinton), is an average, ordinary-looking, middle-class housewife, whose husband is away with the military. Her family is her life. She has reason to believe that her son (Jonathan Tucker) has killed someone and she disposes of the body to protect him.It only makes things worse by leading to blackmail. The handsome blackmailer (Goran Visnjic) gets caught up in a family emergency and becomes fascinated by and drawn into the close family setting. He is also attracted to Margaret. The film is mainly about her relationships with her son and with the blackmailer; one can connect emotionally with each of them and their own personal predicaments. The other family relationships are incidental but they do illustrate how her life is completely filled with the needs of others; there is not much time left for her needs. The DVD allows one to watch much of the film a second time, with the two directors (Scott McGehee and David Siegel) discussing the details behind the making of each scene, often showing several radically different takes of the same scene and explaining why they chose the one that they did. It gives a deep insight into the filmmaking process.To watch the film, I recommend that you turn off the telephone and pick a time when there will be no interruptions so that you will be free to become deeply absorbed in a very moving experience.

During the opening credits, I'd noticed that "The Deep End" was adapted from a novel which I'd hoped was going to be done well. Alas directors McGehee and Siegel fail to create a good movie out of it, granted I didn't read the novel. Tilda Swinton single-handedly holds up the weight of an aloof and stilted script which has some glaring misgivings and failures. First and foremost the idiocy of the main character of which the tension gets created is an eye-roller, the dialog of Swinton and actor Goran Visnjic seems robotic, and the dysfunctionality of Swinton's character and her son in communication is poor feeling contrived. The movie's fight scenes are poorly done though editing and scene fades are on the better side. Swinton is tense and stressed out, believably so. Visnjic is stoic though satisfactory. Other actors as family are OK. The direction is mixed, and some scenes work while others seems more wooden or absurd, unfortunately more so towards the end. Mixed to poor - 5.5/10 - not really recommended

The enchanting opening score and a dominant blue hue eases its way of a concealed familial drama with a murder case, a blackmail and an in-the-closet gay son. Out of expectation, a lesser impact on the gay culture, the film endeavors a strenuous effort to accent on a desperate mother's instinct of shielding her son, and magnificently the plot concocts a cordial twist to furnish the film with compassion and great gratification. Tilda Swinton is the ace here (vaguely has sustained her indie-queen ethereality into a more mainstream scope since then), magnifying every impression into an intact personification of a role model mother of three children, who struggles to cover a murder case which she thinks has executed by her elder gay son (which is barely the truth as audience has witnessed the entire occurrence), after that developing a mutual affinity with a young gay blackmailer, things start to become more engrossing. Goran Visnjic is equally empathetic and even a tad overshadowing Ms. Swinton during the final confrontation (a poignant moment arrives when their lips are so close to each other near the end of the film). It never goes awry with the things-getting-worse-until-the-very-end mode, at first one might sense a pro-WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2011) ominous trauma was awaiting us, congenially enough it is not about the embittering mother-son's love/hate perplexity. This indie gem from director duo Scott McGehee & David Siegel (whose later feature BEE SEASON 2005 is a rueful misfire, a 5/10 in my rating, while their latest WHAT MAISIE KNEW starring my diva Julianne Moore is on the shelf this year) needs more credit for its adroit exposition, splendidly heart-rending impetus and the celeste tableau.