The Worst Film Ever

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Excellent adaptation.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

What is the effect on a small US town when an ordinary-looking guy goes into a diner and shoots several people at random before doing himself in? Maybe this is not an issue that's much occupied your mind?Or maybe you don't want to know at all?In Rowan Woods's "Winged Creatures" a rather close look at such events - also set in a wider context - is taken, and it's giving the impression of being thoughtful and clever to the point where we watchers out here feel we're on tenterhooks waiting for some really big truth about these situations to come out. In a way, there is a truth at the end of the effort we put in, but it's not really a big one...On the way to that conclusion we get performances as good as we might expect from Forest Whitaker, Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning and others.Ultimately, this film is well-done, and most especially so when it touches upon the random nature of this kind of thing. For some not-entirely-clear reason, it also features a relatively tangential (and somewhat unpleasant) Guy Pearce-Embeth Davidtz storyline (the latter playing a Brit for no very obvious reason), and - also for some reason - the film seems to slightly downplay the seriousness of what is going on there. This is a little bit of an enigma, but does certainly add yet another psychological dimension.While Whitaker's character annoys to the point where sympathy for his (genuine) plight is a bit muted, youthful actors Fanning and Josh Hutcherson do a particularly good job.Why would you watch this? Because very sadly such things do happen, and it leads to more of a disintegration in the community than one may even imagine (and one certainly can imagine a bit of it). But the effects are diverse and outward spreading like ripples in a pond, and probably we owe it those affected by such events in real life, and to ourselves, to think on what that means at least a little.For 100 minutes anyway,

Fragments is a crime film directed by Rowan Woods.It stars Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning, Josh Hutcherson, Guy Pearce, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Embeth Davidtz.The screenplay is an adaptation of Roy Freirich's novel Winged Creatures.While in a restaurant, Carla Davenport, the restaurant cashier; Charlie Archenault, a driving-school teacher; Bruce Laraby, an emergency room physician; Annie Hagen, her father, and her best friend, Jimmy Jasperson suddenly hear gun shots. Annie, her father, and Jimmy retreat under a table as a suicidal gunman shoots several people and then himself. The story shows the aftermath as these six traumatized people struggle to regain their trust in the ordinary world.The film is quite literally fragmented. Too much story and too little about each character.But nevertheless,it was a well acted ensemble piece that I think you should see for its entertainment value alone.It was a well-directed tense drama with a terrific cast, it is an old-fashioned, no-nonsense film with no special effects that relies on acting and script.

One of those crazed and deliberate gunmen we hear so much about lately enters a coffee shop in a Los Angeles suburb and begins plugging people one by one, including himself. This causes a couple of deaths and multiple psychological problems for the five survivors -- Kate Bekinsale as the waitress; Forest Whitaker as the self-destructive cancer patient; school girl Dakota Fanning and her friend Josh Hutcherson; and the doctor Guy Pearce. Each handles the post-traumatic stress in his or her own way.It's all unremittingly depressing. Bekinsale seems to somehow contaminate her infant and he wails all the time, disrupting her life. Whitaker heads for the nearest casino and recklessly bets until he wins something like one hundred large before losing it all, having to borrow from the mob to continue his spree, and then being battered when he can't pay it back on time. Fanning turns into a religion freak who carries around in her head a faulty recollection of her father's bravery in the café. Hutcherson, who has a lesser role, becomes mute. Pearce, who was leaving the café as the killer entered and actually held the door open for him, mixes some kind of potient for his migraine-ridden wife that almost kills her.None of the performances can be faulted. They're all professional and some, like Fanning's, Pearce's, and Whitakers, are rather better than that.But good performances don't relieve the gloom, and the ending is improbable, to understate the fact. For instance, I don't know how Whitaker manages to pull a check for one hundred thousand dollars out of his sock at the end, when we'd been led to believe he'd lost it all and quite a bit more. And it's difficult to imagine how elective mutism is going to clear up if the patient hears someone else talk about the precipitating event. And I don't know what Pearce did to his wife's soup -- or why he did it. Yet it all ends happily, so to speak, with a brief philosophical obiter dictum by Fanning that sounds fine, what with "pieces falling into place," but explains nothing.Post-traumatic stress is a serious condition and it deserves the serious treatment it gets here. It's too often dismissed as some perverted form of self pity, but it was genuine enough to ruin Audie Murphy's life -- that's Audie Murphy, kids, the most decorated soldier of World War II (and movie actor) whom no one would accuse of feeling sorry for himself. And I've interviewed Vietnam veterans in the VA hospital in Palo Alto who were near suicide because of survivor's guilt.In any case, I'd applaud this film because, in spite of its weaknesses, it was made for adult viewing and there's virtually no sex and no brains being blown out. I would imagine that for many of today's viewers, that presents something of a challenge. If you want to see a similar movie, but a better one, with no clapped-together simple ending, see if you can get a copy of the Canadian feature, "The Sweet Hereafter."

This film smacks of being made by folk who think they have very high IQ's. It is a very pretentious little bit of film making that attempts to examine what it is like to survive an act of uncommon violence in an urban setting. Many people do survive acts of violence in urban settings and usually the common consensus is that they are glad they survived instead of feeling nothing in particular, which is more or less how this film portrays the survivors, who immediately engage in recalcitrant acts that cross the line into outright criminality after about 24 hours passes from the initial incident. This is bad film making. The characters are stupid. Forest Whitaker is particularly ridiculous in this one. There is no way you would even want to identify with the characters in this movie. Really, it is that bad. I found myself thinking, they survived-so what-they are all morons. Avoid it.