SHAME: AN APT TITLE

Perhaps I've grown a bit jaded over the years. At 54 years old I've seen all sorts of movies. I've seen everything from low budget movies that were impressive to high budget movies that were terrible and the other way round. I've seen movies that were supposed to be great that I hated and movies that were supposed to be terrible that I loved. I've seen movies that were supposed to be high brow dramas that I agreed with. And then I've seen movies like this one that had all the trappings of high brow intellectual crap that critics love to meander over that in truth were nothing less than boring.

Michael Fassbender stars as Brandon, a young executive on the rise. Things seem to be going well for him professionally but personally not much so. Brandon is a character lacking something in his life. For the most part he has little if no love life going for him. At the same time, his sex life is exploding. Brandon is a sex addict of sorts. If he's not paying some high priced call girl for her time, he's surfing sex sites online or having sex conversations there as well. Personally his life is a mess.

If this weren't bad enough, Brandon's sister enters his life as well. Sissy is another totally messed up individual. Having been through many men in the hopes of finding the right one, she always seems to pick the losers. After a recent split she asks if she can stay at his place for a while. He relents and she invites him to see her perform at a local club. He finds it hard to believe she's found work but is stunned when she does well.

So now you have the set up of the story. And honestly it doesn't go much further than this. Each character's interaction with each other and Brandon's interaction with a woman he is attracted to despite his emotional problems make for the gist of the film. Long conversations that lead no where, revelations that aren't surprising and the lack of a character to feel sorry for, to sympathize with, make this one long boring film.

As I said earlier, there are films that critics love to praise with pseudo-intellectual clap trap, discussing the symbolism of what the director intended or how the actors were able to display intensity with a subtle nuance. More often than not when I've read reviews like this it tells me the critic was more interested in appearing to be in touch with the art crowd than writing an honest review that said either this is crap or I didn't get what the point was here.

For me with the amount of movies out there to watch, with the good, the bad and the ugly available either via Netflix, Redbox or the local store, I don't understand why anyone would waste time with something like this. To me it felt like time wasted that I can never recover. With the cost of a movie ticket or to purchase a DVD one has to wonder why anyone would consider something like this to be worth the amount of money they expect us to pay for it. Then again there are so many pretentious people in the world who want to make it seem as if they are so far above the fray that I'm sure this movie will at least make it's money back and cause another investor to put money into more films like it. So sad.

Click here to order.