Clevercell Very disappointing...

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

larapha I came twice to watch this film in a lapse of more than ten years. What motivated to write a review was the recall I had from it, when the character David (Troy Huptash) the painter, curses his best friend Kryla (Lynda Boyd) Faghag. That shocked me, coming from a gay man. And that was one of the few memoirs I had from the film. Seeing it a second time just showed I was right: it has nothing remarkable. In particular, I still have the feeling that Huptash acting has nothing profound – he seemed to read his lines. I would say that Matt (Vincent Corazza) character is deeper. He really shows he's torn between this wife and his new found lover David. Besides, Corazza is a piece of a man, well build developed and a good actor. Overall, it's a film to be watched, perhaps even twice as I did. Another predicate is to say it aged well. The conflicts shown are undying and worth reflection from the viewer.

poets-1 I would like to have seen Fraser's play, POOR SUPER MAN, largely because there are plaintive allusions to Superman in the film that make me know they were, in some context not necessarily evident, important. I think the film became confused: fading pre-op transsexual, nasty self-loathing, fag hag friend with a drinking problem, a closeted straight man too innocent for life-- with an accompanying jealous wife-- and a Virgil-like artist guide who seems compelled to lead them all through the Circles of Hell.I was not surprised that the artist and his straight man foil have sex; steamy and straightforward sex. I was shocked, however, that so much of the movie then seemed to pivot on the obvious. The only vital thing I saw were the paintings of straight man Matt which artist David had conjured out of desire and the experience of desire ( who said TS Eliot was a dessicated old bag? He knew this story backwards and forwards!). These were both titillating and of heroic dimension.Maybe we should have skipped the film and gone, instead, to the exhibition.I suggest one see LOVE AND HUMAN REMAINS and LEAVING METROPOLIS together; LOVE AND HUMAN REMAINS is the better of the two, but, together, one gets a real glimpse of Fraser's enormous talent.

RitchCS This comment contains a huge spoiler which actually is the reason I'm writing it. More times than most when a writer hands his book, screenplay, story, etc. over to a studio where a new screen adaptation is required, plus a new director, the film is usually unrecognizable from the author's original intent. This movie is one of those rare times when a new script and definitely a new director was needed. When a playwright/stage director/moviemaker goes to put his work on screen, he quite often cannot look at the finished product objectively.Listening to Brad Fraser's commentary on the DVD, he explains so many things that he thought the viewer should've known, but in his concept they were never made clear. For example, he tells us that when the husband enters the bus station, that folded piece of paper under his arm is his acceptance letter from a school for cartooning. That would be great if only the viewer had been told that or even a close up of the paper. But in Fraser's mind, we should have figured that out and where the husband was going. Duh... Fraser keeps telling us 'hidden' things to look for. In his mind he filmed it, so why were we so stupid NOT to notice? I realize that Brad Fraser was the god of this film. Everything in it is his own creation and he and only he should have the right to control each and every destiny. Whether Fraser would like to call this a gay movie or not is up to him.To me it's in the vein of a lot of gay movies which are oxymorons."GAY" movie without a happy ending. What's gay about it? Why do gay writers or producers of gay films insist on unhappy endings. Gays are either depicted as stereotype sissy faggots...or dying Camille's.Can't someone, some time, write a serious drama about gays with good acting and let the two heroes ride off into the sunset? The acting in "Leaving Metropolis" is some of the best I've ever seen, especially Vince Corazza and Cherilee Taylor. They play so well together it makes you wonder why a straight masculine husband would leave his wife for a guy who is so fey? Look at the way Troy smokes a cigarette...it's one step above Bette Davis. Brad keeps talking about his low budget of one and a quarter million dollars. Damn! I've seen better movies with half the budget. Sorry Brad, but the movie you THOUGHT you made and the movie that the viewer sees are worlds apart. After all that the husband and artist went through, not to mention us the audience, the least you could do would be to have the heroes wind up together. Great ideas but sloppy executions!

kaneastro This Canadian effort is accomplished playwright Brad Fraser's film adaptation of his stage play POOR SUPERMAN, in which a celebrated but frustrated artist rediscovers his muse, in the form of a supposedly straight man who's running a downtown diner with his wife. It takes no stretch of the imagination to guess what the basic plot is.From the beginning, lawyers for Warner Bros. and Marvel Comics had threatened suit if the Superman imagery from the play were used in the film. The play was written at the height of public awareness of the AIDS epidemic in North America (ca. 1993), and was replete with metaphor carried by the very imagery lacking in the film adaptation. Just as the protagonist is seemingly the last of his race (gay men not yet victimized by AIDS), Superman was the last survivor of his Kryptonian race. Gay people were in the closet as Superman was masquerading as Clark Kent. So, the film was bound to have major problems once it was cleansed of much of this context. Fraser seems to have compensated for his loss by increasing the gymbot quotient; indeed, the male flesh watchers in the audience were treated to a parade of pecs, abs, and asses. Fraser, who answered questions for the audience after the film, insisting he was working on the principle for "equal opportunity sex scenes," ended up showing much more explicit straight lovemaking scenes. Coming in at a short 89 minutes, this film had me walking away remembering most these scenes with the wife's extra perky breasts. LEAVING METROPOLIS's dialog started out very stilted and the characterizations seemed too heavy handed when translated to film, but as the plot wore on, the uneven acting brought occasional glimpses of brilliance. Troy Ruptash as David the gay artist (in the past, seen on TV in episodes of ER, JAG, THE WEST WING, and BOSTON PUBLIC) put on an occasionally emotionally believing performance. But it is Canadian actor Vince Corazza, a young but veteran TV movie actor, who shone with a great job as the tormented married guy, Matt. Newcomer Thom Allison as David's transgendered, AIDS-inflicted best friend Shannon only endeared with the queeny quips, and fell short trying to bring out the gravity of her situation. David's boozy mentor, Kryla (Lynda Boyd), and Matt's wife, Violet (Cherilee Taylor), weren't given much more than base characterizations to work with. In the end, we don't care much why David didn't seem to think too much about the implications of his helping to break up a marriage, because we don't see much of what Fraser is trying to say about David himself.