Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

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

nlytnd_1 I just randomly thought of this movie again, since I remembered it being one of the most pointless movies I had ever seen.Essentially, if someone's different everyone will unprovokingly F with them and treat them like crap, then they'll be struck by lightning and die. That's the extent of this movies underlying message. None of the people involved in messing with Powder ever really come to any realization, like, maybe we shouldn't be messing with some dude minding his own business over there and others could have realized, maybe we could have learned something from this goth dude with superpowers. Even the one chick who was the nicest to Powder, was still unprovokingly a chaunch to him half the time as well. I would imagine that the story for this movie probably was deep and had a purpose, but anything of meaning/substance was trimmed away and it ended up being a pointless piece of crap.

SnoopyStyle Jeremy 'Powder' Reed (Sean Patrick Flanery) is an albino. His mother died in childbirth. His father disowned him. Sheriff Barnum (Lance Henriksen) investigates a dead elderly man and discovers his grandson Powder hiding in the basement. Powder has never been to school and little contact with the outside world except in books. Social services worker Jessie Caldwell (Mary Steenburgen) places him to all boy's Central home and to the high school of small town Wheaton City. His special powers causes fear, fascination and isolation. Physics teacher Donald Ripley (Jeff Goldblum)'s electricity demonstration gets out of hand. Fellow student Lindsey is fascinated but John Box picks on him.The kid is an albino and everybody acts like they've seen a ghost even before he shows his powers to them. I'm not sure what kind of backwards 'To Kill a Mockingbird' hick town this is suppose to be. I'm willing to buy the teen bullies. However the 'kid' actors are not that compelling. It's as if the casting agent is good at casting adults but has no clue how to get good young actors. Sean Patrick Flanery does his best but his character is emotionally limited. He isn't allowed to be happy. The bullies are trying too hard and the girl doesn't have the charisma. John Box is closer to 30. The movie is trying so hard to be profound that it doesn't ring anywhere close to true. People are too stupid. People are too mean-spirited. The melodrama is too high. The actors sound fake. Powder is basically either going to be a superhero or supervillain. This could be a great comic book origin movie but every character is slightly wrong.

ryan mcdaniel The movie is not that bad when you watch it with a blind eye. However, Disney will no longer be supported by me or any of my family after I found out the God awful truth about the director of this movie, and how Disney has betrayed the life blood of their business. Everyone knew Disney was one of the first major corporations to strongly support gay rights as far back as the 80's. By the 90's they were honoring gay unions for employees. Honestly, that's fine. Its their company and they can do whatever they please. But I think they committed the cardinal sin of "looking over" things about employees that NEVER should be done. Disney "tried" to claim they didn't know about Victor Silva's past and him conviction of child molestation. What made it especially bad is that is was done to a child actor while he was making the movie! Honestly, how does Disney not see this as a problem?! They make movies for KIDS for crying out loud! Silva is gay and I think that blinded Disney into looking over the molestation. I personally think there is a lot of "looking over" as it pertains to the gay community, but that's just me. However, making a man rich who is obviously a total scumbag goes beyond the pale. Don't watch this movie. Send a message to Disney and to others that this kind of "support" cannot be tolerated!

Wuchak "Powder" was the first of two films that came out in 1995-1996 dealing with a gifted individual who is super-smart and has paranormal powers; the second was "Phenomenon" with John Travolta. "Powder" is the superior. While "Phenomenon" is good, "Powder" reaches for greatness and, in some ways, achieves it.Sean Patrick Flanery plays a hairless albino teen in East Texas, nicknamed Powder, who's discovered living in a basement after his grandfather's sudden death. As a ward of the state, he is placed in a boy's school where his uniqueness stirs up trouble.For a film like this to work you have to buy into the character, and this is one of the movie's strengths. Flanery reveals his acting expertise in his utterly convincing portrayal of the gifted teen. Seriously, Flannery's Powder stands strong with the greatest misfits in cinema, like Nimoy's Spock and Hank's Forrest Gump.Actually, the acting is great across the board: Lance Henriksen as the hardened-but-open sheriff, Mary Steenburgen as a psychologist who grows to really love Powder (in a motherly way), Jeff Goldblum as a science teacher who's astonished, Bradford Tatum as Powder's main enemy at school, Brandon Smith as a redneck deputy who instinctively hates him, but actually fears him, and the beautiful redhead Missy Crider, Powder's fellow student and potential love interest.Roger Ebert dissed the film for a number of reasons, one being Powder's enemy's don't learn from him. On the contrary, one enemy makes a 180 after being enlightened, but ultimately reverts back to his former base mentality. This happens all the time in real life. On another occasion Powder does something miraculous and you can clearly see the change on his enemy's face -- the realization & acceptance. Whether this will prove to be a lasting change or temporary, we'll never know.Ebert also complained that Powder's electrical tricks upstage his emotional insights. Really? I think it's the reverse. While the electrical tricks are there to maintain the attention of those with cinematic ADHD, it's the film's potent insights that stay with the viewer. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the electrical tricks, but they're way too overdone to be realistic. At the same time, I understand why the writer/director (Victor Salva) included them -- this is a MOVIE, not real life; it's meant to transfer ideas AND entertain, and it does both pretty effectively.Ebert also griped that the ending is unsatisfying the more you think about it. Actually, the ending makes a powerful statement and is reminiscent of the spectacular translations of Elijah and Enoch in the Bible. Let's just say Powder was too good, too spiritual, for the simpleminded and mundane.I'm not saying the film doesn't have flaws or roll-your-eyes moments, but they can be overlooked in view of the big picture and the film's successes. As for the paranormal phenomena featured in the story -- like psychokinesis, telepathy, extraordinary empathy and what the Bible calls "the word of knowledge" -- although some of these are exaggerated in the film I have a secret: They're real.=========================The film was shot in SE Texas and runs 111 minutes.GRADE: A-