Artivels Undescribable Perfection

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Paul Andrews The Ungodly starts as amateur filmmaker Mickey Gravatski (Wes Bentley) shoots serial killer James Lamac (Mark Borkowski) on camera killing a woman, Mickey wants to use his power over James to his advantage & blackmails James into being the star of a documentary about real life serial killers. At first Mickey thinks that he has a strong hold over James but James isn't stupid & manages to find out where Mickey lives & kidnaps his mother. With the life of his mother in the balance Mickey has to do exactly what James wants & is forced to film his horrendous crimes, Mickey can't take it anymore & decides to use his wits to corner James more & regain the upper hand in the ever increasingly twisted relationship...This Spanish American co-production was executive produced, co-written & directed by Thomas Dunn, more widely known in the US under the title The Perfect Witness it really doesn't matter what title you see it under as it's crap. I guess the makers were going for an edgy little crime thriller in a very gritty, documentary style which I just found as dull as dishwater & throughly boring. Far too predictable with some gaping logic holes like when Mickey eventually turned his tape over to the police didn't he realise he would get into trouble for not handing it over sooner? What did he intend to do with the footage that he shot of James? As a serial killer wouldn't Mickey have been in trouble for not turning him in? What about the other people James murdered? The script portrays Mickey as a caring guy who loves his mother & wants to do the right thing but surely hiding evidence & letting a serial killer walk around free is a direct contradiction? Also why does James let Mickey get so close? If James is so careful why introduce Mickey to his family? Why does James make Mickey film his crimes? Anyone? Can anyone say that the script deals with this fundamental questions? The script takes itself very seriously & you get the feeling the makers were deadly serious about the whole affair but it just didn't work for me, the character's are poor, the whole thing is predictable, it's boring & at one hour & forty minutes long it outstays it's welcome long before the final credits roll. I suspect that the makers attempted to try & get inside the mind of a serial killer but it's all clichéd stuff & not that interesting, James was abused as a child & has lots of little prophetic sayings but very little else, no menace, no personality & no believability for me.Certainly not a horror film The Ungodly is much more of a gritty thriller that is neither gritty nor thrilling. At all. What is up with the bizarre totally random scene in the elevator? There's no proper special effects of gore, like most recent low budget flicks just some blood splatter on the floor or on people's faces or on the wall or, well, you know what I mean.Apparently filmed in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, it looks sort of cheap although, again, I think because of the documentary style I think it was intentional & an artistic choice. The acting is bad, I didn't buy anyone for a single second. James needed a much stronger actor while Mickey was very middle of the road & neither her nor there.The Ungodly is crap as far as I am concerned, it doesn't get into the mind of a serial killer & is totally boring & lacks any excitement or blood or gore or intrigue or mystery. You know what? Just watch something else instead.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Disturbing and scary insight of what make a serial killer tick in that he, like almost all his type, has both a good as well as murderous side to him. Which makes him more dangerous in that he's not that easy to identify by both the police and his unsuspecting victims.In the movie recovering alcoholic and armature film maker Mickey "Mick" Garvatski,Wes Bently, catches on video tape serial killer James Lemac, Mark Borowski, in the act as he brutally murders a young women in a dark alley. Instead of turning the tape over to the police Mick decides to blackmail James in giving him the story behind his actions and later, if James is either caught or killed by the police, releasing the video as a TV documentary. To make sure that James doesn't include him as one of his victims Mick has a number of copies made of the tape by his friend Gino, Albert Lopez-Murtra, just in case James decides not to cooperate with him.Having no choice but in going along with Mick's unusual plan James starts to manipulate him into being an accomplice in a future murder of his that will, if Mick decides to turn James over to the police, make him just as guilty of first degree murder as James is! To get Mick even more under his control James tracks down his somewhat not too mentally stable mother Klara, Maria Haufrecht, and kidnaps her to doubly make sure that Mick doesn't rat him out to the police.As Mick starts to get closer to what's behind James murderous impulses he starts to realizes that it all started when he was six years old. Abused by his mother Emma Lemac, Beth Grant, who not only mistreated him but his kid sister Megan, Joanna Baron, as well had James when he reached adulthood strike out at society. Starting his career as a heartless killer by torturing and killing cats James graduated in doing the same to young women who he, in James sick mind, substituted for his hated and deceased mother! ****SPOILER ALERT**** It's towards the end of the movie that James comes to realize that the person-his mother-that initiated his extreme hatred is in fact alive not dead like he was lead to believe all these years! It's then that the cool clam and collective James Lemac for the first time in the movie loses it. With that shocking revelation a mentally and emotionally destroyed Mick is driven, by circumstances beyond his control, to do what even the cold blooded serial killer James Lumac couldn't! And that leads to the horrific bloodbath that breaks out, in a major Philadelphia hospital no less, at the end of the film!Despite the films many inconsistencies it does make it's point in what's the reasons behind the actions of serial killer James Lemac. The big surprise in the film is how someone like Mick Gravatski could let himself be taken in by the clever and ruthless killer. Not being all there, in him being a recovering alcoholic and drug abuser, to begin with Mick completely underestimated James ability to short-circuit his mindless plan to use him to his advantage. And it was that what lead Mick to end up doing something so bloody and outrageous that even the mindless psycho killer James was incapable of doing!

jkhuysmans0 I had a recent spectator experience with The Perfect Witness (2007) because the NetFlix computer recommendation engine suggested I watch this film. Apparently, at some point, I told it how much I liked Michael Haneke's, Benny's Video. I don't know about you, but this parallel being drawn provoked in me a maelstrom of emotion and excitement over Thomas C. Dunn's film and made the allocation of my time toward it virtually impossible to refuse. Just this kind of recommendation from the NetFlix computer intelligence, for me, had the aesthetic/moral movie bar set to level so high that, upon reflection, it represented something pretty much unaccomplished in every film produced in the year 2007.Having prefaced my response to the film that way, I'm going to proceed in knocking this picture down as poorly executed and banal; and I really hate to do that because I think our boy, Wes Bentley, happens to be not only one of the most interesting young faces in contemporary cinema, but also one its most overlooked and underrated screenacting talents in the US. I'm more than moderately concerned that the poor guy's going to miss the fame ship if he keeps fiddling around with first time movie directors like this.The Perfect Witness is about Micky (Wes Bentley), who, about thirty, still lives with Mom ("You're not drinkin' again area ya's?"), but he's a "filmmaker" or at the very least some kind of street-level voyeur with a pension for shooting would-be Johns in the seedy back alleys of Philadelphia with his DVX 100B. Out there, doing his private investigator-like drills, Micky "inadvertently" video-tapes a brutal murder on a hapless early-twenty-ish coed with his hand held camcorder. Baring the notion in mind that snuff and movies as cultural currency can be his equated with his ticket out of the white urban ghetto (and not to the debts of his unwitting friends and relatives who put up the money for his atrocious films), Micky approaches the assailant, James LeMac (Mark Borkowski: also takes a writing credit) or "Mac the Knife" –whichever- and blackmails the killer into making a documentary about his murder impulses, holding this found footage over the attacker with threats of the police.The problem with this movie is not that no interesting ideas exist because they do. While both the writing and direction are amateurish, that alone doesn't make a film bad. It's that these guys commit a rather poor assumption that what they are presenting is shocking in the context of a culture in which just about any person in the free world with access to a private computer can log-on to the web and catch the veracity of the action of a beheading on their little Mac or PC. No film relies on shock value alone any more (unless of course, ironically, it's a film about torture on animals) and therefore cinematic images of violence (real or fake) have less and less cultural capital with each year that passes. Also, we've got this astounding actor-talent in the lead all styled-up, real hip guy: his two inch beard and skull cap with the little bill on it, backwards, just like the dork from high school who craved after the potential services of my primary love interest –same guy who just now calls himself a "poet."Spare me. "I'm an artist," "I'm a filmmaker." Okay. Please do, carry on with that shtick, Cronnie. Seems to have bought you a lot of expensive 35mm stock. And go ahead, you can wear all the accrutements of a "creative" but don't expect us top respond to you, to follow your below average character through your two hour movie while you take down Wes Bentley's career. Why don't we just let history speak to the merits of what you do, filmmaker guy. My guess is history will eventually have say something about that –like, probably that's in not is good as you think it is. And yeah, odds are you'll be laying the blame on your dear ole ma, end up like our man Micky here in The Perfect Witness; hooked on smack and covered in your buddy's blood with a video camera in your hand. Great.

Kitty Rosen I thought this movie was outstanding. It explored the mind of a compulsive killer, without holding anything back. It explored his childhood and abuse; the flame which lit his compulsion. I was on the edge of my seat from start to finish. Wes Bentley was amazing as the desperate, drug addicted film maker who set out to do the documentary on the killer. Also, the supporting cast made it a great ensemble piece. I recognized Kenny Johnson from "The Shield" and Beth Grant from "No Country for Old Men". Mark Borkowski, who played the killer, gave an honest and intense portrayal of Bentley's tortured subject. I can't understand why this film didn't get a theatrical release. I know it toured the festivals this year but, man, it would be great to see this film on the big screen. I highly recommend it.