Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

msgrim-40175 This film falls short to deliver a Twilight Zoneesque feel. Unless you're a Jungian or are familiar with Fred Hoyle and anything psychological or science for that matter, then this film will pass over your head. Love the noir atmosphere but the characters aren't believable in telling a noir style story. Chase Masterson is incredibly talented and gorgeous,and makes an attempt to be Virgil and walk Kipleigh Brown through a scientific Dante's Inferno. If this film were a student project for an astrophysics class, then it would have succeeded. Unfortunately it was presented as an actual film at Cannes. As a lover of science fiction, especially Twilight Zone and Star Trek I delve into this film expecting for a great deal of human factor drama and a blend of 1950's murder mystery and suspense. Instead I received a puzzle with pieces that are missing. If you watch this film research Fred Hoyle or read October First Is Too Late or keep the Sixth Sense and Dante's Inferno in mind.

stephander To describe a film that is different from anything you've seen is difficult. Its style is seriously, consummately neo-noir, the subject matter seems to be that of the hard-boiled detective genre, but as the plot unfolds we realize that we are seeing speculative science fiction. The heroine, Hoyle, seems to be a private detective, a female incarnation of Philip Marlowe perhaps, and she is searching for both a man, who turns out to be her ex-boyfriend, and for a notebook containing metaphysical research by Nazi-era German scientists. Throughout her investigations she repeatedly encounters a haunting, doppelganger-like woman who first appears as a sultry nightclub singer, but turns out to be much more. To add to her confusion, Hoyle seems to be experiencing her life in disjointed pieces that are out of sequence and someone, perhaps herself, is trying to contact her from another time.Definitely not for the popular audience (if the first ten minutes don't grab you, this one isn't for you), Yesterday Was A Lie will appeal to those who are drawn to the off-beat, experimental auteur film, Gothic science fiction and/or neo-noir film making. The digital black-and-white does not really replicate the lush style of the 1940's, but instead creates it own atmosphere, its own intriguing and stylish world of fog-enshrouded half light. Every segment of the film is crafted with great care and photographed with great artistry; the writer-director James Kerwin has really created something quite wonderful. The stars, Kipleigh Brown as Hoye and Chase Masterson, who produced the film, bring it compellingly to life. (They are also two alluring gals.) Redolent of the original Outer Limits, the darkest of '40's film noirs, Humphrey Bogart, and a bit of Sapphire and Steel, it nevertheless stakes out its own unique territory. If you're not turned off by references to Jungian psychology, Dali surrealism, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, and speculations on alternative realities and the nature of time, let this film lead you into its dream world, but be warned, you will need to, and want to see this film several times.

John Michaels I had been waiting for quite a while for Yesterday was a lie. Modern noir is rare and I hadn't seen anything of note since 2005's Brick. Despite going into the film with high hopes, Yesterday was a lie fell short of it's mark. Their seemed to be such an heavy emphasis on the stylistic elements of the classic noir film that it over did it. From the swanky Jazz to the high-contrast black and white, it all was just too much. This over-the-top noir style seemed to ease by about the halfway point of the film which helped. The character Hoyle, with her hair flowing out from under her Fadora wasn't believable. Hoyle along with the singer, played excellently by Chase Masterson, were easily confused since both were so close in appearance. Since this was a movie about moving backwards and forwards through time, one was left wondering if Hoyle and the Singer were meant to be the same person. Also, noir works when we see that point when the main character either makes a bad decision of has one thrust upon them. That is the turning point of a great story. This story didn't seem to have that. If it did, it was lost, relying on sexy women and dress to carry the day. Also this film missed the mark in great dialog. One usually hopes for those great comeback lines and expressions (that we all wished we had said) to carry these films. All and all the acting was fine but this film failed in the directing and editing. It was fun to see the effort but this fell short of it's mark.

tedg I saw this together with "Conversation(s) with other women." Both try something ambitious with narrative structure, extending notions I call folding.Here we have something that starts with noir — and by that I mean noir in the popular sense: black and white photography, a hard-boiled detective, some voice-over and seedy settings. These are only accidentally associated with noir in my mind; the real core of noir is the creation of a world that has features we as viewers expect and to some extent control. This filmmaker understands this, so has used noir for his narrative experiment.The experiment revolves around a science fiction device: a notebook with some secrets of Quantum Interaction. The backstory has experiments that use repetitive number patterns to allow a researcher to start to bend time. Two lovers have faded in their love. She is a detective put on a case that leads them to this notebook. He engages in the experiment to recapture their love at the cost of his soul. The story is told from her POV, which involves non-linearity in three respects: what we see and understand, what she sees and understands, what is understandable (in the sense of the physics changing). This last is to the heart of noir, where the act of seeing changes the cosmos.Her cat is named Schrödinger. She has a doppelganger (her sexy female anima), played by a woman who dominates: she is a muse/teacher. She literally is the producer of the film, and she provides some competent moody songs. All of the actors are people we should know from various, mostly bad TeeVee, science fiction. It is all rather brilliant in the way it is conceived and worth seeing because of the ambition.The problems are many though. The actual narrative, those threads you weave out of the fragments you are given? It just is poorly done. This needs more power in the actors, the lines and the cinema. It references urges that can bend the world. Polanski does this and delivers. "Ninth Gate." There is no there here. You may not notice this because it is easy enough to supply that romantic urge: we all have it and have nurtured it in our movie experiences. We carry it into this project and can plug in, indirectly increasing the narrative effect.So that is not a lethal problem. The other problem may not bother you, but it worries me greatly.This experiment relies on some detailed explanations of the "science" involved. As with many popular-level notions, we have selections from the most accessible and attractive features of Jungian cosmology mixed in with common misconceptions of quantum physics. It plays the same role in this story that mentioning a recent meteorite has in zombie movies. You nod, agree that the explanation is plausible and move on to consume the narrative.The problem is both Jung and QI have possibilities that are much more powerful than those appropriated here. You can't start fire with water just because on screen it looks like gasoline. And you don't need all that folderol (good word) anyway. "Conversation(s) with other women" does much the same thing as here, but without the guff. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.