Beautiful Ohio (2006)

People are voting emotionally.

Absolutely Fantastic

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A mathematical genius and his family are all what this dreadful film is all about.Mom acts intellectual by correcting her son's grammar and playing Chopin. Dad talks a good intellectual game but he has so little material to work with here.Our genius has a girlfriend who has been secretly living in the basement of his house for a year. By film's end, the mother of the genius claims she knows all about this.William Hurt, as the father, mumbles his way through the film talking in a continuous monotonous tone.Our genius has quite a surprise for us years later. Am sure it had nothing to do with the fact that his younger brother was interested in the girlfriend. Who would be interested in this all together?Julianne Margulies of "The Good Wife" fame has dinner with her husband in two scenes. She is loud and has really nothing to say or add to this mess of a film. How fortunate for her.

I was captivated by all the fine actors in this film that I never knew existed until a 2011 presentation on Showtime. Finally there arrived an intelligent screenplay with a wide assortment of unusual characters assembled into a unique family arrangement along with two friends of the math genius Clive--Sandra and Elliot The most astounding performance was by Brett Davern who shines as the prototypical normal kid facing challenges from his demanding parents and the aloofness shown to him by his older brother, Clive. As William, Brett enraptures the audience with his innocence and his driving desires to make love to Clive's girlfriend Sandra, played by Michelle Trachtenberg, who always plays her roles in a brilliant fashion. William finally achieves a most perfect sexual union with Sandra and we all can appreciate his joy. Brett Davern has a sparkle in his eye throughout the film, and lights up every scene he's in.Clive represents a mysterious youth. speaking to his friend Elliot in a foreign language unknown to any of the characters. Clive, Elliot and Sandra hang out and smoke dope and play guitars.Eventually, William gains acceptance and the four of them produce a very unusual team.William Hurt and Rita Wilson are the boys' parents and add a quirkiness to the film that's much appreciated by this viewer. They perform wonderfully.Now this film takes place in the 1970s, in the era of AIDS, and out of the blue the genius Clive and his friend Elliot are discovered caressing each other naked in the basement. His so-called liberal father slaps him hard, as the audience is really shocked by this last-minute development. Of course, we now understand that the secret language between the boys (a love poem in Hungarian)reflects the secrecy of being gay in that time period. Whether Clive is bi-sexual or merely uses Sandra as a beard is not known.If the film has any fault, it is the fact that the viewers would like to have seen another 20 or 30 minutes of plot development. Instead, we are presented with a penultimate scene many years in the future in which Clive is dying of AIDS with his family at his bedside.It is quite a touching scene, but without any plot to cover the missing years, we are left a bit empty.Finally, Clive is married with two children and discovers quite by chance his brother's secret language.I'm sorry so few people have seen the film. It's about intelligent people filmed for an intelligent audience, which unfortunately is quite rare these days.

The bigger thing about seeing this independent film was that I saw it at the 22nd Santa Barbara Film Festival while on a college trip, I had a fantastic time. Oh and after the film finished people in the audience could ask questions to the director, Chad Lowe, and star Brett Davern. Anyway, the film is a family-based film with a lot of talking about life in general, as well as other people's thought's and opinions. The main stars, and who are stealing the show from the teenagers, are the parents, Simon (Lost in Space's William Hurt) and Judith (Jingle All the Way's Rita Wilson) Messerman. The main plot seems to be involving the teenage brothers William (Davern) and Clive (David Call). Clive seems to be speaking what is an unknown language, and William is trying to find the "dictionary" with all words and meanings. The big twists towards the end though are that Clive and his best friend are gay, and that the language is in fact Hungarian, and the "dictionary" is in fact a poem. Also starring Inspector Gadget's Michelle Trachtenberg as Sandra, Ghost Ship's Julianna Margulies as Mrs. Cubano, Matt Servitto as Mr. Cubano, Hale Appleman as Elliot and Justin Matthews as Marty. Good!

This was a wonderful Movie. I saw the preview the preview in a special fund raiser in Cleveland for the Arts. I Can't wait till it is in wide distribution so that I can see it again. Chad Lowe the director and producer has brought humor, meaning, emotion, and depth to flaming. The actors are superb. William Hurt and Rita Wilson are excellent and make this movie time well spent. Julianne Marguilies is surprisingly charming in this role. The new actors are very good and I know they will have an excellent future. It was an emotional and compelling movie that kept me enthralled from the moment it started to the surprising end.