Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Tomas Maly A gut-wrenching movie, it shows an honest/raw portrayal of a distant couple facing the tragedy surrounding their son. The denial, the shock, the grief, the rage, the anxiety, the sorrow, the hopelessness. You wonder why a seemingly normal young adult can do something as tragic/irrational as public murdering of a dozen people and then oneself. Going beyond blame and fear that is conventional in the media, the movie takes the perspective of the child's parents, who are in shock and grief, and simply can't understand what went wrong, with such a "normal" child. Are the parents to blame? Did they do their best? Did they do anything wrong? Were their tell-tale signs? Or are the socially acceptable ideas of escapism (within work and entertainment and gender roles) to blame for shutting down the ability for our youth to feel and cope with their emotional turmoil? What do our children learn from us when we form habits of avoiding communication and expression, and simply escape into a realm of fantasy and distraction? Perhaps something so innocent as not talking to our children about how we feel and letting a marriage drift apart into a chasm, avoiding the responsibility of feeling anything at all by simply not giving one's emotions any time through unstructured time or expression. Maybe the recipe for a broken marriage, faking it for the kids, and our unwillingness to work with our spouse (or move on to healthy relationships), teaches our children to never bother recovering from their own pain caused from our destructive society and communities. Perhaps a large segment of divorcées simply drifted apart because of the inevitable pain they wanted to avoid from being in society. You go through years in life and face many difficult, unpleasant, and traumatic experiences/events (big and small). When you face a mountain of pain, you either face it and risk falling apart, or ignore it and shut down. Shutting down means you disconnect from yourself AND others, and let the most important relationships around you suffer as well. Reality is that society and it's demands are unaccommodating of family, of love, of children, of leisure and intimate/honest human connection - in a world where production and profit are king. The abuse just doesn't become readily apparent until we have other priorities outside of work, ie family.Perhaps the dichotomy of an absent and silent father and an overbearing mother - both socially acceptable roles - has much to do with the despair developing in our youth - powerless to feel and express themselves and to cope with their feelings. Teaching our children to shut down, to sit helplessly in despair, until it becomes too much. That the pain we feel is inevitable and not worth overcoming. The movie also shows a sad portrayal of the parents' attempt at coping through escapism in entertainment (the father) and clinging to familiar habits/roles (mothering, working, fixing things), etc. How we try to fill the void.Perhaps the redeeming and uplifting part of this movie is how we all suffer when we shut down and escape, but opening up back to each other, despite the difficult and painful feelings we don't want to face - such as regret/bitterness over being in such rigid provider/caregiver roles - that this willingness toward raw intimacy, no matter how difficult or unpleasant, might just save us from the despair we don't want to face, by having love and nurturing and understanding from another - something not possible when you shut yourself off from others and prefer escapism and rigid roles over human connection. There are moments in the film where the estranged couple begin to talk about how they feel in general and show a care for the other, moments of letting go of the pain and embracing intimacy, and moments where they hit rock bottom and attack each other for their personal suffering and the suffering of their dead child, rather than bear any responsibility, even if just by communication and intimacy and love. In their case, the marriage ending is perhaps not so much about anything either have done wrong, but about the silent suffering each has gone through, and the fear of facing the pain that the other reminds them of, in the process of being productive and normal members of society. Keeping up with the Jonseses. Suffering which they have, up until this tragedy, learned to stuff and hide away and avoid facing.

Carrie Murray I will be honest, I saw this film listed on the movie channels and looked at the information and upon seeing it had Maria Bello and Michael Sheen in it, I wanted to watch it. The fact it was about parents dealing with the fallout of their sons college shooting pulled me in all the more.Having just watched it, I wanted to have a look what others made of it. There is a review that picks at how the film was shot, and the bleakness of colours/background, but for me that made the film better. I think sometimes films working on low budgets actually make it better, there is something to be said for going a little old school.The drab colours reflect what emotional turmoil the character's are going through, the fact that their world had literally plunged into unexpected and unwanted chaos when it wasn't perfect to begin with. We have two people who are already strangers to one another, there is an emotional and physical divide between them, and then this bomb hits their life and everything becomes isolated, bleak and numb. I think the directing, the photography and the actual film itself really encapsulates this feeling. Of course this is a highly sensitive issue, and there was a lot of talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin, in which Tilda Swinton delivers a wonderful performance. I think these are very separate films offering different perspectives. For Beautiful Boy, you don't have the son available to speak about his actions like the other film, you only get a couple of tiny snippets, the film doesn't focus on him or the shooting at the same time that it is entirely focused on them, but via the parents' reaction.I think this film stands out because there is no way to determine any wrong doing, and it feels that there really isn't any. People do demonise the parents after events like this, and here we have two people who are so completely stunned that they go through a series of emotions. They pull together, they turn on each other, they leave each other, they cry, laugh and shout. They have the double whammy of not only dealing with their child's death, but the fact that he had it in him to kill so many people.I don't think that Maria Bello and Michael Sheen deliver a well acted chemistry, I think they deliver a superb estranged numbness that would be evident in parents like them. It is a silent, subtle thing to act - and to also act out physicality in emotional ways, again - superb. They really turn the turmoil into a tangible assault for the watcher, you are compelled to follow them as they go through both individual and combined experiences and processes.I think if you are a person that enjoys films for what they are, films that don't need anything but good actors with a good storyline to be brilliant, you should watch this. It is a great step into looking behind the scenes of the families that have to go through these types of events, where they may not have been perfect parents but they were by no means bad ones either. Just everyday ordinary people that raised a son, that loved him, that worried about him from time to time, but had no idea that he was capable of murder.If offers no solid reason for his actions, I think that would detract from the film because though the storyline is about him, the film is about them. I also think you're meant to decide for yourself why things like that would happen, whether it is somebody in extreme emotional hurt that turns it outward or is innately bad or evil. Perhaps audiences are not ready to face that, there unfortunately is never a good time to examine this subject head on in this way, but Beautiful Boy offers the closest examination I've seen so far.

Kareninva This is a very thought provoking film. The performances by Michael Sheen and Maria Bello are moving. The chemistry between the two actors is very believable. The grieving process was honestly portrayed. The emotional journey makes you want to see some healing occur for this couple. I loved that the violence was not the focus of this film. This is a story about two people who lose their only son who clearly love him. In the end, whether the son committed a terrible act of violence or not, it's about picking up the pieces and trying to heal. It was wonderfully revealed how ugly and destructive hate is without being preachy. Tissues are needed to watch this one.

MLDinTN This is another movie about a couple whom has lost a child except the difference is it is told from the perspective of parents whose child killed other students before committing suicide.The movie starts out with the couple, Kate and Bill, planning a vacation with their son. We don't learn much about the son except he's in college and is a loner. The film jumps from there to them learning that he's killed other kids and himself. Now, they find themselves ostracized and must wonder did they raise him right. Was it there fault he turned out to be a killer? The two were already going through marital problems and of course this makes it worse. Kate clings to the hope that their son was good and it's not their fault while Bill begins to believe they raised him wrong. So most of the movie is just a lot of grief.FINAL VERDICT: It was OK, but slow moving and the subject matter is depressing. Maybe check it out on cable.