Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

JKlein9823 This is very much a downer of a movie. This is not an LGBT-themed movie for anyone expecting a good time. Both Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig give good performances, and the film has good production values. But ... this is a dreary, dull and plodding film. Daniel Craig took quite a risk portraying the self-destructive and amoral lover. From seeing him in this, one would never guess that he would be the next actor to portray James Bond in "Casino Royale" in 2006. An art house type of movie that is definitely not for everyone's taste.

secondtake Love is the Devil (1998)Francis Bacon (along with Lucien Freud) is one of a handful of British painters of note in the last century. That's not very many. And he's inflated here beyond his very idiosyncratic and repetitive works. They're powerful paintings, no question, and filled with psychological drama as well as painterly angst. They come from a time when representative and expressive paintings was out of favor, and so he's a rebel, too. But this isn't about Bacon the successful artist, and it doesn't address his work directly (the filmmakers couldn't get his cooperation so none of his work is shown). What it does do is show the man, as seen through actor Derek Jacobi, who plays a kind of deadpan and slightly boring character a little too well. We are, I think supposed to find the artist through his mentality, which is played out here by showing his social and sexual lives in all kinds of diversity.But there is another goal to the movie, to me: creating an interesting contemporary world of artists and social renegades. That is, the art world of London (etc.) in roughly the 1970s or 80s. The filmmaker John Maybury is a close associate of Derek Jarman, who was an openly gay filmmaker known for personally quirky films that dealt with issues that mattered to him, including his odd and intriguing "Caravaggio." Maybury, unlike Jarman, has no history of great indie films, and this one is just structurally awkward, and in filmmaking terms it seems a little novice, whatever the good intentions.So it might actually fail on several levels. One is the most damning--that it doesn't actually illuminate the paintings. I found the personal life and the heightened story distracting, even if it has a basis in truth (and is the driving line of the movie). It also doesn't quite work on the simple level of convincing acting, even though Jacobi looks enough like Bacon to make that fly, and his counterpart played by Daniel Craig is decent (we don't dare expect more from Craig, do we?). And then the movie wobbles visually, both with camera-work that is either clumsy or affected (or both) and with editing that seems clunky. That is, this is a movie almost "thrown together."Which I'm sure it was not. Maybury is trying to mainstream his life (unlike Jarman, who enjoyed being an Indie star), and his collaborations with the likes of Keira Knightley are revealing for both (one as a way of going serious, the other for a way of going commercial). I know there are those who accept and love a movie like this because of its flaws, which only enhance somehow it's integrity and its artistry. But that's only one way to look at it, and if you like offbeat movies that are also brilliant deep down, you might not find that here.

tommyterror "Love Is The Devil" stirs me to scope out James Bond now, Daniel Craig's an exciting choice I must say: content over celebrity.In response to the viewer who complained about the dislocated scenes that may or may not be relevant to the whole, the distorted lens... this is a film about a real painter. What is so brilliant about this work, is that they found a way to visually bring Bacon's paintings to life - they are exploring the man, the life, the love through the filter of his own paintings. Audacious attempt. Expertly Accomplished. One of the few films about painting that honestly pays true homage to the art form. This is not a suburban film about a painter - and who he was and what happened to him and what he did - rather... This Is A Painter's Film. There are graceful, indelible moments here that have scraped a little unused previously untouched part of my brain I did not know was there and scarred and these irrelevant vivid images, these haunting shots that only exist to soar and be seen without a net of linear context have affixed themselves into my memory to reappear at whim and always make me gasp. and clamor to savor, they slip away again. and the world, oh yea, here. That last amazing scene I'm trying so hard not to copy in my own creations, but - that - last - amazing - scene - seems - stronger - than - my - own - will -

paul2001sw-1 Francis Bacon was one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation, and Derek Jacobi is one of the finest actors of his, but even this combination can't make 'Love is the Devil', John Maybury's biopic of Bacon's life, especially interesting. The problem is that the film lacks a central point of sympathy: Bacon comes across as selfish and spoilt, while his hapless lover (the film's other central character) is too clearly out of his depth from the start, and never manages to become someone in whom one can invest any hopes. In terms of its overall feel, the film tries to reflect Bacon's artistic sensibility; in this it is partially successful, although the odd decision to fade to black between practically every scene grows tiresome. Unless you're a particular fan of Bacon, you can afford to miss this film: Stephen Frears' 'Prick Up Your Ears' (a biopic of Joe Orton) explores similar themes with more humanity.