Simply Perfect

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

I started watching this because Avril has a role in it and I love her voice. Turns out it's better to watch Over the hedge or interviews. She has like 1 minute screen time. The rest of the movie is unnecessary cheap VFX. Also for $35 million this is nothing. The movie has wolves but why? So crazy. Richard Gere is kind of irritating. I like Claire Danes but I had no interest in her role this time. Don't watch movies that makes you think when this will end, oh my god it's only half time? I'm already doing something else while watching the rest, hoping for more Avril. But she looks bad in this, too much black make-up, and she looks abused. Well, yeah, this film is about all that..

I finally caught "The Flock" on HBO. A taping at 4:20 am while I was asleep, true, but it's better watched at that hour, methinks. It was apparently only released to theaters in Japan and Turkey, from all reports, but North Americans really didn't miss much.It's professionally produced, pairs Claire Danes memorably with Richard Gere, and makes their interplay (standard retiring-burnout-and-protégé) entirely believable in most ways.The gore and corpses aren't beyond those in many modern horror movies, though the camera often lingers more than it should. The fetishes (and worse) of Gere's monitored ex-cons shouldn't shock anyone who's ever been in a triple-X shop.Danes's acting is superb, especially in pursuing an abductor's trail (standard police-procedural, though by non-cops) with Gere's brooding and effective Errol. What blew a hole in this, though, is that she was miscast in the first place.Even though one of Gere's well-worn "flock" is female, nearly all are intimidating men, and the role her character Allison is training to take up calls for more heft. Both physically and professionally.I didn't believe for one minute that Allison chose such a grueling job out of anything more than economic need, certainly not from any more personal calling. No hints are made as to her motivation, nor is anything mentioned of her personal life, beyond nosy behavior and a clumsy allusion by compulsive background-checker Errol.It's a miscasting on a par with what was done with Danes in "The Mod Squad," but unlike that idiocy of a plot-mangled remake, this gives Danes a quite strong setup — and much gore and many sad fetishes — to play against. If you accept that someone of her perception and refinement would ever take that job in the first place, that is.Turn to it on cable, but I wouldn't take the effort to even go to the video store or put it in a Netflix queue. It's worth one viewing.(Most of this review originally appeared on the IMDb board for Claire Danes, followed by considerable discussion.)

This is the first review I've wrote for IMDb so bare with me, but I caught this flick on HBO and was sure glad I watched it. Richard Gere is great in this film as the passionate agent/detective who bends the rules to get the job done. I think the story is great, and there's never a dull scene that slows the pace of the movie down. Some parts of the movie which have to do with demented sex addicts are pretty shocking, but if you've ever seen a crime film like Se7en, you'll be able to stomach the scenes just fine. So all in all, if you're looking for a good detective/suspense movie, ignore the low rating this movie got on IMDb and definitely watch it.

Claire Danes has an enthralling set of features. She has a large jaw and chin, a wide mouth, an aquiline nose that flares out at the bottom in such a way that, on the Frankfurt horizontal, it would resemble one of those perfect isosceles triangles we studied in high school geometry. She has bulky zygomatics, and the default setting for her eyelids is slightly wider than normal so that she always looks either slightly surprised or fully aghast. All of her generous features are framed here by her long blond hair, which gives her a certain more vulnerable character. I don't think her face would work as well under a brunette mop. It's hard to tell how much acting talent she has. She was quite good in "The Rainmaker" but no more than adequate here. I wish she could find more challenging roles, ones that would give her a chance to plumb her range as an actress. I think I'll bill her for this assessment of her career. Anybody have her number? In "The Flock," she's a newbie at the Department of Public Safety, an organization that is supposed to keep track of the location and activities of sex offenders. It's not a very promising set up. Every registered offender we see looks queer in one way or another -- maybe their hair is too long, or their expressions mournful, or they're fat and their eyeballs bulge, or their smiles are too self-satisfied and greasy.That's bad enough. Stereotypical casting. The guilty parties have committed crimes that range from brutal, sadistic acts to making advances to underaged girls -- which would put Jerry Lee Lewis and half the 20-year-old males in America in the slams.But then Richard Gere, gone gray but still looking okay, is the zealous agent who is fighting retirement and must train Claire Danes in the ways of the evildoers. He's suffering from the Dirty Harry Syndrome in that he takes his work too seriously and disregards some of the rules. (One of his peccadilloes is carrying an unauthorized pistol.) On top of that, all these child molesters and slashers seem to know and support one another, which contradicts existing research. Most of these guys are like alcoholics. They're ashamed of what they've done and have no more solidarity than schizophrenics, who have no sense of community at all.So it looks like we're going to get a typical rogue cop movie in which Gere solves a case by unorthodox means, tracks down the sneering villains, and dispatches them to save the spreadeagled victim. He'll probably have to turn over his badge and gun to an angry boss first.It turns out to be a little more complicated than that. Gere is no pragmatist. He's no Dirty Harry, just doing what needs to be done. He really IS nuts. Oh, he's right, in the end, but still comes on at times like a raving lunatic. And it's always interesting to see the perfectly normal but constantly strutting Richard Gere taking a crack at being a maniac.The photography is great. The set design is generic slasher. The plot is, at times, confusing and overall not the film's strong suit. I couldn't exactly follow the reasoning behind every incident.The worst, the most demeaning, of the film's properties, though, is the relish with which it depicts torture. The principal villains team up to torture a young woman to death after treating her unspeakably for days. She's tied to a bed, cut and bruised, and there are indications that she's been made to eat feces. When the time arrives for the final orgasmic act, one of the sadists screams, "Get the BIG knife!" (The other picks up a meat cleaver.) It's a thought-provoking movie. The thought it provokes is, "What kind of people are we turning into?" Torture can be done with taste, for want of a better word, as in "Seven." But in "Seven," absolutely none of it was shown on the screen. Here we see rotting cadavers, cutting of flesh, screaming young girls, photos of chopped-off limbs.Who is this film aimed at? That is, who is the audience? Presumably people who enjoy seeing agonizing pain inflicted on others. Is that really who we are? Is that who we want to be?