Featured Audience Ratings

• Michael S

  
  With Atom Egoyan, you can almost always expect a challenging film accompanied by realistic characters and dialogue, some heavy and complex themes, and no easy answers or payoff. "Adoration" is no exception. This is a multifaceted character study with a (slightly convoluted)… More
  With Atom Egoyan, you can almost always expect a challenging film accompanied by realistic characters and dialogue, some heavy and complex themes, and no easy answers or payoff. "Adoration" is no exception. This is a multifaceted character study with a (slightly convoluted) web of a plot that goes in unpredictable directions along with it's unpredictable characters. It is definitely a good film, but it's intentionally abstract narrative was frustrating at times and it lacked the memorable characters, conversations, and overall cohesion of some of Egoyan's other (superior) films. Still, a good film that built itself up to a strong finish.

• ♥˩ƳИИ &

  
  Cast: Devon Bostick, Scott Speedman, Arsinée Khanjian, Rachel Blanchard, Noam Jenkins, Kenneth Welsh, Aaron Poole, Katie Boland, Duane Murray Director: Atom Egoyan Summary: Assigned to translate a terrorism-related news story for his French class, teen Simon (Devon Bostick)… More
  Cast: Devon Bostick, Scott Speedman, Arsinée Khanjian, Rachel Blanchard, Noam Jenkins, Kenneth Welsh, Aaron Poole, Katie Boland, Duane Murray Director: Atom Egoyan Summary: Assigned to translate a terrorism-related news story for his French class, teen Simon (Devon Bostick) weaves personal details into his tale, which soon leaves the Internet swirling with rumors that Simon's dead father was an actual terrorist. Acclaimed auteur Atom Egoyan's haunting and lyrical drama -- cleverly structured as a mystery -- also stars Scott Speedman as Simon's caretaker uncle and Arsinée Khanjian as Simon's persistent teacher. My Thoughts: "The story is a dialogue driven film with discussions surrounding terrorism, religion and prejudice. This boy Simon, has, with some help from his french teacher, fabricated a story into making his father out to be a terrorist. It was suppose to be a french assignment about putting the story into your own words as the teacher is reading it aloud. SImon writes it as the third person, as if he was apart of it. His french teacher encourages him to go further with it as a drama piece and to not reveal that it is all fabricated. But as Simon continues telling the story, his own story gets tangled within it and the lines of truth and lies become a bit blurred. Also the french teacher has her own secret and reasons for having him explore this lie/story, but you will have to watch the film to figure it out. The whole film is completely absorbing. It can also be confusing at times with the flashbacks. But definitely worth the rental."

• paul s

  
  Adoration is a film written and directed by Atom Egoyan, which of course means that conventional story telling is not in the forcast. Primarily dealing with a high school student, his French (and drama) teacher, his uncle and his grandfather, the film delves into several topics,… More
  Adoration is a film written and directed by Atom Egoyan, which of course means that conventional story telling is not in the forcast. Primarily dealing with a high school student, his French (and drama) teacher, his uncle and his grandfather, the film delves into several topics, including race discrimination, religion and religious discrimination, and terrorism. With Egoyan you get a plot line that likes to double back on itself, showing the interconnectivity of people and their reactions. This often makes for a disjointed narrative, and in the case of this film, gives a very surreal tone, as if the time and place of the story are inconsequential - so the foundation on which most films are built is, in this case, a bed of quicksand, shifting in time and for me, never quite giving a feel for where in the world this story was taking place (which, given its subplots, should matter a great deal). Adding further to the surreal tone, and putting distance between the film and the viewer are some incongruities involving money. The uncle and his ward, the student, are suffering some financial difficulties, and yet the student has tons of expensive toys in his room (computers, cameras, electric guitar and amp, etc). Along the same lines, the teacher at some point loses her job, and yet is throwing cash around like she has some kind of trust fund. All of which gives the viewer the feeling that the director was saddled with a script that should have been thought through a bit more - but since Egoyan wrote the script himself, he only has himself to blame for the cardboard feel of the characters and the clumsy introductions to obvious set pieces (where with a good script and direction, these things become seamless). There are some inventive touches on display here, specifically the partial telling of the story through the student's video camera, and the use of an internet chat room to give Egoyan the opportunity to riff about terrorism and the net itself. I found it interesting that Egoyan had the more impassioned dialogue coming from the chat room where people were venting their feelings concerning an abstract topic - as if the caring about theoretical topics was more real than what was going on outside in the real world. I wanted to feel a certain pity for the student's uncle, who ended up being the student's ward, but the acting was very uneven and the script had so many set pieces that weren't fully realized that the only time I really felt for him was when some snooty woman commented that he was "only a tow truck driver"; as if his occupation defined who he was as a person. I also wanted to feel something towards the student, but again, the story line kept getting in the way, as if Egoyan had so many plates spinning on all these varied topics that the characters, instead of being breathing beings were reduced to mouthpieces for the topics, leaving the last third of the film, where truths are revealed and where emotion was supposed to run high, feeling flat and somewhat trite. The final shot, concerning the scroll of a violin was supposed to hold some great emotional weight, but seemed simply a contrivance. Further, the film holds a twist of sorts, (more of a surprise revelation), which was presented as meekly as the supporting argument for the twist's plausibility. I admire the writer/director attempting to say something relevent and attempting to say it in a non-formula way, but the end result is that the film fails for those same reasons.

• Lanning :

  
  It doesn't happen very often, but I must sadly add this to my Walter-inspired Movies I Can't Watch All the Way Through list. Borating painful. Like hip replacement surgery -- although I did go through that all the way. Twice. <p> Hey, Roger Ebert, aloha! I know… More
  It doesn't happen very often, but I must sadly add this to my Walter-inspired Movies I Can't Watch All the Way Through list. Borating painful. Like hip replacement surgery -- although I did go through that all the way. Twice. <p> Hey, Roger Ebert, aloha! I know you're not a writer, so I got a little piece of insight for you. The reason why it appears to be such a tangled web is because the writing sucks. The overall script writing is as lousy as the kid's precious composition writing. It's a meta thing. And don't even get me started on the the acting and the directing. Borat me. <p> Don't mention it, Roger. Glad to help you out.

• Drew S

  
  Adoration is a movie bizarrely at odds with itself. Its attempts to be an accessible thriller/mystery don't necessarily run contrary to the surprising thematic richness that Atom Egoyan has peppered throughout the film, but the man has a tin ear for dialogue. More often than not,… More
  Adoration is a movie bizarrely at odds with itself. Its attempts to be an accessible thriller/mystery don't necessarily run contrary to the surprising thematic richness that Atom Egoyan has peppered throughout the film, but the man has a tin ear for dialogue. More often than not, characters feel like ciphers or mouthpieces; the most immediate offender is the loan officer that Scott Speedman talks to toward the beginning of the film, who serves as an incomprehensibly knowledgeable plot dump and then totally vanishes. Had all of this narrative flabbiness been excised from the tale (by simplifying the plot or removing some of the characters), Adoration would have been stronger for it. The movie is by all means watchable, and never truly bad, but its greatest crime is that it's overextended. Adoration first assumes the thesis that overanalyzation causes us to lose sight of the true issues at hand, which it illuminates quite elegantly with a chatroom scene...and then another...and then another. Though it does well in showing the dramatic scope that Simon's lie has taken, and the scenes are always engaging to watch if only to hear a new twisted viewpoint, they ultimately start to feel unnecessary to a theme we already understand. The movie is always intelligent, but it isn't economical. Again, those mouthpiece characters don't really seem to cut down on the verbosity; and whether by nature of the script or the actors themselves, no one can really seem to break through the artificiality of the humans constructed here. Arsinee Khanjian comes close, but her character has obviously received the most attention, and instead of seeming like a metaphorical viewpoint she's really just insane. Despite these problems, the film remains worth watching, if only because it constantly holds your attention - the plot at its core is enthralling and I found myself curious as to where it would go next. Adoration will always be remembered as a mismatch of two separate parts, however, a dissonant but still fascinating work.

• Eric B

  
  Every time I see an Atom Egoyan film, I wonder if I could endure a conversation with him without putting my head through a wall. I know I couldn't endure one with his wife. Would he wait a dramatic beat before responding to anything I said? Would he never laugh or smile without… More
  Every time I see an Atom Egoyan film, I wonder if I could endure a conversation with him without putting my head through a wall. I know I couldn't endure one with his wife. Would he wait a dramatic beat before responding to anything I said? Would he never laugh or smile without an undercurrent of misery or woozy introspection? Would ghastly mood music incessantly trickle in the background? I finished watching "Adoration" rather than bailing out after an hour, and feel quite proud of this. I'm giving it 2.5 stars because I recognize the script's craftsmanship, but enjoyed it far less than that rating suggests. Maybe Egoyan needs to just write screenplays, and let someone else cast and direct them.

• Walter M

  
  In "Adoration," Sabine(Arsinee Khanjian) gives an assignment in her French class to translate an article about Israeli security stopping a would-be suicide bomber. One of her students, Simon(Devon Bostick), claims that this was in fact his pregnant mother(Rachel Blanchard)… More
  In "Adoration," Sabine(Arsinee Khanjian) gives an assignment in her French class to translate an article about Israeli security stopping a would-be suicide bomber. One of her students, Simon(Devon Bostick), claims that this was in fact his pregnant mother(Rachel Blanchard) who was an unwitting conspirator with his father(Noam Jenkins). In the present day, Simon lives with his uncle Tom(Scott Speedman) who moved his nephew back to Toronto where he works as a tow truck driver to keep him away from his grandfather(Kenneth Welsh). A wasted opportunity with limited acting, "Adoration" is a movie written, directed and produced by Atom Egoyan that begins provocatively enough in exploring the relationship between an unbalanced woman and a damaged teenager as their collaboration takes on a life of its own. But then the movie skips ahead to a mindboggingly silly sequence that simultaneously seeks to bring closure and make a loudly unnecessary pronouncement about tolerance with a revelation about Sabine that only serves to makes her even creepier. Maybe this would have succeeded if reworked as a multimedia experience.

• Jeff T

  
  When terrific filmmakers misfire, they tend to do it hugely. Atom Egoyan is a terrific filmmaker, and this is a sensationally enormous misfire. Awful almost on a scene-by-scene basis, preposterous, overly convoluted, inexplicably and pretentiously political and just plain… More
  When terrific filmmakers misfire, they tend to do it hugely. Atom Egoyan is a terrific filmmaker, and this is a sensationally enormous misfire. Awful almost on a scene-by-scene basis, preposterous, overly convoluted, inexplicably and pretentiously political and just plain ridiculous, this is a well-meaning mess from beginning to end. Oh lordy.

• Brian R

  
  Atom Egoyan goes back to his filmmaking trademarks in "Adoration" The story of a high school French teacher reads to her class a report of a terrorist who planted a bomb in the airline luggage of his pregnant girlfriend. The teacher's student named Simon(Devon Bostick)… More
  Atom Egoyan goes back to his filmmaking trademarks in "Adoration" The story of a high school French teacher reads to her class a report of a terrorist who planted a bomb in the airline luggage of his pregnant girlfriend. The teacher's student named Simon(Devon Bostick) imagines the story as his own parents story. Sabine(Arsinee Khanjian) asks Simon to develop the story as a drama exercise, to read it to the class, and for dramatic effect to pretend that it really happened. He does so which draws in consequences... In his presentation to the class, Simon says that he is the unborn child, his mother was the innocent being led to her demise, and his father was the killer out to murder 400 innocent people to promote a cause. The only problem with the story is that it is not true. The incident never happened. The film exposes the ease with which people are willing to accept what they are told without question and how modern technology has become a useful tool for those eager to disseminate falsehood. According to the director, the film is "about people dealing with absences. He (Simon) imagines having a father who is a demon; he wants to go as far as possible into what that might mean." Adoration begins with an indelible image - a young woman standing at the end of a pier overlooking a river playing the violin while her husband and young son watch in awe. Moving forward and backward in time with great ease, the film slowly constructs the events which have led to Simon's school confessional. The key player is Simon's French teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) whose own family was killed in Lebanon by a terrorist attack. Sabine reads an article to the class about an incident that occurred in 1986 in which a Jordanian man, Nezar Hindawi, sent his pregnant Irish girlfriend on an El Al flight with a bomb in her handbag, of which she had no knowledge until it was discovered by Israeli airport security. Heavily influenced by his bigoted grandfather Morris (Kenneth Walsh) to believe that his father intentionally caused his mother's death in a car crash, the vulnerable Simon constructs a parallel between the article read by his French teacher and the death of his parents. On his own, Simon posts his fake story on the Internet and has to deal with emotional responses from holocaust victims, holocaust deniers, students, and professors talking about terrorism, martyrdom, and heroism. It is a discussion that often sinks to the level of victimization as portrayed by veteran actor Maury Chaykin who blames the bogus airplane incident for "ruining" his life. Simon's uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman), who raised the boy after his parents' death, acts as a mediator between his nephew and the teacher who encourages Simon to tell his fake story in the school auditorium. Tom is a tow truck operator with a short fuse who harbors a deep resentment against his father for the way he was treated as a child and his encounters with Sabine contain some of the film's most intense moments. Aided by a tenderly evocative violin-prominent soundtrack by Mychael Danna, Adoration is an intelligent and imaginative study of family conflict and reconciliation that serves as a compelling probe into human behavior and the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction. Though it contains a great deal of ambiguity and character motivations tend to be somewhat mystifying, Adoration is a very involving film with performances that are uniformly excellent, particularly Arsinee Khanjian as the emotionally-damaged teacher and Speedman and Bostock who provide enough tension to keep us riveted throughout. Egoyan who is known to use the non-linear approach in past movies(Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) he does so here but this time the effect can be a little confusing. Sometimes I had to double back just to make sure I got the tangled premise, but that isn't to say "Adoration" is a bad picture. Egoyan took me on for a ride and I felt connected with the characters since they suffer from alienation and isolation. The cast does a wonderful job, the visuals is spectacular, and once again it's good to see Egoyan going back to his filmmaking roots.

Read all 9 featured audience ratings