Before Night Falls
Andrea Di Stefano, Hector Babenco, Javier Bardem
This is the story of Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas. Raised in the Oriente Province of Cuba in the 1940s, Arenas began his life-long love of the sea and water. Leaving home as a young adolesc...( read more
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DVD Released: May 22, 2001
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Top Flixster Reviews
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February 17, 2009Quite a difficult one to rate, as the acting was superb, whilst the film was long and drawn out. Great narration throughout by Javier Bardem, which worked well and he, as always was very impressive.
The story of Reinaldo Arenas? life is certainly an interesting one, but the f... ...( read more ) -
November 16, 2008Poetry can be interesting and poetry can be poetry. This movie is poetry. It movies very slooooowly and the deaths are very peaceful but it has a purpose: It expresses the rights of the gay man. Other than Bardem's performance and Schnabel's directing I don't think this movie was... ...( read more )
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September 30, 2008an interesting but fairly run-of-the-mill biopic. it seems to only scrape the surface of the life of reinaldo's life. the cameos from depp and penn are almost laughable.
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May 31, 2008Glimpses of cinematographic brilliance in the opening sequences, a la Terrence Mallick, do not prevent the film from meandering into mediocrity in the 2nd and 3rd acts. Also be warned that certain scenes in the film are reminiscent of Schnabel's most recent ("Diving Bell") film i... ...( read more )
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May 30, 2008The kind of film you watch to remember why Bardem is a great actor. Also, probably the last good film that Johnny Depp made.
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June 20, 2009I liked this so much that I read every book by Arenas in English available... yes, every one of them. Amazing performance by Javier Bardem and crazy cameo by Johnny Depp!
Critic Reviews
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Before Nig...
reviews at RottenTomatoes.com
June 4, 2001
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
February 2, 2001
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Arenas is not presented as a cliche, as the heroic gay artist crushed by totalitarian straightness, but as a man who might have been approximately as unhappy no matter where he was born. full review
Comments
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December 12, 2006Getting Johnny Depp to play Bon Bon was an inspired choice! He is hilarious in that very small role - and worryingly he was a convincing lady too! Well, once he'd had a shave anyway Haha
It's a good movie with a meaningful underlying message. But I couldn't really get into to it.
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