Mister Lonely Reviews and Ratings


  • jezzstjezz
    October 18, 2009
    jezzstjezz
    Not as good as I thought it would be, but definitely a lot weirder than I expected.

    Some pretty nice messages along the movie and also unthinkable scenes, but that's pretty much it.
  • officiallyme
    October 18, 2009
    officiallyme
    i really wanna see this movie :)
  • onomatopee
    October 2, 2009
    onomatopee
    Harmony Korine made another weird film but I still think it's pretty mainstream compared to Gummo for instance. It seems that people didn't really enjoy it but I had a great kick out of it. The cast is awesome, the costumes are superb and the whole story is just fascinating.
  • 5oclockcoffee
    September 24, 2009
    5oclockcoffee
    Add a review (optional)...
  • SadisticMinister
    September 14, 2009
    SadisticMinister
    Diego Luna..

    It was odd. And nice.
    But it never really grips you.. you know what I mean?

    I'm starting to rellay like Samantha Morton.
  • oldkentuckyshark
    August 18, 2009
    oldkentuckyshark
    Who else but Harmony could think up images like Buckwheat giving the Pope a bath in the middle of a field, Abe Lincoln and The Three Stooges shooting sheep, or nuns jumping out of planes on BMX bikes? You even get Werner Herzog playing a priest. What more could you ask for?
  • 339z
    August 7, 2009
    339z
    wow what a movie.,....i have just seen this movie 4 the 1st time n think that this is a good movie 2 watch.....its got a good cast of actors/actressess throughout this movie....i think that anita pallenberg, denis lavant, diego luna, samantha morton, melita morgan, james fox, wer...( read more)mer herzog play good roles/parts throughout this movie....i think that the director of this drama/love/romance movie had done a great job of directing this movie because you never know what 2 expect throughout this movie....its a really good movie 2 watch n its a enjoyable movie
  • FreakyLauRa
    July 18, 2009
    FreakyLauRa
    This movie is depressing, but not in a good way. It sure looks good, and has a lot of character with great potential, but nothing great ever comes out of them.
  • badtzmemm
    July 11, 2009
    badtzmemm
    WTF with this film?? okay i was waiting for the most indie type film of all, and is not all like that.. what really freaked me out was the unanticipated ending.. it was a strange way to end the story.
  • bbliumis
    July 8, 2009
    bbliumis
    Add a review (optional)...
  • kurosawian
    July 5, 2009
    kurosawian
    In years to come I'm sure there will be many more representations of Jackson impersonators, however it looks as if Korine was once again ahead of the curve. Harmony's third feature is as bizarre and original as his first two. The imagery is completely arresting, the music utterly...( read more) charming and the actors expertly cast. It's both cinematic and ambiguous, immediately calling for a second viewing. In many respects, this is Korine's most emotionally moving and funny film. I'd say his best. By the end, what has been learned? To stop trying to be someone special and just be who you are? Herzog and the nuns make a great Greek chorus that perhaps parallels the fantasy lives of our main characters. Shall we test God? The answer appears tragic; however unlike Marilyn, our "Michael Jackson" got out just in time.
  • catpeople22
    June 22, 2009
    catpeople22
    Diego Luna is so Pretty as Michael Jackson
  • mistershinobi
    June 4, 2009
    mistershinobi
    If you're a movie (picture yourself as a movie), and you're slow-paced and quiet (picture everybody yawning), then I'll definitely love you to death (picture me loving you, with a smile on my face) and I won't, I repeat, I won't be bored.

    I tried really hard to lov...( read more)e this movie. I really did. But the plot (MJ impersonator lives in a comune with other impersonators) was so extraordinary on paper and the beauty of some scenes was so amazing, that I hate Harmony Korine for ruining the precious sack of gold he had in his hands and turning it into one of the least interesting films I've ever seen. Nothing, I insist, nothing that happened on the screen captured my heart, not even for a single second. It's a shame because Diego Luna actually manages to show depth and range as he has never showed before and Samantha Morton feels uncomfortable in what could've been her best performance yet but, of course, it wasn't.

    Just like Michel Gondry without Charlie Kaufman, I feel that Harmony Korine without Larry Clark is all over the place, sometimes genius, sometimes dumb. The boy needs guidance and focus... and some actual character development. To make your lead role disappear for so much time as if it wasn't important and then trying to shove it down our throats before the ending is just too rookie to be true.

    It's only the second time in my life that I find myself editing a movie inside my head while I'm watching it and thinking: "Damn... it could've been so much better."

    And, do we really need to discuss the nuns? Herzog: stay behind the camera.
  • romy861
    April 3, 2009
    romy861
    I was very divided on this one. Some of it I loved and thought it was very beautifully framed. Other bits, like the "flying" nuns, I couldn't stand, and thought it was pointless to the film and ruined it. I liked what it had to say about identity and alienation, but I'm not su...( read more)re it was entirely successful getting it across. Samantha Morton was great as "Marilyn", and the guy who plays "Michael Jackson" also great, but some of the other characters were such caricatures, (which I guess is a given in a film about impersonators, but still...), as to be unlikable and irritating.
  • onidemon
    April 3, 2009
    onidemon
    well, okay. time has passed, and i can say it's not really the greatest movie ever made. i can say, however, that it is absolutely, incontrovertibly, a very very good movie. and that i like it a lot. and everything about it is good.
  • sheri
    March 24, 2009
    sheri
    So weird but I liked it. I want to live with these celebrity impersonators. Not sure what nun scenes were about.
  • aLeLie
    February 17, 2009
    aLeLie
    dera world, dear world and everyone in it ...
  • izzynomad
    January 11, 2009
    izzynomad
    For the first half hour I thought this movie was going to be great, but unfortunately it just went downhill and didn't pick up again. At some point it lost its charming irony and became a weird attempt at pretentious artsy film, a bit like "Palindromes". Maybe I just didn't get i...( read more)t. I loved the bit with the nuns though. that could have been taken out and made into an amazing short film.
  • EarthlyAlien
    January 8, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    "I don't know if you know what it is like to want to be someone else, to not want to look like you look, to hate your own face and to go completely unnoticed. I have always wanted to be someone else. I have never felt comfortable the way I am. All I want is to be better than m...( read more)yself, to become less ordinary and to find some purpose in this world. It is easier to see things in others, to see things you admire and then try and become that. To own a different face, to dance a different dance, and sing a different song. It is out there waiting for us, inviting us to change. It is time to become who we are not. To change our face and become who we want to be. I think the world is a better place that way."

    Photobucket

    Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely is one of the strangest (in a quiet, occasionally compelling way) films I've ever seen. It's also a bit frustrating because it could have been great. It starts out with a great idea: a Michael Jackson impersonator meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator in the streets of Paris who takes him to a remote commune for celebrity impersonators in Scotland, where she lives with her husband Charlie Chaplin and daughter Shirley Temple, along with the Pope, the Queen of England, James Dean, Madonna, the Three Stooge and Abraham Lincoln.

    Once Jackson settles into this would-be paradise for people who aren't quite what they seem, things start to go a bit awry. Jealousies lurk beneath the surface and start to bubble over; the commune's sheep population gets sick and has to be taken down; and tensions rise. The group pulls together a celebrity impersonator variety show that they hope will attract crowds from far and wide to see and appreciate what they do, but in that effort, too, nothing comes out quite the way they'd hoped.

    Interspersed with the impersonator storyline, we have an odd little side story involving a priest (Werner Herzog) and some nuns, who seem to be running some sort of aid operation. I kept waiting for that bit to converge somehow with the whole celeb impersonator bit, but it never happened. I suppose that loosely, there might be some underlying statement being made about the loss of personal identity - the impersonators give up who they really are to try to become the celebs they're pretending to be, while the nuns, garbed in blue burqua-esque nun-frocks that conceal all but their faces, have an oblique sameness that obliterates personal identity as well. Beyond that, though, there didn't seem to be much tying the two stories together.

    The idea of a group of celebrity impersonators living together on a commune is the kind that makes you go "why didn't I ever think of that?," with so much potential to be really great, which makes the missteps along the way are all the more frustrating. Korine takes this interesting core of an idea and then spends the next 108 minutes meandering through the storyline, taking his time getting around to (very loosely) reaching a conclusion. The film is shot by young Danish cinematographer Marcel Zyskind (Michael Winterbottom's frequent DP), and his work here is fine. There are plenty of lovely wide shots throughout the film, though occasionally the lighting is a bit too harsh. The opening shot of the film, though, with Michael riding a tiny motorbike with a stuffed monkey attached to it, is breathtaking.

    Diego Luna gives a solid enough performance as Michael; I wouldn't have thought of him as a "Michael Jackson type" based on his previous work, but he's quite believable in assuming the Jackson persona; in an early scene where he's practising his dance moves at home before going out to work, there's some subtle acting going on beneath the dancing that's quite nice. He's really at his best later in the film, when things fall apart and you can see more of the real person underneath coming out from beneath the persona.

    The great Samantha Morton turns in a solid performance, too, as Monroe, committing her all to the role of a woman who, like the real Marilyn, is beautiful on the surface, but full of pain and uncertainty underneath. These two largely carry the film, though there is a particularly funny moment with the Pope in bed with Queen Elizabeth that was pretty hilarious. French actor Denis Lavant is pretty good too, as Chaplin. Korine has his own unique brand as a filmmaker, and I'd certainly rather see a filmmaker take chances than do the same-old, same-old, but in the places where the ideas don't seem to come together, it falls into feeling more self-indulgent than artistic. And yet, in spite of all that, of all the films I've seen in my lifetime, this is one I keep thinking about and trying to figure out, so I suppose that, in all fairness, I have to say that on some level the film worked for me, frustrated though I felt with it at times.

    The idea of people giving up their identities, either as nuns or impersonators, intrigues me with how it mirrors the hiding people do in their everyday lives. We don't all dress up like Michael Jackson or Marilyn Monroe, or shroud ourselves beneath a nun's garment, but we do wear different faces and personalities for different situations, becoming one person on the job, another at home with the people we love, another when we're at a cocktail party around people we don't know.

    Is Korine making some broader statement about self-identity and the ways in which we all bury ourselves beneath invented identities? I'm not sure if that's exactly what he was going for with Mister Lonely, but that's at least part of what I took out of it, which I suppose makes it a valid take for me. After all, art is a merging of both the perception the artist brings to the work and the perception the viewer takes into looking at it. Mister Lonely is the kind of film you have to work hard to get something out of, but, like the celebrity impersonators at the heart of the film, there's more to it than what you see on the surface. And maybe that's the whole point, after all.
  • jluce1
    January 1, 2009
    jluce1
    Harmony Korine weirdness. great fun, great pathos, great message.
  • StaisilD
    December 30, 2008
    StaisilD
    Michael Jackson: "I don't know if you know what it is like to want to be someone else, to not want to look like you look, to hate your own face and to go completely unnoticed. I have always wanted to be someone else. I have never felt comfortable the way I am. All I want is to be...( read more) better than myself, to become less ordinary and to find some purpose in this world. It is easier to see things in others, to see things you admire and then try and become that. To own a different face, to dance a different dance, and sing a different song. It is out there waiting for us, inviting us to change. It is time to become who we are not. To change our face and become who we want to be. I think the world is a better place that way."


    A lonely Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) is not having a lot of success. He goes out into the town square, does all of his moves, and waits for people to throw quarters into his bucket. They rarely do. Michael is ready for a change. One day, he meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton). Marilyn invites Michael to come away with her to a very special place, a place where only impersonators can live. The residents of this place include Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant), The Pope (James Fox), Abraham Lincoln (Richard Strange), Sammy Davis Jr. (Jason Pennycooke), James Dean (Joseph Morgan), Little Red Riding Hood (Rachel Korine), Madonna (Melita Morgan), Buckwheat (Michael-Joel Stuart), Shirley Temple (Esme Creed-Miles), and others. Michael reluctantly agrees to go along with Marilyn, and soon finds himself in a strange and intoxicating new world. Meanwhile, somewhere in South America, something very strange has happened. A priest (Werner Herzog) and a group of nuns were flying over starving villages, dropping bags of rice down on them from the sky. Unfortunately, one of the nuns accidentally fell out of the plane during the trip. Rather than falling to her death, the nun prayed that she would have the ability to fly, and she was able to do so. Now she is attempting to convince the other nuns that they can fly, and the priest is hoping that this miracle will give him a chance to drink beer with the Pope. The performances are acceptable under the circumstances, with most of the actors hanging on for dear life as the picture moves from comedy to forbidding drama to a full-out musical with breakneck speed. Morton and Luna are perhaps the most compelling, being the only two cast members to achieve a rounded presentation of solitude. The pleasure of Korine's films is in their free-form narrative style, but once we're on the island, Mister Lonely gets stuck and begins to feel repetitive. "Mister Lonely" stays faithful to the filmmaker's taste for the fringe, only now the objects of social isolation are endearing souls who have separated themselves from the world to live in a communal fantasyland where ridicule is unable to plague their daily existence.
  • nkkigrrl28
    December 29, 2008
    nkkigrrl28
    Haunting, dreamy, luscious, visually spell-blinding, beautiful, and yet also morbid and dark and tragic. There is so much about this film that I like, but the later bleakness is so unpleasant and hard to shake off. Diego Luna and Samantha Morton's characters had a painful grip on...( read more) my heart: such vulnerable, fragile, and absurdly beautiful characters.
  • divinetrash
    December 11, 2008
    divinetrash
    It's very hard to say something about this movie because it lacks sufficient depth, insight and development, not to mention knowing what it wants to be and say, yet at the same time every fragment of it is so original and beautiful. I guess the best way to enjoy it, if there is a...( read more)ny, is to admire each scene individually and try not to look at it as a whole.
  • juanchi119
    December 7, 2008
    juanchi119
    One of my favorite movies of this year. Weird but genius! Brilliant movie, very original, refreshing and well made! LOVE this movie. Korine is a great director and Werner Herzog is brilliant too. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
  • renedavid
    November 27, 2008
    renedavid
    Another unique film by korine!
  • Nordica
    October 30, 2008
    Nordica
    Fascinating but not fairly entertaining, a interesting look on different kinds of weird people but lacks a point to it all.
  • fullofsakuraflowers
    October 28, 2008
    fullofsakuraflowers
    Samantha Morton in Marilyn Monroe, The Pope ("the Pope stinks!, the Pope stinks!"), little red riding hood, a Shirley Temple which is REALLY a cuteness attack, flying nuns, sheeps, Mister Lonely, a lovely lovely soundtrack and FUCKING Abraham Lincoln, fuck!
    (but someone please ex...( read more)plain the nuns connection!?!)
  • bort16
    October 23, 2008
    bort16
    Well, it's been 8 years since Harmony Korine made a film. The last time we saw him was in Julien Donkey-Boy, before that Gummo. Both those movies passed through eyes of which the majority had no understanding. Roger Ebert, in his review of Julien Donkey Boy, referred to Korine as...( read more) on a list with such names as Herzog, Cassevetes, Tarkovsky, Brakhage, Godard, etc. The reason: because he smashed the boundaries of how a conventional filmmaker would have told such tales. He also pointed out the near death of the underground film scene. There once was a time when if you were a film buff, you sought out films like these, and sat willfully in old one screen cinemas. And you were not alone: It's hard to believe now, but yes people lined up around street corners to see the Godard's or Tarkovsky's. Now those lineups are reserved for the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean and Spiderman.
    That kind of film buff is now a rare breed. We exist, and gleefully buy our tickets and run to the theatres, but we're no longer shoulder to shoulder or lined up around the corner. Take as an anecdote a few trips made to my local film festival. I saw a Bela Tarr film, and in my idealism rushed to get there early so i could get a seat. Though later I realized that the auditorium was only maybe half full, at best, in one of the smallest auditoriums in the city. When I first saw Mister Lonely, it was of course the same.

    But I digress. The point? Mister Lonely, like Korine's two previous directorial outings, dare to be different, dare to be bold, and so are destined to go unappreciated. Even Ebert, who praised Julien Donkey-Boy only gave the film 2 stars - though he did wish he could give a 2 star positive review. The problem with making a film like Mister Lonely is that its so odd that everyone gets caught up on the oddity. A common gripe: "sure its original, but what's the point?"

    Mister Lonely, written by Korine and his brother Avi, sets its sights on the world of celebrity impersonators. Mainly are Michael Jackson (Luna) and Marilyn Monroe (Morton). He meets her while working a bizarre gig at an old folks home, as they sit half amused, half catatonic. She invites him back to her commune in the highlands of Scotland, inhabited by their kind: Abe Lincoln, James Dean, Madonna, the Queen, the Pope, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Stooges, and Charlie Chaplin and Shirley Temple, who are her husband and daughter, respectively of course.
    They live in their own world. The only thing that ties them to the real world is a flock of sheep.
    To them, their world seems as perfect as they want it to be, for they are the truest souls of all as they cloak themselves in the lives and manners of others. Or so that is their claim. To showcase their talents and philosophy, they build a theatre where they will put on shows for themselves, and the townsfolk.
    Although their is light heartedness and tender sweetness, something else seems to be sinister. Charlie Chaplin is an egomaniac, and emotionally abusive towards his wife, Marylin Monroe. To everyone else he is courteous and, well, Chaplin-esque. She tells him that sometimes he looks more like Hitler than Chaplin.
    Though the film retains its tenderness, its big shift comes with the slaughter of sheep. They are infected, and even the living must be killed. All gather round as Larry, Curly and Moe pull the triggers of double barrel shotguns. In a way, their fantasy reality is not so much shattered, but breached.

    Punctuating this is a story about flying nuns, who believe that they can jump from the priests plane (played with absurd hilarity by Werner Herzog himself) and land safely on the ground below.
    Although Korine has always found the beauty in his own chaos, Mister Lonely is a much more aesthetic film than his others. It has a certain level of visual prestige that few others would even strive to. Many images are quite simply breathtaking. The sequences of Nuns, accentuated in their sky blue robes against the sky blue skies are some of my favorite in any film.
    And, yes, there is a point. What is it? I think I know, though I'm positive its up to some personal interpretation. And for that matter, a review is not the proper place for such a discussion. This much can be said though, its poignant, touching, and genuinely heartbreaking and life affirming at once.
    Films like this exist to be based solely upon their own merit. Even though Mister Lonely has some thematic similarities to, say, Sweet Movie (which Korine has said was an influence on his career), it is still something all together unique.
    The problem with films like Mister Lonely, though, is that they must be taken totally literally or not at all, or maybe both at the same time. That is a lot to ask of an audience, especially now. But, I ask, is that not the point of good filmmaking?
  • Soundsofmadness
    October 17, 2008
    Soundsofmadness
    No thankyou - Not interested
  • johnnystrangelove
    September 24, 2008
    johnnystrangelove
    Bizarro até dizer chega ... mas é uma experiencia muito foda ...
  • MandyDarko
    September 14, 2008
    MandyDarko
    El principio de la pelicula es muy prometedor (me enamoré de la primera escena, la veia una y otra vez)... lo malo es que luego decae. Hay muchas partes inconexas, especialmente las de las monjas voladoras que jamás llegué a entender que hacian en la pelicula. El sentimiento gen...( read more)eral que tuve al verla fue de tristeza, los personajes son extraños y viven vidas extrañas. Samantha Morton y Diego Luna actuaron bastante bien. Definitivamente no es para cualquier público.
  • jenn1984106
    August 31, 2008
    jenn1984106
    Good indie film. Good dialogue.
  • magnolia12883
    August 16, 2008
    magnolia12883
    Writer-director Harmony Korine (KIDS, GUMMO, JULIEN-DONKEY BOY) has crafted an odd, bizarrely entertaining and sort of hypnotic dramedy about a Michael Jackson impersonator in Paris (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN's Diego Luna). He meets a Marilyn Monroe clone (Samantha Morton) and falls in w...( read more)ith her commune of celebrity impersonators. Quirky, whimsical and often full of non-sequitors (Werner Herzog as a priest flying a plane full of sky-diving nuns? What the frack?!?)... Korine is an original, that's for damn sure.
  • SaintFrancisofAssisi
    June 5, 2008
    SaintFrancisofAssisi
    Not interested in watching this.
  • johnd62
    May 30, 2008
    johnd62
    Harmony Korine has made his first film after his underrated Gummo and his underwhelming Julien-Donkey-Boy. While Mister Lonely is his most mature work to date you just wish that after 10 years that Korine would have picked up a camera a bit more cause he's gotten a bit rusty.
    ...( read more)/>Not to say that Mister Lonely doesn't have some great moments. Mostly because of the great ensemble cast of Samantha Morton, Diego Luna and Denis Lavant (Who doesn't love foul mouthed Abe Lincoln.) but Korine drags his talent because of a lack of structure, symbolism overkill and just some really pointless scenes. That I feel as though if Harmony focused more on film during the decade he would have easily fixed. It's still an ok film and great to see someone as interesting he is back but God dammit I didn't love it the way I should have.
  • standbyfilms
    May 23, 2008
    standbyfilms
    A better film to see this weekend vs Indi Jones and a topless Harrison ford and Red Aliens

    a new film from Harmony Korine, opened this weekend - the mad man behind GUMMO - one of my all time favorite films.

    Harmony Korine (writer of KIDS, director of GUMMO, JULIEN DONKEY-BOY)...( read more) weaves Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, her daughter Shirley Temple and flying nuns into a hypnotically funny and truly poignant tale of the instability behind fanaticism and the redemption we can hope to find in one another. In a parallel story line, the incomparable Werner Herzog plays a Latin American priest who learns his missionary of nuns can literally fly.

    This was a hit at Tribeca Film Festival 2008, and I saw a screening finally this week.

    not to reveal much about the script at one point, the story seems to strain toward one of those Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney romps where they put on a show in the barn for the whole town. But Judy and Mickey never turn up, and the commune's theatre piece is hilariously ramshackle. As is the film as a whole: worth the price of admission, but only if you leave your expectations at the door.

    Harmony has been gone for almost 8 years.. including some year in Rehab this is his return to the line. I think is amazing work and most will dislike and not feel good about. But avoid IFC's cable cast and see this master on a screen.

    Vince
    Vmedia Berkeley ca.
  • eskaton666
    May 18, 2008
    eskaton666
    Brilliant, surreal mosaic from director Harmony Korine. The basic premise involves a Michael Jackson impersonator meeting a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (played with gusto by Diego Luna and Samantha Morton, respectively) in Paris. Monroe then invites Jackson to come to a commune...( read more) in Scotland where other impersonators live and plan to put on a nightly talent show. There is also a sidebar involving a priest/airplane pilot (Werner Herzog) and a convent of nuns who can jump out of airplanes without parachutes. All that being said, this is truly a Harmony Korine film, and is a showcase of his maturation as a filmmaker. Being that I believe Korine to be one of the best American filmmakers alive today, this is by far one of the best films I have seen in recent years. Definitely the best of 2008.
  • albinonerd13
    May 14, 2008
    albinonerd13
    This is my highest anticipated film of the summer!! Looks SOOOO amazing!!
  • jonrmcmahon
    May 6, 2008
    jonrmcmahon
    Korine without the edge. Some real problems here with editing and structure, which hurt the overall sincerity. Parts are just flat out dead. It started off really well though, and I think Morton accomplished something special. I was always waiting for her next scene. Luna wa...( read more)s pretty good too, but strangely, neither of them have a whole lot of screen time.
  • holidaygreenday
    May 3, 2008
    holidaygreenday
    I REALLY want to see this movie! I'm totally buying it off of ebay when it comes out!
  • pabloutin
    January 24, 2008
    pabloutin
    watch the Flying Nun´s!!!
    and Diego Luna is excellent
  • Missy2106
    October 23, 2007
    Missy2106
    Hehe this looks good, love Diego Luna! Sexy!

Summary

Mister Lonely Summary