Writer/director Bradley Rust Gray's debut feature "The Exploding Girl" was a mild indie success with its star Zoe Kazan, a twenty-something girl dealing with life and relationship issues. It's a slow burn character study that felt very real and relatable and looked to be a good starting point for the young filmmaker. His follow up film "Jack and Diane" is here and it has taken a pretty vicious critical beating. It stars current "It" girl Juno Temple and Riley Keough in a brief but intense affair, that includes metaphoric intercuts with a werewolf like beast. The film also features brief stop motion tidbits from the brilliant Quay Brothers. In some ways I think it has been unfairly picked on and doesn't deserve such a thrashing.Diane (Temple) is a British girl in New York City who while trying to find a phone runs into Jack (Keough) the stereotypical tomboy. The two girls are complete opposites. Diane is tiny, meek and insecure. While Jack puts up a tough and rigid exterior, full of false self confidence. After partying the night before, Jack is hit by a car while on her skateboard and for the rest of the film she has a nasty scrape on the side of her face. We find out both characters are caring around some heavy emotional baggage.Diane has frequent nosebleeds and strange dreams about a big nasty beast ripping people apart, but this is by no means a horror movie. The animated sequences are thick strands of hair moving around the inside of a persons body like a rope tightening around a heart. It's sticky, grimy and a little gross, but then again so are some of the critics. Early on in their relationship Jack finds out that Diane is leaving for Paris in a few weeks and she tries to distance herself and forget everything about her, but she can't. Eventually they start to embrace the time they have left together. The film does feel a little awkward and strange but then again this is what the characters are feeling. The story also meanders and goes in a few different directions but overall I didn't find it annoying. Towards the end of their time together Jack starts getting the nose bleeds and having these awful visions almost like Diane infected her with something.I know I'm in the minority on this but I kind of dug the film. It's currently available on Netflix watch instantly, so take a chance and give it a watch.

This movie is indeed pure pure crap and no more!All the fuzz as for instance that the monster we saw - and also the meaningless images of some kind of living tissue and hair growing around it - is a metaphor for Diane's sexual feelings and how they increase . . and burst . . . come on give me a break folks! This isn't even a love story . . it's the story of two kind of weird teenagers meeting and spending time together exploring each other and nag and whine all the time . . pf . . I really don't see the point of this movie. . . Why not make a decent lesbian movie for a wide audience instead of this piece of crap . . . it's beyond me!

I've been waiting years for this movie...and it was worth the wait. I first heard about this film maybe 4 or 5 years ago, and I've followed it all the way through its development. It was off to a rocky start with many casting changes (originally set to star Olivia Thirlby and Ellen Page), and also suffered funding issues, but this doesn't show in the final product. Let me start off by saying that this film is at its heart, a beautiful love story. Jack (Keough), though tough skinned and sometimes a jerk, proves to be an extremely likable character. Jack is a typical rugged tomboy, but also hides an extremely vulnerable hopeless romantic underneath. Diane comes off first as childish, through the way she dresses and speaks, but she hides a deep intensity and is in actuality very strong and multifaceted. Both actresses are fearless and play their respective roles remarkably. The story line is not arced with the stereotypical first-love plot; it had many twists and turns and was deep and complicated, but the filmmaker made it work on the screen. This movie also had many quirky moments interspersed, that were quite laughable. My favorite part besides Keoughs and Temples performances is the cinematography (and its musical pairings, but more on that later). Gray, the director, shot a picturesque and dream-like movie. The best example of this is the scene where Jack and Diane first kiss in the club; it takes your breath away. Each frame is near perfection, but viewer be forewarned this is a slow movie. There are many awkward (but poignant) moments that draw you in and make you feel just as uncomfortable as the characters. To me, this is the whole point of cinema, to make a viewer feel certain emotions, and this film achieves that admirably. If you are not used to slow films with sparse dialogue, you won't like this one. Now to the nitty gritty, specifically "the monster" and the animations by the Brothers Quay. The fact that this was a "werewolf" movie is what drew me to this project in the first place, but that really is not what this film came to be. There is a monster and it is a throwback to the beastly werewolves of lore. However, this "monster" represents Diane's awakening sexual desire. As the film progresses and the monster in Diane awakens she shows her intense and passionate side more and more. The Brothers Quay animations didn't do much for me, but they are unique and add to the horror aspect of this movie. Speaking of celebrities, Kylie Minogue's performance is somewhat underwhelming. Had I of not known she was in the movie beforehand, I would have never taken a second look at her character. Which is not to say it was badly acted, in fact it was acted so well, it just didn't stand out. What did stand out surprisingly, was the music in this film, one of Minogue's own songs is in it, and it is incredible. The soundtrack suits the film very well and is extraordinarily beautiful, as it portrays the intensity or confusion of Jack and Diane's emotions. There was also exquisite attention to detail in many aspects of this film. The best example that comes to mind is how almost every food that Jack or Diane eat, they share with one another, and it is all colored red, which surely could be a metaphor for devouring someone else's flesh (harkening to the recurring werewolf theme). The ending is open-ended, and I'm certain this will leave most viewers confused and opposed to this film. However, I like a film that makes me think, one that makes me want to believe, and this film does exactly that. TL;DR Not a film for everyone, but if you like unique love stories, superb intense acting, a dash of horror, and long drawn out scenes that are beautifully shot, then this is the film for you.

It was not an horror, drama or comedy; moreover, it was not a good mix of these genres. I could not laugh, could not get scared or felt emotional about anything that is going on in the movie. Mainly, they might want to tell a teenage lesbian story, but they did it in a such a cheap and simple way with very bad cliché dialogue and scenes that you just want to laugh at it. Kylie Minogue plays a small part in the movie, and evidently chosen to make the movie more attractive with her beauty. 23-year-old Juno Temple looks like a early bloomed teenage girl which is also one of the many disturbing and weird things about the movie. At the end of the movie I asked to myself "what was that movie all about?" It's simply a bad movie and waste of time.