This film was one of the most touching I've seen in a long time. When it started out, I had no idea what to expect - in fact, it was funny and pretty sad to see Michael dancing in the street, and on the motorbike with the monkey. But this film really developed into something more when he got to Scotland with Marilyn. It became magical. I don't know how they managed to make the film feel so raw and natural, since it was so surreal. It just...worked. Everything about the characters made them seem so down to earth and human. I especially liked how they made mistakes- how unlike in other films where everything was "one take and perfect", this had a charming quality that completely blew me away. The whole movie represented the world, and life, and the people who reside in it. The times when Michael was introspective, and discussed the meaning of everything gave me shivers. What he said really resonated with me. Also, I loved how the nun scenes always came in at the right time, and really helped the story and the moments that were had. The imagery was FANTASTIC. The way it was filmed was wonderful and engaging. The soundtrack was beyond perfect. The ending was...wow. It just completely made sense to me, the whole movie just came into context - I found myself saying "Wow, this is truly the glory of the universe, this is life." I came to an epiphany - and that's what I look for in a film. It was beautiful, sad, happy, wonderful, meaningful, and it's a must see. Mister Lonely definitely deserves a watch.

While, it might not be the greatest movie of all time and the plot might be so out there that the mass audience wouldn't get or understand it. There is something about this movie; that has me liking it. Mister Lonely is directed and written by Harmonie Korine. It's an underrated yet innovative and creative story coming from the same guy who wrote 1995's 'Kids' script. The guy is very clever and witty in what he does. His other works are variants on this. While Korine's past films have always been about raw ugliness transcending into something beautiful. In my opinion, it's a hit or miss. He is a director to try and make his films overtly experimental and anti-mainstream, that's why I think his experimentation in film fails most of the time. They are so immersed in his own confused ideas that end up just being too pretentious. So I don't find him to be a great filmmaker. I didn't like his other films 2009's Trash Humpers or 1997's Gummo, but this is different from them because it's easier to watch. Mister Lonely is about a young American Michael (Diego Luna) living in Paris, making a living as a Michael Jackson lookalike impersonator. Diego Luna is an incredible Mexican actor with great physical performance, because he's obviously a great dancer. While, I think he's great, I might if a stronger actor had been given this part, it would have a stronger following. By co-incidence, he meets another impersonator named Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) who lives in an imitator commune in Scotland with her French husband Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant) and her daughter Shirley Temple (Esme Creed-Miles who in real life is really Samantha Morton's daughter). Samantha Morton is outstanding as Marilyn. I love her response to his question so how long have you been Marilyn and she says since I got my boobs. Very bold answer. it sounds so sexy and different. Others residents include The English Pope (James Fox), Italian Queen of England (Anita Pallenberg), and a James Dean from Wales (James Morgan). Also living there are; Abraham Lincoln (Richard Strange), Madonna (Medita Morgan) and Sammy Davis JR. (Jason Pennycooke). There are numerous other celebs lookalike that even more questionable like fictionist characters such as Red Riding Hood (Harmonie's wife Rachel Korine) and Buckwheat (Michael-Joel David Stuart) that makes you ask, why are they, there? Anyways, all of them are pretty great actors. At the commune, Michael and Marilyn prepare alongside her overzealous husband Charlie and a host of other impersonators for a star-studded stage show that will brighten and astonish their admirers, bringing them great fame. The first 15 minutes were great and then the story between Michael and Marilyn are thrown out the window. What follows is terrible filler scenes where the characters does not really do anything relate to the show. Then the story takes another odd turn, as the drama shifts to the Brazilian forest where a community of missionary nuns bring aid to the locals. While, on the airplane, a Nun fall out, and somehow survives the fall by praying. It was a miracle, and Latin American priest, Father Umbrillo (the legendary Director Werner Herzog) capitalize on it, and sent his missionary of nuns literally soar through the sky in search of their own answers. I like how Harmony Korine combines a skydiving nun on a BMX bike with a super poignant post rock song. I love the sound of the wind in this video as the nun is falling. I do like the movie soundtrack with "My Life" by Iris Dement, "Cheek to Cheek" by Fred Estaire and last Bobby Vinton - Mr. Lonely. I love the whole absurd meets poignant aspect of it. I wish you could find that in more movies! I thought it was hilarious, and poetic visually beautiful. Each frame is like a painting. There are a lot of dumb scenes; that was purposely done that way. A good example is the talking to the eggs scene. It has some clunky bits which feel awkwardly improvised but it was so wonderfully strange and very sad. It still upsets me to see the Three Stooges putting down the infected sheep even though you see nothing, nor need to. The story is funny and heartbreaking at the same time. Only Harmony Korine could weave 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. I think the title Mr. Lonely doesn't work. I think 'The Impostors' might have been a better title and suited the dual plot line of the celebrity impersonators as well as the nuns who have the idea that they birds and can fly. It about a group of people trying to make a miracle out of their lives. The plot line which works around two seemingly unrelated narrative threads leaves something to be desired, and ends up being a strangely conventional film filled with outcasts in search of love and community. Overall: a good one time watch. It seems like one of those films where if you just go along with the ride even if it's a bit stupid.

*1/2 out of **** (ROTTEN)Now before you people all throw the "you-didn't-get-it" card at me, you should know, I generally do that to every "indie" flick that really IS the "you-have-to-get-it" card to pull. However, the naysayers are unfortunately right... and right on the money as well. Trust me, I as well as you guys were really pumped for this film. I knew what I was getting myself into anyway. I know the director's works, read reviews, saw advertisements/clips. I am as non-biased as they come.But it had such a neat trailer, where did it all go wrong? For starters, the pacing. I think a snail goes at a faster pace than this movie. Some sequences go on for just WAY too long. I'm one patient moviegoer but come on now, this is just asking for way too much. Sometimes I felt like a scene would go on for five minutes. It was just way, way, waay too long. Second off, the entire plot is just put to waste. All the characters are underdeveloped, nothing makes sense AT ALL, and there's just no film structure. I honestly feel like the script missed the mark entirely. The movie you see in the trailer does not even come close to the final product.From the trailer, you get this "happy-go-lucky" vibe when in reality, it is emotionally straining. The ending is so depressing, I felt like I actually had to take a shower. And not in the good depressing. Almost like it was just "forced" on to be that way, to garner a reaction. Then the uncomfortable tension between Marilyn Monroe and her husband. It wasn't "artsy" to me, it wasn't "bold", it wasn't "daring". It was just really, really emotionally straining. All in all, I would not recommend this movie. It's way too long, the trailer makes it seem better than it is, nothing makes sense, and usually if there's some underlying meaning in here, okay, but it's just such a flaccid film, I just didn't care. I'm all up for movies that aren't afraid to be different, but at least be interesting. It wasn't awful, considering it had a nice idea and for the first act, it wasn't too shabby. But man... you really couldn't pay me to sit through this again.

Harmony Korine - he strips the audience into camps that get ravenous at each other. I remember being in film school and knowing people who *loved* Gummo, loved it to death (one girl even did an homage picture of herself like the one boy with his face turns to the side in profile), and would defend it with... I don't know what logic, that (in good argument) that Korine had a vision, that he had a great eye at such a young age (21 or 22) at the outcasts of the world. Fine. Then on the other camp, people *hated* the work of him, couldn't stand it, couldn't get it. Understandable as well: Gummo is, I should add, a freak-show, Jerry Springer shot with the camera of Sven Nykvist on holiday. As for Julien Donkey Boy, well, that's a whole other story.The reason perhaps that I have a whole paragraph about Korine's reputation is that Mister Lonely, his latest film, is also his first in over eight years. Whatever it was that spurred him and his brother Avi to get to work on this after such a hiatus from the director's chair is beyond me, but it is admittedly nothing else if not fascinating - both in how it works wonders and charms and, frankly, how it can bore and act like it's God's gift to the lives of celebrity impersonators. It's the kind of film where things happen but they kind of don't at the same time; it has Michael Jackson (Diego Luna) and Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) meet in Paris, Monroe takes Michael to a Scottish castle where a family of celebrity impersonators (i.e. Chaplin, Stooges, Buckwheat, the Pope, the Queen) all are gathered to do... what? Well, put on a show for the locals, perhaps, even if they don't show up much, at all.And in the meantime, Werner Herzog - yes, Werner Herzog, stay tuned - is in the picture as a Latin American priest who has a plane full of nuns dropping rice on villagers and then, shock of shocks, one of the nun falls out of the plane and can fly. This may be, for me, one of the only times I can remember when Herzog has been not used to his full potential on screen. Perhaps there's a symbolic/Christian/belief connection that I did not get at all, but the rhythm of film-making that Korine had suddenly would shift gears every so often to this unrelated-to-the-celebrity-people to Herzog and the nuns (at one point Herzog, with big goggle/glasses on, rambles on camera about this or that, which usually is enormously gratifying but here is not), and it's as if we're plopped into one of Herzog's docu-fiction films filled with ecstatic truth. This would be fine - if there was *more* of this throughout the film, which there isn't (I'd say %10 of the running time has Herzog and/or flying nuns), or if they had been used for a whole other project and Korine had focused on just the family of celebrities.And yet, it's hard for me not to recommend the picture on some gut-level. There is invention here, and daring, and some kind of intuition with a personal aesthetic that makes Mister Lonely come alive in some unpredictable ways. But on the flip-side to Korine's inspirational coin are some hard truths to face: he finds all of this so self-important, so much like we're seeing something that we *must* find amazing and deep that he gets ahead of his own material. Some scenes end up rambling, others like Marilyn Monroe dancing slowly to herself and then it fading to black and the words "Thriller" streaming across the scene are beautiful and totally perplexing and pretentious in one fell swoop. There's also something of an easy out with the tragic part after the big performance is given (I wont mention it as it is a good spoiler), and it too leads to a conclusion that has some meaning but not enough. Some of this is very funny (hard not to laugh at cussing Abe Lincoln or smelly Pope), some of it weird in a good way... and some of it may make you wonder why you rented it in the first place.Again, as with Gummo, Mister Lonely will divide it's audience (frankly, I'm sort of divided among my own thoughts), but if you need that challenge of a director saying "this is what celebrity, the idea of being someone or doing something you care about that has f***-all to do with the rest of 'ordinary' humanity", or just some remarkable cinematography with art-house tattooed on its eyelids, check it out. If it's a disappointment, it was worth a shot. And if it's the best movie of the year, well, more power to you.