jm10701 How do I get it all into just 1000 words? Having read some negative reviews before watching the movie, I set out to prove them wrong. I can't. This is a TERRIBLE movie! I'll just list a few of its most glaring flaws:(1) The dialog is about half in unintelligible English, half in Armenian; the DVD subtitles translate Armenian into English but leave us to struggle alone through mumbled English and VERY heavily accented and garbled Armenglish; the closed captions do the opposite, giving the English dialog ONLY; all through the movie I had to switch back and forth between subtitles and closed captions as the characters switched between Armenian and English; it was infuriating.(2) ALL of the dialog is stilted, pretentious, moronic crap, but EVEN WORSE than the dialog is the mind-bogglingly stupid pseudo-mythological narration read by poor Peter Coyote, who must be desperate for work.(3) In some scenes, extremely shallow depth of field and oblique angles caused the camera to have to shift focus constantly, which completely ruined whatever was going on and gave me a headache; it was most noticeable when Will was writing an email, but the focus shifting happened pretty often; maybe it was supposed to be artistic, but it was just distracting.(4) Ben Foster is TERRIBLY - and I do mean TERRIBLY - miscast in this movie, and he seems to be angry about it all the way through. I have never seen such obvious discomfort IN EVERY SCENE from any actor in any movie. It's like watching him sulk for two hours. Besides making the whole movie irritating, his extreme discomfort kills whatever chemistry there is supposed to be between his Will and Lubna Azabal's Gadarine.(5) Braden King is an untalented narcissist. He should NEVER be allowed to make another movie! Maybe he can get a job at Burger King in some small town I'll never have to visit.

Armand at first sigh, a film about nothing. in fact, a mirror. or a trip. or a basket of questions. a poem. and frame of a meeting. the gorgeous images from Armenia, the faces and words of characters, the Romanian "Bun e vinul ghiurghiuliu" in a bus from Caucasus are only ingredients. but the subject of film is importance of roots. discover of sense. silence as aura. and delicate steps of self image. a film about birth of miracle. and about sparkles of its cell. nothing else. nothing more. so, all common pieces are different. the man in a strange country in search of pure freedom. a woman who describes her as result of her pictures. an Armenian family. few friends. and the shadow of gestures. essence of story - the church. the window as stick. the priest in Holy Liturgy. the nuns. and the solitude of stranger far by his guide.

bitashafipour I'm not a harsh critique when it comes to slow, beautifully shot romantic films and I grew up with Iranian cinema and the utterly slow movies of Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, but 'Here' is slow for no good philosophical, metaphysical, spiritual, or even sensual reason. The cinematography is lovely, and the production value is good, but the script could have had a couple of rewrites. The acting is okay and what makes it okay is not the work of the actors but the weakness of the script and the lack of enough tension or conflict for the actors to deliver their best performance possible. Despite the slowness and the rawness of the script, I did like the setting, Armenia, which we don't get to see very often in non- Armenian cinema, and how life is like there.

gradyharp HERE is not likely to be a phenomenal box office hit - nor does it seem to be intended for that. This extended (126 minutes) visual, poetic, philosophical experience is more an unwinding meditation about the beauty of Armenia and the crisscrossing of two lives of people who happen to encounter each other and find more definition of their own direction through a slowly developing love story. The film's opening moments are visually blinks of light and color and barely recognizable landscape as background to some lovely philosophical commentary made by off screen Peter Coyote. It plays like an overture to the story that lies ahead.Will Shepard (Ben Foster) is an American satellite-mapping cartographer who has been assigned a location in Armenia to adjust the satellite images of this country. He speaks no Armenian and while attempting to order food in a café he is aided by a girl Gadarine Nazarian (Lubna Azabal) who provides translation. Gadarine is a photographer who spends her time on the road, away from her elderly parents and brother, taking artistic photographs: she has had a successful show of her work in Paris. Will and Gadarine chat momentarily but more importantly they connect with a mutually felt magnetism. Coincidences bring them together to travel as Gadarine photographs the countryside and village people and Will works on his meticulous mapping techniques. Their relationship develops into one of passion and filling each other's needs, but at the same time their coming together defines where each of these unique people find their life direction. How the couple close the film is too special to share in a review.The true star of this film is the cinematographer Lol Crowley who with director and writer Braden King layout the most mysteriously beautiful landscape images: at times there is no dialogue to interfere with the sheer eloquence of the images of Armenian countryside. The musical score is minimal - by Boxhead Ensemble - and that adds to the meditative aspect of the film. Yes, there are scenes where Will and Gadarine interact with other characters and these are sensitive diversions. But basically this is an extended melancholic road trip, taken at a deliberately slow pace to allow the audience to discover the HERE with Will and Gadarine. It seems even longer than its excessive over-two hour length, but at the same time it is a film that refreshes the mind from all the noise and madness of the other current films. Recommended for those who appreciate experimental filmmaking. Grady Harp