FountainPen Absolute waste of time. I had the feeling the "story" was being written as each scene was shot. Dull, dismal, boring, banal, with no redeeming features. Colin Firth was a waste. Mena Suvari played the usual wide=eyed gamin role. How does an abortion such as this film EVER get released? The producers must have realised early on that it was a DUD (to be extremely polite). Or are they in fact a bunch of retards who actually thought this movie had some merit? Hopeless, awful.

secondtake Trauma (2004)The creepy, mind-bending aura of this very British contemporary film, starring a lonely and confused man named Ben striving most of all to find reality itself, has so many really interesting aspects you can't help but wonder why it doesn't quite sweep you away. Or worse, why it's downright bad by the end, all the building up and forced drama being affectations built on sand.And leading man Colin Firth is one of our masters of brooding, interior acting, which he does extremely well once again, against the odds set up by director Marc Evans. Firth's portrayal of Ben actually makes the most of all the ambiguity of the clichéd plot, and we try to follow his mind as it keeps slipping from one point of view to another. It sounds great, on paper. But this is no Coen Brothers film, nor a David Lynch or David Fincher film, even if there are shades of each of these styles and intentions throughout. The sets are gloomy if sometimes too obvious--Ben decides to live in a nearly abandoned former mental hospital, for example. And the background crime which pins together the various facts, the death of a beloved and lovely celebrity, leads to the usual hardboiled detective (Brit style) and to newspaper clippings and flashbacks and glimpses on crude surveillance monitors.If you are curious about the approach, check it out. I think the first twenty minutes gives a great idea of the whole movie. It just isn't smartly made or cleverly written, and this kind of card game with possible realities, which the viewer is made to play as much as Ben, requires smartness and cleverness, for sure.Ben may actually be insane, may actually have murdered the person we are led to believe he did, and may actually belong in the institution he is shown, or not shown, inhabiting. Yes, it's willfully confusing. He wrestles with where he lives, where he walks. He wonders about the darks stairs leading to the gloomy underground rooms. The camera whirls or blurs, many times, almost as if they run out of motivation and need to switch to a camera effect right when maybe, through some actual writing and thinking, we could piece together some of the implied complexity (the way they do in, say, "Memento"). In the end, we are given the police investigator giving it all a knowing eye.Besides the faltering writing, there are secondary actors who are not at their best (and whose best isn't always inspired, at that). For one, Mena Suvari, who I know from "American Beauty" in a kind of odd role where her blankness works well, is just far to lifeless and wooden to make her mysterious presence across the hall either scary or provocative. And so, heads up on this one. It's not what it seems, or could have been.

Ladybugking This is a movie that bears watching more than once. I found it interesting and absorbing, but needed a second (and probably will need a third) viewing of it to probe its depths.Ultimately it lets the viewer interpret events and decide what is happening, has happened, or may not be happening at all.There are clues throughout that I completely missed on first viewing. While I can appreciate what the director and writer involved were trying to convey -- a shattered mind and its perception in the person of an always excellent Colin Firth -- I can see where seeing it once and walking away confused and put off would be a common reaction.I truly liked seeing Firth go back to his early days of challenging acting roles and getting away from the romantic leads he often plays. He is key to appreciating this movie because everything is seen through the prism of his character --including all the other people with whom he may, or may not, be sharing his world. He is in every single scene.If the viewer is intrigued by seeing this puzzler of a film, then I recommend having a second go as much, much more is revealed, though not necessarily resolved. The solving of it is left, ultimately, to the viewer.I liked this puzzle of film very much.

folsominc2 Well, I have to say that this type of movie is not necessarily what I usually like in a "restful, relaxing entertainment value." My reason for watching this was to continue my study of Colin Firth's film career since I saw him in A&E's production of "Pride and Prejudice" recently.However . . . although I have found most of the other movies Firth have played in to be either vulgar, filthy, slapstick or just plain dull for so charming a man and talented an actor (with the exception of "What a Girl Wants"), I can see that in "Trauma" he was shining through as the fantastic, brilliant actor that he is.This type of movie and part that he played can be one of the most challenging for any actor. The actor, Firth, has to believe everything that is going on around him and happening to him for the viewer to find it believable.The character he plays, Ben, starts out in the viewers mind as a sympathetic yet clearly disturbed young man. You are wondering what he is living on and yet how he can afford visiting a psychotherapist so often. You are actually suffering with him in the beginning and furious with his wife's family for their cold behavior.Little by little, the movie tears away the shell until you are getting a more clear view of what is going on and who and what Ben really is. You are wondering what his obsession is with the death of the singer, and how he could be involved. You are also finding out more and more than Ben had been stalking and terrorizing his "dead" wife.When finally his ex-wife unexpectedly makes a return entrance, the viewers are left to wonder at their senses and reasoning. We, the viewers, have experienced every heart break and internal punishment from Ben's mind including some really disturbing dreams. We cannot believe that this woman really is still alive and doubt our own sanity as Ben does.It is not so surprising that when the beautiful next door neighbor Charlotte, played by Mena Suvari, makes a return visit, our character Ben has completely flipped his lid – disbelieving in his own sanity and her very existence. He becomes psychotic about proving to himself and destroying what, in his mind, is telling him that does not really exist – a beautiful woman who seems to truly care about his torment.Our last final hope for Ben dies with his actions against Charlotte, and then with the concluding psychotherapist visit, the viewer realizes he/she has been duped through the entire movie in believing in Ben when there IS no psychotherapist.This was a truly amazing feat for a movie and for an actor, and that really surprised me, considering that I got the secret behind "Sixth Sense" in the previews of that movie before it came out.A couple of points to mention is that I did not understand what happened to his ant farm he was so fascinated by, and frankly, if Charlotte was supposed to be involved with psychics, why didn't she sense that there was danger in Ben at that moment before following him downstairs to nibble on a spider.The "F" word again was unnecessary for emphasis in areas, and the grimy scenes of abandon London buildings and streets, added to the overall depressed feeling from the film. Overall, this can be considered one of Firth's best portrayals, even if not the lovable character we would like to see him in.