Genres

Visitors Review

2012-05-18 18:53:08

special time

Best viewed when you have a special time. When it's over, you'll wish you had more of this type of time and more things like this movie to fill it.

cynic 2012-05-18 08:03:57

cheap shot

The title is much more exciting than the boring movie that is is. Would be better with English accents. Has few actors, few wardrobe changes.

2012-05-17 05:05:18

WEIRD

This review is from: The Sensation of Sight (DVD) I can see why this is more a film festival type movie. I got it as I am a Ian Somerhalder fan (well actually Vampire Diaries fan) and was interested in some of the other work he has done. The movie story is about how the events in ones life can mould that persons future. Ian and the book seller are linked through the death of a young boy. The other characters have their own issues but their paths cross those of Ian and the book seller. Ians voice the same but he had longish hair, which I am not used to. Events unfold to the point where the book seller and Ian are greiving about the same situation, at the same time in the same place. The book seller is on the way to recovery but I guess Ian was not - had to put my own interpretation on it. Most memorable two moments - Ian smoking a cigarette and Ian trying to portray grief - his face twisted crying and all I could see was his pretty white teeth (which seemed out of place) and his beautiful face as per Damon Salvador from Vampire Diaries. I am glad his acting has improved but I guess we all have to start somewhere.

flys_buzzin_my_head 2012-05-17 00:33:44

Exquisitely made, draws you in, subtle , nuanced

The previous writer does give away too much. A Sweet film that revealsmore meaning with each viewing. I've seen this gem a half a dozen timesand it does not disappoint with repeated viewings. Instead it rewardsyou with it's subtle nuanced craftsmanship and vision The ensemble casthits on all cylinders. Straithairn is brilliant in a dark,yet somehowcomic departure from some of his more stereotypical roles. DanielGillies is electric. There is nothing here to indicate the shoestringbudget, beautifully filmed by award winning cinematographer ChristopheLansberg .First time writer / director Aaron Weidersphann bringstogether the whimsy of Capra, the pathos of Wes Anderson and the bitingwit of Charlie Kaufman to this must see Indie delight.

2012-05-13 18:02:01

Impacting and Meaningful

I went to see this film to support a friend who was involved in the project. Living in New York City, I have been exposed to a lot of independent film, some very good, but most too quirky and difficult to understand. When I walked into Pioneer Theater to view this film, I didn't know that it was going to touch me in the deepest layers of my being. Every shot was beautiful; the actors lived in their roles, showing genuine emotion, and the story line was intelligent, dealing with issues that affect many of us in our own life.The film asked important questions and didn't leave me hanging with those questions at the end. It offered insight and hope that wasn't insulting to the realities of everyday life. It left me feeling less alone with my own thoughts about similar questions.This film is the best I've seen all year. I went back a second time and loved it even more. I look forward to receiving the DVD. I will be very proud to share it with my friends.Melissa

jb-307 2012-05-13 02:45:20

Utter Garbage - A real piece of trash

You can tell simply by the negative summaries what this trash of a filmis all about, how it is viewed by the public. We hate it. We want totake away the right to make any film from this writer / director, so hecan never again punish us with his drivel.Look what people write about this movie: Numbing, stultifying, deadlydull. Like an overdose of L-Tryptophan. This film was so boring it mademe fall asleep. Over indulgent piece of crap. Pretentiousclaptrap...misses by a country mile. Self-indulgent and stale.There is NO entertainment in this film. IF you want to be entertained,go to a real movie, almost any other movie. Do yourself a favor, savetime and save money and avoid this like the plague it is.I am truly sorry that I am forced to give this a big 1 (awful) rating,because at most it deserves a ZERO. Unfortunately for us, IMDb doesn'tallow zeros or negative numbers.

2012-05-11 19:28:18

An extremely sensational film!

As a frequent New Hampshire visitor for approximately 20 years from Maryland, I truly enjoyed this independent film for many reasons. In addition to this film's award-winning cinematography, every viewer has the opportunity to familiarize him/herself with each characters' interconnected stories from within the "old B&B", otherwise known as the former Peterborough Manor. Personally, I stayed at this wonderful Victorian hostel/Bed and Breakfast for ten years over time in almost every room! So, I also enjoyed this film because it provides me with fond memories and closure of the entire B&B and its tranquil surroundings from one of my favorite small towns. I was fortunate to attend the '07 premiere with 900 other attendants and met some of the castmembers, which was great! Congratulations to Mr David Strathairn, his co-stars, producers, and directors on a job well-done!

Ann 2012-05-11 08:26:15

Extraordinary movie...

I was intrigued by the story, it was told in a very "outside the box" kind of way. It was also an interesting manifestion of PTSD that I've seen depicted on film.Kudos to everyone involved with this film, it had a great deal to say and an extraordinary way of sharing that message.

2012-05-09 12:35:04

Sensation of Sight caused sensation of boredom

This review is from: The Sensation of Sight (DVD) I ONLY watched this movie for Ian Somerhalder and i regret it, no matter how much i love his acting, and his face, i could not handle the boring neverending drone of this film, it was just too much of the same gray uneventful happenings though the final parts were dramatic the climactic build to these parts were dull and a 10 degree sidewalk climbing to a -90 degree drop off. i would never force anyone to watch this movie

phucitol 2012-05-08 20:51:12

Like an overdose of L-Tryptophan

This film was so boring it made me fall asleep, literally. I was fullyaware beforehand that I was about to embark on what might be aseriously hard-core drama, which I was in the mood for. I will give itbig kudos for acting, direction and cinematography. Some scenes andcamera work are borderline stunning. I also found this film to berather confusing. In the beginning it's fragmented like a psychologicalthriller, giving us bits and pieces of the characters lives andapparently how all are intertwined, or will be. But the extremesubtlety of the story dragged the exceptional acting through the mud,making any kind of interest or connection between the characters andviewer almost non-existent. I liken this film to watching thewatercolors of a Claude Monet painting dry, you know the end resultwill be something visually extraordinary but the process getting thereisn't engaging at all. When I woke to realize the DVD had ended, I hadno desire to resume where it had left off.

johnwaynebosley 2012-05-07 08:47:40

Memoriable

American cinema doesn't have a history of taking risks. Instead itlikes to put movies out into the public like cars on an assembly line.Same car, same make. They just change up the details. What thewriter/director does in TSOS is to take risks and take on somedifficult issues. Instead of having the actors explain everything aswe're going along, he takes the risk of allowing the film to develop onits own.If you go to watch a film made from Hollywood you might get that "wow"effect... but what about the second, third, fourth time? Do you getmore out of each time? Or do you just find the same? With TSOS it'smore like a play or novel. There are enough layers that you don'tcompletely understand the story in its full extent until you watch itover and over again. It's like strong medicine and some of the weakercritics who only like "fluff films" and "cheap entertainmentexperiences" won't appreciate what this film has to offer.

2012-05-06 11:51:38

A multiple award winning independent film

A multiple award winning independent film, "The Sensation Of Sight" is the story of Finn, a middle-aged English teacher entering a mid-life crisis precipitated by personal tragedy. Finn sells encyclopedias to town locals, as his anxieties mount and he finds himself pursued by an unrelenting ghost. This is the deftly portrayed story of loneliness and disconnection that in the end leads to an unanticipated awakening and personal redemption. Showcasing the talents of David Starthairn, Ian Somerhalder, Daniel Gillies, Jane Adams, Ann Cusack, Elisabeth Waterston, Joe Mazzello, and Scott Wilson, all under the direction of Aaron J. Wiederspahn, "The Sensation Of Sight" is an enthusiastically recommended addition to personal and community library DVD film collections.

2012-04-29 05:37:26

Simply Awful.

You're kidding me with this facockta movie. This is the most tedious, boring, pointless, pretentious movie I've ever seen.First of all, let's address all this hype about this movie being "about life." Are you serious? OK, the protangonist, David Strathairn, is a teacher who witnesses one of his students commit suicide, right in his class. ... Are we told WHY? No.Then there's another thread to the script in which a young man is estranged from his father. Are we told WHY he's estranged from his father? No. Not a clue.And what does the teacher, David Strathairn, do? He quits teaching and sells encyclopedias door-to-door -- the encyclopedias he was given by the suicidal student. ... Oh YEEEAH! Sure! ... And he sells them not as a "set" but volume at a time. Then throughout the movie there's this guy who doesn't say anything -- whereupon in the last few minutes we come to find out that he's the ghost of the student who blew his brains out. ... And guess what David Strathairn does -- he shoots the ghost! He shoots the ghost in one of the most tedious scenes ever commited to celluloid. My God, what an incredibly pretentious movie! I don't say that the movie was photographed poorly; it wasn't. But it's about absolutely nothing. You can't purport to tell a meaningful story and then *not* tell a story. At all! You can't purport to make a film "about life" and then render the plot, the structure, the dialogue, and the character-interaction ... lifeless. A great deal is made of the various plots in this movie being "interwoven." They're not! They don't relate at all to one another. One dizzy gal asks David Strathairn, the encyclopedia salesman, if she's sexy. OK, lady, you're sexy. But what's the point? Ok, fine, she's lonely. Yeah, we get it. But then what? There has to be some meaning, even if it's simply impressionist, to her lonliness. But the only impression I get form these characters is that they're over-socialized, self-centered, and incredibly boring.Yes, there exists in the world a great deal of loneliness, but to make a meaningful movie about loneliness you can't simply *refer* to it and then point to yourself and say: "Look at my film, it's about loneliness. I Have all these lonely people in it." You can't simply have actors wandering around cryptically referring to tragedies in their lives that the audience doesn't have a clue about. A (relatively) young woman is concerned about whether she's sexy. So she asks this lonely, traumatized salesman if she's sexy. And he takes five minutes and twelve camera angles to say yes. ... And then what? I suppose we the audience are supposed to say: "Gee, have I learned a lot about life from this gal!" (Not!) The movie is especially annoying when it periodically quotes people like Shelley and Plato and Lord Chesterton; as if to say: "See, what these guys are saying is what's being said in the movie." But guess what, sports fans, this movie *isn't* about what these famous people have said about life. It's just a cheap high school trick whereby a lazy student punches up his or her really poor, really disjointed, really pretentious term paper with quotes from people the student *wish* had written their term paper. Finally, I had a great deal of respect for David Strathairn *before* this movie. I appreciated the fact that he's been very selective in the roles he's accepted. But when I saw this movie and then saw that he also *produced* the movie, phffft! out the window went my respect for him.This movie is right up there with "The Big Chill" and "Ordinary People" for precocious, self-righteousness, empty-headedness, psycho-babble fiddle-faddle. In short, it stinks. On ice. In fact, if you look the "S" voulme of any encyclopedia, under the word "stinkeroo" you'll see a cast picture of this turkey.

NORDIC-2 2012-04-28 17:34:08

Pretentious claptrap...misses by a country mile...

Like short stories, poems, and songs, films either "work" or theydon't. By "work" I mean, the piece has coherence, proper pacing,narrative drive, artistic elan, sufficient seriousness, psychologicaland emotional depth, but also a certain clarity that can't be feigned.Sad to say, THE SENSATION OF SIGHT doesn't work, i.e., it doesn'tengage, fascinate, or absorb the viewer into its world. To cite onefeature among many, David Strathairn's character, Finn, is one of thoseinscrutably quirky characters often found in indies, i.e., a dispiritedbut otherwise sane and articulate high school English teacher who hastaken to carting around a wagon full of Encyclopedia Britannicas thathe tries to sell to local townsfolk--for reasons that remain murky. Ina word, Finn is a droll walking-talking caricature, not a real personand therefore impossible to credit with a sense of reality. Ditto formost of the other denizens of this whimsical little world. Youngwriter-director Aaron J. Wiederspahn exhibits glimmers of film-makingability but SENSATION OF SIGHT is a film that tries too hard to be"profound" and merely ends up being tedious.

2012-04-23 05:04:13

A Film to Savor

I found this film to be poetic, thoughtful, and beautifully shot. It invites you from the very beginning to slow down and experience an intricately layered story on its own terms. Strathairn gives an amazing performance as a troubled English teacher searching for answers to a tragedy he's witnessed, and the rest of the excellent cast--Jane Adams is my favorite--help lead him toward the healing he seeks.

frankenbenz 2012-04-22 16:57:52

Sensation of Something else...

If titles are useful indicators of what a film has in store, then TheSensation of Sight must be a very profound 134 minutes. Trouble is,first time director and writer Aaron Wiederspahn's ambitions heavilyoutweigh his ability to actually make a profound film. As is usuallythe case, wanting to be profound and actually being profound is anocean apart and, unfortunately, TSOS is no exception.TSOS's multiple characters all wear their angst on their sleeves andeach of them stumbles through life burdened by their past, tortured inthe present and bouncing off each other for the sole purpose of pullingout little bits of profundity from one another. This not so subtledevice is used in excess as a means to propel the story and illuminateeach enigmatic character's back story one tidbit at a time. But littleof TSOS's overt melodrama feels sincere, instead it's authorial voicescreams from rooftops at how deep and emotionally powerful the writer'swords are. The stabs at deeper meaning are telegraphed through a seriesof overwrought contrivances, making it very difficult to identify withcharacters who do unnatural things, spew writerly dialogue andawkwardly interact with one another for the sole purpose of forwardingnarrative. In many ways, TSOS is reminiscent of Paul Haggis' Crash,another heavily contrived film that will stop at nothing to prove toyou how profound it is. While Crash barely manages to pull off theimpossible, TSOS falls short.Despite it's weaknesses, TSOS does possess a quiet charm, a qualitythat comes through in it's slow pacing, attention to minutiae andsimple yet poetic photography. It also possesses an effectively minimalsoundtrack punctuated with occasional injections of indie rock gems.Nevertheless, Wiederspahn's inexperience as a filmmaker seeps into TSOSand it never manages to escape the suffocating voice of its author.There's a good chance Wiederspahn has the tools and the sensitivity tomature into a uniquely talented and individual filmmaker, but unlessyou've got 2 plus hours to dispense on potential, you might be betteroff waiting for his next film.

John Holden 2012-04-22 10:53:16

Numbing, stultifying, deadly dull

Imagine that a high-school drama teacher assigns each of his classmembers to write a script. Rules? A small town; people with variousanxieties.Do whatever you like.Then, bring the cast together to exchange scripts (no editing needed);then go. So you act out someone else's script and then periodically thedrama teacher points to 2 of you and says "scene" - they come togetherand ad lib.The Sensation of Sight isn't close to this good. It's the worst kind ofsemi-experimental semi-exploratory, uh, drama.It's unwatchable.Amazing though because the protagonist and others in the cast aredecent actors.

2012-04-21 23:00:24

Nuanced, Entrancing Indie Gem, Straithairn, Gillies shine !!!

The previous writer does give away too much. A Sweet film that reveals more meaning with each viewing. I've seen this gem a half a dozen times and it does not disappoint with repeated viewings. Instead it rewards you with it's subtle nuanced craftsmanship and vision The ensemble cast hits on all cylinders. Straithairn is brilliant in a dark,yet somehow comic departure from some of his more stereotypical roles. Daniel Gillies is electric. There is nothing here to indicate the shoestring budget, beautifully filmed by award winning cinematographer Christophe Lansberg .First time writer / director Aaron Weidersphann brings together the whimsy of Capra, the pathos of Wes Anderson and the biting wit of Charlie Kaufman to this must see Indie delight. Like a sumptuous feast for the spirit.

gtgleeson 2012-04-17 11:57:29

Great writing, marvelous acting, beautifully filmed. Repays repeated viewing.

I got to see this movie for the second time at the Boston IndependentFilm Festival (29 April 2007) and my admiration grows. On first viewingmuch of my brain was occupied with figuring out what was going on andhow the sub-plots related. On second viewing I got to enjoy many of thesubtler aspects of the script and the performances, which are all firstrate. This is a demanding movie. It's complex, the story is revealed slowlyand non-linearly, and many of the areas of personality and philosophyit explores are dark. But there's also great humor, easily understoodechoes of "Our Town" and "It's A Wonderful Life", and a satisfactoryresolution. Great writing and marvelous acting, beautifully captured on film. Andit definitely repays repeated viewing.

cathattin 2012-04-16 23:41:55

Over indulgent piece of crap

The movie is very pretty but thats pretty much all it has going for it.The pace is so slow it's excruciating at times, a good hour could havebeen shaved off without losing anything.The characters are two dimensional, and even having good actors in manyroles could not save them.The movie starts off asking why and by the end, hasn't even answeredits own question. We don't know why, the characters still don't knowwhy, but in the end it doesn't matter because magically Finn is healedof his misery. Maybe he just needed a good cry? That seems to be whatthe film is saying.The other characters don't appear to be as lucky as Finn though, theirproblems still exist, but never mind that because the boring, flat, twodimensional Finn is okay now.At the end all i wanted to know, was why the hell I subjected myself tothat? Take my advice and use the two hours you would have spent on thisto do something much more productive. Like watch paint dry.