Gerry
From the groundbreaking director of GOOD WILL HUNTING and FINDING FORRESTER, GERRY stars Academy Award(R) winner Matt Damon (Best Original Screenplay, GOOD WILL HUNTING, 1997; THE BOURNE IDENTITY, OCEAN'S ELEVEN) and Casey Affleck (OCEAN'S ELEVEN, SOUL SURVIVORS) in a suspenseful and highly provocative story of two men pushed to the limit! A pair of best friends (Affleck and Damon), who've nicknamed each other "Gerry," set out on a desert hike. But what begins as a simple daytime adventure turns into an intense life-and-death journey that will test the strength of human endurance and ultimately, their friendship! Written by Damon, Affleck, and Director Gus Van Sant, this uncommonly compelling and starkly visualized film is a must-see motion picture that has earned the overwhelming praise of critics nationwide!
In Gerry, two young men (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) wander beautiful, barren, and surreal landscapes, gradually growing more and more lost. This film from Gus Van Sant (director of Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Good Will Hunting) has no story, hardly any dialogue, and even less in the way of "action" or "events." Yet the movie is by turns maddening and hypnotic; although few people will agree on which are the maddening scenes and which are the hypnotic ones, you will leave Gerry with one or more stunning images in your head. In fact, Gerry is probably more pleasurable to remember than it is to sit through. Committed performances, flashes of dark humor, and a smattering of visual effects give the movie some shape, but the more you just surrender to the emptiness of the landscape, the more rewarding Gerry will be. --Bret Fetzer
Gerry Accessories
Elephant: A Film By Gus Van Sant
Last Days
Good Will Hunting (Miramax Collector's Series)
Lonesome Jim
Drugstore Cowboy
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
My Own Private Idaho - Criterion Collection
To Die For
There Will Be Blood
David Lynch's Inland Empire (Limited Edition Two-Disc Set)
Gerry Reviews
Considering that at least 20 minutes of the movie is taken up walking. What were Matt Damon and Casey Affleck thinking of when they wrote this movie. walking.walking.Just trudjing along trying to find their way out of that vast expanse. The dialogue is minimal and the plot boring. What was Gus Van Zant thinking.
The dialogue is inane, I kept thinking "Dude, where's my car." while listening to the excruciating meaningless banter between Affleck and Damon. Try "Day Night Day Night" directed by Julia Loktev. Ever. At least I "watched" it at home and was able to work on some tasks and look up once every 5 minutes to see what was happening with the film. they got drunk one night and decided to make the crappiest film possible dressed up to appear artsy to see if it would win praise or even make some money. I would have been terribly upset if I'd seen the film in a theater, held captive with no way to spare myself the waste. Realism was severely lacking.
I nominate "Gerry" for the worst film ever made. The videography is not good enough to sustain such a slow pace, and at times the visuals are so obvious that the film appears to be the project of an overly-ambitious film school freshman. "Gerry" is 103 minutes of *total waste of time*. Every single scene is 5-10 times longer than necessary. without missing a thing. I'm thinking the film was a private joke among Van Sant, Affleck, and Damon.
Want to watch a really masterful slow-paced film. What's really a shame is that everyone who worked on this film wasted far more than 103 minutes. Life is too short to throw time away like that. And as the film dragged on I found myself wishing that the Gerrys would just collapse and die and put as all out of our misery. I wonder if any of them look back and wish they could have spent all of that time in some other way.
The scenes can be very boring and slow moving, yet you can't stop watching because you need to know what happens in the end. Two men are walking through the desert, very little diaglogue, with very slow piano music in the background. This movie about two friends getting lost in the desert is interesting and boring at the same time. As it was, I watched it to the end and was glad to have finished it. If it hadn't been for the good acting and beautiful landscape, I probably would have been bored to the point that I would have turned it off. The scenery and videography are beautiful and well done. It was almost too much to take.
Christmas came. And on. The end. And on. Thanksgiving game. I watched.
I waited. I fathered my first child. This movie is horrible and to give an account of its plot would be like giving an account of used chewing gum rotting over the course of a billion years. Right about the time Matt Damon's character leans over and kills Casey Affleck's (oops) character, I was ready to kill them both myself. I waited even longer. I kept watching.
I sat. Still the film went on. I waited some more. Then my ninth. If you make it all the way through this film, you will no doubt start laughing like a lunatic madman because the end result of this movie is undoubtedly to make you insanse. I kept watching. Special thanks to Gus Van Sant, you heathen demigod, for providing us with this little slice of movie purgatory.
and for this alone Gus Van Sant will not again darken a screen in my life. A waste of film, a waste of breath, a waste of desert.
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