The Night Listener dvd movie.|
The Night Listener buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $29.99 Our Price: $21.49 You Save: $8.5 Features • AC-3 • Color • Dolby • DVD-Video • Subtitled • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 04 August, 2006 DVD Release : 09 January, 2007 |
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The Night Listener description Celebrity and psychosis collide to truly creepy effect in The Night Listener. Radio personality Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) is asked to read an advance copy of a memoir by a boy who was horribly abused by his parents. Struck by the boy's story, Noone starts talking to him over the phone, gradually taking an almost parental interest in him--until someone suggests that the boy may not be exactly who he seems. Troubled, Noone flies to Wisconsin, where he meets the boy's social worker (Toni Collette, The Sixth Sense, In Her Shoes) and uncovers some alarming secrets. Don't let the vague, faux-literary title The Night Listener lead you astray; this is a horror movie and a very good one. There are no supernatural monsters or relentless axe-murderers, only a damaged, manipulative mind, which proves to be creepier than any serial killer. Williams gives an excellent, quirk-free performance, but it's Collette who gets under your skin and crawls around. She's vividly eerie, the sort of performance that can stick with you for days. Stealthy, surprising, and wonderfully acted all around--the movie also features Joe Morton (The Brother from Another Planet), Bobby Cannavale (The Station Agent), and Sandra Oh (Sideways)--The Night Listener is an unexpected gem. --Bret Fetzer |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | A Good Start...but |
| The Night Listener, based on a true story, starts fairly auspiciously. A personally troubled, openly gay radio host (Robin Williams) is contacted by a teenage fan who is dying of AIDS, (although illness is only part of the boy's story). The host is given a manuscript of the boy's life story, which is soon to be published. The boy is reported to have been enslaved and subjected to unthinkable torture and rape at the hands of both his parents and others. We presume the boy contracted AIDS during that period. When we see him, the boy is whittling away his final days communicating with the radio host and using him as a sort of support group. Ironically, the radio host uses the boy as a sort of support group as well as he is suffering through realtionship troubles himself.
The boy resides with a foster parent who also communicates with the radio host and shares the radio host's great sympathy for the young boy's plight. After a short time the validity of the boy's story comes in to question to the point where his actual existence is even doubted. The Night Listener has potential but is lazily directed. With a surprisingly brief 80 minute run time, The Night Listener never really achieves a dramatic arc. Rather it plods along with the faint promise that danger may lurk ahead. Yet when all is revealed, the truth is anti-climactic to say the least. It's a journey that leaves you feeling as if it should have led you someplace more worthwhile. This script could have benefitted greatly from some fleshing out of characters and more attention to build-up and payoff. |
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