Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Iseerphia All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

BILLYBOY-10 Closeted middle-age unattractive family man obsesses about handsome young friend and in the end go all mental on him. Simple story, could have been done in less than a half hour but the director decided to keep the camera on one face or scene for seemingly hours, so it drags and lags and wastes time. The story is OK, but like I say, horrible direction and editing.

donwc1996 This film is without a doubt the most shocking film I have ever seen. It's difficult to say just how the writer/director came about doing this film but a couple of things come to mind. I could not help think of the way Hitchcock would prepare the viewer for a shocking scene by almost lulling the viewer to sleep so that when the big scene takes place you practically jump from your seat and go running for the nearest exit. I'm thinking of Psycho, of course. Here, a virtually identical event takes place and there was no exit for me to run to so I had to stay in my chair and sit out perhaps the most horrific scene I have ever witnessed in a movie or in real life. It is shockingly presented and you sit there frozen thinking to yourself this can't be happening. Everything that happens before the big scene and everything that happens after are completely out of context with the big scene itself and the writer/director has done this precisely the way Hitchcock did it in Psycho. There is an element of abstraction that really hits you hard and you just cannot stop thinking about what you have just seen. In fact, the more I think about this film the more I realize how torn and twisted men are when it comes to lust and the flesh and that the biggest struggle men have is overcoming their sexual desires especially when they are twisted and sick as in this fellow's case. It really is impossible for women to fully grasp just how horrific it is for men in many cases to overcome the flesh and to behave in a humane and decent way. Men are tortured there is no question about it and the man in this film is a perfect example of how wrong a man can go even though on the surface he lives a good life.

jm10701 Beauty is a generally well-made movie about the ugly consequences of sexual repression in an intensely, violently homophobic society in South Africa (although it could just as well have been set in the United States or most other countries). The movie's few serious flaws--Deon Lotz is not believable as a gay man, even as a severely closeted and homophobic gay man; and Charlie Keegan is nowhere near the beauty the movie makes him out to be--in a way aren't really flaws at all, because those incongruities reinforce the fundamental impossibility of anything approaching health and sanity in such a perverted society. The true perverts are the homophobes, and this movie exposes them and portrays the hypocrisy, depravity and violence of their lives with great power and clarity.The characters are bilingual; the movie's dialog is about 30% English and 70% Afrikaans, often switching back and forth several times within a single multi-person conversation. That would be okay if either both languages were subtitled (the best solution) or if the English were not spoken with a pronounced South African accent--but instead they chose to subtitle ONLY the words spoken in Afrikaans.Often I found myself wondering why the subtitles suddenly stopped in the middle of a conversation only to realize too late that they were speaking English now so I was supposed to know what they were saying; then they would switch without warning back to Afrikaans and the subtitles resumed.That's a big mistake, it would have been easy to avoid, and it's unacceptably and unnecessarily distracting. When the same voice alternates between Afrikaans and Afrikaans-accented English, a non-bilingual listener can't make the instantaneous adjustments required to understand every word. It would have cost them practically nothing to subtitle the English too, but they didn't. It became slightly less a problem later in the movie just because I got used to it, but it never ceased to be a distraction. That's the main reason I deducted a few stars.

Michael Bradley Beauty is anything but. A piece of vile homophobic crap is the nicest thing I can call this pretentious mess. Its the kind of film that reinforces stereotypes of the worst and most destructive nature. Yes, it might look real and be real, but is it truly something that needs to be seen? The unresolved aftermath of the rape scene (cinematically it is not attempted rape, it is rape) I found particularly disgusting. Someone looking for anything more than an artsy fartsy pile of pseudo-intellectual garbage will be either totally revolted or bored . Sure the racism and the repression of South Africa is real, it is well acted and the film is well crafted, but are those the only reasons to sit through this awfulness? I understand the director's political agenda and I think this is a poor way of expressing it. This is only my opinion but I'm sure most people would agree.