Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

pointyfilippa The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

sol ***SPOILERS*** "Spreading Ground" starts off with a rash of murders of five year old girls in the oceanside town of Burman City. As the killings are connected to a single serial killer the city's chief executive Mayor Hackett, Elizabeth Shepherd, want's the unknown killer to be both captured and killed if possible within 48 hours in order to keep her pet project, by successfully floating a bond in the upcoming municipal elections, for a new sports stadium alive.Mayor Hackett's unreasonable order put her top cop Capt.Nieman's, Chuck Shamata, head on the chopping block in giving him, and those under him, the sole responsibility to catch or kill the rampaging child murderer within a time period of two days. It turns out that not only are the police interested in catching the killer but the local Irish Mafia as well. Getting their ace hit-man Johnny Gault, Tom McCamus, on the case he gets the low down on who the killer is by a pick pocket team snatching his key-chain during one of his kidnap murders.There's also Det. Ed Delongpre, Dennis Hopper, who's the cop put on the child murder case who has a slew of problems of his own. One of them is his estranged daughter Leslie, Leslie Hope,whom he hasn't seen for ten years who also just happens to be Mayor Hackett's personal assistant and publicist. All this makes Det. Delongpre as well as his partner Det. Micael McGivern, Fredrick Forrest, job in finding the killer more difficult then it already is.Were given a clue to the killer's mental state at the very beginning of the movie in a flashback when he was a young boy. It turns out that he's obsessed with water in that it cleanses both the body and soul of persons who are submerged in it like one being baptized. The killer goes a step farther then baptizing his victims by both bashing their skulls in and dumping their unconscious bodies into the local water purifying plant, where he works at, and drowning them.***SPOILERS*** With both Detectives Delongpre and Forrest and Irish Mafia hit-man Gault working independently they track down the elusive killer in the tunnel of the water treatment plant as he tries to make his getaway. We given a long speech by the killer in how he in fact saved his victims from a life of sin and depravity by mercifully murdering them.Det. Delongpre who was about to put the cuffs on the homicidal maniac just couldn't hold it in any more and did what he in fact prevented Gault from doing: Put a bullet in his hide and leave him for dead for the meat wagon, or police pathologist van, to carter him away.The movie just tried to be too surreal and avant guard, like European films of the 1950's, in it's message to really be effective as an average or very good straight crime film. There's was also a hint of police corruption and being blackmailed for it, by Mayor Hackett, on the part of Captain Nieman that really didn't add anything to the films storyline but only confused it more then it already was. The strange relationship between Det. Delongpre and his daughter Leslie also put a strain on the movie in it, for the most part, not going anywhere and just bogging it down. It took the untimely and unexpected death of Det. Delongpre's dog and companion of 13 years Burt to get both father and daughter together and finally bury the hatchet that they've been swinging at each other with for over ten years. Burt's death also got the two, as the film came to an end, to sit down at the local diner and put their differences behind them over a hot and steaming cup of coffee.

Robert J. Maxwell You can't help but like movies about serial killers of little girls. They're so evil. There is no ambiguity whatever, no room for self doubt, no reason for reflection. They're the Osama bin Ladens of the criminal world. Even imprisoned murderers feel superior to child molesters and killers. Well, after all, THEY have to have somebody to look down on too.This Canadian production gives us Dennis Hopper and Frederick Forest as two detectives who are left only 48 hours to find the serial murderer. If they don't get the job done, the mayor's major investment in some property will be ruined and she'll be out of office. The mayor, however, is involved with some highly juiced Irish crooks, including Tom McCamus, and she puts the crooks on the tail of the serial murderer too because the killings are upsetting her apple cart. Tom McCamus has a great face for the movies. (He was an incestuous Dad in "The Sweet Hereafter".) And you can't beat him name, "Son of Camus." Unfortunately his acting here is about at the level of everyone else's -- strictly utilitarian. Dennis Hopper tries to play it straight, really he does. But underneath the professional cop and the flawed father we still sense the demon. I've always liked Frederick Forest. I don't think he's ever made it possible for a viewer to forget he's acting, but he looks great with his puffy eyes and louche ponytail. He looked even better as Dashiel Hammett. Not to put any of these performers down. Their acting doesn't stand out as poor because no one's stands out as particularly good. Leslie Hope seems to bring a kind of blur to whatever part of the screen she occupies. (Leslie Hope? Isn't that Bob Hope's real name? Maybe not.) The script is generic and not especially bad. The direction is efficient. The photography is really quite good. The colors are cool but appropriately so. And the lighting is as it should be -- solid black shadows where they are called for, and naturalistic lighting elsewhere. They didn't catch The X-File syndrome and throw us a lot of flashlight beams poking about in perpetual gloom. There's what I guess could be called an average chase through some newly constructed sewer at the climax.In first explaining how the sewer works to the investigators, the manager goes through his practiced tour -- the street runoff comes in here and is congealed with the solid waste, then it's processed in that unit over there, then the solid waste is emulsified and extracted by the Nakatomi Solid Waste Extractor, the individual E. coli are vasectomized, the cholera vibrios receive twelve-step counseling, the chloroform and bacteriocidal material are added over there, diluted with Toxico Smegmaphage, fractionally distilled, tested on experimental groups drawn from third-world prisons, and then its flushed out into the reservoir. "And that's what we drink?" asks a greenish Frederick Forest.It reminds me a little of Fritz Lang's "M" without any of the pathos.

yashualie the lowest score possible is one star? that's a shame. really, i'm going to lobby IMDb for a "zero stars" option. to give this film even a single star is giving WAY too much. am i the only one who noticed the microphones dangling over hopper's head at the station? and the acting, or should i say the lack thereof? apparently talent wasn't a factor when the casting director came to town. my little sister's elementary school talent show provides greater range and depth of emotion. and those fake irish accents were like nails on a chalk board. the only thing that could have made this movie worse would have been...oh, wait, no,no, it's already as bad as it can get.

CandidDate Seeing Dennis Hopper and Frederic Forest in the same movie again, I couldn't help but be reminded of "Apocalypse Now" - an unlikely standard for any film, much less the "Spreading Ground", to meet. Yet I found this movie quite watchable and fairly intriguing. It starts out strong, but then levels off in its impact. The director of "The Spreading Ground", Derek Van Lint, was the Director of Photography on "Alien", and his talents as a cinematographer are amply evident here.