good indie stuff - watch it immediately

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 2004)

a few mild spoilers herein ... sorry but i think they are entirely necessary to my thoughts here
this is a crazy cool movie ... quite ambiguous, even before the ending, which is what many always hate in a film but which i usually love, especially here ... in kelly's (director) bio on IMDb here, it mentions that he had to go through a lot to convince producers he could direct actors ... and here is a film which has some of the best performances i have seen of all of the actors, especially jake gylenhall ... it was very intelligent, i thought, to create frank the bunny as someone who causes pain to donnie and whom donnie tries to break the force field to kill at about the halfway point (and then the 2nd attempt near the ending), but at the same time he firstly saves donnie's life as well as gets him a girlfriend (then of course with frank's several hints as well as the ending we figure that just as he can give he can also take back, and this all seems to never have happened) ... a great multi-layered film, with a sentiment and overall mood which i think is made more apparent and appropriate with the setting in the 80s (or else kelly just wrote it then and didn't bother updating, but given other evidence within the film, i think he's smarter than that) ... a great indie film ... 9/10