Birthmarked

Watching this movie is so easy,because it is shot very well and the aesthetic is very pleasing. Matthew Goode does an AMAZING job as does Toni Collette! And all the cast! This movie is so funny,and just..just..Good. I find it like satire for socioloists and psychologists. Love this movie,one of my favourite comedies.

So, the story líne is interesting enough. But it's SO Tenembaums that kinda makes you angry and it's painful to watch the similarities that are all over the movie... Not a good movie guys

It's not like you won't be able to see where this is going. But it's not about where it ends up (though there is a funny montage for that too, if you are open minded to it that is), but how it goes there. And while you can guess the twists and turns even before they come around the corner, the actors make it worth it all - more than decent performances. Not Academy Award material, but still a really good movie that does entertain it a light way, that should be able to touch your heart. It's a bit crazy at times and it might seem to make no sense either at certain cornerstones. Stick with it though and just enjoy the ride if you can. The actors obviously had fun ...

In 1977, scientists Ben Morin (Matthew Goode) and his wife Catherine (Toni Collette) want to prove the dominance of nurture over nature, influenced by their own childhood experiences. They are having a baby and propose to have him raised by artists parents. With two other babies, they chose them to be also raised to be their biological opposites. After watching Three Identical Strangers, this would have a difficult time as a comedy. Instead of quirky, this may work as a dark drama. Its quirkiness is desperate to be funny which only makes the disturbing concepts even more off-putting. Also it's hard to remember the individual children's nature vs nurture changes. They don't become real 3-D characters. It seems highly unscientific to put them all together in the same place. There's nothing to prevent them from influencing each other. I can't laugh at this couple and I can't laugh with this movie. It's trying for something that is never going to work.

A great critique of society. today's families are actually experiencing such feelings. It is important for them to make children like themselves. Do not rely on low ratings. Keep the blu-ray, keep it. Toni Collette is awesome. the children actors are also very good. and Stephen Rennicks' music is tremendous.

Most of the critics missed badly the point and are confusing the frame with the story. The film is not about "nurting vs nature". That is the subject of the experiment of a character. The film is a satire of the family. The real subject of the film is how every parent, at some point, actually behave as if they should report back their results to a scientific commitee. The russian reporter is in our minds. The boss-scientist are our internal conceptions, preconceptions and misconceptions about how our childrens should be. And the portuguese scientists are other supposedly perfect families that we may take as a model and make us behave as if we were in a capitalist competition to bring the better childres to the world.

Others in this string have pointed out, justifiably, how much this film tries to catch the tone of a Wes Anderson film - and fails quite badly. When a film is pretty much wall-to-wall narration, you know that the writers simply could not find their way into the story. The first 10 minutes are pure, raw exposition - mostly about the past of the parents - information that is supposed to by dryly ironic and funny - it is neither. After laying so much expositional pipe, the writers then proceed to ignore the emotional heart of the story - the children. They labour under the false impression that this is a story about the parents (they can't even decide on which parent is the actual protagonist!) almost completely overlooking the far, far richer ground offered by the kids. The nature/nurture debate is barely dramatized - instead, we are presented a series of more-or-less discrete episodic events that never accrete to form as world we can accept and believe in. There is never a really, deeply felt and earned moment of self realisation on the part of the parents - no, "OMG, what have we done!" moment that would at least redeem them somewhat. But this does not deter the filmmakers from forcing a completely unearned moment of reconciliation at the end when the family is momentarily reunited at the kid's private school and watch, gormless and idiotically, as their family history of warm intimate moments unspools in one of the son's film project. Didn't the director understand that these moments, or at least some of them, had to have been seen prior to this moment? Didn't he realized that we, as an audience, had to live through at least some of these good times in order for the little home movie to mean something to us? The screenplay is truly awful - poorly structured, much too reliant on voice-over, lingers far too long on irrelevant and redundant exposition and never gets under the skin of the characters. the greatest fault is perhaps that the filmmakers could never decide who story they wanted to tell. What is worst for English Quebec cinema is that the filmmakers had everything they needed to be successful: a great cast, a committerd producer, lovely cinematography, beautiful locations - they just forgot to bring the essentials; imagination and a script doctor who would have put them right. This is a poor sophomore feature effort from the team who did the spare but excellent "Whitewash."

If the kids were taken from their parents they wouldn't end up at a fancy boarding school. Institutions like that cost a lot of money. They would end up with much more abusive foster parents and I would have enjoyed this more if that happened.