Head On (1998)

That was an excellent one.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Not a terrible movie, would have been much better if they'd found someone under 30 to play role of Ari. I found some scenes to be disconnected and could have enjoyed the entire movie much better had the role of Ari been played by an actor that didn't look more like a 30 to 35 year old. Several times during the movie I had to force myself to continue watching.

Where do you start with this amateur boring disjointed thing? It looked like it was filmed with an early Nokia phone. Half the camera shots are close ups of Ari (the protagonist). The screen play was the worst part though. It is one of those movies that are so bad they could be humorous. And I am gay! Back to the screen play trite comes to mind-- Australia must be 50 years behind the US (I have heard this by the way) in terms of melting pot stuff. Or some pseudo-intellectual lefty queen thought this the perfect movie script (much more likely). No one in US thinks Italian or Greek or even Latino any more it has all become pretty much main stream. Thank God. That then axes the whole PC gist of the movie...ethnic isolation/discrimination/fitting in--in an "angl#" world. Ari is as another reviewer stated gorgeous...why does he have furtive alley sex with an over weight oriental a scrungy old biker type etc...he could have anyone...this just doesn't fit. This unintelligent screen play attempts to be lefty (shots of protests against Greek colonels) and deep. "I am on the edge of a sewer and smell the shi@" "I am a sailor and a whor$"... I actually laughed at this last line. Written by an unintelligent queen trying to be deep. The writer is also trying to show the edgy dystopia of the gay world...drug driven desperate shadowy degrading back alley sex full of drag queens etc... The real gay world even I imagine in Melbourne is much more mundane and thankfully boringly wholesome. How this thing won any awards etc...?? Again Australia must be 50 years behind the US. Sorry if I insult anybody.DO NOT RECOMMEND

Culture clash in modern-day Australia, as a 19-year-old Greek named Ari, handsome but feckless--and prone to snorting and shooting drugs--rebels against his hot-tempered papa, a man of values and culture but perhaps stuck in the past. Ari's inner-anger is all-encompassing; he lashes out at his family, at his diverse neighborhood (which appears to be an otherwise peaceful agglomeration of working-class Asians and middle easterners) and at girls who find him attractive. Ari's father is shown as disappointed with his wife and children, but even in the flashbacks there aren't any clues as to what would've made this man happy (he and his wife protested for Greek rights, but does he want his son to continue this fight--and what would the fight be about, the same issues the father fought for?). As Ari, Alex Dimitriades struts and preens like the next John Travolta (in fact, some of the home front squabbles, particularly one around the table, seem lifted from "Saturday Night Fever"). It's a risky role for the actor, who must keep up a perpetually ill-mannered demeanor, complete with lusty, angry homosexual activities which Ari keeps secret (his father hates 'poofters'); yet, Dimitriades, self-enamored and intense, makes the part work for himself and the audience. He's helped a great deal by director Ana Kokkinos, who also co-adapted the screenplay from Christos Tsiolkas's novel "Loaded" with Andrew Bovell and Mira Robertson. Kokkinos keeps the camera busy and free-flowing, although she stumbles when attempting artiness, which in this case is akin to dreariness. Some marvelous moments emerge in what could have been just another coming-of-age melodrama. **1/2 from ****

This film is basically a Saturday Night Fever re-tread. Yeah, the family is Greek, no, there isn't any disco dancing or Bee Gees, but there is a dark, brooding magnetic lead trying to break out of his family's traditions, expectations and the hedonistic culture around him. It's his ethnic culture that prevents him from being his gay self, distorting his view of what that means (very funny that the Greeks, of all people, should be so adverse to homosexuality) and a drug culture that pulls him downward.But it's a bit of snooze. Sure, there are bits of raw sexual activity but they aren't very well integrated into the rest of the film--like his main character, sex and drugs seem to be the only thing that excites this director, as the rest of the film feels flat and arid in a way that disengages the viewer. The narrative is as confused as the lead, Ari; in fact, this film ends where it really should begin. Instead it just meanders about; all we know is that Ari wants to "move out" but we never see what that means or what influences him to be at all aspirational. Sure, we see the push but what's the pull? Since it's obvious to the viewer from the start that Ari is in a confused state about things, how interesting is it for us to watch him over an hour and forty minutes learn what we already know? Well, since the handsome, well-built Alex Dimitriades is playing Ari, fairly interesting at that, but even his committed, intense performance begins to loop back on itself--and it's clear, as an actor, that he is capable of so much more. He's boxed in by repetitive writing--Ari is frustrated, he's frustrated, he's frustrated--get it? Yeah, got it. In the first scene.The best scenes are between Dimitriades and his friend Johnny/Tula, excellently played with and without drag, by Paul Capsis. It would've been better if the film focused more on this relationship, foregoing lengthy and obvious sequences about Ari's Greek heritage. Though revealing, unresolved, under-developed subplots about his friend's engagement and his younger sister go nowhere and make the film lose focus; these characters only exist to say something about Ari. An attraction between Ari and a very pale-featured man named Sean is unconvincing; the director takes for granted that because they're gay they'll get together when the viewer can see that they are clearly chalk and cheese--though this is obvious, their relationship, rather conveniently, isn't really explored which makes the final denouement unsurprising. It should've been the first scene. (In fact, Ari's attractions make this feel, at times, like a gay Breaking The Waves.) Dimitrades is too likable for us to feel critical of his behaviour; instead it feels more like he is let down by the people around him (save Capsis) and should really be mixing with a better grade of people that he has more in common with. Sometimes it's that easy. But the film doesn't go there.Ultimately, the film doesn't go head on with anything, though it can be credited with some subtlety and one can easily admire the work of Dimitriades and Capsis.