Henry Gamble's Birthday Party (2015)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of those movies that takes over an hour for something to happen and when it finally does happen, you wish it didn't. Also a touch of self-justified Christian intolerance: "you can't choose your race like people who choose to be gay". The intolerance should be kept to Sunday church, not our movie screens. Yuck.

I was impressed by the performances of the cast especially Cole Doman as Henry Gamble. The characters change or are revealed to be different people in the second half and that is worth sticking around for. I wished it had been more daring but I guess it was going for a general audience. (viewed 11/16)

I watched this on Netflix as a lark. I was quite surprised to find it both enjoyable and meaningful. It is atypical of gay-content films as a genre. The 'gay' is more 'by the way' than 'hey, Mary". Really liked the beginning and end. Cole Doman's face holds all the innocence of a somewhat pampered and conflicted middle class boy his age. The contrast between Henry and Logan, the awkward and out gay boy, is well done. The balance provided by smart-ass lesbian characters is not overplayed. The contrast between the twisted lives of the adults and the openness of the youngsters is also well written. The way Henry's older sister acts out that contrast is quite good.This film is outstanding for its quiet subtlety about religious bias and its constriction of human vision and compassion. It unfolds gently with the exception of a slightly contrived crisis involving an ostracized gay man. I recommend it to non-religious people (like me) who may lump all religious folks into a single category.

It seems that Mr. Cone has seen too many movies he liked because he is trying to use camera angles that seem to make no sense what so ever. I mean... interesting they are but that is all about them. To start a movie with the conversation about the size of the d**k without having anything to start from in the first place, to me is porn. 'Wannabe' art but ends up being porn. And that's bad enough. But when you involve actors or 'wannabe' actors in it then I can only think the director has a hidden message that the only person to have access to... might be just himself. I truly hope this is not true! I truly hope the actors or the team, at least, know about this message. If this is not the case then Mr. Cone does movies to be paid for. And my questions is: what happened with Mr. Cone we know from 'Wise kids'? Was that a mistaken-art-success? Because we see there as well the 'Mr. Cone wannabe director' but he shows love for the script and for the characters and building of the characters. He shows love for the plots and pure courage in creating them! Where did all that go?The story of the movie: the birthday of a Christian teenage. The rest of the story is so incoherent that only Mr. Cone might be able to put it here but I am not sure about that either, now that the movie is out. I have a special sensibility for the collaboration between gay-Christian themes. And of course, there is a certain conservative respect that has to come with this collaboration. Which existed in the aforementioned 'Wise kids' movie. I have no clue what happened with this here either. The respect for the conservative Christianism disappeared. There is a feeling that covers the movie and is very exaggerated in some small parts of it: that feeling is 'the bad is coming'! And indeed, it comes!