Excellent, a Must See

Dreadfully Boring

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

After the conclusion of the shooting of the polemic movie "This Is My Blood" about the life of Jesus performing the role of Maria Magdalene, the successful actress Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche) feels obsessed by the life of her character and decides to stay in Jerusalem in a quest of faith and self-knowledge to fulfill the emptiness of her life. The selfish and egocentric director Tony Childress (Matthew Modine) returns to New York, where he meets the atheist host of a famous TV show Ted Younger (Forest Whitaker) in the prescreening of his movie. Ted is presenting a series of programs about the life of Jesus Christ and invites Tony to participate as a guest in his show. Meanwhile, Ted has one night stand with Tony's assistant and his upset wife Elizabeth Younger (Heather Graham) has problems with her pregnancy having an early delivery. When the desperate Ted sees the pain of his wife and his premature newborn son, he regrets and feels the need to pray for his beloved family.Abel Ferrara usually uses Catholic icons in his movies; however, "Mary" is specifically about elements of the Catholicism, such as faith, guilty, sin, love and regret. The story is very well acted by Forest Whitaker, Juliette Binoche and Matthew Modine; however, the screenplay is confused and something is missing to make "Mary" a great movie. Nevertheless, it is an original story and does not disappoint. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Maria" ("Mary")

My wife and I were trying really hard hard hard to see this piece of art to the very end, hoping that its endless boredom will end up, as it says "thriller" on its genre. No plot we did find, no interesting part, no good feeling of watching a movie but anger how wonderful stuff HBO showed up on Saturday prime time in the Czech Republic. Who pays for this "art"? The authors only stole some ideas from Da Vinci Code without making their final product interesting. Just non stop rehashing "Jesus this and Jesus that, and Mary Magdalene this and Mary Magdalene that", just good for priest seminary.I understand that not every day is a holiday, isn't it? But why on Saturday evening prime time, HBO, why!?

It is really hard to understand what kind of message this film is supposed to convey. We have several threads of story that start and seem to lead nowhere. Juliette Binoche is an actress who after acting as Mary in a film about the life of Jesus is struck by religious fervor and apparently starts identifying herself wit the the Bible character. Forest Whitaker is a religious TV host who does not seem to care to much about God, but when disaster strikes his personal life he remembers Him and starts praying and believing - are we supposed to believe as viewers that this sincere? The film about Jesus starts some kind of controversy which seems to refer to Mel Gibson, but the real Mel Gibson as much as I may not like him is certainly sincere in his beliefs, and does not look like the cynical character in this film. Although 'Mary' lasts only 83 minutes the screen time is too long, so it is filled up with scenes of the biblical story (from the film in the film, or trying to convey some confuse metaphor? who cares?) and an episode of a Jewish Passover celebration in Jerusalem interrupted by an act of terror with no connection whatever with the rest of the story.It is hard to grasp why this film was made, what is it really trying to say and why actors like Juliette Binoche and the now-Oscared Forest Whitaker got involved with it. They act well, but it's wasted talent. Unless you are a fan of Bible inspired films, there is no good reason to spend the time seeing it.

I really enjoyed the actors playing, however I think the movie could have spend more time on most of the interesting subjects it only "listed". During all the movie, I really enjoyed it, but when it finished I thought "That's all ?" and found that it was in fact quite empty. Nothing about what was the life for women at the time of Jesus, about interesting ideas which leaded Mary to drop her career, ...I really think this movie would have been really great with 30 more minutes and more stuff to make us think about the ideas it "lists".However I think it's beautiful and interesting enough, so you should go and see it :)