Wonderful character development!

Truly Dreadful Film

The Worst Film Ever

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Zero entertainment value would be the best way to describe this wretched film. Billy Zane is a strutting ass, so pompous and unlikable that you will immediately be disgusted. His religious rants make no sense as does the entire movie. Equally unlikable is his twin sister, Gina Gershon, who portrays a street trollop with no scruples. Both are so stuck on themselves and each other that they are two of the most boorish characters I've ever seen on the screen. Constant voice overs only add to the train wreck of a script, which is basically unwatchable. This movie is a real turn off, and most definitely should be avoided. - MERK

About the unpredictability of life, about how "nothing really happens for a reason, it just happens" (the film's first spoken words). About how nobody else matters if you found your one true love (even if this love happens to be your twin sister). About how the best people sometimes have to be the most morally bankrupt ones to get ahead in a depraved society. About smoking simply for the reason that it fills the air with atmosphere, infusing something into a void.An IMDb reviewer wrote a wonderful thing about Sheryl Lee in this film, allow me quote it. "Sheryl Lee gave a terrific performance as Lois, the sex crazed lady cop who becomes obsessed with Marty (Billy Zane). She was so desperately needy and shameless in her appetite for Marty that it seemed she couldn't live unless she was breathing the air he just exhaled." The same reviewer also wrote how unfitting Billy Zane is in the film because his moodiness was so "un-50's". I agree that it would be a rather untypical character for an old film noir but that's just one of the areas where it shows that 'This World, then the Fireworks' does its own thing, it doesn't merely try to emulate a classic film noir, the filmmakers know that, for example, they can be more frank in the depiction of sexuality and violence and they gladly use that opportunity. Rue McClanahan as the mother (known from Golden Girls) looks like an old, withered, crazy, washed up version of Marilyn Monroe, which seems all kinds of appropriate. Director Oblowitz says his main inspiration was Welles' 'Touch of Evil' which seems all kinds of appropriate as well.The French just love it (how else to explain that there are half a dozen French DVD releases of the film while there doesn't seem to be a single American one...although the French screwed up the beautiful title). Maybe the full-screen version (which has more information at the top and bottom but also cuts off quite a bit of the sides) actually works better but one way or the other it works, especially after the wild first third that introduces us not only to the characters but also to this world, the pace settles down with the slow, jazzy "The Thrill is Gone" setting the mood and the film starts molding the emotional core of its main characters while remaining unpredictable and varied.

If you like neo-noir, or the real thing from the fifties, then this film is for you. The look and feel of a fifties classic is all over this film from the cinematography to the music to the narration.It is a story about a totally dysfunctional family. The children witnessed their father killed while shagging the cop's wife from across the street. Mom didn't seem to mind, but then she was wacko, too. Why do people play in their own back yard? The kids grow up totally weird as expected. Gina Gershon (Bound) plays the sister, who left a rich husband to become a prostitute. She had that classic look of the Fifties - white skin and the full pouty lips. Style the hair right and she could be Ava Gardner. Is there something going on with her brother (Billy Zane) that is more than brotherly love. That is for you to figure out.Sheryl Lee ("Twin Peaks", Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, John Carpenter's Vampires) can always be counted upon to present skintastic moments in her films. She comes through here as a sex-crazed cop who hooks up with the brother.Lots of death, of course, as that is the rule for noir, and lots of passionate and sexy moments. An entertaining Fifties film presented as they never could in the Fifties.

A young reporter has an incestuous relation with his twin sister who is working as a prostitute. Growing up in unkind circumstances after they became eye witnesses of a murder their father committed, the twins held even tighter to each other and the knowing mother was never disposed to intercept their relation. It is correct that the core story does not provide a great "pointe" but the stereotyped personalities are about to make the movie quite entertaining by creating some kind of suspense with, unfortunately, no determined Issue. The acting was quite good regarding the strange and sometimes absurd emotional actions of the characters. All in all, I wouldn't grant an Oscar but 8 points for keeping me close to the screen for 100 minutes