Disconnect

At last there is a film that places before our eyes and ears and minds the intrinsic dangers of the now ubiquitous ether cloud of substitute life/communication. The number of identity thefts, suicides, fraudulent dealings, and the accompanying waste of human brain time from the ever-present cellphone or pad or laptop has grown to appalling proportions and it just may help for the general audience to watch this film and witness how deleterious our 'advanced communication' has become. Written by Andrew Stern and directed with phenomenal sensitivity and dexterity by Henry Alex Rubin (both rather newcomers on the cinema scene), this is a film that deserves wide recognition at awards time and definitely wide attendance by audiences. Hard-working lawyer Rich Boyd (Jason Bateman), attached to his cell phone, can't find the time to communicate with his wife Lydia (Hope Davis) and son Ben (Jonah Bobo) and daughter Abby (Haley Ramm). A couple (Alexander Skarsgård and Paula Patton) is drawn into a dangerous situation while investigating the computer hacking of their complete finances when their own secrets are exposed online: they stalk a simple worker Stephen Schumacher (Michael Nyqvist) who becomes caught up in their obsession. A widowed ex-cop (Frank Grillo) struggles to raise a mischievous son Jason (Colin Ford) who with his cohort Frye (Aviad Bernstein) cyber-bullies a classmate, the haunted and taunted musician Ben. An ambitious journalist Nina Dunham (Andrea Riseborough) sees a career-making story in teen Kyle (Max Thieriot) who performs * on an adult-only chatroom. They are strangers, neighbors and colleagues and their stories collide in this riveting dramatic thriller about ordinary people struggling to connect in today's wired world. It takes a suicide attempt to tie all of these stories together. Every member of this cast is excellent, the pacing of the film is over the speed limit as well it should be, and the manner in which each of these seemingly disparate stories is told in overlapping fashion and finally in impressive slow motion pushes this cinematic piece into an art work with a blisteringly tough message. It is a wakeup call, hopefully not too late to change. Highly recommended. Grady Harp

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source: Disconnect

While it doesn't have quite the scope of either '04's CRASH or '06's BABEL, DISCONNECT is structured along the same lines, with mutual conflicts intertwining four sets of people in very different occupations/walks of life. With so many engaging but fundamentally flawed, mediocre, or downright awful films coming out in the last few years, it completely restored my faith in today's movie-making industry. The protagonists in DISCONNECT have one thing in common: Their lives are seriously, often tragically disrupted by online misadventures involving identity theft, cyber-bullying, and child *. The empathy conveyed in this film is powerful. DISCONNECT makes you wish you could just leap through the screen and beg all of its unwitting players to do exactly as the title says. Stellar performances by just about everyone, with particular kudos going to Andrea Riseborough as television reporter Nina Dunham, Max Theriot as the 18-year-old interactive-online porno model who Dunham befriends and reports on, and Colin Ford and Aviad Bernstein as the two punkishly convincing cyber-bullies. The themes of guilt, reconciliation, and how we're all both oppressors and victims shine through very well. While they will appeal to many tastes, the parallel endings may prove too touchy-feely for others.

I think this movie has come so close to defining the time we all live in, I may be wrong the movie might have done much more than getting closer to defining the time we all live in, it might have done just that - defining the time we live in. The movie explores our inabilities to be relevant to our times in the way we understand it or the way we try to understand it and scares even the little bit naiveté out of our already cynical individual selves. It starts with not so much of a comment but with glimpse's into one of the stark realities that has come to be associated with the word "Staying connected", a reality which is a world unto itself existing in response to the world that has changed the way it communicates with itself and the world that doesn't mind shedding its inhibitions in front of a 10 inch screen which implodes into a domicile of a different kind that's built up of bits and not pieces but gigabytes where nothing is spurned in answer to a 16 digit number on a plastic card. A teen can exist in that world wanting to be rewarded for playing along satiating with carnality the eyes staring at the 10 inch screen from the other side desire's, a teen who finds it impossible to give expression to his thoughts in the way expected of him in the world he exists finds it easier to show how vulnerable he is in front of that 10 inch screen, an unassuming women leading an insular existence along with her reclusive war veteran husband finds an outlet to her grief through that 10 inch screen only to confront a much starker reality of the other world, its the world that allows people now to use the words " I am online" in a context that defines everything around us even the medium that has dominated our living rooms for over 8 decades- television, what is television today if not redundant in a world that stay's connected constantly. The movie disparages what television has turned out to be through a character, a woman TV reporter, who sets out to expose one of the dark realities of the online world but gets caught up in her own guilt after coming face to face with the reality of her own existence besmirched by the vile as inveigled by the screen on which she loves to see her face projected every day for millions to see. Through these characters the movie raises many pertinent question's as to how the things that makes us human our ability to trust, our inabilities which allows us to be vulnerable, our innocence that has very little use in the real world will be shaped into in the future to which we all are chained to through the links of time, The movie is a stunning depiction of the insecurities and confusions one has to confront in the time we all live in, which makes us more gullible than we ever were, more in need of rectitude than we ever needed, desperate to be close to each other than we ever wanted to be. I don't know if I should call this movie a great one but it surely is one of the best movie's of our time and definitely deserves a watch.

At last there is a film that places before our eyes and ears and minds the intrinsic dangers of the now ubiquitous ether cloud of substitute life/communication. The number of identity thefts, suicides, fraudulent dealings, and the accompanying waste of human brain time from the ever-present cellphone or pad or laptop has grown to appalling proportions and it just may help for the general audience to watch this film and witness how deleterious our 'advanced communication' has become. Written by Andrew Stern and directed with phenomenal sensitivity and dexterity by Henry Alex Rubin (both rather newcomers on the cinema scene), this is a film that deserves wide recognition at awards time and definitely wide attendance by audiences. Hard-working lawyer Rich Boyd (Jason Bateman), attached to his cell phone, can't find the time to communicate with his wife Lydia (Hope Davis) and son Ben (Jonah Bobo) and daughter Abby (Haley Ramm). A couple (Alexander Skarsgård and Paula Patton) is drawn into a dangerous situation while investigating the computer hacking of their complete finances when their own secrets are exposed online: they stalk a simple worker Stephen Schumacher (Michael Nyqvist) who becomes caught up in their obsession. A widowed ex-cop (Frank Grillo) struggles to raise a mischievous son Jason (Colin Ford) who with his cohort Frye (Aviad Bernstein) cyber-bullies a classmate, the haunted and taunted musician Ben. An ambitious journalist Nina Dunham (Andrea Riseborough) sees a career-making story in teen Kyle (Max Thieriot) who performs * on an adult-only chatroom. They are strangers, neighbors and colleagues and their stories collide in this riveting dramatic thriller about ordinary people struggling to connect in today's wired world. It takes a suicide attempt to tie all of these stories together. Every member of this cast is excellent, the pacing of the film is over the speed limit as well it should be, and the manner in which each of these seemingly disparate stories is told in overlapping fashion and finally in impressive slow motion pushes this cinematic piece into an art work with a blisteringly tough message. It is a wakeup call, hopefully not too late to change. Highly recommended. Grady Harp

And the award for the 2013 film most reminiscent of the Oscar-winning Best Picture "Crash" goes to "Disconnect." Though, in defense of "Disconnect," it's a much better film than Paul Haggis's hot mess. It's directed by Henry Alex-Rubin, whose only other screen credit that I'm personally familiar with is the excellent 2005 documentary "Murderball." It examines the toll social media takes on personal relationships, and like "Crash," it examines the paradox of a world in which communication with other humans is easier than ever before, yet in which everyone feels lonelier than ever. It brings together a number of stories and makes connections between them, and like any screenplay that relies heavily on this narrative approach, some of the connections are more graceful than others. The film culminates in a montage of violence, in which the characters in the various stories finally and literally connect with each other in the only way they know how -- through violence. Parts of this climax, particularly a story featuring Alexander Skarsgaard and Paula Patton as a married couple who fall victim to identity theft, felt over done, but Alex-Rubin mostly keeps a firm and sensible hand on his material and doesn't let his film become preachy the way "Crash" did. One of the things I liked most about "Disconnect" was the way it captured just how reliant we as a race have fallen to all electronic devices. Some type of gadget makes an appearance in literally every scene of the movie -- characters sit around checking their phones, listening to their music, tapping away at their laptops -- and yet it didn't feel forced by the screenplay in order to make a point. It felt like the way the world actually looks now. Grade: A-