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With: Brady Corbet, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jeff Licon, Bill Sage, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Elisabeth Shue, Lisa Long, Chris Mulkey, George Webster, Chase Ellison, Billy Drago, Richard Riehle
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Written by: Gregg Araki, based on the novel by Scott Heim
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Directed by: Gregg Araki
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MPAA Rating: NR
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Running Time: 99
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Date: 09/03/2004
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Human Touch
By Jeffrey M. Anderson Gregg Araki's remarkable new film Mysterious Skin has alreadyreceived some negative press and a few reviews that have missed thepoint, but it's a superb achievement, and easily one of the two or threebest films of the spring season. It traces the lives of two young menwho were abused one summer as children by their baseball coach (BillSage). Neil (played as a youngster by Chase Ellison, and as a teen byJoseph Gordon-Levitt) becomes a rebel and a hustler, while the other,Brian (George Webster, and later Brady Corbet), withdraws and becomesfascinated by alien abductions. Araki (The Living End, TheDoom Generation) could have gone the usual brutal, oppressive routebut instead finds an astonishingly beautiful center to his film,focusing on tender moments of re-discovery and re-direction rather thanon pain and defeat. In one great scene, Neil picks up an older,sinister-looking john (Billy Drago), only to discover the man's bodycovered with HIV-related sores. The scene's danger level rises, but onlyfor a moment, before the pitiful man asks merely for a back rub. Arakishows the subsequent rub, and the man sighs in ecstasy from this simplehuman touch. My one complaint is that, after Araki finds the perfectimage to close his movie, he stifles it with a bit of totallyunnecessary and jarring narration. Otherwise, Michelle Trachtenberg andElizabeth Shue are excellent in supporting roles.
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