Most HORRIBLE Movie of ALL TIME

Hmmm...Obviously some of us are not able to understand the meaning of 'because I dream I am not'.
Maybe Lara Croft or Armagedon have more meaning for you?
Not trying to be sarcastic, just wondering if you understood that the film, characters and story, were exagerated on purpose! It is not a straight forward story but a world created by a very imaginatvie or rather insanly creative 10 yr. old.

Jon, you also say that Leolo "lacks a strong philosophy", that you get nothing from it.
¿What i (and many others) got from Leolo? I will make a little list:
· The anguish of grow-up and the perception of a miserable reality. The “existential anguish” that provoques becoming more concious about reality, about the miseries and mediocrity of the life that he is compelled to live. Leo is the sensible soul captured in a world of concrete, a family without any aspiration. You can see him as en extreme, tragic version of Lisa Simpson. But he is too young and can’t understood completely what’s happening to him and his family.
· The scape, the exorcism, not only throug dreams, but throug WRITING. “Leolo” is an excellent essay about the nature of artistic creation or artistic impulse. Artaud says “nobody ever has writed, painted, engraved, ..., constructed, invented, but to escape from his hell”. His writing is an act of survival. That’s an extremely decided philosophy of art, and also, of human being.
· The natural resistance to external coercion over the own personality: “My familly has become obsessed whit *beep* The young Leo spits the laxative that his father compel him to take, and it’s not only rejecting to *beep* but principally he is rejecting to being “created” according to external, ARBITRARY decision. In that scene you can see also a parody of Eucharist (and i’m telling you that being myself christian). He is claiming the right of having his own personality, his own aspirations. “My father was a dog that bites his doggish life”. Being too young, he perhaps does not realize what he want, but with his dreamings and writings he makes his own, little fight, lost right from the beggining. That’s why he claims defiantly “¡¡Leolo Lozone!!”.
· A strong critic to traditonalist education. The little kids repeats like parrots what his teacher says. The education also completely ignores the "animal part" of the person, and the difficulties of the passage to teenage (“nobody talks about that tail that grows between my legs”), is a purely rationalistic education mostly oriented to create workers or tecnicians for the factories (remember the discussion between the “word tamer” and Leo’s teacher), and it’s an education especially oriented to the kids of worker’s families. And that’s too a critic of education politics.
· “At home, I never saw anybody read or write...Television and comercials cluttered my brain”. A brutal social critic. That’s a claim of the necessity of books, of culture in general, to enrich human life. He also talks about the difficulty, about the force of will that requires the improvement of the own personality (“The words were pushed together and required enormous effort and concentration to yield their secrets”).
· Fernand. Poor Fernand. A ton of muscle can’t replace what he really lacks: character. Without a strong nature, we would for ever be dominated by others, we will be pets of “big shots” (remember “The Godfather” and “Unforgiven”). Even if we lose to them, with a decided personality we will not be defeated "as easily", for stupidity or cowardy. When Leo realizes that, his illusions suffers a strong blow: “I understood fear lived in our deepest being”. The scene were Fernand suffers, for the second time, a cudgelling, is one of the most depressing of an already depressing movie. It’s a strong “blow of reality” that destroy the hope of Leo in his older brother, and with that, the hope of Leo for a more just life: “And I shall walk the alleys of the world, and tell the wretched of this earth what I think of them... Even the Arabs and the Jews will fear me, so tall will i be on my brother shoulders.”
· The cat scene. That’s perhaps one of the best scenes of the movie. ¿ What is really telling Lauzon with that scene? T-guy Godin is capable of doing anything to prove himself, and that’s the subconcious need of being accepted. What the narrator tells in that scene is also a terrifyng denunciation of social realities. It’s not a matter of “the poor people”, but “the life of the poor people”. The frustration of a mediocre, void life, the suffering and the resentment of misery, takes the human being to the extreme of brutality and depravation. “White meat sells better.” Even if T-guy is a depravated boy, he is mostly a victim of a social reality that overcomes him. His actions are actions of a desperate human being.

Note : His mother does not keep the liver in the bathroom, Leolo stoles it and takes it to the bathroom, to amuse himself with him. He is in an hormonal stress. I think that every one of us, even if not reaching the extreme of “playing” with a liver, has “suffered” that difficult, stressing moment of life. Lauzon is assuming it and “confesing” it. I personally think that the scene of the liver portraits an “extremely alive” human being, and with that the ending becomes much more tragic, because Leo(lo) was a breathing, dreaming, strong, extremely alive, extremely “real” person. His “death” his, for my personal experience, one of the saddest moments i’ve ever seen in the movies, along with “Sunset Boulevard”, “The Godfather II”, and “Raging bull”.
I have not even mentioned the aesthetics achievements of “Leolo”, that deserves another entire note.

Well, i absolutely hate "Schindler's List", i consider it a whicked version of a "true story", extremely "Hollywood" (!7 oscars!), that, unlike "Leolo", is plenty of unfair resources to manipulate the sensibility, with scenes that just are there to provoque the spectator, a void "special effect". I think that's not even a single "superflous" scene in "Leolo". BUT i must admit that "Schindler's List" is filmed with mastery, even if i hate his ideological content. I can understood that you don’t like “Leolo”, and you seem to be an intelligent, critic “cinema lover”, but please don’t say that’s a “piece of crap”, beacuse she is not, and i think that i gave you an argument of why she is not, an why many people loves “Leolo”. This movie is strong from every point of view, and it’s filmed with genuine artistic motivation. Lauzon does not try to please us, but to make us think about a bunch of profound questions.

Thanks, and please forgive me for my bad english, my original language is spanish.

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your entire repsponse is superficial and needless

i think theres a misconception of "entertainment" here.
cinema IS NOT entertainment. hollywood does entertainment but real directors doesnt intend to create flowers from *beep* i mean they "paint" the world as it is. sometimes it is sad and that fact doesnt demerit the movie per se.
theres hundreds of examples of this matter.
for one instance "citizen kane" probably one of the best movies ever made is sad as hell! it is decadent and shows us the rise and fall of a lost soul.
theres no "redemption" in there although the movie is perfect.

i do have the feeling that leolo its a piece of art. it is very complex and hard to bite for the mainstream in general becouse it articulates codes and symbols that are out of hand for most people.
on the other hand, most people dont want to to feel sad when going to movies nor want to see "reality" exposed through art becouse it is a very painful experience... thats the case with leolo.