PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

framptonhollis This movie isn't for everyone, and both fans and detractors of the film must accept that. Someone who loves this film isn't automatically "pretentious" and someone who hates it isn't automatically "too stupid" for "art". That being said, I feel as if this film should at least be given a chance by everybody whose interested deeply in the movies. It is in no way a conventional film, it combines all sorts of styles and moods while still miraculously maintaining all of the requirements to be labeled officially as a dogme 95 film. In itself, that is quite the achievement, but Korine's brilliant film goes lightyears beyond accomplishing only that. Most people may believe that there is a fine line between comedy and tragedy, at least in most cases, but I fervently disagree, and films like "Julien Donkey-Boy" could be the best evidence I have for this belief. Harmony Korine does not bore audiences with constant brooding drama, but he does not pander to them by providing constant comedy. Instead, he shakes things up a bit on a scene by scene basis, or sometimes just on a minute to minute basis, or even a second to second basis; there are scene in this film that tackle the very difficult task of being both roaringly funny and deeply sad in a comparable fashion to such gems as "Happiness" or "Lolita". The film focuses on many troubling, disturbing themes, including mental illness, incest, death, abuse (physical and mental), deformity, loneliness, sadness, etc, but it's hardly ever downright depressing. It is tense and shocking, but only rarely can I say it made me feel really bad, and whenever it did that's because it was supposed to, and I realized that n these moments Korine is just doing his job, and he's doing it absolutely wonderfully. "Julien Donkey-Boy" is an intensely evocative and emotional experience filled with memorable characters and moments, bits and pieces of philosophical dialogue, awkward black humor, perverse behavior, terrifying imagery, disorienting editing, avant garde beauty, and plenty more are constantly showcased during the entirety of this entertaining, yet artistically extreme and highly ambitious (to an almost unrealistic level) film. You may love it, you may hate it, you may love some moments, and you may hate others. It can be seen as either a huge, tonally confused mess or a refreshingly original take on the dysfunctional family drama (if that's even what it wants to replicate, implying that such a cryptically bizarre film would really want to replicate anything). It's got moments that made me laugh out loud and others that made me choke on my own tears. There is one scene in which a man swallows a shocking amount of lighted cigarettes, and other scenes include a rapping albino, a man without any arms who drums with his feet, and plenty more. These are real people that see to have been plopped into a fictional world, Harmony Korine lets his imagination run wild despite dogme 95's extreme limitations. He's a fearlessly unique and surreal filmmaker, a man whose films make my mind explode with confusion, happiness, and melancholy. Too bad he had to go on to make sh*t like "Trash Humpers"...

Taotrac ...but I honestly think that is exactly what Harmony Korine makes his films to be. With his newest film, Trash Humpers, being filmed as part improv/part 'what would happen if a buncha old people seriously filmed their own J@ckA$$ and then left it at Goodwill for someone to find', it really brings even more light to why Korine has his style. I'd explain his style any day as Home Funniest (And Most Autistic) Videos. His films are random clips throw together for the most part, and he wrote a book like that too. It's just a style you have to accept and get over it.But the magic is really in those clips. Sometimes Korine misses, sometimes he creates a scene that reaches out to you in a special way that is unique to every person watching. I personally love Korine's work because I was born with a mild mental/physical syndrome, I have a billion weird fetishes, I had a very strange mind as I child, I had extremely domineering parents, etc etc. Since Korine grew up an hour from me, he knows the culture in the South very well, and this reflects in all his films. In all, I think I actually connect with his films out of experience, not because I'm looking for something artistic. Korine is just a factor in my life who happened to pop up because of a bunch of extremely strange coincidences, and it's also in that coincidence that I like his work. If someone told me about him before I discovered the magic myself, I'd have been like 'Wtfcat'.And that's how I'd describe Julien, as well as Gummo and Trash Humpers. Either Korine has, out of fate, woven himself into your life, or he hasn't. He's created films that are supposed to be thrown into 50 cent sale bins so that people can pick up his mess for cheap, watch it, and laugh at it, make fun of it, destroy it afterward, set it on fire, love it, or just whatever they want. He's never made a film to make money, he makes films that are made to look like trash, and then he thinks people actually want to watch it. And well, he happens to be right, no matter what he does, he happens to make clips that make me smile.So at the end of the day, his Youtube previews are the best (someone else usually edits the Official Previews, as Korine usually does not pick great editors for the final film, and so the previews always cheer me up better). But besides them, it's also fun just to scour around Youtube and see what secret scene I can find from Donkey-boy. My favorite so far is the scene where he's washing the girl's feet, and Herzog pwns (did you know he just directed Bad Cop: Port Call? weird :P).Idk, I like HK's films, I think anyone who gets complex about him either; a. is fooling themselves, or b. hasn't been through the things he portrays in his films. I do think HK makes these films for autistic people to relate to, rather than giving a normal person a view of their world. At least thats what I think.

Searchingforhelen Dogme films have been known to cause uproarious debate and dissent amongst cinephiles, as to the integrity, accuracy, and adherence to the Dogme rules and intellect. It mirrors almost a cult or religion, (hence where the terminology "Dogme" derives). With this parallel in thought, it is easy to determine the movie's constituents. Not everyone is going to accept the Dogme ideals nor its products, just as Budhism, Christianity, Islam, etc...You might think me pretentious or almost myopic to equivocate movies with cults or religions, but it's not too far off, especially Dogme. Well in this church of film-making, I consider myself a devout. I worship these shrines of inspiring, super-realist, examples of divine human contemplation and visual harmony.The reverend deserves at least some if not most of the credit, Harmony Korine, whose earlier sermons include the screenplay KIDS, and Gummo. The use of video here demonstrates a pure, visceral observation of a family's interaction to their schizophrenic sibling, Julien, played masterfully by Ewen Bremner. The patriarch of the family, Werner Herzog, does a believably eccentric adaptation of his own psycho-anatomy.Upon my first viewing of this film, I thought it was a documentary on a real life schizophrenic (due to Ewen Bremner's brilliant vocation of repressing his Scottish tongue to affect a uber-convincing accent that would put fellow Trainspotter Mcgregor to shame). Chloe Sevigny does an impressive job also with the ambiguous pregnancy.This film sneaks up on you until you watch it and tell all your indie friends about it, but it stays on your shelf, because it is too powerful to watch everyday, even though you secretly want to review it. (see Requiem for a Dream, American History X, Dancer in the Dark, Magdalene Sisters, Naked Lunch). Go rent this film at least once, If you've at least gone to church once, go to this MASSive example of purist film-making via Harmony.

Troy H That's part of the bottom line...The other part of the bottom line is that I have enough friends with schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder to tell you for once and for all, ignore the bigots who aren't open minded enough to embrace this film. Julian's portrayal is right on target, end of story, especially when you take the rest of the sick family show in this film into account. Julian's mysterious behavior reflects my own experience with my own friends and family. Get yourself to the nearest library and look in the DSM-IV Diagnsotic Manual, and look this stuff up. Werner Herzog, as the equally disturbed father, brings something to this film I can't even begin to describe, but I can tell you, I've seen too many people like this for my own comfort.The beginning of the film exploits some of the limitations of the DV equipment it was shot on, making it as harsh, jarring and garish as Julian himself would have felt it. The ending of the film has stayed with me to this day, you still ask yourself about the potential incest months after you've seen it. It's brutally ambiguous, at least for me it was. The rear-guard snobs and bigots I've seen bash this film here and elsewhere are obviously completely ignorant of all the advances made in POV based exposition and storytelling in 20th century literature, which really fries my balls, since they harp on literary devices they obviously know nothing about.Having said that, I would personally bend the Dogma "rules" for the sake of losing all the extra noise and grain that gets magnified in the tape to film transfer. This film was shot largely on a Sony VX1000, BTW, but to respect the Dogme Manifesto, nothing was done to clean up the footage, and I'm not sure if there was much if any color correction done on the answer print for the 35mm pint for theaters, either. More people need to read Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury", then look at something like Lynch's "Eraserhead" a few times. Lead, follow, or get the **** out of the way. People like Korine lead.