Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

TeenzTen An action-packed slog

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Retinend This documentary about the death of a group of zoophiles whose club disbanded with the death of a Boeing engineer, "Mr. Hands," illustrates phone interviews with the perpetrators with dreamy imagery of dew- sprayed orchards, rolling mid-western highways and slow motion panoramas of farmstead porches. The film makes no judgement of the men, who were not found guilty of any crime due to the niceties of state-specific lawmaking. The love of horses is portrayed as a mystical, philosophical longing to connect with nature. A dissenting voice, an investigator who first visited the scene of the non-crime, gives her reaction of horror and sympathy for the animals, but her case is not strongly made, since the sordid details are left out of the film. By so emphasizing the mystical-philosophic- longing-nature side of things, the film seems unnaturally sanitized and the elephant in the room looms large throughout (probably with its back to the wall): Watch the infamous video and you see a man with a manifold metal-studded ballsack eagerly prostrating himself in front of a member the size of a man's extended arm. The horse's penis is guided into Mr. Hands by a second man who asks "yeah, you like that, don't you?" in a lascivious tone, to the man soon to die. In the film, Mr. Hands is portrayed as a family man who had a bright future... I find it more convincing that he had a strong drive towards death, and that at least his sexual being was pleased to die in this way.My negative opinion of this film is not so much about its filmic aspects, but of its morality. Sure, the film does not explicitly endorse what these people did. However, I find the film perverse in its avoidance of simple questions that spring to most peoples' minds: what did they do with the horses? what sexual history did these men have? how did they get started? Typical of over-intellectualized analyses, these simple questions are discarded in favour of equivocation and obfuscation of the moral matter.Outside of these general questions, specific questions posed by the interviews themselves are unanswered or obfuscated by a chronology that seemed to have been cut up and stuck back together at random for a shallow intellectual effect. Who is "Cop #2" and what film was he hired for? Who was the boy who died? Who did the horses belong to? How can two horses give and receive a blowjob? Were they trained to do it? I'm barely scratching the surface because so little of the historical information hinted at is given it's proper providence, and so falls easily out of memory.As its fundamental moral angle and narrative loose ends are so dissatisfying for me, that stylish visual elements and overall technical quality is abundant was more irritating than it was palliative, for me. I wondered even more, on account of this, why such a film could even be made by intelligent, resourceful and skilled filmmakers, without thought for what they were implicitly advocating. Still, for the quality and style alone it is a convincing package, but is the lush surface texture an indication of its profundity? A loud "neigh" from me.

Emma Nøddespæk K Winona The narrative, from the people's point of view was very touching. The scenery and pictures were beautiful, and often made you forget about the grimness of this freak accident. I did not watch the last 20 minutes or so, because i got interrupted, and did not feel like resume watching this documentary, because of how understated the whole matter seemed to be. I would have liked some more factual things, for it to work as a proper documentary, since i am more used to the "Zeitgeist" part of the documentary-genre. Another thing i sort of missed in this movie, was some guiding - either by some sort of objective narrator or by some more relevant pictures, rather than pictures of woods and a guy on a greyhound bus. However, I really liked this movie for being so visually "clean" and for sticking to the relevant people and places. Another thing that i really liked, was the convincing acting of the "stock-footage" actors, so overall a well-done movie. 5/10 Best Intentions - Emma

leela42 To my mind, Zoo isn't really a documentary. It's an art-opinion piece trying to make a point that peaceful people who aren't harming anyone and love their animals (?) should be left alone. Much of the cinematography is indeed beautiful, but many shots are too dark (in the lack-of-light sense) to appreciate, and most are lingered over far too long. Since the filmmakers use audio-only interviews over goofy scene reenactments to tell what story there is, it's hard to tell what's going on most of the time. Any actual facts are referred to obliquely rather than delineated. I wasn't looking for graphic details, but did hope to learn more about the truth of the situation. This film was little help in that regard, although I did learn a few things about the people involved. This mess does not a documentary make. Bottom line: Don't try to be Errol Morris unless you can pull it off. PS: Some folks think differently; Zoo was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

tomgillespie2002 Upon getting hold of a copy of Zoo, my girlfriend asked me what it was about. I ummmed and aaahhh before informing her that it is in fact a documentary about a man who died from internal injuries, caused by having sex with a horse. That's putting it nicely. I may have even used the phrase 'bummed to death'. She then asked me why I would want to watch a film about such a thing. I couldn't reply. The fact is, since Zoo was released back in 2007, I had been dying to see it. I don't know what that says about me. Perhaps it's revealing my disturbing levels of curiosity about all things that shouldn't really be discussed. Anyway, I had the last laugh, as the film is genuinely very good.On a small farm in King County, Washington, groups of men would get together every now and then to escape their hectic lives and family. They would talk, drink, joke and play games together. They also had one thing in common - they were in love with horses, and enjoyed having sex with them. When a withdrawn character called Mr. Hands arrived at the farm, the men were curious. He seemed unsure and unattached. In 2005 he was rushed to the hospital, dying of internal injuries. He subsequent death caused a media storm and the investigation uncovered the farm and what was happening there. The state was forced to immediately pass laws against bestiality and the recording of the act.While it would be quite easy to make a joke of the situation, or to make a straight-laced documentary uncovering the seedy goings-on at the farm and the incident that later became known as 'the Enumclaw horse sex case', credit must go to director Robinson Devor for creating something entirely different. It was completely not what I expected. Zoo is a mysterious, dreamlike documentary that allows its real-life participants to give their point of view over slow-motion reconstructions of the incidents. It's a brave artistic move that never feels pretentious or meaningless.I can only describe the feeling of the film as a mixture between Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line and Andrew Jarecki's Capturing The Friedmans. It had the slow-building, crime-oriented feel of the former, and the storyline that you just can't quite believe actually happened of the latter. It's a fine mix and works surprisingly well given the taboo subject matter.In regards to the subject matter, it is handled both sensitively and with an air of curiosity. It allows the participants on the farm to tell their story, and doesn't misrepresent them in a way to make the viewer feel disgusted. Not to say that I didn't feel that way. Hearing these men talk about having genuine feelings of love for the horses, and relating to them on a basic, animalistic level just made me pity them. Not to say that I wasn't fascinated by what they had to say.A strange, hypnotic film about a shocking and unbelievable incident. I urge people to see past what the film is about and allow themselves to be moved by this quite unique film.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com