Here I Am – trailer

The cinematography looks good and I’m sure there are some great performances, but it looks depressing and boring — where is the market for this??

Sorry, but I won’t be shelling out $15 to watch this.

The trailer doesn’t tell the story very well either – what the hell is this about?

Someone sad and depressed woman with a kid who wants to be a better person?

Don’t we all?

Where is the entertainment?

Everything I’ve seen from the trailer tells me this story is too small for the big screen. It’s probably too personal even for a successful TV show.

I was beginning to think Aussie films were turning around. I was wrong.

I watch 120+ movies per year with a broad taste in film and I had no interest in either Precious or Winter’s Bone. And therefore – didn’t see them.

Winter’s Bone did $6.5m at the US box office. So – make of that what you will.

Precious did somewhat better with $47.m at the US box office, but it had two other factors in play:
1. It was based on an existing, successful novel.
2. It was nominated for an Academy Award – which in itself, creates buzz for the film which translates to viewers.

While I’m grateful that many talented Australians were employed in the making of this film – if you want to tell a story about the microcosm of a person’s domestic life: write a novel.

Or a poem.

It’s cheaper, quicker and more suited to the subject matter.

@Anonymous: We live on a vastly populated planet, with a variety of diverse cultures to suggest a film that has gone into production should have been something other than what it is: A social realist film..is pointless. This is a film, people will see it, maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t. Winters Bone..made for a budget of $2Million and a gross revenue of $12.4 million could hardly be considered a failure. This said I see where you’re coming from, the trailer doesn’t excite and does seem to me to be the kind of film that might be better off made for TV…but it is what it is.
We need to be careful when we appraise films that are of a certain genre, especially when wish them to be something else. The film is what it is and should be judged as such. If you can find a way to finance the kind of entertainment you wish to see, I’m sure everybody is all ears. Still I understand that these kinds of social realist films have dominated the Australian screens over the last ten years and they seem to be able to access financing easier than other genre’s… personally I’d also like to see some more provocative and entertaining films that take a few chances and respect the audiences intelligence. I’m not talking about creature features, “giant rogue shark-crocodile-squid-mantaray-killerwhale-lizards”. Can we stop making these stupid things for a while? With social realism We get it “Life is tough and Rough, full of hope and peppered with disappointment and love, anger, frustration, bewilderment and random acts of insight and cruelty” We get it..why? We’re all living similar lives, varying in degrees of frustration and insight etc…we get it we get it. We are just not seeing innovative entertaining cinema at the moment..is it a lack of screenplays? I think so. Maybe rather than say where is the entertainment?…Say “Where is the development funds that are pushing screenwriters to have the confidence to write provocative cinema?”
Answer?
Nowhere to be found!

Well said Doug!