Bully (2001) - 6/10

Directed by: Larry Clark

Starring: Nick Stahl, Brad Renfro, Rachel Miner, Bijou Phillips and Michael Pitt
From director Larry Clark, who delivered the sexual antics and sheerly disturbing film known as Kids, comes another embrace of teens, lots of nudity/sex, violence, and language. With Bully, Clark aims to make a film with dark shades and does gain attention for what he shows. But he takes it one step further. This isn’t playful antics a la The Dreamers or Dangerous Liasons. This is much more sinister. However, there’s perhaps too much focus on Clark using the sex and violence with teens mantra. And the characters create an aura of awful pretentiousness themselves (though, I will agree that is probabaly the point).

But it’s not a bad film, it actually embraces what I loved about Lion’s Gate movies before they became known as the company with the horror films. In the era pre-Saw and The Punisher, LGF was willing to play edgy with movies that if a bigger studio put out, would’ve hardly had the same impact (and would’ve been horribly edited). And while this isn’t as brilliant as other LGF films (TROA, Frailty, and Secretary were much more daring and brilliant in my mind), it does work its dark elements well.