Excellent film. James Franco is truly a great actor...just wished he'd get more recognition for his body of work. He's outstanding and this movie is a perfect vehicle for his rare talents.

You really do not want to miss James Franco's soulful and raw portrayal of Sonny. This movie would be easily forgotten by most people after watching it, if it weren't his performance that fleshes out this character and burns him into your mind. A very passionate, gritty, and sad movie. Worth watching.

I love the campiness and the awesome house in which it was filmed!

Despite absolutely being obsessed with James Franco, this movie was really great. The direction by cage is great and i ab. loved the ending. The only thing i found irritating was Sonny's mothers accent and overzealousness. Worthwhile film! loved it.

"Carol," with her 20s flapper bob done up in platinum blonde, is a weary young prostitute who is tiring of never being able to have children. I can see why Mena Suvari jumped through hoops to play this part: she gets to walk through the rain, kiss James Franco while supine on a pile of hay in the barn, and also sink hysterically onto her knees in a giant mud puddle in the middle of a storm while sobbing her eyes out and suffering the indignity of having her mascara run. Even on SIX FEET UNDER Mena Suvari rarely got to stretch her acting muscles like this. She begs Sonny to love her and let her bear his children, just to run off somewhere where they wouldn't have to be male and female prostitutes and they could just be normal people.

Well, as many have speculated, this is probably an allegory for the relationship between Cage himself and his kooky wife, Patricia Arquette, both of whom were typecast by the old Hollywood casting system. Arquette finally broke free, divorcing Cage and finding her own network success with "The MEDIUM," in which she plays a wife, mother and psychic all rolled up into one, although she does not sport the fashion flair of Mena Suvari playing her former self in SONNY. In the scene where Carol tells Sonny that she's leaving him for a man (TROY) who will marry her, he's standing there shaving with a big blue towel knotted incredibly low on his waist. I kept thinking, one of two things would happen--a frazzled Sonny was going to take the razor away from his soapy face and slash poor Carol with it; or b, somehow the towel would fall away, or maybe that was just wishful thinking. How tall is Mena Suvari anyhow? In the swingers scene where she and Sonny have sex with two middle aged and unattractive parents, the little children run in afterwards, happy to see their mom and dad. Mena Suvari stands there, directed to seem awkward, but it is shocking how five and eight year old kids look bigger than she does.

As for Brenda Blethyn or whatever her name is, she is simply terrible. So terrible it makes you rethink all her previous performances and chalk them up to dumb luck, because no one could be so bad without actually being bad--in fact evil. Harry Dean Stanton wears that pork pie hat as though he were born to the role, but why oh why does the music have to telegraph everything that happena to him? But how about Scott Caan, playing Jesse? Sonny and Jesse served together in the Army or whatever, and when they got out Jesse told Sonny that his dad would have a job waiting for them both in the family bookstore (!!!)--however when Sonny gets to Texas he finds out that creditors shut down the bookstore, cancer done took away the life of Scott Caan's dad, and all that is left of the bookstore idea is one book--Camus' STRANGER. In this movie it is presented as a physically hefty book, like the Manhattan Yellow Pages--one sign that the producers never bothered researching the real STRANGER which is only a novella for god's sake.