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best movie i've ever seen.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

James Franco does an experimental autobiography of American poet Hart Crane. Michael Shannon plays Emile, one of his lovers. It's black and white and supposedly Franco's student film at New York University. It is unwatchable if you're looking for a narrative driven story. I'll be cruel and say it's pretentious. It's an art student film. It is technically competent. The black and white photography looks good. Unlike most amateur films, this one has top level actors. It is simply not good as a film. I'd rather have a short film with only Franco reading poetry. There's no way to maintain enough concentration to follow the entire run.

This film tells the life of an American homosexual poet named Hart, who died of suicide by jumping off a sailing army ship."The Broken Tower" is shot in black and white. It is a tell tale sign that it is a very artsy movie that has no commercial elements at all. I tried very hard to enjoy it, trying to appreciate the slowness of the pace, and trying to enjoy the beauty of the literature reading. However, there is really very little plot in the film, and the story is told in a very scattered manner. For every 30 seconds of plot, there are five minutes of self indulgent filler scenes. I got quite tired of watching James Franco walking around or sitting around. We also see a lot of Hart's sexual liaisons, ranging from walking up the stairs with another man, to apparently non-simulated oral sex.After watching the whole film, I did not gain an insight into Hart's life, but rather it felt more like a project for James Franco to expose the exploration his sexuality.

WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS This film fails on so many levels, it is hard to decide what is the worst thing about it. For one thing, the pace is maddeningly slow, and way too much camera time is spent on the back of Franco's head, or of him walking up endless flights of stairs. The incessant, long blackscreen segments are excruciatingly boring and add a further drag to the film's pace. Dialog is mostly absent, save for over-long recitals of Crane's poems by Franco, who becomes nothing more than a talking head for minutes at a time. Continuity is spotty, at best. At the film's conclusion, one knows nothing more about Crane than he knew before viewing it. I realize this was a student thesis of Franco's, but the entire project is boring, puerile, and without merit.

Just attended the premier of The Broken Tower at the LA Film Festival and, once again, James Franco makes brave choices and produces a beautiful film. The camera work, editing, score, and the actors' performances, sustain a sometimes difficult story with elegance, honesty, and passion.Set against the backdrop of 1920's New York, Paris, Cuba, and Mexico, The Broken Tower succeeds in merging two disparate art forms, film and poetry, to propel the narrative. There's also a lot of silence in this film where we are allowed to see Crane's world as through his eyes. Elegaic sequences are punctuated with cuts to black and the spare and subtle soundtrack perfectly matches the storytelling.I admit to knowing nothing about Hart Crane before tonight's screening but I left wanting to read his poems and letters myself.Thank you, Mr. Franco, wlm