Watch James Dean For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I'm a great fan of James Dean and I really have very high expectations about every documentary/movie that is about his life.This movie really impressed me !The directing work was great, the plot, the cinematography and last but not least - James Franco. This guy truly amazed me, i've always liked him but in my opinion this is his best role.He made an absolutely outstanding performance.And as far as we know about the life and personality of James Dean , Franco portrayed his character very convincingly.If you've watched Dean films you'll know that he was a man with an incomparable charisma and Franco gave me the same feeling with his performance.The film is a absolute must-see if you are into James Dean life ,or biography movies at all.From my point of view , the movie is a real masterpiece and it deserves all the approval from both the critics and the audience.

I would like to begin by truly saying that James Dean was an actor that met his end before we, as cinema watchers, were fully about to appreciate his talent as well as full body of work. The short three films that he devoted himself to wasn't enough for my taste buds, and I think the majority of film aficionados would heartily agree – yet I would have to say that those seeking the knowledge of James Dean, the truth behind his life and his devotion to youthfulness – should not (repeat NOT) watch this horrid film. I realize that this was a made-for-TV film that couldn't take the risks that most major budget films could, but I didn't realize that "consecutive sentences and structured storytelling" needed a big budget to complete. What made this film strange was that it began so strongly with a detailed scene about how devoted Dean was to his trade, but after that, it just went further downhill by avoiding details and the classic cop-out "educated guess" technique. From outlandish storytelling to depreciating acting from the beginning to the end, James Dean attempted to bring Dean to life, but sadly, just drove Dean into another devastatingly horrid car crash.While I did mention above my disappointment with the acting, it wasn't so much the style of acting, just the lack of excitement. Dean was played by Spiderman's egotistical villain (hell-bent on saving his father's name), James Franco. While I feel he captured the audacity of Dean, as well as those smaller details, but he wasn't Dean. To me, there were scenes that felt as if Franco was adding onto Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man impression/character. He wasn't original, he wasn't charismatic enough, and the Franco's win of a Golden Globe was completely uncalled for. He played the part, but didn't build the character, and after all of it I still had the looming thought that Rydell left me with at the very end … the "educated guess" which completely debunked the film – but that is another story. Sam Gould playing Martin Landau was completely forgettable and I disliked the fact that Landau was such a small part to the story, in fact, by the end, he was forgotten about entirely. One could say that nearly all the secondary characters were forgettable in the sense that if you blinked, you would literally miss them. Director Rydell was so excited about having a biopic about Dean in his repertoire of films that he didn't seem to care that Dean was built upon the people surrounding him. Landau, Kazan, and even Angeli didn't seem to match (or even remember) up to what this film needed to be. What I wanted to see, and what this film needed to be a pivotal biopic about James Dean, were a foundation based around strong supporting characters adding to the destabilized life that Dean lead. All I witnessed from the actors involved were a slight movement of their hands, an occasional bit of emotion, and a small segway into the life of Dean – nothing that one could build a mountain upon. I believe this is why the film's ending was so futile. We weren't shocked or surprised by the ending, because by that point in the film we just didn't care – apathy had set in, and we were dumbstruck to resist it.Finally, I would like to say that when you are making a "made-for-TV" movie, there is no need to give it the feel of a "made-for-TV" movie. In fact, most of the films that go beyond that point do very well (i.e. see some of Stephen King's miniseries), but for James Dean it felt rushed, fast, and completely underdeveloped. I have already mentioned about the acting, but the story, which surrounds these actors, was just as weak. Nothing worked, nothing was exciting, nothing was jaw-dropping at all, basically, we had a couple of unknown actors doing what little they could to afford their current rent checks. How embarrassing is that … especially for the Dean estate? We needed force, power, drama, and humanity all rolled into one, but instead we just found a shallow actor doing a weak impersonation (if one could even call it that). Not that I could really give away the ending, but there seemed to be about two hours missing from the climax between Dean and his father and the iconic crash. The crash wasn't even worth the film it was printed on. Slow motion drama with a random unknown in the passenger side (not unknown, but again, lacking the development) – weren't these techniques mastered and forgotten about in the late 80s? After watching this film I felt cheated, because I love Dean's body of work and what he represented in Hollywood, but this film captured nothing of the sort.Overall, I thought this was one of the worst biopics that I have seen in my time of watching films. It was shallow, disrespectful, and pointless to the end because you walk away knowing less about Dean than when you started. Nothing congealed in this film because of both the shabby acting as well as the under-developed (which is a word I used too many times and is not shrew enough) story which completely debunks itself as the final credits roll by using the lines, "Most of this film was based on fact... some was an educated guess." Who ends a film like this? Imagine turning in a term paper with the phrase at the bottom, "I couldn't get all the facts correct, so I guessed on most of it" – would the Professor accept your paper? I think not my friend, which is why I cannot accept this film as a "real" biography of James Dean. This one should be stricken from the record books. I am sorry Mr. Dean – this film is not what should remain as your legacy.Grade: * out of *****

James Dean led a phenomenal life. Having achieved so much in only 24 years, it is an extremely hard task to document the most significant events of his life in just 90 minutes, but this film doesn't even try. It plays like a cheap soap opera, and portrays Dean as the lonely protagonist who just wants his fathers love and respect. Some aspects of this film seem pointless, if not insulting, like the character James Dean providing the narration for this film. The three films he appeared in are only skimmed over, and this film goes to great lengths to portray what a troubled soul Dean actually was, how he was haunted by demons of his own past, rather than the good things he actually did for the world of cinema. This is not to say that the film fails completely, not by any means. The actor playing Dean is well cast and gives an exceptional performance, and the production design is faultless. If you just want a cursory insight into James Dean then this film is the way to go. If you yearn to find out the real James Dean story then look elsewhere.

Before I started my senior year in high school, I had watched the premiere of the TNT original movie about the famous actor who died at a young age in the 1950's. The actor who portrays the late actor is James Franco (who strikes a resemblance) in which throughout the film, Franco portrays the character with such realism that we are convinced that he IS James Dean. This film is a look from how he started off in Hollywood doing famous films as "Giant" and "Rebel Without A Cause" to the conflicts he had in his family and the early marriage he had. Yet, as of now, people still cherish James Dean as a recognizable actor who died too young; as of 2005, I only pray that James Franco doesn't leave us anytime soon as he continues to make movies.