The best coming of age film sense THE DYNAMITER . I usually have no problem rambling on about a great film however in the case of hide your smiling faces when you watch it you will understand why i felt nothing more needed to be said, hope you take the time to enjoy these lovely films

The cinematography was really good. The "boy" antics believable. But any sort of story was kind of non-existent. No character development. No history or back story revealed regarding Ian's family...Eric and Tommy's family for that matter. i guess the viewer is supposed to guess how Ian wound up dead next to the train trestle. Was it a suicide? Was Ian's father's rebuke so devastating he couldn't go on living? And why was Eric's pal suicidal? No explanation there either. Also...where were the daughters? Maybe that's why Eric's buddy wanted to die. He was born into a mid-west sausage-fest farming community where it appeared the only modes of sexual release were farm animals or same-sex friends. The whole Roman-Greco wrestling matches were a bit homo-erotic. Yeah, I wrestled occasionally with my guy friends where spontaneous erections from unintentional or maybe even intentional friction happened...but that all ended by 7th or 8th grade. The only wrestling I did after 14 was in high school gym class because I had to. Once the credits began to roll, I felt as though the writers must have knocked off early or were never there to start with) and nobody could figure out how to end it. Though the moment between Tommy and Ian's dad was touching, I was sort of hoping Ian's dad would give Tommy a reason to use the pistol he took from his shed. Not that I love violence, but the film up to then had been such mealy pap anything would have made it more interesting. I guess it was interesting enough to keep me from turning it off. But just barely.

With excellent performances from Ryan Jones and Nathan Varnson, "Hide Your Smiling Faces" is another of the remarkable and recently seen films about children and adolescents, adding it to a list that includes "These Birds Walk", a documentary about street kids in Pakistan, who find refuge in a home created by an old humanist; and a science- fiction motion picture dealing with education, and sold as a horror movie, called "The Tall Man", which is in reality a terrifying parable of the destiny of children these days, that made me think of the education methods in totalitarian societies and reminded me of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". "Hide Your Smiling Faces" is the gentle one, although it does not lack elements of tension in environment, family and relations among the young persons. It belongs to the category of observational motion pictures, in which you deduce and obtain information (and, from an aesthetic angle, pleasure from the viewing experience) in a very quiet way. Even its dramatic peaks are handled in a wise tone, with a quiet touch, when danger is present: I refer to the final scenes involving Jones and Varnson, with elders and the force of nature (I can't be more specific, for I would spoil your viewing experience). In a jaded world where violent images are what bring "artistic fulfillment" to most persons, motion pictures like this one, although rarely done, are the kind of productions that are needed every now and then, to remind us all what we are, where we belong and what in the end is the purpose of existence.

This film was very highly rated by the jury of the Heartland Film Festival, an annual event here in Indianapolis, and I was eager to see it. To say I found it disappointing is an understatement.The opening scene of a corn snake slowly swallowing a rather large fish is a good foreshadowing of what the filmmaker requires of his audience. We are being offered an Art Film with a big capital "A". Do we really need yet another film exploring the emotional trials of young white American boys? Perhaps if I had not just seen two major release films dealing with similar material in the last 6 months- the excellent "Mud" and the pretty good "Boys of Summer" I might have had a little more patience with mining this material for fresh insights. The scene where the brothers are introduced to us, at the lake, was promising, though enigmatic. What is their relationship to each other? Is the older boy sexually abusing the younger? The shot of their silhouettes from the rear, where Eric puts on his shirt, and Tommy removes his was a beautiful moment. It was downhill from there. The acting in the scenes in the abandoned house was awkward, and the boys' behavior unnatural. For instance, when Tommy watches Ian playing with the cicada shell he brought home from the abandoned house and asks him what is is, Ian does not reply. I cannot imagine a boy not responding to a direct question like that. I was trying to buy in at this point and waited for the film to hit it's stride, but it never did. The consequences of Ian's death were not depicted in a realistic way, which contradicts the whole point of this supposedly lifelike film. More information about Ian's father and Eric & Tommy's parents would have given the viewer a better understanding of their motivation. There was no sympathy for Ian's father, and the idea that he was either abusive or an alcoholic was never substantiated. The most engaging character in the film was Daisy, the dog. All the characters milled about in lifeless, disconnected pantomimes of real people. The introduction of the gun into the narrative was trite, simplistic,over-used. Unnecessary. Mr. Carbone, couldn't you think of a more creative device to heighten the tension? So the film dragged on, the leaves blew, the water rustled, the rain came and the seasons changed. Nothing was resolved, and there was no transformation as the cicada implied. I could have used a Barf-o-rama scene or a character like Neckbone to relieve the unrelenting tension.In the Q & A session that followed the screening, opinions were mixed, and several people left during the movie. Those who liked the movie lauded its attention to detail, the fabulous cinematography and absolute realism of the characters. I felt like they were describing a film I didn't see!