Ryan_Pace I found this film to be intriguing. I relate to these characters and the place they find themselves stuck in. I appreciate the use of metaphor (guy at the train tracks, the beating a tractor with a shovel)and found the cinematography to be beautiful. The actors did a fantastic job of telling the story of these characters. I found each to develop through a series of emotions. Hurting, Angry, Happy, Good natured, fearless in the face of difficulty, honest, frightening, dangerous, under pressure, heart broken, in love, and many more I can't list here. This film is nothing like any other film and cannot be grouped with any other, it stands along in its expressiveness and investigation of the human condition. I think they have really created and captured something here and it takes someone with the ability for sensitive and artistic observation to catch it, slow down otherwise you won't get it.

noralee "Dandelion" is a hauntingly beautiful contemporary spin on "Splendor in the Grass," with pervasive forebodings of how the endless horizons of the American Western prairie can lead to claustrophobic traps.Debut director/co-writer Mark Milgard masterfully makes the long hot summer of the lovely Idaho and Washington landscapes redolent with both the magic of young love and the dread of violence in a very "Days of Heaven" fashion. The perceptive camera fills in the silent gaps of the inarticulate characters, between parents and their teens, between parents and between teens. The sins of the parents are literally visited on the children. The action is moved along not by theatrically explosive explication but by the existential choice that each character makes, even as one gently points out that his passivity at a key point was a choice. Using cinema as a storytelling technique, the director unveils these choices visually.Key to the success of this approach is Vincent Kartheiser. We certainly had no trouble thinking he was from another dimension in TV's "Angel," and here his emotive face and saucer eyes are Garbo-like to the camera. His "Mason" almost non-verbally goes from sullen son huddling under his hair to opaque Billy Budd-like martyr to an achingly enraptured Romeo. His sudden bright smile lights up the screen and forecasts the potential for hope and love as much as his tear-filled eyes drown our hearts. Every feeling felt or shut down is reflected in that face and eyes. Kudos to Kartheiser for not choosing to be another of the WB TV Boyz -- was he in college in between?-- and instead taking an offbeat role. No wonder Taryn Manning's "Danny" finds the scrawny sensitive kid irresistible even when a more conventionally hunky bad boy Shawn Reaves (of TV's "Tru Calling") is a rival (though the triangle plays out in an atypical fashion). She sensitively exudes toughness and vulnerability, in a different way than she did in "Hustle & Flow," as she blossoms into what "Mason" sees in her.The parents are also atypically not inconsequential and the excellent acting by the adults ratchets up tensions (though a post traumatic stressed syndrome Viet vet uncle and a grief-stricken mime out of Springsteen's "Reason to Believe" are a bit too much). Arliss Howard well captures a nice guy who nevertheless commits terrible emotional abuse on his wife and son. Mare Winningham starts out as the usual tippling oblivious homemaker, but brings real feeling to the last part of the film, in both an explosion of frustration and of an almost pieta scene of sympathetically stroking her inconsolable son's hair. Michelle Forbes is commendably almost unrecognizable in a very atypical role for her as a troubled single mom who destroys her daughter's self-esteem. The film well shows how the adults start to perceive their kids' feelings and how that powerful life-affirmation affects them.Even though what was obviously a minuscule budget necessitated no changes in hair styles or aging make-up etc. to back-up the interstitial "two years later," the weather beaten buildings and exquisite settings of meadows, creek, endless road and railroad tracks and big sky of bright clouds and overpowering rain are an essential component of the story, though I'm pretty sure the title image only appears once. While co-writer Robb Williamson's score captures the ominous mood and the indie rock song selections are illustrative, especially Sparklehorse ironically singing of a "wonderful life" and Cat Power covering Lou Reed, the visuals reminded me of a country song: "You know the world must be flat/'Cos when people leave town, they never come back." (from "Small Town Saturday Night" by Alger and DeVito, popularized by Hal Ketchum).There have been some other films lately dealing seriously with teens and parents amidst death and first love, including the suburban "Winter Solstice" and "Imaginary Heroes," but I was the most moved by "Dandelion." This is the most poignant, mature portrait of young people in rural America since "Tully" and "All the Real Girls."

zrhanes I really can't understand why people keep making films that have basically been done before. Here's a common formula these days: Precocious loner teenager who doesn't fit in, hangs out with the wrong crowd, has a dysfunctional family, yet has a unique, intelligent and thoughtful nature that sets him apart from others. His eccentricities cause clashes with others. He generally meets a girl who likes him because he's different. Throw in a few tragic events and some bizarre twists and you've got yourself a quirky young art drama. Dandelion is textbook. About a half an hour into the film I realized how really similar it was to another film of this type, Donnie Darko, and this opinion was only strengthened as the film went on. I'm not saying that this kind of cookie-cutter quality is enough to entirely ruin a film all by itself, but Dandelion's problem is that it has little to make it interesting. At least Donnie Darko had a bizarre science fiction plot and occasionally good humor. Dandelion is for the most part unremarkable. The writing is almost pure cornball- characters wax about love and life in short, uninteresting conversations. The plot has its unique twist, but decides to give it little attention and move on to the boring heartwarming business at hand. The kid is pretty good. The girl is awful. The performances given by the parents are by far the best parts of them film, in particular the stressful father with regrets, the only character in the film with much ambiguity about him. By far the best aspect of the film is its cinematography. Tim Orr, who you may also know from his work on the similarly rural (the unsimilarly fantastic) films of David Gordan Green, is good at shooting grass, air, and water and making it look great, though the nature shots appear too often for my tastes, seemingly between every scene. And I swear I heard almost nothing in the film that I hadn't heard before. At one point early on, on his first real meeting with the love interest, the main character says "I think love is something people make up to make themselves feel better." This is just about the most poignant or deep thing the kid, or any character, can think to say. If you think this observation is the pinnacle of brilliance, you'll probably love the film. It will also help if you really really like to watch wheat fields blow in the wind.Want a good 'troubled precocious loner' movie? Watch The Adventures of Sebastian Cole.

timothy-s I saw this movie at the Rotterdam-FilmFestival in Februari. It was a stormy dark day, a kind of weather which is also predominant in Dandelion.The Director was present and after the movie he told us a little bit about why he made the movie. He wanted to show in what circumstances the teenagers in the Midwest grow-up, how sad there existence can be.I didn't fully agree with him, because I think you can also extract positive things from Dandelion, for instance that teenagers can be happy with each other, even when there parents are very unhappy. But the final conclusion is indeed that the unhappiness of parents rests heavily on their children and passes inevitably on to them.I was pleasantly surprised by the actors' wonderful playing and I hope I will see more of them. It's a pity that so few 'alternative' American movies reach Europe. So, to encourage Directors of these kinds of movies to go on like this, I gave a 9, instead of an 8.