Bone

Went into this thinking it was going to be a standard home-invasion nasty. Turned out it wasn't. It was so weird, verging on the surreal, and certainly stretching believability. Kotto has a lot of charisma, and the rest of the acting was pretty colourful as seems the norm for a Cohen film. There seemed to be a lot of themes in play, and I'm not sure how successfully they were conveyed. Peculiar, but strangely likeable.

What an interesting film. It works on multiple levels, and the psychedelic editing and pseudo-dream sequence car ads really add to it. Every character is well-developed. The acting, as with every Cohen film I've seen, comes across as somewhat melodramatic, but that's not to say that the actors aren't convincing or entertaining.

"I was expecting this to be a very different movie." Me after every Larry Cohen flick

Strange and extremely compelling thriller done in typical Larry Cohen-genrebending mode.

Larry Cohen is full of sh#t. Everything people in this movie do and say is not just implausible, it's plain stupid. I think it's supposed to pass for humorous social commentary, but really, it's just mean-spirited stupidity and nothing more.

Larry Cohen shows that from his first film, he was interested in mixing exploitation/entertainment with social commentary. I was expecting a no holds barred home invasion film and while things are taken far, this is not that film and a lot of the events take place outside the house. Yaphet Kotto is always great and here he takes the spotlight. There's also some fun dialogue and interesting characters, but I was expecting more. Maybe I need to give this another shot with adjusted expectations.

I guess it's intended as a sort of wild and absurd comedy, but it's only sporadically amusing at best. As a kind of scattergun approach to race relations in 1972 America, it is at least daring in the way it foregrounds sexuality. Yet perhaps it is most successful in the scenes featuring Jeannie Berlin, whose character is unusual and even touching (but maybe what I found affecting was what I was supposed to find hilarious). Larry Cohen is an odd guy, but he does seem to have thoughts on his mind.

A critique of materialism, race and inequality disguised as a home invasion film, Bone is arguably Cohen's most explicit engagement with social issues. The sexual tension is palpable, and the characters and situations develop in interesting and unexpected ways. Kotto makes a strong impression, most of the performances are engagingly offbeat, and there are several hard hitting scenes, resulting in Cohen's best work as a writer-director.