best movie i've ever seen.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A somewhat engaging film that recounts the Berlin years of Christopher Isherwood's diary. I'm not a Doctor Who fan, so I was more distracted by the fact that Matt Smith looks nothing like Christopher Isherwood, nor does Imogen Poots look anything like Jean Ross, but they both give adequate performances. The film mainly plays upon two brief love affairs and the trials and tribulations of Isherwood's boarding house neighbors, with Toby Jones giving a great performance as an immoral conman with a penchant for S&M-- frankly his character was the most interesting in the film. In the end, like most biographies, it only touches upon great matters like Hitler's rise to power, the plight of the gay men of Berlin and the coming world war. Ultimately, it was a fragmented film without a plot.

"Christopher and His Kind" was Christopher Isherwood's way of correcting what he glossed over in "The Berlin Stories" and this film version corrects the exceedingly glossy glosses of "Cabaret." The real Jean Ross (nicely played by Imogene Poots) was no Liza Minnelli. Likewise Matt Smith is no Michael York. He's simpler more direct "Herr Issyvoo," and his love affair with Heinz Douglas Booth) is recounted with great affection. It's hard for gay people today to imagine just how loose and louche things were in Berlin just before Hitler came to power. But Isherwood was there and what he recounts speaks volumes about art, politics and the beating heart of same-sex love.

From the hyperbolic verbiage of Oscar to the sparser prose of Mr Isherwood took only only two generations of Gay literature but during that relatively short time the love that dare not speak its name was being being grasped (figuratively speaking) by the incipient chattering classes and buggery - if "Christopher and his kind" is to be believed - was being elevated to the level of an Olympic Sport. Certainly Mr Isherwood,once having escaped from England's frying - pan to Nazi Germany's fire ( and you must ask what was he thinking about here)joyfully entered the fray,gleefully indulging in rough trade with all the energy of his class(posh domineering widowed mum,unwilling Cambridge student dropout). This programme was so bad it made me look back with affection towards the Laurence Harvey "I am a camera" of half a century ago - and anyone who remembers that will know what a leap in the dark I'm making. Mr M.Smith is very poor as Isherwood,inciting no sympathy whatsoever,rather a drawback you might think in a drama where he is the main character and,presumably,is supposed to be presenting a gay man in a positive way.Sadly Mr Smith does not seem to possess the acting "chops" to carry off such a complex part. His Isherwood is only interested in one thing - and we all know what that is. "Christopher and his kind" is a missed opportunity to interest a new generation to a minor but interesting figure of British literature whose life surely cannot really have been so proscribed by his sexuality.

Plot: An English homosexual goes to Berlin in the 1930s as the Weimar Republic ends and National Socialism begins.This is rather typical of BBC serious drama in that it has high production values, a youthful lead parachuted in because of his celebrity and a very dull script. Christopher Isherwood was a rather interesting gay novelist and the period when he lived in Germany was even more interesting as it covers the depravity of Weimar and the novel horrors of the National Socialists - but sadly the screenplay isn't very interested in all that and plumps for plenty of gay sex and clichéd Nazis instead. You'll have to read the relevant chapter in Michael Burleigh's book 'Sacred Causes' if you want insight. The acting is pretty pedestrian, with the grey-haired veterans putting the fresh faced sexy-but-dim types to shame. Nor does it help that the whole thing is shot in the same dull, flat manner, so that everything looks and feels rather same-y and boring.Worth no viewings.