Anybody else believe this was one of the most unfairly reviewed movies?

I totally agree that this film was unfairly reviewed by some critics, even though, for once, I thought the late Roger Ebert's review of the film was spot-on (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/8mm-1999). It remains one of my favorite Nicolas Cage's movies and I thought he was excellent in that part, playing an ordinary man who gets in way over his head and ends up irrevocably scared and transformed by what he went through during the course of the investigation and beyond. Plus, Joaquin Phoenix was very convincing and he made us care about a character that ends up being much more than just a cliche. And as the trio of morally bankrupt characters whom Cage confronts in the course of the movie, I thought James Gandolfini, Peter Stormare and Chris Bauer were all very effective, their characters feeling disturbingly real and not just typical vilains. Several scenes from the movie will remain deeply ingrained in my mind forever: the first time Cage sees the film, the scene where he asks the mother is she would prefer to know about what happened to her daughter even if the worst happen; the meeting between Tom, Max and Dino Velvet; the confrontation between Tom and Longdale where he really expressed his anger and incomprehension about the banal reasons justifying the production of the snuff film; Tom's confrontation with Eddy Poole at the scene of the crime; Tom's initial incapacity to kill Poole and his call to the victim's mother to build up his strenght to do what he feels is justice; Tom's final confrontation with Machine, where the script wisely did not demonize Machine, instead choosing to leave the motives behind his actions ambiguous; Tom's return to his home and his emotional breakdown, begging his wife to 'save him'; and at last, the scene where Tom receives Mary-Ann's mother's letter, and he looks at his wife with a smile yet you can clearly see how emtionnally bruised he is.

Bill Foster: I'm the bad guy?...How did that happen?