Amazon.co.uk Review
Internal madness is hypnotically externalized in David Cronenberg's Spider, a disturbing portrait of schizophrenia. Adapted by Patrick McGrath from his celebrated novel, this no-frills production begins when "Spider" Cleg (Ralph Fiennes, in a daring, nearly nonverbal role) returns to his childhood neighbourhood in London's dreary East End, where a traumatic event from his past percolates to the surface of his still-erratic consciousness.
Released from a mental institution and left to fend for himself, he pursues elusive memories while staying in a halfway house run by a stern matron (Lynn Redgrave), unable to distinguish between past, present, and psychological fabrication. The distorting influence of Spider's mind is directly reflected in Cronenberg's cunning visual strategy, presenting a shifting "reality" that's deliberately untrustworthy, until the veracity of nearly every scene is called into question. With an impressive dual-role performance by Miranda Richardson, Spider falls prey to its own lugubrious rhythms, but like the acclaimed 1995 indie film Clean, Shaven, it's a compelling glimpse of mental illness, seen from the inside out. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews:
Highly underrated psychological drama from David Cronenberg........2008-01-10
After glancing over some the previous comments for Spider (2002), as well as several other somewhat similar films that explore various comparable themes, I have come to the conclusion that audiences today don't want to be challenged. A sad fact indeed, since David Cronenberg's Spider is one of the more challenging English-language films of the last couple of years.
Told in an entirely subjective fashion that owes much to the work of writers like William S. Burroughs, Franz Kafka, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, the film draws the audience into the lead character's mind and leaves them there to wander through a wavering maze of fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, the conscious and the subconscious, etc. The symbolic side of the film sees Cronenberg at his best; rejecting the adolescent sex and violence of his earlier work and instead building on the same highly psychological mind-space previously explored in his 1988 film Dead Ringers. There's also a certain reminiscent feeling to his two controversial literary adaptations of the 1990's, Naked Lunch (1991) and Crash (1998), both of which depicted a world as viewed through the eyes of a tormented character.
Cronenberg has always enjoyed chronicling the downward spiral of characters that have been psychologically damaged, but with Spider, novelist Patrick McGrath has created one of the ultimate cinematic schizophrenics. From his oversized shoes, to his nonsense book of gibberish, Spider is every rambling lunatic we've ever come across rolled into one. In lesser hands, the performance could have very easily veered towards Rain Man territory; however, with Fiennes in the lead role, this was never a danger. Having exorcised all traces of hammy overacting as The Tooth Fairy in Red Dragon (2002), he is here free to create a subtle, less showy role that requires little besides simply 'reacting'. His appearance is one of outright dishevelment throughout, as he sits in smoky canteens decked out in a dirty rain-coat, scruffy trousers and with bright yellow nicotine stains on his fingers. If we could walk into the film, we get the feeling that the stench of urine would be everywhere.
When not chronicling the darker side of mental illness or the terrible living conditions of the British halfway-house system, Spider works best as a gripping detective story. We, the audience are here to follow Spider as he traces his various webs back to that one fateful night; studying the facts and putting the pieces back together. There is even a semi-nonsense voice over/stream of conscious thought pattern mumbled by our 'hero' throughout, which helps shed some light on the mystery at hand without necessarily giving too much away. The film also works as a showcase for underrated actors. Fiennes, of course, in the lead is outstanding, but we also have Miranda Richardson as young spider's mother, as well as acting as the film's central enigma. Some have criticised her performance as being almost larger than life, like a caricature, but she is supposed to be playing the fevered incarnation of womanhood as depicted from the mind of a very troubled boy; so what do you expect? As mentioned before, the film works from an entirely subjective viewpoint, in which everything in the film has been rearranged and readapted to better suit the crumbling mindset of the central character.
With this in mind, Cronenberg creates a depiction of Britain that has more in common with The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) than anything resembling old London town. There are no cars in the film and, save for a few scenes, very little in the way of extras. This allows Spider to wander the empty streets and empty allotments as if constantly roaming around his own damaged and alienated psyche. Gabriel Byrne is also interesting as Spider's father, but his performance is one of great subtly. Even more subtle and criminally underrated is John Neville as Spider's only companion in the halfway house. He gives a very restrained, understated portrayal of psychosis and old age, which is both intriguing and disturbing; with many viewers picking up on the circular thematic of these two different characters. Is Terence a prototype for Spider? Perhaps. Even more intriguing is the character of Mrs Wilkinson, who may or may not be the very same woman who initially flashes her breast at young Spider, thus triggering the events of the film. If she fails to register, it is perhaps down to the streamlining of the character from book to film, which will inevitably leave out major plot details.
Regardless, Cronenberg ties all of these ideas into the images of the film; creating frames of Kafka-like complexity, with damp, bleak, washed-out scenes brimming with symbolism. Try and count how many times we see Spider framed through bars and grates, or how many times the web symbolism is used. The obsession with gas is also a clever allusion to later events and wonderfully represented by the looming gasworks that linger constantly on the horizon. This is a film that rewards multiple viewings, and, as a fan of engrossing, suspenseful, intelligent cinema, I greet it with open arms. Some will no doubt find the film to be a real chore, while others, I would hope, might find something to enjoy within this dark and troubled story. Sufficed to say, for those willing to allow themselves to be tangled in the spider's web, the film will reward....
unsettling, disturbing...yet strangely moving.......2007-10-27
After the critical mauling of two of his previous films, the incomprehensible Naked Lunch and the equally preposterous Existenz, and the moral outcry caused by the filming of J G Ballard's crash, you would have expected David Cronenberg to go back to what he does so well, the genre known as "body horror" that he practically invented.
So it was a bit of a surprise when he came back with this movie, a small, intimate exploration of one mans mental illness. The film focuses on Dennis Clegg (brilliantly portrayed by Ralph Fiennes, who immerses himself in the character and clearly relishes the challenge of portraying this mans fractured mental state), a man recently released after a long stay in a mental institution, who returns to his home turf and finds rooms in a bleak halfway house run by Mrs Wilkinson (Lynn Redgrave in a fantastic supporting turn playing a woman so unsympathetic to her charges that it is something akin to a slap in the face). It is in this bleak environment that Dennis (or spider as he was nicknamed by his beloved mother) attempts to piece together his fractured childhood memories. Flitting in time between a grimy London of the 80's, Spiders present, and his equally colourless childhood in the 60's, his memories gradually come to focus on the apparent spur of the moment murder of his doting mother (played with a quiet dignity by a wonderful Miranda Richardson) by his brutish boozing father (Gabriel Byrne). However, the fact that Richardson also plays the floozy who takes the place of Spiders mother in the Clegg house following this event suggests that everything may not be as it seems.
And it is the truth underlying this tragic event that we, the viewers are here to witness as we try to understand this confused, muttering and crushingly lonely cipher of a man. This is a film that offers no easy explanations, with no men in white coats pooping up to offer an easy to digest answer to Spiders haunted mind. Abandoning his more recognizable milieu, Cronenberg has fashioned a film that is horrific in a much more subtle, disturbing way, and marks a welcome change of direction for the Canadian auteur, whilst still dealing with his common themes of psychology and transformation, though here focused firmly on the cerebral rather than the anatomical.
Never haunt your infancy again.......2007-05-08
A simple, very simple film. A child loses his mother who is killed by his own father and replaced by another woman. He eventually kills this substitute as a vengeance but also as an act of justice for himself and maybe the mother he is remembering in his empty mind. He feels like a spider in the middle of its cobweb, but also like the very prey of the spider in that very centre of that very cobweb. He will be taken away to some mental hospital and will come back a long long time later and he will revisit the scene of his crime and he will start all over again just to revive his past and what he lost a long time ago, his mother who is probably still alive in his mind, his memory. And he will be taken away again, this time for good. Sad vision of these men who are the prey of the world and become vultures because they are punished for what they did instead of being understood or just even being prevented from running into a situation of this type. Killing is a catching disease for one and an incurable disease for two. Cronenberg is the bleakest pessimist of them all and there is no escape from his fatal fate, his lethal death, his morbid moribund sense of black dis-humor that makes you feel as if you had eaten some live eel or snake, head, tail and venom alike.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Melancholy and understated Masterpeice.......2006-02-28
David Cronenberg, Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Burne in a Patrick McGrath adaptation. All these high quality peices fit together to provide an assured and perfectly paced film. This is mature Cronenberg, so the heads stay in one peice; its the minds that fracture instead. Depicting mental illness in an unsensational style, in a dour and miserable 50's London, this is a disturbing and sad work that gets its teeth into issues of loneliness, isolation and family breakdown. Not one for a saturday night then.
Cronenberg 1664. A bad year for flim-making........2005-10-11
You never really know what you're going to get with a Cronenberg movie but if you like a nice title sequence then this film delivers. Shortly after that a bunch of other stuff happens but nothing of any great consequence.
Customer Reviews:
Misty Mundae is the bodacious SpiderBabe.......2004-05-12
SpiderBabe (2002) was and probably still is Seduction Cinema's most spectacular and glamorous motion picture production. Bringing together the likes of the gorgeous Misty Mundae, Darian Caine, Julian Wells, and Kelli Summers, directorJohnny Crash, takes SpiderBabe far beyond erotica for erotica's sake and sets his sights on producing a movie that can hold its own in terms of comedy, action, and special effects. Of course, there is still plenty of Seduction Cinema's trademark nudity and sizzling moments incorporated into the production, but the seamier moments were removed in the R-rated version of the film (in an effort, I imagine, to extend the company's reach to consumers who might not be familiar with the films and starlets of the world's best erotic B-movie production company). The SpiderBabe DVD offers the best of both worlds – if you buy the right package. It is not always overtly obvious, but there are two different SpiderBabe releases – I urge you not to buy the single-DVD release because it includes only the R-rated version of the film plus a few extras; what you want is the "two-disc collector's edition DVD." The two-DVD version includes both the R-rated version and the unrated version plus an abundance of additional extra features.
As you might have guessed, SpiderBabe is a parody of the film SpiderMan. The delectable Misty Mundae plays Patricia Porker, a shy and quite nerdy college student who is ridiculed constantly by her classmates. There is actually a parallel here between the character and Misty herself, for Misty is a very intelligent young lady who is shy and rather nerdy at heart. Anyway, Patricia gets bitten by a hybrid, radioactive spider. Naturally, she develops super powers (including a powerful sex drive) and becomes a crime-fighting superhero; she can even shoot her own spider webs (which do not come out of her hands or wrists, and that's all I will say about that). Needing money for her new apartment, Patricia signs up to wrestle the Queen Bee at Madison Square Garden, and soon thereafter, when a personal tragedy hits home, she accepts the responsibility of using her special powers to fight evil (and to – shall we say – get to know other people very well). While she is out keeping the city safe from bad guys, her own personal nemesis is borne in the form of Femilian (Julian Wells). Before long, SpiderBabe is attacked in the pages of the Daily Bungle and set up to look like a criminal or, at best, a clumsy would-be hero. Everything soon spirals toward an ultimate showdown with Femilian.
It goes without saying that Misty Mundae turns in a magnificent performance (even if she does look pretty silly jumping around New York City in that crazy SpiderBabe costume); it was especially enjoyable to see her take on all the baddies and leave them lying in her wake. Julian Wells does a pretty good job playing the Jekyll/Hyde-like Lucinda Knox/Femilian character (but that fake accent is just annoying), Darian Caine is wonderful in what amounts to a supporting role, and I was quite pleased to finally meet up with the lovely Kelli Summers once again. All of the action and special effects are rather cheesy, as you might expect, but some (certainly not all) of the special effects actually turned out to be rather impressive.
Let me describe the differences in the R-rated and unrated versions of SpiderBabe because there are important differences. You will surely be tempted to watch the unrated version first, but I would strongly suggest you start with the R-rated version. The fact is that the editing of the unrated version makes a mess of the plot – in conjunction with the added naughty scenes, you also find a number of scenes from the R-rated version shortened or removed entirely. Lost in this process are some of the funniest scenes in the movie as well as a number of necessary plot points; you also have the absurdity of an important event being reported on the news before it even happens. If I had watched the unrated version first, I would have come away thinking this was a horrible movie.
The two-disc collector's edition DVD comes with a huge bounty of extras: three deleted naughty scenes (of pretty hot material); behind-the-scenes featurettes on the making of the film and the special effects used in the film; a look at the evolution of the SpiderBabe costume; an "Out There TV" clip featuring Misty Mundae and Julian Wells in a saucy additional scene; several minutes of out-takes and bloopers; interviews with Misty Mundae, Julian Wells, and director Johnny Crash; a nice SpiderBabe photo gallery; trailers to a number of other Seduction Cinema films; and a music video (plus a making-of-the-video featurette) from the band Punishment featuring Misty Mundae (quite fun to watch).
I'm not saying SpiderBabe is a work of cinematic art, but it's not really supposed to be. This is just great entertainment bursting with action, comedy, and the drop-dead gorgeous Misty Mundae. I loved every minute of it.
Customer Reviews:
Misty Mundae is the bodacious SpiderBabe.......2004-05-12
SpiderBabe (2002) was and probably still is Seduction Cinema's most spectacular and glamorous motion picture production. Bringing together the likes of the gorgeous Misty Mundae, Darian Caine, Julian Wells, and Kelli Summers, directorJohnny Crash, takes SpiderBabe far beyond erotica for erotica's sake and sets his sights on producing a movie that can hold its own in terms of comedy, action, and special effects. Of course, there is still plenty of Seduction Cinema's trademark nudity and sizzling moments incorporated into the production, but the seamier moments were removed in the R-rated version of the film (in an effort, I imagine, to extend the company's reach to consumers who might not be familiar with the films and starlets of the world's best erotic B-movie production company). The SpiderBabe DVD offers the best of both worlds – if you buy the right package. It is not always overtly obvious, but there are two different SpiderBabe releases – I urge you not to buy the single-DVD release because it includes only the R-rated version of the film plus a few extras; what you want is the "two-disc collector's edition DVD." The two-DVD version includes both the R-rated version and the unrated version plus an abundance of additional extra features.
As you might have guessed, SpiderBabe is a parody of the film SpiderMan. The delectable Misty Mundae plays Patricia Porker, a shy and quite nerdy college student who is ridiculed constantly by her classmates. There is actually a parallel here between the character and Misty herself, for Misty is a very intelligent young lady who is shy and rather nerdy at heart. Anyway, Patricia gets bitten by a hybrid, radioactive spider. Naturally, she develops super powers (including a powerful sex drive) and becomes a crime-fighting superhero; she can even shoot her own spider webs (which do not come out of her hands or wrists, and that's all I will say about that). Needing money for her new apartment, Patricia signs up to wrestle the Queen Bee at Madison Square Garden, and soon thereafter, when a personal tragedy hits home, she accepts the responsibility of using her special powers to fight evil (and to – shall we say – get to know other people very well). While she is out keeping the city safe from bad guys, her own personal nemesis is borne in the form of Femilian (Julian Wells). Before long, SpiderBabe is attacked in the pages of the Daily Bungle and set up to look like a criminal or, at best, a clumsy would-be hero. Everything soon spirals toward an ultimate showdown with Femilian.
It goes without saying that Misty Mundae turns in a magnificent performance (even if she does look pretty silly jumping around New York City in that crazy SpiderBabe costume); it was especially enjoyable to see her take on all the baddies and leave them lying in her wake. Julian Wells does a pretty good job playing the Jekyll/Hyde-like Lucinda Knox/Femilian character (but that fake accent is just annoying), Darian Caine is wonderful in what amounts to a supporting role, and I was quite pleased to finally meet up with the lovely Kelli Summers once again. All of the action and special effects are rather cheesy, as you might expect, but some (certainly not all) of the special effects actually turned out to be rather impressive.
Let me describe the differences in the R-rated and unrated versions of SpiderBabe because there are important differences. You will surely be tempted to watch the unrated version first, but I would strongly suggest you start with the R-rated version. The fact is that the editing of the unrated version makes a mess of the plot – in conjunction with the added naughty scenes, you also find a number of scenes from the R-rated version shortened or removed entirely. Lost in this process are some of the funniest scenes in the movie as well as a number of necessary plot points; you also have the absurdity of an important event being reported on the news before it even happens. If I had watched the unrated version first, I would have come away thinking this was a horrible movie.
The two-disc collector's edition DVD comes with a huge bounty of extras: three deleted naughty scenes (of pretty hot material); behind-the-scenes featurettes on the making of the film and the special effects used in the film; a look at the evolution of the SpiderBabe costume; an "Out There TV" clip featuring Misty Mundae and Julian Wells in a saucy additional scene; several minutes of out-takes and bloopers; interviews with Misty Mundae, Julian Wells, and director Johnny Crash; a nice SpiderBabe photo gallery; trailers to a number of other Seduction Cinema films; and a music video (plus a making-of-the-video featurette) from the band Punishment featuring Misty Mundae (quite fun to watch).
I'm not saying SpiderBabe is a work of cinematic art, but it's not really supposed to be. This is just great entertainment bursting with action, comedy, and the drop-dead gorgeous Misty Mundae. I loved every minute of it.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Internal madness is hypnotically externalized in David Cronenberg's Spider, a disturbing portrait of schizophrenia. Adapted by Patrick McGrath from his celebrated novel, this no-frills production begins when "Spider" Cleg (Ralph Fiennes, in a daring, nearly nonverbal role) returns to his childhood neighbourhood in London's dreary East End, where a traumatic event from his past percolates to the surface of his still-erratic consciousness.
Released from a mental institution and left to fend for himself, he pursues elusive memories while staying in a halfway house run by a stern matron (Lynn Redgrave), unable to distinguish between past, present, and psychological fabrication. The distorting influence of Spider's mind is directly reflected in Cronenberg's cunning visual strategy, presenting a shifting "reality" that's deliberately untrustworthy, until the veracity of nearly every scene is called into question. With an impressive dual-role performance by Miranda Richardson, Spider falls prey to its own lugubrious rhythms, but like the acclaimed 1995 indie film Clean, Shaven, it's a compelling glimpse of mental illness, seen from the inside out. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews:
Highly underrated psychological drama from David Cronenberg........2008-01-10
After glancing over some the previous comments for Spider (2002), as well as several other somewhat similar films that explore various comparable themes, I have come to the conclusion that audiences today don't want to be challenged. A sad fact indeed, since David Cronenberg's Spider is one of the more challenging English-language films of the last couple of years.
Told in an entirely subjective fashion that owes much to the work of writers like William S. Burroughs, Franz Kafka, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, the film draws the audience into the lead character's mind and leaves them there to wander through a wavering maze of fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, the conscious and the subconscious, etc. The symbolic side of the film sees Cronenberg at his best; rejecting the adolescent sex and violence of his earlier work and instead building on the same highly psychological mind-space previously explored in his 1988 film Dead Ringers. There's also a certain reminiscent feeling to his two controversial literary adaptations of the 1990's, Naked Lunch (1991) and Crash (1998), both of which depicted a world as viewed through the eyes of a tormented character.
Cronenberg has always enjoyed chronicling the downward spiral of characters that have been psychologically damaged, but with Spider, novelist Patrick McGrath has created one of the ultimate cinematic schizophrenics. From his oversized shoes, to his nonsense book of gibberish, Spider is every rambling lunatic we've ever come across rolled into one. In lesser hands, the performance could have very easily veered towards Rain Man territory; however, with Fiennes in the lead role, this was never a danger. Having exorcised all traces of hammy overacting as The Tooth Fairy in Red Dragon (2002), he is here free to create a subtle, less showy role that requires little besides simply 'reacting'. His appearance is one of outright dishevelment throughout, as he sits in smoky canteens decked out in a dirty rain-coat, scruffy trousers and with bright yellow nicotine stains on his fingers. If we could walk into the film, we get the feeling that the stench of urine would be everywhere.
When not chronicling the darker side of mental illness or the terrible living conditions of the British halfway-house system, Spider works best as a gripping detective story. We, the audience are here to follow Spider as he traces his various webs back to that one fateful night; studying the facts and putting the pieces back together. There is even a semi-nonsense voice over/stream of conscious thought pattern mumbled by our 'hero' throughout, which helps shed some light on the mystery at hand without necessarily giving too much away. The film also works as a showcase for underrated actors. Fiennes, of course, in the lead is outstanding, but we also have Miranda Richardson as young spider's mother, as well as acting as the film's central enigma. Some have criticised her performance as being almost larger than life, like a caricature, but she is supposed to be playing the fevered incarnation of womanhood as depicted from the mind of a very troubled boy; so what do you expect? As mentioned before, the film works from an entirely subjective viewpoint, in which everything in the film has been rearranged and readapted to better suit the crumbling mindset of the central character.
With this in mind, Cronenberg creates a depiction of Britain that has more in common with The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) than anything resembling old London town. There are no cars in the film and, save for a few scenes, very little in the way of extras. This allows Spider to wander the empty streets and empty allotments as if constantly roaming around his own damaged and alienated psyche. Gabriel Byrne is also interesting as Spider's father, but his performance is one of great subtly. Even more subtle and criminally underrated is John Neville as Spider's only companion in the halfway house. He gives a very restrained, understated portrayal of psychosis and old age, which is both intriguing and disturbing; with many viewers picking up on the circular thematic of these two different characters. Is Terence a prototype for Spider? Perhaps. Even more intriguing is the character of Mrs Wilkinson, who may or may not be the very same woman who initially flashes her breast at young Spider, thus triggering the events of the film. If she fails to register, it is perhaps down to the streamlining of the character from book to film, which will inevitably leave out major plot details.
Regardless, Cronenberg ties all of these ideas into the images of the film; creating frames of Kafka-like complexity, with damp, bleak, washed-out scenes brimming with symbolism. Try and count how many times we see Spider framed through bars and grates, or how many times the web symbolism is used. The obsession with gas is also a clever allusion to later events and wonderfully represented by the looming gasworks that linger constantly on the horizon. This is a film that rewards multiple viewings, and, as a fan of engrossing, suspenseful, intelligent cinema, I greet it with open arms. Some will no doubt find the film to be a real chore, while others, I would hope, might find something to enjoy within this dark and troubled story. Sufficed to say, for those willing to allow themselves to be tangled in the spider's web, the film will reward....
unsettling, disturbing...yet strangely moving.......2007-10-27
After the critical mauling of two of his previous films, the incomprehensible Naked Lunch and the equally preposterous Existenz, and the moral outcry caused by the filming of J G Ballard's crash, you would have expected David Cronenberg to go back to what he does so well, the genre known as "body horror" that he practically invented.
So it was a bit of a surprise when he came back with this movie, a small, intimate exploration of one mans mental illness. The film focuses on Dennis Clegg (brilliantly portrayed by Ralph Fiennes, who immerses himself in the character and clearly relishes the challenge of portraying this mans fractured mental state), a man recently released after a long stay in a mental institution, who returns to his home turf and finds rooms in a bleak halfway house run by Mrs Wilkinson (Lynn Redgrave in a fantastic supporting turn playing a woman so unsympathetic to her charges that it is something akin to a slap in the face). It is in this bleak environment that Dennis (or spider as he was nicknamed by his beloved mother) attempts to piece together his fractured childhood memories. Flitting in time between a grimy London of the 80's, Spiders present, and his equally colourless childhood in the 60's, his memories gradually come to focus on the apparent spur of the moment murder of his doting mother (played with a quiet dignity by a wonderful Miranda Richardson) by his brutish boozing father (Gabriel Byrne). However, the fact that Richardson also plays the floozy who takes the place of Spiders mother in the Clegg house following this event suggests that everything may not be as it seems.
And it is the truth underlying this tragic event that we, the viewers are here to witness as we try to understand this confused, muttering and crushingly lonely cipher of a man. This is a film that offers no easy explanations, with no men in white coats pooping up to offer an easy to digest answer to Spiders haunted mind. Abandoning his more recognizable milieu, Cronenberg has fashioned a film that is horrific in a much more subtle, disturbing way, and marks a welcome change of direction for the Canadian auteur, whilst still dealing with his common themes of psychology and transformation, though here focused firmly on the cerebral rather than the anatomical.
Never haunt your infancy again.......2007-05-08
A simple, very simple film. A child loses his mother who is killed by his own father and replaced by another woman. He eventually kills this substitute as a vengeance but also as an act of justice for himself and maybe the mother he is remembering in his empty mind. He feels like a spider in the middle of its cobweb, but also like the very prey of the spider in that very centre of that very cobweb. He will be taken away to some mental hospital and will come back a long long time later and he will revisit the scene of his crime and he will start all over again just to revive his past and what he lost a long time ago, his mother who is probably still alive in his mind, his memory. And he will be taken away again, this time for good. Sad vision of these men who are the prey of the world and become vultures because they are punished for what they did instead of being understood or just even being prevented from running into a situation of this type. Killing is a catching disease for one and an incurable disease for two. Cronenberg is the bleakest pessimist of them all and there is no escape from his fatal fate, his lethal death, his morbid moribund sense of black dis-humor that makes you feel as if you had eaten some live eel or snake, head, tail and venom alike.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Melancholy and understated Masterpeice.......2006-02-28
David Cronenberg, Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Burne in a Patrick McGrath adaptation. All these high quality peices fit together to provide an assured and perfectly paced film. This is mature Cronenberg, so the heads stay in one peice; its the minds that fracture instead. Depicting mental illness in an unsensational style, in a dour and miserable 50's London, this is a disturbing and sad work that gets its teeth into issues of loneliness, isolation and family breakdown. Not one for a saturday night then.
Cronenberg 1664. A bad year for flim-making........2005-10-11
You never really know what you're going to get with a Cronenberg movie but if you like a nice title sequence then this film delivers. Shortly after that a bunch of other stuff happens but nothing of any great consequence.
UK DVD:
- Spike Lee Box Set
- Stand By Me [1987]
- Straight from the Heart [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- Strings [2004]
- Subway [1985]
- Swimming With Sharks [1996]
- Tai Pan
- Tales Of The Unexpected - The Complete Third Series
- The Assassination Of Richard Nixon [2004]
- The Bill - The Complete First Series [1984]
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