Following

Rating:
Summary: "Following" in the Tradition of the Moderns
Review: ... The velvetwork of the "soft" black & white cinematography, the dislocated temporal locus, and the insolent railing against the logical preconceptions "haunting" the contemporary narrative make "Following" my top pick for purchase.
Just as the cubists abolished the idea of the pictoral "Climax," so too does director Nolan. Only faint traces of the great "literary" triangle of Aristotle are detectable. The film is more experimental than not, and plays as an encommium to the unconscious states of Lyotard's ultimate aesthetic experience where at once "the banal, mundane, and sublime all merge to become one."
Imagine Faulkner's "Sound and Fury" or Joyce's "Ulysses" as pure cinematic imagery, and than one begins to understand the hypnotic, disturbing sway of "Following".

Rating:
Summary: A Must Have For Any Aspiring Filmaker
Review: A fascinating portrait, the film is just riverting, but it is the director's comentary that really blew me away. Rather then the usual ancdotes of filmaking, this lecture is a how-to for low budget filmakers. Just Great.

Rating:
Summary: Who stole the sides of the picture?
Review: A ripper story to be sure, but I'd seen it before in widescreen vhs and was appaled when it began playing - cropped!!! on my dvd player!

Don't buy this if you want to see the flick properly- pray that the Memento/Following double set has them both in the correct ratio- otherwise- buy vhs- more picture for your money.

Damn, thought it was widescreen...

Rating:
Summary: Had Me Stroking My Chin...
Review: A very hypnotic piece, this British mystery/thriller is.

Ths story centers on a harmless young writer/voyeur who follows people so that he can "see where they go, where they live, what they do..." but he, "never follows the same person twice..." until one day, that is.

He is approached by one of his subjects, and lured into the realm of breaking and entering. Throw in a beautiful Marylyn Monroe look-a-like, a shady businessman, and pieces shot out of chronological order, and you have FOLLOWING.

Similar in style to MEMENTO, 21 GRAMS, AMORES PERROS, and ENGLISH PATIENT, FOLLOWING never ceased to keep me guessing right to the last second. This is a fun flick that fans of olf Hitchcock and Doyle stories will appreciate.

Great indy b&w flick!

Rating:
Summary: You're Never Alone.
Review: After watching Following (1998) last night, I've determined that writer/director Christopher Nolan, who would later do the immensely popular film Memento (2000), is either a raving psychotic, mad genius, or possibly equal parts of both (I'll elaborate more on this later). Appearing in the film is Jeremy Theobald, who appeared in Nolan's first feature short, Doodlebug (1997), Lucy Russell, who is going to appear in Nolan's take on the Gotham Knight in 2005's Batman Begins, and Alex Haw, who has no other credits, which is too bad as I thought he did very well here.

Theobald plays Bill, an aspiring writer (i.e. the starving artist type...you know him...greasy, unkempt, living in a shabby apartment subsisting off macaroni and ketchup...or is it catsup? I guess it doesn't matter) whose curiosities have developed into a rather odd compulsion of picking people out of the crowd, randomly, and following them with no other reason than to see where they go...I guess it beats working. Anyway, after Bill gets caught `doing his thing' by one of his subjects, a slick, smartly dressed man named Cobb (Haw), he learns the man is a burglar, the two develop a sort of partnership, and Bill begins tagging along with Cobb (who seems to have an awful lot of insight about those who he robs), supposedly to gather information for his writing...but soon Bill finds himself not only learning, but participating, using the tricks of the trade taught to him as Cobb becomes the mentor, Bill the student. Bill also becomes involved with the occupant of one of the flats the two have burglarized, a pretty blonde woman (Russell) with a somewhat shady past and a penchant for manipulation. So what happens next? Well, let's just say once you begin your downward decent, regardless of the illicit activity, the momentum generally takes hold and becomes a force of its' own, and not stopping until confronted with an immovable object, in this case, rock bottom.

So what the heck did I mean when I referred earlier to Nolan's mental state? The story seems pretty straightforward, from the way I described it, right? If you've seen the film Memento, you'll have a better understanding about what I'm talkin' about, Willis. The story is straightforward, when played in the linear, chronological sense, but that's not the case here. The film begins in the present, with the Bill relating his story to what appears to be a police detective, and then bounces between three different timeframes, the past, the not so distance past, and the present, highlighted by noticeable physical changes in Bill (hairstyles, facial hair, distinguishing bruises and cuts on his face...Bill gets the beating at one point). Now, this might make the story sound confusing and hard to follow, but I didn't think so as Nolan seemed to know exactly how to best put things in the order without actually putting them back in order (if that makes sense). As I said before, he does allow for variances to become the key indicators between the various timeframes, so if you're paying attention, you shouldn't have problems keeping up. The story, when told in chronological order, is actually pretty simplistic, but Nolan manages to complicate things just enough to keep you in the dark right up until the end. It is strange how much different the same story can play out depending on how it's told. As I said, Nolan seems to be able to extract the most out of his skewed chronology of events, heightening the tension greatly. The whole notion of understanding a story enough to completely tear it apart, re-assembling it in a completely different fashion, ultimately getting the same ending though a different route, and doing it successfully, is amazing. The film, which was shot in black and white, is kept minimal (i.e. sparse) in nearly all aspects (script, story, characters, etc.), and runs lean and mean with a runtime of about 70 minutes. There seems little, if anything, in the film that was unnecessary, so there's little to distract from the story. Bottom line is if you're interested in a sharp, smartly paced film that wastes little and requires a bit of thought from its' viewer, Following won't disappoint.

The full screen picture (aspect ratio 1.33:1) looks gritty, serving to give the film a `noir-ish' quality, which accentuates the story well. The 2.0 Dolby stereo is adequate, but there are English subtitles if you have difficulty hearing all the dialogue. There are a whole slew of extras including commentary by director Nolan, the ability to reconstruct the film into chronological order, theatrical trailers for this film and Memento, second angles with the director's shooting script, along with cast and crew biographies. I was surprised to learn Nolan was directing the next Batman film, Batman Begins, as it doesn't seem like the kind of thing he'd be interested in, but then many had preconceived ideas when it was announced Tim Burton was going to do a Batman film way back in 1989, and that didn't turn out too bad.

Cookieman108


Rating:
Summary: The decent precursor to Nolan's outstanding Memento
Review: As the film debut of Christopher Nolan, Following showed serious promise. While not perfect, its manipulation of time and use of the film noir genre is admirable and proved to be the precursor to his first widely released and superior Memento.

Following is about a man with the habit of following strangers, and what happens when one of them turns out to be a follower himself. The film cleverly mixes up time, showing scenes out of order to raise questions to what later happens to the follower. At the beginning, he's long haired and unshaven, but in other scenes he's cleaned up and others he's bruised and beaten up. It's a wonderful technique to keep the audience involved in the film. We know he must get into some serious trouble, but we don't know what or why. The film's black and white photography, while likely chosen more for its inexpensive trait, complements the film noir aspects of the storyline.

However, mostly due to the small budget, the acting isn't too great. Only the thief character named Cobb whom the follower gets involved with is convincing in his role. Everyone else feels like a B-movie actor, and not very good ones at that. But another downfall of this film isn't much a fault of its own. Nolan's later film Memento tells another noir story in a very similar style, but with amazing fashion (telling the story completely backwards) and a story arc (A man with a memory disorder after his wife was murdered) that far outshines Following's smaller ideas. Here it seems he was just beginning to toy with time and scene order in film, so he'd really get it right in Memento.

Overall, Following is a decent little flick that is better rented before being purchased. Fans of Memento may find it especially interesting to see how the director began shifting time and scenes around in preparation for his later mind bender, but the average film viewer might want to skip it and check out the superior Memento instead.

Rating:
Summary: Warning
Review: At least on certain players such as the Apex, it is impossible to turn off the alternate-angle feature. I went specifically into the menu and selected for it to be off, but it comes back on with every chapter stop. It can be very distracting. It's a great film, but this managed to take me out of it. Columbia/TriStar also put out the Planet of the Apes DVD with a similar feature, but this one would turn on and off and truly was a feature. Not being able to turn it off keeps me from wanting to purchase the DVD, which I'd give 4 or 5 stars were it not for this flaw.

Rating:
Summary: Follow The Leader
Review: Before he made MEMENTO, director Christopher Nolan, brought us a little gem called FOLLOWING. Bill is a writer whose career is going nowhere. He decides to start following people at random, as they walk the streets, hoping to cure his intense boredom. When he begins to shadow a man named Cobb, he is caught in the act, and finds himself being drawn into a dangerous game. Cobb breaks into the homes of folks, and takes the opportunity to gain information about his victims. The two form a strange symbiotic relationship, like both sides of the same coin, the pair soon discover that they need each other...but for very different reasons.

The film employs the same non-linear technique that made MEMENTO work. However, the use of non-linear storytelling never gets old if done right. Thankfully, Nolan keeps this one going at a brisk pace, and the twists in the story are solid enough to keep things interesting. In a very real way, I think this film is just as compelling as MEMENTO, and I don't consider it to be a smaller version of that film, just because they share the same narrative style. Nolan not only directed the film, he also wrote the script, and shot it as well. Because the filmmaker had a limited amount of money to work with, the film is very low budget and shot on the "fly" in black and white. These limits turn out to be part of the film's best assets, and only add to my enjoyment of the film.

The DVD has a great commentary track from Nolan. It also allows you to watch the film in chronological order The second angle feature lets viewers see the shooting script while you watch the movie. Rounding out the main extras on the disc, are the theatrical trailers, and cast and crew information.

I not only recommend this film with a **** and a half star rating, but I also suggest that you watch MEMENTO as well

Rating:
Summary: Smart and Clever (4 1/2 stars)
Review: Christopher Nolan is a very talented director who proves how talented he is with his first "no-budget" movie, "Following." This a dark film noir that will keep you thinking and guessing until the shocking last scene.

Bill is a struggling writer who has been on his own for quite sometime. During that time he has become very bored and needs to find ways to kill time. He starts to follow people... anybody who seemed interesting to him. At first it was supposed to be a way for him to gather material for characters in his stories, but soon he becomes obsessed and cannot stop following people. Once a thief, Cobb, catches Bill in the act, he decides to allow him to enter his world of robbing houses, showing Bill how to really violate the lives of strangers. Soon everything starts to spin out of control and things for Bill will never be the same as he starts to learn that somebody just might be trying to use him as a decoy.... but a decoy for what? This dark film noir will keep you watching and thinking, even when it's all said and done. Then, you're going to want to watch it again.

Very much like "Memento," Nolan screws around with time, forcing us to remember exactly what has happened and the order they occurred in. However, the movie is not backwards, it is very much out of order in parts, so pay attention to every little detail that you come across. Is this film confusing? Yes, it is, or at least the first time you see it. This is a movie that will require you to watch it at least two times. Although I thought this was a good movie, I was a little disappointed with the length of the movie. It is only 70 minutes long, which isn't very long at all. It's also not widescreen, but I'm sure that' s because it wasn't filmed that way. It is black and white, very much like "Clerks," but it actually makes the film seem more darker and eerier. The movie does have great acting, from people you've never even heard of most likely, and it does have a great story line. It tends to be confusing at times, even frustrating. So see it with an open mind. I loved the music in it and you will be glad to know that it is the same person Nolan used for "Memento." There are a few extras on the DVD; one of the best features is the ability for you to see the movie in chronological order. There are also trailers for "Following" and "Memento." ("Memento" is probably one of the best theatrical trailers I have ever seen. "Following" is also a fine trailer.)

"Following" is a fine first from Nolan, who has proven that he is a brilliant writer and director who loves to make us do a lot of work when watching his films. If you liked "Memento," chances are you will enjoy this film as well. A brilliant movie, and one that shows you that you do not need a big budget to make a great movie. See this one as soon as you can.

Rating:
Summary: Smart and Clever (4 1/2 stars)
Review: Christopher Nolan is a very talented director who proves how talented he is with his first "no-budget" movie, "Following." This a dark film noir that will keep you thinking and guessing until the shocking last scene.

Bill is a struggling writer who has been on his own for quite sometime. During that time he has become very bored and needs to find ways to kill time. He starts to follow people... anybody who seemed interesting to him. At first it was supposed to be a way for him to gather material for characters in his stories, but soon he becomes obsessed and cannot stop following people. Once a thief, Cobb, catches Bill in the act, he decides to allow him to enter his world of robbing houses, showing Bill how to really violate the lives of strangers. Soon everything starts to spin out of control and things for Bill will never be the same as he starts to learn that somebody just might be trying to use him as a decoy.... but a decoy for what? This dark film noir will keep you watching and thinking, even when it's all said and done. Then, you're going to want to watch it again.

Very much like "Memento," Nolan screws around with time, forcing us to remember exactly what has happened and the order they occurred in. However, the movie is not backwards, it is very much out of order in parts, so pay attention to every little detail that you come across. Is this film confusing? Yes, it is, or at least the first time you see it. This is a movie that will require you to watch it at least two times. Although I thought this was a good movie, I was a little disappointed with the length of the movie. It is only 70 minutes long, which isn't very long at all. It's also not widescreen, but I'm sure that' s because it wasn't filmed that way. It is black and white, very much like "Clerks," but it actually makes the film seem more darker and eerier. The movie does have great acting, from people you've never even heard of most likely, and it does have a great story line. It tends to be confusing at times, even frustrating. So see it with an open mind. I loved the music in it and you will be glad to know that it is the same person Nolan used for "Memento." There are a few extras on the DVD; one of the best features is the ability for you to see the movie in chronological order. There are also trailers for "Following" and "Memento." ("Memento" is probably one of the best theatrical trailers I have ever seen. "Following" is also a fine trailer.)

"Following" is a fine first from Nolan, who has proven that he is a brilliant writer and director who loves to make us do a lot of work when watching his films. If you liked "Memento," chances are you will enjoy this film as well. A brilliant movie, and one that shows you that you do not need a big budget to make a great movie. See this one as soon as you can.