eXistenZ

Rating:
Summary: eXistenZ is enGrosSing and sUrreAl
Review: I am actually pretty unfamiliar with the works of David Cronenberg, and so knew none of his "trademarks"...but from the very beginning, the movie caught my interest. He throws you into this strange world, in which games are incredibly popular, and strange biological "pods" are used to play them. I did not find the movie slow-paced at all. Okay, well it wasn't "fast-paced", per se, but the movie keeps your interest, because you're just as confused as to what's going on as the characters are, at times.

I've heard comparisons to *The Matrix* but when I saw the movie, I disagreed slightly. This isn't *The Matrix*...this approaches reality at a different angle, the game/virtual reality angle...if games do become more and more realistic, how will someone be able to distinguish the game world from the real world (well, yeah, like Morpheus' dream world/real world speech). But this isn't *The Matrix*, I assure you. There's more gore, for one thing. And less effects and action. The movie relies on its intriguing storyline and thr confusion of what is real and what is not.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Back to an earlier Cronenberg era
Review: It's been a treat to watch David Croneberg progress over his career. Though his movies have not always been the greatest, one is able to see an artist hone his craft and try to further his vision. This is why I found eXistenZ such a surprize. This harkens back to his earlier works, particularly The Brood and Videodrome. Where in his later works the dialogue had become truer and his camera work and editing smoother, here we experience a generally rougher edged production. The story is very similar to Videodrome, but the television is replaced by video games. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a game designer who, along with a marketing assistant from the company, played by Jude Law, tests out her new game. As in other past and recent films, the question of reality comes into play. They have a difficult time knowing when they are or aren't playing the game. Throw in rebels who fight for reality, corporate espionage, a significantly high "goo" factor (at times bordering on vomitous) and you're firmly in Croneberg world. The plot is so convoluted it might take a second viewing to determine if it all really adds up. I didn't particularly care because it was so much fun trying to unravel it all. Viewer beware. This has a lot of pretty disgusting stuff in it. Game control pods that look like body parts with umbilical cords that plug into ports in the small of your back, guns that are made of mutant animal parts and shoot teeth. This is not for viewing on a full stomach. One restaurant scene in particular is rivaled only by the "chicken eating" scene in "The Dark Backward" for true stomach turning delight. This is not Cronenberg's best, but it's firmly entrenched in his unique style and will appeal to fans of his work.

Rating:
Summary: Seriously underrated Cronenberg sci-fi film
Review: The biggest strike against David Cronenberg's eXistenZ is the year that it came out - 1999. It was a summer dominated by Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss. Cronenberg's film covers strikingly similar territory to The Wachowski Brothers' comic book/kung fu/sci-fi/action opus, The Matrix. Whereas The Matrix was a big-budget Hollywood movie aimed at a wide mainstream audience, eXistenZ is an independent lower budget Canadian production aimed at a significantly smaller audience. Both movies deal with issues of technology, specifically actual reality versus computer-generated reality. That's where the similarities end. The Matrix may ask profound questions, but it's an action film at heart, and it's only interested in asking those questions so long as they pave the way for a set piece filled with special effects and stunts. Cronenberg is not interested in dazzling the viewer with effects and action. He wants to make the viewer think (and of course, feel completely repulsed and disgusted).

eXistenZ is a smart sci-fi thriller that is thought-provoking, complex and completely immersing. The premise is pure Cronenberg brilliance: A designer of virtual reality games which use living, organic "controllers" that plug into the user's spinal cord, is pursued by a gang of realists who resent her attempt to deform reality as we know it. She enters her game to make sure it wasn't damaged in the attack, and things get interesting from there. Is anyone even after her at all? What is real and what isn't? Cronenberg manages to infuse his usual trademarks into the story, particularly technology versus biology. The part synthetic/part organic game pods are very clever, and I especially liked the completely organic gun made of bones and cartilage which fires human teeth as bullets. Cronenberg loves to combine flesh and bone with technology as illustrated in many of his films. The film has its share of gross-out moments as per usual for the director. The Chinese restaraunt sequence was particularly memorable for me. This film may put you off Chinese food for good.

Cronenberg's vision is decidedly much darker than the comic book universe of The Matrix. I felt that The Matrix had good intentions but took the wrong approach. It's very difficult to successfully merge existentialist philosophy with action shoot-outs. The Wachowskis felt the need to dumb down their subject matter for the action movie crowds and the movie suffered as a result. David Cronenberg is not trying to make an action movie, so the ideas reign supreme here. The subject matter itself, is hardly original, but Cronenberg deals with it in a fresh and unique way adding his own grotesque sense of style. This is not a movie for all audiences, certainly. For those who like their science fiction cerebral, dark and grimy, eXistenZ should be right up their alley. I find it to be an overlooked gem of a film that is a great alternative to that over baked Hollywood cash cow The Matrix.

Rating:
Summary: Original and Strange - Still Cronenberg Has Done Better
Review: A typical Cronenberg - blurred line between reality and fantasy, strange interaction between biology and technology, themes of addiciton and a psychological thriller plot. Leigh is average at best as a star game designer who is releasing a VR game so potent that people are out to kill her. Jude Law is good as the sidekick dragged into Leigh's alter world. However, as in all Cronenberg movies, he is the star and the actors are basically meaningless. Like "Naked Lunch" and "Dead Ringers" the sets and effects are striking and often gross. And also like those movies, Cronenberg injects biology where you would never expect it. In "eXistenz" the game console is a biological creature which must interact with the player via a connection to the spinal cord - weird stuff indeed. Gamers eventually develop a strong addicition to their bio-console in a drug-like way - another common Cronenberg motif. The story is intelligent and the artistic direction is quite interesting, but this film is not for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Another brilliant Cronenberg film
Review: Although eXistenZ came out around the same time as The Matrix, it seems to be a response to that film. Where The Matrix gave you a digital divide between reality and virtual reality, eXistenZ takes place in the gray area between.

But it's not a PK Dick rehash. Cronenberg spends as much time on the characters and their motives as he does on pseudo-intellectual questions of reality. (The film is also a humorous spoof of computer-game devotees.) Although there are a lot of scenes that lay flat --- instead of moving the plot forward --- the actors are so good, everything is easy to watch. Willem Dafoe is charming and scary as Gas, and Jude Law plays a pitch-perfect resourceful sidekick to Jennifer Jason Leigh. (You also have to hand it to Cronenberg for making the central character female without making her a damsel in distress or an masculine action heroine.)

This is a low-key but excellent movie. It's the kind of film you can enjoy over and over, picking up new bits of detail every time. It's not for everyone, of course. Cronenberg can repel some viewers with gooey special effects and psychological drama. But I think it's one of his best films, and certainly one of the best in 1999.

Rating:
Summary: "Matrix" haters will find solace in "eXistenZ"
Review: David Cronenberg has always been an unpredictable filmmaker, and even after 25 years in the business, his unique visions show no signs of decay. The possibilities of the human body used for malevolent purposes fueled his "Shivers" and "Rabid"; the eerie drama of the human subconscious punctuated "Dead Ringers," "Naked Lunch," and "Crash." With "eXistenZ," Cronenberg takes eager aim at the future and questions our reality in a film that's devoid of flashy, computer-generated EFX and mindnumbing violence (*ahem*, "Matrix"), but is exciting and intelligent all the same.

The plot concerns a Virtual Reality game designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) previewing a new system--'eXistenZ'--to the public, but things go horribly wrong when a would-be assassin puts her on the lam with a P.R. nerd (played by Jude Law). For the rest of the film, this odd couple wanders about the VR world, occasionally coming out of the game, to the point where the line between fantasy and reality is blurred (the last shot in the movie only reinforces it).

Cronenberg has gathered possibly his best cast here, getting a lot of mileage out of familiar faces (including Willem Dafoe, Christopher Eccleston, Don McKellar, and Ian Holm, among others). And even though the acting is occasionally overwrought and laughable, the director doubles back in the final sequence, critiquing his work with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Perhaps most importantly, "eXistenZ" proves that FX don't necessarily insure a more 'futuristic' film. Through subtle camera techniques, Cronenberg successfully merges from one level of reality to another with an expert hand. Unlike "The Matrix," which impressed me only on a technical level and left my brain hollow afterward, "eXistenZ" is for cerebral moviegoers, people who demand a little more than chic black leather and slow-motion bullets to propigate a satisfying experience.

Rating:
Summary: eXistenZ
Review: What a wonderful movie. All of the mind twisting about just what is reality anyway? and a feeling for what it's like if you are a videogame character living in a videogame world, where you may have to chop off a person's head to proceed with the game. I love the homage to Philip K. Dick, who beat the reality problem nearly to death in his works (movies made from his stories include Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Screamers, Imposter (which I haven't seen), and the embarrassing Paycheck). When the main characters in eXistenZ get hamburgers to take to the motel, the burgers come from Perky Pat's, and Perky Pat comes from Philip K. Dick. Residents of Mars, to spice up their boring lives in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, take a drug and play with their Perky Pat dolls, becoming the dolls and trying to live a Barbie and Ken existence. They know it's not real, but it becomes more real than real. You know that you are viewing a great simulation of reality in this movie when the burgers come from Perky Pat's. This movie would not have been made if Philip K. Dick had not lived, and we are better for both of those events.
It also seems to me that people who love The Matrix as much as I do - and there are millions of us - can't help but love this film. I can only attribute this movie's small potatoes performance vis a vis The Matrix to not enough people having seen it. So if one one-hundredth of you Matrix fans out there and all of the Matrix haters one reviewer referred to would rush out and buy this DVD you would make David Cronenberg really rich, as well as one of our finest creators of off-kilter movies.

Rating:
Summary: Superb psychotic suicide
Review: Cronenberg is a genius in a way. He leads us into the world of a new generation of console games and 3D virtual reality. Everything happens the way the characters you are projected into decide, and yet your deeper psyche can influence the characters. You liberate in such a game your most sombre death instinct and psychotic tendencies. You become the character and the character becomes you. You are entirely dominated by a logic that comes from the character and from the deepest layers of your impulses and passions. You burn up yourself in such a game and you do not know any more where reality is and where you stand in it. Everything becomes both virtual and real. You are lost and unable to make a decision and get out of this virtual world which is just as real as reality. Reality disappears by being blended with virtuality. The game becomes a nightmarish experience and a psychotic trip. You use any weapon at your disposal, in the game or in reality, to kill and destroy yourself and other characters or individuals. Death is at the end of the line, death of your mind, death of your psyche, death of your individuality, death of your freedom and free choosing mind. This film is dangerous because it reveals a real danger we are confronted to : playing any game builds in you a second nature that is rooted in your most morbid passions.

Dr jacques COULARDEAU

Rating:
Summary: Jennifer Jason Leigh makes it worth it
Review: Baaaaad script, but weird enough to keep you going. A little scattered and with large pieces that are needed to understand what's what missing from the film entirely. Still, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Willem Defoe, make it worth watching. Good actors are worth their weight in gold ... or at least in bad scripts.

Rating:
Summary: Really disgusting
Review: This movie made me feel sick!
Whatever world the characters are in there are always bodyparts laying around, being cut, destroyed or disected (and I don't mention the mutant amphibians that finish in a repulsive chinese dish and that get eaten!). There is no sense in the story, it's just about killing people without understanding why. The characers try to explain it, but you get so confused with all this non-sense! Forget reflecting, just turn off the TV. The best part of this movie is the end which could be described as quite good (when they're back to reality).
I liked the cast, especialy Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law, who played quite well (I really hope they didn't choose to play in this movie or I'd be concerned)
I really regret the movie being so bad, I could have enjoyed it if there had been less meaningless violence and less disgusting body parts.