eXistenZ

Rating:
Summary: Mind bending
Review: Every once in awhile when I am feeling reflective I like to watch a David Cronenberg film. I have seen quite a few of them at this point, from some of his earliest stuff like "Shivers" to his seminal reworking of "The Fly" starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. One thing you will always get out of a Cronenberg film is a serious look at how technology and human beings interact. Like science fiction author J.G. Ballard, Cronenberg's films embrace a synthesis of man and machine that is exceedingly grim, usually served with a generous helping of gore. The overarching theme in his cinematic examinations seems to be that humans simply do not know enough about the technology they develop, or if they do, their arrogance in the ultimate abilities of mankind always leads them charging into experiments despite the risks. That we are just not far seeing enough to predict the outcome of using new drugs, messing around with human genetics, or plugging game units into our spinal cords may be a good message to take from a Cronenberg film. "eXistenZ" is almost a sequel to his masterful early 1980's effort "Videodrome." Whereas "Videodrome" dealt with the addictive and manipulative potentialities of television, "eXistenZ" warns about the addictive and manipulative potentialities of video games.

Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a top video game designer, is about to premier her latest efforts to a select gathering of techies and marketing schleps. Called eXistenZ, the game promises to blow every other previous effort out of the water, and the people in attendance at the debut of the game are beside themselves with joy. It is difficult to get so excited over a mere video game until we learn that the games these people play goes well beyond a television set and a joystick. In Geller's world, the games plug directly into the human brain via a bioport, or a hole in the base of the spinal column. The system connected to the spinal cord is a half-flesh/half machine game pod, a squishy, living organism sporting an umbilical cord attachment. The action starts when a person plugs in and uses their hands to manipulate this grotesque bag of skin. As for the program itself, well, it goes far beyond virtual reality to create a reality nearly identical to the one we see through our own eyes. Sure, there a few differences easily noticed by players, such as characters who repeat phrases until the player says the right thing to move the game along or weird little creatures that could never exist in reality, but eXistenZ is light years ahead of Donkey Kong.

Geller barely fires up eXistenZ before a nut in the audience attempts to kill her with a weird gun fashioned out of bones that uses teeth for bullets (!). Allegra flees the chaotic scene with Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a public relations gopher, and the two head to a hotel out in the sticks until they can figure what the heck is going on. Geller's astonishment about Pikul's lack of a game port leads the two to an out of the way gas station where a guy named Gas (Willem Dafoe) installs unregistered bioports for a fee. More weirdness ensues when Gas makes an attempt on Geller's life, fortunately thwarted by Pikul, and the two confused fugitives head even deeper into the woods to a pod repair shop run by a couple of Geller's old friends. As if it couldn't get any stranger, Pikul and Geller at this point plug into eXistenZ in earnest and are rapidly propelled through a series of strange scenarios involving a Chinese restaurant, a really disgusting meal, one of those strange bone guns, a pod manufacturing plant, and a conspiracy concerning Geller's invention. You are never quite sure when Geller and Pikul are in the game or in reality, which makes the movie quite confusing at times. About the only thing that really makes sense is the conclusion of the film, an ending I will not spoil except to say that it was quite a twist and one which I did not see coming. I probably didn't pick up on the numerous clues throughout the movie because I spent too much time soaking in all of the epic weirdness going on every few minutes.

I always enjoy a Cronenberg film, but the real reason I liked this film was the presence of Jennifer Jason Leigh. Although I have heard several things about her that are slightly off putting, I think she's a real cutie who only gets better with age. I also admire the risks she has taken with some of her roles over the years. I couldn't help but draw a comparison several times in "eXistenZ" between Leigh now and Leigh when she starred in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" two decades ago. She's definitely attained a greater range since the early 1980s, and she is much, much prettier as an older woman. At one point in the film the script calls for Allegra Geller to cradle an assault weapon while talking to Pikul, a very short scene that reveals how stunning Leigh is even while toting military hardware. As for Jude Law and Willem Dafoe, they do an adequate job with what they have to work with here. "eXistenZ" ultimately focuses more on the twisty plot and the oddball effects than it does with character development. "eXistenZ" is not David Cronenberg's best film, but it is an entertaining romp through employing his usual themes. The DVD has no extras except for a trailer, disappointingly, but the movie is in widescreen and the quality is excellent. Here's to a long career for Cronenberg, a man who has brought up plenty of wild and wacky films and who will hopefully bring us a few more in the future.

Rating:
Summary: not the best work by Cronenberg
Review: I like David Cronenberg movies. But this one was quite disappointing. I didn't look at the year the movie was created and thought that it's some earlier Cronenberg' work so undeveloped the movie was. It turned out the movie was made in 1999. Although the spirit and environment of the movie is typical Cronenberg, the plot is hardly original, chaotic and not convincing (and it doesn't mean that I don't like complicatedly structured movies). The only bright spot is the acting (as always) of Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth your money
Review: The intellectual counterpart of the matrix. This film is truly enjoyable and made me think. Not only that, but the first thing I said after seeing it for the first time was 'are we still in the game?' It was disturbing, extremely well written, well acted, the special effects were very well done and an amazing atmosphere was created. Overall, I would recommend this film.
The story is about the creator of a game called eXistenZ, which plugs into the human nervous system via a bioport on someone's back. It deals with far more though, it is not so much the story which is important, as are some of the underlying themes and questions, such as 'what constitutes reality?'
The verdict? Terribly good. Terribly engaging. Worth several views and capable of providing hours of material for discussion. Definitely a thinker, but very enjoyable if you don't feel up to that.

Rating:
Summary: imaginative and the end is a surprise
Review: its quite a movie. Jennifer Jason Leigh creates a game called eXistenZ and you can tap in threw the back or the bellybutton, one of the two, anyway, at the beginning, a man trys to assassinate her but luckily Jude Law brings her to safety and tries to save her, then a man named Gas trys to kill her, played by Willem Dafoe and then he gets killed. they start tapping into the game and experience reality bending things. imaginative soup gun in that chinese restautant and the end is a twist which it turns out to be an actual game hey are all playing and the 2 are actually assassins themselves. other cast members like Don McKellar(Exotica) with a funked up part, Sarah Polley(GO, The Claim), Ian Holm(The Fifth Element) and Christopher Eccelston(Shallow Grave, Jude, 28 Days Later), add spark to the interesting piece, I read the book and David Cronenberg did an excellent job on the movie as well.

Rating:
Summary: Don't watch it for the wrong reasons
Review: If you are into CGI effects and mindless shootings and explosions, you are not going to like this movie, as I can see from some of the other reviews. Cronenberg isn't out to make a popcorn movie for video game addicts. He just uses the frame of gaming to tell a story that has deeper subtextural levels. Like all cronenberg films, it's laden with sexual metaphor and imagery relating to the conflict between flesh and spirit. It's a heady art film. Watch it as such.

Rating:
Summary: Disgusting
Review: The world of eXistenZ is dominated by game playing. The players use these strange flesh pods which plug directly into the user's back. When users play the game, they enter an ultra-realistic virtual world and play out a fantasy which is created from the mind of the users. In this world, there is also a faction of "realists" who are bent on destroying this game technology.

There are some serious flaws in this movie that detract from the basically good plot idea. First of all, the game intself is strangely bizarre and gross. There are lots of body parts, organs, exploding heads, and bloody gunshot wounds. It seems hard to believe that such a game would be appealing to a large enough of an audience to inspire a terrorist group to oppose it. In fact the game is an absolute nightmare. The second point that bothers me is that the test group is freakishly cultish, which again detracts from the idea that this game is a mainstream thing. The test group meets in a small country church in the middle of nowhere. Where is the logic in that? Why isn't the product testing held at the company's headquarters?

For this movie to work, you have to believe that the game is the greatest thing ever, but in this movie you just don't feel that, so the point the movie is trying to get across, just doesn't get across.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting to compare to The Matrix
Review: eXisteZ invites comparison to The Matrix, another movie that explores questions about what is real raised by recent advances in virtual reality technology. eXistenZ is fascinated by the question of what is real, but has no plot velocity to keep the viewer interested in the outcome. The Matrix, a more traditional Hollywood movie, has a structure that keeps you engaged. Overall, eXistenZ is worth seeing; but, unlike The Matrix, it is not worth seeing again.

Rating:
Summary: slow moving, unrealistic, and at times confusing
Review: Half the text should be cut out of this movie...it is poorly written, contains no suspense, and some scenes are far too long and drawn out with absolutely nothing interesting happening...the characters are mostly poorly developed with very little personality, the sexual tension is virtually non-existant, the major twists in the plot are not explained fully, which makes for disjointed viewing, and apart from the ending there is nothing particularly interesting or new about the movie from either a science fiction or a special effects perspective. Watching frog guts for half the movie just does not cut it in terms of interesting science fiction-in fact it seems totally unrealistic that the entire game system is made of flesh and guts...finally, the part that annoyed me the most was when "Pikul" asks why the "bioports" in the spinal column don't get infected because "they open straight into your body", and Jennifer Jason Leigh says "don't be ridiculous, listen to what you're saying" and then opens her mouth. The mouth is not "opening" straight into the human body as would a hole directly into flesh, organs, or the spine, in fact the entire digestive column can be considered as an entirely separate hollow tube inside of the body, with membranes to control what passes in and out of what is actually part of the human body. I found this movie was a waste of my time and just plain annoying.

Rating:
Summary: Holy clunker of a film, Batman!
Review: I was seriously shocked at how leaden and uninteresting this film was. I've been a fan of Cronenberg for many years and have liked quite a few of his films. I've also always respected Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law. This film, though, was laughable. The dialogue was awkward, the acting was empty and the story was just strange without creating anything intruiging. I cannot believe the people writing reviews comparing this to The Matrix and calling it a "smarter version". Smarter how? Not even close. and the Matrix is not even a great film in it's own right - but compared to this, it is. A better film than both of these (which both films steal from, liberally) is Alphaville. Rent the Criterion edition and you'll know what I mean.

Rating:
Summary: Just didn't work for me
Review: I'm usually easily entertained by movies, especially Sci-Fi ones, but this one just didn't work for me, and some parts I just thought were pretty silly. And that's despite my usually liking Cronenberg films. For example, I thought his Naked Lunch and Crash were terrific, two movies with the sort of dark, disturbing, and sinister themes that Cronenberg knows how to make the most of. But this one just seemed to fall flat, including the existential reality-questioning aspect of the movie, and the puzzles that arise from that, which might have been really fun. For example, at one point toward the end of the film it's hard to determine whether the characters are actually in their "normal" reality or whether they're in some cyberpunk alternative reality. As I said, that might have been really fun if done differently, but unfortunately the film gets pretty cliched at that point and starts going downhill from there. I hate to say it, because I'm usually a fan of his movies, but at that point this one really just turns into a turkey. I mean a serious one. It was still gobbling, scratching, and pecking when I left the theater. There should have been a food kiosk in the theater serving turkey dressing and cranberry sauce so people could have had it with the movie. Oh well, sorry about that David. I really am usually a fan of your movies.