eXistenZ

Rating:
Summary: A film for those who enjoy the operating scenes on 'ER'...
Review: I refuse to write the title of this film in that weird eXistenZ kind of way...oops, I just did. The title is just one annoying aspect of many in the film, which plays like some kind of nerd fantasy involving lots of weird technology crap and Jennifer Jason Leigh in a miniskirt. The film begins when Allegra (Leigh), a world-famous game designer, survives an attack from a would-be assasin during a company demo of her new game, eXistenZ. Ted (Jude Law), a PR agent-in-training for the company (and her temporary bodyguard) whisks her away to a motel to hide out. In order to test whether her game (a revolting, squirming flesh pod thing with an umbilical cord...yum) has been damaged in the attack, she must test it out with someone friendly. After Ted is installed with a BioPort, the two can enter into eXistenZ to see whether the game has been damaged. Unfortunately, things get pretty freaky and soon it becomes difficult to discern between reality and the game. For the rest of the film Allegra must give Ted dangerous come-hither looks from under her eyelashes, and he must shoot waiters and yell, "something doesn't feel right!" periodically.

Hmmm...what to say, what to say? Oh yeah: yuck. This movie lacked any kind of a coherent plot and contained a few too many bloody animal parts for my taste. Jude Law is even kind of boring in this one (oh, except when he slurps the head off of a mutant frog snake...thing). Mostly he just whines at Jennifer Jason Leigh in a bad American accent (but this CAN be forgiven as he was an excellent American in 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' and he is my favorite actor.) Jason Leigh just seems tired and PO'd for most of the film, although her hair is quite stylish. All in all, this movie has great special effects and very realistic fake blood and organs. See it if you like sci-fi. It's not terrible--just a little too stylishly bizarre.

Rating:
Summary: poor
Review: this movie is poor-bad acting, disgusting scenes and very little believable. Leigh's character in particular is very annoying. try Strange Days instead.

Rating:
Summary: Real or not, A great Vision from a great Visionare
Review: I live in México City and I really admire the Cronnenberg's work. I was waiting this movie to come theaters in my country but that never ocurred. So, without seen it but trusting in the Cronnenberg's work, I decided to bought this DVD and I must say that is one of the best movie treatments about Virtual Reality. The legend in the potrait is just a "promo" thing, the one about Matrix is just Child's play, but eXistenZ is a most intelligent look about the distorsion of our reallity and the creation of new ones. I really love this theme, but there are just few movies out there that have something very intelligent to say about it. Comes to my head: of course MATRIX, NIRVANA(an itallian by Gabrielle salvatores and with a very different Cristopher Lambert ***Reccomend***), Strange Days and of course eXistenZ. May be I forgot one, or many of them.

ABOUT THIS EDITION: Is not bad. I cuts a little in the original aspect ratio but well, nobody's perfect. But, DVD, DVD. New technology. USE IT. Extras, deletes scenes, audio commentary by Cronnenberg, art design, pictures,etc...

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre
Review: I am a fan of odd movies. In fact the more one has to think while watching a movie the better I like it. However, this failed to deliver. I am afraid that I found this movie almost border on being boring!! It had a wafer thin plot which in conclusion didn't really make sense and I have to say that I really didn't care what happened to anyone by then!!! I also have to say that I thought the characters to be ill defined, to say the least, and unsympathetic. In fact I would go as far as to say I truly disliked the character of Allegra, if indeed that was her real character!! In short I felt decidedly disappointed in this film as I had such high hopes as I started watching it.

Rating:
Summary: Spineshank Eroto Mechanyx (Interzone Mk II)
Review: As one of the few passionate admirers of Cronenberg's *Naked Lunch* (I've screened the film nearly thirty times in eight years), I had understandably high expectations for this, his latest effort. *eXistenZ* is something like a "sequel" to the earlier film, a dreamscape of surrealist sound-stages backlit with vulcan reds and dusky blues, spinal landscapes of inverted logic, odd reversals and breakneck paradigm-shifts, paranoiac espionage metaphors right out of Philip K. Dick, cipher-cored characters traversing the eXistenTial dream-labyrinths of ye olde Interzone....

Sounds good, right?

Unfortunately, *eXistenZ* just doesn't work as a film. Like the fish at the end of that Faith No More video, the actors flounder and suffocate on-screen, trying to build scenes out of dramatic deadwood, congested dialogue in the plaqued-out arteries of Cronenberg's screenplay. The quietly compelling labyrinth of *Naked Lunch*, a world of mystery, omen, conspiracy and strange portent, yields throughout in *eXistenZ* to mere non sequitur, to unconvincing performances and unintentionally funny tableaux. A slow narrative train-wreck, unable to really grip the viewer for more than a few minutes....

On a brighter note, the set-design is outstanding, with built-environments and color-schemes rising to the level of visual poetry. The trout factory, the Chinese restaurant, the sunny outdoor tidal pools as a hatchery for mutant sea-creatures (right out of William Burroughs's *The Soft Machine*), I would love to page through this designer's sketchbook. Much of the film has a cheery, sunny, brightly lit ambience unusual for Cronenberg, an oddly refreshing melange of natural sunlight and blue-green organic flourish, of brown shadows and biomechanic grunge. But brilliant sets and dreamy atmospherics aren't enough for a script-treatment that's more or less dead in the water.

As a treatise on the postmodern, *eXistenZ* almost redeems itself, and will no doubt appear on course syllabi for many semesters to come. Jude Law, shortly after being spineshanked with an eroto-mechanic BioPort jacking him into Leigh's proto-sentient game console, complains that this new game is frustrating, absurd, obstructionist, rife with abrupt and meaningless transitions, peopled by plastic "game-driven" personae, and just not a whole lot of fun. Who would ever want to play a game like this? To which Leigh's character replies, We've been playing eXistenZ all our lives. Which addles the viewer into a culture-concept catch-22. If virtual reality is the wave of the future, digitalized full-body immersion technology designed for the ultimate in simulated experience, why would consumers want to "escape" into a heightened reality even more brutally absurd than the existential meatspace of "real life." The game is praised as "more real" than any of its simulacral predecessors, but isn't there an inherent contradiction in the idea of "escaping into reality"?

*eXistenZ*, after all, is a game for elite postmodern junkies, a culture-portal for those who've abandoned the material world to simulation and simulacra, addicts of trendy nihilistic doctrines beneath a television sky. It can hardly sustain the shallow, narcissistic fantasies of 21st century pop culture. Games like *Myst* and *Riven* are remarkable entertainments, but as a "text" they're as shallow as spit on a rock, neo-Christian allegories as tendentious as anything by Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. *eXistenZ* ultimately flounders because it assumes that the television-shrunk minds of pop culture will want to enter virtual-reality environments as emotionally and intellectually challenging as a deep, Melvillean work of literature. But will those same consumers who carry Cliff's Notes editions of *Moby-Dick* to English Lit. class ever slap down sixty bucks to jack into *eXistenZ*? Seems about as likely as Harold Bloom zoning out on Sony PlayStation.

As always, Cronenberg should be applauded for grinding against the grain of adolescent wish-fulfillment which dominates the science-fiction film market (*The Matrix*), but the ultimate value of *eXistenZ* may be as a case-study for what happens when visionary experiments collapse under their own conceptual weight. A chastisement to would-be visual poets everywhere. A crash-profile in the annals of conceptual and aesthetic failure. A painful disappointment, but one that rewards film students with careful scrutiny as to what exactly went wrong.

Rating:
Summary: The Nature of eXistenZ?
Review: I have been a fan of David Cronenberg's movies for some time, and of movies and sci-fi writings that successfully question reality. BRAZIL and JACOB'S LADDER or DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, are among my very favorites. I was all set to love eXistenZ, but I have to report that it SEEMED quite unsuccessful to me.

Was it really unsuccessful? The acting was ponderous, with lines delivered slowly, awkwardly and with some of the thickest, most unconvincing accents ever committed to film--true, this was supposed to help us understand that the characters were actually in a game. The special effects were amazingly awkward--although the designs were interesting, the models didn't seem organic, but obviously rubbery. I'm sure Cronenberg would say that the SFX were designed to further this understanding as well. So it wasn't REALLY a bad movie, but it was a good movie PRETENDING to be a bad movie.

But let's add another plot twist to our critique--what if eXistenZ wasn't really a good movie pretending to be a bad movie, but was instead a bad movie pretending to be a good movie pretending to be a bad movie? How could we tell? Maybe, if the script weren't particularly good, and if everything were explained according to a reality that left no questions unanswered and was conceivable at the beginning of the film--that would surely be an indicator. And, I'm afraid, that is indeed the very nature of eXistenZ.

On one level it does have something to say about addiction and humanity's self-destructive nature, and on another there are many of the Cronenberg touches--lots of goo and exploding heads--his fans will be familiar with; maybe the real statement eXistenZ makes is about its director's addiction to slime and gore. But ultimately the movie doesn't really work that well on the surface, and it doesn't work as a deep philosophical exploration either.

Rating:
Summary: "Matrix" Loses to Smart Sci-Fi "eXistenZ"
Review: It has been almost two years since I first wanted to see eXistenZ by David Cronenberg. And I do insist on the particular ortography since, in the very first sequence, one of the movie's characters says that "It's a new game - it's spelled like this: small 'e,' capital 'X,' capital 'Z.'" But the game is not new at all! It is as old as time, except now somebody has finally done a coherent, solid, and downright smart film about the make-believe of video games. Before them, of course, it used to be the theatre and film that got accused for their make-believe.

Done with much much less money than the well-acclaimed "Matrix," eXistenZ should also stimulate much much more neurons than Keanu Reeves's square-shaped face that - unfortunately - haunts me not through the films he's made but through his bad-hair-day appearances at various gatherings and awards. In lieu of him, eXistenZ features one of the best actors to emerge from the UK in the past 3-4 years - Jude Law. Beside him, there's Jennifer Jason-Leigh - whom, after seeing this film, I will never again mistake with Claire Dannes or Julliette Lewis. And of course, it doesn't hurt the movie a bit that alongside these two there are Willem Defoe and Ian Holm.

It is a general opinion that Cronenberg has got us used to strange films, which is a strange affirmation in itself since all of his films deal with very human themes, even though sometimes they are very obscure. eXistenZ does not contradict this. It is a story in which the constant shifting of perspectives and the director's imagination create a rhythm that cannot by any chance be equalled by the fights and special effects of "Matrix." Moreover, while "Matrix" is already dated (probably in less than ten years from now people will regard it as some sort of "Blade Runner," if that) eXistenZ will stay fresh because it is already filmed as a classic. Don't get me wrong - it is a Sci-Fi alright - but it also demonstrates very well how it is like to cut a little on the special effects and add a little on the mental effects!

Cronenberg is diabolical - he will make you want to go right back to the beginning of the film once you've watched it, and make you want to watch it again and again. He will also make you want to play eXistenZ - the video game - which to my knowledge does not exist (while the one based on "Matrix" is probably already out of fashion) and he will make you want to be Law of Jason-Leigh. Which is perfectly alright since they are both fresh and sexy.

Rating:
Summary: Videodrome 20 years on........
Review: David Cronenberg is a very sick man. Everytime I tape another one of his movies & sit down to watch it, I wonder about an industry that would continue to give this man money with which to record his personal obsessions. Of course, the fact that I find it necessary to tape & watch the films provides the answer!

"eXistenZ" is, in a nutshell, Cronenberg's return to the themes of his first film "Videodrome". Since "Videodrome" was produced at the dawn of the cable era, it used the video aspect of modern society to make its' points. Now that computer gaming is so much a part of modern society, Cronenberg has found an even more potent tool for his surgical dissections of mass media.

To viewers who haven't seen this earlier work, Cronenberg's repeated use of "bioports", "gamepods" & other artifacts of mutant genentech may seem ripped out of William Gibson's later works. However, "Videodrome" presented us with repellent representations of man merging with plastic way back in the late 70's (well before Gibson was a household name). The vision however has grown much darker. We've watched the progression thru the intermediate works of "Dead Ringers", "the Krays" & "Naked Lunch" but "eXistenZ" is so dark as to be almost unwatchable at times.

I realize I am completely ignoring any plot synopses, but you can read other reviews for that. I will mention that Jennifer Jason Leigh does excellent work as the "demoness Allegra Geller" & Jude Law does an excellent "PR nerd" keeping an American accent credibly thruout.

Will you enjoy "eXistenZ"? That depends on your gross-out factor. If you enjoy watching amorphous pulsating blobs slithering into apertures in people's spinal columns, the answer is a resounding YES. For the rest of us, the answer is a little more ambivalent. The issues dealt with are important & thought- provoking. It is the manner in which Cronenberg chooses to present them that makes me state he is a very sick man!

Rating:
Summary: Genuinely intelligent and unique Sci-Fi
Review: Where does one even begin to explain the genius of this film? David Cronenburg creates some of the most disturbing and controversial films ever put on celluloid. It's no wonder people have so many strong opinions about them. This movie grabs you, puts you in an uncomfortable position of a "where are we going, and where are you taking me to" feeling. It's only in the last three minutes of the film where you finally get the psuedo-assuredness of being halfway understanding when in the last few seconds you're thrown for a loop all over again. This movie is simply something you don't see in movies anymore. The story is dreamlike, the characters are peculiar and mysterious and the technology is frighteningly surreal under todays mesmerizing love of video game consoles. This movie taps into the principle and possiblities of how far big video game companies could really go in the near future. I actually loved this movie more than "The Matrix." Although both movies are completely different, for the sake of everyone comparing, this movie has a far more delicious story and a far more realistic probability presented by two very underrated movie actors. Which makes the comparison of the two sci-fi flicks no contest.

Rating:
Summary: Maximum disappointment
Review: This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. A fan of the strange, this movie hooked me in the first few moments with the Kubrick-esque car escape down back country farm roads. I had hope, but alas. . .horrible acting (yes, even by Jude Law. . .why get rid of that glorious accent?) and a story that Croneneberg thought was so very clever. Bad use of over-gratifying sotrytelling devices, relying on the value of shock over defined characters and what about the stupid twist ending? Give me a break. . .would rate it in the negative if I could.