eXistenZ

Rating:
Summary: A nice attempt, but it falls decidedly short.
Review: This movie started off like it could have been a great low-budget tech thriller, but due to lack of consistency, poor acting, and patchy direction, it just falls apart into a mess of good ideas gone bad. Sounds like a number of other Cronenberg projects...

Cronenberg has shown on a number of occasions that, when inspired, he can direct on a level with many other big names. In this case, I think he fell for a good pitch during a time when the "What is reality?" idea was popular. Unfortunately, this movie doesn't have a leg to stand on when compared with other movies that shine in this sub-genre.

Cronenberg tries to slip all this by in a sleek and sexually charged package, complete with Jennifer Jason Leigh as a smolderingly sexy game programmer, and a game system with a nipple that needs to be tweaked frequently.

Jude Law makes several attempts to make his character seem real, but for all his trying, it comes across rushed: as if Cronenberg had a deadline to meet, and tried to make the movie in one take. Leigh never really does anything except play her part in such an over-the-top manner that it's really quite laughable. If you're looking for a movie in which these two stars shine, try The Talented Mr. Ripley for Law, and Delores Claiborne or The Hudsucker Proxy for Leigh.

All in all, this movie was more of a disappointment because it could have been so much better. I'm a sucker for Sci-Fi, and I tend to make excuses for a bad movies that I like. I can't scrape up any excuses for this flick, however. If you're able to forgive unacceptably bad movies of the likes you would see on Showtime after two in the morning, than you might be able to stomach this.

If not, steer clear.

Rating:
Summary: eXistenZ: Are you there or Are you not????
Review: Having been been from a class in analyzing film, I have seen eXistenZ and it gave me one hell of a headache that kept me watching it a dozen times till I agreed on some plot for the movie itself. My analysis on eXistenZ is that it goes beyond the limits of what doesn't or does exist, and what is real and not real to confuse the viewer. It's tremendously cerebral! To the viewer from National City Ca., who thinks he's solved the plot, I ask this: "Why didn't david cronenberg choose the title transendenz and not existenze? Could this mean their still in eXistenZ or the whole damn thing is eXistenZ from beginning to end? The acting, to me, in the ending of the movie was just as it was in the beginning, absolutely weird and no sense of concrete place or characters at all. (Hey, If you think you've analyzed this movie try NAKED LUNCH which was an older david cronenberg flick, let me no when you lose track of plot? I did. See you in interzone.)

In conclusion, eXistenZ is very thought provoking movie but I'll have to say the matrix and eXistenZ are the same because they both challenge the existence of the characters in the story using two different plots each with different level of technology rather than special effects. If you like the hard plot of matrix you'll like eXistenZ!

Rating:
Summary: I didn¿t enjoy the ¿Matrix¿ either¿..
Review: ATLOB (I won't tell you what that stands for). This movie is similar to the Matrix which I found totally boring as well. Give me a night at the movies with Sigourney and the Aliens anyday.

Rating:
Summary: I'd have given 5 stars, but...
Review: A great movie! I'd have given 5 stars, but I just can't bring myself to agree with that self-serving doubletalk proffered by the viewer from National City, CA.

Rating:
Summary: Cronenberg, meet Tim Leary; Tim, meet Cronenberg
Review: I really thought Cronenberg had exhausted this material after Videodrome, Naked Lunch and The Fly, but guess what, he had not. eXistenZ is wickedly funny and mind-bending; anyone who has studied psychedelic experience will relish this film, and the more cerebral cyber-nerds should have some ooohs and yucks, too. It's much more than Cronenberg probing the usual, uh, orifices.

The plot has been laid out sufficiently if superficially by the amazon.com reviewer; the effect is what matters. Cronenberg has captured the queasy and always sexual tension of psychedelic forays whether induced by chemical agents or, in this case, flesh pods plugged into a backside orifice. Jude Law's squeamishness at having a BioPort installed is one of the funnier sequences; he's a fine actor and always compelling to watch. Jennifer Jason-Leigh was well-picked for her role: her hard edges mesh well with the self-possesed character who imagines herself as a computer game genius. The Chinese Restaurant sequence wherein Jude is forced to make a gun from the bones of Mutant-Cuisine is stupendous in its evocation of dread. It suggests that certain moment when the tripper wonders which way the drug/game is going - towards illumination or total mayhem and madness? Lines of kinship between Anxiety and Sex pop up frequently in such sequences in eXistenZ, and its ofttimes hard to tell which is which.

There are also compelling moments that would make social engineers and extreme right-wingers very anxious: the threads that hold 'social reality' together are very, very thin, and eXistenZ tweaks this well.

eXistenZ is Cronenberg's sexiest, funniest flick, and a nice follow-up to CRASH, whose porn-in-form-but-not-in-effect conceit alienated most viewers and left them cold. Plus only a handful got the outrageous joke about combining car crashes with eroticism, as obviously absurd as it was. For myself, I found CRASH to be an absorbing study of how fixed and single-minded sexualized attention can become, and its eventual drift into pornography. In retrospect, "Crash" is a study of the pornographic mindset.

I can't imagine Cronenberg mining this material much further, though. One could bookend this outing with THEY CAME FROM WITHIN (SHIVERS) and have a nice body of work from a very entertaining mind who excavates humor from the strangest crevices.

Rating:
Summary: THE WORST FILM EVER MADE
Review: Let's not try and pretend, like most of the other reviews, that this film is at all CLEVER. It's not, it's utter rubbish. The concept is far too similar to 'The Game', the difference being that 'The Game' is a very good film. The acting is wooden, and the characters have to keep explaining what the hell it is they are doing. Imagine 'Star Wars': "This is your father's Light-sabre Luke, the light comes out of this bit but it doesn't go on and on forever, gradually getting dimmer like normal light, it stops after a while. Also it can cut through things and hurt people which light can't normally do, and.........blah, blah, blah, blah, blah"

Cronenberg should be banned from directing and should have to personnaly pay back the money that was WASTED on this boring, rubbish.

If you like this film you can help David pay the money back instead of buying the DVD!!

Rating:
Summary: Very Intelligent Film for The Sophisticated
Review: The problem is that most film critics have never studied film themselves so how can they critique something that they know totally nothing about? Well I am a film student and I would like to let you in on some secrets about this movie. This is not a movie that you really experience. That is to say that it's not out to necessarily entertain in the conventional sense. It's out to make you think, to make you intellectualize what's happening. I'll give you an example: One easy example is in explaining why the acting was so bad at the beginning of the movie. The acting was so bad because they simply weren't well drawn characters within the game, and as you could see the game's characters, mostly Allegra Geheller and Ted Pikul, went through varation in character because of what happened within the game. So when everyone finishes the game at the end you could conceivably say that this is version 2.0 of the game because the characters are better drawn and have more depth to them. They have more depth to them because they have gained experience from the earlier parts of the game (It's sort of like layering). Now the intellectualizing can go some thing like that ranging from the simple to the elaborate. Its really fun once you start its just that some people aren't sophisticated enough to actually analyze a movie. They would rather sit in front of a T.V. set for an hour and a half saying duhhhhh, duhhhhh, duhhhhh, until the movie is over. This movie sorts out the educated from the mindless

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT. LOW KEY CRONENBERG
Review: Existenz represents an older, mellower, more playful Cronenberg. This is his first original screenplay since Videodrome and it makes one yearn for more.

It's probably because he is getting older, but gone is the suicidal rage of Scanners and Videodrome. Existenz is a mind-opening experience that demands repeated viewings.

Those who prefer films like The Matrix will probably be disappointed by Existenz, as it is comparatively slow-paced. But those who enjoy films that push boundries and encourage thought and mind-expansion will be dazzled by Existenz.

David Cronenberg, the mad scientist of the movies, is probably the most socially relevant director of the last twenty years. No one else has so encouraged viewers to truly contemplate where modern technology has taken us and how it has changed our culture.

Existenz is not as prophetic as Videodrome, which I consider to be Cronenberg's masterpiece, but it is nevertheless superb. My only quibble is that I wished he had not made the plot so intricate. When looked at as a whole, the wild plot twists make sense, but they are hard to follow.

Check out Existenz. Watch it several times and then let your mind go. Let it explore. When does life truly become a game? How is technology altering us? Are games more real than life? How does virtually reality bleed into everyday situations? Is it possible to confuse reality and fantasy?

These are the questions Cronenberg poses.

For a truly revelatory look at technology, be brave and rent Videodrome, a film at least twenty years ahead of its time, and one of the most important films of the last thirty years.

Rating:
Summary: uneven film with a redemptive ending
Review: David Cronenberg's "eXistenZ" is one of those films that falters badly during much of its running time, but which redeems itself with a cleverly revelatory ending that explains and justifies some of the seeming nonsense that has come before it.

Joining an increasingly long list of thrillers dealing with the concept of virtual reality, this latest Cronenberg effort raises an increasingly disturbing question: will cyber "reality" ever advance to the stage where it becomes indistinguishable from "true" reality? In an earlier time, this theme usually developed along the lines of dream vs. conscious reality, wherein characters would become caught in dreams within dreams with the hapless victim ultimately left in a state of perpetual confusion and desperation. Now, this theme has moved into the realm of cyber reality (i.e. "The Matrix") but the essential question still remains - only now the issue is a more complex one because, unlike dreams which exist beyond the control of the dreamer, cyber reality is a conscious outgrowth of mankind's quest for ever increasing technology, employed in the purpose of achieving more leisure time gratification. Soon, novels and movies will become passe as ordinary citizens take on the virtual reality roles of daredevil adventurers or irresistable romantic heroes. In many ways, this theme was touched upon as long ago as 1983 in the film "Brainstorm", which, in retrospect, seems to become more and more prescient in its view of a world laying just a few decades down the road.

Unfortunately, "eXistenZ" works mostly in retrospect itself. Too much of the film borders on the ludicrous and incomprehensible and Cronenberg needs to begin to shed his junior high level obsession with goop and gore. However, when the "reality" of the film is finally revealled, much of what has occured previously begins to seem justified and the audience does leave the film with some food for thought. Also, Cronenberg continues to explore the motif of bizarre sexuality he exploited to the full in his last film, "Crash". Here, sex is as simulated as all other virtual reality activities, with the computer game "plug-ins" and receptors functioning as substitutes for the more traditional sexual organs.

"eXistenZ" may provoke more giggles than gasps during much of its running time, but it is a film worth sticking with to its rewarding conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: Wow! This is all that can be said about this video. It's a must have for any si-fi fan, and I recomend it even if you are not.