Rating: 
Summary: Poor choice for Criterion fans
Review: 1% of Criterion movies should never have been made this falls into the 1%.
Rating: 
Summary: Toyah Toyah Toyah
Review: A fascinating cult movie. The Elizabethan Magus and astrologer John Dee (shown performing the sign of Osiris Risen on the cover) magically transports Queen Elizabeth I and some of her courtiers forwards in time three hundred years to witness the London of a far far Jubilee.However, the Future London is in the throes of total anarchy, with sex and violence being the order of the day. This is classic Jarman and features a solid cast, which includes Punk goddess Toyah Wilcox, who I believe is now Mrs. Robert Fripp (King Crimson) - who also appeared (gasp... topless) in Jarman's superb version of Shakespeare's The Tempest. This is still well up there in my Top Ten Quirky Movies, along with The Wicker Man, Derek Jarman's The Tempest and Rocky Horror, and is highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Sex, Drugs and Punk Rock!
Review: Criterion Spine Number: 191
Derek Jarman's twisted psuedo-Rocky Horror is just the perfect treat for any fan of really twisted films.
Queen Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre who also plays the character of Bod) wants to see into the future. With the aid of her court and the angel Ariel, she is transported 4 centuries into the future to get a gander of current life. What she sees is nothing less than shocking. Total anarchy: Buckingham Palace is a recording studio owned by insane media master Borgia Ginz (Orlando), the Church is a sex hall, police only help themselves and what you can grab, is yours.
The main focous of the movie, however is a group of five young women: the sexy and always turned on Crabs (Little Nell), the "schoolteacher" with a nack for singing "Rule Brittania" in punk fashon named Amyl Nitrate (Jordan), the pyromaniac fire bug Mad (Toyah Willcox), the sweet and romantic Chaos (Hermine Demoriane) and finally the Queen in her own little world: Bod (Jenny's second role in the film).
There is also some early music by: Adam Ant, Brian Eno, Wayne County and many others. The music fits the film perfectly and is quite fun all around.
Now, onto the DVD:
The image quality is great. Probably not the best dvd picture I've ever seen but none the less, it's wonderful. It's presented in it's original aspect ratio of 1.66 and is enhanced for widescreen TVs.
The films original audio track is quite good as well. It's a Dolby Digital Mono track and surprisingly, there's no problems with it (I sometimes have problems with 1.0 tracks but not this time)
The special features are a bushell of fun: First there is the documentary which runs nearly 40 minutes and has a lot of information of the director and film. Toyah Willcox even shows up for an interview along with Jenny Runacre). We are also offered script pages with a series of notes. Continuity stills, sketches, the original (and almost as twisted as the movie) theatrical trailer, production pictures and finally, Jordan's complete dance (longer take than what is in the movie) which is quite interesting.
Jubilee is not a film for everyone or casual viewers of odd movies. Unless you really like twisted movies, then just rent it. But if you are ready for some odd, odd, odd fun...enjoy Jubilee.
Rating:
Summary: FILM ART IS ALIVE & WELL
Review: Derek Jarmans film Jubilee is not for pacifists or homophobiacs.It's a study in violence as violence and sex as sex.Not only does it show what an artist can do with a UNIQUE idea and a couple of 8 & 16 mm cameras but is a critique on modern society itself."If the music's loud enough,we can't hear the world falling apart".This film is another quality (under the rug) release from the good people at CRITERION for us film makers and cinema students.This is not Kate & Leopold or Sleepless in Seattle.Either you dig it or you don't.This is a great addition to the CRITERION COLLECTION, I have them all!!CHECK OUT THE LIGHTING!THE TRANSLUCENT PINK SHEETS!AND THE VIKING OPERA SET TO PUNK ROCK!A film like this takes talent,not a big Hollywood budjet & Brad Pitt.This a GREAT EXMPLE of why CRITERION are the best in the DVD biz.
Rating: 
Summary: Moments of pleasure - but mostly hard to watch
Review: I find it easy to overlook the fact that a film like Pasolini's - 'Salo' is hard to watch. That is because 'Salo' is one of the most rewarding and deeply effecting films ever made - but Jubilee does not contain these rewards for me. I sat and tried to watch this film with an open mind - and saw some very good things about it - Jarman is without a doubt an exceptional talent - but as a whole I simply did not enjoy this film.
Rating:
Summary: not at all what i expected
Review: i had a lot of trouble watching this, partly because it made no sense and partly because it wasn't interesting at all. a coherent storyline isn't really that essential for me, i enjoy david lynch. even though lynch rarely makes much sense his films are beautiful and hold your attention. technically jubilee was fair, visually it was okay. i ususally trust the criterion company with their releases but this is one of the few that i recommend against.
Rating:
Summary: The worst movie i have ever seen
Review: If i could give this movie zero stars, i would. The story (or lack thereof) sounded interesting in principle, but this movie has absolutely nothing of intrest to say to the viewer and fails in every respect. Forget the reviewers who tell you to purchase this if at least for the punk legends who act in it, who cares if Adam Ant is in it when youre just going to be bored to tears the whole way through? The film is amateurish beyond belief and i can honsetly say the acting is the worst ive seen in any film, ever.
This is the first time Criterion has let me down, and what a gargantuan let down this movie was. I wonder what on earth they were thinking when they decided to unleash this stinker of a movie on the public. At the risk of sounding like a fascist, I dare say it would have been a much better move to bury every print of this movie in the same landfill they used for the E.T. Atari game back in the 80s than release it on DVD. Let's play pretend for a second and say the actors in this film could actually act - even then every character is so annoying and not one bit likable that the movie would STILL stink. One good thing can be said about it though - The bad acting mixed with the horrible dialogue mixed with the incredibly stupid looking "angel" that shows Queen Elizabeth the future will bring a generous laugh to anyone, that is untill you realize you paid for this $hit. Then you'll probably cry.
Dont waste your money on this, even if youre a fan of punk rock and/or Adam Ant as i am. This is genuinely garbage. My copy of Jubilee is going straight to an auction site.
bye.
Rating:
Summary: Anarchy & Beauty
Review: Jubilee is a wildly beautiful - and entertaining - film which strikes a precarious, and compelling, balance between sheer anarchy and genuine beauty. I was so struck by it that I watched it three times in one week. Yet it remains an elusive work, constantly tantalizing with new connections and still more layers of meaning. The outstanding Criterion Collection DVD offers a wealth of supplemental features, making it an excellent introduction to both the film and director Derek Jarman. The basic plot of this experimental fantasy is simple: Queen Elizabeth I has the historical alchemist John Dee summon the spirit Ariel and transport all of them 400 years into the future, where they find London a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The talented Jenny Runacre plays both Queen Elizabeth and the anarchic latter-day "queen" Bod, who leads an all-female biker gang. Made in 1977, at the height of the Punk movement, Jubilee has misleadingly been called a "Punk movie." Despite its trappings (from clothing to casting several well-known singers), ultimately it seems more about Punk than of it. How Jarman uses then-rising star Adam Ant is revealing. With his sweetly boyish persona - made just a bit wild by the black leather and painted-on lower sideburns - Adam Ant as "Kid" is undeniably appealing. But throughout he is as passive offstage as he is frenzied onstage. And Kid, unable to connect with anyone, will do anything for his career. He signs with the grotesque Borgia Ginz, the multinational mogul who controls the entire planet's media - hence political, even religious - power structure. Ginz immediately rechristens Kid as "Scum. That's commercial. It's all [the audience] deserves." One of the film's most haunting images is of Kid lasciviously kissing his own image on a TV. How's that for a postmodern twist on the myth of Narcissus? Beyond the Punk movement, Jarman turned to many diverse sources to flesh out his vision for Jubilee. It's powerful on its own terms, without any need for "footnoting," but the wide-ranging references create a fascinating texture. He uses film (notably Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, Godard's La Chinoise, Pasolini's Oedipus Rex, and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange), literature (Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984; also his pastiche Elizabethan dialogue is beautiful: "I cast for Ariel, pearl of fire, my only star...."), history and myth (suggested by character names, from the historical female ruler of ancient Britain, Bodicea - i.e., "Bod" - and the Borgias to mythical figures like Sphinx and Angel), and even dance club culture (characters named Amyl Nitrate and Crabs). He is also one of the most creatively playful of modern filmmakers, and that schoolboyish "let's put on a show" energy keeps his films, even with their density of themes, buoyant and wonderfully entertaining. Jarman also brings great emotional resonance through his characters (most of whom he cast from friends and lovers). I was often surprised by how much I cared about these eccentric, and sometimes lethal, allegorical people. Although each viewer will bond with different characters, I was most moved by the "triangle" between the two teasingly incestuous brothers, Sphinx and Angel (who utters the classic line, "I didn't know I was dead till I was 15"), and the artist Viv (whom Jarman described, affectionately, as a "butch dyke"). Their tangled connections, although genuinely caring, never reach true equality: The two men, on one level, can be seen as using the woman as a way of enhancing their own (masculine, even incestuous) relationship. Still, they become all the more affecting at the film's climax (which I will not divulge). There is so much more to Jubilee than I can suggest in the brief space here: It is visually gorgeous (Jarman is a master of composition and lighting; he began as a painter, and stage and film designer), makes fascinating use of music (from Punk to classical) and sound effects, offers a provocative series of ideas about history (as Amyl says, "History still fascinates me. It's so intangible. You can weave facts anywhere you like. Good guys can swap places with bad guys"), media manipulation and artistic narcissism and audience passivity, and, ultimately, the duality of beauty and anarchy, which are perhaps two sides of the same double mirror.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Jubilee? I never heard of that Jarman-movie before, but I loved Sebastiane, Edward II and Caravaggio, well, and I haven't been disappointed. It's wild and beautiful, and some scenes (Jordan's interpretation of "Rule Britannia", the club-scene in Westminster-cathedral etc.etc. !!!) are simply miraculous. See it, and you will find one of the important sources where the imagery of so many films of the 80's and 90's derive from, even if such a bizarre, tasteful punk-poetry like in "Jubilee" rarely has been attained since. It's a highly elegic and even moral movie, Jarman sadly glances at our time, and one has to admit that many things have gone quite accurately in the direction Jarman predicted in 1978. After having seen so many un-modern movies (i.e. neo-monumental, neo-melodramatic, neo-hyperrealistic films) in the last decade, watching "Jubilee" is like diving in fresh, cool water after a long walk in the desert. By the way, Criterion did, as usual, a fine job; don't miss the excellent documentary!!!
Rating: 
Summary: shocking, beautiful, and riotous
Review: This film deserves more attention. Underneath its surface of violence, unusual sex, and loud, harsh music there is a great deal of surprisingly intelligent philosophy and unconventional beauty. Don't expect anything like a conventional plot or narrative structure. Do expect that segments of it will be painful. But please, watch it anyway, for the strange beauty that leaks through even the most unpleasant scenes. And if you find yourself liking it a lot, go read Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey and _really_ break your mind.
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