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A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

List Price: $19.97
Your Price: $14.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the most thought-provoking movies ever made.
Review: First off, I'm only 19 years old. It's pretty hard, if not impossible, to convince today's youth to watch older movies, let alone enjoy them. This movie is different, it's simply amazing.

I went into this movie not knowing what to expect. Someone else said in their review that this was the American Beauty of the 70's and I think this is quite true. It's a movie that depicts society, or the near future society, in England. Quite simply the movie has it all, in fact I don't even know how to categorize the film. It's almost an action/horror movie when you watch the rape scenes, but it's also a comedy in a sick way, and in the end a huge satire of government, and how they try and "fix" criminals even though we all know this really isn't possible. The truth is evil and hatred exist in all of us, some of us are just better at hiding it. You can't get rid of it, it's part of the human nature, and when you do try and "cure" someone of their primal nature you just dehumanize them.

I won't bother trying to explain much of the plot, cause it's a really difficult movie to explain. You just have to watch it for yourself, it will definetly make you think for days and weeks after seeing it.

Lastly, the acting is top notch, the soundtrack is also excellant, and the movie flows quite well. I honestly can't find one thing wrong with this movie. Go buy it or at the very least rent it immediately. WARNING- This movie contains scenes of extreme violence, rape and nudity. It's beyond what you expect out of an R rated movie. Do not watch it with young children. At the same time don't let this turn you off from the movie though. The more brutal scenes are absolutely necessary to the movie. You can't go around watching everything censored and expect to get a clear picture of the way things really are.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A satiric masterpiece
Review: This is Stanley Kubrick's highly visual adaptation of Anthony Burgess's classic novel. A panorama of colorful sets, striking images and jarring uses of symphonic and synthesized music, it was clearly ahead of its time. The first thing most viewers notice (and, unfortunately, the only thing that some people remember) is the film's fascination with graphic violence and rape. In the first twenty minutes or so, young hoodlum Alex and his droogs (friends) have beaten up an old tramp, engaged in a brutal fight with a rival gang, and beaten an aging writer while raping his wife. The state's remedy for such misconduct is the experimental "Ludovico" technique, a form of behavior control which Kubrick implies is just as barbaric and pointless as the original crimes. If one isn't bothered by the frequent glimpses of savagery and nudity, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is a fascinating film. Like another of Kubrick's masterworks, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, this movie is a creative visual feast, but of a much darker tone.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Real Bolshy Horrorshow
Review: Alex and his "droogs" are young, free, and full of fun. Their hobbies include listening to Beethoven, drinking drug-laced milk, trying to run cars off the road, beating up bums, beating up other gang members, and breaking into people's homes to rape the women while singing "Singing in the Rain." In this crime-ridden, nihilistic future, the British government is willing to try an unorthodox technique to purge violent tendencies out of their criminals. Alex volunteers for this technique after being caught for murder, eager to claim the promise that he will be cured and free within two weeks. But it does something to him that he didn't expect, and the viewer wonders whether the cure is worse than the disease.

This is a shockingly violent, graphic film, even by today's standards--but one wonders how much moreso in 1971. The scenes of attempted and successful rape nearly earned the film an X-rating in its day, and the sheer brutality and meaninglessness of Alex's violence is hard even for post-Columbine, post-inner city, and post-9/11 audiences to watch. (Moreover, it's even less violent than the book on which it's based!) He is the narrator, however, and his carefree, nonchalant attitude manages to grip the viewer nonetheless, though the viewer initially despises the scoundrel, until the terrible treatment he undergoes takes its toll. Kubrick's satire of government social engineering is brilliant, letting neither the hoodlums nor the meddling scientists off the hook for trying to scientifically fix what is really a spiritual problem (as the ineffectual presence and protests of an Anglican priest shows): violence and sin is inherent in the human condition. No treatment can really get rid of it, but a spiritual answer isn't really welcome in the day and age portrayed in the film, which seems like a near-future as imagined in 1971. (The set designs and synthesizer music are the most dated aspects, though the latter is still ominous and eerie all these decades later. Kudos to Walter/Wendy Carlos. Also, Kubrick will never let you listen to the William Tell Overture, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie" the same way again . . . ) The startling juxtapositions of monstrous "modern" design, nihilistic violence set to classical music, and youthful joy with the suffering of others, make this one of Kubrick's most memorable films. It's memorable in quite a different way than its predecessor, the G-rated 2001: A Space Odyssey, however! This is not for the sensitive, but those who want to sample a savage social and political satire are in for a disturbing reflection of what seems all too real now in our modern cities and in school shootings, and perhaps inside every human heart: there's a little of Alex in all of us. It also proves one of CS Lewis's predictions right--when we cease to view crime as deserving punishment and try to "cure" it like a disease, we actually end up dehumanizing the criminal instead.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of My Top 5 Favorite Movies!!
Review: When I look back at all the movies Stanley Kubrick made, this one stands out as his best (with 2001:A Space Odessey a close second). Malcolm McDowell is brilliant as the anti-hero, Alex. He a smug S.O.B. who you'll probably feel sorry for in the end. The violence was just a part of the sociological consequences of the movie. I understood fully the method of Anthony Burgess and Kubrick's madness.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Disturbing
Review: One thing that always gets me about this story is that it is largely a political satire but it attacks liberals and conservatives with equal intensity. Being the good liberal I am, I kept thinking we were going to learn that if Alex had been born into a less violent society, had more loving parents, had a pet puppy instead of a snake, hadn't gotten in with the "wrong crowd", or met the right girl, then he would suddenly transform into a sweet and innocent boy. No way. Kubrick does not give in the way Burgess eventually did. I think he is saying that Alex acts violently because he enjoys violence and that's it. Just like he enjoys sex and Beethoven. It is purely biological. The joke seems to be aimed at people who want to politicize violence when Kubrick seems to tell us that it exists beyond politics, psychology, sociology, and modern science. It's primeval and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it. Maybe we have to wait for that monolith to lead us toward the
"2001" Starchild. This idea is more disturbing than any of the violent scenes themselves. It is almost as disturbing as the fact that a movie about murder, rape, punishment, and brainwashing is an entertaining comedy. I think Kubrick is pulling a Hitchcockian trick--if you are entertained, then you are implicated in Alex's crimes yourself.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Oddly enjoyable, equally groundbreaking
Review: Everyone speaks about this film as how groundbreaking it was back when it was first made. Mostly i am at a loss to see a film that has come even close in the last 30 years. Its one of the best movies ive ever seen for so many reasons. I do understand the graphic nature of this film, but if you consider what goes on in this world everyday the film is actually quite tame. It's insights to our culture as a people, the way we interact with one another, our impact on the world based on how we are raised, its all in here. No stone is left unturned in this film, and i believe its that kind of no-apologies exhibition of themes in this film that actually entertains me time and time again. Thanks stanley kubrick for creating one of the best fictional films of all time.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kubrick's Masterpiece.
Review: A trouble making rapist hooligan by the name of Alex (Malcolm Mc Dowell) gets himself in trouble by accidently murdering a woman. Now in Prison for two years, Alex finds himself as a Guinea Pig to being a Brainwashed Proper Citizen but Alex finds himself to be in a deeper, disturbing matter.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick (Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining) made a brillant, tour de force, one of a kind film. Based on the Novel by Anthony Burgess (Jesus of Nazareth) & Kubrick, which he got Three Oscar-Nominations for this film, including:Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director & Best Picture. The film was also nominated for Best Film Editing. Mc Dowell gives a fascinating terrific performance. DVD's has an clean non-anamorphic Widescreen (1.66:1) transfer & digitally remastered-Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. This is my favorite film from Kubrick. One of the Best films ever made. A Cult Classic not to be missed. Garde:A+.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: To Understand the Movie Understand the Title
Review: Movies that seem to focus on one apparent theme or set of visuals usually do not stand up to the ravages of time. Whenever a director builds his movie on that single element, then if that element is no longer in synch with future audiences, this movie dates badly. With A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, director Stanley Kubrick made sure this would not happen. Kubrick took the novel by Anthony Burgess and squeezed out the ultra violence that characterized the nihilistic teens of a vaguely futuristic England and grafted it onto the big screen. Malcolm McDowell as Alex the Droog is a walking trunk of unleashed anger that feels unbound by the laws of morality that bind the rest of the world. To him, the world exists only to serve as the backdrop against which he plays out his fantasies of sex and violence. For Alex, as his inability to distinguish Beethoven from brutality indicates, is similarly unable to recognize that the violence that he sees daily on the screens of his milkbars originates not from them but from within himself.

The novel suggests that Alex's violence is a learned response to the violence of a harsh world that is even more morally empty than Orwell's Oceania. Kubrick implies that if violence is the problem then more violence is the solution. If there ever were an unregenerate soul it is the teen Alex, and if any technique could regenerate him, then that technique ought to be seriously considered for widespread use. The problem with that is that Kubrick's use of sight and sound mask the inner villainy of a solution that is, at least on the Christian level, as bad as the disease. Human beings are human, not because they can do both good and evil, but because they are free to choose either. When Alex is sufficiently brainwashed, what emerges is not a de-violenced Alex, but a totally different young man who only looks like his amoral predecessor but with whom he has nothing in common. This Alex reminds one of nothing less than a morally inverted character from any novel from the Marquis de Sade. If one can unlearn violence and have that process hailed, then the reversal of that same process can be hailed too--if one also believes that free willed evil is preferable to forced good.

Such weighty issues of free will versus predetermination stamp A CLOCKWORK ORANGE as far more than the astounding melange of surreal violence accompanied by classical music that many critics have either praised it as thoughtful or condemned it as mindless. What both the book and film emphasize is that if a thug like Alex can choose evil over good, then it is far better for society to punish him than punish the rest of us by forcing him to tread a path that to him might have once seemed ugly beyond belief.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Violent.
Review: This movie is full of violence every 5 minutes and should not be viewed by anyone. The director of this film, who is now dead, was definitely on some kind of trip when he made this film. It is a total waste of film and should be destroyed. Don't waste your money or time ...

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No Masterpiece
Review: I'm not sure why I've given this movie one star. Perhaps it's because of McDowell's acting, which is good. When I saw the film in 1971 it made a big impact: 32 years later it says nothing at all. I'm not shocked by violence or nudity; it's just that it's a very poor work of art, empty of everything except design, ugly, repellent design. I'm beginning to think Kubrick must be the most overrated director of all time. As another reviewer has pointed out, his films seemed to get steadily worse and worse. And all of them have one thing in common: they are s-l-o-w. It seems to me that Kubrick was obsessive and dedicated, but just not very bright. He was also, apparently, intensely depressed about life. Still, it was clever of him to make such a big thing of these disadvantages. I suppose his films are worth seeing, once only. But after the first sensation of puzzled surprise, they just turn into hideously tedious sludge.


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