Seven - New Line Platinum Series

Rating:
Summary: A worthy addition to DVD Format
Review: I love DVD's! Not only is the format superior to VHS, but it allows me to enjoy movies on multiple levels. Now, in the spirit of the Criterion Collection, we have 'SE7EN - New Line Platinum Series Edition' added to the ever expanding library of DVD's to choose from. (If you have not heard of the Criterion Collection, please search for titles that include this designation - you will not be disapointed!) Seven is a great film with superb writing, acting, direction, the whole shebang and I am not going to bore you with those details. This review centers entirely on the Platinum DVD Release - and I can honestly say that it is VERY worth the money you spend on it. The commentary by David Fincher is awesome, and the commentaries by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt expand the understanding of their characters. Beyond this, the professionals who work behind the scenes have their two cents to share with you as well, and they are quite informative. Exlporing the Title Sequence is invigorating, as are the animated story boards. But the true value of this DVD is in the animated Notebook of John Doe's writings. Talk about a glimpse into the mouth of madness! It illustrates the mind of the killer, played marvelously by Kevin Spacey, and blows your mind. Talk about over the top DVD extras! This two disk set will keep you busy for quite a while, and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: How far can someone be push?!?!?!?!?!?
Review: This extremely intense movie depicts the dementia and fanatism, and how both of them endanger life. Brad Pitt delivered another great performance along with the great Morgan Freeman.

This is one movie that will keep you on the edge of your chair with an outstanding unpredectible ending.

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing to the core
Review: Hollywood has a tendency to pull its punches with movies, like the film wants to say something, but at the end of the day the studio is more concerned with cuddling the audience, so the message falls flat. Seven is one of those rare movies that makes it past the studio bigwigs and does exactly what it wants to do. THe story is about a veteran detective (Morgan Freeman) who teams with an insolent, rookie cop (Brad Pitt) to catch a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) who kills people in the style of the seven deadly sins. Fincher (Fight Club) has a perfect sense of pacing and visuals and tells this disturbing, haunting story very well, making sure all of the punches hit home. This 2 set DVD is chock-full of movie-making goodness. Although most of the included cut-scenes are mostly alternate or extended takes of shots, it is interesting to see the evolution of the movie. Also, the features about the making of the opening credits are fascinating. I never knew how much work went into that small portion of the movie. The commentaries, although sometimes overcrowded with voices, are, as one would expect from Fincher, very informative and informal. Fincher seems to really enjoy what he does and he has a lot of good stuff to say about his craft. Although this movie has little onscreen violence, I can't recommend it to those that are soft of heart, some of the imagery is very disturbing. For others, this is a must, and if fully stacked DVDs are your cup of tea, I also recommend Fincher's Fight Club, another 2 Disc set filled with goodies.

Rating:
Summary: Wow! What a cool movie, and the DVD is filled with treats!
Review: Wow! What an amazing movie, and the DVD version has more goodies on it than I have had time to explore so far. What I love about the movie is that it is art - you can enjoy it on a purely visceral, gut-emotion, brain-dead horror/detective movie sort of way, but you can also enjoy it on an intellectual level. Great scriptwriting in that regard - art should be enjoyable as it is, but has so much more meaning when one is left with questions and thoughts and a changed perception after seeing the art (whether film, music, paintings, etc.). The cinematography is beautifully matched with the story - tight shots, many shots of the characters in confined and very dark places as they look at the mutilated bodies, lots of rain, a collection of great camera angles, and some freaky hand-held camera work. The frenetic nature of the opening, and the plethora of angular, pointy fonts for the opening credits, all add to the moodiness and the spookiness of the film, and the sense of hopelessness for the present and the future that pervades the film. The acting is topnotch, although Brad Pitt is every now and again a little too Brad Pitt-ish, but those moments are quickly over. But mostly what is great is the story - a man so consumed with the desire to rid the world of its sins that he starts killing what he thinks are the worst examples of each sin. I will not give anything away here, so keep reading - the ending is a total cliffhanger, and the real meat of the story. All I thought was "Wow!" What would I have done in that situation? And one is forced to sympathize in many ways with the killer - like Hannibal Lechter, he's very precise about the people that he kills. Not random killing, and not for enjoyment or fun, but to rid the world of people they feel unfit for their abhorrent sociological/cultural interaction with the world. For Hannibal, it's the artless non-cultured non-aesthetes; for John Doe in Se7en, it's people who exude sin, and by association, he's hoping to kill the whole culture that allows those sins to take place. Kevin Spacey is a really spooky intentional murderer with a prophetic mission - his character is quietly spoken, reserved, and yet cold-blooded and lacking remorse when speaking of the murders. A chillingly acted role.

I do think the story has a few less-than-perfect moments, as other reviewers have noted, and I think the movie would have been stronger had those issues been addressed. I would like to see more development in the relationship between Brad Pitt and his wife, and more usage of John Doe's bizarre apartment and his writings, which receive only minimal coverage. I also wish that they would have found John Doe with a more interesting method than having someone illegally run a search on library checkouts for certain books. That was just too easy. But what was brilliant was John Doe giving himself up, the methods of killing, the cinematography, and the ending. I loved Morgan Freeman's lack of action at the final scene - it added to his nihilistic demeanor, and made the characters that much more human, because they fail, and there is no happy resolution, just like real life often is.

Beautiful, brilliant writing, and wonderfully filmed. An amazing movie that any detective story or horror story fan will like, and a movie that anyone who likes seeing the art of movie making will enjoy, even if they aren't so keen on detective or horror.

And as I said, this DVD version is a real treat - two DVDs, three different versions of the movie, and a bunch of other stuff. Yow! Buy it!

Rating:
Summary: Fincher's best.
Review: An innovative, atmospheric, smart, entertaining, creepy, tactfully-paced, and -- at its climax -- sincerely impacting thriller by David Fincher. Unlike many other movies of the same genre, Seven earns its chills soberly in the aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional arenas. This film elevated Fincher in my eyes from his previous work on the stylish & sound, but essentially needless commercial "milk-it-for-all-its-worth" success, "Alien 3." (It's a shame he would follow it with the well-intended but abysmally stupid "The Game.")

Complaints are few. Just a little more time with the Gwyneth Paltrow character would've gone a long ways, and added more emotional resonance to the climax; but as the climax is already pretty riveting based on the content as it exists, this complaint doesn't carry too far. I wouldn't have minded the omission of a superfluous gothic trapping here or there, but I'm talking really minor things (my pervading thought during the opening credits was "lose the NIN.")

Mm. Indeed, I think the fact that NIN figures prominently into the soundtrack and the irritating, trendy "Se7en" thing are the most bothersome facets of the overall Seven experience; and as they have no bearing on the content of the film itself, Fincher lands on pretty solid footing with his thriller.

Definitely recommended, and as far as I'm concerned, Fincher's best -- or, in deference to Fight Club advocates, at least his most *solid* -- film to date.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT MOVIE EXCELLENT DVD!
Review: SEVEN was and always will be the best suspense thriller of all time. The suspense, the atmosphere, great performances by the cast, not to mention the great soundtrack. Now that i have the New Line Platnium Edition I can see inside the directors mind and how he made S7ven, what thoughts he had about the characters, the scenes and the story, how he set up the mood. This is all explained in the four commentaries that are included with the disc. On the second disc are supplemental material such as an inside look to the making of John Does books and the making of the title sequence with alternate versions. Also included are Deleted scenes with optional commentary, (mostly just extended takes but still good otherwise). But of course the best thing about it is the movie itself, fully remastered to look and sound just like the director wanted it. This is a must have for everybody.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing movie, but buy the New Line Platinum Series edition.
Review: Awesome movie, but do not buy this version. I bought this edition and regret it because 3 months later they released the New Line Platinum Series. It has many more special features for about the same price.

Rating:
Summary: Huge plot hole in SEVEN
Review: SE7EN is a very power film that relies on the shock of its chilling ending to divert the moviegoer from the gaping hole in the climax. We know from the Sloth victim that John Doe has been planning this crime for over a year. Yet we are to believe that he put all this in motion without having planned out the Envy and Wrath victims? Certainly Doe could not foresee Mills' transfer and move. Certainly he could not foresee that the detective assigned to his case would have a pretty young wife capable of making him feel envy. The ending is contrived and unbelievable. Sadly, this contrivance is there simply to make room for cliches... the retiring detective facing the case that changes his mind... the green upstart unwilling to admit his lack of omniscience... and the necessary convention of having the case become personal. This necessity could have been achieved through better screenwriting while still avoiding cliches and plot holes. The movie is powerful enough to distract most from the error, but reliance on shock over story is lazy. There is no way that John Doe didn't have the entire design planned out well in advance... and no way he could have planned it around Mills in the story's current structure.

Rating:
Summary: Chillingly Entertaining
Review: One of the best and most frightening movies of the past 10 years, "Se7en" contains on the edge of your seat terror, great acting by the police duo of Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, and disturbing realism. David Fincher, who later directed "Fight Club", is on top of his game here, crafting a horribly disturbing script about a serial killer who matches his murders with one of the seven deadly sins. Freeman and Pitt watch as the murders become more brutal and brutal, as the corpses pile up and each deadly sin is fulfilled. And in the nail-biting last 30 minutes, the clever plot twist brings out the cold-blooded killer (played by Kevin Spacey in a small role).

This movie is made better by the chilly and dark environment that Fincher chooses to use for the city. The dark and rainy city streets make each murder seem worse and magnifies the frustration of Pitt and Freeman, who seem helpless in their pursuit of a killer that they cannot capture. The DVD is packed with extras, from actor-director commentaries to deleted scenes to alternative endings. You can see just how much work went into making this movie, from the crafting of "John Doe's notebooks" to set designs. The extras included in this edition of the movie make it A SOLID BUY, on top of the digitally remastered widescreen version of the film on the first DVD.

This is arguably Fincher's masterpiece, although with many movies ahead of him it is hard to say what he'll do next. Freeman has never been better, playing the grizzled cop vet teaching Pitt the ways of the street. An underestimated thriller upon its release, "Seven" will eventually take its place with "Silence of the Lambs" as the best horror-thrillers of its time.

Rating:
Summary: Black, broody, bleak and...brilliant!
Review: This is what a psychological thriller is supposed to be about. A movie all about atmosphere, mood and anticipation; the real horror is in our own minds created by our own fertile imagination - not spattered across the screen in gory shades of red. It's after the fact, after we've been thoroughly chilled by 'Seven' and are ponderously walking away, contemplating it's bleak message - it's then that we realize that we did not actually witness any of the murders. Our minds are the source of our own discomfort, we have disturbed ourselves.

William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), world-weary, seen-it-all, senior investigator on the homicide squad has seven (naturally) days to go until he retires. Eager, young detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) requested to be transferred to the division to work with him. Flattery?, not at all, and in fact they don't hit it off - Somerset a more cerebral thinking man's cop does not have the time to babysit Mills, or the patience to put up with his gung-ho attitude. This tension between the two principals is incidental to the story and is there mainly to allow Mills' wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) to act her role as peacemaker and more importantly, to place her in our minds as the one and only pleasant, happy and light presence in the whole movie (it's important at the ending).

The killer - 'John Doe' (Kevin Spacey) - is a real psychopath, sick, deranged and chillingly cunning and smart; always a step ahead of the detectives. He uses the seven sins - gluttony, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and wrath as the motiffs for his crimes - and he IS very creative(?)in their execution. Even though it would appear so, it was not immediately apparent that the first crime was the crime of gluttony - a grossly obese man who, bound hand and foot, was forced to eat himself to death. The detectives simply knew there was a deeper meaning. After the second murder where the word 'greed' was spelled in blood, and with forensic evidence finding 'gluttony' at the scene of the first crime - Somerset shows why he is the brilliant detective that he is, and deduces that there will be five more crimes. Crimes of sloth, pride and lust take place with the detectives desperately but vainly trying to gues who, what, where and when as good detectives are wont to do.

Nothing however prepares us for the prelude to, and the execution of, the crimes of envy and wrath. The killer walks into the police station, blood dripping from his hands, confessing and giving himself up...it's over. Not at all. There is a purpose to the killers madness. He's about to conclude the sermon he's been preaching on sin, finishing the lessons to be learned. It requires all of us, the audience, Somerset, Mills, Tracy and 'John Doe' to be a part of one of the most shocking and numbing endings to any movie that I have seen in a long time. This movie is the definition of psychological thriller.