Rating: 
Summary: Depressing? Well, Enjoyable.
Review: I'm not going to say much on the movie itself. It's very good, don't get me wrong, but the reason why I recommend "this" DVD is because it includes David Cronenberg's comment on it that, once it is activated, will be heard along the way. For those who often feel movies like these are hard to understand, this one might be a good one for you to start build your ability to understand them, because, besides its quite straightforwardness, the comment is really really clear.
Enjoy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Awful, awful movie
Review: I saw this movie probably about a year ago or so. I have read numerous fictional books about mental illness (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; etc.) and seen some movies about the subject (A Beautiful Mind; Fight Club; etc) but I believe that this movie was the worst take on the theme that I have ever seen.
Ralf Fiennes plays a mentally disturbed man nicknamed "Spider," whose childhood is reveled through flashbacks. The movie moves very slowly and Fiennes' acting is not impressive: he just walks around and mumbers for most of the movie. There is even a scene where, for no reason, he takes off his clothes and covers himself with curtains or something. I have no idea why this was in the movie.
The flashback scenes deal mostly with Spider's father who in one scene kills his mother and takes up with another woman. Supposively, these events were not what really happened, but only the distorted views from Spider's mental illness, but this concept isn't convincing and is only clear up briefly at the end of the movie. So basically, through the whole movie, spider's father just seems like a terrible person and terrible human being in general which makes this one of the most depressing movies that I have ever seen.
This movie is really a downer that will likely disturb you for a few days after watching it. It isn't an introspective look into mental illness; it is just a cheap, dark, artsy-fartsy movie. Don't watch this movie unless you want to make yourself depressed and don't try to analyze it because there isn't really much there. Don't watch it!
Rating: 
Summary: "Spine tingling"
Review: Cronenberg has masterfully weaved a story about a fragile boy's decent into madness and the horror of coming to grips with it as a man; a Voyeuristic look into the mind of mentally disturbed murderer.
This is a movie not to be taken lightly.
You'll be thinking it about long after you turn off your T.V...Awesome...
This is his best work to date...
Canada rules!
Rating:
Summary: A very slow paced puzzle !
Review: David Cronenberg - at last - has made his masterpiece . He has made an overwhelming and carefully designed work in which every frame has been thought with any hole all along the story .
The miserable and painful introspectivity of that misterious man will be revealed with shots who reminds to Bergman style (Wild strawberries , The hour of the wolf and Fanny and Alexander) and some reflects of the best German expressionism making a colossal color employement, a delicate art direction and the use of the narrative elipsis to show the living memories linking past and present age .
Our disturbed man will show his terrible childhood incident , and told with supreme maestry and artistic honesty . Fiennes as always gives a towering performance, Miranda Richardson is superb too and a special recognizement to Gabriel Byrne as the merciless and unscrupulous father .
A winner in Cannes and a new classic film .
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to where time stands still.
Review: After sitting on my shelf for well over a couple of months I decided to give this movie a try. My expectations weren't very high and I expected something on par with Willard.
Upon viewing I was captivated from the very beginning by Ralph Fiennes' performance. He really communicated the feelings of being totally drawn in on himself.
The unfolding of the story was depicted in such a way that we experience the confusion and emotional turmoil of the main character.
While I've never been a big fan of Freud, the movie does make use of Freud's Oedipal Complex theory and models Spider's entire relationship with his parents is based on it. Spider's idealization of his mother made him incapable of seeing her negative qualities. While his mother did make efforts to be a "good mum" she also shared her husbands wrecklessness and drinking problem. In order to displace his mothers undeniable neglect he displaces her, in his mind, with a bar fly who flashes her breast at him at the local pub.
In reality Spider's father isn't too far removed from his mother. A man who makes efforts to be a good father but doesn't do much to eliminate his vices, however, Spider staying true to Oedipal victimhood takes a hostile view of his father and ignores the good qualities and demonizes his father.
While it is clear that Spider's memories are often twisted and others are mere imagination that he uses to make sense of what's going on around him, we can still say with relative certainty that his parents were too selfish in their drinking and partying to have any idea what their actions were having on their son.
The truly sad part of the movie is that Spider is never willing to look the truth straight in the face and the only time he admits to himself that the drunken woman really was his mother is when he kills her. So he selectively chooses to see the truth only when he is at fault. This partial look at the reality of his life is what keeps him locked in his past.
I think the saddest aspect of the movie is that Spider's father, Bill, actually did kill his mother. Not literally, of course, but he was the reason she chose to embrace the lifestyle of alchoholism, so that she could win the affections of her husband. It was Spider's mother who, at least for the early years of his life, tried to make their home a good one. But upon losing his mother's stability, he had to create an evil persona for her.
As if this couldn't get any more disturbing, Spider does develop a strong sense of hidden sexual desire for his "new" mother and this is apparent in many scenes of the film. For example, his reconstruction of the bar fly is quite a bit prettier than the actual bar fly. And so he feels both repulsed and attracted to her. It is most likely this contrast of feelings that drives him into complete insanity.
A truly haunting movie but memorable on many levels.
Rating:
Summary: Spider And Flies...
Review: David Cronenberg has never been all that subtle. So, I was expecting another sledgehammer to my brain with SPIDER. WOW! I was totally wrong. SPIDER concerns a man of the same name (Ralph Fiennes) who returns to his childhood neighborhood after spending most of his life in a mental institution. SPIDER spends most of his time wandering the empty streets, mumbling to himself. To any sane person, he looks like a nut without purpose or direction. However, he is actually a detective, in search of the clues that will help him solve the mystery of his own life. We get to tag along with SPIDER on his mission and see things through his eyes, feel as he feels. We get a reality that only exists in SPIDER's mind. Pretty soon, I personally found myself lost in SPIDER's way of looking at things. I was able to accept and enjoy the story on it's own terms. Miranda Richardson is excellent in her dual role (actually 3 roles) as Spider's mother and the "other" woman who replaces her. Gabriel Byrne is SPIDER's father, who is seen as both an evil drunkard, and a calm, loving man in SPIDER's head. In the sticky web of SPIDER's shattered psyche, memories are just dead husks, bearing some vague resemblance to the original events. SPIDER must discover the truth within the reality he's fashioned for himself. We go with him as he investigates the darkest corners of his past. Things are not as they appear and we're in for a surprise. Bleak and disturbing, yet I found this movie to have a warmth and light of it's own. Inventive and haunting. Highly recommended...
Rating:
Summary: Cronenberg's Most Emotional Film
Review: David Cronenberg is one of the greatest Sci-Fi/Horror directors of all time. His disturbing look into the twisted ways of society are some of the most disturbing and eye-opening films ever made. Spider takes a different direction in Cronenberg's filmmaking. The film is a character study of man with schitsophrenia trying to relive his childhood but all of his memories of it are wrong.
The film is about "Spider" Cleg, a man who has extreme schitsophrenia. After needing to leave the asylum that he was being kept at, he returns to his neighborhood of his youth to live in a halfway house. He moves in to the house, which is run by Mrs. Wilkinson, and tries to mix with the others living in the household. He begins to relive his childhood in his mind. The only problem is, all the memories he has are wrong.
The movie is slow, but it really helps to pull the viewer into what he is watching and helps them to identify with Spider. The film's score is a sad slow score that helps to show how Spider is feeling.
Spider is a great film and character study. The usual fans of Cronenberg's other films like Dead Ringers and Videodrome might find it strange and boring, but it is truely one of his greatest films. Definately a must see.
Rating:
Summary: Forget A BEAUTIFUL MIND...
Review: Ron Howard's gentle & ultimately manipulative A BEAUTIFUL MIND had Hollywood & award ceremonies in raptures over his sugar coated look at mental illness. My advice? Skip it!!! Buy this instead. Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne & David Cronenberg deliver an up-close & at times, claustrophobic study of mental illness that is as close to perfection as a film with subject matter such as this can get. Nothing can prepare you for the final twist. Cronenberg spins the best web of his career with this masterful journey. Perfect! Just Perfect!!
Rating:
Summary: A daring and brilliant psychological study
Review: This movie, by Canadian director David Cronenberg, fulfills the earlier promise of his tragicomic reprise, The Fly. Get the connection? I just wish Rod Serling ("Hollywood's a great place to live - if you're a grapefruit") were alive to appeciate "Spider" - he would have loved it, as would the great French crime writer Georges Simenon, who loved to explore the psyche behind the crime.This is a thinking person's story, superbly filmed in chameleonic tones of gray, with a pace that makes a laughing stock of the entire Hollywood production culture, and with an absolutely dedicated cast. I needed to watch it twice just to begin to appreciate Cronenberg's "spin" on the story. You can get penicillin from spiders' webs, and from this brilliant movie you can unexpectedly find a cure for some of your darkest thoughts.
|
