Rating: 
Summary: I felt like I needed a shower after viewing 8MM.
Review: Director Joel Schumacher takes us into the seedy underworld of sick and disturbing porn and leaves the viewer reeling. Nicolas Cage plays Tom Welles, a PI hired by a widowed wife of a well-known and respected public figure to find out if a possible "snuff film" she discovered among her late husbands effects is authentic. On the tape, a pretty young girl is viciously assaulted and murdered. With the help of Max, played by Joaquin Phoenix, Welles dives head first into the bowels of Hollywood and New York to determine both the fate of the girl and the identity of her killers. The film suffers through a few weak plot segments in the middle, but also manages to shock, intrigue, and offend the viewer much in the way that Se7en did. This dark film isn't for the kids or the easily disturbed.
Rating: 
Summary: terrible
Review: this movie is probably the worst in my collection
Rating: 
Summary: There's nothing like the original
Review: I saw 8mm without knowing it was a remake. I din't like it much, but when i saw the original "Thesis" by the great chilean-spanish director Alejandro Amenabar (The Others, Open Your Eyes) I was amazed. It is one hundred times better....
If you like great cinema, you MUST watch it. It is a real masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Snuffy Snuff Snuff
Review: Great movie, Dark, Seedy and entertaining. The bad guys are BAD GUYS... They remind me of the crew from Blue Velvet. Dangerous and twisted. Acting; Great. Sound; Great Music; Could have lived without the middle eastern music. I hate that shilling ... they call music. Other than the middle eastern music I can't complain about this movie... Nicolas Cage is a great actor, but he could have sacked it up a bit... The crying at the end was ... The movie is great, the DVD I have issues with...The Directors Commentary is realy ... The guy is about one breath away from lisping and start ranting about rainbows and and being proud about coming out of the closet... I got about 30 minutes into it and could hack it anymore. The guy is so touchy feely and talks in such a monitone voice it was driving me insane. He's much better of directing movies and not talking.
Rating:
Summary: Certain Literary Themes Inhabit This Horror Thriller
Review: After having seen this film a couple of times, I could not help but notice sundry literary allusions in the film. Many years ago I read a work on theory theory written by the late Frances Fergusson, a professor of comparative literature at Rutgers University. The work was, or is, entitled "The Idea of a Theatre," a study which develops the author's well known views on what consitutes tragedy. This is a seminal work in my view, and, although it involves the study of theater, it delves into themes and concepts developed in non theatrical works, most notably in Dante's "Divina Comedia." Fergusson develops his views on theater and literature as a whole and acknowledges the presence if not the ubiquity of myth and philosophy as well as religion. In the work the author conceives the developng mythos as purpose, passion, perception. The concepts are involved; however, in a nutshell, in this particular film several of Fergusson's ideas are noted. The hero protagonist Wells has a mission (to find out how a client's husband was involved in a snuff flick) which quickly becomes purpose; namely,to find out who the "snuffed" victim was. Ultimately the purpose becomes the quest for knowledge. Wells then undergoes passion, as he is dragged further and further into seemingly concentric levels of hell, into his "descensus ad infernum." The horrors experienced (recall Conrad's "The horror. . the horror") escalates as the central character becomes ever aware that knowledge consists in the fact that the killings, the pervasions committed, serve no other purpose than to satisfy the perverse, hedonistic pleasures of those who pay for or to perform the lethal acts. The victim just happened to be there; to fall (Fall)into the wrong hands in her own twisted quest; in short she was a nothing. Wells experiences his perception as an ultimate act of mercy, the desperately needed act or new mission of exterminating the evil. He, however, is not the redeemer. It is ultimately his wife to whom he must turn to in the quest for redemption from his having experienced hell. There are other literary parallels, such as the cleansing fire (as in Dante's Purgatorio) near the end, plus others too numerous to mention here. Suffice to say that the film, in my opinion is an interesting one; it is an excursion, not unlike "Silence of the Lambs," or "Seven," into the bowels of the sordid, into pure evil. Not a quintessential masterpiece, to be sure; yet it does incorporate literary, if not archetypal suggestions and themes.
Rating: 
Summary: Subliminal messages
Review: I was disturbed by this movie's use of Arabic music as the leitmotif for the pornography underworld. The story and setting had no other connection to Arabs or Arab countries, and the music had no purpose other than to cue the audience that something sinister was coming up. I found this association both offensive and alarming, particularly at a time when Arabs are targets of the American backlash against terrorism. Shame on Joel Schumacher.
Rating:
Summary: not true to life
Review: This could've been a deep and disturbing descent into the alleged world of snuff films; instead, it is undercut by incompetence at every turn. To begin with, you cannot just go into a porn store and ask about snuff films expecting to get a lead on some "hot stuff." I also thought it was totally unbelievable that a private investigator (played by Cage) would be so completely shocked by viewing such a film-- where does he work, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? And why he wasn't killed by the bad guys early on is beyond me. It degenerates into a vigilant revenge drama with a poorly-shot chase scene at the end. A very unsatisfying film.
Rating: 
Summary: Very deep and intense.
Review: When I first saw this movie I hated the bad guys so much I walked out of the theatre angry. This is a good thing by-the-way. Not only are the bad guys repellent creeps they are also, in a way, pretty ordinary. You'll never look at a complete stranger the same way again. I thought Nic Cage did a very good job of portraying a squeaky-clean private eye Tom Welles (he's just so innocent looking) descending into the world of hardcore pornography and unknowingly letting it change him. Joaquin Phoenix plays wanna-be musician Max California who is also Welles' sidekick. I'd never really seen him in any movies before this but now that I've seen him in a likeable role, in a movie where there are very few likeable characters, I look forward to his next movies. Some parts of this film to me are very disturbing, for example the first viewing of the snuff film where we see the girl cry or finale with the jumping record. Joel Schumacher certainly has redeemed himself over Batman and Robin (shudder) and should stop being the victim of nasty critisism by critics who are rubbishing this brilliant film only because Batman and Robin was terrible. If you like your thriller movies to be deep, intense and nerve-racking then watch this movie. Schumacher ever explains in his commentart that the movie was originally about 3 hours long and an alternate ending had Welles kill himself by driving into a wall and a whole subplot of Welles trying to save a girl who was quickly headed in the same route as the original victim. The DVD is in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound. Aside from Schumacher's commentary the only extras are a rather stupid featurette and a trailer.
Rating:
Summary: Before Windtalkers and Gladiator, There Was 8MM
Review: Really sick movie. I guess that is pretty much a given, considering the subject matter. Overall, I found the movie to be average. I didn't appreciate how Cage was always whispering his lines. He rarely showed much feeling, and his croaky voice was a little obnoxious. But I'll give him this, I've seen worse. Much worse. He actually wasn't that bad. Joaquin Phoenix gave one of the top performances of the movie, but not his best role. At times he added some humor to a mirthless plot. I was a little vexed with his final scene. It seems he was being compared to Christ. I'm so sick of this. Apparently the only way to add deep meaning to a scene is to have someone being hung on a cross or spreading their arms wide in surrender (aka J.D.'s death scene in Heathers where in the commentary they actually said this was a reference to Jesus on the cross). I'm not saying it's blasphemous. I don't quite know what to make of it. It just seems forced. Catherine Keener as Cage's (Tom Welles') wife could have been left out all together, along with that annoying baby, and been replaced with a picture (you know, that Tom carries around in his wallet). And I could have done without the psycho death rants ( or whatever the heck you want to call it where the killer gives their final speech). But I don't feel like I wasted my time watching this movie. I guess it all depends on the viewer, though. It all depends on whether you resonate to this sort of movie. Or, of course, if you like the actors in it. Basic summary? Nicholas Cage is hired to investigate the authenticity of what seems to be a genuine snuff film. He meets many disturbed characters on his way to hell and back. Your typical crime/revenge movie. There is a beginning, where we are made aware of the aforementioned snuff film, an excruciatingly gory middle and the denouement. And perhaps the ending really was supposed to serve as a conclusion, though, of course, many innocent lives have been lost in the process of getting there. But it's all make-believe. Or is it....Since the main actors have made movies after this one, it's a pretty safe bet that it is. In that case, Gladiator probably could have been entitled, in the words of Max California, Snuff it; The Resurrection. And it works, given that character's symbolic fate.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Twisted!
Review: I am a huge fan of Seven, and when the trailer for 8mm hit the big screen, I flipped! This movie is definitly one of the most dark, most twisted movies I've ever seen, it's just plain creepy! And the creepy part was. . ."snuff" films really exist, but most people's minds are so closed to what is actually around them, that they have no clue that this is all over the place. 8mm did a great job depicting this! As a great man in the movie said, "You dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change, the devil changes you!" Buy this movie, watch it, and become aware of the truth!
|
