8MM

Rating:
Summary: THE REAL LOS ANGELES
Review: "8mm" is the most honest film about young girls' strange infatuations with moving to Los Angeles to become movie stars. Although the film plays like a typical detective film superficially, the film is actually about the ill-fated death of a naive young girl who ran away to L.A. to become a star and ended up mixed up in porno and snuff films. Nick Cage plays Tom Welles, a surveillance specialist hired by a rich widow to track down the source of a disturbing sex/torture 8mm reel she found in her dead husband's vault. In the film, a teenage girl is raped and murdered on camera. Welles is hired to prove if the film is real or fake. His search leads him to Los Angeles, where he must search for the identity of the young girl killed in the film. Throughout his search he learns of her desperation to become a star and her growing distaste for her small-town roots. Although many people dislike this film, Cage and director Joel Schumacher, it's because they don't understand the message of the film and how close it is to Los Angeles' dirty, manipulative sex underground, where girls are promised they will be stars and end up exploited in pornos. Most filmgoers today are uneducated and don't know how to judge art properly or on multiple levels. "8mm" is a film that deserves to be seen and thought about. The film's highlights include Cage dumping boxes of porno videos and mags on a pornographer's body before setting him on fire, and great location shots of how Hollywood really looks today; disgusting and dangerous.

Rating:
Summary: Wants to be Se7en, but falls short.
Review: With 8mm, it feels like Joel Schumacher(The Lost Boys,Batman and Robin) is trying to emulate Se7en. Both were written by Andrew Kevin Walker. But Joel falls short in this unpleasant, clichéd film. With Se7en, you were swept along with the characters. In 8mm, you can feel the hand of the director pushing you were he wants you to go. 8mm is blatant in it's attempts to manipulate the viewer, but is so clumsy you end up resenting it and the director for doing so. A film like this needs to be more subtle in it's attempts to coax the desired response from the audience.

Rating:
Summary: Near perfect A-list shocker for a hollywood movie.
Review: There are a few good things about 8mm that make it a five star movie but it suffers from a poor Scooby-doo finale and post-Se7en burnout. In truth it is about a 4.5 rating. Andrew Kevin Walker wrote both the screenplay for this movie and the infamous Brad Pitt one so there are similarities that suggest heavy lifting from the later at times. On top of this director Joel Schumacher has gone for the deep tone same gritty feel. Let's face it... 8mm would have faired much better if released today than four years after the king of modern serial killer flicks, however it has aged well and probably will continue to disturb for some years to come because of the theme.

Like Paul Schrader's Hardcore, the theme is one of a youth who had a dream of going to Hollywood only to become part of the seedy underground pornography industry there. Here in 8mm Nicholas Cage plays a discreet wealthy-client specialist detective who is asked by a widow to trace the whereabouts of a girl who appears and is killed in a secret snuff film that her late rich husband kept in his vault. Cage watches the film, much to his flinching horror, and then sets out to find the girl by hiring porn shop clerk Joaquin Phoenix as his main advisor. Suffice to say that searching for snuff films soon sends Cage a little round the bend as he gets closer to his objective but at the same time can not get the things he is seeing out of his head, as our porn shop clerk keeps reminding us - "You don't change the devil... the devil changes you."

The actual PI work is quite well done and all of the actors are functional, even possibly some of them in their best roles. In fact Cage's performance here is on par with Leaving Los Vegas.

Ultimately 8mm is a great movie about tragedy and the beast within man. Don't go expecting anything deeper than "I did it because I could" type reasoning though. There are no twists here and the film only looses a star because the final unmasking could have been done with someone better than a nobody bit part actor who is asked to fill the role of the killer "Machine". That final sequence in the house in quite unnerving though.

Simply a great adult thriller with first rate stars and acting.


Rating:
Summary: A Good Thriller, but it makes you feel ugly inside
Review: Nick Cage is a great actor, and he does do a wonderful job here, considering what he's been given to work with. Snuff films and underground porn... that's not the easiest stuff to work with. It's hard for me to describe a good time for somebody to watch this film. It's certainly not a 'feel-good' flick.. so don't watch it when you are looking for one of those.. it's not funny, so don't watch if you are looking for a laugh.. it doesn't qualify as an action movie, because, well.. most of the plot messes with your head --your imagination--your conscience... This movie is, indeed, provocative. It does make you think.. quite a bit, in fact.. it's just that the thoughts that pop into your mind are not the happiest.. they are dark, and horrible. But, if you are mature, and can handle a seedy thriller, than this one is for you. Definately is one of the more unique films in my DVD collection.

Rating:
Summary: SNUFF SAID
Review: Granted this is certainly not a feel good kind of movie. Nor is its subject matter, which sad to say, does exist in our pristine world, but for some reason, audiences tend to find it repulsive and tend not to look at the film as an artistic endeavor. I think Joel Schumacher's direction is excellent; the one scene where Cage has broken into Machine's house and the record is stuck at the end is as frightening as anything I've seen in recent movies. He also draws excellent performances, not only in his leading cast, but in the supporting roles. Nicolas Cage, not one of my favorite actors, does an outstanding job in a role that is complex and multi-dimensional. His persistence to find who killed Maryanne Mathews is relentless and at times heart-shattering. James Gandolfini is superb and despicable in the role of the smut producer who helmed the snuff film. Peter Stomare as the heartless director Dino Velvet is likewise disgustingly realistic. Joaquin Phoenix provides a complex comic portrait who wants to join up with Cage in his quest. Anthony Heald as the Christian's lawyer is typical bar bull, and Catherine Keener, though stuffy and reserved, makes a good wife to the volatile Cage. However, to me, the most impact comes from the carefully controlled and subtly nuanced performance of Amy Morton as Maryanne's mother. Her desire to hold on to her daughter's reappearance; her loneliness in eating alone ("I'd like to eat once without the TV) and the lustful longing in her scenes with Cage are awesome. Her performance gives the movie its heart, and enables us to see why Cage acts like Charles Bronson at the end.
This could be called a "sick" movie, but we are a "sick" society. Old Mr. Christian did the snuff film because "he could", and Machine killed because he enjoyed it.
Ultimately, a disturbing but unusually good movie. Should have done better at the box office, but don't let its subject matter keep you from watching Amy Morton in an unheralded bit of brilliance.

Rating:
Summary: Smut film expose
Review: Joel Schumacher was panned horribly for the goofy "Batman and Robin", so he went to make "8mm", a decidedly more adult and bleaker movie. Nicolas Cage is Tom Wells, a private investigator hired to check out a snuff film, where a young girl seems to be savagly raped and the killed even more horribly. Many people didn't like the movie, and I can't blame them to be honest, but I liked the edgy and gritty subject matter, the seedy side of an already notorious pornography industry. I thought Cage did a good job as a smart man who falls deeper and deeper into the slimy underworld of vice. The end is a little too fronteer justice style for my taste, I would have liked to seen the culprets get arrested. Machine was an interesting charactor.