Rating: 
Summary: brilliant, poetic, peculiar
Review: Institute Benjamenta is a fantastic and peculiar film by the Quay Brothers (who also did Peter Gabriel's _Sledgehammer_ video among other smaller bits). Based on the Robert Walser novel, it's slow, quiet, strange, poetic as all get out. You couldn't get anything better in this century.
Rating: 
Summary: Soporific
Review: Insufferable. Recommended only for those having difficulty sleeping and not willing to take a pill. Makes "Last Year at Marienbad" seem like "60 Seconds." Actually, "Last Year at Marienbad" was a great film. In no way is this representative of the Quays' work or talent.
Rating: 
Summary: It could be considered "paintings caught in celluloid"...
Review: It reminds one of being in a musty museum that closed it's doors to the public centuries ago.
It's scent is of a zoo that was shutdown by local ordinance and has long been abandoned.
Ascetic intellectualism projects tormented imagery as if awoken in the middle of the night amid being rubbed down by soft fiberglass insulation.
Enter through the middle door, for artistic curiosity.
Rating:
Summary: shock the monkey
Review: Let's appreciate the visual. The brothers Quay are very dedicated to their craft. We need to overlook the obvious and support anyone who dares to make pictures with this kind of quality.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a film, but a ballet (and a rather lovely one at that).
Review: Okay, so this film has almost no narrative and the characters are as flat as cardboard. I knew that going in and I still enjoyed it. Why? Well, some movies you just can't watch as narrative experiences, they exist by a different set of rules. As I was watching I realised that the most interesting thing was the movement of the actors. There was a lot of choreography involved, so much so, that I came to realise it was more of an elaborate peformance piece than a film (think Pina Bausch). There isn't much to interpret, but then, there usually isn't in a dance, you just enjoy the motion. Also noteworthy is the lighting and the use of moving spotlights to animate the setting. The characters are awash in light of various qualities, some spectral, some soft. The set decoration and production design are also wonderful, always something to look at in every frame. The camera movements are odd and quixotic, just like in any Quay Brothers film. The performances, especially those of Gottfried John and Alice Krige, are nicely articulated, given that they contain only the merest whiffs of character development. All in all, this is a lovely piece of visual poetry. Watch it in bed and let it waft past you.
Rating:
Summary: It Is the Dream Come Alive!
Review: Once you realize they've attended film school and overlook some initial pretentions I believe you'll simply tumble into the dream with awe and delight. Extraordinary. Few film makers could realize this mood and enchantment. Plus... alittle scary!
Rating:
Summary: Like a dream from which you do not want to be awoken.
Review: Reminiscent of Jean Cocteau. Eerily existential and poetic. As expected, Mark Rylance is perfect. The best kind of fairy tale that will stay with you for quite some time.
Rating:
Summary: Place That Fork
Review: Strangely haunting. If you are mesmerized by Butoh dance, then this movie should appeal--not for fidgeties predisposed to jazz dance.
I haven't seen this feature since it came out in 1996, yet I still have vivid imagery recurrences of the cinematography. Imagine linking a million painstakenly taken sequences of still photographs, printed in sepia-tone, and you'll get an idea what this movie is like to watch. How you view this movie will depend on your state of mind and you're patience for artistic self-absorbtion. Soon I will track it down and reabsorb.
Rating:
Summary: The Philadelphia Stur
Review: Sun Ra lived in Germantown. David Lynch was across the street from the Mutter Museum of Pathology (that houses the remains of the original "siamese" twins amongst other oddities). And the brothers Quay obviously were influenced by the Franklin Institute. The commonality seems to be a sense of madness and epiphone that lies within the structure of discipline and study. Institute Benjamenta is not so much a story as an experience, exactly what you'd expect from a private fraternity with a history for specializing in visual abstractions. Only it is now startling to see the activity produced by live actors rather than their usual bits of shop class remnants and broken dolls. The effect is less fascinating, but more disturbing. I have a friend who contacted the distributor of this film when it was still restricted to rental, hoping to get enough friends to cover a screening. Instead, when the video came out, she couldn't sit through it. Yet she still is haunted by it. This is not an easy movie to recommend, but you may not want to take the chance of missing it.
Rating:
Summary: The Philadelphia Stur
Review: Sun Ra lived in Germantown. David Lynch was across the street from the Mutter Museum of Pathology (that houses the remains of the original "siamese" twins amongst other oddities). And the brothers Quay obviously were influenced by the Franklin Institute. The commonality seems to be a sense of madness and epiphone that lies within the structure of discipline and study. Institute Benjamenta is not so much a story as an experience, exactly what you'd expect from a private fraternity with a history for specializing in visual abstractions. Only it is now startling to see the activity produced by live actors rather than their usual bits of shop class remnants and broken dolls. The effect is less fascinating, but more disturbing. I have a friend who contacted the distributor of this film when it was still restricted to rental, hoping to get enough friends to cover a screening. Instead, when the video came out, she couldn't sit through it. Yet she still is haunted by it. This is not an easy movie to recommend, but you may not want to take the chance of missing it.
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