Rating: 
Summary: Sarah's Requiem
Review: Requiem For A Dream is a shocking veiw of the drug world and the true effects it has on people. Through its four characters, played brilliantly by Jared Leto, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans, you see the effects different kinds of drugs have on different walks of life. The excitment of this wonderful film is nurtured and at times heightened by the amazing cinematography. This electrifying film will have you hearing the requiem of the lovable characters and dreaming about the chance that this could happen to you.
I thought that Requiem was a wondefful work of art that deserves to be seen by all that coudl fully appreciate it. I thought it was wonderfully done and perfectly cast. Ellen Burstyn's portrayal of the secluded and desperate Sarah was Oscar worthy and one of her greatest and most intriguing roles.
Rating: 
Summary: Joyless in Babylon
Review: Requiem for a Dream is the story of the drug induced transformations of junkie turned dealer, Harry Goldfarb, his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly), best friend (Marlon Wayans), and mother (Ellen Burstyn). This is a bleak and quite unpleasant film; still there is much to recommend it: good directing, camera work, special effects, editing and acting--particularly Burstyn in the role of Sara Goldfarb, whose addiction to television leads to something stronger. Burstyn's slow metamorphosis of the meek Sarah into a blithering psychotic is just a masterpiece of acting. Jennifer Connelly shows she's not on the silver screen just for her looks and handles a complicated role as the degenerating junkie girlfriend with real style and color. Leto and Wayans turn in memorable performances too as best friends turned failed drug dealers looking for one more good score to put them back in business. The fault with this movie is that it is virtually a manifesto of nihilism; compounded by a lackluster script and a tendency for certain scenes to run on too long. This said, I still think writer/director Darren Aronofsky should be applauded for an imaginative and unflinching treatment of an ugly subject.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Movie!
Review: This was my favorite movie. It was thrilling. It shows how drugs can mess you up. The sountrack was really good too. I think evreryone should see this.
Rating:
Summary: Probably best movie of the year (but that's not saying much)
Review: This film is definately great but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. If you are able to handle scenes of an extremely disturbing nature then go for it you won't be dissapointed. But, if you are at all sqeamish than this is not for you. Even though I'm not a drug user I would have to say that this film probably portrays drug use better than any other movie. It was so intense that at the end I felt like I was on narcotics. So in conclusion if you can handle it this is an enthrolling film which will effect you deeply. But, probably not worth buying because you won't want to watch it a second time. ....
Rating:
Summary: a monument of dramatic intensity
Review: it is really a shame that Traffic, while a very good film, received so much attention and this one, a far superior film, recieved so little. the direction, score, and editing define the best qualities of independent film and the performances, especially Ms Byrstyn and Mr Leto, are spellbinding. remember to breathe in the last fifteen minutes, i almost forgot. this film so brilliantly depicts the downward spiral of addiction that you wont be able to take your eyes off of it until the last credit rolls
Rating:
Summary: Finally
Review: One word described the way I felt after viewing this movie---finally. Finally, someone had the guts to make a depressing movie, that will leave the viewer sad yet satisfied. Finally, someone made a movie without using a lot of special effects, but still told a story with innovative and unique camera techniques (not to mention a horrific yet capturing soundtrack). This someone mentioned is Darren Aronofsky, and I believe that he is one of the best new directors in film today. I love both of his movies (Pi being the other, don't miss that one either), and I am looking forward to his new project with Brad Pitt.
Back to the subject at hand, Requiem for a Dream is a great movie with very believable characters played magnificently by Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connely, and Marlon Wayans. The simple plot is magnified by the camera work and acting. This movie is a must see. Go out and watch it now....heck watch it twice.
Rating:
Summary: Scary as hell, and I saw the edited version
Review: If you ever get into your skull that drugs will make the porblems in your life go away, go see this movie. It's like a train wreck-terrifying, disgusting and utterly spellbinding.
Previous to this movie I had always had an aversion to drug flicks. You know what I mean,they're either preachy or flashy, filled with glamorous, talented people or crummy low-lifes. Then I heard about the movie when I saw the Oscars and a couple of months later the name was still stuck in my head. I hadn't heard too much about the plot except that it had to do with drugs and that it was good. Four stars from pretentious critics good. So I decided to check it out.
The cover made it seem like arty, stream-of-conciousness garbage and I almost didn't rent it. Thank God I did. I have never considered taking drugs in my entire life, but if there was even the tiniest doubt that I might, this movie obliterated it. At first the interesting camera work caught me off-guard but slowly I started to get into it. As I did, (wonder of wonders!) I started to feel for the characters. They aren't crummy low-lifes. Jared and Jennifer's characters really do love each other, Marlon Wayans is a lost mama's boy, and Ellen Burstyn just wants her life to be like the "as advertised on TV" version. But slowly as addiction takes over, their lives collectively spin out of control.
This movie is watchable for the last sequence alone (pathologically disturbing) and I highly encourage everyone to watch it. You won't regret it (except maybe for the second when Jared Leto is injecting himself in his gangrenous arm).
Rating: 
Summary: View with Haldol.
Review: This movie is a post-modernist deconstructed pipebomb that highlights flawed belief systems by gutting the viewer with images of obscene and horrific nihilism. And, it is really not that innovative. A self-conscious Grand Guignol from a sophmoric film student with a poor first showing in the boring and borish Pi.Clever misanthropes like Miller, Celine and Kerouac always have discovered something of the sadness that sleeps next to beauty-and often overwhelms it. This is a useless book translated into a propoganda real for the Director's MTV editing chops and ill-formed moral intelligence. It reflects bile as if reflecting bile is a grand intellectual experiment. It praises decandant sickness and then comdemns it in the same scene. Slickness unto death. The logical extension of the Western commerical art that rapes its subject while pretending to do so analytically. I pity the world that allows this filth and its creator to peddle these perverse and nihilistic wares. However, if you like that sort of thing, this movie is for you. ...
Rating:
Summary: Police Academy 8 : Narcs Get High
Review: If you thought the sight of Jennifer Connelly getting it on naked with a ...(sexual toy) could never be repellent, then let me introduce you to a whole new experience... And if the cinema reviews of "Requiem for a Dream" were agreed on two things, they were that it was stymied from the beginning by its outdated and unsubtle source material, and that the last twenty minutes are hard to watch and impossible to enjoy. Yet what recommends the film is the fact that despite the stomach-churning closing sequences, it is not only compelling but impossible to tear yourself away from (and, incidentally, never as painful and unsettling as his debut "Pi"), and that despite its apparently two-dimensional moralising, it remains with you longer afterward than any film since perhaps "Magnolia." It is certainly a measure of Aronofsky's high-minded approach that although he has cinema's sexiest couple at his disposal in Connelly and Jared Leto, he never trades on their looks and the only nudity is non-sexual. Indeed one of his greatest achievements in the film is making the golden couple appear increasingly grotesque as their fall progresses. Connelly in particular echoes Roald Dahl's Mrs. Twit, whose ugly thoughts over time, you may recall, began to show on her face until she became so ugly you could hardly bear to look at her. But "The Twits" never did brave that ...(sexual toy) sequence... All the lead performances are flawless, and Ellen Burstyn was rightly nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Leto's mother. When a director and actor come together so well you get infinitely memorable moments like Burstyn's beaky, wrinkled face peering with confusion around the room at the edge of a fish-eye lens. Horrible. What's most astonishing on viewing the film again, though, is that "Requiem for a Dream" clearly marks out Aronofsky as the natural successor to Stanley Kubrick (and isn't it nice that we had only to wait two years?), with his fastidious attention to frame composition, his delight in colour, his careful use of a brilliant score, and of course, most tellingly, the sense of something missing in the heart region... This brings us back to what the some didn't like about it, and with these concerns taken into account, the film itself probably only deserves four stars. I'm giving this package five though, as the DVD gives it a whole new dimension (though not the one the critics were looking for). The extras are simply the best I have ever seen on a single disc set, and, crucially, now you can program your DVD player to run the chapters backwards, and give the lovely Jennifer and Jared the happy ending they deserve.
Rating:
Summary: Restore your faith in the power of FILM!
Review: This movie, shocking, riveting, is one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen. Recommended to me by a fellow film-lover, I had no idea what I was in for. The tour through a drug addicts life, and the incredible mirror of the more standard druggie to the pill poppers, ignorant of the incredible weight their habits carry, unwarned by society, will shock and amaze you. Aside from that, the cinematic techniques employed in this film are incredible - long takes at fast speed, super short shots, and walking shots with the character still, the background moving behind them, all expertly placed, filled with meaning, symbolism and power. It will blow your mind - I was just blank for hours after, unable to comprehend the power of what I had just witnessed. I recommend this to anyone who has ever done or thought of doing drugs, as the most powerful possible deterrent (DARE doesn't have anything to compare to this), anyone who is losing their faith in Hollywood's cheesy movies, or anyone who likes movies. Just don't expect to do anything for a while afterwards - your brain will be literally overpowered.
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