Rating: 
Summary: Requiem for a Dream
Review: With little doubt "Requiem for a Dream" (based on Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel) is a relentlessly bleak and austere film that left me breathless and emotionally devastated after I left the theater. I don't believe that this film is about heroin addiction per se, but has much more to do with addiction in its many splendored forms. On the one hand you have physical addictions (i.e., drugs, sex, and money), and on the other you have addictions of a far more intangible variety (e.g., irremediable attractions to unattainable dreams and desires). Obviously the characters portrayed by Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans, and that actress whose name I can't seem to remember appear on the surface to suffer from physical addictions (i.e., heroin), but below the surface they suffer interminably from delusions of grandeur, i.e., the American Dream. The more dope they shoot into their veins the more palpable this absurd vision of opulence becomes, until finally the rug gets swept from underneath their feet and they lie prone and helpless amidst the devastation that surrounds them. But even when Leto, Wayans, and the girl eventually become aware of the imminent fall they still manage to convince themselves that their dreams still possess that chance (no matter how slight and insignificant) of coming to fruition. This naive presumption, in my opinion, is the driving force behind this remarkable film. Most Americans think that by the time they've reached a certain age (say, 35 or 40) they should have a pretty firm grasp on life and not vice versa. However reality, in most cases, tends to rub most people the wrong way leaving them either 1) disappointed with what they have or have not accomplished or 2) generally angry, depressed, or downright perturbed about their miserable existences. Now I don't believe that the primary message in "Requiem" is as trite as "be happy with what you've got and be careful when you pause to think about what you haven't", but I do believe that it runs closely along those lines. It's no secret that the media and our democratic "theology" has a lot to do with injecting people with this bankrupt notion that anyone can achieve monetary success so long as they try their damnedest. Many individuals obviously do prosper and flourish in this incomparable republic we call the United States. But for every "one" there are hundreds of thousands who fail ignominiously and perish without even so much as uttering a whimper. Selby's novel (and Aronofsky's excellent cinematic adaptation) brings the hammer down on these misconceptions and shatters them with a force that will not soon be forgotten.
Rating: 
Summary: Heartbreaking, brilliant, unforgettable
Review: Hubert Selby Jr.'s elegiac and mesmerizing novel about four addicts of different varieties appeared in 1978 and ranked alongside Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (also made into a superior film) as one of his best books. Darren ("Pi") Aronofsky was himself a Selby fan and eventually persuaded the Thousand Arts production company to finance his $5M film of the novel.The resulting film is as horrific and fascinating as anything ever put on a screen. The plot isn't complicated: Junkie Harry (a nearly unrecognizeable Jared Leto) takes to pawning his mother's TV set for heroin. His buddy Tyrone (Marlon Wayans, in a performance that makes his turn in "Scary Movie" and other junk look like total red herrings) hatches a plan with him to score for a pound of pure and put them on the fast track to riches. Harry's girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) has vague plans of opening a boutique with her share of the gains. And Harry's mother (a truly amazing Ellen Burstyn) is obsessed with appearing on her favorite TV show. Movies like this are not about plotting but emotion. We know there is no happy ending possible here; what matters is not what happens but how and to what extent. The final 20 minutes -- which have been written about endlessly elsewhere -- are a masterpiece of Soviet-style intercutting and gradually mounting, excruciating tension that does not even end with the release of death, but with the promise of unending, ongoing pain. This isn't a pretty movie. This isn't a movie for your mother (well, I guess that depends on the family), or a movie for the whole family. This is a movie about despair and destroyed dreams. In short, this is a movie about something -- and it tells its story with such fierce style and power that it almost makes issues of taste or subject matter irrelevant. You may not like the film -- and there are many who don't -- but you can't deny its power, or the skill involved in making it.
Rating:
Summary: We have a winner! We have a winner!
Review: To read a review for Requiem, will do you no good, as it is nearly impossible to capture the visualizations, and raw emotions depicted in this film. Those who saw it will tell you they left the theatre in a unison of feelings, and psychological disturbance. I too, experienced Requiem, a dark world, where four characters, four rays of light, slowly fade before you. It is perhaps the most intense film I have ever seen. I sat there gripping my seat, my breath barely there. You can read the great reviews from critics of this film (see rotten tomatoes site)... but I can only give you the humanistic reaction to a purely human film. Locate a showing of Requiem...experience it, then you will know exactely what you, me, and all those who experienced Requiem, know.
Rating:
Summary: Best Movie Of 2000
Review: In a year of mega hyped flicks, and mega bombs, it was very refreshing to stumble upon a wonderful peice of filmaking. "Requiem For A Dream" has tight direction, a great story, and the best acting. Can a film about drug abuse really affect the new cynical seen-it-all audiences of today? Well let me tell you this, the film made me and my date actually cry a couple of times. The Ellen Burstyn monologue in the middle of the movie, about being alone, wins the Oscar for her. Julia Roberts? Whatever. It would be a shame if the academy mistaked her clevage baring and mega watt smile for acting in "Erin Brockovich", and ignored Ellen. Another flick garnering raves is "Traffic", a longer, all star flick, that after watching "Requiem" bored me. It paled in comparrison to "Requiem". Jared Leto, looking very emaciated also plays his part very well. He shows how desperate a drug addled person can be. I don't like revealing too much in my reviews, but those who saw it, the scene in the car when Jared revealed his arm to Marlon Wayans was disgusting, but I could not keep my eyes away from the screen. Jennifer Connely also turns a shockingly great performance. The film I really remember her from is "Labyrinth". With this movie she proves she does indeed have acting chops, The scene where she goes to her therapists apartment made me feel for her. Marlon Wayans, after a horrifically awful performance in "Scary Movie" rebounds with a steady performance here. The scene about him not letting his mom down was sweet and sad. This performance should help him shed his goofball image. But with "Scary Movie 2" comming out he is just moving backward again. Now all my praises to Darren Aronofsky. A man who should win Best Director. His subject matter was harsh, he picked under the radar stars, he adapted the story from a book, and did it all very well. This guy knows what he is doing. The movie is very vivid and to me looked real. I live in NYC and I have seen people affected by drug use. And I know that rarely there is a happy ending. Like "Traffic" with it's stupid Michael Douglas ending about his daughter, who was a super addict having ... for ...., who then turns out to be chipper and happy in the end. Yeah right, only @ the movies. The ending in "Requiem" was far more realistic, and it haunted me for days. The Best Movie Of 2000! I highly recommend it. And fans who have already seen it, check out the website @ ... .
Rating: 
Summary: As bad as it gets
Review: I can not imagine it being any more obvious and two dimensional. The end was a surprise, but only because nobody in their right mind would have written that ending. As I had not seen the characters as anything other than poor actors, I really did not have much of a reaction to the ending, other than the erie realization that the director could indeed sink lower.
Rating:
Summary: requiem for a dream
Review: This is the best movie I have ever seen, that I'm not sure I ever want to see again. During the climax of the film a woman was sick to her stomach, my boyfriends hair on his arms stood on end, and I cried out loud and out of control. It was the most moving intense film ever made. The director is absolute genious. Everyone should see this movie. I vow to never touch drugs again.
Rating:
Summary: Good Lord!
Review: Man, what a sad, scary, excellent, grim, disturbing, well-made movie. The more I read about this movie and learned about it, the more fascinating it seemed. I also am one of those people who, when they hear a movie is extremely shocking and disturbing, get a burning urge to see it as fast as I can to see if it shocks me (especially if it's unrated or NC-17), since I am pretty jaded. So, I eagerly anticipated seeing it. The plot concerns four addicts. Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly play a young loving couple, Harry and Marion, who dabble in heroin and plan to make a big sale along with their friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) so they can be set for life and Marion can open up her own (legal) business. Unfortunately, their recreational drug use turns into day-to-day addiction, and things start to get ugly. REAL ugly. (Watching someone shoot up directly into a gangrene-infected, pus-filled crater in his arm kind of gave me a whole new definition of the word ugly.) Ellen Burstyn plays Harry's mother Sarah, a lonely widow who wants to lose weight to fit into a red dress so she can appear on her favorite TV show. She starts out by being addicted to TV and candy, but has the bad luck to go to a doctor who-in what I thought was the only unrealistic part of the film- gives her an RX for 'diet pills', that turn out to actually be speed. I say unrealistic because, as anyone who has ever worked in the medical profession knows, very few doctors will NOT just write someone who goes to them for the first time to see them for weight loss a huge prescription for extremely powerful and addictive controlled substances without so much as an examination. If the movie took place any time before the early 80's, this would have been a little easier to swallow. Anyway, I found her story thread the most memorable and heartbreaking. Sarah takes pills and starts losing weight, as well as suddenly becoming very energetic and chatty. Like any addictive drug, her happy blue pills stop working after prolonged use so she ups her dose more...and more...and things slowly start getting very weird and scary. In one of the best scenes midway through the film (one of the few that had a tiny bit of comic relief) Harry visits her --the only visit he makes during the movie where he doesn't openly steal her TV to pawn for dope money. He is briefly riding high (in more ways than one) and tells her he bought her a big screen TV-he wanted to do something nice for her and figured out that "TV is her fix". He looks like he's getting a bad feeling when she's babbling happily about how she has a reason to get up in the morning, and then he hears her grinding her teeth, and figures it out. This is the first time in the movie you see real fear in his eyes. Sarah soon starts having very scary strung-out hallucinations-starting out with subtle things like time woozily slowing down and speeding back up, and when her refrigerator suddenly starts moving on its own, the real nightmare begins. An agressive fridge with a mind of its own sounds Monty Python-esque when you first hear about it, but trust me, you won't be laughing by the end of the movie. One review I read said that the movie not only pulls the rug out from under you, it drags you and the rug down a long flight of stairs into a very dark basement. Another reviewer compared the experience of watching the film to a drug, and that's not too far off the mark either. Whenever a character gets high, there's a slam-bang fast cut montage of the same images over and over; a sigh, a pupil dilating, cells changing color. The scenes where Sarah hallucinates are pretty close to the real thing. The description I probably agree with most came from Darren Aronofsky himself-he compared the film to a jump from a plane without a parachute, and the movie ends three minutes after you hit the ground. The last few minutes that show the gruesome, depressing, worst-case-scenario fates of all 4 characters are just as intense, hard to watch, and nightmarish as I heard they were. I don't think I will ever forget Harry's mother's transformation from a harmless, plump, friendly older woman to someone so frightening looking that people cringe away in fear and revulsion at the sight of her. My only complaints would be that I wish it were longer, with more time for character development. I would have liked more scenes of what these people and their lives were like before they were addicts, as well as their relationships with each other. The cast is great- Wayans shows that he has the most range and talent of the Wayans bros- I laughed so hard at him in Don't Be A Menace that I ended up buying it, but here...wow. I would have liked to see more of his character. I never liked Leto much before, but he is excellent and also almost unrecognizable (he said he dropped 1/5 of his weight for the role and boy does it show). Connelly I disliked so much before that I would actively avoid seeing movies she was in, but I was very impressed and convinced that she can act. Burstyn gives the performance of a lifetime- not only convincing, but she was dedicated enough to let the filmmakers make her look like absolute and total hell, which many actresses over 50 would probably not be brave enough to do. Not recommended if you're easily shocked, squeamish, or upset. If you only like movies that take you to a happy place, stay away. Everyone who left the movie theater looked like they had just been hit over the head with a very large board. And we were all people who knew what we were getting into. Recommended for those who want to see a movie that will completely overtake you and involve you emotionally. In addition, this film should be required viewing for everyone in the fashion industry that supported and glorified that whole 'heroin chic' crap. Also a good movie if you are having some problems in your life and want to put them in perspective VERY fast.
Rating:
Summary: This film will flay your soul...
Review: Aronofsky has created in Requiem for a Dream one of the most harrowing, disturbing visions I have ever seen, but how it drips beauty and mastery. It is a testament to how a harsh and distributing truth *is* beautiful, specifically because it is true. All of the acting is superb, and Aronofsky's vision as a director has only sharpened since Pi. Quick edits, cuts, perspective views combine with a soundtrack that screams and sings along with the visuals to beat your defenses down, to re-sensitive you and make you feel. It's a masterwork, and if Aronofsky makes nothing else at all his work will still be remember by those who see this film. This film is not for the weakhearted. If you cannot see a 'feel-bad movie' and believe that evil not seen, not heard, and not spoken is not there, then this film will destroy you. But if you are one who desires to try to see the whole world, shadow and light, then you must see this film. It will hurt you, and you may not even be stronger for it. But it's beautiful, and I haven't seen much beauty like this.
Rating:
Summary: Mind-Blowing!
Review: After viewing "Requiem for a Dream" I sat for about 5 minutes in the theatre, totally numb. I couldn't even move. This movie absolutely ripped me inside out. Ellen Burstyn's acting blew me away (if she doesn't get the Oscar for her performance, the Acadamy may be getting a letter from me). I barely recognized Jared Leto, and Marlon Wayans' performance really impressed me. Aronofsky's directing style is so beautiful and so gut-wrenchingly realistic that this film is far more profound than any other film I have seen. I felt so empty and so deeply saddened after this movie that I can't believe I liked it so much. The last scene just moved me to tears. I have to see it again!
Rating:
Summary: A GUT-WRENCHING, MIND-BLOWING DESCENT INTO HELL
Review: Move out of the way, Lynch. Time to retire, Cronenberg. Gilliam, take some major notes. Darren Aronofsky has proven himself as a force to be rekoned with. An amazing second effort, in so many ways: art direction, cinematography, editing, painstaking attention to detail...this man's work is perfect in each and every frame. With tremendous respect, Ellen Burstyn should simply be handed the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe right at this moment. Why wait. There isn't any other performance that has or will ever come close to hers. She is incredible. What an amazing woman. Run, don't walk to ge see this film.
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