Morvern Callar
List Price:
Our Price: $11.65
You Save: $13.34 (53%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $8.41 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Dolly Wells, Kathleen McDermott, Linda McGuire, Ruby Milton, Samantha MortonDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Palm Pictures / Umvd
DVD Reviews of Morvern Callar
DVD Review: An unusual dark mix of a movie
Summary: 4 Stars
I had never heard of this film before but it came up under the 'Customers Who Bought this all Item Also Bought...' suggestions on Amazon, so I decided to give it a try.
Morvern Callar is a dark, minimalistic and dare I say, cheap-budget, kind of film. However, this by no means detracts from what is a rather unusual and entertaining 93 minutes. The plot follows Morvern, an English 21 year old who lives in a small Scottish seaside town. Her boyfriend commits suicide and leaves her instructions to post off the manuscript of his novel to London publishers. She does so and attracts a 100K offer - however what she omitted to tell them was that she deleted her dead boyfriend's name and replaced it with her own on the front page. This is all incidental to her not actually burying him either - instead she eventually dumps him in the bath, then chops him up and buries him in a field. Dark...? Yes. Unusual...? Absolutely.
Around half of the film is also set in Spain - as instead of following his instructions to take the ?3,800 from his bank account to bury him, she decides to blow the money on a holiday with her friend, a co-worker from the local supermarket. Here they stay at a cheap budget hotel and party into the small hours, before Morvern decides that they should go trekking through the remote countryside among the cacti and donkeys.
I enjoyed this film. It's a bit of a slow starter and has an unorthodox feel to it - a sort of unusual dark comedy with serious undertones. The music is also a bit different - for example, there are contributions from artists that were getting a lot of press in the NME around the turn of the century for their melancholy electronic output, such as Stereolab, Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada.
Overall, watchable, different and mildly amusing in places. If you enjoy this, there's also an original book and an accompanying movie soundtrack.
DVD Review: Morvern is a hero most Americans won't appreciate--no spoilers review
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't get the negative reviews for "Morvern Callar." I can understand why many won't like this film--but I can't understand why they watched it. You can tell what kind of film it is right off the bat. Don't their DVD players have OFF switches?
Here's who should watch it:
(1) people who appreciate great acting--Samantha Morton is amazing;
(2) people who realize that the choices available to middle class, college educated Americans are not the choices available to lower working class Scots living in a stratified society where your accent is your destiny. Think "My Fair Lady" except Eliza Doolittle never met Professor 'iggins and had to make her way on her own, only set in the 1990s, only the UK hasn't changed that much in this regard;
(3) people who don't require Hollywood production values, special effects sequences, and artificially flavored happy endings;
(4) people who are prepared to admire Morvern for using everything at her disposal to cope with the rotten hand life dealt her.
I'd be honored to know someone like Morvern, inarticulate working-class bloke that she is. Her educated artistic boyfriend saw something in her that isn't obvious at the beginning--except that she's reasonably attractive. What's inside her is slowly revealed through the course of the movie, which will only seem aimless to those who want to be lead by the hand, like Hollywood is only too happy to do.
My spouse thoroughly disapproved of this movie and Morvern's life choices, and I haven't been able to change her mind. So I understand how appalled some will be at this movie, even some who have been exposed to hundreds of interesting films from all over the world. But though Morvern's no saint and doesn't pretend to be, I approve of her actions in the context in which they occur.
My own father only had a 7th grade education, so perhaps I'm in a better position to understand the working poor. There's so much we take for granted.
For me the high point of the film is a scene in which she's negotiating with two publisher's representatives. She's waaay over her head and bloody well knows it, but she's also plucky and resourceful, and watching her navigate these waters, continually at the brink of disaster, is both wonderful to watch and a wonder of magnificent, mostly wordless acting on Samantha Morton's part. This is a scene I'd show to acting classes.
I'd also use this if I were trying to teach people what "middle class" and "lower class" mean existentially.
Lastly, I know of no other film like this. It doesn't remind me of anything else except perhaps Kurosawa's version of "The lower depths." But that's a stretch.
See "Morvern Callar" if you're honestly prepared to visit the life of someone who absolutely is not from your world.
DVD Review: Credit for acting but not for much else
Summary: 2 Stars
The cast is quite good in this film, and perhaps some of the music, but the rest of it is unfocused, plodding, and trying to look artsy and mesmerizing by having no sound at all in the early scenes and then showing the main character examining twigs or windows or other things, as if it were meaningful to do so.
It's also impossible to be interested in the protagonist, who disposes of her suicidal boyfriend's body after leaving it in their flat for a while so she can go out and party for the sake of distraction. Then she replaces his name on his novel with hers, gets it accepted and gets the money and credit that should have gone to him.
Later, she drags her best friend out of a hotel in Spain, gets them lost in the wilderness and then abandons her pal.
Sheesh!
DVD Review: Trainspotting minus plot, with truncated songs
Summary: 1 Stars
Let's skip my usual ostentatious introductory paragraph this time and get right to the heart of the matter -- or rather lack thereof, because Good Lord, I just cannot say enough awful things about this movie.
Let's start with the plot. It opens with a dead body in an apartment and that, honestly, is the MOST EXCITING PART OF THE ENTIRE MOVIE. To save you time, here is a complete and total spoiler of this film: vapid semi-attractive mannequin's boyfriend commits suicide, leaving her money for funeral, a novel he wrote, and a mixtape. She publishes his novel as her own, disposes of the corpse, uses money to go to Ibiza with her equally horrible best girlfriend, and sporadically fast-forwards through the lovingly-crafted mixtape the whole while.
That's it! No resolution, no moral, no point whatsoever. It's like MTV Spring Break with Scottish people. In fact the only redeeming part of the film is the soundtrack, which is used so haphazardly and with such severe editing that you may as well be listening to a Negativland album.
Artsy-fartsy types will laud the film for its cinematography. I'm sorry, but if I want long, ponderous shots of random nonsense, I'll watch Baraka, which at least TRIES to have some sort of depth and sincerity; Morvern Callar has neither of these attributes, and in fact seems to regard them with abject scorn and mockery.
I gave up an hour into this movie, because I honestly DON'T CARE HOW IT ENDS. If this is the sort of garbage Warp Records is willing to license their music to, the underground is in bad shape, jack.
DVD Review: Sucked, really. SPOILERS BELOW, but who cares?
Summary: 2 Stars
I would not recommend the purchase of this movie. Why would you let a dead loved one's body lay on the floor for days and just step over it? They never showed Morvern doing any drugs, but I'm sure she had to be on something the way she acted. What normal person chops their lover up and buries them without contacting anyone who might have wanted to know that he was dead.
Was i the only one waiting for Morvern and her "friend" to have sex?
I regret buying this movie.
Description of Morvern Callar
Eerie, morbid, yet somehow life-affirming, Morvern Callar stars the superb Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) as the title character, a young Scottish woman whose boyfriend has just killed himself, leaving behind a cassette of assorted songs and an unpublished novel. Instead of reporting his death, Morvern puts her name on his novel before sending it off to a publisher, then uses the dead man's bank card to pay for a trip to Spain with her friend Lana (Kathleen McDermott), where she tries to lose herself in sensation and chaos. The events of Morvern Callar suggest a story, but director Lynn Ramsay (Ratcatcher) focuses on moments of ambiguity and ambivalence in between the dramatic action--and when Morvern does take decisive action, her choices are unnerving. The movie's striking images and rich use of color vividly capture a dislocated state of mind, when life has come unmoored from meaning. --Bret FetzerUnited Kingdom DVDs
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Bestsellers in United Kingdom DVDs
The InheritanceBAXTER,MEREDITH; Release date: 2004-12-07; DVD
Best price: $3.13
Price in other shops:
Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient ExpressPARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2004-09-07; DVD
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Les Miserables: The 10th Anniversary Dream Cast in Concert at London's Royal Albert HallWARNER HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2008-02-19; DVD
Best price: $20.97
Price in other shops:
PersuasionSONY PICTURES HOME ENT; Release date: 2000-02-01; DVD
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops:
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Widescreen Edition)WARNER HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2007-12-11; DVD
Best price: $6.45
Price in other shops:
Pride & PrejudiceKNIGHTLEY,KEIRA; Release date: 2006-02-28; DVD
Best price: $12.15
Price in other shops:
Sense & Sensibility (Special Edition)Sony Pictures Home ENT; Release date: 1999-08-24; DVD
Best price: $5.60
Price in other shops:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Special Edition)Sony Pictures Home ENT; Release date: 2001-10-23; DVD
Best price: $6.48
Price in other shops:
![A Clockwork Orange [Blu-ray] Image](/images/A-Clockwork-Orange-Blu-ray-B000Q678OO-X.jpg)
A Clockwork Orange [Blu-ray]Warner Brothers; Release date: 2007-10-23; Blu-ray
Best price: $9.48
Price in other shops:
![2001: A Space Odyssey [Blu-ray] Image](/images/2001-A-Space-Odyssey-Blu-ray-B000Q66J1M-X.jpg)
2001: A Space Odyssey [Blu-ray]WARNER HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2007-10-23; Blu-ray
Best price: $8.97
Price in other shops:
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
![Hunger [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ] Image](/images/Hunger-NON-USA-FORMAT-PAL-Reg-2-Import-United-Kingdom-B002A6JA80-X.jpg)
Hunger [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]DVD
Best price: $21.99
Yi Yi - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2006-07-11; DVD
Best price: $23.99
Price in other shops:
In AmericaDVD
Best price: $1.66
Tropical MaladyRelease date: 2005-11-01; DVD
Best price: $11.99
Price in other shops:
Cach?DVD
Best price: $12.99
My Summer of LoveUniversal; Release date: 2005-10-04; DVD
Best price: $4.85
Price in other shops:
The Beat That My Heart SkippedGenius; Release date: 2005-11-22; DVD
Best price: $1.55
Price in other shops:
Red RoadRelease date: 2007-08-28; DVD
Best price: $9.48
Price in other shops:
Morvern Callarby Alan Warner
Anchor; Published: 1997-02-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.32
Price in other shops:
![Ratcatcher [Region 2] Image](/images/Ratcatcher-Region-2-B0000AV3G7-X.jpg)
Ratcatcher [Region 2]DVD
Best price: $6.23