eXistenZ
by David Cronenberg
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DVD details
Actor: Don McKellar, Ian Holm, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Willem DafoeDirector: David Cronenberg
Producer: David Cronenberg
Writer: David Cronenberg
Producer: Andras Hamori
Producer: Bradley Adams
Producer: Damon Bryant
Producer: Michael MacDonald
Producer: Robert Lantos
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Dimension
DVD Reviews of eXistenZ
DVD Review: Cronenberg after Dead Ringers?
Summary: 2 Stars
All you need to see from Cronenberg is his films through the film Dead Ringers. He created a unique genre of horror films, many of which remain a masterpiece to this day(The Fly), (Dead Zone), however, all of his work after the 80's, just like John Carpenter, seems very uninspired. This film is not horrible, its just boring and predictable. DVD Review: Highly underrated David Cronenberg movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
In the future, a special technological and biological achievement has been created called "eXistenZ" which is an organic living cybernetic thing that taps people into a virtual reality video game universe that makes them escape from reality. An inventor woman named Allegra (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who created ExistenZ has been targeted for assassination but lucky for her, a security guard named Ted (Jude Law) saves her and must try everything in his power to protect her. However the two must play the game of ExistenZ as they are in a special artificially created world that feels real soon becomes a dangerous game of life and death.
Underrated futuristic Sci-fi/horror/action thriller from famed Canadian director David Cronenberg ("Scanners", "The Fly", "Videodrome" and "History of Violence"). The film co-stars Ian Holm, William Dafoe, and Sarah Polly as it offers an interesting yet smart storyline with bizarreness and of course some neat special effects. It's a gory yet action packed thrill-ride that came out during the same time as "Matrix" in 1999 yet it's almost as good as that movie but it's more of a long awaited semi follow-up to his masterpiece "Videodrome" in the traditional sense. Howard Shore who is also collabrated on Shore's films (Except "Dead Zone") does a fine score in this movie and there's good performances with ideas that make this one of David Cronenberg's most overlooked movies that has gained cult status.
This DVD has only one extra and it's the trailer but that's ok it's still great as it is.
Also recommended: "Tron", "Videodrome", "Scanners", "Blade Runner", "Akira", "Total Recall", "The Running Man", "Vanilla Sky", "V For Vendetta", "Minority Report", "The Fly (1986)", "The Matrix Trilogy", "The Animatrix", "Ghost in The Shell 1 & 2", "Children of Men".
DVD Review: Awful Offal
Summary: 1 Stars
This movie is aimed at juveniles who want to scream "EWWW!" at every other scene.
Whole movie goes like this: Guy takes a mutant frog, cuts it open, plays with its guts. They do some version of this over and over, ad nauseam, through the entire movie.
I got suckered into buying it because of the glowing reviews and promise of a twist ending. The "twist ending" was exactly what you would expect from a movie about being inside a video game.
DVD Review: An experiment that somehow made it to film and now relegated to Cinemax at 5:00 on a Monday and this DVD.
Summary: 3 Stars
Watch it on Cinemax at 5:00 AM on a Monday morning or buy this DVD if you want to watch this strange digest of other film concepts.
The cast seems like the A-List of 1999 who happened to be in between other studio projects and dropped in on this film to just hang out and do a movie.
First year acting school students are given improvisational assignments to convince the audience an inert object like a coffee mug or the recalcitrant professors ball point pen are a meaningful object and have to interact and portray that object as a significant story element.
Jude Law and JJLeigh seem to replicate a better acting school exercise as they carefully cultivate and protect the "Game Pods" which are organic looking cybernetic storage devices which are just latex movie props from John Carpenter and Alien movies the studio didn't want to throw away just yet.
So, they built a film around the characters who use the GamePods as a portal to a Matrix like reality where they jump in and out of multiple sub realties in a life like game without a real or even stated goal just like EverQuest that encases other mini-realities like Virtuosity until the viewer becomes more annoyed than intrigued. Later, there are the revealing true realities like the end scene of Jacobs Ladder until you realize it is another double cross.
You likely won't notice this because you'll either stop watching this film or your TV will be broken by whatever heavy object you've flung at it in an attempt to abruptly relieve yourself from this waste of time impersonating a movie.
The special effects are nonexistent beyond blood squibs under the actors shirts to simulate gun shot and there is a semi-steamy love scene with Jude Law and JJL that includes some chest fondling but none of her trademark nudity that makes her films bearable sometimes.
DVD Review: eXinstenZ
Summary: 5 Stars
[Existenz [IMPORT]Forget "The Matrix". Now, really forget it. It's a different movie. "eXistenZ" lives in a world, or really nested realities, all its own. Cronenberg is a master of mixing up reality with non-reality and physical with non-physical. I think one of the beauties of "eXistenZ" is the ugliness of the Virtual Reality world created by Geller's (Jennifer Jason-Leigh) half-mutant amphibian/half plastic game pod. The icky porting into it with an umbilical cord into the spinal column is so Cronenberg. I liked the way he had the characters (and us) believing they were out of the game when they were still in it... those pesky nested realities. It does harken back to some of Philip K. Dick's visionary short stories, as well as Cronenberg's own "Videodrome" (especially with the "Death to..." sequence). I also liked the use of some of Canada's best actors who have since become more well known, such as Don McKellar, Callum Keith Rennie (by way of Sutherland, England), and Sarah Polley. In fact, Cronenberg played a character in Don McKellar's 2000 film, "Last Night", which also starred McKellar, Rennie, and Polley, not to mention Sandra Oh. I liked the way some of the characters in the Virtual Reality did not respond unless they were fed the correct line. That was brilliant, and I have not seen that done anywhere before or since. I also liked the gun made out of a jawbone that fired teeth for bullets. Cronenberg is brilliant. Take a pop over the Amazon's sister site, IMDb.com, and look at Cronenberg's filmography. There isn't a bad apple in the bunch, and you would do well to watch them all. "Naked Lunch" and "Dead Ringers" are just two out of many that would stand out if you liked "eXistenZ".
Description of eXistenZ
Exciting stars Jennifer Jason Leigh (DOLORES CLAIBORNE), Jude Law (GATTACA), and Willem Dafoe (SPEED 2, AFFLICTION) challenge the boundaries of reality in this futuristic, critically acclaimed adventure thriller! During the first closed-door demonstration of an amazing new virtual reality game called eXistenZ, the system's brilliant designer, Allegra Geller (Leigh), is violently attacked by a crazed assassin intent on killing her and destroying her creation! Forced to flee into hiding, Allegra enlists a young assistant (Law) to help her in testing the damaged system ... by convincing him to join her inside eXistenZ! The action then explodes as their world's real-life dangers begin to merge with the fantasy of the game! If you're ready to play, it's now your turn to plug into this powerfully entertaining hit!Director David Cronenberg's eXistenZ is a stew of corporate espionage, virtual reality gaming, and thriller elements, marinated in Cronenberg's favorite Crock-Pot juices of technology, physiology, and sexual metaphor. Jennifer Jason Leigh is game designer Allegra Geller, responsible for the new state-of-the-art eXistenZ game system; along with PR newbie Ted Pikul (Jude Law), they take the beta version of the game for a test drive and are immersed in a dangerous alternate reality. The game isn't quite like PlayStation, though; it's a latexy pod made from the guts of mutant amphibians and plugs via an umbilical cord directly into the user's spinal column (through a BioPort). It powers up through the player's own nervous system and taps into the subconscious; with several players it networks their brains together. Geller and Pikul's adventures in the game reality uncover more espionage and an antigaming, proreality insurrection. The game world makes it increasingly difficult to discern between reality and the game, either through the game's perspective or the human's. More accessible than Crash, eXistenZ is a complicated sci-fi opus, often confusing, and with an ending that leaves itself wide open for a sequel. Fans of Cronenberg's work will recognize his recurring themes and will eat this up. Others will find its shallow characterizations and near-incomprehensible plot twists a little tedious. --Jerry Renshaw
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