Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

info-5178 Hmm, what a fab. movie. Just caught this flick at a film festival and let me tell you it is one dame fine movie. Sitting thru the opening scenes I must admit that I thought that it was going to be total @#!&*, but it soon got going. Being involved in the "entertainment" industry I did feel a connection with this film. The acting was superb, the general production values good, although the hand-held camera work did occasionally get on my nerves.It was quite strange actually, the start of the movie (opening credit sequences) seemed to go on for ever, and the credits that would normally be put at the end were put at the start. Anyway, I think if people can get thru the first 15 minutes, they will see the film for what it is.Great character performances, great story and subject matter. Think an "arthouse" version of "The Player.Just ordered this on DVD from the UK. MUST SEE!

Framescourer Based on a Tolstoy novel, Bernard Rose's satire on the ephemera of Hollwood is filmed in the hand-held cam style of the Dogme 95 movement of the late 90's. Danny Huston plays an agent who is dead... and then we are shown how he lives and, so, dies.As in Roger Dodger we are treated to a brilliant principal performance from otherwise unknown Danny Huston with his Jack-Nicholson-Joker fixed grin crumbling as his own mortality is brought home to him with quiet diagnosis, using the same euphemism with which he works his deal-making art throughout LA. As in both films there is redemption through a mother figure; unlike Roger Dodger this is a short lived reprieve, and we know that death is the last hand that will be held out to him.The Dogme-techniques give the film a documentary feel which adds both to those scenes which, impressionistically, pan out as if on the drugs Ivan has been taking and also to the real feel of the story. We can afford a little sympathy for the shark. The use of specially 'doubly exposed' productions of the prelude and Liebestod to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde frame the picture and provide a powerful emotional momentum to these poetic and, latterly, ecstatic (xtc?) scenes. However, whilst I was impressed with the impact these made within these two episodes, they are rich oases in a viscerally anaemic film. It's all a little hard to swallow, worth the effort perhaps for its coherence and, notwithstanding the distention of the opening credit sequence and final tableaux it lean storytelling. But the story of a shark storing up wealth on earth rather than in heaven is not new, and there is not enough development of the character that is Ivan to really make one mourn his passing so much as to examine our own behaviour. 6/10

simonveksner Rare to find a film with this much heart and integrity, especially one about the 'insider' world of Hollywood.Brilliant performances too. And humour.The death of Ivan Beckman is the most moving death I've ever seen on celluloid. And the guy's a Hollywood agent!Some really fresh touches in the way it's directed as well.

sibisi73 A realistic, but strangely unmoving, parable of Hollywood excess and life in the fast lane. There is a central performance of great depth and subtlety, yet the rest of the movie felt heartless, overbearing, and obvious. A disturbing experience nonetheless, as it conveys the meaninglessness of life quite beautifully.