LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

andrew73249 Safe is about Carol, a woman struggling with her hollow existence as a wealthy suburban housewife. Although the movie, which was made in 1995, is set in 1987, there doesn't appear to be any significance to this. The central concern of the film is Carol's mysterious, possibly psychosomatic illness, which serves as a wonderfully ambiguous metaphor for her emotional and intellectual malaise; nobody, including Carol, can quite put her finger on what's wrong. She just knows that something isn't right.While "best film of the decade" is a fairly ludicrous pronouncement (does anyone really think Safe is better than, for example, Schindler's List?), the film is indeed a hauntingly beautiful portrait of spiritual bankruptcy in contemporary America. Despite this, I found that Safe was, perhaps intentionally, itself hollow at the core. It simply didn't have anything interesting to say about such a big, important topic. One could argue that it is not the job of the film to supply answers or even an easily-digestible plot, but the almost complete lack of narrative drive, dramatic tension, and penetrating insight ultimately left me cold, and quite honestly, bored stiff. By contrast, American Beauty (1999), a roughly contemporaneous film with a roughly similar subject, also has nothing to say, but at least does so in an entertaining, over-the-top style.The latter half of the film depicts Carol's experiences at a New Age retreat called Wrenwood, where she attempts to find the solutions to her problems. Unlike many viewers, I did not interpret Wrenwood as a cure that is worse than the disease. In fact, almost everything said by the guru Peter and his underlings is, as far as I can tell, consistent with widely-accepted, scientifically-validated ideas, such as Mindfulness. The exception is some of the more questionable statements about and practices surrounding "chemicals" and the immune system, but nothing remotely equivalent to "psychological fascism," which is how one high profile review of Safe termed it.At any rate, the movie does seem to imply that life at Wrenwood for Carol is as empty as life in the suburbs, and her condition does not appear to improve. Particularly painful to watch, due in no small part to Julianne Moore's flawless performance, is a birthday scene at Wrenwood that serves as a climax of sorts. In that scene, Carol struggles to articulate the beliefs of the cabal, with the words as hollow as those in discussions with her vapid friends back in suburbia. The final shot in Safe, reminiscent of the final shot in The Graduate (1967), is a masterpiece of ambiguity, perhaps implying there is hope for Carol if she can find it within herself, but then again, maybe not.I can't help but notice the similarities of Carol's journey to that of the protagonist in Hermann Hesse's classic novel Siddhartha. The protagonist in the book feels empty, tries various means to fill the void, including materialism and organized religion, and eventually finds peace through the hard-won development of a very personal perspective on himself, his life, and his place in the universe. By analogy, the plot in Safe would be like the novel's plot if it followed the protagonist through his life until it simply stopped in the middle of another failed attempt at finding meaning. It's certainly a journey, and perhaps a realistic one. However, it would be deeply unsatisfying, and would make me question the value in even reading the book in the first place. That's how Safe felt to me. Perhaps there is great value is simply calling attention to the issues, depicting the toll it takes on a woman, and doing so with compassion, honesty, and artistic skill. On that level, Safe certainly succeeds.

faidwnasgk One of the most important figures of modern independent American cinema, Todd Haynes is widely known mostly for his music-based projects ( ''Velvet Goldmine'', ''I'm not there'', ''Superstar : the Karen Carpenter story'' and the videoclip for Sonic Youth's ''Disappearer'' ). But it's 1995's ''Safe'' that, although not related to music ( except for the amazing soundtrack ), stands out as his greatest work by far - and that is because it proves once more something that seems paradox at first glance : that the most ''anti-American'' culture that we've known so far, is the American culture itself.Carol White ( Julianne Moore in the greatest moment of her multifarious career ) is a bourgeois housewife that leads a peaceful and safe ( motif that obviously repeats itself several times throughout the film ) life with her husband and her adopted son in their luxurious house. Her daily routine is limited to aerobic classes, choosing the right color for the new sofa and having healthy meals with the rest of the good housewives - her friends. While the story unfolds she goes through some crises that look like epileptic and she starts believing more and more that its due to the effects of the environmental disaster, like the infected air she breathes in the city, or the chemical products she consumes on daily basis - and that's enough with the synopsis cause I already gave away a lot.Judging from all the above, someone would imagine that this is just a film with eco-friendly messages and indeed, this is the impression that the viewer gets around halfway through the film. Sure, the emotional emptiness of her family routine and her materialistic way of life has been made clear so far, but until then her emotional crisis doesn't seem to connect to the environmental crisis in any convincing way. The viewer is trying to connect the pieces, completely unsuspected about what's coming up next - and be sure that it's going to shake and flutter you like few other movies do.The ideology that dominates the world right now, not only in the US of course but globally, has too many aspects and the environmental crisis is only a small part of its effects in the social life - also in the film, it's going to be proved that the ecological extension is just an excuse. What really matters here is the basis upon which this ideology is build, meaning everything that feeds it and promotes on a daily basis ''from below'' : the path of individualism and family alienation from society create the need for safety from everything that threats to shake the peaceful life of the proud ''civilian'' - and that's exactly what Carol is. A low-profile, exemplary, law-abiding citizen that minds her own business and that once in a while ''breaks'' the routine by drinking tea with lemon at her friends' or trying a perm for a change. However, she's completely helpless fulfilling her need for emotional contact and, in what seems a huge step for her from what we've known so far, she decides to change her way of life drastically. Convinced that the root of all her problems is the exhaust gas of the big city, she cages herself in an even more limited environment, a strictly closed society that promises peace and serenity to her. ''We are safe, and all is well in our world'' teaches the new ''alternative'' mentor and he warns her that she is the sole responsible for everything that spoils her peace - and that is because ''she doesn't love herself too much''. Carol is willing to believe anything to find a cure, but her new cage is as deadlock as the previous one, only this time human contact is restricted by rules. The shockingly ironic last scene still haunts me every time I walk alone in the dark.

chaos-rampant How to exemplify that Reagan's sun when he promised morning again in America was really a toxic sun, toxic for the soul, this is all the foreground you're going to need here. The film opens in '87, three years after that promise, in a sunny suburb somewhere in south California, and it's reasonable to assume this couple, with their spacious home, their well-kept garden, their ample free time, is one of many who were soothed by that promise, the promise to have a Dream, into a kind of comfortable sleep.Todd Haynes has the benefit of building upon Lynch, which is to say the option of discarding in hindsight the sexual darkness of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, the film opens to that effect with the woman having bland, passionless sex. This is how far sleep has numbed the senses, even desire is deadened and the nightmare has diffused into the very air itself, the smoggy air of Los Angeles.This is given to us as the woman developing some sort of allergic response to her surroundings, but the point is that we cannot know where evil is flowing from into the world, we just can't. Is it car fumes, the hair-dresser's chemicals, something off the new teal sofa they have ordered? Or is the mind conjuring the illness as the desperate means of making known the extent of the damage inside? Is it stifled instincts, stifled for too long? The point remains though, that life keeps breaking down on us and for no apparent reason, this satisfied life that should have been alright.Observant viewers will be able to link her response with the barely audible static on the soundtrack that continuously hums beneath dull day-to-day life. It is the mind humming to some malevolent tune of the fabricated world.This is taken to be resolved in a remote New-Age commune, out in the clear air somewhere in the countryside. Now we've been accustomed, ever since the Beatles traipsed all the way to India to be scammed by spiritual gurus, to view this sort of therapy as fundamentally crooked, but the leader gives some solid advice; quiet mind, beauty cultivated inside, clarity, all that Japanese gardening for the soul. At the same time, he advocates an almost paranoid retreat from the world, is complacent and satisfied, and we're shown his luxurious house that overlooks the otherwise spartan retreat. No, something is wrong here as well, and the filmmaker is smart enough to barely hint at merely another kind of toxic environment that sells peace of mind.Now so far the film's power is rhythm and pulse from the heart of this woman as she tries to cope with it herself; slow, dissipating, tiredness, plus ambiguous response to unsatisfactory reality. The husband is bland and selfish but is not a caricature, which would have significantly cheapened the thing. Nothing has been really subtle but evokes its own time and space.You have to wait till the end for the formative mechanism that gives rise to this clouded mind, the masterful touch is all Julianne's and carried alone before a mirror.Of course each patient has given his own reasons for his illness, but this one we have followed close. She finally encounters her own mirror image in that artificial womb of a room, and does she look at a real self looking to see a real image, warts and all, or does she soothe herself with another dream, another promise for morning again? This is the thing that got the ball rolling, ever since Reagan's ad one morning on TV; it would all be alright, you just had to trust someone else.Julianne Moore completely erases any presence of herself in the process, truly outstanding work.

PWNYCNY This movie dramatizes the plight of the hypochondriac, a person who sincerely believes that he or she is physically ill although all empirical evidence indicates the exact opposite. A person has a cough, or a headache or some other somatic problem yet a physically examination reveals no problem. What is a person to think or do? Okay, then is it the environment that is making the person sick? That leads to more frustration as those in charge of the environment claim that everything is fine, that nobody else is getting sick, only that one person, so therefore the problem must be psychological. By this time the person is frantic, can no longer function and then really becomes mentally ill. This is the theme of this movie. How is one to cope in an increasingly polluted environment that literally makes you sick but nobody really believes that you are really sick?What is one to do when they sick, really sick, yet there is no empirical evidence to suggest the presence of a health problem? Is it all merely psychosomatic? That is, is just in one's head? That is is the them of this provocative movie. Our environment is filled with thousands of chemicals the exposure to which cannot be avoided. Yet what is one to do when exposure to these chemicals effects one's health? How can one effectively cope? As movie so effectively shows, there are few if any viable options. For instance, what are you to do when at the workplace you have an adverse reaction to the chemicals in a detergent used to mop the floors? Stop working? Go home? Quit the job? Complain? Stop breathing? And then there is the question of whether you may be overreacting or is a hypochondriac. This movie dramatizes the plight of those who become sick as a result of exposure to chemicals.