Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Micransix Crappy film

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

jc-osms I like Nicolas Roeg's films although I don't claim to always "get" or enjoy every minute of them. They're always fantastically shot in a crisp, realistic style, he often pushes back the boundaries, particularly with the censors, and they frequently have scenes which stick long in the memory. However, they often seem to have just as many longueurs, with off-beat characters and non-linear narratives. Maybe I'm the problem...Anyway David Bowie here plays a part which seemed to haunt him for years to come, in the aftermath of the film alone, he used images from the movie for two of his album covers, a 12-inch single sleeve while it also seems to inspire tracks on his "Station To Station", "Low" and "Scary Monsters" albums not to mention the famous "Ashes To Ashes" video. Bowie was at an artistic peak musically although off stage he was hopelessly hooked on cocaine, in fact just watch the contemporary BBC Arena documentary on him, "Cracked Actor" and he looks here as if he's just walked on-set from there. So can he act then...?Well if there was one part he was born to play, it was this one, the alien misfit who conquers the world, but to be honest, while he certainly has a presence, you wouldn't say he was extended much. Looks great though.The film stop-starts its way on his space invader odyssey, as he leaves his family life on Mars (or wherever it is) to start inventing items which quickly become society's new fashion must-haves. He picks up, (or rather she does him) an adoring if simplistic hotel chambermaid and garners a back-up team to make him a vast fortune, his target being to amass enough funds to build a spaceship to take him back home. But something happens on his way to heaven as unsurprisingly, he's abducted by government officials, where he's subjected to excruciating tests which wouldn't be out of place in an animal cruelty lab. Resistance however is futile and the mysterious Mr Newton by the end is a washed-up drunk, still resigning himself to his earth bound fate. In one of the film's most telling lines, he forgives his captor-torturer, as he admits his own race would gave treated a visiting earthling in the exact same way.There's solid back-up to Bowie's central role with a variety of convincingly portrayed stock characters. Roeg pushes the permissive button pretty far here with more than a smattering of nudity in the sex scenes, not ignoring the fact that males frequently get naked too when being intimate. I would still say there were too many scenes which for me played like Bowie's own cut-up method for lyrics at around this time, by which I mean I found them puzzling, strange and unconnected. And why no Bowie soundtrack?Still, an interesting if confounding movie, as strangely addictive in its way as television is to Newton.

dierregi As a Bowie (and SF) fan I had high expectations for this movie. I also read the novel, although I did not find it particularly memorable or inspiring, but hoped for an interesting on screen development. Unfortunately, I found it disappointing many years ago, as I did yesterday evening, when the movie was broadcast by BBC Two, to commemorate what would have been Bowie's 70 birthday.The non-linear plot follows Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien dropped to earth to find water for his dying planet. Despite his superior scientific knowledge, Newton get corrupted by our bad earthlings way and his plan derails miserably.Among the many problems of the film, the biggest for me were: the poor development of the "alien" planet, of which we see only four inhabitants (Newton and his family); the narrative, which is a series of disconnected scenes following the slow deterioration of the Newton character and the annoying jumps in time. All the main characters grow older within 40 minutes, while Newton does not age a minute. This could be because he is an alien, but it certainly does not help to connect with what goes on.Besides, there is plenty of useless nudity and sex scenes. One of the main characters is a horny professor who sleeps around with his students. We get him canoodling with three different girls for no other reason than showing more of the same, when his character was well defined by the first sexual encounter. It is a very "cold" movie and I felt completely disconnected. Bowie conveyed alienation in an almost perfect way, but it is up to the viewer to decide if it is because of his acting skills or to the fact that he was going through the weirdest period of his life and was probably just being himself. Also, rumors of problems with Roeg and uneasiness on set might have contributed to the overall weirdness.

michaelgfalk This is a weird movie, and compelling. David Bowie stars as himself: an alien, fallen to earth, whose moral vision is out of kilter with the humans around him. He is superb. His quietness, timing, movements, and thin otherworldly look are mesmerising. And despite his moral strangeness, he is sympathetic. He is one of the strangest characters in fiction: almost impossible to relate to, and yet constantly evoking our pity.The plot moves in fits and starts. Some moments stretch forever, and then suddenly it races ahead, and we find the same characters thrown together in new relationships. Things seem to be developing in a certain direction, and then suddenly turn and render what went before irrelevant. The whole movie is mysterious. Events are unexplained. Characters' motivations are cryptic. But it is never boring, because it is so suspenseful.It is a poetic movie. Often two or three scenes take place at once, and are spliced with the television Bowie is watching or the things he sees and imagines. Strange images come together. We get a sense of how his mind works, though it is often ambiguous whether all the different things we see are in his mind, or are simply coincidences.I loved this movie, but I found aspects of it less compelling. A subplot develops about the finances of the company Bowie founds, World Enterprises. Like the rest of the film, this subplot is weird, but unlike the rest, it doesn't work. The characters involved are ciphers. Thinking about it the next day, I can begin to see some connections between the subplot and the rest of the movie, but I still feel it was jarring and ill- managed.

Leofwine_draca While I consider myself a fan of director Nicolas Roeg - his WALKABOUT and DON'T LOOK NOW are two of my favourite films - and a fan of David Bowie's music, I didn't think much of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH at all. I don't mind arty films to a degree, but when a film becomes too abstract I tend to lose interest. This sci-fi oddity comes across as more of a collection of beautifully-shot vignettes rather than a real movie, and it suffers as a result.I think this film is trying too hard to be cult and in doing so it ends up alienating the mainstream audience instead. Certainly Bowie is effective as the alien visiting Earth, and you find it hard to think of anyone else who'd be as believable in the part, but what happens? There are endless, tastefully-shot sex scenes with Rip Torn and the like, some bad guys sitting around in their offices, and lots of surreal stuff. It's hardly THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. The cinematography is excellent as you'd expect, but I found this to be an incredibly hollow experience overall.