Customer Reviews

Felicia's Journey [VHS]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I really think this is one of the best movies to come along in years. It is mysterious, creepy, and alarming but somehow it is also funny, endearing, and charming. How did the director combine so many different moods in one movie? This movie is a character development and mood type movie, not a plot type, so don't expect your typical American blood and guts killer type movie! Many people will not like this movie because they are so conditioned to nonstop action. This movie gives you time to reflect and enjoy the intriguing vivuals and eerie sound track. I loved it!

This film was beautifully made, and the music is beautiful, too. Director Atom Egoyan's twist of the TV chef mother really adds some cinematic taste to the movie, though it does seem to confuse the story and the formation of Hilditch's personality. The ending is good. Personally, I think it is better than in the book. Bob Hoskins' performance is superb! This movie is a must-see only for his performance. I wonder why he was not even nominated for the Oscar. This reminds me of another mystery in 1987 when Hoskins swept almost every award with his performance in Neil Jordan's "Mona Lisa", then lost in the Oscar to Paul Newman's "The Color of Money"? Elaine Cassidy (Felicia) is a novice in film making, but surely not a novice in acting. She is great in the movie, too.

Well, I have to say, I watched this movie in a rather unusual way. A few weeks ago, on TV, I saw the very ending (about the last 5 minutes) and I thought, "Egad, what IS this movie about?" Well, now I just finished watching it again only this time,from the beginning. (I just happened upon it while channel surfing.)

I have to say Hoskins is brilliant. I can't imagine any other actor doing any better than he in this role. You are convinced he is totally "off the track" as you see him preparing those impressive convoluted meals while watching hid dead mother's cooking show re-runs.

As he manipulates the turkey skin and pierces the trussing needle through the rack of lamb there is no doubt he is full of hate and revulsion for his mother but also filled with an obsession about her for which he has little control.

He is at once, menacing, charming and pathetic and his inner demons are juxtaposed alongside Elaine Cassidy's character's innocence and childlike trusting nature.

I thought the movie was very well done, VERY unusual and a suspenseful thriller in a sort of Hitchcock genre but without the blood and gore.

Where Silence of the Lambs might bang you over the head with its portrayal of a madman, Felicia's Journey is far more quiet but just as deft. Elaine Cassidy is very sharp and sincere as Felicia, and it is her preformance that holds the film together. Hoskin's, on the other hand, handles his character with less ease. He seems a little uneasy with Hilditch, the mother obsessed killer, and in his interview included on the disk, he re-affirms my feeling that he found Hilditch "creepy". So, his portrayal comes off all creepy and less human.

Atom Egoyan is a film maker i never really liked in his early work, witch had too much of a art house stink to them for my taste, but with his recent outings (far more conventional ones) The Sweet Hereafeter and Journey, he has vastly impressed as a fine cinematic storyteller, who never forces the subject upon the viewer. He just presents a good story, in a simple manner, for all those willing to listen and watch.

The DVD is of good quality. Looks great. The extras are fine but negligible. All of the cast interviews are already in the short featurette, save a few brief comments. It would have been better just to make the featurette longer and include the interviews in whole. Hilditch's video collection just offers basically what we see in the movie, only with very annoying black fades breaking up the conversation. A video fast forward or tape break would have looked better than the fades.

Journey by no means breaks new ground in storytelling or subject matter, but it succeeds as a fine tale of a innocent young girl and a deadly man, who both are confused with how to function in this world.

Egoyan's works deal with how we, as humans, deal with the loss of something sacred. In "Exotica", how does on deal with the death of a child, innocence, or a lover? In "Hereafter", we see the same theme explored in another interesting manner. In "Journey", we see it again. In order to appreciate the subtleties for Egoyan's works, you have to appreciate their thematic elements, not to mention his methods of storytelling, as well as his wonderful cinematic eye. "Journey" is a character study in madness, as well as loss. Loss of home, loss of love, loss of innocence. How does one deal with these things? Some must grow up, other must murder. Wonderful acting all around. I highly recommend this film to Egoyan fans and true lovers of extraordinary film. Put your thinking cap on.

Atom Egoyan followed up his masterpiece film "The Sweet Hereafter," with this strange movie about an unusual serial killer. Bob Hoskins gives a great performance as the man whose hobbies are gormet cooking and killing young girls. But he doesn't murder them outright, as young Felica discovers. She's come to his town seeking out the boyfriend who left her. With nowehere to go, she seemingly lucks out when Hoskins offers to allow her to stay at his large house. All of this sounds more intriguing than it ends up being on the screen. Though well acted, the movie moves slowly and ultimately just doesn't amount to all that much. Egoyan's movies are always literate, but this one is so to the point that you start to lose interest. There are no great moving moments like in "The Sweet Hereafter."

Bob Hoskins splendidly plays a serial killer who is also a gourmet chef and manager of a catering service at a large factory. A respected and outwardly very respectable man whose mother was a TV personality chef whose influence has dominated him from childhood.

Into his clutches falls a girl from Ireland pursuing the man who impregnated her and who she thinks is as much in love with her as she with him. The fun of the movie is in watching Hoskins develop her trust to the point where she stays with him in his home.

The story is extremely well developed, a tight, concise study that is gripping from start to finish as we wrestle with the killer's intentions while fearing for his beautiful victim, played by Eileen Cassidy.

The only off-note in this fine art house film is the final resolution where the plausability of the killer's dialogue and actions takes a turn completely inconsistent with the heretofore unerring observation of real human behavior and interaction. Suddenly, what comes out of Hoskin's mouth is anything that serves the writer/director's (Atom Egoyan) misdirection of what was needed for the denouement and finale. He should have given it more thought.

The film, however, is worth seeing for all its other virtues and is highly recommended.

~~ The Filmiliar Cineaste http://variagate.com/movrevue.htm

Despite the mixed to negative reviews this film received, I quite liked it. It wasn't dramatic, considering the subject matter: an isolated middle-aged man who befriends then kills young girls in trouble. Yet I somehow liked that, along with its pace, slow or not; the location shooting and the acting. The book, I think, was set in the mid-70s, and the film doesn't specify an era, so it is realistic in its portrayal of an impregnated Irish girl arriving in England seeking the boyfriend who has helped her get into this condition without leaving her an actual address. Befriended by Bob Hoskins, a caterer suffering from a childhood traumatized by a bullying mother, she finds herself drugged then trapped in his house, which she escapes by chance. That the viewer is clued into what Hoskins does with the girls he befriends via videotapes he has made of them in his car is subtle and effective. Hoskin's character has spent his whole life in the largish house in which he spent his miserable childhood. This, if anything, is the reason why he kills: a solitude relievable only by befriending then trapping people in his car or, like Felicia, his house, disposing of them as they realize the warped mind this man actually possesses.This isn't Egoyan's best film ("The Sweet Hereafter" might be)but it shows that the filmaker's subject matter is diverse and his direction skilled.

Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey is the kind of movie that will make you sit and think about the characters. In the surface and in the promotions, this is a serial killer movie. In reality, it is much more than this. Not only does the movie deal with the plottings of a madman played by Bob Hoskins, but it gives us a window into his past which tries to help us understand what went wrong with this man. Yet we could never completely understand a man like this.

Opposite Hoskins is a very innocent performance by Elaine Cassidy. She plays a naive young lady, looking for her boyfriend. Here, too, we see the pain in her life. Both Hoskins and Cassidy have a horrible mother and father, respectively. The shame in which they grow up in is very important here.

I was less interested in what was going to happen and what did happen than I was in letting Egoyan work his gift as a director. He manages to take this story into disturbing imagery not because of gore or physicality, but for meeting such scarred people, and (in Hoskin's case) their victims in such a visually provacative way.

As I do completely love Elaine Cassidy and count myself among many of her adoring fans...I've asked myself would I like this movie as much if she wasn't in it? The answer is probably not, being truthful...Therefore, speaking strictly as a fan of Ms Cassidy's...I thought Elaine was especially gifted at playing this innocent character. Felicia is a very innocent girl who is walking head on into a very bad situation! This fact had me sitting on the edge of my seat throughout the entire movie. Bob Hoskins was fantastic also. But you know, as demented as his character was. Elaine was equally angelic as her character in contrast. As for me, this dynamic made for one really good thriller! I really cared about what was happening to Felicia...She was so kind, so lost, so trusting...Bob Hoskins on the other hand takes his role to the exact polar opposite end of the human psyche...I hated him, but yet I also felt sorry for him at times...I think this is one of those films you'll either appreciate, or you'll hate it. Because it doesn't offer up american style thrills. Meaning, no special effects, body parts, blood, or gore whatsoever. Which is yet another reason why I loved it...