Customer Reviews

Slipstream

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

Slipstream is a rare kind of movie. Read the other reviews (not the 1 stars) if you want to get a fairly inclusive overview. What makes Slipstream so special is that it is experienced by the left brain as utter nonsense, but the right brain can catch on. It is possible to "get" this film without being able to say what you got. Isn't that delightful! The scenes are an indecipherable kaleidoscope that gave me a headache on my left side (true); there is a rhythm, rather than logic and a relatedness, rather than linear unfolding. Perhaps this film is even brilliant. If you can bear to be in a state of not-knowing, this movie can work for you. If you enjoy not knowing, if you enjoy not having complete control over your experience, you may thrill at this film. Early on, you'll realize that the "plot" is too complex for it to all come together at the end. So don't wait for it. Instead, let yourself enjoy your bafflement.

By leaving understanding entirely in our hands, the movie presents us with pure possibility. How often can we say that? Even though it was too violent for my taste, I felt exhilarated and inspired. What it left me with: Each of us is in a wildly individual, and often even significantly divergent, experience. What allows us to be related to another's experience is our ability to step out of our unique perspective and recognize the commonly held narrative in which we each have our own experience. I have no idea if the film delivered that or if my firing-furiously-at-novelty neurons invented it, but such is the wonder of this marvel, that I could be left with this delicious insight. What might you find?

The least of Slipstream's virtues are lighting, cinematography, editing that becomes a "character" and Hopkins' ability to get an excellent performance out of his actors. Bravo.

The febrile and fevered mind of a sly screenwriter - Felix Bonhoeffer - is constantly baffled and besieged by personages of the fiction of a play he's writing for the big screen and his tormented past, when these characters intermingle themselves, and appear blended with his memories of the past, acquiring such dimensions of trueness that become a horrid nightmare of undecipherable horror in his alienated mind.

This film made remind to Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote a forceful but descriptive brief tale about "The memory of Shakespeare" (a superb and relatively unknown tale) in which describes the sharp physical tensions into a creative mind in process, as final outcome of a well coveted ambition of any writer. In this sense the sleeping process may work out either liberator device or alienation mechanism. And that's why Hopkins, smartly makes reference to this cult movie "The invasion of the body snatchers", which is (at least to my mind) the most pyramidal science fiction picture ever made in the Fifties. That interesting portrait about alien organisms, that masked into pods are capable to reproduce with absolute fidelity a human being after he has slept.

So these brief interludes of the suspended conscious or the pores of the infiniteness acquire life, being absolutely to distinguish in this ambivalence state what is reality and what `s unreal, will take over the mind of Felix leading to the last frontier of unexplored and even wasteland territories of our memory's labyrinths, carving once more in relief, the demons of the reason produce monsters."

Along the history of cinema, there have been other films that have remarked this process of sudden breakthrough of the reality and the fiction. Paul Wengerer started in 1913 with his anthological film "The student of Prague", in the middle twenties was Murnau with "The last man"; during the thirties "The blue angel", during the forties "Dead of night" ; in the fifties "The seven seal"; in the sixties "Shock corridor" and "Seconds" ; in the seventies "Catch 22" and "Someone flew into the cuckoo's nest" in the in the eighties "The stunt man", "Brazil" and "Altered states", while in the Nineties "Zentropa," "Twelve monkeys" and "Window to Paris."

So, this film is not an easy film to watch. You must keep in mind all these previous references, because otherwise you would be able to stand without understanding this disintegration hell.

A true masterwork!

I love Anthony Hopkins so I thought it was just going to be wonderful. I made myself watch the whole movie just for punishment and I took it out and threw it in the garbage right after it was done....wow that sucked.

As most of you, I am a fan of Anthony Hopkins (unlike most of you I hated Silence of the Lambs as it seemed to me to glorify cruelity)
I started watching this film cold turkey and after 20 minutes, I was thinking "This is the stupidest, dumbest, most irritating pile of crap I have seen" and I turned it it off but out of respect I went to Anthony Hopkins commentary...and like Seinfeld, he admitted it was a filmm "about nothing', he just wanted to play with his imagination...First of all I could listen to him and/or James Earl Jones read the phone book and still love...but he makes some interesting philosophical observations..So it was like having dinner with Mr. Hopkins just 'for the hell of it'
Fun, but I would never watch it again...

Slipstream.
Upon reading the negative reviews of this film I was very keen to see I have to say I became reluctant to do so. Then, I remembered that formulating my opinion based off others was completely and totally irrational. So, I didn't rent or netflix this movie, But i purchased it for the $20.00 USD It was selling for and watched it.
Despite what other reviewers say, Slipstream is a wonderful film. Scattered...yes, Strange...yes and Different? oh yes. Sir Anthony Hopkins wrote, directed, starred, and scored this film. About a writer who slips further into a slipstream of his characters and has trouble distinguishing his characters from reality (in a nutshell)
The result is a brilliantly colorful and absorbing film that gives you an insight to such a gifted actor and takes you on a visual rollercoaster of a profile of a man. Slipstream is worth every penny and is different. It all builds towards something and in the end you understand what is going on. Don't pay attention to the other reviewers.

The directorial and screenwriting debut of one of the world's greatest living actors is by no means an accessible film. While Anthony Hopkins stars in "Slipstream" as well, the thespian has stepped behind the camera to bring us a strangely imaginative cinematic experience.

The film itself makes no sense and is challenging, at times down right frustrating to watch. Though, "Slipstream" is one of those rare storytelling masterpieces about everything without meaning anything. Or perhaps a story about nothing that means everything.

Anthony Hopkins has drummed up what feels like decades of suppressed angst about filmmaking. His writing is full of the energy and guts of a young screenwriter, but with the wisdom of the most seasoned scribes. He has created a slice of cinema for the cinephile; overly rich in its flavors and densely packed with ingredients. If you're a connoisseur of the strange and admirer of Hopkins's demanding presence, like me you will eat it up till the last crumb falls indulgently from your gaping gaze.

You can read my full review here: [...]

...which takes place in the final minutes (or seconds) of a screenwriter's life. This amazing movie documents in stream-of-conciousness manner the merging of a movie script written by one 'Felix Bonhoeffer' (see below why I put quotes) and the reality of an indeterminate period of the writer's life, maybe most of his life. People and places are interchangeable, as are times...it's the final flash of a confused, dying person, just the way we're told that our life flashes before us in our last moments.
A recurring theme throughout the film is the 1950s horror movie, 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', an allegorical film which has had many interpretations; the frightening thing about that film was that you would lose your identity, your mind, and your life to creatures that occupy your physical body after you fall asleep. And we all must sleep, sooner or later. The star of the original film, Kevin McCarthy appears in this film, interacting with Felix from time to time.
An amusing in-joke about the director of the film-within-a-film, Gavin, who has a tyrannical film producer for a brother is that the actor who plays Gavin is Gavin Glazer, who happens to have a famous successful producer for a brother, one Brian Glazer. You don't get to be successful in Hollywood by being a sweetheart, no matter what they say to each other at the Academy Awards.
Another interesting point is that Felix Bonhoeffer is probably not his real name - check the book cover on the table in a later scene - if his last name is Bonhoeffer, then his first name's not Felix, or if his first name IS Felix, then he's just lifted the Bonhoeffer name from the book, whose author has a different first name, or maybe he did write the book, or maybe he didn't; maybe he just bought it. ADDENDUM: the Bonhoeffer name is inspired by Dieter Bonhoeffer, who was a German Luther pastor, and an opponent of the Hitler regime. He was hanged in 1945 due to his involvement in an asassination attempt by the Abwehr in 1943. (And I thought I knew my history trivia...). This explains the periodic flashes of images of Hitler.
This movie is masterfully edited and takes you from one surprise to the next in such a way that it needs to be viewed more than once to absorb it all; it's an incredibly complex script. An interview with Hopkins, (who wrote the script and the incidental music) in the special features section makes it clear that this was a personal project, not expected to have great commercial success, and in this, he was correct. According to Box Office Mojo, the worldwide gross for this film was about 27,000 dollars, which must be some kind of record. I hope DVD sales make more - this deserves to be a genuine cult film, and I think it's probably one of the best movies I have seen for many years.
Just the fact that there are wildly different opinions of this movie should provoke the curiosity of those who seek unconventional movie entertainment!

I love elliptical, even trippy movies. What I can't stand is an aggressive visual style, with shaky cam, flash cuts, 1-frame inserts, random images thrown together. My flicker-fusion threshold is slightly faster than average; I see florescent lights flicker when others don't. I also get sea-sick extremely easily.

This made me sick, and angry. The first 7 minutes are a complete visual assault. I didn't get past them.

This was edited, not by Hannibal Lecter (he has some taste) but by Multiple Miggs in the cell next door.

Just because it's possible to hurt the viewer with these techniques doesn't mean you *should.*

A must to avoid for the sensitive: Or, viewable only with a scopolamine skin-patch and sedation.

update: I gave this a second chance. I found the rest to be as unwatchable as the first part. And, it's not even interesting thematically--life-as-movie? Come on. I don't want to watch actors improvise about How Confusing It All Is.

I'm a big fan of metafiction like Adaptation. This was no Adaptation.

Edgar Allan Poe

After being bombarded with previews for this film over the course of the past three months with whatever film I rented; the catchy Lennox song, the obscure language, and the idea of a dream within a dream all pulled within my mind so long, that "Slipstream" finally found its way into my queue - subsequently into my DVD player. Bravo to the marketing, its constant barrage of previews finally did break through my subconscious and I had to watch this movie. None the less, Sir Anthony Hopkins jumps headfirst into the role of tri-fecta by directing, producing, and also creating the music for this random film that demonstrates the power of editing coupled with free thought. It is a simple story, but the way Hopkins narrates; he easily gives it a voice of his own as well as paying homage to several influential directors. As his wife produces and acts in this film, "Slipstream" transforms before your eyes from a confusing dream to a project of passion. As Hopkins gives you small puzzle piece after puzzle piece, the average viewer will immediately scrunch up their face, wonder where the explosions are, and not give this little gem an opportunity. This is not mainstream cinema. "Slipstream" forces the viewer to use your imagination, listen to the clues, watch the symbolism, and use every part of the brain possible. As this being a film by Anthony Hopkins it was surprising, for this critic, it was even a bigger surprise - "Slipstream" is a cranial film that kept me on the edge of my couch the entire one hour thirty minutes.

We Have Lost the Plot

Where did this film come from? Hopkins said that he had never written a film before, and I must say, this freshman outing hurt my brain more than any other film ever has. It wasn't that it was boring, dull, overly stylish, or cliché, it was just intelligent. There were scenes that just felt more surreal than - shall I say - real? The concept that Hopkins developed, the idea of a dream within a dream, translated well to both being dream-like to even more literally, a film within a film. He built an entire film around a small concept, a poem none-the-less, and he built it sans the big explosions, the linear storytelling, and the overpriced stars. For the first time in my possible review existence, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed a particular scene involving Christian Slater and Jeffery Tambor. Pre-"Slipstream", one could never imagine the two being such a dynamic pair, but their words, their connection between themselves in that one scene was breathtaking. I had to watch it again just to ensure that I understood their language. It was as if Hopkins took a page from Tarantino's playbook with Oliver Stone looking on, that entire "I'm Not a Crook" coupled with the entire Yogi Bear references just sent shivers through my spine. They were phenomenal, and I applaud Hopkins for giving them the words and emotion to create such a superb scene.

This Stone-esque scene was just the beginning of something startling unique. Hopkins creates these scenes further within the film, never quite giving us that full taste of the real plot, but just enough to keep us guessing. This isn't "Remains of the Day" Hopkins or "Silence of the Lambs" Hopkins, this is a film utterly his own. The average viewer will not understand his darkened message about life and existence, but those cinephiles that enjoy challenging films will fall over backwards. Hopkins choice of editor also creates this world with fresh new brush-strokes. At times the jumps are spooky spiced with some brooding foreshadowing, but Hopkins creates a story with the jumps, the editing is a part of the story - choosing to ignore them will inevitably mean that you are missing the destructive nature of the film. "Slipstream" is a mystery; clues are heavily embedded in the language, characters, and choice of editing all created by Hopkins. It reminded me of a bit of "Primer" coupled with "Natural Born Killers", but uniquely Hopkins.

Overall, "Slipstream" came out of nowhere and proved to be an enjoyable hour and a half of unknown Hopkins. Just when you think you know his style, he creates something like this. The editing, the power of his actors (as small as they were), and his choice of language and sound blended a powerful film that will leave you guessing until the final moments - and even then, you may not capture the full scope of his message. This is a challenging film to watch. It isn't you straightforward storytelling or compelling characters, and in fact, Hopkins is only in about half the film. It is the idea of using the tools around you to create a non-linear story based with a film of a film. If that sentence doesn't hurt, than you may not be ready for this film. That isn't to say Hopkins film doesn't have flaws - it isn't perfect - but it was intellectually powerful. This is a thinking-person's film, Hopkins realizes it, but he doesn't talk down to the average viewer. He creates scenes and emotions that literally come out of nowhere, leaving you in the dust asking for more. Again, watch the Slater/Tambor scene to see what I am speaking about - surprisingly - it will knock your socks off!

If this constitutes the new world of Anthony Hopkins, I cannot wait for his second outing. "Slipstream" took me back to an era where challenging cinema didn't go straight to DVD release, but instead found its way into mainstream and finally gave us something to pay nearly $10 for. If you are looking for explosions, scantily clad women, and product placement - go to any summer blockbuster - if you are hunting for something to ensure brain cells are not decaying - see "Slipstream", it impressed me from beginning to end!

Christian Slater/Jeffery Tambor 2008!

Grade: **** ½ out of *****

I rented this movie because of Anthony Hopkins name. Totally disjointed scenes, not entertaining at all. I could not make sense of it, not even at the end. I will watch movies starring AH because he's a great actor, however I won't be tempted to watch another written and directed by him.