A Clockwork Orange
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.80 You Save: $16.18 (65%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.50 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of A Clockwork Orange
Movie Review: My All Time Favorite Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, I will say something that usually only gets said about rock and roll records: you should play this movie loud (and on a good system). It's probably the music that pushes this movie over the top for me, as the Walter Carlos (now Wendy) work is as brilliant as the Jimi Hendrix music of that time period. Secondly, I have read the American version of the book, (also missing the last chapter) and Kubric changed or left out maybe one paragraph per chapter when making this movie. Thirdly, we have some of the most incredible sets I have seen in a movie. I espcially love the scenes of Alex's neighborhood. What, at the time of the filming of the movie, was an ultra modern upper middle class neighborhood, got turned into a trashed out ghetto for the movie. Alex, what a vicious and evil person. But one ends up liking him and identifying with him. For those of you who are disturbed by this fact, consider this: Many of us were out of control during our terrible twos, but then many of our parents over did it when they tried to civilize us. Therefore, many of us are, in some way, shape, or form, the very Clockwork Orange (predictable vegtable) that Alex was turned into.
In fact, Alex is turned into exactly what the bullies that run this real want. Note the stageshow scene, where the bully knocks Ales down and forces his to lick the shoe. If you have ever noticed, the bullies of the world want to be able to do that kind of thing to you, and if you even try to defend yourself, they will shout, "No Fair!" (I liked Al Frankin's recent comments on NPR, where he said that when someone finally got around to hitting the schoolyard bully back, the bully usually goes, "Teacher! He hit me!")
This movie is a must see for anyone who is intellegent. The unintellegent will tell you that this movie has no plot or someting. I turned on a 24 year hip hopper, at work, to this movie. Him and his boys watched it and rated it gangstah. I rate this movie ten million out of ten, or two hundered thumbs up.
Movie Review: Troubling Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess's fable of dystopian delinquency is a cavalcade of colour, cartoon and caricature. It is a multi-faceted, multi-layered kaleidoscope of artistic and filmic endeavour, a darkly humorous exploration of violence and uncontrolled sexuality. Like a musical overture it is structured around a series of emotional peaks and troughs, of climax and anti-climax, this is reflected in the schizophrenic soundtrack which combines classical with modern electronic and synthetic techniques. Kubrick gives us a swirling pool of contradictions; it is both emotionally complex and passionate, yet cold and clinical. Kubrick's camera is an imperious eye, and it is fitting the film should open with a close up of Alex's optic. It is an eye that never blinks, so obsessed is it with presenting the audience with audacious and challenging images, which decades on have a retained a brilliant luminosity.
This is a dark dystopian fable in which the gossamer strands that keep society in place have collapsed. A world in which right and wrong have become ambiguous terms and in which the violent excess of Alex and his gang of misfit "droogs" takes on a biblical and spiritual grandeur. Kubrick presents an attack on art and culture, it is no longer part of a critical hierarchy, defended by academic elitism, but is dirtied and rubbished. Modern art becomes a murder weapon and the music of Beethoven is a masturbatory aid to fantasies of whole scale death and destruction. This is an assault not only on hypocritical social institutions; the police, religion, government, family and scientific rationale, but also on the appropriation of art, its promoters and consumers. That Kubrick captures this in a film that uses the artistic capacity of cinema to its greatest extent shows both his ambivalence toward cinema as a means of expression and artistic pretensions in general.
Movie Review: One of My Top Five Films of All Time
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the most disturbing images I've ever seen in a film is the opening shot -- the close-up of Alex's purely malevolent face. Malevolent doesn't even seem to compass the entirety of Alex's expression in that single shot. It's psychopathic and almost the look of pure evil, itself. It's an expression that I would never want to have directed at me.I'm not going to bother to talk about the plot because I'm sure pretty much the entire story has been given out through these reviews.
I discovered this film about ten years ago on video and loved it from the first viewing. I read the book and felt that the adaptation from paper to celluloid was nearly perfect. True the film was modeled after the U.S. version of the book which had the final chapter exised at the time (a new pressing has restored the book to it's entirety within the last few years) so the final chapter is also missing from the movie plot. I've read the 'missing' chapter and I think it would have been interesting if that had been included in the movie but then the grim, sinister ending would have been replaced with something more positive which sort of negates the feel of the rest of the movie.
Visually astounding and mesmerizing like all Kubrick films, the movie features his trademark scoring technic of using classical music to perfectly set the mood of the scene (or sometimes purposefully clash with it).
I love the way that each scene is set-up like an elaborate painting -- no attention to detail was wasted or forgotten from the phallic symbols drawn over the paintings where Alex lives to the busts of Beethoven which show up a surprising amount of times in many unlikely houses.
A Clockwork Orange was and still remains one of my all-time favorite films just as Kubrick is one of my all-time favorite directors (up there with Akira Kurosawa and Terry Gilliam).
Movie Review: Criticisms debunked
Summary: 5 Stars
Several varied criticisms have been expressed in the reviews below. Let me take them on one at a time. <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> is not an immoral movie. It is a movie that contains immoral actions, and since the movie is written and directed in Alex's mindset, these immoral actions are presented as a normal release. Of course, viewers are grounded in conventional morality by the supporting cast, but the haunting and brilliant part of the movie is the exploration of amorality. This, then, is the basis of the treatment of women in the film. It is not Kubrick, but rather, Alex, who sees women as objects. It is the same way in Burgess's novel. The film does not glorify violence, Alex does. The film points out merely that, while Alex's actions are horrible and inexcusable, he remains a human being, with the right to choose between good and evil. His inability to choose evil is also his inability to choose good. He has no choice. The issue is not that he is defenseless, it is rather that he has become an automaton, programmed with specific reactions (the clockwork orange of the title). He ceases to be human, and thus, ceases to be good or evil. Finally, I agree that Kubrick would not jam a DVD with pointless extras. His work stands alone. And for those naysayers of the format, know that this film was originally shown in the 1.66:1 format, with mono sound, as were most of Kubrick's movies. Those "widescreen" version you see on Encore are cropped to 2.35:1--things are taken out, not added. This is a brilliant movie, so much so that despite the outrage at its release, the Academy (not a notoriously liberal sect) nominated it for an Academy Award (in 1999, they refused to nominate <i>Boys Don't Cry</i>, replacing it with the lukewarm <i>Green Mile</i>).Movie Review: Kubrick's Finest
Summary: 5 Stars
Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange is the best film in his eclectic career. Malcolm McDowell stars as Alex, the leader of a bunch of droogs, living in futuristic England. The droogs are a bunch of vicious, unrepentant hoodlums who take joy in merciless beating people and in living a life of crime and ill repute. Alex's favorite pastimes are drinking milk laced with drugs and listening to Beethoven. One of the more disturbing scenes is when Alex and his droogs rape and kill a woman in her own house while her husband watches. Through it all Alex joyful sings "Singin' In The Rain". He is eventually arrested and sent to jail for his crimes. As part of a new governmental program, he is put through a process that will no longer make him a menace to society. By having him watch gruesome films with his eyes pried open and being shot up with drugs, he is "cured". The cure involves anytime that he starts to become violent or has sexual thoughts, he becomes violently ill. He is released back into society. His parents have rented a room to another person, whom they now treat more like a son. He meets his droogs, who are now cops and they beat him. One side effect is that during the movies they played his beloved Beethoven and now the sound of his music drives him to pain. He ironically ends up at the home of his rape victim's and is at first treated nicely as the husband doesn't know who he is. This all changes when he starts singing "Singin' In The Rain" in the tub. He eventually snaps and tries to kill himself. The film is visually stunning and Mr. McDowell gives the performance of his life as Alex. A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing morality tale that has an ambiguous ending that leaves you thinking.