Dead Ringers
|
List Price: Our Price: $10.60 You Save: $9.36 (47%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $8.99 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Dead Ringers
Movie Review: Dead Ringers
Summary: 5 Stars
This one sounded really interesting but the plot develops really slowly so I had already lost interest by the time it started to get interesting.Movie Review: Smart horror for the thinking person to obsess upon
Summary: 4 Stars
This is one of the most disturbing films I have seen and I recently watched it again after 10 years and found it is just as disturbing now as 10 years ago.
The story is very hard to describe because much of the action is actually mental deterioration of Beverly and Elliot Mantle, twin gynecologists. These men are brilliant and whereas one conducts the clinical research and writes the journal publications, the other markets their work and is the public face of their accomplishments. Beverly sees patients and conducts surgery while Elliot deals with hospital and departmental power struggles. Beverly is more studious, withdrawn, shy; while Elliot is more daring, verbal, outgoing, and assertive. They have developed a pattern whereby Elliot will seduce women and as he tires of her he will hand her off to Beverly who steps in and acts like Elliot.
This pattern breaks down when Beverly diagnoses a famous actress, Claire Niveau, played by Genevieve Bujold, as having three cervixes and as infertile. Elliot beds here first and then Beverly but as a master of emotion and acting, she quickly figures out the scam once she learns they are twins. Claire starts Beverly on a downward projection in that he becomes emotionally attached to her and this creates a distance between he and Elliot. She is also a drug addict and he begins taking all the uppers, downers, all-arounders that she doles out to him until he takes the lead and puts her to shame with the amount of drugs he eats.
As Beverly deteriorates, Elliot tries to keep him sane. Yet as Beverly sobers up, Elliot oddly enough becomes completely out of control and addicted, as if Beverly was actually passing off his addiction to Elliot. As these two personalities dissolve into schizophrenia, addiction, and eventually suicide and murder, the viewer better hold on for a wild ride. Beverly becomes totally out of control during surgery and during gynecological examinations in some frightful scenes. A classic scene is where he has tied off his arm and injected heroin sitting at his office desk and his secretary comes in and calmly resigns saying that she can't take the chaos any more while Beverly is too intoxicated to care.
Jeremy Irons displays absolutely a phenomenal job of acting in this film. This is an outstanding performance, worthy of high praise. He must not only play two characters but also play those same characters as they fall apart and deteriorate. Genevieve Bujold is also superb and convincing.
Many sub-themes bubble about in this film, including exploring the similarity between emotional and chemical dependency. Creepy but challenging, unnerving yet thoughtful, this is a thinking person's horror show.
Movie Review: Not for Everyone, But Remains a Fascinating Character Study
Summary: 4 Stars
David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers" is slow moving but ultimately ends up at a disturbing and perfect ending. The movie also features one of Jeremy Irons' best performances, The movie looks at the strange bond between identical twins and a slow descent into madness. When we meet the twins, Beverly and Elliot Mantle, they are young boys chatting about sex which leads to them asking a neighborhood girl a pretty funny question. Next we see them at Cambridge using a new medical device of their own creation on a cadaver, which soon becomes a standard tool in gynecology. Next we see them as gynecologists, with their own practice. They share the practice, an apartment, and even women. Both of the men, despite being identical...Are both like bi-polar sides of a personality. Elliot is suave and charming; Beverly is sensitive and hardworking. After they both meet (and have sex) with an actress named Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold), their lives change when she discovers the deception. The rest of the film takes a dramatic turn as we watch the twins descend into madness, drug use, and sexual confusion. Yep, it definitely sounds like a Cronenberg movie...But it's actually quite different from the other two films I've seen by him (A History of Violence & Crash). While "A History of Violence" jumped right into the action and "Crash" was pretty quick to get to the point as well...This movie moves very slowly, which pretty much guarantees that a lot of people won't like this movie. But, as I said, Irons is great as the twins. He captures both of their personalities so well and makes it ultra-believable. As for the effects, the scenes where the twins are directly next to each other in the same frame are flawless...It looks like it could easily be two different people. Anyway, like all Cronenberg films, it's not for everyone...But if you like thought-provoking character studies, then you should check this movie out.
GRADE: B+
Movie Review: "We do women - this is our specialty"
Summary: 4 Stars
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Beverly and Elliot Mantle are identical twins and have shared everything during their entire lives - their interest in the women reproductive system which leads them both to become famous gynecologists, their apartment (they both love Italian furniture), their successful practice in Toronto, and their patients. "We do women - this is our specialty" says Elliot, more confident and self-assured twin who seduces the women he meets and then passes them on to his shyer brother. Enters Claire, a new patient with an extremely rare condition and soon both brothers "are doing her" without her knowledge. But Claire feels that the person she is with is sometimes different even if he looks the same - she is an actress and to pretend to be someone else is her specialty. After she finds out that she sleeps with both brothers, the movie becomes a very interesting dissection of the most mysterious connection between two people possible and the intense look at playing with and losing identity. The movie is written and directed by the master of intelligent horror movies, David Cronenberg, and it is very clever, dark, unsettling, and uncomfortable (the main characters are gynecologists, remember?). As with many Cronenberg's films, "Dead Ringers" fits well into the "fatal error of a mad scientist" sub-genre: "Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos" (David Cronenberg).
Jeremy Irons in a dual role is mesmerizing, giving not just one but two his best performances, so powerful and convincing that I felt a lot of sympathy for the twins instead of disgust and loathing for what they were doing to their patients and to each other.
Movie Review: Dead Ringers
Summary: 4 Stars
With 'Dead Ringers' it seemed as if Cronenberg was moving further and further away from the B-movie genre pictures that defined much of his earlier work. Jeremy Irons' performances are perfect, displaying the kind of detached self-destructiveness that defines Cronenberg's best films (particularly 'Naked Lunch'). What's truly astounding is that Irons, playing two identical twin gynecologists, is able to differentiate his performances to the point that, even as they become increasingly unstable and dependent on the other, both characters somehow retain distinct personalities. This gives the film an uncanny, tragic dimension.
This is especially significant given that Cronenberg, pegged as a special effects artist, was not then thought of as much of an actor's director. The interiors in 'Dead Ringers' are fantastically moody, as in all of his best work, and perfectly support Iron's acting.
This (Warner) DVD is pretty good overall. The transfer at least rivals the Criterion release released much earlier, though the aspect ratio is somewhere around 1.85 instead of the Criterion's 1.66. 1.66 may suit the film a little better and is/was Cronenberg's preferred, though some have argued that the original theatrical release was probably projected at 1.85. Price will probably be the deciding factor.
The Irons commentary is good, too. It's very subdued, relaxing, and a performance as complex as his probably warrants a feature-length commentary.