A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

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.

Writer and director Philip Kaufman is an American with a continental European art-house sensibilities when it comes to films. Yet he also has a populist touch which tends to make his films accessible to the many. He is after all along with George Lucas the co-creator of the character Indiana Jones and co-wrote the story Raiders of the Lost Ark.Quills is a bawdy and satirical romp. It is an adaptation of a stage play and features a fictionalised story of the Marquis De Sade. It is certainly not a bio-pic.The Marquis (Geoffrey Rush) here is a morally dubious and depraved character living in relative luxury at an insane asylum. The asylum is run by a liberal priest Abbe du Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix). The Marquis attacks his faith and celibacy by trying to put ideas in his head.When Napoleon tires of the Marquis sexual tomes he puts Dr Royer- Collard (Michael Caine) to deal with the Marquis. The doctor is a man who uses torture to cure his mental patients. It is clear he will use extreme methods on the Marquis. The doctor is a hypocrite of the highest order. He marries a young convent girl who he imprisons in a large house and has rough sex with her without any tenderness.Madeline (Kate Winslet) is a laundry girl who helps smuggles out the writing of the Marquis. She is being pursued by one of the asylum patients and also desired by du Coulmier. Yet although she enjoys the salacious tales of the Marquis she has not acted on them.Simone (Amelia Warner) the young wife of Dr Royer-Collard is the one person who acts on the tales of the Marquis by seducing and running off with the architect much to the fury of the doctor.Of course the film wants to make a point about free speech and censorship. It wants to give the middle finger to the conservative shock jocks in the USA who want to censor left, right and centre and then espouse free speech when it is convenient for them.However the Marquis de Sade as the standard bearer for freedom of speech, seriously? The real de Sade was a sadist. The word is named after him!The film rather loses its way in the latter part of the film where the screenplay becomes rather blunt. Madeline wants a final story relayed to her by the Marquis which drives some of the inmates mad, including the one who has in the past assaulted her and is the person who relays it to her.It is du Coulmier who takes extreme action against the Marquis when you know given the humiliations heaped on him by the Marquis and that his young wife betrayed him, it should had been the bad doctor.The film is well acted. However Rush who we only glance at briefly here and there at the opening part of the film maybe plays him too nice and sympathetic.I kept thinking how this film would have turned out if it got into the hands off a director such as Peter Greenaway, wayward he may be but it would had been a full on riot.

I saw this movie a few weeks ago and I finally decided to write my review.What a great movie it makes you have mixed feelings in almost every scene and like others said it gets darker and more dramatic as the films advances.All the performances were fantastic and the chemistry between Kate and Geoffrey its great. Their relationship in this film reminded me too much the relationship between Haniball Lecter and Clarice starling in the silence of the lambs So why do I understand the people who didn't like it. It's obvious this film and Geoffrey Rush with his fantastic performance make the Marquise look like a a very charming sexy(in a different way) smart and heroic character when the truth is the real marquise wasn't exactly that way.(especially not heroic or sexy)!In short is the right word is Guilt What It makes us feel so guilty for liking a bad guy like him? The answer is easy Marquise truly existed meanwhile when we like Antiheroes like Haniball or let's say John Milton( Al Pacino in The devils advocate) we don't care because we liking a fictional character, but in this case it's real person portrayed in a fictional and Romanticized way.

It is an immoral story, a semi-fictional biography film about the notorious pornography writer Marquis De Sade in Napoleonic era, which is doomed to be controversial. As for me, I have never read his works and I don't feel any impulsion to read them after watching the film. Strangely, when I took out the DVD out of my mac, I generally felt nothing, my head was empty. I must say that the film doesn't impress me much even it is full of erotic remarks and scenes, tortures, even death. One side it proves my resistance towards explicit porn and violence has been exalted to a new level (maybe I am a little bit exaggerated, anyway it is not a creepy horror film); on the other hand it states that the film is in lack of an universal empathy, especially towards non-Catholics like me (as if there is no God, sex is not quite a speechless sin at all). In my mind's eye, the story is erotic in an unsexy way, even with Kate Winslet and Joaquin Phoenix in their primes (as for Geoffrey, his portrayal of Sade is brave and pathetic at the same time, but I will not call it sexy).So if I just take out the erotic coat wore by the film, what remains is a banal story of fighting against the national superstructure, attached with the struggle with one's belief, which suddenly makes the film not so glamorous as before. Then I realize that it is not the film's fault, I think still millions of people will be interested in the film itself. On the premise that I don't give too much credit to sex, the film obviously is not my cup of tea. Also too many unnecessary close-ups make the film look more like an acting-competition play than a decent film. However the settings and costumes of the film is exquisite and precise, plus a strong performances from a memorable cast (Geoffrey got an Oscar nomination as a leading actor, both art-direction and costume were also got nominated as well, surprisingly to see a young and fangless Stephen Moyer), which merits some accomplishment. Finally I must express my sympathy to Michael Caine, who offered a heartless and villainous performance, but was shamefully overlooked during the award season in 2000.

Geoffrey Rush stars as the notorious Marquis de Sade, languishing in an asylum, allowed some freedoms, though his appetites for causing a stir by way of his quill lands him in a lot of hot water. Kate Winslet, the laundress who moves his written work to the outside where it can be marketed underground to the people who love the Marquis' sordid tales of the violent and erotic. Joaquin Phoenix, the priest over Charenton mental institution, who treats the patients, including the Marquis, with humanity and kindness. Michael Caine, the medical scientist(more like certified torturer, whose methods include dunking the disturbed in water among other ways)who arrives at Charenton at an advisory capacity. Caine's doctor is ferocious and his way of curing the mentally ill is barbaric, a complete polar opposite to Phoenix who wants to keep his inmates free from vile experiments which do more harm than good.The movie amusingly asks us which one's worse, Caine's scientist or Rush's Marquis. Caine is commissioned by Emperor Napoleon to "cure" Marquis because death to such a quietly revered author might make him a martyr for the lower classes. The film shows how Caine's old man is married to a teenage virgin raised in a convent, and we see him force her into rough sex. Yet, his control over her is brief as she soon gains an advantage, his wanting to please her in ways sex can not used as a tool to get her way. Interesting development shows that Caine's wife is an avid reader of the Marquis..talk about irony.The depraved work thrown into the fire by an angered Napoleon is "Justine"..this is the work which repulsed him into action(a very funny scene shows Napoleon sitting upon his throne, his feet unable to touch the floor as if he were a child in a swing, legs flailing). When the Marquis pens a farce mocking Caine and his marriage to the young bride, set to a play designed to insult and ridicule for fun, he enacts a feud he will live to regret.The movie shows people appalled at the way the Marquis writes about his characters' "inadequacies" and devious pursuits and yet they remain curious and find his work even humorous, fighting off giggles.When the Marquis escapes from his cell, thanks to Winslet unlocking his door against her better judgment, Phoenix is forced into a predicament he'll never be able to recover from, his decency towards the patient rewarded with disregard. Basically, upon Caine's arrival, everything the priest had built falls to ruin. By the end, the lives of many will be shattered, death and anguish to all through Caine's actions. Though, despite all his underhanded tactics, no matter what he was able to accomplish in scoring a revenge against the Marquis for his wife's leaving him for a talented home decorator, influenced by the depravity and vice written by his hand, the author's work lives on no matter what the conniving scientist does to him.The movie shows that no matter what punishments are dealt him(remove his means to write, such as quills and paper, cloth and wine, etc), the Marquis finds ways to get his work to the outside world. Eventually, the evil scientist does get rid of the man, and he even sets up a printing factory using the inmates to distribute the Marquis work at the author's wife's permission, but halting the power of the one he so despises will never be easy as long as Phoenix's defrocked priest keeps his memory afresh. QUILLS includes an erotic scene where Phoenix fantasizes making love to a ravishing Winslet and Rush devours his scenes like a mutt with rabies. It's easy to see that Rush summoned the spirit of Marquis de Sade while portraying the role, I thought he wholly brought him to life in QUILLS. The asylum itself can be presented as both a refuge for the inmates and a bleak place once Caine's presence constrains the freedom they once had, his power attributing to the very Emperor who gave him absolute authority to see that order is kept."My most glorious prose..filtered through the minds of the insane."