I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

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

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There's a tricky decision the you have to make when you choose to do a film examining the controversial elements of an industry.You have to choose whether to fix the film in a place and time, and discuss real historical events, or to allow the film to examine broader topics through fictional constructs, thus freeing the movie to be timeless.Both choices can be fraught with peril, and Sally Potter braves those waters with Rage, choosing to create a fictional context for examining the class disparity, sweatshops, and unrealistic beauty standards that are at the heart of most of the Fashion Industry's major controversies.Potter uses a bare-bones film technique, fixing a camera at a green screen, and shooting a series of documentary-style still-camera interviews with actors playing fashion industry archetypes.There is a fundamental premise, and a story arc complete with acceptably dramatic events of a shocking nature, but these are neither compelling, nor believable in any context. The story here is secondary, and is a means to an end.This film is, essentially, an acting exercise. It is an opportunity for Sally Potter and her actors to explore a character's arc in the broader context of a (largely silly and contrived) fashion industry disaster.The film never answers any of the poignant questions it asks, and it never really allows any one character to follow a satisfying arc (with the possible exception of Jude Law's character, the high point).For the most part, theatre and film geeks will enjoy the effort, if not the execution, but mainstream film-goers will be bored to tears inside of five minutes.

well not the worst movie I have seen but certainly a disappointing one given the cast and the director. The movie had the structure and intimacy of a play which would have been alright if it had explored deeper into the characters' intentions and the meaning of their actions. As it were they were predictable and cliché-y: the superficial billionaire, the jealousy ridden transvestite; the vulnerable baby faced model; the over the top "artiste" designer; the cold critic; the body guard (who had too much time to talk to the camera to be doing his job) etc. The story is unclear on what really happens to the two models though we know we should mourn but over what? Suicide, murder accident? We see repeated shots of the characters with cliché gestures of sorrow but we cannot share in the tragedy as we don't know what happened. We are led to believe that the blogger has incited a mayhem of protest but would people -young people we are told- protest so vehemently against some stupid fashion's show? Which gets rerun after the first corpse is not even buried? I don't buy that. The format should have yielded amazing performances as in THINGS YOU CAN TELL JUST BY LOOKING AT HER by Rodrigo Garcia where the actors are stripped bare in front of a close up camera, but in RAGE they chose to follow preset tracks giving little more than prefab personae and that flatness is what kills the movie. Save for Dame Dench who is always superb; Dianne Weist's smile and voice as sweet as honey and Adriana Barraza who steals the movie as Anita de Los Angeles, the only believable and truly sympathetic character in the story. I was disappointed by Buscemi and Leguizamo who can do better acting (Buscemi is excellent as a grieving father in The Messenger) and by Izzard whose straight acting does not convince me - I love his cross dressing comedy routines and he should stick to them. Law is well hidden under wigs and make up and though I was reminded of him (his amazing eyes, beautifully enhanced by make up) mid movie I did not realize it was actually him. Still his Minx was just a caricature of a shallow diva who wants to grab and hold our attention, nothing more. The vivid color backgrounds made for interesting optical tricks when complementary colors clashed and glowed almost hurt the eye, but were insufficient to keep one interested. It's a pity that Potter's failed to go beyond color and costumes for I loved Orlando, her aesthetic was formidable in that movie and Virginia Woolf's story well adapted to her eye for rich costume imagery.

I greatly enjoyed this film and have no idea why all of the IMDb reviewers seemed so bitterly scorned by this production. I found so much of this movie to be funny, sad, or at least entertaining. I thought the writing felt honest and sharp, and i found the acting to be superb, because IT FELT LIKE I WAS WATCHING REAL HUMAN BEINGS. Everyone else who commented seemed to have a problem with the performances but i thought they felt authentic. I think we could probably all agree that some people working in the fashion industry might on occasion behave in a way that is a little over dramatic. So when the characters in this film are portrayed behaving in an overly dramatic way, as many of them are, it makes complete sense to me. I thought this was a really unique (I'm saying this because I haven't seen any other movie shot with only actors sitting infront of blue screens) way to tell a story and I was really glad I picked it up. A fellow reviewer complained that Rage was plot-less, but it felt as ambiguous as something a teenager might put together but still had cohesive elements strong enough to leave you, or at least me, with a sense of what transpired off camera, which I believe was the aim of the director. I mean, so it is rather beyond the scope of possibility that some teenage black kid got to interview all of these people, repeatedly, and did so while they were not trying to be interviewed. But I think the statement that, "Rage shows how ugly and downright wrong it is to allow the production, fiancé and distribution of 'anything goes' cinema," is a horrible and self indulgent criticism of a artistic work you didn't like. There are a lot of things down right wrong in this world; creative expression typically isn't one of them. And also that isn't how you spell finance.

I don't post here often, in fact this is my very first comment, and wish it was a better film I felt I could say something about...Please, if you feel differently, explain it too me. This has been my first exposure to Sally Potters work.In Rage, we see a host of characters involved in a fashion show, being interviewed by and speaking with a student working on a school project. Throughout his seven days with the fashion designer, the models, the investor, the marketing consultants, the company owner, the pizza delivery guy, and others, several deaths occur, an investigation is launched, and public opinion is formed and voiced. Stylistically, we see see talking heads, declaring their thoughts and describing their own and others' actions.In my view, the film tries to be a bunch of things, but fails at most of them, miserably. First and foremost, it lacks a plot. Stuff happens, but there is no discernible character development (with a couple of exceptions, rounding up), no new or challenging views on topics we should care about, no discussion on why bad stuff happens to good people, or why people end up as bad people. This is notable, as films as Babel even Crash, and TV fare as The West Wing have taught us that issues have more than one side. Rage fails at that for the most part, focusing on illustrating that the fashion industry is bad, the media industry is bad, marketing folks anyways, and that those poor kids in China and on the runway that suffer. The film seems to work through a laundry list of things you ought to get upset about, had you not heard of them before and discussed them with your friends 10 years ago.Secondly, I straight out blame lack of directing skills for a set of inconsistent, seemingly badly enacted characters. Frank (Buscemi), Mona Carvell (Dench) and Miss Roth (Wiest) come across as at least as semi-credible, non-farcical, at times even multi-layered, or torn. Contrast this with Homer (Oyelowo), Merlin (Abkarian) and (don't shoot me) Minx (Law) - shallow monologues, farcical as far as I could tell, or plain out unbelievable and embarrassing. Either way, I dare say, could be fine. But please, don't mix! Help me understand if the film tries to be funny, or if we see an actor's most horrid performance to date. Ideally, help me understand this without the help of a pamphlet as required reading.Thirdly, try to maintain a shred of plausibility in the set-up. A kid with a cell phone camera being asked by Otto to please, not leak information, again? Diamonds trying to strike a behind-the-scenes deal, talking to said camera? Anita, doing the same, asking for anonymity? Cut that kid off, throw him out, sulk, but do not do what we see on screen! It renders the story implausible, as this asks the viewer to follow along with the cheap-looking declarative approach, no matter what. This in turn allows the makers of the film to skirt the hard work of story-telling - creating a believable universe of topics, characters and contexts.We saw the film as part of the Berlinale competition program. It did receive applause, especially Jude Law and Dianne West, but it also received applause when the words "last day" appeared on screen, and several people, possibly those more critical of what they saw, left mid-film. We wondered if Tilda Swinton is too good a friend of Potter to not invite her to this festival.3 stars, for Wiest, Dench, Buscemi, and 1 laugh/half hour.