Pretty Good

Just perfect...

Better Late Then Never

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Jonas Ackerlund's SPUN leaves you feeling dirty, breathless, scuzzy, and like you've just watched a parade of every single facet of Chrystal meth addiction unfold in front of you like a horrible carnival of lost souls and ruined lives. It's a hard flick to sit through, but there's a brutal poetry and gutter stained beauty to the characters lives, and the events that unfold are a nonsensical, dizzying merry go around of calamity, confusion and speed addled insanity. It's my personal favourite film of about drug addiction ever made. Jason Schwartzman plays Ross, whose mission in life is to score the next hit. After a delirious opening sequence set to a calming rendition of Number Of The Beast, he arrives at the home of Spider Mike. John Leguizamo has never had a shortage of energy, and here he lets the ripcord fly off the handle, handling his role like a squirrel stuck in a vat of distiller caffeine, bouncing off every wall in sight and chewing the scenery like a plastic straw. Mena Suvari plays his equally addicted girlfriend Cookie. Brittney Murphy bring surprising depth to her role as a girl who Ross strikes a friendship with. The two of them eventually find their way to the house of The Cook, played by Mickey Rourke. From there the film heads down a scum encrusted rabbit hole of nonsensical run ins, hapless failures and an eventual rock bottom inevitability where every character finds themselves at a place where if they go any further with their lifestyle, there's no return. Rourke finds the emotional anchor in an otherwise manic roster, and even though he's off the wall for much of the film, he has a monologue in the eleventh hour that grounds his role in tragic regret. Very underrated performance from him. Murphy balances the ditsy slut aspects with a maternal yearning for something better than the road she went down. There's a whole rats nest of other assorted characters and cameos running around, from Peter Stormare's aggressive, hilarious narc, to Patrick Fugit's grotesque Frisbee, to Debbie Harry is from Blondie fame as a nosy feminazi. Even Eric Roberts shows up for a brief reunion with Rourke. The film has a heavily stylized, go for broke attitude that pushes the boundaries of what movies have been able to do, in the best way possible. It shows you not from an outsiders perspective what it might be like to observe people on this drug, but gives you a very intimate, non judgmental day in the lives of these manic, lost soul pixies, ghosts of their former selves, enslaved in the mania and constant need for a fix that is their own design. If you can handle this sort of stuff and like the sub genre (Trainspotting, Requiem For A Dream, The Salton Sea etc) then this is a heavy hitting visual and auditory blast of pure experimental cinema, and a total joy to watch. Just bring a barf bag.

This not so potent movie will leave you spun. It involves speed, paranoia, drug making, crazed cops, even a green dog. We too have some cameos from some fine actors. All the actors impressed me in this, none more than the late Brittany Murphy. Jason Schwartzman too, who I really hadn't seen act before, pulled me in with his performance, of such intensity, he had me concerned for him. These two are so believable as drug addicts, they walk the fine line between acting and non acting. Spun has so many racey images, where in the end, nothing really amounts to anything, and whatever messages the movie was trying to telegraph got lost somewhere amidst this mess. Rourke is great as Murphy's old man who hires a motel room out, using it for a drug lab, hence the green dog. Oh, yeah, and guess what, husky voiced Rourke, (not the gentle voiced one we remember from earlier days) manages to blow up his motel room, before taking refuge in the back room of a sex shop. Got to lay off the speed Mick. When it comes selecting porn, Mick's a hard to please customer. Mick, an advocate of women's rights, shows us at first hand, his reaction to a guy hitting his two girlfriends, one guy never more deadlier with a six pack. Larry Drake, spending too little screen time as a vet, reminded me of just what a fine actor he is, while Eric Roberts is priceless as Mick's gay friend. "Blondie's" Deborah Harry, now overweight, makes a guest appearance as a tough dyke, another splendid acting performance in this insane film. Definitely an entertainer, you drug takers or non drug takers, will get a lot of laughs out of, if also relating with these drug's experiences and it's effects. But really, did we have to see Menu Suvari's poo hitting the water in the toilet bowl.

Spun takes the viewer on a harrowing, hilarious ride-along with a bunch of speed freaks as they blast through a four-day binge. We meet normal guy Ross as he goes to score from his dealer, Spider Mike. At Spider's place, we meet his girlfriend Cookie, her friend Nikki, and teenage hanger-on, Frisbee. Spider has lost his stash and is freaking out. Nikki tells Ross that she can get him some speed, because her boyfriend is the cook.The cook agrees to provide Ross with speed if Ross will act as driver for him and Nikki (Ross being the only one with a functioning car). Ross goes off to meet his occasional hookup, stripper April. They go back to Ross's apartment (complete with eviction notice tacked to the door), and have loads of kinky sex. The cook calls. Nikki needs a ride. Ross leaves April tied to his bed (he'll be "right back") and proceeds to forget about her for a couple of days (Oops! Looks like Ross isn't so normal after all).Things go on in this vein. Frisbee is arrested and forced to rat on Spider. The cook blows up a hotel room. Ross hits rock bottom (but seems not to realize it) when his "girlfriend" (Amy, not his hookup, April) makes it very clear that she has no interest in him beyond the $400 he owes her.Along the way, people do drugs, talk incessantly, have sex and argue. what they do not do is eat or sleep.The movie's best point is its unflinching portrayal of the grubby lives of the characters. Mena Suvari, as Cookie, is a pale, pockmarked mess (contrast that with her radiance in American Beauty). Brittany Murphy, as Nikki, is sexy, but in a very low-rent kind of way. Jason Schwartzman's Ross is a convincing everyman, who becomes a twitchy, red-eyed burnout with scabby cuticles by the end. Formication is a bitch! The acting is great. These characters are not admirable people, and Schwartzman, Murphy, and especially Suvari have taken big risks in playing them.Unfortunately, the film does have some big flaws. Ross utters some embarrassingly amateurish lines like, "...and the great thing is, I'm not hooked!" We know it's meant to be ironic, but there's irony, and then there's irony that comes walking into the room with a sign around its neck saying, "Hello, my name is Irony." It's painfully obvious that this is a first script.In the end, though, this is a film that will stay with you. It's world is grubby, saturated and pornographic, but all to the purpose of getting to the core of the speed-ruined characters who inhabit it.

If it doesn't bother you when a director blatantly rips off another movie, take this one for a spin. It's Requiem for a Dream for the methamphetamine crowd. Not as good, of course, but it's a fun ride. Lots of quick edits, lots of Oliver Stone weird, sweaty, extreme close-ups, and absolutely no substance. It's just a week, or so, in the life of a bunch of speed freaks. Nothing more.BIlly Corgan contributes some good stuff, via Djali Zwan to the soundtrack and gets in a quick cameo. There are lots of cameos alongside the ensemble cast. Leguizamo's a little over the top, and Mira Sorvino, er ... Mena Suvari seemed a little stretched, but all in all not too bad. It's a fine line between over-acting and acting like you're freakin' on speed, so I'm not going to complain.Spun is also surprisingly explicit in a number of ways: Leguizamo's masturbation scene wearing nothing but a sock; the shot of a little turd splashing in the toilet while Sorvino takes a dump; a girl tied to a bed for pretty much the length of the movie, naked and spread eagle with gaffer's tape over her mouth and eyes forced to listen to a skipping CD the whole time.There is no moral to the story. Heck, there really isn't any story. It's just one big buzz with events. I don't mind that it's a Requiem for a Dream clone in style, not substance. I would imagine this kind of physical film making via power-edits would be difficult to do, and I think this first time director did a credible job.