That was an excellent one.
... View MoreI cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
... View MoreI enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
... View MoreThis film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
... View MoreThe plot is wacky enough to promise a great film: a repressed alcoholic middle-class housewife with incestuous tendencies, married to a doctor with infantilism tendencies, encounters a young English guy who turns out to be her lost son (fruit of a teenage rape, whom she had to give for adoption). But it's not clear what's real & what's not. Freud would be proud.The bad thing is seeing how generic Hollywood-ian Nicolas Roeg's direction has become. There really is very little here that reminds of "Don't Look Now" or "Bad Timing". Not that it's not worth watching. The spanking sequence is hilariously disturbing, the film has the feel of a hysterically surreal 80's soap opera, and the interplay between past, present, reality & fantasy is sometimes inspired.In fact David Lynch ended up copying lots of stuff from here, particularly on "Twin Peaks" and "Lost Highway". Notice for example the demonic rape scene, or the merging of the truck driver and lost son characters.
... View MoreI only rented out the film last night and Ive watched it three times since. Such an interesting little film and it leaves tons of questions. Its thought provoking on whether some scenes are real or some are part of Lindas (Theresa Russell) insanity. I wasnt too keen on watching Theresa Russell or Christopher Lloyd on screen (the spanking scene was incredibly disturbing) but Gary Oldman somehow saves the film which makes it at least watchable. He was loveable all the way through as Martin.If you love Gary Oldman, watch this. If you dont, then youll be disappointed.4/5
... View MoreAs one of screenwriter Dennis Potter's few feature films, this is definitely worth seeing for fans of his work. Potter incorporates a grab-bag of typical themes (and a couple of familiar jokes) into a surrealistic erotic thriller. Oldman and Russell have a smoldering chemistry, and many of their scenes together are very well done.But ultimately, as a movie, Track 29 gets hung up on a couple of points. First of all, as everyone has pointed out, the southern accents are really, really bad in this movie. Oh what a difference a good language coach would have made. Given Potter's interest in accents, and social class, I can't help but think that the juxtaposition of the characters' strong East London and North Carolina accents was probably specified in the script, but the utter ineptitude of Russell and her co-stars to sound like they're actually from *anywhere* in the South keeps destroying the viewer's suspension of disbelief. The other stumbling block, is the director's style. Potter's writing, bred at the BBC, seems to work better when filmed in an understated, realistic style. He's a writer who really packs a lot into every line, and his material doesn't generally need to be "played up" at all in order to carry the intended impact; all the power is right there in the script. Unfortunately, Roeg comes out with both guns blazing, and while his over-the-top visual style works really well in some sequences (as when Oldman destroys the train set), the overall effect was one of "more is less". I couldn't help wondering as the movie ended how differently the script could have been handled by a director like Jonathan Demme, who not only has an ear for accents and an understated visual style, but also a more subtle understanding of class in rural America than any director I can think of. In the end, an enjoyably campy B-movie with unfulfilled potential for greatness.
... View MoreYet another indecipherable movie from director Roeg; it plays like a puzzle that is never solved. Definitely not uninteresting, because of the unique nature of the plot, but so muddled and inconsistent (for example, a seemingly imaginary character interacts with other people as if he really existed) that it's not likely to satisfy many viewers. One or two (intentionally) funny scenes help. Extremely offbeat performance by Gary Oldman. (**)
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