PiraBit
if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
Catangro
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
filippaberry84
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
gavin6942
Tired of her husband's philanderous ways, the mother of two daughters drowns her husband. With the reluctant help of the local coroner, the murder is obscured. Her daughters are having similar problems with relationships, and tend to follow their mother's example.I really thought I would like this movie, with its clever counting scheme and dark sense of humor. I love black comedy as much or more than I love horror. But for whatever reason, I took no joy at all from this movie.The How I Met Your Mother episode "Bad News" uses a numbering device inspired by the film, with the numbers counting down to the titular "Bad News," when character Marshall learns that his father has died. Now, that is a show I greatly enjoyed, and now that I know the connection would be interested in seeing the episode again.
chaos-rampant
The notion is the same. All things move towards their end, as Nick Cave would romantically have it. Or die violent, arbitrary deaths, as Greenaway would. Bees, cows, men, we are witness to all these deaths, how all of creation is inadvertently eclipsed, as marked one to 100. We need not see any more because as a girl jumping rope says while counting stars, after you count to the first 100 all the other hundreds are the same. It's enough to understand the replicated pattern.Various games with stakes in the film mirror the one game, life, where existence is the stake, various conspiracies attempt to unlock the meaning, while others obfuscate it. That these deaths, of three husbands at the hands of their wives, are the result of cruel whims and little more. That there's no grand plan or ultimate purpose that justifies the loss, Greenaway always the pessimist and cynical.The most interesting character in all this is the coroner's son. Who, as his father devises elaborate games to pass idle time, with boyish innocence he wants to know the simplest answers of the universe. How many leaves on a tree, how many hair on a dog? And who commemorates the passing of living things by lighting up fireworks.Greenaway generally knows how to make an interesting film that is intellectual but not dyspeptic. The fun here is in the form of a typically British black comedy, where deaths are clumsily covered-up and the noose around the culprits' neck is pulled tighter all the time.He's done better work but this worth watching. If only for the cinematic fireworks of Sacha Vierny.
hrothgar19
There are some rare films where you discover something new each time you watch, and this is such a case. Initially you might watch it for the simple fairy-tale story (like all good fairy tales, there is repetition and a good deal of nasty goings-on). Then you might try to spot the ascending numbers that are sometimes obvious in the frame, sometimes spoken by the characters or sometimes really obscure (can you spot 86?). You may wonder whether any of the games - some of which are brilliantly conceived, like The Great Death Game - have ever really been played, or whether they are just products of Greenaway's imagination. Then you start seeing strange connections, like the one between the water tower conspirators' names - all from the apocryphal last words of famous people - and the way each of the Cissies destroys an object symbolic of her husband's occupation at the time of each murder.Even after ten viewings, the film will still have you wondering. The star names at the beginning, for example, contain other Greenaway characters and "Adnams", which is the Suffolk brewer based in Southwold (the Skipping Girl's home is a real Southwold house, by the way, called Seaview House, although there is no Amsterdam Road!).Ultimately the characters' motives are the hardest to understand. Each of the three Cissies (mother, daughter and niece) encourages the next to dispose of her unsatisfactory husband, with Madgett used as a pawn to cover up the murders. However, there are several strong suggestions that a fifth person is behind the whole plot, with its twin themes of counting and death. There is a twist at the end, however, that means things don't quite work out as intended.It's fantastic and surreal to look at, with the typical garishly coloured and deliberately over-lit scenes used by Greenaway in his other films, and quite affecting, although it's hard to feel sympathy for many of the characters involved. I give it 10/10 for its sheer uniqueness and ability to make the viewer think.
KFL
Life's a game, death's a game. This playful little movie is all about games. If you're not a gaming-type person, you might not find this, umm, diverting.The thoroughly surreal and tongue-in-cheek tone of the movie keeps us from taking it very seriously...all of which is for the best, since that way we don't confuse the plot with serious drama; the games the women play tend toward the homicidal....Wittgenstein famously pointed out that there are all manner of games in the world--there's no tight set of identifying characteristics; games all have, at most, a "family resemblance". Greenaway has here collected numerous far-flung relatives in this odd family. You'll no doubt appreciate some of them more than others, Well, we all inevitably have favorites.DbN and Prospero's Books (two very different movies!) are my favorite Greenaway films.
