Milo Jerome

It seems silly to take the time to write one more awed review of this movie months and months after it's died a commercial death, but the more I think about it the more appalled I am that there are so many people out there who would love Fight Club as much as I do and who have no intention of seeing it, ever. I want to hire a bus and ferry all my friends to and from screenings so they don't miss out on the biggest cinematic experience of the 90s.

All concerned give the best work of their careers to this movie and even with its cargo of irreverence and disgust at our society, it has as much intelligence and class as 1999's best: American Beauty, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Election etc. David Fincher is a genius. Fight Club is 1999's Blade Runner and in ten years time everyone will be claiming to have known it was a masterpiece first time round. Go see it.

Brainstorm has many things to recommend it. It is original, thought-provoking and refreshingly off-kilter in its concerns but somehow it ends up being less than a sum of its parts. It is worth bearing in mind that the version that exists was 'rescued' after the death of Natalie Wood and so is not exactly the film that its makers set out to make. It has a feeling of being unfinished, its climax seems hurried and inconclusive. The parts however are fairly impressive....

It's curious that Louise Fletcher's performance didn't win her at least a nomination as Best Supporting Actress; she is hair-raisingly good. The music and design are both spot-on and the opening titles especially is aesthetically one of the most amazing special effects sequences I've ever seen. It's a shame the film to follow doesn't quite live up to its promise.

This isn't a very good movie. I remember watching it on the big screen in '92 and being satisfied back then. I watched it on video recently and thought it rather embarrassing. It's main points of interest are the recurring Enya track and the incredibly committed Alice Krige whose intense presence I suspect was the reason this film came to be made at all. She's far too classy for this, her performance is from a movie for grown-ups while everybody else plays pantomime. Interesting for completists who have an urge to see for themselves cameo appearances by the likes of Stephen King and Clive Barker but in 1999 these things merely add to the embarrassment. Alice Krige 10/10, Sleepwalkers 3/10.