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Bound

Bound

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $11.24
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Zzzzzzzzz
Review: Bound main appeal is not the alright crime plot behind it, or the powerful performances by the lead actors. No what makes Bound so appealing is the one moment of HLA, or Hot Lesbian Action. At least that's how I heard of it.

Any who Bound is about this biker chick who moves into a new appartment. Next door there is this couple, the man works for the mo and the wife and just stays at home. The wife becomes attracted to her new neighbor and in the first half hour there is some decent HLA. After that the rest of the movie spirals around a plot to steal some money from the mob and the husband and escape as a rich couple. Things don't always go as planned and the husband discovers the plan, but by then the moneys already gone, and he has killed 2 mob members. Overall the plot is alright, and the acting needs some work. Overall it gets an extra star because it did have that good HLA moment.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This movie had me on the edge of my seat the entire time! If you don't particularly like lesbian love scenes, then you might want to skip the beginning, but if you do, enjoy! Wow! Two gorgeous ladies make a steamy, sweltering love scene.

Aside from that, this is a great gangster movie. After the beginning the focus is on what happens to the mob money. The end becomes a game of cat and mouse you will not soon forget!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a little info about dvd special features...
Review: Okay, I loved the movie. It was so many things at once. Funny, suspensful, sexy, clever, etc. But so many other reviews go into detail about all that. I'd rather talk about the audio commentary by the directors and stars of Bound.

I've recently fallen in love with dvd technology because of all those wonderful special features, and I find myself, while reading amazon reviews, wishing people would talk more about the special features included on dvds. So without much further ado...

The Bound DVD... has no deleted scenes (which is a pity) but it does have either one or two trailers (I forget presently) and the reason to purchase this dvd is for the audio commentary by the directors and stars of the movie. They explain much of the cut footage and they give the story behind the story in many scenes.

The audio commentary turns especially entertaining when Jennifer Tilly shows up and rambles on in her Jennifer Tilly way about the movie. Then Gina Gershon shows up, and the banter among the men and women is so delightfully entertaining. They tease Joey P about wanting to drop the towel so he'd be naked in the movie. Jennifer T. talks about how her open mouth won her a oscar nomination in Bullets Over Broadway. They talk about injuries on the set, and all in all, I just love these actors and directors. Especially Jennifer T. I never really liked her before listening to the audio commentary to this movie, but I swear I just wanna crawl in bed with her myself, and I'm not even gay. She's just too funny. You can tell, they really had fun making this movie.

The movie, of course, is wonderful. But the DVD is even better.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Who's hot now?
Review: Can we say hot or what? This keep me glued to my seat not pee breaks for me. This was a keeper.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great Joe Pantoliano in an excellent movie exercise
Review: The Wachowski Brothers are a little like Steven Spielberg. They have begun their career as filmmakers with a really good exercise of suspense thriller, like Spielberg did with "Duel". Then, like him, they have ended up in Hollywood and made a series of commercial and technically unpersonal films. So forget about "The Matrix", which is just a mixing of too many elements of Asian cinema (John Woo, kung-fu, and Japanese mangas - "Ghost in the Shell") in a Hollywood production, and let's concentrate on the independent movie this review is supposed to be about.

"Bound" tells the story of two beautiful but greedy lesbians, Violet (Jennifer Tilly, "The Bride of Chucky") and Corky (Gina Gershon, "Showgirls"), who decide to rob the lover of the first one. Corky, who's a crook, just got away from prison and of course, she's the one who gets the idea. Her plan is machiavelic and requires great precision. Their victim is played by an extraordinary Joe Pantoliano (not Patliano, Mr. Deffley), who'll be back as treator Cypher in "The Matrix", four years later. He's Cesar, and his job is clean drug money for a mobster played by John P. Ryan ("Runaway Train"). Pantoliano plays his character with incredible intensity; he totally invests himself in his fooled character (WHERE... IS... MY... MONEY?), always run around and around by the two witches, and makes an amazing performance which'd have deserved at least an Oscar nomination. When Corky takes the money out of Cesar's suitcase without moving the case, replacing the money with old newspapers, the story gets tough and the massacre begins. Confidence and trust between the two girls mix with treason and confusion between them, Cesar and the mobsters, and the whole keeps on in a bloody and dark ambiance until the final climax.

The Wachowski Brothers prove, with their first film, that money is the first source of violence and death in our societies. They do it with a surprising talent, ability and competence. They also prove their uncontestable technical and artistic knowledge. Their story is really original: here the usual couple of gangsters is replaced by a couple of lesbians and the story is not the one of a runaway; it entirely takes place in a closed space, managing to get powerful characters involved in it. The result is highly interesting and intense.

After watching this movie, we can think that it's too bad that the Wachowski Brothers didn't do like Quentin Tarantino, that they didn't keep their independent status. Because "Bound" can very easily be compared to "Reservoir Dogs". By getting completely involved in Hollywood, they lost their cult status and let themselves get overwhelmed by the huge success of noisy and hi-tech "The Matrix".

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fabulous directorial debut from the Matrix boys
Review: "Bound" surprises the viewer from start to finish with plot twist upon turn - it's a great movie. It'll grab your attention right from the start with two passionate scenes between Jennifer Tilly & Gina Gershon, and then things really get rolling.

Joey Pants (as folks seem to call him in the biz) plays a middle-managment gangster who borders on the pathetic; his attitude is definitely much bigger than he is. After a collection operation gone a bit awry, Violet (Tilly) and Corky (Gershon) hatch a plan to make off with more than two million dollars of the mafia's money. The plan is simple enough, but naturally is doesn't go off exactly as planned; blood is shed, there's a lot of running around and screaming, cover-up is laid upon cover-up, and some pruning shears come into play more than once.

This is great film noir, and everyone is cast perfectly. The brothers do an excellent job of direction, with novel angles and shooting methods (you wouldn't expect anything less from these guys, would you?) They also employ some classic film noir sequences that work perfectly. It should hold your attention throughout, very enjoyably.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Sickening Violence Ruins "Bound"
Review: I was dissapointed that "Bound" included so much sickening graphic violence, to the point of obscenity. This totally ruined a good plot. I could not feel good about the main characters because the end did not justify the means. All I could think about were the hauntingly disturbing images stuck in my mind. It's too bad that women would let such garbage ruin a good storyline with great actors. It would have been so much more effective to insinuate the violence without showing every gory detail.

Lesbians are hungry for movies that are about us, but we aren't this desperate!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "All we've got to do is wait him out"
Review: Bound is a sexy, stylish and suspenseful modern visitation to the film noir genre that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. Right from the outset - where the letters of the film's name cast deep dark shadows like high-rise buildings - the viewer is inducted into a world where duplicity is the norm and where choices made result in prices being paid. And with over $2 million of Mob money at stake, the risk to life and limb is very high indeed.

Violet is a latter-day gangster's moll looking for a way out of 'the business'. Her chance comes when her boyfriend, Ceasar, brings home a fortune in cash to be sorted and collated before being passed on to the Chicago Mafia. She seduces the tough-talking ex-con who is renovating the next-door apartment (an impressively butch Gina Gershon) and together they scheme to relieve the Mob of the money. But when Ceasar doesn't react according to plan, suddenly there are dead bodies to deal with and events begin to spiral out of control. The women's trust in each other is stretched to breaking point as they are drawn into a deadly battle of wits.

Directors Larry and Andy Wachowski make judicious use of the conventions of film noir, such as extensive chiaroscuro, and some imaginative and uncomfortable extreme close-up shots. The clever cinematography is backed up by a tension-laden script and an excellent cast (particularly Joe Pantoliano as the increasingly frenzied Ceasar). Although Bound may take some viewers out of their comfort zone with its graphic lesbian sex scene and depiction of Mob torture tactics, it is a film that will reward its audience with a stylish and intelligent foray into the eternally murky confluence of good and evil.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: explicit but not tasteful.
Review: I was severely dissapointed with Bound. Its explicit sexuality is not tasteful, but serves to exploit the women in the movie. If you're looking for plot, try again. If you're looking for sexuality, see "Better than Chocolate," which has both tasteful sensuality *and* plot content (deals with real-life issues).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Over-look the lesbian scene...The story is pretty Good too!!
Review: When everyone thinks of this movie they think of the steamy lesbian scene, well it its only a minute or so, and before you know it you have to sit through another hours worth of a movie you just got to see chicks kiss. But don't worry, the storyline is half way exciting so don't fret!


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