Home :: DVD :: Drama :: Gay & Lesbian  

African American Drama
Classics
Crime & Criminals
Cult Classics
Family Life
Gay & Lesbian

General
Love & Romance
Military & War
Murder & Mayhem
Period Piece
Religion
Sports
Television
The Wild Side

The Wild Side

List Price: $24.98
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 >>

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: TYPICAL....
Review: VERY VIOLENT MOVIE WITH WALKEN PLAYING A CARDBOARD VILLIAN IN AN ALL TOO REAL LIFE STORY OF MURDER,DRUGS, SEX, AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF BOTH MIND AND BODY FOR ALL THE MAIN CHARECTERS. MOVIE SEEMS TO B MORE REMEMBERED FOR THE LOVE SCENES BETWEEN THE CHARECTERS PLAYED BY ANNE HECHE AND JOAN CHEN, BUT VERY LITTLE ELSE.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An apt title
Review: "The Wild Side" is a good description of the tone of this film. The whole thing is wild, erratic, and ultimately hilarious in its pace, plot, and casting. Anne Heche, a banker, becomes a call girl for reasons never fully explained, but the reasons are ultimately unimportant. After attracting the attention of a client (Christopher Walken), she meets his girlfriend (Joan Chen) and the rest is soft-core history. Although the sex scenes between Chen and Heche were erotic, they weren't believable as being in love. But even they weren't as odd a couple as Chen and Walken, who cracked me up every scene they shared. Walken's psychotic, rapist driver has no redeeming qualities at all, and I enjoyed watching Walken screw him over. As usual, Walken manages to impress in a horribly written role. Heche is given the most (acting) meat to chew, but she is unimpressive. Chen is given little to do other than cry and be sexy, which she accomplishes. The relationship between Heche and Chen is ultimately unsatisfying because it is not developed.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An apt title
Review: "The Wild Side" is a good description of the tone of this film. The whole thing is wild, erratic, and ultimately hilarious in its pace, plot, and casting. Anne Heche, a banker, becomes a call girl for reasons never fully explained, but the reasons are ultimately unimportant. After attracting the attention of a client (Christopher Walken), she meets his girlfriend (Joan Chen) and the rest is soft-core history. Although the sex scenes between Chen and Heche were erotic, they weren't believable as being in love. But even they weren't as odd a couple as Chen and Walken, who cracked me up every scene they shared. Walken's psychotic, rapist driver has no redeeming qualities at all, and I enjoyed watching Walken screw him over. As usual, Walken manages to impress in a horribly written role. Heche is given the most (acting) meat to chew, but she is unimpressive. Chen is given little to do other than cry and be sexy, which she accomplishes. The relationship between Heche and Chen is ultimately unsatisfying because it is not developed.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: An absolutely awful movie, BUT WAIT...
Review: ...if you're desperate for a romantic lesbian love scene, the one in this film can't be beaten. The actors--Joan Chen and Anne Heche (pre-Ellen)--are stunning. That gets the film two stars instead of one. In fact, that scene has to be the only reason this film wasn't ground up and fed to the guppies. What a shame that one wonderful scene can't be transplanted into a film with a better plot.

DON'T BUY THIS FILM; RENT IT. Once you slip it into your VCR, unless you particularly like heterosexual kitchen counter-top get-togethers or you're dying to see Chris Walken suffer through a bad hair day, fast forward about 38 minutes into the film, where you can watch Anne Heche and Joan Chen do lunch in a cool restaurant, drive around in a convertible, and indulge in an impromptu--and surprisingly beautiful--adult dessert in a seaside cabin. Then rewind, return the film, and spend the rest of your evening watching something else.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very, very watchable!!!
Review: Accidentally finding it on cable last night - I found it quite scintillating/titillating or perhaps even - very erotic. As the other reviewer commented, Walken is maniacal and very odd, his hair distracting you and making you wonder if the wig will fall off! WATCH IT - if only for the Heche/Chen scene, as it dawned on me later - both actresses were probably not, acting but in fact, truly enjoying each other!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: How true love is different with pure sex
Review: Althouth the plot is not very reasonable,this movie worths some credit. All actors and actresses act well.The personalities are remarkable. And I see how true love is different with pure sex. The prostitute "Alex" involves in many sex scences, but only the lesbian scene with Virginia moves me. It is so sweet! When the prostitute in this movie falls in love, she becomes so tender, so caring. How respectfully she touches her lover! I hope viewers catch that point.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A for effort, A+ for Erotic!
Review: Ann Heche and her little booty will make you shiver and quiver. Though not much of a story ever develops, and Chris Walken fails to impress, Heche's hot scenes make this an erotic thriller for the ages. Heche is fine, and though the plot may suffer, the film is a revealing look (no pun intended) at a star in the making.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An enigmatic, unjustly forgotten masterpiece
Review: Donald Cammell's beautiful and poetic WILD SIDE concludes the path that he began with Nicolas Roeg in 1969. I am referring, of course, to their directorial debut, the magisterial PERFORMANCE. As in PERFORMANCE, the principal characters mirror one another at crucial points---the rogue undercover cop (Steve Bauer), the vampirelike money launderer (Christopher Walken), his bewitching wife (Joan Chen), the banker/prostitute (Anne Heche) all perform a round-dance in which each partner takes on the other's identity, is attracted to the other because s/he sees in him/her a reflection of his/her own self. The fascination with homoeroticism, as in PERFORMANCE, could be taken on its own terms; more profoundly, it touches upon the film's Cammell's tireless obsession with finding similitude in difference.

Homosexuality is the love of the same. Homosexuality is a metaphor in the film for difference-in-similarity, similarity-in-difference.

And yet on a more visceral level, the film works beautifully as a lesbian fantasy. Without a trace of moral justification, Anne Heche is an object of lust for the viewer.

As in PERFORMANCE, the dialogue in this film is highly lyrical and stylized.

Every scene in this film is essential. Shame on the MPAA for forcing Cammell to censor his film (the film is now attributed to his psuedonym, "Frederick Brauner"). To all those who read these words: see the unrated version and only the unrated version.

Without a knowledge of PERFORMANCE, the significance of this film will be lost on the viewer.

Someday, Donald Cammell will be celebrated as one of the greatest directors in film history. His films are PERFORMANCE, DEMON SEED, THE WHITE OF THE EYE, and WILD SIDE.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The lesbian scenes are very good!
Review: Finally a movie where the lesbian character(s) have a happy ending! I am so sick of movies where the girl ends up dying tragically or in prison or trapped in a loveless relationship. I also agree with the previous reviewer who felt that the lesbian scenes were tastefully filmed and resembled real lesbian sex. I think Anne Heche may have had something to do with that. Being a lesbian herself she may have been given free reign by the director to direct the love scene with Joan Chen and get the job done right! After all they go to experts on World War II to film scenes about the World War II, they go to experts on Drug trafficing to do film scenes on drug trafficing! Why not go to a lesbian to film a lesbian love scene? Joan Chen and Anne Heche look very charming and very sexy together. I was glad that in the end, Anne Heche got the girl and they lived happily ever after. THE REST of the movie is really not worth your time. Most of the other characters are corrupt, brutal, unethical, untrustworthy and violent. The only parts of the movie that are worth watching are when Joan Chen and Anne Heche are on camera. Watch the movie and you will see what I mean!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: NOT THE DIRECTOR'S CUT; DO NOT BUY THIS JUNK
Review: How DISGUSTING that this film has been put out in its awful BUTCHERED version, the one Donald Cammell took his name off, just to capitalize on the recent big public Lesbian love-affair of Anne Heche and Ellen De Generais. This is the version that has been showing up on lists of the worst films ever made, BOMBS, etc., and needs to be thrown on the trash heap where it belongs. And if that weren't enough of a disgrace and insult to Cammell's artistic vision, the Full-Screen Only specification should clue you in to what kind of charlatans you're dealing with here. You should know for your own good that people are just trying to take your money and run when they offer only a full-screen version on a DVD!

Fortunately, through the efforts of some of Cammell's friends we now have the original version which should be put out on a good DVD as soon as possible. In fact, I just saw (at the American Cinemateque in Hollywood)a pristine print of that ORIGINAL DIRECTOR'S CUT, meticulously reconstructed by Frank Mazzolla, Cammell's editor, from detailed notes Cammell left right before he shot himself, and was COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY by it (no pun intended). I haven't laughed so hard and been thoroughly fascinated at the same time for a long, long time. The great, very long, leisurely paced and quite erotic Lesbian scene between Anne Heche and Joan Chen is maybe the least of the original film's virtues. Cammell's vision seamlessly puts together amazing cinematography, hilarious farce, off-kilter dialogue that goes everywhere you don't expect it to, virtuoso editing, and above all, the semi-improvised performances of their careers from the three main leads (Anne Heche, Christopher Walken, Steven Bauer), into a near-masterpiece that only a talentless producer could've ever turned into a 'bomb,' a film, that in the final analysis, can hold its own against "Performance," and "White of the Eye" (the two mind-blowers that made Cammell a living legend, albeit one who couldn't find work!).

You might ask who's Steven Bauer? Steven Bauer is the guy who's mostly known for having played Al Pacino/Tony Montana's brother in De Palma's "Scarface." Now you know EXACTLY who he is, because he was so excellent in "Scarface" that people always wonder what happened to the guy! Well, he's done quite a lot of mediocre stuff just to keep working, but when given the chance, as here, under Cammell's direction, he's done truly exceptional work. The scene where Bauer has to 'bend over' to prove his loyalty to Christopher Walken and has his underwear torn off, with a non-chalant Anne Heche in the room amused by the goings-ons, is maybe one of the two or three most hilarious, daring, pulling-out-all-the-stops, semi-improvised virtuoso acting scenes in recent cinematic memory. This film will yet have its day!


<< 1 2 3 4 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates