In Dreams (1999)

Anyone who has seen and loved Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves should feel right at home in his off-beat psychological thriller In Dreams. A sexy, very adult take on "Little Red Riding Hood," Wolves unreeled as a series of surreal "fairy tales" interwoven within the heated dreams of a young girl verging on womanhood. Wolves' patron saints were Freud and Jung (as sifted through Jordan's wickedly fertile imagination), and the duo are very much aboard for In Dreams as well. Here's a movie that takes place entirely in dreamtime, where the dark, violent fantasies of Claire Cooper (Annette Bening)--wife, mother, and illustrator of children's books--play out unpoliced by superego, conscience, or society. On the face of it, Claire's a clairvoyant whose mind becomes more and more possessed by child-killer Vivian Thompson (Robert Downey Jr.). Cops and shrinks refuse to take her seriously until she loses her own daughter and much, much more. Tapping into weird images of her soulmate's childhood, when he was abused by a hateful mother in a house now submerged in a nearby reservoir, Claire comes closer and closer to her gender-shifting bad boy (and his latest victim). From start to finish, In Dreams dwells in hyperreality. Whether leeched of or drenched in color, slipping eerily through an underwater world, rushing madly toward catastrophe--every hallucinatory shot is saturated with menace. It's the kind of potent, unresolved menace that haunts your waking day after a particularly unsettling nightmare. Watch this gorgeous film as therapeutic (?) theater inside Claire's mind, where she and her murderous doppelganger act out a terrible Oedipal drama driven by sex and jealousy. Bening and Downey deliver superb, risky performances, and Darius Khondji's cinematography, with almost every frame punctuated by blood-reds, is sensuously dreamlike. In Dreams is one of those great, flawed films that reaches for more than it ultimately achieves. But what a welcome change from the dullness and shallowness of the formulaic sure things that dominate movie screens as the 20th century draws to a close. --Kathleen Murphy Amazon.com essential video

VERY HAPPY First time buyer!!!

I absolutely love this movie... I ordered it and received it in about a week!! The movie was as advertised..in it's original case and there wasn't so much as a scratch or fingerprint on it!! i love Amazon.com and will order again and again....one satisfied customer! December 15, 2008

Horrible but hilarious

I bought this as a gift for my mother. she enjoyed hte movie and i admit it is a good movie but i can't watch it without laughing. November 21, 2008

Not an upper.

I really liked this movie. Annette Bening was so good. I thought is was scary, suspenseful, interesting and also sad. October 12, 2008

Six Feet Under The Apple Tree...

IN DREAMS is NOT a typical hollywood thriller. It is a shocker w/ so little light in the story that anyone looking for a "feel good" movie had better avoid it like a face-full of sulphuric acid! As for me, I love it! Annette Bening (American Beauty) is Claire, a woman who has become psychically linked w/ a serial murderer named Vivian Thompson, played by Robert Downey, jr. (Zodiac). The two are drawn together in fatalistic fashion, while Claire's mind disintegrates, and her family is obliterated. Sound like fun? I first saw this gruesome little chiller back in '99. I never forgot it. It is a psychic odyssey through almost total darkness. Claire is taken through inner hell, culminating in a finalé that brought me the same icy satisfaction as the ending of CANDYMAN. Director, Neil Jordan (The Company Of Wolves) brings this twisted faerie tale into being w/ no holds barred. In this movie, nothing is sacred and no one is safe! Highly recommended... September 29, 2008

A past time revisited

A beautiful moving I remember from when I was litte. It's rare when a movie stays with you, especially one of such calibur as this one, and you were only five at the time. I immediately HAD to seek this movie out and after searching vigorously for the title and the actors within it, upon coming acorss it- nothing could stop me from buying it. I waited anxiously to recieve it in the mail and upon doing so instantly popped it in the DVD player, forgetting all other distractions.

I was not dissapointed. I remember the scenes that brought me to tears, the scenes that made me stare on until my eyes waterd from not blinking enough. Everything was just as I vaguely remembered it to be, the acting were on key, the gruesome detail of horrific psychopathic nature, the events that unfolded, the connection between killer and victim by circumstance. It was insanely gratifying. A beautiful, wondrous movie that I really push for everyone to see. Robert Downey Jr. is one of those rare actors in those world that plays his parts to the maximum of his potential.

I was and still am, in love with this movie. September 18, 2008

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