Spun (2002)

Good job for a "Requiem for a Dream" clone

If it doesn't bother you when a director blatantly rips off another movie, take this one for a spin. It's Requiem for a Dream for the methamphetamine crowd. Not as good, of course, but it's a fun ride. Lots of quick edits, lots of Oliver Stone weird, sweaty, extreme close-ups, and absolutely no substance. It's just a week, or so, in the life of a bunch of speed freaks. Nothing more.

Billy Corgan contributes some good stuff, via Djali Zwan to the soundtrack and gets in a quick cameo. There are lots of cameos alongside the ensemble cast. Leguizamo's a little over the top, and Mena Suvari seemed a little stretched, but all in all not too bad. This is a much better role for Brittany Murphy than Love and Other Disasters. It's a fine line between over-acting and acting like you're freakin' on speed, so I'm not going to complain.

Spun is also surprisingly explicit in a number of ways: Leguizamo's masturbation scene wearing nothing but a sock; the shot of a little turd splashing in the toilet while Sorvino takes a dump; a girl tied to a bed for pretty much the length of the movie, naked and spread eagle with gaffer's tape over her mouth and eyes forced to listen to a skipping CD the whole time.

There is no moral to the story. Heck, there really isn't any story. It's just one big buzz with events. I don't mind that it's a Requiem for a Dream clone in style, not substance. I would imagine this kind of physical film making via power-edits would be difficult to do, and I think this first time director did a credible job. August 15, 2008

amazing

amazing movie, it has to be one of the best drug cinema movies ever made.
the whole movie was intense from start to finish and just leaves you in a daze of amazement.

it's a great movie, if you like movies like Requiem for a Dream, you'll absolutely love Spun. July 20, 2008

Looks like SOMEBODY just got out of film school

First of all, if these people were all on crank, their houses wouldn't be so dirty.

This is what I refer to as a "Headache Movie." That's a movie that employs a lot of high-octane camera and editing tricks with accompanying wooshing noises (not to mention characters who lack any motivation but the screenwriter's desire to be "out there") in a pathetic bid to take up the slack for an inane and witless script. Yawn.

A hyperactive, yet dull, irritatingly cartoonish "antic" drug movie that relentlessly riffs on far better films, which only serves to throw its own bankruptcy of intelligence and imagination into high relief by association. It's supposed to be funny/edgy - but it fails on both counts. It's about as funny as a hemorrhoid. Granted, some people think hemorrhoids are funny, but most of those people are well under the minimum age the MPAA has set for seeing this movie. And in order to be edgy, it would probably have to have characters who appear to be human in SOME sense - not the vapid, unbelievable creations of a screenwriter with delusions of cleverness. Whacked out meth heads, as obnoxious as they can be, don't even act the way the exaggerated ciphers in this movie do. It's an illicit drug dramedy (emphasis on the comic part of the equation, but don't get your hopes up - it's mostly groans and rolling eyeballs) for juvenile twenty-somethings with ADD.

An abject waste of celluloid - and a crashing bore, despite all the ridiculous visual gymnastics, and desperate zaniness. Nothing can disguise the fact that watching this movie is ultimately like looking at nothing for an hour and a half. It's full of irritating music video moments, too - the merchandising department obviously had a hand in, as far as the soundtrack goes. The hastily tacked on, and all too expected, 'Drugz R 4 Loozerz' ending rings powerfully hollow after the preceding 90 minutes of desperate wallowing to try and make it seem exciting - I'd say even more hollow than the rest of the film, but under the circumstances, that's just not possible to achieve.

This style of filmmaking, by the way, constitutes a new cliche as much as the tone of any J-horror rip off or the overworked tapestry-of-interconnected-lives structure that has become a plague on the arthouses of late. Maybe there should be a rule: filmmakers aren't allowed to watch anyone else's movies. Don't people get tired of seeing the same half-digested garbage regurgitated over and over again? Do the fanboy punks that evidently populate the film department at UCLA not have lives and imaginations of their own to draw upon? Are they giving awards now for 'most frantic,' for movies like this that throw everything at the screen but a logically written script - you know, like you can force quality on something as long as there's some new ridiculousness every few seconds? That's not a movie. That's called trying too hard. It is also called not trying hard enough. And I believe the laboratory term is FAILURE.

'Requiem for a Dream' also employed aural and visual gimmicks from one end to the other, but it actually worked a lot better than it should have - maybe because some thought actually went into when, where and why, and they weren't just trying to cram in the razzmataz anywhere they could fit it in. That movie wasn't a comedy, but it also manages one or two moments of genuine humor, which is one or two more than you'll find in this alleged yuk-fest. April 30, 2008

You May See Yourself

Every time I watch Spun, I can't help but smile thinking that John Leguizamo was the cute little voice for one of the furry characters in that kids movie Ice Age. In Spun, we find him having phone sex with a lesbian biker (played by Debbie Harry of Blondie) on the other line and he's jumping up and down on the bed working his aparatus thats covered with a sock. It's disturbing and pathetic, but darkly humorous. There is also a spot where Rob Halford of the rock band Judas Priest plays a porn shop clerk. If you are homophobic and one of those macho type males who likes Judas Priest, you may be shocked and may never listen to Priest again. I found the opening theme song, The Number of the Beast, done better than the original creators of that song- Iron Maiden, on any good day! All together, I think the film is a harsh view of a dark reality and what its really like to be on meth and around people who lost all moral ethical values. It speaks of the great apathy of today's youth and so called adults. These are guidless and lost characters, no worse than some people who don't have any drug problems at all and appear to be quite "normal" in society. But there are troubles deep under the facades. A film for the naive and anyone who is curious to see how desparate characters live. You may see yourself. April 26, 2008

crazy

This movie is seriously "SPUN" unless you had a drug addiction to crank you would not understand this particular movie. the people in this video played their roles very well. April 6, 2008

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