Customer Reviews

Eight Millimeter

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(30)
2 star:		(27)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

This dark tale of the underworld of pornography,and the weirdos it entales, follows a private detective Tom Welles (Nick Cage) who was hired by the widow of a millionaire, to track down a girl who is in a supposed snuff film. Det. Welles is quickly taken into the depths of thie hellish lifestyle as things begin to unfold, Cage does his most remarkable performance since 1996 in "Face/Off." Cage had long ago shown the entertainment fans that he was a powerful actor but incase they forgot this film quickly reminds. WATCH THIS FILM

Granted this is certainly not a feel good kind of movie. Nor is its subject matter, which sad to say, does exist in our pristine world, but for some reason, audiences tend to find it repulsive and tend not to look at the film as an artistic endeavor. I think Joel Schumacher's direction is excellent; the one scene where Cage has broken into Machine's house and the record is stuck at the end is as frightening as anything I've seen in recent movies. He also draws excellent performances, not only in his leading cast, but in the supporting roles. Nicolas Cage, not one of my favorite actors, does an outstanding job in a role that is complex and multi-dimensional. His persistence to find who killed Maryanne Mathews is relentless and at times heart-shattering. James Gandolfini is superb and despicable in the role of the smut producer who helmed the snuff film. Peter Stomare as the heartless director Dino Velvet is likewise disgustingly realistic. Joaquin Phoenix provides a complex comic portrait who wants to join up with Cage in his quest. Anthony Heald as the Christian's lawyer is typical bar bull, and Catherine Keener, though stuffy and reserved, makes a good wife to the volatile Cage. However, to me, the most impact comes from the carefully controlled and subtly nuanced performance of Amy Morton as Maryanne's mother. Her desire to hold on to her daughter's reappearance; her loneliness in eating alone ("I'd like to eat once without the TV) and the lustful longing in her scenes with Cage are awesome. Her performance gives the movie its heart, and enables us to see why Cage acts like Charles Bronson at the end.
This could be called a "sick" movie, but we are a "sick" society. Old Mr. Christian did the snuff film because "he could", and Machine killed because he enjoyed it.
Ultimately, a disturbing but unusually good movie. Should have done better at the box office, but don't let its subject matter keep you from watching Amy Morton in an unheralded bit of brilliance.

Joel Schumacher was panned horribly for the goofy "Batman and Robin", so he went to make "8mm", a decidedly more adult and bleaker movie. Nicolas Cage is Tom Wells, a private investigator hired to check out a snuff film, where a young girl seems to be savagly raped and the killed even more horribly. Many people didn't like the movie, and I can't blame them to be honest, but I liked the edgy and gritty subject matter, the seedy side of an already notorious pornography industry. I thought Cage did a good job as a smart man who falls deeper and deeper into the slimy underworld of vice. The end is a little too fronteer justice style for my taste, I would have liked to seen the culprets get arrested. Machine was an interesting charactor.

I thought this movie was disturbing because of the film that Cage watches and the places he goes to find out the horrible truth. it has great suspense though and Cage really puts the villians to rest. it deals greatly about underground porn and other sick things

I have seen this movie only once a long before but when I saw it
I thought WHO ELSE SHOWED THIS PROBLEM IN A MOVIE BEFORE?, maybe it's not a good movie to deserve only good words o congratulations but I liked the way that the role played by Nicolas Cage decided to do something that no one else wanted to, it means find the truth about something real not only in the movie because when this film was in theathers in my country I read a note in a newspaper that 8mm films exists in Brazil for example, and has the same end that the girl in that movie.
It was useful for me to know something unknown until then

This movie is great.I mean sure it's offensive with all the porn
ographic material,graphic violence,strong languege,and the story
alone.But hey it all works very well together with great acting
by Nicholas Cage,Jacquin Phoenix,James Gandolfini,and Peter Storm
are(Very Creepy),great directing by Joel Schumacher(Falling Down,
A Time To Kill),and great screenwriting from the writer of the
equally offensive and creepy Seven.But if your easily offended,
and if you are bothered by graphic violence,or savage weird or
sadistic behavior seen in movies such as Seven stay away from
this one.But if you wanna be glued to your seat and thouroully
entertained give 8mm a try.

Director Joel Schumacher takes us into the seedy underworld of sick and disturbing porn and leaves the viewer reeling. Nicolas Cage plays Tom Welles, a PI hired by a widowed wife of a well-known and respected public figure to find out if a possible "snuff film" she discovered among her late husbands effects is authentic. On the tape, a pretty young girl is viciously assaulted and murdered. With the help of Max, played by Joaquin Phoenix, Welles dives head first into the bowels of Hollywood and New York to determine both the fate of the girl and the identity of her killers. The film suffers through a few weak plot segments in the middle, but also manages to shock, intrigue, and offend the viewer much in the way that Se7en did. This dark film isn't for the kids or the easily disturbed.

this movie is probably the worst in my collection

Great movie, Dark, Seedy and entertaining. The bad guys are BAD GUYS... They remind me of the crew from Blue Velvet. Dangerous and twisted. Acting; Great. Sound; Great Music; Could have lived without the middle eastern music. I hate that shilling ... they call music. Other than the middle eastern music I can't complain about this movie... Nicolas Cage is a great actor, but he could have sacked it up a bit... The crying at the end was ... The movie is great, the DVD I have issues with...

The Directors Commentary is realy ... The guy is about one breath away from lisping and start ranting about rainbows and and being proud about coming out of the closet... I got about 30 minutes into it and could hack it anymore. The guy is so touchy feely and talks in such a monitone voice it was driving me insane. He's much better of directing movies and not talking.

After having seen this film a couple of times, I could not help but notice sundry literary allusions in the film. Many years ago I read a work on theory theory written by the late Frances Fergusson, a professor of comparative literature at Rutgers University. The work was, or is, entitled "The Idea of a Theatre," a study which develops the author's well known views on what consitutes tragedy. This is a seminal work in my view, and, although it involves the study of theater, it delves into themes and concepts developed in non theatrical works, most notably in Dante's "Divina Comedia." Fergusson develops his views on theater and literature as a whole and acknowledges the presence if not the ubiquity of myth and philosophy as well as religion. In the work the author conceives the developng mythos as purpose, passion, perception. The concepts are involved; however, in a nutshell, in this particular film several of Fergusson's ideas are noted. The hero protagonist Wells has a mission (to find out how a client's husband was involved in a snuff flick) which quickly becomes purpose; namely,to find out who the "snuffed" victim was. Ultimately the purpose becomes the quest for knowledge. Wells then undergoes passion, as he is dragged further and further into seemingly concentric levels of hell, into his "descensus ad infernum." The horrors experienced (recall Conrad's "The horror. . the horror") escalates as the central character becomes ever aware that knowledge consists in the fact that the killings, the pervasions committed, serve no other purpose than to satisfy the perverse, hedonistic pleasures of those who pay for or to perform the lethal acts. The victim just happened to be there; to fall (Fall)into the wrong hands in her own twisted quest; in short she was a nothing. Wells experiences his perception as an ultimate act of mercy, the desperately needed act or new mission of exterminating the evil. He, however, is not the redeemer. It is ultimately his wife to whom he must turn to in the quest for redemption from his having experienced hell. There are other literary parallels, such as the cleansing fire (as in Dante's Purgatorio) near the end, plus others too numerous to mention here. Suffice to say that the film, in my opinion is an interesting one; it is an excursion, not unlike "Silence of the Lambs," or "Seven," into the bowels of the sordid, into pure evil. Not a quintessential masterpiece, to be sure; yet it does incorporate literary, if not archetypal suggestions and themes.