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90I was floored by Cronenberg's mastery of the material. Fiennes gives one of his finest performances; Miranda Richardson, playing at least three characters in the protagonist's twisted vision, is no less impressive.
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80Were he only trying to remark on that world's creepiness, Cronenberg would still succeed brilliantly, if coldly, but his sympathy makes the film.
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100Arguably the subtlest, most carefully textured film of Cronenberg's career.
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100In this small and very smart film, Cronenberg does several things at once and makes them all look effortless, capturing various shadings of consciousness and versions of reality.
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88What catches us in Spider's web -- besides the indelible performances of Fiennes and Richardson -- is the director's sympathy with this freak man-child who struggles to order his confused memories into a kind of truth.
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88A shocker for devotees of stylish angst and psychological torment. You'll have to watch it with patience and great attention, but it richly rewards that patience.
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88It's Cronenberg's finest film, it's star Ralph Fiennes's riskiest role, it's a tour de force for actress Miranda Richardson.
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88This is a rare adaptation where the script (by McGrath himself) heads straight for the novel's horrible essence, reproducing it non-verbally and in an even more concentrated form.
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75The details of the film and of the performances are meticulously realized; there is a reward in seeing artists working so well. But the story has no entry or exit, and is cold, sad and hopeless. Afterward, I feel more admiration than gratitude.
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75Spider is a difficult film, but an inspired one, the movie equivalent of eating a meal of artfully prepared eel or sea urchin. It's for those with adventurous tastes and no fear of squishy textures.
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50Spider as a character is a fantasizing detective, but the movie is no Singing Detective (the high-water mark of the sub-genre). This film rarely rises above a murmur.
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80This is the film that "Shine" and A Beautiful Mind could not be, a story about schizophrenia that doesn’t neatly resolve its complex subject matter.
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91Exciting spectacle of a master director reining in his abilities to create a work that is etched in acid, burnished in smoke.
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83Cronenberg's most disciplined exploration yet of that shadowy realm: the world refracted through the prism of a schizophrenic mind.
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75Fiennes' very skin participates in the project -- his fingernails are nicotine-stained the color of tea bags. The performance works; it's a ballet, a concerto of big, big Acting.
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100Spider lasts in the mind and it's built to last -- this is a movie that invites and repays repeated viewings.
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90Deliciously wicked, strangely poetic portrait (adapted by Patrick McGrath from his own novel) of a schizophrenic man at once tyrannized and elevated by oedipal terrors.
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90It takes an especially fine-tuned director and an inventive actor to cut as close to the bone as Spider does.
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90In an instance of director, stars and material melding flawlessly, Spider is a brilliantly realized depiction of a mentally ill individual.
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90The superbly acted Spider is muted in comparison: it’s a quiet nightmare, painted in hospital greens and rust browns.
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90This slow but brilliantly sustained journey into madness is fronted by a remarkable performance from Ralph Fiennes and superb backup from Miranda Richardson in a triple role.
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90His story is sad, compelling and morbidly, tragically watchable.
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90Spider is not a pulse-quickening experience, but Fiennes's art makes it engrossing.
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80It isn't likely to drive anybody out of the theater -- although getting people out of the house to see a meticulous, minimalist study of madness and memory may be another story.
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80Brilliantly realized but bone-chillingly bleak.
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80An eensy-weensy movie sustained by two utterly gigantic performances.
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70A kind of psychological whodunit, but without the thrills. The clue-making is rather desultory, as if Cronenberg were indulging a narrative strategy he didn’t really care for.
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70The inner life of the young Spider is just screaming to be taken to the next level--but Cronenberg mulishly won't go there. What goes wrong with Spider is pretty basic: The audience has no idea why it was made.
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75This superbly realized, clammy and unsettling movie doesn't hinge on plot. Claustrophobic and profoundly creepy, Spider isn't a pleasant viewing experience, and that's the point.
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75A cat's cradle of creepy childhood memory oozing unreliably from the mind of an aging, desiccated, paranoid schizophrenic, played quite amazingly by a mumbling, stooped, shifty-eyed Ralph Fiennes.
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75If you have the patience, its almost endless silences and extremely slow pacing eventually pay off.
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75This is the kind of well-made movie you wish well but you don't particularly wish to see again.
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70Its minutely detailed revelations work their way under the skin like slivers of glass.
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78Cronenberg’s nonlinear narrative is trying at times – it keeps you nearly as off-kilter as the characters, and surely that’s intentional – but as a character piece about madness and stymied dreams, it’s remarkably realistic.
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90The most elegantly crafted and confidently directed of all his (Cronenberg's) films, it's a calm, chilling portrait of a blighted soul and, just as calmly but quite stunningly, an evocation of the thought processes behind the blight.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 16 out of 22
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Mixed: 4 out of 22
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Negative: 2 out of 22
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williamw10The most nerve-racking, chillingly precise film about mental illness ever made. In my humble opinion, the director's magnus opus.
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Methusalah10
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MathewB.10A masterpiece of perception of reality vs. reality