Film: Spun

[cravNbeets]

no, no they're not

total disappointment of a movie. i actually had to pretend to like it so i could watch the whole thing w/o my sister ripping it out of the vcr.

plot??? we dont need no stinking plot

tweaker cliches poorly brought to the screen?????? check

i nearly soiled myself when "Ross" says,

"and you know what the best thing is.... im not hooked"

omg could we just cut to that oh so artistic anti drug add featuring the girl jumpin into an empty swimming pool

8)


So many things about that movie were so bad its hard to remember them all. the ending was particularlly insulting, the only cool character in the film explodes himself (on purpose? lame) and everyone else gets to sleep.

ugh this movie was just short on content and long on poorly portrayed misnomers about meth ( dont care how much crank schwartman could score he's not banging strippers). waste of my time and i totally agree w/ lingo that The Salton Sea did a better job.

 

[blahblahblah]

typical drug porn...

Not bad, they should have shown more direct shots of drug intake. I only remember one injection scene.

 

[jpgrdnr]

I thought it was good flick. I mean could you really hope this movie was going to be realistic? After the cops go up to the trailer park all 70s style I laughed my ass off. A very very funny movie. Very funny.

What about the classic scene when the cops are comin and that guy has a sock on his dong? Seriously, that was classic.

If you go into it with an insanely sick sense of humor its a riot. Like if you found Romance funny, etc. Or enjoy Kids in the Hall, Jackass, etc.

 

[Lingo]

^^
maybe, but it wasn't really pitched to the people as an oddball comedy. Read the reviews. People take that shit seriously. They say shit like:

"A gritty look at addiction"

and

"I don't see how ANYONE could want to try drugs after

seeing Spun."

and my favorite:

This movie truly is good and true to life. The movie just starts you out on this trip that really makes you feel like you've been thrown into the mind of a speed freak. The tweeking of the movie is similar to that in Reqiuem but not quite the same. Rather than using the effect to focus on the drug use this film uses it to enhance the film and give it the feel of a speed trip, then in particular scenes where the drug is used the effect is zoned in on. It does a good job of revealing the scary and grimy reality of a drug addict.

^^^
Jesus fucking christ. What's scary is people like this.

MOST reviews compare it to Requiem for a Dream and Fear & Loathing, even though it is no where even close to either one of those movies aside from drugs.

I wasn't expecting it to be realistic. I was expecting it to be GOOD. Spun was neither of those things.

Spun not only offended me as a movie-buff, it offended me as a tweaker movie-buff.

Adios,
Steve

 

[kiwikr720]

Yeah, there's a definite high level of concurrence on the cruddiness of this movie. We were originally going to rent the Salton Sea the other weekend when I recalled hearing about this movie. I decided to rent this instead and while I still have yet to see Salton Sea, I regretted every minute of that decision.

It did seem an awful lot like a cheap rip-off of Requiem to us. We did wonder whether or not they were making fun of Requiem's inaccuracies though when they showed the pupils constricting after they did the meth. I definitely recall everyone making a huge deal about the dilated pupils in Requiem.

After I got past the shoddy plot line, I did enjoy the high number of cameos, especially the guy from Judas Priest as the porn store clerk. Anyone know who the guy who provided the money for the "Cook" was? He seemed really familiar, but since the credits were so hard to read, I never found out who it was.

 

[starlightgemini]

I rented this movie several weeks ago, with MUCH anticipation. I had seen something on tv about it when it was coming out in select theatres but, I don't know of any theatre around here that played it. So I waited for it to come out on video.

I have to say...well, it wasn't what I expected. As an ex-meth user, some of the stuff I saw and kinda said to myself "yuuuuuuup thats how it is" but some stuff was stupid. Wish I could elaborate on what was stupid and why it was stupid but I really don't know what to say.

There were things I *wish* they had portrayed in the movie but they didn't I guess I was kinda sitting there thinking I could have written a better script (I highly doubt that, but my point is that I didn't like how the story went a lot of the time).

I say its worth watching, but don't get your hopes up. Also, its a fucked up crazy movie.

Oh, and they totally needed to include some psychosis and some damn shadow people. What's a movie about tweakers without the shadow people? 8(

 

[Lingo]

Anyone know who the guy who provided the money for the "Cook" was? He seemed really familiar, but since the credits were so hard to read, I never found out who it was.

That was the older, much more talented brother of Julia Roberts. Star of such classics as Best of the Best, Best of the Best 2, & The Coca-Cola Kid. It was none other than Eric Roberts.

Adios,
Steve

 

[Finder]

I saw this movie yesterday and enjoyed it. I sort of got the impression that it was shot taking into account a stereotypical tweaker's exaggerated point of view...you know, 70s-looking cops busting people and stealing their drugs so they could do them, talking of doing great things, extreme paranoia, et cetera. At least that's how I perceived the film.

 

[Negro-kitty]

This movie fucking sucked. As a meth user I was shocked by the major inaccuracies about meth use.

FIRST: Pupils DILATE when you do meth, NOT constrict! Why is that so FUCKING hard to get right? Had they read just ONE medical textbook they would have quickly learned this. The only conclusion I can reach is that the producers are lazy morons.

SECOND: The rush from snorting meth is NOTHING like it was portrayed -- WAY overhyped. The whole head-spinning thing really pissed me off.

THIRD: You don't hallucinate on the second day of doing meth. It takes longer than that. And the hallucinations weren't very realistic IMO.

FOURTH: People weren't horny enough. There should have been more sex.

The only things that WERE good about the movie:

-the injection was very accurately portrayed, MUCH better than in Requiem.

-that kid frisbee clearly was picking at his face -- but there should have been a lot more compulsive face picking

-the lab setup was extremely realistic and well done, and generally the cook was a good character

-I like how the dyke neighbour ended up with april

Overall though the plot was just so shitty and the meth use was just so badly portrayed I kept wanting to scream.

 

[E-girl]

reminded me a lot of Requiem too.. not just b/c of the drugs but b/c of a lot of similarities in effects... and i have to personally say that 1)i think Requiem was more realistic and 2) i really didnt think Spun was that great at all. i just couldn't get into it-- was bored with a lot of it.

 

[silverfucked]

FIRST: Pupils DILATE when you do meth, NOT constrict! Why is that so FUCKING hard to get right? Had they read just ONE medical textbook they would have quickly learned this. The only conclusion I can reach is that the producers are lazy morons.

Thats strange as both the producers and the writer were ex meth users... They would have to be extremely stupid to have not realised the eye dilation thing...

Im assuming it was all done in the name of cinematics and had fuckall to do with true portrayal.. Either that or Requiem got a copywrite on the eye dilating thing.. 8)

 

[xena]

i finally saw this movie. it was ok.

i also felt like it was just the meth version of requiem for a dream. the effects were similar in both movies. the story was ok... it needed more sex though. the characters were interesting. i think that they were pretty stereotypical though. i didn't see the ending coming... but i'm glad it ended like that.

overall, i wasn't impressed, but i'm not disappointed either.

 

[Negative]

Totally did not live up to my expectation . . .

 

[Fried Man]

i agree, disappointed.

i thought it was funny how requiem the eyes dialated (they were doin heroin) and now in this movie their eyes constrict (meth) HA!

but yah, disappointed

 

[Fried Man]

oh yah, what was with the bleeping of the swearing and the censoring nudisty (strippers crotch) the dvd i rented was like that

 

[xena]

^ it was probably the edited version. i mistakenly bought the edited version (it was really cheep though, go figure)

 

[CryoPhuze]

SPUNpinions on the film

Well i happened to watch it two times now, and we have it on DVD, and I think it is an excellent depiction of life in the 'fast lane', though it lacks in general placement and creative plotlines. The actors chosen to act the tweaker parts in the film are chosen well, and the acting in the film is quite what I would have seen or experienced within the evils of the methworld. The only thing I was quite dissapointed with was the musical score, which was conducted by our special and now out of the league, billy corgan, and some of the scenes would have been felt more intense if a hard techno or dark jungle track were being played instead of a simple few mellow guitar riffs and the occasional corgan and unknown girl vocal wonder songs.

thats my opinion. whats yours?

 

[gothic-trench-coat]

I haven't seen it yet. I really want to. I mean, being a tweaker it just seems like somethin I should do. My friend Weezle rented it and he and Andrew had it FOREVER so I kept going to the rental store and it was always rented out and later I found out they had had it all that time. Anyway, the day I actually had $4 to rent a movie, SPUN was rented out so I got WASTED instead. WASTED was too much like my life--different drug though--and just made me sad and fiend for drugs. My favorite movie I have seen where drugs were a big part of it was ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE.

 

[Basecamp]

I thought everyone was well cast except for jason shwartzman, he seemed a little out of place. But its still a great movie.

 

[@lterEgo]

i thought the film paled in comparison to other modern drug movies, especially requiem for a dream. i found the portrayal of tweekers to be very unrealistic and largely based on exaggerated stereotypes. i've been exposed to my fair share of meth addicts, and i agree that the paranoia, misplaced emotion, nonsensical chatter, fiending, and shadiness do exist. however, i think the tweeker traits in spun were embellished almost to the point of parody.

when i saw requiem for a dream, i was moved. in addition to an amazing storyline and phenomenal soundtrack, it had a clear message: unchecked addiction in any form always wins. the fates of some of the characters in requiem may have been a bit extreme, but they contributed to the overall message of the movie. on the other hand, i walked away from spun thinking nothing more profound than, "boy, tweekers sure are weird!" i also thought spun quite shamelessly stole the cut up frame-by-frame drug use sequences from requiem by the way they used sound, pupil close-ups, etc.

i also disagree with CryoPhuze's criticism of the musical score. contrarily, i found the soundtrack to be one of the only redeeming qualities of this film. i will admit to a certain bias due to my respect for billy corgan, but given the size and type of town this movie was set in, bangin' electronic music hardly seems appropriate.

at any rate, this film has been discussed already in Visual and Performing Arts. a search actually brings up a number of threads about this movie, but here's a link to one that's still open for comments:

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