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8

Because it is very loosely based on a novel by Tolstoy, it knows just enough to give that existential layer. In the last days of your life, desperately seeking superficial pleasures that give no satisfaction whatsoever. It shows a very frustrating life. Otherwise great camera work too, feels a bit Dogme/Miami Vice experimental. Great soundtrack by Chopin and Wagner too (even better than von Triers use of it!). It is not a film that makes you happy, at times it is very bleak, but therefore very impressive. In the end; these are the gems that impress me.

Review by pirateneckbeard ★★★½

There is an arthouse looseness to this Bernard Rose picture giving us a bookending story structure with some stylized shots that open up this movie. You seem to only get fragments of this mans life that leaves us to interpret. This is a scathing commentary on the film industry and Danny Huston gives an impressive performance in it. While Peter Weller is just down right devilish. Not for everyone but I found it engaging and worth the watch.

Review by Shane Craig ★★★★★ Liked

Last night...I had this incredible pain. The pain was so strong I took every pill in the goddamn house. The pain wouldn’t go away. I was trying to find an image, one worthwhile image, that would get me through it. And all I could find was shit. I couldn’t find one worthwhile goddamn thing.

Perfect scene ^ and the fact that he was never even able to have that conversation with Charlotte makes it all the more devastating.

One of my favorite films at this point! Second watch within two days. The other day when I revisited this on the DVD I have I was completely unaware that Arrow had released a Blu-Ray only last week. I quickly ordered that and…

Review by ᴊᴏᴇ ᴍᴄᴋᴇᴏᴡɴ ★★★★½ Liked

Fantastic character study from Bernard Rose and Lisa Enos.

I only knew Rose's name from his most famous work, Candyman - a film that I enjoy but have never felt the need to dig deeper into, though I do recognise it's an important movie for many.

This is another story entirely though.

Shooting on digital and with a wonderful Danny Huston at his disposal, Rose manages to capture both the thrill and decadence of the Hollywood lifestyle, whilst tapping into a far darker reality of living such a fast life.

Opening with an overture of sorts, with picturesque shots of L.A. shown to the sounds of Wagner, it's the dialogue we can also hear that creates the juxtaposition between darkness…

Review by Dr. Ethan Lyon ★★★½

3rd Bernard Rose (after Candyman and Paper House)

Watched this after reading the novella it's based on, namely The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy, and its interesting to see where Rose and co. take dramatic liberties with the source material, updating it from the life of a minor judicial figure in 19th century Russia to turn of the 21st century Hollywood, with Ivan now a hard-living agent. Yet the film retains the story's basic textual thrust, that of a bon vivant coming to death with his own mortality as the inevitability of incurable sickness.

The big change is the removal of Ilyich's wife and children in favour of Beckman's girlfriend, Beckman's father and his artist sister. Sadly, that change…

2

A fascinating look at a man caught in an existential nightmare, I thought this more a take down of modern society rather than the specific hatchet job on the movie industry its often reported as being.

Based on a Tolstoy novel, this begins with the announcement of the death of our lead (a very sweaty, very manic and very good Danny Huston), we spend the first act witnessing how little value those he knew placed on him, culminating with a shameless row between two people who loomed large in his life during his own funeral. We then flash back and begin to witness Huston slowly realize his own worth (or lack thereof) as he comes closer and closer to his…

Review by Brian Formo ★★★ Liked

The beginning of ivans xtc., Bernard Rose's digital film experiment, is pretty rough because it's the production office of the film acting out dramatic scenarios and the stilted nature of early digital really captures their inability to act. It's unfortunate because once we get to professional actors, Danny Huston and Peter Weller, this experiment really starts to click. Huston is great; druggy mania looks fab in strobe lights. And ultimately, this captures the modern Hollywood era that allowed many predators to thrive while others looked the other way. Because the film is structured to introduce Ivan after his funeral to recreate Tolstoy just having a few more seasoned actors in the office scenes would've gone a long way.

In the end, I liked it. But it sure was cringe-and-go there for a while!

Review by nomenclature ★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Review by Wilson ★★★★½ Liked

Bernard Rose is an interesting filmmaker, with a strange obsession for adapting Leo Tolstoy. ivans xtc. is his version of the Tolstoy novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Rose has directed another four Tolstoy adaptations, as far as I can see (pretty sure Leo didn't have a short story about Candyman...), he has also made Anna Karenina (1997), The Kreutzer Sonata, Two Jacks and Boxing Day.

Rose takes the Tolstoy stories and updates them to the modern day, often setting them in sleazy Hollywood. He casts Danny Huston and lets rip.

ivans xtc. is a really full throttle Hollywood satire. It is a sleazy, sordid 90 minutes. The kind of film where Peter Weller snorts cocaine off Danny Huston's wife,…

2

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Review by Caroline

There is a scene where a woman is getting dressed and puts on denim (low rise jeans. So where the zipper is like one inch long) over nothing. No underwear. This is the sort of chilling place Hollywood was at the turn of the century.

Review by MovingPictures ★★★½

IVANSXTC (2000) colour US 94m.
Directed by Bernard Rose.

Cast: Danny Huston, Peter Weller, Joanne Duckman, Lisa Enos, Valeria Golino, Victoria Silvstedt ao.

TAGLINE:
There's a fine line between success and excess!

This film is actually a contemporary Hollywood version of Hollywood, bizarrely enough, based on the russian novella: "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1886) by Lev Tolstoy.

I have to confess that it was much harsher than I expected, but it also turned out much more fascinating than expected.
It is not very likeable or beautiful, but rewarding to watch.

Perhaps THE PLAYER (1992) by Robert Altman moves in the same circles and is somewhat reminiscent of this, although that one was delightful to watch, and IVANSXTC isn't.

The…