Slipstream.

"What in the name of...?" asks Nick Schager at Cinematical. "Anthony Hopkins goes way, way, way off the deep end with Slipstream, a straight-outta-crazyland film written and directed by the actor in some sort of feverish attempt to mimic the work of former The Elephant Man collaborator David Lynch."

"Amazingly, Sir Anthony Hopkins has raised the bar to batshit insanity with this maddening passion project, which he wrote, directed, scored, and stars in with as much slack-jawed discombobulation as he's likely to inspire in his audience," writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

Updated through 10/30.

"[I]f this were a sonata, it would be called 'Mulholland Drive in Oliver Stone Flat," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "Blaring its pretense to Lynch-ness, Slipstream crumbles under the weight of Hopkins's self-indulgence, yet there is some measure of sincerity to this senseless upchuck."

"I thought the talking spider was kind of cool, but the movie as a whole is nonsense," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "I'm glad that Hopkins has apparently been using the bland, middlebrow stage of his acting career to experiment with massive doses of psychotropic chemicals and open the doors of perception and all that. Next time, maybe he'll just write a manifesto."

"Slipstream calls to mind David Lynch's Inland Empire gone horribly awry," writes Jeff Reichert at indieWIRE. "Lynch, an expert in bending cinematic reality to his will, had the good sense to masterfully seduce audiences into his rabbit hole. Hopkins, seemingly less sure of himself, hyperactively assaults from the start."

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Updates, 10/26: "Anthony Hopkins has written and directed a very peculiar film. He is the first to say so," writes Roger Ebert, introducing his interview for the Chicago Sun-Times. In his review, Ebert writes:

I trust you enough, dear reader, to tell you something I should keep private: During a period after my surgical emergency, when I was on what Mr Limbaugh so usefully describes as prescription medications, I had dreams more real than my waking moments. Then the fog cleared, my health returned, the medication stopped, and I resumed writing brilliant and lucid reviews like this one. But I know Hopkins gets it right, because I've been there.

"[F]or an actor like Mr Hopkins, disappearing into another character, especially a historical figure, must be a far more unsettling deconstruction of reality than for the casual moviegoer observing the transformation," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "That is a notion Slipstream might have explored more fruitfully, had it focused its wandering attention span, kept its camera steadier and figured out what it wanted to say."

"Slipstream is an experiment in visual stream-of-consciousness, but stream-of-consciousness fares better as a literary form than a cinematic one, possibly because the Parallax View-style atrocity montage has long been such a favorite among film students, possibly because literary stream-of-consciousness better mirrors the thought process," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

"Perhaps one could find a prose equivalent in Joyce or Beckett, but basically this is 'all cinema, all the time,'" writes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "I'm a sucker for this sort of narrative playfulness, so I fully enjoyed Slipstream. Perhaps it's best thought of as Inland Empire Lite: At half the length, it's easier going down but less filling. And there is pleasure to be had in watching [Christian] Slater and [John] Turturro chew the scenery. Most of all, for any died-in-the-pod film buff, there's the thrill of seeing old fave Kevin McCarthy on screen, looking remarkable at 92."

"What do we know about Anthony Hopkins, really?" asks Noel Murray at the AV Club. "If nothing else, Slipstream is astonishing just for the way it lets us in on what Hopkins has been thinking about all these years. Turns out, he's been pondering the slipperiness of identity among people who make their living pretending."

"Hopkins's film offers modernism without any rigor or discipline, and experimentation based on other people's ideas," writes Steve Erickson in Gay City News. "I haven't seen such a pseudo-avant-garde muddle since Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers."

Online listening tip. Hopkins is a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

"I suspect most viewers will find that the only enduring outcome of Hopkins's admittedly bold but nonsensical film is an acute headache," writes Emily Condon in Reverse Shot.

Update, 10/27: Peter Sobczynski talks with Hopkins for Hollywood Bitchslap.

Update, 10/30: "This is a screen artist wrestling with the memories, fears, dreams and regrets that rage at the twilight of a brilliant career - and of life," writes Steven Boone in the Star-Ledger. "It is also, sad to say, unwatchable."

Posted by dwhudson at October 25, 2007 3:42 PM