Watch Stoned For Free

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a story of two people, not ten, as you might assume from the poster, which suggests a bio-pic of the Rolling Stones and their various rock-chicks. We are actually looking at the last few weeks of Brian Jones, the group's genuinely brilliant creator, whose colleagues had just fired him on the grounds that he was no longer fit to create anything, after plunging too deep into the debauchery of the 60's music scene. He would soon be found drowned in his pool, possibly at the hands of an unpaid builder, Frank Thorogood, resentful at living so near yet so far from the pop-star life.The murder theory is far from proved, and even then there is an alternative suspect in the Stones' chauffeur and minder Tom Keylock, who plays a menacing role in this film, while others claim that the asthmatic Jones had simply gone swimming while stoned out of his mind.It is the relationship between Jones and Thorogood that drives this story - the glamorous celebrity and the humble tradesman, dazzled and disoriented by the young groupies casually brushing past him with their mini-skirted thighs.To Thorogood, Jones is generous with his drugs and his girls ("Haven't you ever heard of free love?"), but relentlessly tight with money. He was in fact a small, narrow, mean character, as shown by the offhand way he ordered his first girlfriend to abort their baby. But by now he is overtaken by debt, having failed to deliver good songs for some time. And Thorogood's men are wanting their wages rather badly...Those of us with vivid memories of the 60's will pick up some too-obvious images of people smoking cigarettes in a theatrical way, so you don't miss the point, and a poster of the Black and White Minstrels, long since branded as non-PC. Also Thorogood's wife commenting on his new trendy long hairstyle. And a few contemporary song-hits (sung in cover-versions only).The scenes of drug-taking do not really touch a nerve among us non-druggies, and as for the free love, there is some weird camera direction, especially at a climactic point where one of the girls seems to be resisting group-sex, while a male voice shouts "Experiment with me!". The nature of the experiment remains obscure.Meanwhile the swimming pool is featured almost like a character in the story. Jones and Thorogood are seen lounging and drinking beside it. When it's empty, they even make a recording down there, with echo effects. And there is a ghostly reappearance of Jones, thanking Keylock (but not Thorogood, you notice) for making him a martyr. "If it wasn't for you, I'd still be alive and no one would care." For Jones had earned immortality as founder member of the 27 Club, commemorating rock-stars who die at that age, for which there is (supposedly) a statistical spike.As one of the rock-chicks remarks, showing an unexpected shaft of profundity, "Stonesville. A very strange place."

This is a great film. Took me totally by surprise. I had watched the documentary about the murderer of Brian Jones in which they used a few clips from this film. I downloaded it and then read the reviews—not that flattering and so filed it away as a "later watch." Glad I did so.Watching it about 6 weeks later it was awesome. It's just about the last 3 months of Brian Jones' life but it is a great portrayal of the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll lifestyle of the 60s.Never boring. This film grabs you. 99% of it is about Brian so if you're looking for biopic of the Stones, don't watch it. But about Brian Jones and his builder it is spot on—everything that the doco suggested.Certainly well worth a watch.

I watched this film once and thought it was good. I watched it a second time, with the Director's Commentary activated on the DVD, and it became sublime. Simple as that.Stephen Woolley has done some useful previous stuff as a producer - Michael Collins, etc. - and Stoned, his first offering as director, is just as good.As Woolley explains, Stoned is heavily influenced by the great, off-beat American exiled director, Joseph Losey. The essence of this film, Stoned, is similar to that of The Servant, the Losey film where a servant (Dirk Bogarde) takes up a post in the house of his master (James Fox) and, slowly, the roles are reversed. The servant becomes the master and vice versa. This is what happens in Stoned, where the builder, Frank Thorogood, seems to take over Brian Jones's life.Losey's masterpiece, The Servant (1963), is set in a London world facing social upheaval and the end of the old class system. It's also set in Chelsea, just where the Rolling Stones started out, in 1963 also. But, when you listen to the Director's Commentary on Stoned, you get some amazing explanations of the brilliant camera-work and cinematography which I had completely missed.For instance, when Brian Jones is in Cheltenham, confronted by the father of a schoolgirl he's made pregnant, there are little touches from Losey, like the convex mirror, and a distorted and disturbed Brian Jones.Stoned has some brilliant vintage-style photography, such as the trip to Morocco preceding Jones's sacking from the Stones. Then it's back to 'Pooh Corner' (as Tom Keylock, the Stones' manager describes Jones's Elizabethan country manor house in Hartfield, East Sussex). Jones lives in A A Milne's old house, the home of Christopher Robbin and Winnie the Pooh.Stephen Woolley draws on another Losey film, The Accident (1967), also set in a country house with certain class divisions evident. You could even draw on The Go Between (Losey, 1970), with Tom Keylock (in a superb performance by David Morrissey - a sort of Harry Palmer crossed with Mike from the Young Ones).A fascinating film. Make sure you take advantage of the Director's Commentary on the DVD.

The worst thing about this film (and there are so many) is that Brian Jones is portrayed throughout as a snotty, drugged out loser. Yes, he was at the end...but there was so little insight about his prodigious musical abilities (beyond a cursory look via grainy flashbacks) that it is hard to be sympathetic to his plight, and unfortunate demise.(another curious point) Why, besides the ton of boobs shots, were there mostly frontal nudity of the male characters only? This has nothing to do with my main comments, but it is indeed curious why only male "members" are shown, and female genitalia were mostly hidden? It is usually the reverse in most films. I also now might add that I am no prude, but the gratuitous nudity seemed more for "show" then to further the idea that indeed... this was the swinging 60's.The scene near the end sums this movie up. Tom is telling Frank how he has to "clean up" everyone's messes including Frank's. Frank is about to confess to the murder, when Tom cuts him off, saying that he doesn't want to know how it happened. Tom's attitude mirrors my own.It really doesn't matter what the truth is/was, Brian Jones was dead..and who cares at this point? ..and that's exactly the biggest problem with this film.After making Brian himself and the viewer so desensitized to his life and accomplishments (and only belaboring the drugs, booze and sex) the movie at the end, tries to insert some meaning into it all by a imaginary meeting between Tom in his old age, and Brain's ghost. The scene might have been more poignant if the whole movie was a flashback through Tom's eyes, but it wasn't, so the scene plays out like one of Brian's drug hallucinations.Another way the film tries to patch things up is the statements on the screen before the credits, but it is too little, too late. My first thought when I turned off my DVD player was, "what a waste"..... and that goes for both Brian's beleaguered life, and this film...