Watch ivans xtc. For Free

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

What is most telling about this film is the director's use of overwrought music for the film's beginning and end which seems like a desperate and failed attempt to inject some emotion and gravity into the movie. This is akin to laying down a laughtrack in a lifeless comedy. The director chose to use Wagner and plays it really long and loud and hard. Granted this picture has a very smart lead performer, it's not enough that your characters be smart. Wouldn't it be nice or simply better if they could just make you feel?

Rule #645: All films made in Hollywood, by Hollywood, about Hollywood, must be seedy. I should probably add ‘for Hollywood' to the above list, as the film is more or less a home movie. Like The Player, Sunset Boulevard and countless others before it, it is a film that has been made by locals and just happened to have been given a world-wide release; seemingly by accident. It also takes great delight in detailing what a dreadful, decadency, drug and sex-fuelled level of hell it is. Personally, I can't wait to go there.Although based on an original novel, its structure is different and only the central idea has been ‘borrowed.' Danny Huston plays (and rather well) an agent who manages to land a big, starry client and discover that he has cancer, all in the space of a few days. It's all downhill from then on as he begins to reassess his life, realises his girlfriend is just after his business connections and that he has barely achieved anything of worth in his short life. To be honest, that really doesn't come through in the film and feels as if it could have done with a few more scenes and some sharper editing. Despite some excellent scenes, the characters seem too much like improvised teaching studies and not well-written, three-dimensional people. Only Ivan manages to leap from the screen, and that is largely because of Danny Huston's Jack Nicholson-like presence.Another thing to note is that the film was shot with digital cameras, although the sound seems to have been recorded with a Dictaphone. The photography is good, but is soft and jittery. This is because it was shot interlaced and not in progressive scan. Given the quality of the cameras available, and its inevitable transfer to film, I'm not quite sure why. Techno-bore detail, I know, but still distracting.A good effort, but a home movie: 6/10

Again, we have a literary masterpiece "adapted" to the big screen (e.g., the recent "Bartleby"). Not a total success, in my opinion. First of all its transformed setting...the Hollywood scene...while the film creates its reality fairly well...is far from the original characterization of a public servant (a magistrate) and his powerful, reflective downward path to death. Secondly, the depiction of the movie business as superficial and full of back=slapping and phony relationships is a rehash to the point of cliche.That said, Danny Huston's performance as the high-living Hollywood agent, facing his imminent death is very convincing and even moving at times...and creates sympathy for an otherwise vacuous character. We are spared none of the grim details of his last days on earth...so be warned.

I went to see this film without knowing anything about it except that I was a fan of the director and while it doesn't rank amongst his best work it is certainly engaging. After the longest opening credits I've ever seen (i.e. all of the film's credits are at the beginning except for the music credits), the film introduces us to the backbiting world of Hollywood agents. Ivan is a self confessed 'weekend alcoholic' who 'lives in the fast lane' as he tells his psychiatrist. In nearly any other film we would dislike this character as he takes drugs, has sex with other women behind his girlfriend's back and only seems to care about his status. If I added that he just wants to be loved you might avoid the film altogether, however it is Danny Huston's subtle and involving performance as the lead character that hooks the viewer and keeps you interested. Coming across as a combination of John C. Reilly and Jack Nicholson, Huston is a great character actor and deserves a career as notable as his sister. I'm not a fan of digital video and certainly the lower constrast and flatter cinematograpy here hasn't convinced me of the merits of the medium, but the director has said he wanted the film to look like a documentary and so this approach suits the film. The shots are at least typically well framed and always contain something interesting. This is Rose's second adaptation of Tolstoy following Anna Karenina, and shows the writer holds up well when relocated to the present day. The lead character is apparently also based on Rose's (late) agent which may be why the film is still waiting for a release date. Stylistically the film is most similar to Mike Figgis' Timecode (which also starred Huston) as the performances here were also somewhat improvised but doesn't suffer from the amateur dramatics of that film as the actors in ivansxtc didn't have to keep going for an hour and a half. At the London Film Festival where I saw this film, Rose commented that he wants to work with the same cast and format again and this isn't a bad idea if he goes for stronger and snappier material next time. I enjoyed the film, but it took a while to get going and the undercurrent of homophobia (no doubtedly present in that world) was slightly off-putting. The dovetailing of the images and soundbites in the opening credits with the last scenes of the film worked well and the use of classical music throughout, particularily Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, creates the kind of atmosphere and gravitas (perhaps occasionally heavy-handedly) that you would get from one of Bernard Herrman's Hitchcock scores. Overall I enjoyed it but it is more for the fans of Mike Figgis' films than Rose's. Having made two of the greatest horror films ever made I just wish he would return to that genre.