Red-Barracuda In fairness, this sounds like quite a good idea on paper. A bunch of lost movies from the silent era have been put on film by using old reviews as building blocks. What's more, the idea of visually representing this material by way reproducing the look of old film stock and silent movie techniques seems like a pretty good one. But what it ultimately comes down to is that old adage that some ideas sound far better on paper than they are in practise. At the outset I was pretty much on board with this one and appreciating the visual ideas and general oddness of the content but after half an hour or so I was basically struggling. The visual style, while well done, is basically so relentless that it becomes increasingly difficult keeping your mind on any of the content. So much so that for the most part of this I was staring at it as you would wallpaper. Pretty wallpaper admittedly but staring at a wall for extended periods is hard going and ultimately a somewhat mind-numbing endeavour.I don't think there is any point summarising the plot. I cannot see what good that could possibly achieve. But suffice to say that that the material is dealt with in a part surrealist, part absurdist manner. There is even a few interesting actors involved in this as well but they are pretty much lost is the mix also. As I said earlier there is an interesting visual aesthetic at play here and the concept has potential as an idea but, despite all this, I found this to be a thoroughly unengaging experience. It felt way too long clocking in at two hours as well and, in the final analysis, I more or less hated watching this interminable film.

wayneluscombe I did not enjoy this film. In fact after investing an hour trying to watch it, I had to give up. Some reviewers have used the terms "deep" and a "slog" to get through. Well it was deeper than I wanted to go, and slog is an understatement. I was not able to figure out a plot, it appeared to be a jumble of disconnected clips randomly strung together that made no sense. The harsh flickering high contrast filming style with it's strange pulsation graphic images in the background, was like watching something from the psychedelic 60's. The flickering was like watching a strobe light. The scenes were short and jumped from scene to scene like something from Sesame Street. If you are a fan of Pulp Fiction, you may be able to sit through this film long enough to figure it out. For me, it was an hour of my life I will never get back.

euroGary Canadian director Guy Maddin may be one of cinema's foremost practitioners of arty-fartiness, but he's certainly attracted some big names to appear in 'The Forbidden Room': Louis Negin (a Maddin regular), Roy Dupuis, Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier... I wonder how many of them understood the film? I certainly didn't, but then, I'm not sure Maddin is terribly bothered what the audience think.The plot, such as it is, features a crew on a doomed submarine who are suddenly joined by a lumberjack. The question of how the lumberjack got on the submarine is never answered; instead he begins telling his story, which starts with a beautiful woman being kidnapped by a finger-snappin', bladder-beatin' tribe of cavemen and grows, in incomprehensible fashion, to include a man who murders his butler to cover up his own failure to remember his wife's birthday; an aviatrix who finds herself accused of squidnapping, and two animated models that are meant to represent talking bananas but which wouldn't look out of place in those smutty 'Flesh Gordon' films.Substance, though, is not important to Maddin: it's all about style. And my word, does that style make this film a tough watch. Maddin has apparently gone for a 1940s movie serial look and while that implies a certain period charm (indeed, the underwater shots of the submarine have a pleasingly cheap and retro look), we also get bleached colour, flickering images and scratchy sound that, coupled with the fact most shots last no longer than 3-4 seconds and even then the bloody camera doesn't stay still, make it difficult for the eye to focus on anything.To sum up, the loose and at times humorous storyline does make this an interesting watch. But the production values mean I wouldn't want to put myself through it again!

JvH48 Saw this at the IMAGINE film festival 2015 in Amsterdam. Walked out after one hour, nearly half of the 130 minutes running time. I did not understand a thing about what it was all about from the outset, but I allowed it some slack due to the overly positive introductory talk by the festival's artistic director. He told us about the abundance of references to films from the silent period (I don't think I care). The format is blatantly weird in taking trouble to look like a film from the silent period, with seemingly missing pieces and imperfect material, though we know that this film is recently made, as such leading to the conclusion that these imperfections are added as a gimmick and defeating any useful purpose. It may resonate with film professionals, however, but what do I know.There is no edible story (actually five stories I've heard or read somewhere, craft-fully intertwined). I could not derive anything in common that could have served as a binding theme. It may be so that the binding element(s) were to be revealed later on, but I did not wait until the final revelation, and left. Anyway, other festival visitors who sat it out until the very end, did not make much of it either, as it scored a lowly 36th (out of 45) place for the audience award with average score 6.78 (out of 10).