Perfume- Story Of A Murderer

The final 10-15 minutes have to be seen to be believed. Loved it.

I find it hysterical that it seems like most of us are trying to cleanse ourselves from Halloween by finding movies that actually show us believable killers.

I've been putting off seeing this one for too long, thanks for the reminder.

I was a big fan of this when I first saw it upon hitting DVD. Really an unexpected film with drop-dead gorgeous cinematography.

It also manages to truly deliver a sense of smell via film. Not since John Water's "Polyester" Smell-O-Vision cards has this been successfully accomplished.

This movie is way more dark fantasy than anything close to realistic horror. It was completely different from what I expected, but that ended up being a very good thing.

I finally saw this last weekend. It's fantastic. Being a fan of the novel, I really wondered how they would successfully evoke the whole variety of fragrances on-screen. Like Surge pointed out, it's well-done.

The acting is top-notch (like Bob said, you can't really go wrong with Rickman and Hoffman), especially the fairly unknown actor playing Grenouille.

And those last 15 minutes SPOILERS: The scene on the plaza being slightly exaggerated and amplified, to make the point a bit more obvious since it's a different medium raised the whole movie.

I thought Hoffman struck a bit of a bum note by playing his character for laughs. It just didn't sit well with the rest of the film.

My girlfriend brought home Rest Stop* over the weekend and we decided to watch it the day after I'd seen Halloween.

It almost made me want to watch Halloween again.

*I knew nothing of this movie except for recognizing the title. The dvd review on CHUD was too kind.

Hey, Rest Stop's fun at least! And it's a way more brutal film.

I loved this movie. It's definitely one of my favorites of the year.

Did anyone else kind of think of this as a "rise of a supervillain" movie? A guy with a special born in ability that could help him enslave the world seemed very comic booky to me.

Ok, Joey Lawrence did get shot in the head twice. But that's all I'm giving it.

As for the original reason for this thread, Perfume is a movie I am really looking forward to seeing.

It's been playing here in theatres for a while and now I regret not seeing it. You guys got me really curious now.

Hated it. The lead actor, very dull.
Hoffman tries hard, and the last 15 minutes was great
but it was way overlong and couldn't make me care about it.

I realize I look like an idiot in the minority.

If it makes you feel better, I didn't think it was too hot, either. I didn't hate it, but I didn't think it was particularly good.

I can't even make one of those "the book was much better" arguments, since I think the book tends to get more attention and respect than it deserves (thanks, Kurt Cobain). I mainly saw the movie just to see how a book that's so concerned with scent and the internal logic of the main character could be conveyed. All things considered, it's pretty faithful, but there was never enough story there to sustain a a two-and-a-half-hour movie, especially with a protagonist whose motivation is fairly unrelateable (even among other cinematic murderers). There are two big scenes at the end that are very effective, but they don't quite make up for the rest of the movie.

Nudity and apparently some minor girl-on-girl as well. Do any of these involve Rachel Hurd-Wood?

I think you maybe get Ms. Hurd-Wood's bare butt. But everyone else gets nekkers at the end.

Sweet. I was interested in this film before that, honest.

You might want to hang on to that initial interest, because the sex and nudity in this movie are pretty far from arousing.

Devin's review can be found here

http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=reviews&id=8407

Like Devin I found the first half, aside from a few minor setpieces, largely lacking. But I found the second half to be utterly superb. It's very hard to like any of the characters in the first half because aside from Hoffman no one is given a chance to really do anything.

Once the transition has been made to the country town we get this influx of interesting minor characters and the gallows humour, which was evident right at the start, comes back full swing.

I loved the murder montage particularly because after the first killing it seemed to be played as some bizarre comedy more than anything else. But the film seems to become very sympathetic to Jean-Baptiste's ideology and aside from the first few and the very last of the murders the rest of the killings are played for laughs or pushed aside. The surrealistic ending is particularly great though, although I found Rickman's inability to do anything really devastating.

It just kinda reminded me (in tone, not production value) of an old Hammer Horror film.

But I think Dave's right on the money when he saws that none of the nudity/sex is particularly arousing. The film is far too odd and the mise en scene far too horrible for the nudity to be anything other than matter of fact.

He still grosses us out. That's powerful.

Funny how the mention of Fab pretty much spoils that the main character is a necrophile. That's a special kind of spoil.

He's not a necrophile.

EDIT: I'm of course referring to the main character of the movie, not Fabfunk.

So many layers of meta.

I managed to see this back around christmas.

It's a film of... mixed merits, on the whole, but certainly interesting enough to be worth a look, and I was very taken with the cinematography.

Like Spike, I think bizarre comedy is probably the best way to regard much of it. I do like the sympathetic stance it adopts towards Baptiste, though.