Mad Song (2004) Online

MAD SONG, especially for a first film, is fantastic. Essentially throwing away convention for its own unique and thought-provoking brand of narrative, the film weaves through an excellently-realized dream world. It's a shame the film wasn't picked up for distribution, but the reviews it got and the votes on this site prove that whoever posted that negative comment was one of a slim few who didn't appreciate -- or couldn't understand -- this work.

MAD SONG is a very unusual, non-linear story that provokes interesting images and illusions. I found the cinematography and direction to be that of high quality art house films. David Roy has a vivid imagination and projects the story with great expertise. I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys creative, artistic, stylized art house films.

I thought this was a unique film, and had a very thrilling story, great acting, and wonderful cinematography. The director employs styling like that of David Lynch and Nicholas Roeg.

This film is beautifully shot and edited. Kudos to David Roy for maintaining a wonderful art house style.

I just finished watching this. I was intrigued at the beginning, but by the end, I just felt like it was a repeating record (literally too) that ultimately went nowhere. I very much liked the way the continual present/ past splicing was handled. But in the end, I just felt teased and ripped off. It felt like the work of a new filmmaker who had some interesting visual style but who ran out of money and didn't have what he needed to put together the film that he would have really wanted. the ending is one of those SO disappointing ones where I can just see the director not being able to figure out how to end it, and how to wrap it up. So ultimately, I got some interesting visuals, good acting, and the ultimate feeling of being let down.

Einstein once said that great thinkers have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. Mad Song is not `incomprehensible drivel'. It's beautifully shot and a joy to see. It's not your conventional narrative, and for me that's fine. It is quite comprehensible in spite of the layered stream of consciousness narrative. The acting is superb, the story complex.

If it turns out that this screening is LA's only chance to see this film then that's a sad commentary on the state of the American Cinema where a `hunk of woman' is the best measure of a film's value.

MAD SONG is a visually rich film which breaks many accepted rules of filmmaking but does so in a disturbing, yet touching manner. The filmmaker has great respect for the characters and for the film language. Every frame seems thoughtful and connected to every other frame in the movie as well as each character's struggle with a difficult past and present. It is told in a stream of consciousness style where the past, present and future and seamlessly blended together to give an intensely emotional and satisfying experience. MAD SONG is the work of a born filmmaker, I can't wait to see what David Roy will do next.

Mad Song is a unique find among so many movies aimed at entertainment over emotional complexity. Rich tones and beautiful cinematography saturate the lines between reality and illusion in this dangerous bold movie. What would happen if filmmakers gave up on entertaining audiences and allowed them to find own individual private meanings? Movies that come to mind when watching this film are Mulholland Drive, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Chelsea Walls and Red

Mad Song is a film that will fulfil your needs for high production value, as well as keep you hooked on the story. It is sexy, suspenseful, and visually beautiful. This is a must see for true fans of film making.

I thought this low budget thriller was very well done. The acting was very good, however, the direction and cinematography was outstanding. I highly recommend this film to anyone who is a student of independent film making. It is quite good!

I work for a library services business and I'm trying to catalog this movie -- which includes writing a plot summary. I've come to IMDb and I find... The exact same pretentious drivel that's on the back of the container.

At least 8 of those positive reviews were OBVIOUSLY written by the same person. Probably more.

So... what is it about? Do things happen in this "story" or is it just some series of images and noises? There's at least one woman in the movie -- some kind of radio host/psychiatrist/bi-curious goth chick -- but then the pronouns she and her get tossed around so much I can't tell who is what.

To whomever wrote the summary for the container: a) you're useless, b) there's a word for the article of clothing you call a 'hooded cape' -- it's called a 'cloak'.

The credits for this film indicate that the screenplay was copyrighted in 1998 and that the film was released in 2000. Since it is currently showing, for the first time, at the Laemmle Sunset 5 theater in West Hollywood, this means that it has taken 3 years for the film to find distribution even in such a large market as the Los Angeles area.

And no wonder. Better it had stayed in the can. This is a stupid, pretentious, and incomprhensible piece of drivel which surely must rank as one of the worst "serious" movies I've ever seen. It's only virtue is that its female lead, Kandeyce Jorden, is a lovely hunk of woman, and she can act as well. I certainly hope to be seeing more of her. As for the film, forget it.

shill: noun, 1. an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others.

Fellow IMDb members (if there are any real ones on this page), try this experiment. Click on the name of the person posting all the exuberant, ecstatic reviews and check how may other movies they've reviewed or discussed or even seen. The answer in every case: 1. This one. "Mad Song", or as I shall petition IMDb to change its title to "Mad Shill" because there are certainly some swindlers in support of this movie.

Before I even get to my review of the film, which I had typed up before even coming to this page and seeing this insultingly juvenile display of self-promotion by those whom I can only assume are the director and/or his girlfriends, I would like to pose the question: How bad does a film need to be to warrant a whole bunch of phony IMDb accounts to pad its ratings?

The answer is in my review below.

This movie was so irritating I actually shut it off 4 minutes before it ended because I wanted to leave with some shred of dignity. My original title for this review was going to be "Attack of the bad 90s clichés" because that's what it felt like. Imitating but not quite matching many of the now-dated 90s movie gags, "Mad Song" failed to achieve an identity of its own and instead came across as someone's attempt to copy other films.

In particular, this movie tries hard to be a sexy thriller like Basic Instinct (1992) or Sliver (1993), but there's nothing thrilling about it, and the sex scenes make about as much sense as a bad porno but without the nudity. We do get a few flashes of meaningless full frontal female nudity (an extra walking around in the background of a scene), and the actors are certainly doing their best to seduce each other in every damn dialogue (very tiresome, if not silly), and the lead female does wear a micro miniskirt in every scene that was probably stolen from Ally McBeal's dressing room in 1997, but other than that there's really nothing either sexy or thrilling about the production.

I give the director points for having an extreme visual style with some surrealistic edits that kept my attention. But after a while, with no thematic substance to hold it all together, the film devolved into something like an MTV video that goes on 90 minutes with the song looping over & over. That's certainly one way the Mad Song will drive you mad.

Now let's get to some of those clichés I mentioned earlier. We have (1) the creepy talk show stalker straight out of Oliver Stone's "Talk Radio". We have (2) the milfy housewife/mother who has an unerring capacity to boff every male (and maybe a few females) that she finds herself alone with for more than 30 seconds, like in, I dunno, "All Ladies Do It" (1992). We have (3) a little girl peeing on the floor like in The Exorcist (ok that one goes way back to 1973). Then we have some miscellaneous clichés that are so cliché that nobody knows where they originated, like a creepy girl wearing a hood... who has absolutely nothing to do with anything, or like a cheeseball goth-wannabe rockstar glam girl (transvestite?) who's supposed to be there to make things sexy I guess but again she has absolutely nothing to do with anything, or the WORST cliché which is the titular "Mad Song" that supposedly holds some ethereal significance to the story, but really it's just annoying.

I saved myself 4 minutes, but you can be even smarter by saving yourself the full 97 and skip this movie.

In closing, let me just say to all you IMDb folks, regardless of if you agree or disagree with me or find me insufferably boring or whatnot, I want to stress that at least I'm a real person who likes to write real reviews for real movies. And that's a lot more than I can say for the other dozen shill reviewers on this page. What an insult to IMDb, really.

Very well shot indie. The actors are good, the directing is rather impressive. Once you are in the story, you do care and you do get scared. Watch it! One word of caution: concentrate when you watch this thriller. Otherwise you will miss a lot of the story and the background story as well.