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Anthony Hopkins, Stella Arroyave, Christian Slater, John Turturro, Michael Clarke Duncan ... see more see more... , Camryn Manheim , Jeffrey Tambor , S. Epatha Merkerson , Fionnula Flanagan , Gene Borkan , Christopher Lawford , Lisa Pepper , Gavin Grazer , Kevin McCarthy , Lana Antonova , Michael Lerner , Bill [William] Lucking , Aaron Tucker

Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins took a turn behind the camera for the first time since 1996's August with this mind-bending fantasy that he also wrote and stars in. Hopkins plays Felix Bonhoeffer... read more read more... a screenwriter with a habit of getting lost in his own head. Felix begins to doubt reality itself, though, when the real world and the one in his imagination begin to blend together. Also starring Christian Slater and John Turturro, Slipstream premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

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28% liked it

3,408 ratings

Critics

23% liked it

40 critics

R, 1 hr. 36 min.

Directed by: Anthony Hopkins

Release Date: October 26, 2007

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DVD Release Date: February 26, 2008

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Flixster Reviews (526)

  • paulsandberg
    October 6, 2011
    paulsandberg
    "A scriptwriter sees the line between his characters and real people begin to blur"... sounds good on paper, doesn't it? I'm sure the studio thought so when they green lighted this bit of excessive hubris, especially when it was pitched by Anthony Hopkins, who was chief cook and... read more bottle washer for the project - being writer, director, actor and what the heck, even wrote and performed most of the background music.

    Wow, what could possibly go wrong? Well nothing unless Hopkins spent many a day imbibing mind altering chemicals while discussing states of alternate realities with David Lynch. Sadly, all these ruminations concerning what is "real" only ends up being a cheap cop out where the threadbare seams of a script apparently written on the fly are readily apparent. As one of the characters bemoans "we've lost the plot". Indeed!

    While this film doesn't have 7 foot tall rabbits or dancing dwarves, it is very Lynchian in its approach and tone - but instead of giving you the feeling that you are watching something profound that you just aren't seeing quite right, Slipstream is like a high school play with bad acting - too obvious and a one trick pony, with little wink, wink asides meant to cover up the fact that the film is short on vision and all too proud of its, I will confess, nifty concept.

    Perhaps Hopkins had a clear vision for this film, but regardless it comes off as uneven and you suspect that Hopkins may have been having a jab at the industry and fans that enabled him the opportunity to stroke his vanity. As the film fades to black you hear laughter and a bit of a looney tunes melody - some big inside joke or an attempt to say "yeah, this is all a mess so I might as well admit it".

    Personally I think the film could certainly used a bit of collaboration - by allowing Hopkins free reign, he could indulge his whimsy with no-one to tell him that you can't mess with the audience by using slight of hand; passing off lazy continuity and a lack of clarity by claiming that Slipstream is time moving backwards and forwards at the same time - ok, even if you buy into the alternate reality stuff, there's still no excuse for having no character development whatsoever.

    In the end, one could support the supposition that the entire film was all in Hopkins' head - a dream within a dream, so to speak - and art imitating life (or vice versa). In surer hands I think that there could be relevance here, but as it stands you end up with a bit of overindulgence that, for me, had only one redeeming moment: when the owner of Dolly's Diner makes an appearance, looking like Dolly Parton and when asked her name she winks at the audience and says "I'm the character playing the Dolly Parton look a like".
  • Stinger839
    March 2, 2009
    Stinger839
    As I write this segment at 59mins in, I can't decide if this film is brilliant or pretentious. Certainly the first third (and pretty much all) of the camera work that isn't a jump cut is pretentious (esp the color changes are not earned). And this second third I've just finished ... read moreis plain brilliant, a new sendup of movie production on par with The Player, Swimming with Sharks, and Day of the Locust. I do know that however I turn out feeling about this movie in the end, I will probably rent the DVD and do tons of research on how/why Hopkins put this project together. Okay, resuming screening.

    1:hr10mins: this movie is tripping me out, but also annoying me too(again with the unearned color and cutting "style").

    Okay, the SAVE creen is awesome! I'm totally geeking out on the writer aspects too, cuz it's like very much in the vein of a William S. Burroughs or Philip K. Dick confrontation b/w the self and reality. Perhaps other writers oft wonder if their lives will turn into that blur of story and objectivity; the multiple layers of reality that stack themselves before us cannot be ignored and must be grandly experienced, like a fever dream spanning a few decades. This film captures that very well. It is all really hinging on the last 10-15mins though.

    Alright, I thought it was awesome with the horror detour to the framed beginning/ending tragic device. Awesome as
    Schizopolis or Adaptation or Naked Lunch? Hellz NO. But I enjoyed; others will rate 3 to 3.5. I give it that extra bump just because the stylistic blend confused and angered me in a kinda fun way.
  • ceWEBrity
    April 1, 2008
    ceWEBrity
    Kudos to Anthony Hopkins for trying something fifty times more creative and ambitious than any other actor-cum-director would, but this just didn't work for me. You can't pull off David Lynch unless you're actually David Lynch, and that's solely based on name recognition - half o... read moref his quality is inflated by his reputation alone, but I digress. This is a lousy, wasteful movie, peddling style without actually having a fundamental understanding of it. Like I Know Who Killed Me before it, Slipstream tries to imitate Lynch while completely ignoring what makes his style (sort of) work.

    There is a sickening amount of jump cuts, freeze frames, crossing the line, all sorts of gimmicky editing devices scattered throughout this film. The first twenty minutes are nearly unwatchable. Past this point, these little glitches still occur, not as severe but certainly just as annoying.

    I understand that this movie was an attempt at a stream of consciousness narrative, so why did Hopkins let an eight year old edit it? It is perfectly possible to tell a story such as Felix's without disorienting camera changes, sudden removal of color and stuttering images. Maybe, MAYBE things like this could have enhanced the movie if they were used sparingly, and even then there would have been the risk of gimmickry. But Hopkins goes way the fuck overboard. It makes Slipstream into something deeply amateurish, not the product of someone who has worked in film for over 40 years.

    Past all that, it doesn't even change the fact that there isn't anything going on in the movie. The time that these camera tricks detract from the movie really begins to add up, and by the time you're an hour in there's this unshakable feeling that you've only seen twenty minutes of movie. It is not without its charms, but I'll be damned if I'm going to sit through an hour and a half of visual masturbation just to watch S. Epatha Merkerson laugh at something inappropriate.

    Skip this one, unless you're one of those indignant pseudo-intellectuals who thinks that anything "different" is automatically good.
  • puffchunk
    February 27, 2008
    puffchunk
    Were I to watch this film not knowing anything about it, I'd have given it 2 stars for being obnoxiously confusing. But, knowing that it is an autobiographical interpretation of Anthony Hopkins' career and views of todays dying film art and overlap of media, I would give it 3 st... read morears. Put um together and you get 2.5 stars. Watch it when you have something else to do at the same time.
  • gator681
    December 9, 2008
    gator681
    [font=Century Gothic]On the surface, "Slipstream," written, directed and starring Anthony Hopkins, may seem like a ripoff of David Lynch's puncturing of reality but this film lacks the vitriol that Lynch has aimed at Hollywood with "Mulholland Drive" and "Inland Empire." In fact... read more, I think it is quite personal to Hopkins. So personal in fact that he cast his wife Stella Arroyave in the role of the wife of his character, Felix Bonhoeffer, a screenwriter. But if that's true then what is Tracy(Lisa Pepper), a young blonde, doing with Bonhoeffer at the racetrack and later asleep in his convertible when a gunman goes nuts on the freeway?(This could also be after the ending of the film...) As she tells a friend on the phone that she is going to become a star because her picture is on the news, I was thinking how strange it is to see yourself on television as other people are also watching. Now imagine an actor who is used to that kind of attention but it becomes such a common occurrence that he is always confused with the characters he portrays.(The movie starts with images of Nixon and Hitler, two of the more infamous real people Hopkins has portrayed.) Now, that leads to an examination of identity and wasn't that what "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was all about?[/font]
  • Yinali
    May 9, 2008
    Yinali
    Superiously weird. Didn't get any part of the movie.
  • trisarahtops22
    March 14, 2010
    trisarahtops22
    I just have one question...what was Anthony Hopkins thinking?? I'm all for a weird, you-might-have-to-watch-this-several-times to understand type of movie, but this was just dumb...
  • filmguy450
    November 22, 2009
    filmguy450
    I cannot desricbed this film, at all. I could tell you what happens, but I cannot descirbe, partially because it will ruin the beauty of how astounding it is, but mostly, words cannot do this thing justice. Athony Hopkins directs a very assured movie, and does not care to make it... read more easy on the viewer. A must watch, even if you wind up hating it, I bet it'd be apperciated on come levels.
  • jasontmartin3
    October 11, 2009
    jasontmartin3
    I dont even know what was going on maby I missed some thing I dont know but it was very bad, maby I was to high? If I should watch it again let me know!
  • Sloirishbud
    September 2, 2009
    Sloirishbud
    I am myself a big fan of surreal films and I found this film utterly confusing at best and nonsensical at worst. Even though the continuity in the story line was no where to be found, I found the film to be a visually pleasing delight. Anthony Hopkins is one intelligent man and t... read morehis film of his is truly the most confusing film I have ever watched. I will give the style, artistry, and solid cinematography a rating of 3 but the rest of the film deserves a 2.5.

View All Slipstream Reviews

Critic Reviews

Steven Boone
October 26, 2007
Steven Boone, Newark Star-Ledger

Slipstream ultimately winds up an avant-garde film that just ain't all that avant. Full Review

Kyle Smith
October 26, 2007
Kyle Smith, New York Post

At 96 minutes, this vanity/insanity project runs a bit long; five minutes would have been plenty. Full Review

Carina Chocano
October 26, 2007
Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times

Slipstream is an experiment in visual stream-of-consciousness, but stream-of-consciousness fares better as a literary form than a cinematic one. Full Review

Stephen Holden
October 26, 2007
Stephen Holden, New York Times

Slipstream is Anthony Hopkins's third film as a director and his first as a quasi-avant-garde filmmaker working well outside the mainstream.

Roger Ebert
October 26, 2007
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Leave it to a 69-year-old actor to make the year's most experimental film. Full Review

Sid Smith
October 25, 2007
Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune

Slipstream is bold, experimental, off-the-wall kicky and utterly exasperating. Full Review

Gene Seymour
October 25, 2007
Gene Seymour, Newsday

Say this much for Anthony Hopkins' project: If he's going to indulge himself as a writer-director-star, it's probably better that he goes completely off the wall. Full Review

Andrew O'Hehir
October 25, 2007
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

I'm glad that Hopkins has apparently been using the bland, middlebrow stage of his acting career to experiment with massive doses of psychotropic chemicals and open the doors of perception and all tha... Full Review

Aaron Hillis
October 23, 2007
Aaron Hillis, Village Voice

Hopkins claims it's a comedy, and perhaps John Turturro's live-action cartoon of a mogul producer suggests so, but what does it all mean? That art can be just as shallow as Hollywood? Full Review

Kirk Honeycutt
January 25, 2007
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

The veneer of stylistic hyperactivity can't conceal the starkly banal dialogue and a roster of performances that seem, under the circumstances, hardly directed at all.

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