Thanks for the memories!

Simply Perfect

Fantastic!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Cliff Spab doesn't really care about anything. He gets held hostage at a store for 36 days by terrorists, who demand that the entire thing be broadcast on national television. Cliff ends up taking a bullet for fellow hostage Wendy - making him a national hero. The two are the sole survivors of the ordeal, and soon become prisoners of the media. Cliff escapes it all, only to find himself being pushed further away from Wendy when he needs her most....Once you get past the fact that Dorff sounds uncannily like Christian Slater, you get another one of those films from the mid nineties that tried to define good old 'generation X'. And for the most part, it works.Dorff is great as the guy who is having his fifteen minutes of fame, but cannot decipher why people are not mentioning his friend who was killed. But this was a time when media only really dwelled on the good stuff, to sugar coat the public, to get more money behind their new 'celeb'The film doesn't know what genre it belongs to. One minute it's hilarious, next it's soul searching, and then it goes for a Araki/Solondz hybrid that baffles.But it's good, and all the performances are great, I just wish it didn't get lost in its own smugness every now and again.The last fifteen minutes is great though, showing us how fickle the media were/are, and how fame really slips through your fingers, once a new fad has been found.Everything Matters? S.F.W...

I really love this movie. Dorff is way cool and the soundtrack just rocks your face off. SFW is really more than that, because it really takes the mickey out of news, media and reality TV, and it's cool to think that this came out way before the reality TV craze hit all our channels. Heaps of good acting from the cast, and lots of cool tunes and a really good message in this movie. I don't know why more people haven't seen it but if you love cool 90's movies with awesome soundtracks like Soundgarden, Manson and GWAR , then this is a movie you should really check out! Nine out of Ten, would be more but I was bummed the DVD had no features.

I saw this movie on release ages ago and it's not hard to fall in love with it at first.Stephen Dorff's performance is really amazing. You never think for a moment he isn't Cliff Spab, with all the pent-up rage, pain, hostility and hilarity that it entails.For the first half of the movie, it's really "the Cliff Spab/Stephen Dorff Show." He goes on a sort of Jack Kerouac road trip, bumping heads and rubbing noses with a variety of characters (and some wonderful actors who play them): Jake Busey (a good movie for once), Joey Lauren Adams (always terrific and smokin' hot here), and Pamela Gidley (quite a complex little cameo).But after his odyssey ends, there doesn't seem to be much of a place to go...the film just stalls. I think the intent was for it to be completely character driven, so I wasn't expecting, well, a story-line or anything, but still.... I was hoping for more of a connection between the final scene, Spab's revelations, and the rest of the movie leading up to that point, but it didn't happen.Never read the book, but it sounds like that ending would have made more sense. A movie this dark doesn't deserve a happy ending....a little too tidy, in my opinion. But SFW?

S.F.W.Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound format: Dolby StereoA feckless young man (Stephen Dorff) becomes an unlikely celebrity after surviving a televised hostage ordeal in his local convenience store, but he's unable to reconcile the tragedy of the siege - in which his best friend (Jack Noseworthy) was killed - with the exaggerated version of events peddled by a ratings-hungry media.Jefery Levy's cult-movie wannabe pairs Dorff alongside relative newcomer Reese Witherspoon in a vicious assault on the contemporary media, depicted here as a soulless entity concerned solely with ratings and money (yeah, so what else is new?). The message is obvious, but Levy and co-scriptwriter Danny Rubin (GROUNDHOG DAY) revel in their own daring: Dorff and Witherspoon play ordinary characters who emerge from an extraordinary situation and are forced to confront their unexpected (and unwanted) fame. However, Levy's unflattering view of modern journalism (symbolized by John Roarke as a variety of thinly-disguised real-life TV celebrities who feed off other people's misery, and Gary Coleman in a fleeting, self-deprecating cameo) seems a little distorted and misleading, though clearly filtered through the lead character's personal viewpoint. Dorff himself is terrific, as always, playing a charismatic and foul-mouthed Everyman, scornful of the manner in which his personal misfortune has been manipulated to feed the expectations of a mindless, sensation-hungry audience. But there are moments when the screeching soundtrack fades abruptly to silence and Levy concentrates on Dorff's haunted face as he recalls key events - good and bad - from the siege, and the friendships that were forged and destroyed under extreme duress. The movie doesn't say anything new, but the execution is invigorating.Look out for an early appearance by Tobey Maguire as a young stoner who thinks he's died and gone to heaven when he and his buddy (Dana Allan Young) encounter their idol Dorff on an empty street (a truly hilarious sequence). Steve Antin cameos as a news reporter named after his character in the equally odd INSIDE MONKEY ZETTERLAND, helmed by Levy in 1992.