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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Drugs > Candy (2005/THINKFilm)

Candy (2005/THINKFilm)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Film: C+

 

 

For years, Heath Ledger was making usually very bad films until Brokeback Mountain gave him credibility, but drug abuse drama Candy (2005) offers what is for him an ambitious performance as Dan, who loves the title character (Abbie Cornish of Ridley Scott’s A Good Year) and possibly to death as they go from recreational drug use to outright junkies.

 

Director Neil Armfield co-wrote the screenplay with Luke Davies and though this is a somewhat sincere attempt to show the rise and fall of such a relationship, it is everything we have seen before and is not even as memorable and therefore not as palpable as better such films.  It is certainly less effective than Darren Aranofsky’s Requiem For A Dream and though it does not glorify the experience, it sometimes goes too lightly on it.  The leads have some chemistry, but the sheer inexperience of Armfield & Davies fails them.  Too bad, because this could have been interesting if it had just been bolder about the heroine itself.  Geoffrey Rush also stars.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is softer than expected for a new production, though colors are not intentionally gutted or anything.  Garry Philips camerawork is not effective, with the usual tired shaky camerawork that is artistically referred to as “handheld’ but means nothing but bad shooting.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix has some good surrounds, including with interesting choices of music sometimes, though is still dialogue-based.  Extras include trailers for this and other THINKFilm product, feature length audio commentary by Armfield & Davies and two other pieces that are not necessarily featurettes: Writing On The Wall: Candy’s Poem In Motion and Candy: The Path To Wild Abandon.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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