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B. Monkey (1998)
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Overview
User Rating:
Release Date:
15 July 1999 (Germany) moreTagline:
Trouble never looked so goodPlot:
Alan Furnace is a young man with the perfectly proper, quiet life of a London school teacher. But beneath... more | add synopsisUser Comments:
All this useless beauty. more (47 total)Cast
(Cast overview, first billed only)| Asia Argento | ... | Beatrice | |
| Jared Harris | ... | Alan Furnace | |
| Rupert Everett | ... | Paul Neville | |
| Jonathan Rhys Meyers | ... | Bruno | |
| Julie T. Wallace | ... | Mrs. Sturge | |
| Ian Hart | ... | Steve Davis | |
| Tim Woodward | ... | Frank Rice | |
| Bryan Pringle | ... | Goodchild | |
| Clare Higgins | ... | Ms. Cherry | |
| Simone Bowkett | ... | Angie | |
| Marc Warren | ... | Terence | |
| Camilo Gallardo | ... | Barman (Conrans) | |
| Michael Carlin | ... | Carlo | |
| Paul Ireland | ... | Barman (Kings Head) | |
| Elizabeth Ash | ... | Nurse (as Elisabeth Ash) |
Additional Details
MPAA:
Rated R for strong sexuality and language, and for violence and drug content.Parents Guide:
Add content advisory for parentsRuntime:
92 minColor:
Color (Technicolor)Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 moreSound Mix:
Dolby DigitalCertification:
Iceland:16 | Netherlands:16 (DVD) | Argentina:16 | France:U | Germany:12 | Hong Kong:IIB | Japan:R-15 | Netherlands:AL | Portugal:M/16 (video premiere) | Singapore:R(A) (original rating) | Singapore:R21 (re-rating) (uncut) | Spain:18 | UK:18 | USA:RFun Stuff
Trivia:
Michael Caton-Jones was the original director for the film but left over creative differences. moreQuotes:
Alan Furnace: [first lines - at DJ mic] You grow up in the suburbs, you picture a life for yourself, right? A life of danger, late nights in smokey Jazz clubs, beautiful women everywhere. There's Janda Rhineheart with A Hot Cup of Paris, 1939. - You're listening to Night Duty in Saint Jose's hospital. - Only then you *do* grow up, and you're not living that life. You're poor. You teach in a school during the day, and of course you like it. Though you can barely find time to play the bloody trumpet. moreSoundtrack:
DE CAMPTOWN RACES moreFAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (47 total)
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I love this movie like it's a woman. The reviewers have once again missed the ferry -- what we have here, folks, is an honest to God(ard) B-movie tone poem, an exercise in sensual, physical, SURFACE beauty that will send any self-respecting Keatsian aesthete straight to Hyperion ( the palace of visionaries, not the Miramax book division. ) Thanks to director Michael Radford -- who I wrongly assumed to be eighty or ninety years of age on the basis of his last movie, Il Postino -- B. Monkey is as seductive as the single bar of red neon that illuminates the opening shot. The movie will surely gain minor but devoted cult status in the years to come, while its lead actress, Asia Argento, will probably have to buy a house with very tall gates. ( Because I'm quite tall myself, and a good climber. )
How to describe B. Monkey without resorting to banal adjectives like you'd find on cartons of Haagen-Daz, "luscious" and "velvety"? Well, I see it as sort of a disreputable cousin to Bertolucci's ravishing Besieged; other people, no doubt less pretentious, will compare it to the kind of movie Steven Soderbergh has been making lately -- a cool, jazz-inflected, proudly inconsequential genre flick. But Radford has his own style -- impossibly trendy -- and he's a genius at evoking the loneliness and beauty of big cities everywhere.
This is a director's movie, to be sure, but make no mistake: Asia Argento is no slouch when it comes to decorating the frame. She's compact, tough, and fierce-eyed, her unconventional beauty only enhanced by a strong nose that would look terrific underneath a centurion's helmet. Like Louise Brooks or Anna Karina, she's a vamp for the ages, mesmerizing for no good reason ( much like the movie itself. ) It doesn't hurt that she's matched with the brilliant Jared Harris, whose interior performance perfectly complements her exterior one, or that the atavistically lordly Rupert Everett is on hand to do his Wilde thing. Even pretty boy Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is a bit more animated than usual; he throws open car doors briskly and with conviction.
Yes, the plot is inane. No, it doesn't really matter. B. Monkey, in the end, amounts to no more nor less than the sum of its impressionistic moments. The world is a glittering tomb where we all languish in oh-so-gorgeous isolation, or something. As Jared Harris says early in the movie, deejaying at a local hospital: "This next one is for all you romantics out there. Get well soon."