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Movies / On DVD / Requiem for a Dream
Requiem for a Dream

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Requiem for a Dream (2000)

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Reviews Counted:123

Fresh:98

Rotten:25

Average Rating:7.3/10

Consensus: Though the movie may be too intense for some to stomach, the wonderful performances and the bleak imagery are hard to forget.

Rated: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release:Oct 6, 2000 Limited

Box Office: $2,546,851

Synopsis: For his follow-up to his darkly brilliant debut, PI, director Darren Aronofsky chose to adapt a tough and meaty piece of work: Hubert Selby's 1968 novel REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, a dark spiral into the... For his follow-up to his darkly brilliant debut, PI, director Darren Aronofsky chose to adapt a tough and meaty piece of work: Hubert Selby's 1968 novel REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, a dark spiral into the abyss of barren fantasies doomed to extinction. However, in Aronofsky's frenetic, visionary, unique, and disturbing style lies the perfect setting for this story of four people whose intertwined lives are filled with eternally hopeful despair. This is a different sort of horror film. Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly) are lovers in Brooklyn with dreams of setting up a small business and spending the rest of their lives in love--their version of the American dream. The two are also desperate heroin addicts, a compulsion that darkens their lives and leads Harry to repeatedly pawn his mother's television. His mother, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), is addicted to television, which is why she keeps replacing the stolen set. One day she receives a call from her favorite show, the surreal TAPPY TIBBONS SHOW, and learns that she has been selected to appear on an upcoming broadcast. When she can't fit into her best red dress, her doctor prescribes diet pills (uppers), to which she swiftly and painfully becomes addicted. Harry's cohort, an intelligent hustler named Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), completes the foursome. With its unflinching dissection of addiction, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is a psychologically disturbing, visually captivating depiction of lost hope. The last half hour of the film is among the most harrowing of any film ever made. [More]

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, Christopher McDonald, Keith David, Sean Gullette, Louise Lasser

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Screenwriter: Darren Aronofsky, Hubert Selby, Jr.
Composer: Clint Mansell
Studio: Artisan Entertainment

[See More Credits]

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Release:

Sep 8, 2009

[DVD Details]
 
 

Blu-ray Disc Features:

  • Unrated
  • Widescreen - 1.85

Audio:

  • DTS HD Master Audio - English
  • Subtitles - English, Spanish
 
 
 
 

Reviews for Requiem for a Dream

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Aronofsky rewrites the language of film to create a dizzying journey into the abyss. The best film of 2000.

Full Review Source: Aisle Seat | comment Comment
01/01/00
Mike McGranaghan
Mike McGranaghan
Aisle Seat

A horrifyingly honest yet stylish portrayal of addictions and their inevitable end.

Full Review Source: Apollo Guide | comment Comment
01/01/00
Brian Webster
Brian Webster
Apollo Guide

... when the process of finding this meaning is mired in the storyteller's self-indulgent tendencies and harrowing repetitious visuals, the effort is rendered reprehensible.

Full Review Source: Apollo Guide | comment Comment
03/06/02
Jon Lap
Jon Lap
Apollo Guide

There's a wholehearted commitment in every frame toward synthesizing the feeling of hopeless addiction. It's in the writing. It's in the chaotic cinematography. It's in the actors' eyes.

Full Review Source: Arizona Daily Star | comment Comment
02/24/06
Phil Villarreal
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

Film lovers with a high threshold for unpleasantness will get a contact high from Aronofsky's muscular manipulations of imagery and editing.

Full Review Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution | comment Comment
01/01/00
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Requiem for a Dream is like a late-night ghost story that can only be told with all the lights out, and which haunts the memory long after you've left the theatre.

Full Review Source: Austin Chronicle | comment Comment
01/01/00
Sarah Hepola
Sarah Hepola
Austin Chronicle

This is, without a doubt, cutting-edge film-making.

Full Review Source: BBC | comment Comment
04/16/01
Ben Falk
Ben Falk
BBC

One of the most powerful I have ever seen. The film's score and editing will haunt you for years to come.

comment Comment
08/02/08
Kevin McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy
BDK Reviews

Yes, visually this is an exhilarating, unique film. But it is also a singularly difficult and challenging film to watch.

Full Review Source: Big Picture Big Sound | comment Comment
07/14/07
Joe Lozito
Joe Lozito
Big Picture Big Sound

You're going to see real actors in their highest form.

Full Review Source: Blunt Review | comment Comment
05/21/01
Emily Blunt
Emily Blunt
Blunt Review

It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort.

comment Comment
01/01/00
Jay Carr
Jay Carr
Boston Globe
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

This Dream doesn't stir much beyond stereotype.

Full Review Source: Boston Phoenix | comment Comment
03/24/02
Peter Keough
Peter Keough
Boston Phoenix

Accompanied by mournful violin music performed by the Kronos Quartet, the sequences are both jarring and intoxicating.

Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | comment Comment
01/19/01
Lael Loewenstein
Lael Loewenstein
Boxoffice Magazine

Requiem for a Dream is an outright horrific addiction yarn. In Aronofsky's hands it springs to demonic visual life, its reference points being German expressionism, shock cinema, and the great American tradition of the loser.

Full Review Source: Bryant Frazer's Deep Focus | comment Comment
01/01/00
Bryant Frazer
Bryant Frazer
Bryant Frazer's Deep Focus

A brilliant bringdown, a swirling evocation of nightmares, illusions and hallucinations.

comment Comment
01/19/01
Lawrence Toppman
Lawrence Toppman
Charlotte Observer

Aronofsky brings a new urgency to the drug movie by trying to reproduce, through his subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel.

Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | comment Comment
01/01/00
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Something like a poetry of degradation and sorrow.

comment Comment
01/01/00
Michael Wilmington
Michael Wilmington
Chicago Tribune
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

As he did in his stunning debut, director Darren Aronofsky shows himself to be keenly tuned into the imagery of the living hell.

Full Review Source: Cincinnati Enquirer | comment Comment
10/15/02
Margaret A. McGurk
Margaret A. McGurk
Cincinnati Enquirer

If this film doesn't convince a drug addict to abandon their habit, no outside influence can be expected to. Pure and simply, this is Requiem For a Nightmare.

Full Review Source: Cinema Signals | comment Comment
11/27/01
Jules Brenner
Jules Brenner
Cinema Signals

I found it appropriate that I had trouble looking away.

Full Review Source: CinemaBlend.com | comment Comment
11/20/02
Joshua Tyler
Joshua Tyler
CinemaBlend.com
 
 
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Latest News for Requiem for a Dream

August 25, 2009: EW Lists 16 Classic "Dare You to Look" Scenes Opens in new window
All the Nazi-scalpin' action in "Inglourious Basterds" has got the EW staff to thinking about some of the most hard-to-watch scenes in film -- and to that end, they've assembled... More...

January 09, 2008: Lorenzo di Bonaventura Talks G.I. Joe, Transformers 2
You think G.I. Joe and Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura doesn't hear your grousing, film fans? Well, he does -- and fortunately for you, he isn't the type of... More...

March 28, 2007: Aronofsky to "Fight" with Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon
Last seen together in Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg will reunite for Paramount's period piece boxing drama "The Fighter,"... More...

July 24, 2006: Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz Get Real Close in a New Trailer for "The Fountain"
Armed with a love story taking place at three times over a thousand years, flawless special effects, and more period costumes than you can shake a stick at, the man who brought... More...

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