Re-Generation (2004) User Reviews

Not entirely uninteresting...

[crash_into_me420 · 6/10 · 14 May 2006]

Definitely on the messy side but at least there seem to be some ideas behind this... they remain latent, however, and never really coming to the surface. Much of the film is terrible looking, not managing to escape the 'videoy' look throughout many shots... a very blown-out, over-exposed look much of the time. Fairly lame dialogue. Misguided acting.

This 'Ingrid Veninger' is surely one of the most unappealing actresses I've ever laid eyes on and I do not mean just in appearance. Not a good screen presence, to say the least. Peter Stebbings, however, seems to have some potential...

There seems to be a lot of diversity going on within the Canadian cinema community.... an eclectic mixture, definitely. Before long we'll begin to see some more really notable projects appearing if we continue to encourage experimentation and stray away from attempts at Hollywood emulation (Foolproof) and 'identity movies' (Men with Brooms)... This isn't exactly a notable movie in and of itself but the spirit of the thing should at least be commended.

A visually powerful independent film.

[steadi-3 · 18 September 2004]

Having just seen "The Limb Salesman", I was immediately taken by D. Gregor Hagey's film noir in colour approach to the photography. The sets and costumes exude a richness and patina rarely seen in low budget independent films of this kind. The stark whiteness of the snowbound landscape sets up an uneasy palette for the characters to play against. The metaphor of the two protagonists helping each other out of their wounded states is very touching and I found myself drawn completely into the world Anais Granofsky has assembled with its rather odd characters, where even the strange are somehow lovable.... Jackie Burroughs and Clark Johnson particularly got my attention with their eccentric performances and the rage of a defied man.... Excellent, easily the best indie effort I have seen in several years...

Avoid this worthless film at all costs.

[JohnnyLarocque · 2/10 · 12 September 2004]

THE LIMB SALESMAN is a complete bag of ass. It's like someone from Degrassi Junior High directed it. It was as poorly written as it was executed. The location was uninteresting, the set and costume design was amateurish at best, and most of the acting was lame, save for Julian Richings who is always a treat.

It's too bad really. It had a catchy title and an interesting idea, which was then hammed up with sappy dialogue delivered by flat emotionless actors. There were some decent drug nightmare sequences, but ultimately they could not save a worthless film. I want my time and money back. (2/10)

Go and see this film.

[troubadour-2 · 7/10 · 19 September 2004]

The Limb Salesman is a small, indy film with big ambition and

unique ideas. It is the story of a drug-addicted 'limb salesman'

(Dr. Goode) living with a mechanical heart whose life changes

when he falls in love with one of this patients (Clara). Set sometime

in the late 21st century, it paints a grim and entirely plausible picture

of a frighteningly dystopia Canadian future. The world's fortunes

turn not on gold or oil but on water, and of course Canada is ripe

with that particular commodity. There is an incredible shot of the

tattered remains of a Canadian flag atop an isolated mansion in a

bleak, wintry landscape during the opening sequence of the film that

will possibly tell you more about the continued erosion of our

ecological and economic independence than dinner and a lecture

with Naomi Klein.

From a special effects point of view, it's pointless to compare the

innovations of this film to the technical achievements of sci-fi

blockbusters like the Matrix or Spiderman. These studio-fed pictures

are drawing on 100 million budgets, and Anais Granofsky clearly is

not, choosing instead to create her dystopia future in more

imaginative ways. There are some wonderfully simple devices at

work here. Everything is back lit by an endlessly blown-out sky,

always ever-so-subtly a greener shade of yellow. People speak in

hushed tones about ominous-sounding places like City and

Junction, leaving our imagination to gnaw on something a hundred

times more mysterious than the latest CGI-inspired 'world of

tomorrow.'

I love films that have the nerve to portray the future as a slightly more

mundane and ordinary version of the present, and the Limb Salesman

is no exception. Like Gilliam's Brazil, the future is less a promised land of technological gizmos and smooth, sleek surfaces than a hodgepodge of broken machines and long-dead fashions that speak to a

society desperately nostalgic for a whiff of their own past. Just ask the Hollywood studios if this is true, whose pathetic reliance on lukewarm remakes of middling and mid-century movies is barometric proof that rear view mirror-gazing is the next big thing. The Limb Salesman plays with this idea admirably, adorning the heroine in a striking union of vintage Victorian dress and Rasta Goldilocks. There is even a priceless moment when someone has enough pluck to rev up a rusty,

old gramophone for our musical enjoyment.

The use of water in the film is pure thematic genius. In my favourite scene of the film, we're left to ponder our own cold insensibility when two human

beings indulge in small thimblefuls of water with the orgiastic intensity one might reserve for the elixir of immortal life. And the brilliant irony of situating the story smack dab in the middle of an endless landscape of lethally polluted

snow resonates impressively with the plight of the Ancient Mariner:

"Water, water, everywhere...and not a drop to drink."

The cast is mostly good, with intricately understated work from Peter Stebbins and an open-hearted freshness from Ingrid Veninger. Seasoned

pros Jackie Burroughs and Clark Johnson anchor the cast with rock

solid characterizations, and Julian Richings offers up a fascinating diversion in the bowels of City.

The music and cinematography are breathtakingly beautiful, and so inextricably woven together that the composer and DOP deserve some

kind of hybrid Genie award.

If there is a problem with this film it's in the script. Too often films get made before they have finished being written, and I felt at times the Limb Salesman suffering from this fate - in the absence of a clear protagonist. The story begins and ends with the prodigiously weak-hearted Dr. Goode, but it is Clara we most care about, and it is clearly her story we are urged to follow in the early going of the film. I felt irritatingly torn between these two opposites, and

equally frustrated by the resolution of their story lines into one underlying theme of self-sacrifice. But maybe that was the filmmakers intention all along, and anyway, who quibbles over protagonist shifts when there's a dinner like this on the table?

Certainly not Quentin Tarantino.

Garbage.

[robotjohnny · 1/10 · 14 September 2004]

The Limb Salesman is a science fiction love story written and directed by Anais Granofsky, whom you may know better as 'Lucy' from Degrassi Junior High.

It's always fun to write reviews of bad movies, and I feared that most films screened at the Toronto film festival would be of a certain caliber since they were clearly chosen by educated programming directors and screening committees. Lucky for me I forgot about one thing-- independent Canadian cinema.

First off, the movie is shot on video, so it has that great cheap made-in-my-basement Canadian feel to it. Not necessarily the best choice for a quasi-futuristic sci-fi romantic epic -it reeks of a final-year school project.

It takes place in a dystopian future that is part cybergrunge and part Victorian period piece. And since it's shot on video, it looks like what I imagine would happen if the Wachowski brothers directed an episode of Road to Avonlea (it even features Jackie Burroughs!)

The premise? Cellular regeneration and genetic engineering are blackmarket specials for the 'limb salesman' who is hired by an industrialist to give his stumpy daughter some real legs to walk around on. Meanwhile there is a subplot of a social uprising of the working class- miners that exist entirely offscreen. 'I just came from the mines,' explain characters, 'there's been a horrible accident of which you'll have to take my word!'

For a move that tries to take itself as seriously and as epic as The Matrix it is devoid of any and all special effects. The wardrobe looks like it was found entirely at a flea market or at Value Village and the whole thing is laced with horrible unnatural dialogue delivered in stiff, high school acting (fitting, I suppose, that it was directed by a Degrassi alumnus).

'Your day will come!' 'Are you finished?' 'Quite!'

It was all I could do to not roll my eyes every 5 minutes when another sci-fi cliché was introduced into the story, such as this beauty: The world's most expensive, precious commodity? You guessed it. Water. $100 shotglasses of the stuff are sipped with comically orgasmic effects. I guess the writers forgot to notice that they situated the entire movie in a house surrounded by fields and fields of waist-high snow. 'I long to see the ocean,' laments a character, clutching a tattered postcard of some tropical locale. 'I long for the credits to start rolling,' laments this moviegoer.

Doors are locked with thumb-print scanners, hybird computers (poorly ripped off from Gilliam's Brazil) and CD-ROMs comprise some of the 'futuristic' technology but for some reason people still listen to Victrolas.

This movie takes itself so seriously it is laughable. I only wish I could see it again as an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Oh and the irony? Our regenerative specialist, the limb salesman (appropriately stupidly named Gabriel Goode), has a failing heart. Which of course is prime fodder for the all the romantic melodrama.

Steering clear of this one should be easy, as I can't imagine you'll ever see it in theaters. 1/ 10

Why was water an issue

[mousepumper · 3/10 · 26 March 2021]

In a snow-covered landscape? I really wanted to like this film but nearly EVERY scene dragged. Too hard to watch...

quietly memorable

[jb-184 · 9/10 · 17 September 2004]

The wildly varying reactions to this film in the few reviews already posted here seem to confirm one thing: it's why they make both chocolate AND vanilla. But I have to align myself firmly on the side of the positive postings. Three days after seeing it, I can still see many of the film's images very clearly -- and I'm already confident it's a film I'll be seeing again.

I was consistently intrigued by the world that Veninger, Granofsky & company created, and was impressed by how they managed in almost every case to turn low-budget necessities into creative virtues. I actually enjoyed the fact that we only heard about the "ice mines" and never saw them; and that we only caught glimpses of a futuristic city that didn't seem like a very nice place to visit, let alone live in.

While I still have a few unanswered questions I wouldn't have minded being clearer on, overall I found it strangely refreshing that I WASN'T being shown or told everything about this ironic, anachronistic future -- or that bizarre house, strangely suspended in both time and space -- but just enough to keep me wanting to see how the characters within it would fare. It's a kind of minimalist sci-fi that stays with you, sometimes long after the 50-million dollar CGI effects have faded from memory.

In some ways it reminded me of how I feel watching (or just thinking about) certain episodes of Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone series, and as Martha Stewart used to say, "That's a good thing".

A slow, measured, quietly staged drama.

[Rabh17 · 8/10 · 15 August 2010]

Some of you may come across this offering in Netflix: It will be cast in the Sci-Fi category. Another name may be "Limbs for Sale"

It's set in the future.

There are a few, FEW instants of Sci-Fi props. You will count them on one hand. And that will be that.

Past that-- this is a Staged Play that takes place in a Tattered Canada of the future. It involves a traveling Surgeon, a northern Water Baron, and his not quite 'on the level' family and house retainers who look like Cloned 'Lurches'.

Isolation. Bleakness. Barely controlled emotions under the surface. Family Secrets. Personal Vices. Unsuspecting innocence-- or maybe not quite as Innocent as we would believe.

In a way-- it's a kind of Victorian drama played out in the future.

Many Mainstream viewers looking for a Sci-Fi boom-Zap-Pow WILL be turned off by this. There are no fights. There isn't even a Single gun. From the set in the Old House, the sedate setting, the neo-Edwardian costumes. . .even the CARS are old 70's models.

But the point is that this is a Future CONSTRAINED by climate change. Not quite Apocalyptic, although I would somewhat disagree with the dystopian label.

If you do pull this DVD, you MUST be in the mood for something slower and low octane. This movie is more of a literary flavor than the Sci-Fi label purports. I would slot this movie for a slow, rainy Sunday Afternoon. Give it a little time-- the Actors are putting serious dark energy into their performance and their professional touch is to be appreciated. And the Ending is actually. . .poetic.

Also-- this one is Girlfriend-Friendly. She will probably still be sitting on the couch when you get up now and then to hit the fridge.

I say Give it a chance.

The Limb Salesman's- a unique, Independent Canadian Feature.

[martha-47 · 16 September 2004]

The Limb Salesman ROCKS!! made with love; a great cast, a strong script, an amazing Director of Photography, and a wonderfully imaginative crew of designers (set, costume, hair and make-up designers) this film stands out as one of this years most inspiring Independent Features. The cast is great; the very sexy Peter Stebbings, Ingrid Veninger whose strong performance is the center piece of the movie (the chemistry between Peter and Ingrids' characters is fantastic), and the amazing Jackie Burroughs who is always incredible to watch. Thank you Anais (the Director) for this prophetic and powerful movie about love amongst the ruins of a society on the edge of the world / a kind of post-apocalyptic 'Wizard of Oz'. May you continue to make films in Canada with exceptional Canadian Actors!!!!!

MF

Awesome!

[userray2305 · 10/10 · 3 November 2004]

The disgraced doctor, Gabriele Goode a.k.a. The Limb Salesman, regenerates limbs on the black market. So this guy actually buys and sells limbs for a living. What a concept. I looked it up, and there are actually people like this. Gnarli!

When Gabe travels to the water mining regions of the north to heal the cherished daughter of a wealthy water miner, dark family secrets are revealed, and Goode is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice.

And get this, Gabe's got a mechanical heart that disallows him to feel too much. Far out! What happens when he starts to fall for the daughter? Get ready, get set, 'cause this movie's gonna knock your socks off!

A few things I liked

[onepov · 15 September 2004]

While the story may not be to everyone's taste, this movie has some things to admire. First off, it's the best looking non-HD digital film I've seen. The 35mm blow up looks terrific and I think the DP and producers deserve a lot of credit of achieving such a high quality look on what I'm sure was a meagre budget.

I also enjoyed the score. The composer is clearly someone who is or could be playing in the big leagues and his work lends a lot to the emotional impact of the film. And while the acting wasn't exceptional, it was solid throughout.

It's not clear how this unique film will fare in the marketplace but I think the creative team has accomplished a lot with it and have set themselves up for bigger budgets and projects.