Christopher Reid This is one of the most unique (and bizarre) movies I've ever seen. I didn't really like it that much, mainly because it seemed pointless. The mood and style were interesting but where was it going? What was the big idea, the force driving us through the film? Having now read up a little on it, I like it a bit more. William S. Burroughs seems to be an interesting but pretty sad figure. That he accidentally shot his wife is baffling and tragic. It's hard to believe or to feel sorry for him. But it happened and can't be changed. Apparently this movie is basically about him. It's kind of moving that he became an author because of the intensity of what happened. Hopefully it helped him heal or move on.The whole movie is very yellowy/orange/brown in colour. And there are lots of close-ups. It's very claustrophobic - we can't escape this world. It's dreary. It generally seems hot, characters are often sweating. Every scene predictably has Bill (Peter Weller who played Robocop and dropped out of Robocop 3 to do this) with his pale, expressionless face casually conversing with either a giant talking bug of some sort or otherwise some man in a suit. The movie is so calm all the way through. It only intensifies occasionally in grossness or eroticism. Cronenberg seems to have a thing about drawing parallels between sex, disgust, pain, fear, I don't know, a bunch of things. There's always morphing and moaning, blood and guts. Pleasure and pain get mixed up. Those primitive urges, I guess they all come from the same place.One reason I didn't connect too much with Naked Lunch is the drug aspect. I don't plan to ever do drugs. I don't get it. It's so easy to avoid them completely (and the same for smoking and even alcohol). Why waste money destroying yourself? Hence I don't empathise with those kinds of habits. Especially since people seem to do it out of boredom. Their life is so plain or empty that they turn to drugs. Why not read great books or watch great movies or learn about maths and science? There are so many deep truths and unsolved problems that could blow your mind. There are so many safe, real, tangible things to explore and enrich your life with. How do drugs have any appeal at all?Cronenberg's movies always seem very focused and patient and sincere. You might not get what's happening but you sense that thought has gone into it. You're *meant* to have "that" reaction, whatever "that" might be.This movie is frustrating if you're expecting the wrong thing from it. It really doesn't seem to go anywhere. I've never been great at following dialogue. There are probably some abstract gems here or there that I missed. But if you feel like something really weird but slow and calm, Naked Lunch is one-of-a-kind. I'm assuming there's a lot more to it than I understood. For now, I'm glad I experienced it, I was frustrated that I didn't "get" it at the time but for some reason it's growing on me as I remember it.

Liam Blackburn I recommend watching this in the early morning hours when your mind is glazed with the sheen of your early morning donuts. The surreal scenes work with the jazz music. It's about communication. The typewriters keep turning into fleshy organisms that talk themselves. They look like insects and the one hybrid typewriter is like a huge insectoid alien. The same one that gives him one mission thats sitting in the bar. Plus he gets his first mission which is to kill his wife. So he kills his wife, but I totally forgot that that was his mission. It is really cool how the movie maker accomplished this because I didn't clue into that he carried out his mission until later. He didn't even know it at the time and then it gets revealed to him by another insect machine that he was programmed to not even know he was carrying out a mission. The most effective agent is a unconscious agent. The most effective agent is an unconscious agent. Think about that. Then there's the story of the guy who teaches his rear how to talk. It just becomes this unconscious agent without a brain. Just a talking machine like the typewriter who keeps giving him the missions. The only difference between an operative and non- operative is they write reports. Then they mention the new world order near the end. It's like the whole New york media is in internal operation focused on these grotesque cockroach type machines that keep spewing intoxicating stories like drugs for the mind.

braddugg This is a film that jolted me in my sleep and made me awake, days after I saw this. Some scenes are terribly brilliant in this surreal drama.Thanks to Criterion, because of which I got to know of this film, and picked it up from their collection. David Cronenberg is one of the outrageous directors existing today. He does not seem to compromise with his vision and tries to be so true to the material that it frightens the viewers very much. I wonder if I can ever see this on a big screen, in theater somewhere. Will they dare to put it up, will there be audience in the first place? I really doubt. yet, this is one of the finest surreal dramas that was made in 1990's.A week after I watched it, I just woke up as I got a scene from this film in a dream. Damn, even today (which is a month after I watched it) as I type the review, the hairs strands are standing on forearms. Creepy it is and totally insane too. I wonder how such a subject was chosen to be presented.This is an adaptation of the novel by the same name, written by William S. Burroughs. I wonder whether those who have read it imaging the details presented in the book, also have been through nightmares as I did watching this film.Nevertheless, this is a very important aspect of art and film making and indeed it is needed. I appreciate the courage of the director and more so the producers. Obviously, this is not a film for everyone, even for the generally weird people, but it's for those who have a liking for aesthetics of weird, nightmarish, disgusting things.I cannot reveal characters or the plot points coz that would make any reader of this review miss the fun, given that he chooses to see the film. It's definitely worth a one time watch and that perhaps is enough for a lifetime as it would not be easy to erase from memory either. It has tremendous impact undoubtedly. A 4/5 for one of the terrific and even terrible surreal movies

amazing_sincodek I generally love Cronenberg's films. They (generally) have a unique, dark, hallucinogenic sensibility that is often compared to David Lynch, but characteristically differ from David Lynch's films in that they often get progressively weirder as they go, constructing their own logic and drawing the viewer further and further from what (s)he expects to see in cinema.Naked Lunch is the only exception I've seen so far. Though the first 30 minutes or so suggest something familiar from his previous films, the rest of the film is too obvious in its intentions (namely, a figurative discussion of the writing process and of Burroughs himself), with no surprises or additional weird stuff being introduced. All the weird stuff gets introduced in the first 30 minutes, and then the "rabbit hole" feeling disappears.There's nothing wrong with that, I guess, if you are a fan of Burroughs, or, alternatively, if you AREN'T a fan of Cronenberg. That is, this movie, while certainly pretty disgusting and weird relative to mainstream films, is actually pretty generic in its artistic sensibilities. It uses metaphors which are easy to interpret and nests social commentary in its dialogue in a way that is easy to recognize.I wanted a movie that would challenge me, confuse me, and unsettle me more and more as it progressed. Instead, I started yawning and fast-forwarding as the same metaphors were recycled over and over. Again, this is fine from the standpoint of traditional art and narrative construction, but I expect Cronenberg's films to go beyond what I am able to interpret. No such luck here.