Drowning by Numbers

I enjoy the films of Peter Greenaway. "The Cook the Thief his Wife and her Lover" and "the Pillowbook" are both films that are unique and visionary. Peter Greenaway is like a British David Lynch. Some critics get frustrated by... Full review

There are some rare films where you discover something new each time you watch, and this is such a case. Initially you might watch it for the simple fairy-tale story (like all good fairy tales, there is repetition and a... Full review

Not much I can add to the rave reviews above. A simple-complicated-ugly-beautiful-puzzle-painting of a film, which demands repeated viewings."Drowning" is not for everyone - but look at the breakdown on that voting. As I write this, this film got more... Full review

Such an obviously non-American film. I believe this was the first time I had seen Joan Plowright, and she was so good. Having seen more of her work since, I know this is no fluke. Everyone else was also good... Full review

Life's a game, death's a game. This playful little movie is all about games. If you're not a gaming-type person, you might not find this, umm, diverting.The thoroughly surreal and tongue-in-cheek tone of the movie keeps us from taking it... Full review

In "Drowning by Numbers" Peter Greenaway managed to find the thin line between the art movies and the audience-pleasing comedies. His other films, like "The Draughtsman's Contract" are visually arresting but very hard to understand and to stay with. I... Full review

One woman in three bodies. Games about death, with death as a rule, and as a consequence. Life as this game and vice versa. The scoring of the game, the ruling of the script according to numbers. Sequential skipping through... Full review

'Drowning by numbers', like the other Greenway films, is stuffed with symbols, which meaning is sometimes hard to decipher. Without getting into much detail (unjustifiedly so), I'll summarize the film as a film on the uprise of femininity and the... Full review

This is a picture that offers so much to the viewer. It is beautiful, but also, at times, grotesque. It is intriguing and complex, and covers a cornucopia of subjects. The film has an elegant Englishness about it. It is... Full review

I was ready to shut this movie off during the opening credits. A young girl skips rope as she names the stars in the cadence of her count 13-Rigel, 14- get it? Now you'd think most filmmakers would pick up... Full review

Children never fare well in Greenaway movies. I've just killed Jake," she tells Stevenson matter-of-factly, moments after fatally dunking her husband. ... Full Review

A 25-minute segment, however, was shown one afternoon, and applauded by some as the best film in the festival. The characters in "Drowning by Numbers" are all completely credible people, who speak in ordinary English and inhabit a real landscape (except for the numbers), and behave in ways that would not shock the reader of a mystery novel. ... Full Review

Altogether all these different parts create an audacious whole whose impact upon the senses confirm Greenaway as this country's leading `artistic' filmmaker. Greenaway's film is another foray into the subject of metaphorical sex-and-death games in the best traditions of black humour. ... Full Review

Equally teasing is the film's complex web of absurdly interlocking allusions to games, sex and mortality ... Full Review

P eter Greenaway's "Drowning by Numbers" couldn't be more aptly titled to express how we feel watching it. The thing, which tells the story of three women -- all named Cissy -- who drown their husbands, is darned clever; so... ... Full Article

Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts ( Joan Plowright ), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II ( Juliet Stevenson ), and granddaughter... ... Full Article

Against a backdrop of the autumnal Suffolk seaside, three generations of women, each named Cissie Colpitts (60-year-old mother Joan Plowright, 34-year-old daughter Juliet Stevenson and 19-year-old granddaughter Joely Richardson), murder their unsatisfactory husbands by drowning--respectively, Jake (Bryan Pringle), in a... ... Full Article

And this is Father Geek back again with some sad news about a really good film maker... This is my first time emailing you, and I'm sorry that it's bad news. Cinematographer Sacha Vierny died on May 15. Click for ... Full Article