Tideland (2005)

Very morbid and disturbing, but at the same time very poetic. It is kind of movie where you expect Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Barton to show up around the corner, but not enough fairytale- like or too realistic for them. Surely it is not horror, it's beautiful child drama. Whole movie is made from the point of view of 11 years old girl, so she carries whole movie on her own from the beginning till the end. And to successfully pull off that in such a young age is quite amazing.Maybe I am too biased towards this kind of movie, but in my opinion kid deserved at least nomination for Oscar. <38/10 overall 10/10 for Jodelle Ferland

The main trouble with this movie is simple - it is boring and not very captivating. Like Jean-Pierre Jeunets Delicatessen and the like the movie depicts a world filled with weird characters but Tideland does it in a bad way - I didn't feel any empathy for them - strangeness for the sake of strangeness... How its well done to portray a little girl fleeing into her personal fantasy-world to cope with the harsh circumstances of her world is shown in Guillermo del Toros Pans Labyrinth superb. If you compare those two pieces you will see immediately the difference - which movie is a masterpiece and which one a fail or at best a mediocre attempt and to compare this story with Alice in Wonderland counts imo almost as blasphemy ;) Ofc Gillaims is no newbie - the basics (cinematography, settings etc.) are well done and also the actors did there job well - and if the young Jodelle Ferland wouldn't have filled her shoes well, this movie would have been a total fail.

Very strange movie, which I expected after reading about it.Still, praise whatever you believe in that most of existence is not so bizarre. Like some other reviewers, I need some processing time on this one.I'll watch it again, though. Maybe I'll get a little more in the loop, because I feel altogether outside of it right now after having watched "Tideland" for the first time. Also, no clue where the name came from.Interesting to see Jeff Bridges in such a creepy, scruffy role. Wow!We don't get to see much of Jennifer Tilly either, and I wouldn't have recognized her except for her distinctive voice. Very daring of her to appear with a protruding belly and unrestrained pendulous breasts in the very unglamorous scene sprawled on the bed. Sometimes this can be Oscar fodder; not so much here.Jodelle Ferland is astonishing in her role. I hope she had a lot of support during her performances, because no child should ever have to endure anything close to it in real life.I may well return to update this review, and will certainly return with a star rating. I just need to watch again and hopefully get my brain better wrapped around this extremely unsettling, but also engaging trip down the Rabbit Hole!

Just got done with this movie and I must say it drags on somewhat, similar to the way Fear and Loathing did for me. The dialogue is done in a way that it defies you to listen to it and absorb anything. I tried to watch Fear and Loathing 3 times and could never finish it. I finished Tideland, but it wasn't that great. I will say Jodelle Ferland and Brendan Fletcher are SUPERB in their roles as Jeliza Rose and Dickens, but it feels like 2 great performances in a boring, supposed-to-shock-me, Natural Born Killers-esque affair that has already been done. Then again, the film challenges me in that I am appalled that I am not appalled by the things I see here, so it has some social merit, of sorts.Overall, my feeling is that Terry Gilliam's best work is long behind him, like 12 Monkeys and Brazil, Time Bandits, Python, etc. I think sometimes filmmakers get older and lose their edge, falling victim to sentimentality, and it changes their art (usually for the worse, imho.) It is beginning to seem this is the case with Gilliam. I didn't like Imaginarium, either, btw. I saw That before I saw this.