The Caveman's Valentine |  | Director: Kasi Lemmons
Actors: Samuel L. Jackson, Colm Feore, Ann Magnuson, Damir Andrei, Aunjanue Ellis
Category: DVD
This item is no longer available
Rating:  42 reviews
Format: Ntsc
Rating: R (Restricted)
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
ASIN: B00003CY74
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Samuel L. Jackson gives a virtuoso performance in this intensely visual suspense film. Jackson stars as Romulus Ledbetter, a brilliant musician whose mental demons have driven him onto the streets. When Ledbetter finds a murdered man outside the cave he calls home one morning, he is compelled to find the real killer. While interesting enough to hold the viewer's attention, the mystery of The Caveman's Valentine is a distant third to Jackson's performance and the film's sumptuous visuals. The film is gorgeously shot, and lights and abstract images are effectively used to show Romulus's beautiful but tormented inner world. While the plot does take a silly leap of logic or two, Romulus's illness and the strain it puts on his family are sensitively and realistically handled. His all-too-real run-ins with his policewoman daughter are nicely contrasted with his visions of his ex-wife, who serves as a combination of Greek chorus and muse. If one is willing to suspend a little disbelief here and there, this picture is well worth a look. --Ali Davis
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Heartburned April 23, 2009
Amanda Richards (Georgetown, Guyana)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Romulus Ledbetter: "Swarms of moth-seraphs howl in my skull. Lies vex them."
Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):
1. Paranoid schizophrenic Romulus Ledbetter (Samuel L. Jackson) lives in a cave in New York's Inwood Park.
2. He believes that the root of all evil dwells at the top of the Chrysler Building, emitting rays that control the world.
3. He has a host of moth-like angels swarming in his head.
4. The dead body frozen in a tree outside his cave is no hallucination
5. Gripping but highly improbable plot follows, as Ledbetter searches for answers.
This is one of Jackson's finest performances, in an over-looked murder/fantasy movie that lacks a great plot, but makes up for it with great acting and vivid imagery.
If you can ignore the impossible and unlikely bits, this is a good rental for fans of the unusual.
Amanda Richards, April 23, 2009
 Caveman's Valentine April 19, 2009
Carol
Previously, I viewed this movie on cable and thought it was brilliant. There was nothing else to do but to order a copy for my video library.
My favorite movie of all time that nobody has ever heard of. November 23, 2008
Jason Moore (Phoenix, AZ)
I originally saw this movie on the Independent film channel. It is a masterpiece that no one I know has ever even heard of. It doesn't have many special effects or big explosions. but the story is amazing and the plot line will blow your mind. buy this movie. its well worth the price. especially if u buy it used. it's like $6.
The Enhanced Vision of so-called "Crazy" People May 1, 2008
F. Grinage
"The Caveman's Valentine" like other movies of this genre ("The Fisher King" and "Powder") speaks to humanity's collective unconscious more powerfully than any of us can ever know, or even admit to if we did know. We are all so focused on this one lifetime, this one living space we call the world, our reality. But I believe there are those who remember other lifetimes lived in other dimensions and worlds in the universe; places, even earths, far older than this one. All too often, those memories, necessarily, return, shocking and so overwhelming the systems of those who do remember, that their exhumed, authentic sanity is catapulted into overdrive and the result is a brilliantly strange, supremely talented individual who can no longer co-exist with the delusional condition we call "civilization" because its very nature and the bylaws of that nature are a collective, unequivocal denial of what the Caveman (or Cavewoman) lives with everyday. This is because, by comparison, the tenets of the "regulated" insanity of our so-called "civilization" won't allow him to believe what he feels, dreams, or sees in myriad visions.
Society's cavemen and cavewomen are enormously frightening because they tap into our own "blocked" memories, and to try to believe them, even a little bit, is too much. So, we immediately label them "insane" because we hope that to do so will keep us from ever having to face what I think is a reality common to all of us, a place of secrets, and perhaps a shame that is older than time. For, why else would we, since the beginning of known time, torture ourselves with so much betrayal, violence, and suffering?
So, the Caveman's "insanity" grows not from some chemical secretion or refusal to deal with reality, but from the overwhelming power of the denial of an extraordinary, but true reality, which, to our shuttered minds is the stuff of lore and forbidden fantasy; a real-life fantasy which is impossible to prove to a world where the history of our souls and their creation has become the warp and woof of religion and legend, finding no real outlet except in the babblings of the "insane" or the "possessed." You may ask: What is the entire unabridged story? Well, for now, we've hidden that in the depths of our unconscious, where it lies "forgotten," until someone like the Caveman pokes a teasing finger and scares us into almost remembering. The story shall, I fear, remain "forgotten," until we can somehow resolve the often horrible contradictions of our pasts, and forgive ourselves both collectively and individually. Then perhaps, insanity will simply cease to exist. We will go home to the Caveman, the prodigals, whose acceptance of him, and his of us, finally brings the wholeness we have sought, and have shedded more than blood to find.
"The Caveman's Valentine" is not for everybody. But for those of us who believe in far more than we can actually see, this movie is a validation of that part of us, of those shadowy dreams and nightmares we wake from, frightened, not of their strangeness, but of their familiarity; not of their impossibility, but of their undeniable validity.
 The Strength of Great Actors vs, So-So Material January 9, 2006
Thomas Galasso (San Francisco, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have seen this film many times over the years and my opinion of it hasn't changed much. Kasi Lemmons is a very interesting director, she has a nice visual flair as evidenced also with Eve's Bayou, she seems to have incorporated elements of Black Theatre into this piece with the Moth Seraphs and their dances.
Samuel L. Jackson is completely at his best, and once again shows why he is a huge mainstream movie star. His portrayal of Romulus Ledbetter is very much Sam Jack, but he does some amazing things with this character with such small nuances as his disoriented walk much like what Ralph Fiennes did in Cronenberg's Spider (for those who have seen that), in fact this is the kind of story I could see David Cronenberg tackling, but alas this film suffers from what I call a conventional ending, and has too many cliche plot twists for me that in the end it almost comes off as an above average prime time television show along the lines of CSI or even a made-for-television film.
I do recommend seeing this for Lemmons direction, and Jackson's awesome performance. Any young actor can learn a thing or two.
-Thomas Galasso
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