no, whats it about?Mihajlovic said:
Film The Redcafe Movie review thread
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
"Stockholm, the fifties. Though academically bright, violent pupil Erik Ponti (Andreas Wilson) is expelled from his state school with the headmaster's words "there's only one word for people like you - evil... what you need is a good thrashing, and more". In fact already Erik frequently receives a 'good' thrashing at the hands of his sadistic stepfather (Johan Rabaeus) - so he is packed off by his mother (Marie Richardson) to the traditionalist Stjärnsberg Boarding School, where discipline is left to the pupils themselves, who operate according to rigid hierarchies defined by age and family pedigree. Against the advice of his roommate and friend Pierre (Henrik Lundström), Erik publicly refuses to submit to the arbitrary punishments meted out by senior pupil Otto Silverhielm (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his fellow enforcers, and soon finds himself an unlikely champion of the tactics of civil disobedience against the school's institutionalised abuse."
Another good comment is on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338309/
Another good comment is on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338309/
i saw it. strange little film. part coming of age film, part parable on sweden's questionable wwii neutrality. i'd recommend it.Mihajlovic said:
I heard Mikael Hafstroems "Ondskan" (also known as "Evil") is a fantastic movie! I`m just trying to find a good download with English subtitles but it`s so hard to find.
Has anyone seen it??
same director as "derailed," which was not as crappy as i thought it would be.
KICKING AND SCREAMING
During one particularly illuminating sequence of Kicking and Screaming, Grover (Josh Hamilton) has to watch as his short story is critiqued in class. “It’s beautifully written,” says someone who will shortly become very close to him. “However, I’ve noticed that characters in Grover’s stories spend all their time discussing the least important things, like what to have for dinner or the best-looking model in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. I see nothing wrong with dealing with the important subject matter.”
Many people level the same accusation against this gem of Gen-X ennui, so easy to underestimate with all the throwaway conversation about Traci Austin, Bud Bowl II, and movies starring monkeys. It’s a little picture, little meaning it has a small budget and no one gets cancer or anything. “I’m a little guy,” says Otis (Carlos Jacott as one of the film’s more memorable characters). “I can’t do all the things the big guys do.” A friend offers a small measure of comfort: “What are you talking about, you’re like a monster, you’re huge.” Don’t underestimate yourself, Otis, for however “little” it may be, Kicking and Screaming is really about the biggest things there are: our dreams in a lonely, chaotic world where we think we know God, only to find He’s not so much dead as just not answering the phone.
At the center of the picture are four college friends for whom graduation is a form of birth trauma; they stare into the real world abyss that awaits (and the abyss most certainly stares back). Grover’s girlfriend Jane (Olivia d’Abo) has ruined his post-commencement plans by joining a writing program in Prague. “How will that work if you’re living with me in Brooklyn?” he asks. “It will be the same, except I’ll be in Prague.” Otis is moving to Milwaukee, where he’ll continue his education and live with his mother. Skippy (Jason Wiles) has no concrete plans other than to read all the great short novels. Chris Eigeman, playing the curmudgeon intellectual he has made an indie film career out of (see: all of Whit Stillman’s pictures), says it best: “Eight hours ago, I was Max Belmont, English major, college senior. Now, I am Max Belmont who does nothing. All of my accomplishments are in the past.” Yes, school has prepared them for nothing, but now they have a thousand ways of expressing it.
Taking a cue from perpetual student Chet (Eric Stoltz as the kind of individual who paraphrases himself), they collectively decide to “postpone that get-started year” by renting a house on campus and continuing to live life much as they had before graduation (but without the grades). The rhythms of college are quickly reinstituted as Otis and Chet start a book club, Max eats at the cafeteria, Skippy audits classes, and Grover hits the campus bars with an eye for “freshman betties” whose sexual congress he hopes will cleanse him of any unresolved feelings about Jane. They all meet where Chet tends bar to rationalize life’s absurdities and prove their intellectual worth with trivia.
Writer/director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) instills in each of his characters juvenile affectations consistent with a desire to climb back in the womb (most notably Otis and his pajama tops worn as formalwear). It’s worth reminding that they all have childish, even pet-like names (Grover has the added bonus of the phonetic “grow” in it); despite superficially “mature” traits like blazer-wearing, cigarette-smoking, and scotch-drinking, they’re unable or unwilling to take care of themselves outside the collegiate cocoon. The world does not run by the rules they know, if it has any rules at all – even their games of trivia have become so contextually incestuous that they are entertaining only to themselves.
The crux of everything is Grover’s deteriorating relationship with Jane, juxtaposed as it is with its genesis. When they make that first connection, it’s strange for Grover to think they’d gone four years on the same campus without meeting, “catching the same colds and being bit by the same mosquitoes.” We like to think of love being a uniquely spiritual entity, a product of fate – that there is a special someone we have to be with. Grover is so grasping for design in his solipsistic existence that he interprets divinity in something as mundane as a flight attendant fidgeting with a model airplane. But as he soon finds out, perhaps these things are instead a product of chance, controlled by circumstance and nothing else; that there is no meaning in things other than the meanings we give them. The love we feel doesn’t necessarily last forever; a deigned future does not exist, no matter how entitled to it we may feel. All that we can be sure of is the moment of now.
How do you make God laugh? begins Chet’s favorite joke. Make a plan.
Interesting footnote: Olivia d’Abo (Jane) is probably known to most as Karen Arnold from the hit television show The Wonder Years. She is also jarringly British, if you’ve ever heard her give an interview. One of her first motion picture performances was in the Bo Derek film Bolero, where she controversially appeared nude. D’Abo herself claims she was born in 1971, which would have made her thirteen at the time of that picture’s release.
http://pretentiousmusings.com/kicking_and_screaming.html
During one particularly illuminating sequence of Kicking and Screaming, Grover (Josh Hamilton) has to watch as his short story is critiqued in class. “It’s beautifully written,” says someone who will shortly become very close to him. “However, I’ve noticed that characters in Grover’s stories spend all their time discussing the least important things, like what to have for dinner or the best-looking model in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. I see nothing wrong with dealing with the important subject matter.”
Many people level the same accusation against this gem of Gen-X ennui, so easy to underestimate with all the throwaway conversation about Traci Austin, Bud Bowl II, and movies starring monkeys. It’s a little picture, little meaning it has a small budget and no one gets cancer or anything. “I’m a little guy,” says Otis (Carlos Jacott as one of the film’s more memorable characters). “I can’t do all the things the big guys do.” A friend offers a small measure of comfort: “What are you talking about, you’re like a monster, you’re huge.” Don’t underestimate yourself, Otis, for however “little” it may be, Kicking and Screaming is really about the biggest things there are: our dreams in a lonely, chaotic world where we think we know God, only to find He’s not so much dead as just not answering the phone.
At the center of the picture are four college friends for whom graduation is a form of birth trauma; they stare into the real world abyss that awaits (and the abyss most certainly stares back). Grover’s girlfriend Jane (Olivia d’Abo) has ruined his post-commencement plans by joining a writing program in Prague. “How will that work if you’re living with me in Brooklyn?” he asks. “It will be the same, except I’ll be in Prague.” Otis is moving to Milwaukee, where he’ll continue his education and live with his mother. Skippy (Jason Wiles) has no concrete plans other than to read all the great short novels. Chris Eigeman, playing the curmudgeon intellectual he has made an indie film career out of (see: all of Whit Stillman’s pictures), says it best: “Eight hours ago, I was Max Belmont, English major, college senior. Now, I am Max Belmont who does nothing. All of my accomplishments are in the past.” Yes, school has prepared them for nothing, but now they have a thousand ways of expressing it.
Taking a cue from perpetual student Chet (Eric Stoltz as the kind of individual who paraphrases himself), they collectively decide to “postpone that get-started year” by renting a house on campus and continuing to live life much as they had before graduation (but without the grades). The rhythms of college are quickly reinstituted as Otis and Chet start a book club, Max eats at the cafeteria, Skippy audits classes, and Grover hits the campus bars with an eye for “freshman betties” whose sexual congress he hopes will cleanse him of any unresolved feelings about Jane. They all meet where Chet tends bar to rationalize life’s absurdities and prove their intellectual worth with trivia.
Writer/director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) instills in each of his characters juvenile affectations consistent with a desire to climb back in the womb (most notably Otis and his pajama tops worn as formalwear). It’s worth reminding that they all have childish, even pet-like names (Grover has the added bonus of the phonetic “grow” in it); despite superficially “mature” traits like blazer-wearing, cigarette-smoking, and scotch-drinking, they’re unable or unwilling to take care of themselves outside the collegiate cocoon. The world does not run by the rules they know, if it has any rules at all – even their games of trivia have become so contextually incestuous that they are entertaining only to themselves.
The crux of everything is Grover’s deteriorating relationship with Jane, juxtaposed as it is with its genesis. When they make that first connection, it’s strange for Grover to think they’d gone four years on the same campus without meeting, “catching the same colds and being bit by the same mosquitoes.” We like to think of love being a uniquely spiritual entity, a product of fate – that there is a special someone we have to be with. Grover is so grasping for design in his solipsistic existence that he interprets divinity in something as mundane as a flight attendant fidgeting with a model airplane. But as he soon finds out, perhaps these things are instead a product of chance, controlled by circumstance and nothing else; that there is no meaning in things other than the meanings we give them. The love we feel doesn’t necessarily last forever; a deigned future does not exist, no matter how entitled to it we may feel. All that we can be sure of is the moment of now.
How do you make God laugh? begins Chet’s favorite joke. Make a plan.
Interesting footnote: Olivia d’Abo (Jane) is probably known to most as Karen Arnold from the hit television show The Wonder Years. She is also jarringly British, if you’ve ever heard her give an interview. One of her first motion picture performances was in the Bo Derek film Bolero, where she controversially appeared nude. D’Abo herself claims she was born in 1971, which would have made her thirteen at the time of that picture’s release.
http://pretentiousmusings.com/kicking_and_screaming.html
anyone see half nelson?
Saw Night at the museum yesterday, crap.
saw 3 movies yesterday
night at the museum . kiddish
the prestige .. liked it ..
children of men wasnt bad either
night at the museum . kiddish
the prestige .. liked it ..
children of men wasnt bad either
get with the program you guys, no sloppy reviews
I have Glory lying at home. any good? will watch it over the weekend. also have amadeus but the bloody DVD seems to be scratched.
Amadeus is superb, it's maybe my favourite film ever, unscratch it, I say. Glory is ok, but nothing really special, good stuff from Washington and Freeman though.
I'm going to watch Pans Labyrinth tonight. Anyone seen it? I've heard it's the greatest thing ever, even better than Simon Le Bon's singing voice
I'm going to watch Pans Labyrinth tonight. Anyone seen it? I've heard it's the greatest thing ever, even better than Simon Le Bon's singing voice
gonna sue Blockbuster for renting me a scratched dvd.
i cry at the end of glory despite its relentless button-pushing, latent racism, and white liberal guilt polemics.
i saw pan's labyrinth. it's a very strong picture.
been waiting for it to come out on DVD.
Yeah, Pan's Labyrinth I'd give 8/10, splendidly done film with some fine performances and imagination, though I thought there was a lot of untapped potential
mehro said:
I've downloaded it. If I love it, I'll probably order a copy.
i could only find a TS ..Spoony said:
is the dvdrip out ?
screener, I think.
I just watched "36 Quai des Ofèvres". Very good french cop movie. Has a nice atmosphere, feels like a french remake of "Heat". Acting is allright, a bit forced sometimes. Still 7/10 I`d say.
And the best thing is the song at the ending. "Dont bring me down" by Sia. An incredibly nice, melancholic/ambient song!
Talladega Nights
A truly terrible "comedy". This film makes The 40 Year Old Virgin look like Oscar material. Dumb lazy and a waste of 1.5 hours of your life.
0.5/10
A truly terrible "comedy". This film makes The 40 Year Old Virgin look like Oscar material. Dumb lazy and a waste of 1.5 hours of your life.
0.5/10
DOA: Dead Or Alive
Lots of amazingly attractive women doing martial arts in bikinis. Sounds amazing? It's the worst film I've seen in years, the fighting and acting in Power Rangers is better (I'm not joking). It's 1:10 minutes long, but even that drags, I can sit through any shit film but this ran me close to suicide. fecking hell the women are fit, but the film is horrible.
1/10
The 1 point is for the wank I had that night over Holly Valance and Jaime Pressly
Lots of amazingly attractive women doing martial arts in bikinis. Sounds amazing? It's the worst film I've seen in years, the fighting and acting in Power Rangers is better (I'm not joking). It's 1:10 minutes long, but even that drags, I can sit through any shit film but this ran me close to suicide. fecking hell the women are fit, but the film is horrible.
1/10
The 1 point is for the wank I had that night over Holly Valance and Jaime Pressly
The Prestige
Saw it tonight. Best movie I've ever seen.
Robert and Alfred are rival magicians. When Alfred performs the ultimate magic trick, Robert tries desperately to find out the secret to the trick.
10/10.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/
Saw it tonight. Best movie I've ever seen.
Robert and Alfred are rival magicians. When Alfred performs the ultimate magic trick, Robert tries desperately to find out the secret to the trick.
10/10.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/
The Holiday
Two women troubled with guy-problems (Diaz, Winslet) swap homes in each other's countries, where they each meet a local guy and fall in love.
saw it yesterday with me wife...a so-so movie, predictable : 6/10
Two women troubled with guy-problems (Diaz, Winslet) swap homes in each other's countries, where they each meet a local guy and fall in love.
saw it yesterday with me wife...a so-so movie, predictable : 6/10
Metropolis
Plot
In 2026, society is divided into two classes, those who work on the machines and live in Underground City, and the rich who live lavishly. Workers get fed up and revolt.
Review
Considered to be the first true science fiction film, this is a masterpiece. Lang shows masterful direction, and the effects for that time are wonderful. The acting seems a bit strange based upon today's styles, but taking into consideration how acting was back then, it was top notch. Sadly the original version will never be seen, as the 3+ hour version was chopped down to 2 hours and a print has never been found. The version I saw had some crap 80s soundtrack with it. I'm sure the original 1927 orchestral score is miles better than this one.
Rating
9/10
isn't metropolis a silent movie? i've been planning to watch it forever.
Yes it is. I highly recommend it....obviously.mehro said:
True, it does have Audrey Raines in it from 24 though....Jacob said:
KingEric7 said:
I hope you're not implying that you find her attractive...
Le Samourai
Plot
A hitman, Jef Costello, is a suspect in a murder(which he committed). Police try to prove it's him, his employers try to off him for being a suspect.
Review
One of my favorite Jean Pierre Melville movies. He doesn't rush anything and shows the lonesomeness that Costello surrounds himself in. Alain Delon plays his role expertly, truly a badass of his day.
Rating
8.5/10
A SCANNER DARKLY
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly...
- 1 Corinthians 13
Seven years in the future, Officer Fred (Keanu Reeves) spends most of his life on the front line of the drug war, undercover in what is known as a "scramble suit." His voice is disguised and his appearance transforms constantly; he describes himself as "the ultimate Everyman." Officer Fred is, quite literally, us. He is also a hypocrite, an impostor in his own changing skin, hunting down dealers while also indulging his habit for the era's narcotic of choice, Substance D (or Slow Death).
Not too long ago, Fred didn't have to pretend. He went to work in a normal suit, the three-piece kind, until a run-in with a open cabinet door took the lid off his life (as Hammett put it half a century earlier) and let him look at the works. What he saw, he hated: a predictable existence where nothing new would ever happen again. So Fred exchanged his unblemished life for something that wasn't so perfect: his power-mower and perfectly manicured lawn for a car on cinder blocks and garbage in the driveway, his two little girls for a coterie of fellow tweakers (Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane, Woody Harrelson), and his wife for a drug dealer (Winona Ryder) who lost her libido in a pile of white powder. When you ride Substance D, sometimes you see bugs, or even worse (shades of Naked Lunch), people turning into bugs; it can be a nightmare, but at least you're still dreaming.
Like he did on Waking Life, filmmaker Richard Linklater employs the "Rotoshop" animation technique, similar to Ralph Bakshi-style rotoscoping - the final animated image is drawn over filmed movement. It's reality, painted; A Scanner Darkly did not give me a headache like Linklater's previous effort did, so either the director made a stylistic choice or significant advances have been made in the technology (or even more likely, a combination of both). It's an irony of sorts given that Linklater has been making a number of cartoons lately of the troubling live-action kind - School of Rock, the Bad New Bears remake, even his well-intentioned Fast Food Nation were all plagued by a depthless frivolity he used to avoid (the one outlier in all this is Before Sunset, perhaps the best film of 2004). Here, in his exploration of cultural/personal dualism, the artifice is applied to good effect; Linklater has created a liquid world so his polemic pill doesn't go down so rough. Then again, maybe our lives are more cartoonish than we realize; it's hard not see existence through the prism of theater, of show, when someone is always watching.
Here's where things get political.
Obviously, Philip K. Dick's original science fiction novel was largely colored by his own substance addictions - the author was renowned for his prodigious output fueled by heavy amphetamine use (forty-four books in thirty years). It was also a response to Nixon-era police state paranoia, in particular untoward government surveillance and monitoring (Dick himself claimed his home was broken into by the CIA); these are Big Brother issues loudly echoed in our time of warrantless wiretaps, watch lists, and something else with a (ahem) dubya. A Scanner Darkly is unapologetically overt in its assessment of the War on Drugs: how can you win a war where the real enemy is the self, where society both trades addictions and trades on them? We all have habits; whether some of them are illegal is often arbitrary, even counterintuitive or backward. Perhaps we are sick only so someone can sell us the cure.
Linklater also lays subtle aim at our other vaguely-defined struggle exploited for illusory purpose: the War on Terror. "The most dangerous kind of person is the one who's afraid of his own shadow" Officer Fred says about the side effects of Substance (WM)D. Double meanings abound: "I kinda have to tip my hat to any entity that can bring so much integrity to evil" is another memorable proclamation, made by his friend Barris about the New Path Recovery Center (a monolithic rehabilitation program that plays a large role in the picture), the kind of unaccountable authority that drapes itself in Manichean virtue. Barris, the closest the picture has to a true character villain, isn't being ironic when he says it as he possesses the same amoral ethos of our nightly news: he doesn't kill anyone but likes to be around when they die. One of the central plot lines of the picture is his comical attempt to rat out Fred for "anti-American drug terrorism;" unbeknownst to him, Fred is already informing on himself to the police, having acquiesced to cameras in his home and even agreed to edit the footage for them. Watching himself is like observing someone else, a shadow, a faceless enemy - you see the person and his habits but you cannot see inside the man.
Interesting footnote: In addition to A Scanner Darkly, many works of Philip K. Dick have been adapted for the big screen. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, Screamers, Impostor, and the French-language picture Confessions d'un Barjo are all based on Dick novels or short stories.
http://www.pretentiousmusings.com/a_scanner_darkly.html
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly...
- 1 Corinthians 13
Seven years in the future, Officer Fred (Keanu Reeves) spends most of his life on the front line of the drug war, undercover in what is known as a "scramble suit." His voice is disguised and his appearance transforms constantly; he describes himself as "the ultimate Everyman." Officer Fred is, quite literally, us. He is also a hypocrite, an impostor in his own changing skin, hunting down dealers while also indulging his habit for the era's narcotic of choice, Substance D (or Slow Death).
Not too long ago, Fred didn't have to pretend. He went to work in a normal suit, the three-piece kind, until a run-in with a open cabinet door took the lid off his life (as Hammett put it half a century earlier) and let him look at the works. What he saw, he hated: a predictable existence where nothing new would ever happen again. So Fred exchanged his unblemished life for something that wasn't so perfect: his power-mower and perfectly manicured lawn for a car on cinder blocks and garbage in the driveway, his two little girls for a coterie of fellow tweakers (Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane, Woody Harrelson), and his wife for a drug dealer (Winona Ryder) who lost her libido in a pile of white powder. When you ride Substance D, sometimes you see bugs, or even worse (shades of Naked Lunch), people turning into bugs; it can be a nightmare, but at least you're still dreaming.
Like he did on Waking Life, filmmaker Richard Linklater employs the "Rotoshop" animation technique, similar to Ralph Bakshi-style rotoscoping - the final animated image is drawn over filmed movement. It's reality, painted; A Scanner Darkly did not give me a headache like Linklater's previous effort did, so either the director made a stylistic choice or significant advances have been made in the technology (or even more likely, a combination of both). It's an irony of sorts given that Linklater has been making a number of cartoons lately of the troubling live-action kind - School of Rock, the Bad New Bears remake, even his well-intentioned Fast Food Nation were all plagued by a depthless frivolity he used to avoid (the one outlier in all this is Before Sunset, perhaps the best film of 2004). Here, in his exploration of cultural/personal dualism, the artifice is applied to good effect; Linklater has created a liquid world so his polemic pill doesn't go down so rough. Then again, maybe our lives are more cartoonish than we realize; it's hard not see existence through the prism of theater, of show, when someone is always watching.
Here's where things get political.
Obviously, Philip K. Dick's original science fiction novel was largely colored by his own substance addictions - the author was renowned for his prodigious output fueled by heavy amphetamine use (forty-four books in thirty years). It was also a response to Nixon-era police state paranoia, in particular untoward government surveillance and monitoring (Dick himself claimed his home was broken into by the CIA); these are Big Brother issues loudly echoed in our time of warrantless wiretaps, watch lists, and something else with a (ahem) dubya. A Scanner Darkly is unapologetically overt in its assessment of the War on Drugs: how can you win a war where the real enemy is the self, where society both trades addictions and trades on them? We all have habits; whether some of them are illegal is often arbitrary, even counterintuitive or backward. Perhaps we are sick only so someone can sell us the cure.
Linklater also lays subtle aim at our other vaguely-defined struggle exploited for illusory purpose: the War on Terror. "The most dangerous kind of person is the one who's afraid of his own shadow" Officer Fred says about the side effects of Substance (WM)D. Double meanings abound: "I kinda have to tip my hat to any entity that can bring so much integrity to evil" is another memorable proclamation, made by his friend Barris about the New Path Recovery Center (a monolithic rehabilitation program that plays a large role in the picture), the kind of unaccountable authority that drapes itself in Manichean virtue. Barris, the closest the picture has to a true character villain, isn't being ironic when he says it as he possesses the same amoral ethos of our nightly news: he doesn't kill anyone but likes to be around when they die. One of the central plot lines of the picture is his comical attempt to rat out Fred for "anti-American drug terrorism;" unbeknownst to him, Fred is already informing on himself to the police, having acquiesced to cameras in his home and even agreed to edit the footage for them. Watching himself is like observing someone else, a shadow, a faceless enemy - you see the person and his habits but you cannot see inside the man.
Interesting footnote: In addition to A Scanner Darkly, many works of Philip K. Dick have been adapted for the big screen. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, Screamers, Impostor, and the French-language picture Confessions d'un Barjo are all based on Dick novels or short stories.
http://www.pretentiousmusings.com/a_scanner_darkly.html
That's all fine and good but did you see it? what sort of rating are you bestowing upon this film?Kevrockcity said:A SCANNER DARKLY
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly...
- 1 Corinthians 13
Seven years in the future, Officer Fred (Keanu Reeves) spends most of his life on the front line of the drug war, undercover in what is known as a "scramble suit." His voice is disguised and his appearance transforms constantly; he describes himself as "the ultimate Everyman." Officer Fred is, quite literally, us. He is also a hypocrite, an impostor in his own changing skin, hunting down dealers while also indulging his habit for the era's narcotic of choice, Substance D (or Slow Death).
Not too long ago, Fred didn't have to pretend. He went to work in a normal suit, the three-piece kind, until a run-in with a open cabinet door took the lid off his life (as Hammett put it half a century earlier) and let him look at the works. What he saw, he hated: a predictable existence where nothing new would ever happen again. So Fred exchanged his unblemished life for something that wasn't so perfect: his power-mower and perfectly manicured lawn for a car on cinder blocks and garbage in the driveway, his two little girls for a coterie of fellow tweakers (Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane, Woody Harrelson), and his wife for a drug dealer (Winona Ryder) who lost her libido in a pile of white powder. When you ride Substance D, sometimes you see bugs, or even worse (shades of Naked Lunch), people turning into bugs; it can be a nightmare, but at least you're still dreaming.
Like he did on Waking Life, filmmaker Richard Linklater employs the "Rotoshop" animation technique, similar to Ralph Bakshi-style rotoscoping - the final animated image is drawn over filmed movement. It's reality, painted; A Scanner Darkly did not give me a headache like Linklater's previous effort did, so either the director made a stylistic choice or significant advances have been made in the technology (or even more likely, a combination of both). It's an irony of sorts given that Linklater has been making a number of cartoons lately of the troubling live-action kind - School of Rock, the Bad New Bears remake, even his well-intentioned Fast Food Nation were all plagued by a depthless frivolity he used to avoid (the one outlier in all this is Before Sunset, perhaps the best film of 2004). Here, in his exploration of cultural/personal dualism, the artifice is applied to good effect; Linklater has created a liquid world so his polemic pill doesn't go down so rough. Then again, maybe our lives are more cartoonish than we realize; it's hard not see existence through the prism of theater, of show, when someone is always watching.
Here's where things get political.
Obviously, Philip K. Dick's original science fiction novel was largely colored by his own substance addictions - the author was renowned for his prodigious output fueled by heavy amphetamine use (forty-four books in thirty years). It was also a response to Nixon-era police state paranoia, in particular untoward government surveillance and monitoring (Dick himself claimed his home was broken into by the CIA); these are Big Brother issues loudly echoed in our time of warrantless wiretaps, watch lists, and something else with a (ahem) dubya. A Scanner Darkly is unapologetically overt in its assessment of the War on Drugs: how can you win a war where the real enemy is the self, where society both trades addictions and trades on them? We all have habits; whether some of them are illegal is often arbitrary, even counterintuitive or backward. Perhaps we are sick only so someone can sell us the cure.
Linklater also lays subtle aim at our other vaguely-defined struggle exploited for illusory purpose: the War on Terror. "The most dangerous kind of person is the one who's afraid of his own shadow" Officer Fred says about the side effects of Substance (WM)D. Double meanings abound: "I kinda have to tip my hat to any entity that can bring so much integrity to evil" is another memorable proclamation, made by his friend Barris about the New Path Recovery Center (a monolithic rehabilitation program that plays a large role in the picture), the kind of unaccountable authority that drapes itself in Manichean virtue. Barris, the closest the picture has to a true character villain, isn't being ironic when he says it as he possesses the same amoral ethos of our nightly news: he doesn't kill anyone but likes to be around when they die. One of the central plot lines of the picture is his comical attempt to rat out Fred for "anti-American drug terrorism;" unbeknownst to him, Fred is already informing on himself to the police, having acquiesced to cameras in his home and even agreed to edit the footage for them. Watching himself is like observing someone else, a shadow, a faceless enemy - you see the person and his habits but you cannot see inside the man.
Interesting footnote: In addition to A Scanner Darkly, many works of Philip K. Dick have been adapted for the big screen. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, Screamers, Impostor, and the French-language picture Confessions d'un Barjo are all based on Dick novels or short stories.
http://www.pretentiousmusings.com/a_scanner_darkly.html
ratings are overrated.
it's an unconventional film with some compelling, political topicality. if that appeals to you as a viewer, rent it.
winona also gets'em out, but it's a cartoon, so i don't know if that counts.
it's an unconventional film with some compelling, political topicality. if that appeals to you as a viewer, rent it.
winona also gets'em out, but it's a cartoon, so i don't know if that counts.
it counts...I'm renting it!Kevrockcity said:
Thanks for that Kev. I've been planning to watch that movie.
It's different and I liked it.
Has that kid form 3rd Rock from the Sun. Good stuff from him. Gripping and dialogue you don't want to miss so keep your ears open.
That's a rubbish review, Mehro.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
my pleasure, mehro.
btw, i had some issues with brick. was rather disappointed, actually: i love the hardboiled novels of hammett and chandler, so you would figure i'd be the target market for this kind of film.
however...
i never got beyond the high concept - why exactly were trappings of noir applied to a high school film? it felt forced - you can see the splitting seams during the scenes with the principal and the pin's mother, where the film doesn't know whether to take itself seriously or not. it doesn't believe in itself or in its world, so neither do we. i feel the genre is misapplied; high school is not like a noir, thus they are ill-suited for each other.
the picture also is way too pleased with itself, too busy patting itself on the back for the unconventional dialogue that it never achieves the kind of wordy, poetic rhythm of the maltese falcon or the big sleep (or even chinatown). i know these are high standards to set, but these are the films you will be inevitably compared to when you ape their conventions.
anyway, that's my two cents.
btw, i had some issues with brick. was rather disappointed, actually: i love the hardboiled novels of hammett and chandler, so you would figure i'd be the target market for this kind of film.
however...
i never got beyond the high concept - why exactly were trappings of noir applied to a high school film? it felt forced - you can see the splitting seams during the scenes with the principal and the pin's mother, where the film doesn't know whether to take itself seriously or not. it doesn't believe in itself or in its world, so neither do we. i feel the genre is misapplied; high school is not like a noir, thus they are ill-suited for each other.
the picture also is way too pleased with itself, too busy patting itself on the back for the unconventional dialogue that it never achieves the kind of wordy, poetic rhythm of the maltese falcon or the big sleep (or even chinatown). i know these are high standards to set, but these are the films you will be inevitably compared to when you ape their conventions.
anyway, that's my two cents.
Spoony the legend said:
Its been 6 months since I saw that movie. Ask Hectic to get it for you.
I randomly caught the trailer of that movie on some DVD and decided to rent it but it hadn't released on DVD then. Saw it last summer and was impressed. Good acting from everyone but the dialogue is the best part. Real catchy stuff that you'll want to remember so you can use it in the future. Also, the plot's pretty neat and moves real fast. Murder mystery with some drug selling thrown in.
I'm no professional movie critic like yourself Kev but yes I do agree with the points you've put up. I guess I liked it because I wasn't expecting anything from it. I hadn't heard or read anything about it. It's true that the movie seems far removed from reality. But like you said yourself, making comparisons to something like The Big Sleep is a compliment in itself for this movie.Kevrockcity said:
Flags of Our Fathers
Plot: Wartime America in order to raise funds uses 3 soldiers who were part of the legendary picture taken at Iwo Jima. This is a story which shows that those who have truly faught the war resent the need to be celebrated and provides perspective.
Typical of an Eastwood movie there aren't all to awe-worthy adventures at every incident depicted in the movie and he mixes it with the real and the dialogues are good as ever.
Rating: 7.5/10
Plot: Wartime America in order to raise funds uses 3 soldiers who were part of the legendary picture taken at Iwo Jima. This is a story which shows that those who have truly faught the war resent the need to be celebrated and provides perspective.
Typical of an Eastwood movie there aren't all to awe-worthy adventures at every incident depicted in the movie and he mixes it with the real and the dialogues are good as ever.
Rating: 7.5/10