Gozlukluimam

I don't review movies often, because there's usually other people who express the same thoughts I have in a much better way. Same thing goes for the piece of garbage that is Waking Life. I'll pass over the pretentious, preachy tone present throughout the whole film, as most reviewers before me pointed it out so eloquently.

What bugged me the most was the decision of using animation for telling the story or whatever was going on the screen. Once the perfect medium for conveying impossible worlds and materializing all things abstract, animation is today left in the hands of directors who attempt to make an otherwise uninteresting story stand out. Relatively recent examples include A Scanner Darkly and Waltz with Bashir. These, plus Waking Life have two things in common: they're rotoscoped, and nothing would've changed if they were shot in live-action. Tracing over live footage has to be the most hilarious attempt at novelty, ever. It's mind-blowingly unnecessary. The human beings depicted are wobbly, unnatural and ugly. Where's the personal touch of the animator? What's the point? Nothing improves, but everything becomes awkward. Nevertheless, A Scanner Darkly had a somewhat exciting story to tell, and Waltz with Bashir made a point, without insulting the audience's intelligence, I might add. Here's how I imagine it went with the production of Waking Life: Alright, let's film some mediocre actors monologuing about whatever, gather untalented technicians so they can trace over every goddamn frame. Looks deep enough to me.

When I decided to watch Escape from New York, there were a few good reasons;

The setting's awesome: one of the world's largest metropolis' is in ruins, turned into a huge prison. I don't know about you, but I always dreamed of spending a day in a humongous city, devoid of peace and order, full of scum ready to get their asses kicked. There's simply something in the idea of survival in an urban hell that is appealing and gives you great ingredients for a good story.

Snake Plissken looks like one tough bad-ass: at least when he's not speaking. I mean the eye patch, the stubble beard, the gloriously violent past, the general dirty look: Snake's a picture of a bad-ass pirate, only cooler, because of all the gun-toting. But as I mentioned earlier, the way he speaks disturbed me. It was a little forced and cheesy, as if Kurt Russel tried to emulate Clint Eastwood's legendary attitude, and failed.

So where does John Carpenter fail in this movie? He's got an awesome premise, a decent actor in the shoes of the perfect anti-hero, what can go wrong? Well nearly everything; The guy is simply unable to use his material well. I'll pass over the cheesiness of the soundtrack, since it didn't sound that out of place back in the 80s' sci-fi and action flicks. But there are absolutely no suspense, tension, "F*** YEAH" moments, etc. when you feel there should be. We're introduced to a world of pure visual genius and general awesomeness for the first 15 or so minutes (it's amazing, all the things you can do with lights and shadows. Pay attention to those 15 minutes if you happen to watch the film again) and then it's your usual, boring string of events movie. I wouldn't care if those events were presented in an interesting way. I mean just take a look at what the hell James Cameron has achieved in the prologue of Terminator 2: the sight of a burning swing, plus a couple of instruments playing in the background, and drama ensures. THAT is cinema; Being able to dramatize a goddamn playground toy. Whereas in Escape from NY, I was unable to even feel a few nerves tingling at the sight of two bad-asses about to split each others' skull in half. Yep. The swing wins, John. Man it's so depressing. This movie could've been awesome at the hands of an action movie expert like James Cameron, but I can't blame him. He was only background painter at the time. Oh well. I gotta admit, though, the ending made me laugh for a long time. Awesomest ending ever.

So as you can see, I was very disappointed with Carpenter's work here, but...

When I think of all the amazing people this film has inspired, (William Gibson, JJ Abrams, Hideo Kojima, among others...) it kinda makes the time I watched this average movie worthwhile. Plus you don't get to see that kind of anti-hero with attitude that much anymore.

I gotta admit, I had quite high expectations when I bought the DVD of Stealing Beauty, having heard mostly good stuff about the film. So I sat down in front of the screen, expecting a highly emotional, entertaining flick. Boy was I wrong! There were just too many things that didn't seem right in this. I don't even know where to start so I'll just write the first things that come to my mind;

The plot. It just went nowhere. Before watching the film, I had an overall idea of the story, in which there was this 19-year old American girl involved, who travels to Italy in order to resolve the mystery surrounding the father she never knew. With a premise as simple as this, I was expecting the director to surprise his audience with a twist in the plot or two. Alas, as soon as I saw the credits popping up, I shouted out loud "so, is THAT it?!" What was the point of all this? What was I supposed to get? Nothing important happened during those 114 minutes. Let's face it, the countryside is fine for resting, but if you don't have a damn good story to tell, it's just a boring setting for a movie.

Cinematography is not enough to make a good film. If I want pretty images, I watch a documentary, or here's a better idea, I just take a walk outside. Watching the regular lives of useless country people don't really match my idea of quality entertainment.

The characters are another matter. There are simply no characters that you can relate to/show sympathy, because frankly, there's something disturbing about horny, aging hippies. The only likable person is Lucy, then again, that might only have something to do with Liv Tyler herself, rather than her character.

Come to think of it, Liv Tyler's the whole reason I forced myself to watch this to the end. 2 stars for casting her.