Acting-wise I enjoy, for example, watching Tom Cruise walk around the city, talking to people. There is enough randomness in the script that this is very interesting. Also the cast is so different and you have many interesting faces and characters that do not need to be that interesting, that make the whole movie a lot more alive than it would be otherwise. Which is probably why the movie works in the first place. Because it is rather slow.
There is a lot of dark humor in the movie. In one scene Tom Cruise's character chases his own eyes as they are rolling down a corridor. Then there are a lot of funny criminal type characters. The two best are played by Jason Antoon and Peter Stormare. In both cases the humor comes from some derange characteristic of the character. Making for very funny, but also very dark jokes. There is an expositional scene with an elderly woman played by Lois Smith in which they talk about some truly terrible things some of which are political. But the scene is hilarious. And it has one of the most weird character moments in the entire Spielberg's filmography. I'm not gonna spoil it. But I'm pretty sure you will notice it.
"You know they are listening to us this very moment?" - said Jake to Tom on a party one night. "What are you talking about?" - Tom was obviously confused. So Jake had to continue - "You know the Facebook app and the Google app on your phone is constantly recording what we have to say to each other, forming an opinions on us. They claim it's for advertising. But they can use it for anything they want. You know?". Tom looked at Jake with a slight smile. He knew he had a very good comeback. After a short pause Tom said - "I use a dumb phone." - and went into the party. But Jake didn't stop feeling bad. Jake didn't use no phone at all.
This is a flawed logic. First there is the presupposition of some kind of power to begin with. A director is not necessarily the most important person. Even if he is the person in charge of the work. For example let's look at Top Gun: Maverick. The director of the movie is Joseph Kosinski. And there are actors such as Jennifer Connelly that worked on the movie. But the main and the most important person on set is not Kosinski, but rather Tom Cruise. It is easier to replace Kosinski, and it is easier to replace Connelly, but it is out of the question to even consider replacing Cruise.
There was one shot where I felt kind of proud and in the same time scared for the boy in the movie. He did a stunt to fall face down from a tainting rig. And it felt very real. This boy will probably grow up to become another Tom Cruise. Thought Rodriguez is not a stranger with using stunt-children. His son Rebel Rodriguez ( who made music for this movie ) started as a stunt-child in one of Rodriguez's films.
There is a famous quote from a movie "A Few Good Men" where Jack Nicholson's character says to Tom Cruise's character:
Mr. Humbert: So you are saying that there will not be any movie productions soon? Well wait a second there... The trend is now to shoot films back on film actually. Look at Christopher Nolan or Tom Cruise. Their whole business model is to make shit for real and not using computers for everything.
His previous film, Collateral was already an experiment. A much smaller and simpler story where he had enough balls to cast Tom Cruise as the main bad guy. But it perhaps didn't tickle his senses enough, so he had to do Miami Vice.
The grim reality of this, while truly disturbing, is not the most disturbing, though. How much time during a day you sleep? How much of life wasted unconscious? If you will die tomorrow what could other people say about you? You are the person that slept through the life? You are the person that procrastinated most of the time? You are the pervert that couldn't stop masturbating?
At the moment of me writing it I obviously have internet. Which is how I was able to publish this article. But I believe that from tomorrow it will no longer be. And it will no longer be untill I get paid, in about 2 weeks from now.
To summarize and close this review, when I came back I looked at the Rotten Tomatoes score of the movie. And it's a rather accurate representation of the film. It's very good at what it is good at. But it's somewhat cheesy in other aspects. It feels like a proper epic film. But then sometimes it felt like Edwards just didn't know how to tie things up so he hoped nobody will notice the cheese.
game. Anything else was "simple" and "easy". He would be caught and put to prison tomorrow. But maybe no. He would not
But then we go back to America and there are no action scene in the movie from that point on. Oh... There are! Well technically it's not an action scene. At least in the script it wouldn't be an action scene. But Steven Spielberg goes out of his way to present it as one. Tom Hanks's character learns that he needs to get somewhere quickly. So he talks in his phone in the car while driving at a bazillion miles per hour. Sitting in the cinema I though that it must be a Visual Effects shot, since who in their right mind would allow their lead actor drive so damn fast while talking on the phone!
Of course if directors would not talk to each other, Avatar itself would not be made. See, motion capture was not a development for Avatar. Films like Peter Jackson's King Kong and scary "uncanny valley" cartoons of *Bobert Zemeckis, like the infamous Christmas film where all of the characters are played by Tom Hanks used motion capture. Gollumn from a movie that some people use as a marriage ring could be considered a motion capture creature. Even though it was much more manual. Hell, Titanic has motion capture. Terminator 2 has a form of motion capture. And it was made in 1992.
I don't know if I am going to stream today or even tomorrow. The other thing that might have happened was that I was just working too much. And that means that I have to give myself breaks. I think to have weekends as weekends. And only stream during the work week. Will see. But anyway...
From tomorrow and until Moria's Race is finished I will not watch any film what so ever. I will be able to look at videos. Anything which is not a movie. But if it's a movie with plot and characters, no matter at what length, I'm not letting myself watch it. I'm not even letting myself watch I'm Not Even Human or other films I made. Apart from Moria's Race itself since I'm making it.
The wife thought for a bit and said - "The world is moving way too fast for me. Tomorrow we will marry dogs made of poo. I'm sorry. But the world is just getting ridiculous."
Sheiny: You have an organ... maybe... inside of your skull that thinks. This organ... by the way it's called "The Brain" ... it enjoys things like art and music and books. You know that books are almost exclusively intellectual? Those are strings of words that must be thought over and decoded to extract a meaning, that must thought over and decoded to extract a deeper meaning. As so on and so forth. Imagine tomorrow buying books so a computer will enjoy it and you.