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Abre los ojos (1997)
Miles better than Vanilla Sky
If you've read my review of Vanilla Sky then you know that I hated it. As a result, I was reluctant to see Abre Los Ojos, both because I knew the plot and so there would be no surprise and because Sky sucked so badly. However, a friend of mine dropped it in the VCR and I was pleasantly surprised.
First of all, Eduardo Noriega is a better actor and much more watchable than Cruise. He has actual facial expressions, which always helps.
However, the big improvement was in small variations in the story that make me wonder what Cameron Crowe and the screenwriters were thinking when they created Sky.
**** SPOILER ****
One example: when David Aames (Cruise) finds out that he's in a directed dream, he goes down to the lobby and screams, "Tech support!" After a brief pause (this is supposed to be dramatic, folks), Edmund Ventura shows up and takes him to the final scene.
Compare this with Abre Los Ojos. Our hero, Cesar, figures out that he is in a fantasy world. He freaks out. He runs outside the building, where two security guards confront him. Gunfire ensues. Lots of blood, a couple of bodies. Consider the heightened drama here: If Cesar is wrong, then this is about as bad as it gets. If he is right, then nothing has happened. Amenabar gives us a moment to consider the implications, then resolves the situation.
Sorry, but that kind of climactic scene beats the hell out of some elevator doors opening and a guy saying, "Yoo hoo! Over here!"
This was a problem throughout Sky that doesn't exist in Abre Los Ojos: scenes that should have been dramatic but weren't. Does that make Abre Los Ojos a fantastic movie? Personally, I still prefer his later movie, "Nadie Conoce a Nadie" (Nobody Knows Anybody), which I found more suspenseful. However, if your wife keeps nagging you to see Vanilla Sky, try to talk her into Abre Los Ojos instead. It's the same basic plot with better actors and a better script.
Cure (1997)
Reading these comments is as interesting as watching the film
One of the joys of seeing "foreign" films is catching a glimpse into other cultures. What do other people consider funny? Ordinary? Terrifying? "Cure" puts a Japanese spin on an idea that several American directors have touched on: that evil is something that can afflict perfectly ordinary people. David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" television series explored a similar idea to Kurosawa's: ordinary people afflicted with evil, rather than evil people, as such. The difference between Lynch and Kurosawa is that Lynch saw evil as some sort of independent force, whereas Kurosawa sees evil more as an idea. "Cure" presents us with a world in which words and ideas are a kind of virus that passes from person to person, leaving destruction in its wake. A carrier who doesn't fall ill himself, but who infects others with murderous instincts. For this reason, some of the comments here surprised me. Frequent complaints about how elliptical the film is, and how the characters need to be better defined. In particular, several complaints that the film never explained who the drifter was or where he came from. Surprising, because that, to me, was the point: he was nobody special. He didn't come from anywhere special. Viewers brought up on a diet of American cinema will find "Cure" frustrating: American thrillers always explain who the killer is, why he kills, and, most importantly, why he is different from you and me. This last point is to comfort the audience, to let them know that they could never be like the killer, that they are outside the drama, watching. Kurosawa presses the opposite point: this could be you; there is nothing special about these men. You should not be convinced that you are different from them. I will admit that if you dislike slowly-paced cinema, a la Tarkovsky, or if you don't buy the hypnotism "mumbo-jumbo" on which the film is based, then you will probably find "Cure" tiresome. I enjoy Tarkovsky, and I found that it wasn't a lot of work to suspend disbelief on the point of hypnotism. Finally, this film is an intellectual thriller; it's more frightening for its implications than for what actually goes on. The point is not to scare you and then wrap it all up neatly at the end (like most American thrillers), but instead to show you a possible world and then scare you after you leave the cinema with thoughts of what might follow. Check out the interview at http://www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/kurosawa as well.
Revenge (1990)
A masterpiece... of mediocrity
Someone suggested bringing a box of Kleenex to this film, but I would recommend the small soft packs, as you may hurt yourself with the box. In fact, remove all sharp objects from your pockets, as the urge to slit your wrists in order to avoid sitting through the whole movie may be too much for some people to bear.
I sat through this one along with a group of friends when it originally came out. I very, very much wanted to like it, but for what seemed like hours it just dragged on with nothing noteworthy happening. Anthony Quinn trying to be menacing (but just coming across as cliché); a love scene that tries to be torrid but ends up looking either wooden or silly depending upon your sense of humour; Kevin Costner... well he was playing Kevin Costner in this one, too. A tense scene near the end in which Costner confronts Quinn... maybe something is going to happen... nope.
Finally, a great scene with Costner and Stowe: real emotion (from Costner, no less), pathos, heart-wrenching drama, and then... in all my years of watching films I have never before or since been so shocked to see the credits rolling.
Two hours. One good scene. You do the math. My advice: don't even rent it.
Le Cinquième Élément (1997)
A letdown for Luc Besson fans
I had seen only two of Besson's past films when I rented this one. La Femme Nikita and The Professional I found thoroughly enjoyable, but The Fifth Element was just more cliché-ridden American celluloid.
Now, I was looking for something specific. In both Nikita and Professional, Besson employed delightfully flawed main characters. Does Nikita deserve the mind-twisting manipulation she's enduring? She's a victim of ruthless and calculating people, but on the other hand she's a cold-blooded bitch killer. Do I like Léon? He's a sympathetic, child-like man, but on the other hand he's an efficient executioner. I find myself thinking about these two often: they raise questions about what I feel about the world and why.
All of the characters in The Fifth Element were stock items. Bruce Willis played, once again, Bruce Willis. I liked Moonlighting and Die Hard but how many times can he play David Addison in yet another movie and have it continue to work? Gary Oldman was rehashing Norman Stansfield from The Professional with minor adjustments. The rest of the movie amounted to nothing more than a giant treasure hunt and chase scene, culminating in too many gender clichés to count and a sickeningly sweet monologue on the nature of love. The whole effort left me cold.
Now, if you don't make the connection with Besson's earlier films, and you just want to see a bit of fun, over-the-top science fiction fluff, then The Fifth Element may be for you. If, like me, you enjoyed Besson's earlier complex characters and are looking for more of the same, then avoid this one like the plague.
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Interesting premise... weak execution
This film is at its heart a thriller. The question that nags at you from halfway through the movie is, "What the heck is going on here?" No, I didn't see the ending coming, so on that level it worked for me as a puzzlebox of a movie.
Nonetheless, in my books a thriller has to have four things going for it before it rates:
1. You can't see what's coming from a mile away. In this sense, Vanilla Sky was fine. I see that one or two people here had the ending pegged, but I sure didn't.
2. Once you know how things end up, you should be kicking yourself because you "should have figured it out." Again, Vanilla Sky delivers: there are enough clues throughout the film (over and over and over) that I should have clued in. However, the clues seem unconnected to the story, so I took the bait didn't make the connection. Two good marks for Vanilla Sky.
3. There should be a credible, interesting alternative explanation. Here I found the film a letdown. What's the alternative explanation? That he's going crackers? This didn't hold my interest long. As such, I found the film turned into a long series of weird events that I couldn't make sense of... until the end. Fun thrillers are fun when you think you have it figured out except for one or two nagging inconsistencies... and then you find out you've been led down the garden path. I spent a third of Vanilla Sky either not knowing what was going on or not caring, until I finally found out in the last ten minutes. Not very satisfying.
4. You have to care about what happens to the characters. I think that this is Vanilla Sky's biggest failing. I must say up front that I've never seen a Tom Cruise movie before. I know: hard to believe; where have I been? Regardless, I found it hard to get interested in his character, because I couldn't figure out what he was feeling throughout the beginning of the film. I took away the impression that he has only five facial expressions: toothy smile, pouty look, angry frown (pouty look without lip extended), "that look" he gives the women that makes them swoon, and quizzical frown. This last one appears much of the time throughout Vanilla Sky, and it simply wasn't enough for me to connect to the character. As such, I had trouble caring about what was happening to him near the end. Tom Cruise spends part of this movie wearing a mask, and oddly enough I found him a better actor with it on: he displays more emotion with his voice and his body movements than with his face.
Overall rating: Rent this one. There is nothing in it that requires the big screen and it isn't worth the big ticket entry price, unless you love Tom Cruise or, like my wife, you have vertigo and want to sit in the front row and have your stomach do flips during the New York flyover scenes.