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Strange Days

Strange Days

List Price: $9.98
Your Price: $9.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: mind blowing
Review: Best sci-fi since blade runner. Ignore the bad reviews, its a film that needs to be seen in person before passing judgements. With its really original plot and hyper-kinetic style, Strange days begs to be watched, even though it crashed at the box office. The opening sequence alone is probably worth the cost of the dvd, so do yourself a favour a give it a try. You won't regret it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: great movie
Review: i saw the movie recently.I wasnt expecting anything all that great in the movie but from the get go i was hooked.angela basset does a great job with her role. same for Ralph fines (excuse the spelling). the only real problem with the movie was it was a little to graphic for my tastes but it is easily over looked.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Strange Days
Review: My all time favorite movie! I'm really not sure why, but the movie contains elements that really appeal to me. I don't know what these elements are either, but it's got to be something, because I really love this movie. Maybe it is the action, the setting (a couple of days before the end of the millenium) or the tiny chunk of romance? I don't know, and I don't care either. The movie is the best one ever made, and you should see it no matter what kind of films you usually watch.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Waste of Terrific Actors
Review: As a longtime fan of the cult film "Blade Runner," I had hoped this film would be in the same vein--and maybe it will, in time. But the convoluted plot is too much even for this great cast--Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Lewis, Angela Bassett, Tom Sizemore--hey, this should have been a great film. But the actors struggle bravely to not much avail. The one clip I enjoyed was Fiennes' and Bassett's sexy kiss at the end, but it was pretty unbelievable that two people who had just been almost beaten to death could have mustered up much erotic drive. Fiennes fans will enjoy seeing his usual brilliance, but don't expect another "Blade Runner."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Three movies in one... Noir, apocalypse, breakup
Review: My friend Nathan said that this movie should end with Bassette getting beat up and a huge riot burning down L.A. but he was concentrating on only the Apocalyptic aspect of the film which is really a backdrop to the actions of sleazebags.

This is a movie about a breakup told in classic Film Noir style. There are sleazy cops, a femme fatale, a character showing up in the first act who is visibly upset and whom you know is going to be dead before the first reel is over (45 minutes into the movie) leaving a mystery that won't be solved until 20 minutes before the ending.

There's also the breakup storyline. Many commented on how Juliette Lewis just doesn't seem to be someone to be broken up over, but people get messed up over breakups with horrible people who are all wrong for them all the time. Why should Lenny, the Ralph Fiennes character, be any different. This is one of Ralph's best roles as he alternates between romantic, sleazy and heartbroken. Angela Bassette has some horrible dialogue that she's got to get over but she handles it well. Much of the movie is about Ralph Fiennes getting over Juliette Lewis, and he does get over her. THe rape, the violence, the murder is all external and commentary to what is happening with Lenny.

I also like it when a movie starts out violent and bleak and ends up with a really gentle and sweet ending and the Lori Carson song at the end is one of the most haunting beautiful pieces to be placed in a film soundtrack.

This movie is not for everyone. There is a certain bleakness to it and it is uncomfortable being around these people. You forgive Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassette is the moral center of the movie but everyone else from Juliette Lewis' singer character to Michael Wincott's club owner to Jericho-One to the LAPD is horrible.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Film noir of a brutal and unrelenting sort
Review: Most of the negative reviews of this film have centered on brutality of certain scenes, and less than ennobling characters who (in some minds, at least) represent disrespect to an entire race or gender. This film has some unforgiving scenes, particularly one horrific rape scene that ends in strangulation. If you think of a society as a perfect mime of all bad things that occur in films, then you might well be disgusted.

I don't.

Many stock characterizations are used to great effect in this film, since film-noir essentially repackages the same feeling of mystery and danger every time. Ralph Fiennes plays a former vice cop turned pusher, and what he markets is the recorded memories of street life and sex - i.e. the stuff that the middle class wants without the risk of offending the law or their popularly held ethics. With all down-on-their-luck detectives, it's the personal relationships that provide the drama once things begin to turn dark. Angela Bassett and Juliette Lewis are the women in his life, the former being the one who wants him in spite of himself and the one who he wants without the faintest glimmer of love returned.

It's an excellent mystery, and it never failed to keep me wondering about the resolution - which is what makes mystery entertaining. Never doubt that you are watching a film about people who regularly perform criminal acts, attempting to solve a mystery with which the police cannot be bothered. It's not a pretty or conventionally moral world that this film depicts, and the fact that it almost exists already adds to its impact tremendously.

Restrain judgment until you can appreciate the wondrous sleaziness and imaginative use of noir conventions. It's suspenseful, hits hard and ends better than the plot usually plays in reality.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: POV and the inevitble mainstream letdown
Review: This is one of those movies where you go into it knowing that everyone involved is going for the big pretentious overtones and promises to "say something" by the end that will really prove meaningful and long-lasting. Unfortunately, Strange Days peters out in the first act.

Take for instance the promising play with POV during the murder--arguably the centerpiece of the film--where perception, memory, desire, and all of those other elements that are hot in academe these days are treated in a genuinely NEW way! I was shocked. Somehow it seemed to step above the schoolboy thrill-seeker Fangoria level (I can hear it now: "And then he killed her, and she saw it, and HE saw it too, man!") to something truly abject, disturbing, X-rated. For all of its denial of dealing with VR, the movie trafficks in it, in my opinion, a really novel way.

But then it slides comfortably back into the Hollywood groove: the white and black hats firmly on the right heads and tongue NOT in cheek. Like The Matrix, which began as a kind of Marxist reading of AI craziness, this film lets the plot and Cameron's hubris overshadow some really interesting and terrifying aesthetics, leaving the rest of the film flat and predictable.

So when the big pretentious social questions start to get answered in the last 2 minutes, we know that eveybody is going to end up holding hands in the streets as long as the RIGHT black hats get singled out and shot, prompting the theater crowd to stad up and cheer, too. But since the effect (and affect) is so superficial and contrived, the scene won't last as they walk to the parking lot.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: disturbing film with horrific themes and shallow development
Review: I had heard that this movie had some semblance to the "different reality" as may be found in Matrix (loved Matrix!), so I watched it with much expectation, but unfortunately I was really disappointed. All the more disturbing aspects of simulated experiences is covered here but most of it - I ended up fast forwarding - and I felt that the movie pandered to all that is base in being human, down to an exploitive bestial level. I was saddended that the script was written by James Cameron (Terminator, Judgment Day - Terminator 2, Aliens, Titanic), and directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break)because after the type of work they both have produced, this was poor in both scripting, believability, and action. I also felt that this movie should have been rated an "X" for some of the violent scenes against women - and again, it was a poor vehicle for acting for both Angela Bissett and Ralph Fiennes (first time I saw either). In addition, near the end, when the answers are being played out, I felt let down that the character plotting turned out to be a trite cop-out to formula "B" or "C" movies - ugh. I would not recommend this movie because there is so little actual semblance to reality, plot is dismal, characterization is superficial, and most of all, it is a diservice to women. If what happened to the women in the film happened exactly to men, I wonder if the vocalization against this film would have been more publicized.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: good sci-fi film with original ideas
Review: Good acting, Good looking scene, Good scenario, several good detail ideas wich make the atmosphere real. This film should be in the list of the Sci-Fi reference. If you like Sci-Fi not only with special effects, do not miss this one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Strange Days? No, better.
Review: Strange Days is quite comparable to Blade Runner. Both are set in LA, yet the visions are different. Strange Days' a dark, chaotic yang to Blade Runner 's dark, dull yin, what Ghost in the Shell is to Akira. While both has interesting techno-premises, they're more about society, civilisation and humanity's near downfall. Another interesting note, the visuals. Blade Runner may have set the trend for cyberpunk movies portraying cityscapes as dark and menacing, but Strange Days pushed it further. LA is still dark, but in a rather "fun" way. The use of chaos, fury, anarchy, flashy colours and funky wardrobe shows us that "dark" movies don't have to THAT dull like in BR. The Visuals and themes it touch should be influential in a few years, and if such influence is found in mediums like anime, you'll know how far this movie has come. And another thing, isn't the director a hottie?


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