Rating: 
Summary: Refreshing
Review: Waking Life isn't for everyone, and judging from the reviews posted here, it looks like you either love it or you hate it. I loved everything about it, from the animation to the philisophical quotes and metaphysical nature. How can we as a human-whole NOT wonder whether we are awake or dreaming? What is real? How did we get here? I will not divulge the facts of the movie, in fear of spoiling it for anyone, but I will say that it's refreshing, the animation is spectacular and very unique, the ideas presented are thought-provoking... This is a movie that inspires you to think upon your daily life and wonder if there isn't more to life than meets the eye. A great feat for Linklater.
Rating: 
Summary: Intro To Philosophy- Reason and Reality 101
Review: From Skepticism to Determinism...For anyone who wants to take a two hour crash course on philosophy... knock yourself out. I will say that the visual work and music in this movie were excellent;however, the constant philosophical conversation shoved down my throat was enough to make me want to throw it back up.
Rating: 
Summary: 3 1/2
Review: Waking Life. Waking Dream. Dreaming Wake. Dreaming Life. Life Dreaming. Wake Dreaming. It'll make your head spin if ya think about it to much. This movie to me, is not about an entire film. It's about moments. One moment. Another moment. My favorite moments are the ones that have neat endings. Like the guy talking to the boy and is mysteriously filling up a bottle with Gasoline. (Ummm I wonder what for.) And the man in the bar "testing" out his gun. Those were great. Some of the conversations are forgettable. (Alot of the inbetweeen ones) The beauty is you can hate one and love another. The ugliness is that if you rewatch it ya hafta sit through it all anyway. Too bad their isn't an editing feature to include only the ones ya liked. It's a mixed film, with mixed reviews. I didn't like the lack of a plot, no tension, which frankly made me a little bored. Once the main character FINALLY gave us a reason to stick to the end, (he revealed a problem to which he wanted an answer too) It's funny how everyone is giving him all this advice but they don't tell him the ONE thing he really wants to know. (Maybe thats another point the film gives off) The beginning sets up all the rules for ya. The man driving the boat like car explains how things will proceed from then on. You're path is random and so is the movies path. The text commentary is a neat feature and will help with sources of info and other possible questions. Is it too much at times? Yes. You hafta committ yourself to finishing it or you can easily find your way to the stop button. Rent it before you buy it. The Animation is great but can destract at times from the talking as others have mentioned. And I need to see it again to understand the ending. The movie does come off as a "college" or "village voice" type movie for new age hippies or stoners. It's ideas can be intruiging or laughable depending on your point of view. I enjoy that they weren't offensive, like they didn't disprove God or anything. It's very objective and you take in what you want. The film may cause discussion afterwards with friends or colleagues IF you can remember anything that was said. It's a mixed film. It was NOT nominated for best animation because drawing on people is more of a special effect, rather then creatign from scratch which is harder to do. although I too agree with the Jimmy Neutron nomination being utter ... They should change the title too Best Children's Film. To call it best animated film is a joke since we all know the hollywood peeps don't take the time to watch anything they don't take their kids too. ANYWAYZ See it, it won't change your life, but then again it's not supposed too, it's just a movie.
Rating:
Summary: hollow yet profound
Review: I've read most of the reviews of the film and there seem to be two distinct camps. The first camp rants and raves about the philosophical implications of the dialogue, while the second group dismisses the dialogue as "sophomoric", "pop-culture cliche", or just plain moronic banter. I, as the other two camps, was deeply surprised by the originality of the film via its visual presentation. But, unlike most of the viewers i think the real crux of the film doesn't lie in the individual nature of each dialogue, but rather the sum and the spectrum of the ideas that are presented. Sure, most of us have heard bits and pieces of every idea presented in the movie, but most of us have never went beyond that fringe superficial information that was given to us. This movie offers simple yet concise previews of the positive aspects of existentialism, the metaphysical aspects of the dream vs. the lucid state, the evolution of humanity as a whole, fringe political ramblings, and many other motifs that I've forgotten. I would never say that these ideas are ground breaking or have profound implications, that's because most of them are not of a novel nature and have been stated and discussed long before this movie ever came out. But the thing that makes this movie so enjoyable is the way in which these thoughts are presented, the rhetoric is superb and i found myself totally immersed in each scene. If you're a "hardcore" philosopher try not to scoff at the ideas that are presented and if you're an average Joe, don't be too enthralled with their "novel" nature, but both of you should enjoy the visual aspect of this film...:)
Rating:
Summary: Visual and Mental Candy
Review: I won't waste time critiquing parts of this movie. Suffice to say I loved the whole thing. I've never seen Rotoscoping done so well, it's a far cry from Ralph Bakshi's use of it. The lack of a plot did not bother me. The thrust of the movie is to live in the moment, totally experience it, so where it was going did not concern me. There actually was a plot, just a very straight forward one. I won't give it away though. The dialoug was wonderful--the insights into life, death and dreams very profound. I bought the DVD so I could watch it again and again to pick up what I missed. Watch this movie when you can totally devote you attention to it. I loved how they worked in clips from other famous movies, ie Dreams by Akira Kursawa, etc....
Rating: 
Summary: Hold out to the end
Review: Sure, Waking Life is a mind-numbingly pretentious excursion into pseudo-intellectual territory -- or so you may think. For most of the film, I was sure I was laughing AT it. That is, until the last fifteen minutes or so, when it surprisingly turns out to be as profound as it's been pretending. Suddenly the monologues, ravings and bull has a point: representing all our human theories about life, death, and dream, they eventually fall away and become negligible. The animation hightens the unreal feeling of what had to be a surreal film even in live-action, and allows the viewer (if willing) to accept the central conceit that makes it all worthwhile; or, at the very least, to keep us laughing derisively until the last reel blows us away. That, I say, is what makes a good film.
Rating: 
Summary: College Students' Flick but Nothing More
Review: I'm currently in the midst of watching "Waking Life" but am so irked by the movie that I have to simultaneously write a review to alleviate my pent-up irritation. As I thoroughly enjoyed Linkslater's "Before Sunrise", I bought "Waking Life" to find out what exactly happened to Jesse/Ethan Hawke and Celine/Julie Delphy. (An art/indie flick in this form or substance will never be aired in Asia). The script, or the lack of it, is so pretensious that I can't help but feel I'm wasting my time and polluting my mind simply by listening to the dialogue. Even innovative animation cannot save the show. Actually, I've just decided to call it quits on the movie. Unless you're at the stage of life where you enjoy debating about the meaning of life et al with friends, save your time and money for something more meaningful.
Rating:
Summary: what god doesn't know
Review: mine's a four 'cause god didn't write this flick. (Or did she?) Indeed, the protagonist, in the scene where he's watching the movie about holy moments, when you realize the soul you're talking with is god manifested in mortal form, he's watching the movie, and get this--his face becomes the face of god, some kind of Inca fire god. For if god is omniscient, god needs to know what it's like to be you, including your aspect that doesn't know you're god. God thinks she's you, while she's you. Why choose this fragmentary fate, being ants and people reviewing this movie with the consciousness of ants? Because god chose life and not death. Not that ants don't have a sublime consciousness--a hundred thousand of them can coordinate the manufacture of an intricately nested tunnel-permeated nest, which seems like more than the people who rip on this movie as being superficial and meaningless have going on in their skulls. OK--I admit, taste in art varies crazily from spirit to spirit. Beauty may be truly relative and subjective, incapable of being shared, except by telepathy, which as Ethan Hawke explicates, is a real possibility in a world where rats can learn mazes faster when thousands of other rats in far away labs have already learned them. Beauty may be such that these reviewers can't see it in a film which at parts is as highly crafted as Dali or Monet, or maybe even subtler, because of the real human substrate behind the animation, a variable that makes the facial morphisms uncannily evocative, perhaps even more interesting than actual faces, due to artistic freedom, which normal people only have partial control over in the everyday life of their face expressions. The writing in this film has been variously attacked by these people as philisophical, as undergraduate, as pop-theoretical, as stonerist, as trivial, as primitive, as overly complex, indecipherable, blatantly obvious and heavy-handed. In short, the negative reviewers have used their own limitations, fears, and prejudices to brew up invective whose intensity bespeaks the possible validity of the film, given the personalities behind the attacks. I'll try to address the criticism. One--philosophers are not out-of-touch, abstract eggheads spouting irrelevancies from safe within their ivory towers. Instead, I have learned that they are people, damned by bigots merely because their brains are capable of intricacies unavailable to the average sheep--people with often truly elegant explanatory ability, who dedicate their lives to sharing their discoveries with each other or the rest of us, discoveries they consider meaningful and useful. They are sharers. And that's what the world needs, if you think it needs anything in the way of help. (Some view business as usual as a special gift, without realizing their luck of birth could have been different, leaving them in predicaments unspeakably tragic). Two--undergraduates are not the stupidest folk around. So labeling this movie's dialogue such is not really a criticism. There are youngsters whose poetic skills, musical inventiveness, spiritual spirituality, strength of vision, and so on rival, I dare say, what these critics can even dream of. This film is attacked by people who don't dream well. People who can only see what they've already seen. And we can probably submit to reality and say this is as it should be. We want to bother the critics in any way possible. Making them watch the faces of god, listen to the voices of angels and devils, think about things actually worth thinking about, is perhaps fitting punishment. Those who yearn for movies, like intravenous opiate drips, which "entertain" and "comfort" their fragile mentalities, can't be really told anything about the higher levels of human existence. They simply don't believe how good thought can be for people like the characters in this movie, who are farther above the sheep than the sheep are above ants. Should we even suppose the anti-waking-life critics are conscious? What do they do that would lead us to believe they are not automatons? What's going on in there besides darkness and twistedly pathetic computation? They may be artificial, but never intelligent. But what do i know--I'm lucky enough to have eliminated this type of critic from my immediate vicinities--I only know them through their sickening diatribes in venues like this. PleaSe tell me I'm wrong. I want to be. I know we live in a giant robot-world, eating nature and producing mostly misery--but I wish that most of the human moviegoers were not robots themselves. Proponents of strong AI may say There's nothing wrong with being a robot--leave them alone--they have merely been programmed a bit wrongly by insignificant and unenviable childhoods--you'd hate this film if you were one of them. Here we go, with the grace of god. I've been told not to listen to the negative ones. I guess i'm just programmed to take reviews seriously, even if their authors don't deserve to see Waking LIfe, let alone have access to DVD's, MAC machines, fast food, spectator sports and all the other lovely elements of their lives, which they can't examine, but which they force us to examine here when we're trying to contemplate what it means to see real artists doing their thing as delicately and powerfully as they can possibly struggle to do. It is a shame. But remind me--this shame is but a spoonful in the ocean of shame that is history.
Rating:
Summary: you expect something? god doesn't deserve to die.
Review: If I would have died, this film wouldn't exist for me. How could one want to die? After seeing this, you'll never. Or no, that's wrong. "Waking Life" marvels at death-life connection, the most important thing, that we can know about only as far as we can know knowledge itself. For death may be the most important part of life. But maybe not. God is dreaming this world, all of us, everything, just once. And does she suspect she's dreaming? Does she believe in us? She gets to see us fly in our dreams. She gets to make our faces and places. You will go so far into this movie that you'll never get outta it. And that's the way life should be. Nothing is ever gone. It's all, all of history, here now, in attenuated, if abstract, form. The potential to reverse time. Why not? How can we say the world is causally closed? That there can't be the metaphysical soul, because our brains are physical, and we know all about it, we can theoretically perfectly explain-something that isn't a thing can't make me write these words. And so. We're artificial intelligences. What is natural? The natural is the mental universe-mentality with rules. Why would particles attract each other? They have nothing better to do. They are part of god. Who could be dead, but again, who would die when the best part's just beginning? True pleasure is not to be avoided. Anyone with a real choice wouldn't choose pain. Because truth is true. In a way nothing is false. Imagine the birth of god-floating in a void. Not so scary, if you try it yourself. What was the neuronal configuration of god's birth-mind? A hundred billion neurons in my brain, four billion years of "evolution"-twenty-five new ones per year, wired in in the sublime insanity of mind, consciousness which is the most amazing thing, possible. So I say. Given my somewhat limited knowledge. There are people who know everything. Or who know people who know everything. Linklater's film is about waking up. Wake up and scream, metaphorically, or really. Only you can know if you're real. Only you can tell us what you'd tell us. Nothing is ever the same as anything else. All electrons aren't just one. There are multitudes. And we invite each other. Or we automatically fear each other. I don't think people are too lazy to live. I think it can be too hard. Unless. You know the trick. The first move you learn, after which you're addicted. It's your life that's been treating you so and so, and so take me any way, how long is a day, we learn to pay, for which we can play. say the secret words that god would say.
Rating:
Summary: Empty cans rattle the loudest...
Review: I was sorely let down by this movie. The prevailing anti-intellectualism in America is never justified. However, this movie epitomizes the uncertainties and anxieties of those who would ostracize intellectuals, by burdening the viewer with a drawn-out pretentiousness. The philosophy presented herein makes no attempt to enlighten the lay person. In fact, it is almost as if the filmmakers went out of their way to go above the heads of the average person. Nor is it a movie for ardent philosophers, for nothing new is offered. The dialogue could have been (and perhaps was) stripped from the most boring Philosophy 101 textbook. The impressive animation is rarely used creatively and there are so many missed opportunities. The only thing more annoying than watching conceited philosophy students sit in a coffee shop pondering the meaning of life is watching them do so in animation. So much talk, no substance. Quite disappointing and strictly for pseudo-intellectuals.
|
