Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: The best sci-fi movie I have ever seen! I can see why the Matrix may have a more widespread appeal to the popcorn munching masses but Dark city is an out and out classic!
I have read reviews which criticise the `cold' acting of the cast but disagree enormously because this aforementioned `cold/detatchment' is fundamental to the plot. If the memories of the main characters are so confused that they don't question the fact that they can't recall the daylight hours, it would be absurd to have them portrayed in a more three dimensional manner. I think that Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly and William Hurt convey this state of confused turmoil absolutely brilliantly! I love sci-fi and eagerly devour quality movies in this genre and I cannot understand how this piece of cinematic brilliance can be so under-rated by so many critics!
Rating:
Summary: Dark City
Review: Before there was the Matrix...Dark City is one of the most outstanding movies. Which can be
debated whether or not it fits film material--but for the sake
of swiftness, we'll call it a movie. Dark City has great style
and great story written up and down it's walls surely as there
was blood and creepy spirals. For those who saw the Matrix and felt it was the best movie of
that type, I'm sorry to say that Dark City exists. As deep-
down philosophical that people thought the Matrix was, Dark City
has already been there and done that. You can see the heavy
influence that Dark City had for the creators of the Matrix.
Of course, you could draw a lot of inspiration from films like
"the Children of the Lost City" in Dark City but they're still
very different in many ways. And if you were looking for a good modern movie that has that
Noir setting, I'd have to recommomend "Dark City". Not only
rich in plot, great visuals, and very stylish, but you've got space aliens! How much better could you get than that? ~bgmdragon
Rating: 
Summary: Movie doesn' t live up to its potential-Commentary Excellen
Review: The movie Dark City is a visual and imaginative feast, but, having it seen it twice now without commentary and twice with, I find that it leaves me a little cold. I really wanted to love this movie for all its visual spendor, but, amongst other things, a witless script, cold characters and a dour muddy appearance leave me less than moved. I get the sense that many folks have praised it for what it aspired to be rather than what it actually turned to out be. The movie gives us a great setting- and setup- and then falls short on invention. Like Blade Runner, Dark City is a movie is as much about its setting as its storyline. And what a setting it is! A unnamed noir-era, metropolis in which buildings bloom from the depths according to the mental machinations of the Strangers, a pasty faced, leather trenchcoat wearing bunch of Nosferatu types from below. The Strangers are involved in a great experiment. They are manipulating human beings during nightly periods of induced sleep, putting them into various settings, injecting them with memories mixed like cocktails by the athsmatic Dr. Schreber (Keifer Sutherland), and watching the result. This is a potentially very interesting concept, and ripe for inventive exploration. And before the wheels of the plot take over, it succeeds- we are drawn by the potential of, say, exploring the core nature of humanity stripped of context. Alas, the movie stops short of this. Director Proyas, like the Strangers, seems to want the characters to behave Just-So- that is, well within their assigned noir archetypes- and becomes ill at ease when they stray from their appointed behaviors. Thus, we are treated to what seem to be bland, one dimensional performances and very functional dialog. As Roger Ebert points out in his fine commentary track on the DVD, the choice of acting style in the film was, perhaps, deliberately cold, deliberately blank, as the main plot point of the films is that the characters have all been injected with canned memories and have not had time to develop any of their own. The fact that all the human characters are pre-programmed by the Strangers (who presumably did their resarch by watching old noir films) on how to act, how to behave and how to think, seems to me a convenient excuse for the cliched dialog and coming out of their mouths. This would have been fine had I sensed that, as the movie rushed forward toward its apocalyptic conclusion, the now free and independent characters were somehow, like Blade Runner's "replicants", budding strange new emotions of their own. Unlike Ebert (whom I consider to be my favorite film critic), I did not find the characters to be warming up in any way. And I felt no warmth or concern for them by the time the movie crashed headlong into its personality obliterating finale. Here's something to help you understand what I mean when I state that this film is lacking invention. In his commentary, Ebert enthusiastically points up a scene in which we see the Strangers forcing a rags-to-riches transformation on a couple eating dinner. Their dinner table grows from the size of a card table to something that would be not out of place at San Simeon (recalling a similar transformation in Citizen Kane) and their home grows from a low rent apartment, to a palatial mansion replete with polished stone columns and candleabras. This is potentially interesting. In such a transformation, one could explore how humans change themselves to adapt to their station in life. But, since the both the behaviors and the settings of the characters are pre-programmed (and the dialog is cliched), the scene has no emotional or ironic impact. We feel no suprise or delight when the characters behave exactly as one would expect given their setting- lower class, they act hammy, upper class, they suddenly become east-coast WASPs. This is, of course, a requirement of the script. However, with a bit more "invention" the scene could have had a touch of warmth and humor. Would it not have been far more interesting, and potentially illuminating, to have had the personalities of this couple left "lower-class" while their living conditions change? Perhaps, after a bit of adjustment, the characters would settle in to an upper class manner, but the initial cognitive dissonance would be source of much information about human nature. The Strangers, and Proyas, are not very clever experimenters. A few words about Keiffer Sutherland, whose narration the film found a need to fall back on from time to time to explain to us what has been happening. I have no gripe with Mr. Sutherland in general, but his performance in this movie left me questioning his judgement as an actor- and Proya's as a director. All... his... dialog... is... deli..vered... in... a... monot... o... nous... gasping... cadence... that... grows... old... before... the end... of the first... reel. It sounds less like Athsma, with which I'm familiar, than a malfunction in Steven Hawking's voice synthesizer. I didn't believe for a minute that this was anything but an clumsy affectation. I would have loved to see Dr. Schreber pause just once to excuse himself to take a much needed puff on an Ventolin inhaler. Despite my disagreement with Roger Ebert on the merits of the film as a whole, I find his commentary track to be among the best I've ever heard- no less than a treatise on how to watch a good movie. Unlike many commentary tracks, where a director or editor or screenwriter injects a comment every minute or so, often merely behind the scenes gossip, Ebert talks pretty much for the entire film. He postulates on the decision making processes of the director, and points up scenes that he thinks work well, and decisions that he likes (most of them he likes...) It is clear that he loves this movie and his enthusiasm is great fun to listen to. (Indeed, he turned down payment for his services to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest and more credibly promote this "overlooked gem.") So, the bottom line is, as a movie, Dark City is disappointing- a "coulda' been". As a DVD, however, it's worth a look.
Rating: 
Summary: Too fast, too short, and too much unrealized potential
Review: Inside Dark City, the oppressive urban locale, a man named John Murdoch is trying desperately to get out. Inside "Dark City", the 110-minute movie, a two hour and ten minute masterpiece is trying to get out. I suspect that Director Alex Proyas had a lean budget and pressure from New Line to deliver a lean thriller, and thus had to cut corners he might not have otherwise cut. For example... The film's opening, a section usually reserved for introducing characters and context, felt rushed and uneven. One scene ends abruptly and, before the audience can get their bearings, another begins. I had a difficult time keeping up, which I suppose was intentional. Just as the characters on screen have a sense of vertigo every time they awake, so should the audience. I can forgive this flaw this time. Where I can't forgive it are in the film's few (thankfully, just a few) action sequences. Somebody let a monkey loose on the editing bay, apparently, for these scenes have little coherence, structure, or sense of pacing. Put on a blindfold, spin around in a circle a dozen or so times, and then walk down the stairs. You'll get a pretty good idea of what the action scenes feel like. Once the film settles down into its rhythm, things begin to pick up. Proyas can then concentrate on explicating, in usually subtle ways, the fascinating idea that makes up the core of the film. I'll not tell what it is; that job goes to Keifer Sutherland's character, during a clumsy scene in a boat, that's pretty much all dry exposition (another example of Proyas being rushed to the film's conclusion). Proyas has much fun giving us the clues to the mystery, and then shaking things up by throwing red herrings at the screen (what was the significance of those incessant swirls? Hmm...). The film's biggest strength, and I'm not the first to point this out, are it's dazzling sets. I can only describe the cityscape as being made up of liquid skyscrapers. The Strangers, an enigmatic alien race that controls Dark City, push and pull and stretch the tall buildings as if they were so much taffy. At one point a man on a balcony gets crushed between two itinerant high-rises. The problem that Proyas encounters, and to me it's but a minor one, is that though the movie needs to be set entirely at night (an important plot point) the glory of the sets sometimes gets lost in the darkness. I longed for a spotlight or even a harsh torch to better light the way through the ominous streets. Sometimes you can judge a picture's quality by its cast. I know I did with this one, which is why it took me so long see it. In 1998, William Hurt was ten years removed from his glory days a perennial Oscar nom, Keifer Sutherland had recently embarrassed himself in "A Few Good Men" and "A Time to Kill", Jennifer Connelly had a couple of years before her career renaissance, and Rufus Sewell wasn't (and still isn't) a household name. Not a spectacular bunch, I'd say. But don't fret: three-fourths of the leads are solid and watchable. Hurt's Detective Bumstead comes off first as a cliched noirish cop, until you realize that there is a very good reason for him to be cliched. Connelly, always watchable if only for her unchallenged beauty, manages confusion and pathos as the wife of a man accused of serial killing. And Sewell, the accused killer, overcomes his distracting lazy eye by jumping in with both feet to the shoes of his nihilistic anti-hero, John Murdoch. I think Sewell's anonymity, at least to my eyes, works well for him. I didn't know if he would end the film as a conquering hero or just another casualty. This greatly helped the film's suspense. Sutherland, for his part, is once again quite ludicrous. Nothing more than an amalgamation of ticks and tricks (a scarred right eye; an asthmatic vocal rhythm; a limp. C'mon! Hasn't film psychology gotten past these tired character conventions?), his Dr. Schreber is supposed to be the conduit between the humans and the Strangers. But I wouldn't trust Sutherland's character with my brain. Okay, so I wouldn't have the choice if I was in this film, but still. It's a grating performance from Donald's son. Richard O'Brien, whose work on "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" threatened to typecast him as a creepy pale-faced bald weirdo, plays the lead creepy pale-faced bald weirdo. He is the only one of the Strangers to be moderately fleshed-out (although, for a member of an alien race defined solely by their collective unconscious, he sure has a healthy ego and a forceful streak of ambition). Named Mr. Hand (was Ray Walston even asked to reprise his "Fastimes" role? *smirk*), he is meant to be menacing and omnipotent, but comes off rather fey and ineffectual. Someone once said that this movie could be called a cross between "The Matrix" (obvious) and "The Truman Show" (much less obvious, but still very relevant). I tend to agree with that neat shorthand assessment. Its originality is tainted by being such an easy comparison. But if you look close, and I mean real close, you'll see that "Dark City" is indeed a flawed masterpiece, hampered by outside circumstances, desperately trying to bust open its seams and reveal it's true nature. It was this naked potential that forced me to enjoy the film.
Rating:
Summary: Best movie of 1998. Sci-fi future classic.
Review: This was a total surprise to me. I wasn't expecting such a well made movie. Finally someone in Hollywood had an original idea. The story is unlike any I have seen in the movies. It keeps you guessing right until the end. In these current days of predictable plots and cliches, this was a breath of fresh air.
Rating:
Summary: Truly something else
Review: "Dark City" explores areas never before explored in the history of film making. It is the ultimate science fiction/fantasy/horror movie.
The movie is breathtaking. The visual atmosphere is dark, gritty, gloomy. The metropolis that the movie has created is something to drool over (artistically speaking). The story is so surreal and so huge that at times my jaw dropped after a humungous explanation. The special effects are great, as are the sets, the acting, and the execution. The editing could've been better; at times conversation timing seems incosistent; but I don't believe it is something to complain about. This is one of my top ten movies.
Only one question nags me about this movie after watching it. SPOILER! Why and How does John have the special power? Maybe the film explained it in some subtle way, but I guess I just didn't catch on.
Rating:
Summary: The City of Lost Children.
Review: Before the Matrix, there was Dark City. I believe that the Matrix borrowed Dark City's concept and ideas. I enjoyed the Matrix but I think Dark City is a much better film that's better directed, almost to perfection. I would put this film among my 3 favorite films of all-time including Blade Runner, and The Crow. What amazes me the most about this film are all the symbols and hidden messages within the plot. Roger Ebert's commentary on this explains a lot about the meaning of the spiral, the importance of lighting and the power of film noir. He compares the fantasy world and the set designs to Metropolis and Blade Runner. Ebert absolutely loves this film and named it the best film of 1998. There is even a review by Neil Gaiman in this. The theatrical trailer is awesome and the chapter menus are cool with actual scene bits you can watch with sound without actually playing the movie. There is also the full screen version on one side of the disc so you can compare the two versions and see just how much picture is really taken out. This is a superb Dvd with outstanding sound and picture quality. This film should not be passed up. Dark City is a rare visual feast that will open your eyes to a world you have never seen before.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Tour de Force for SCI-FI Fans
Review: This is a visionary SCI FI movie that will be a cult classic in years to come. Rufus Sewell (a young Ian McShane clone) shows - as he has in the past in such productions as Cold Comfort Farm and the BBC Middle March - that he is not just a pretty face, but has raw talent just waiting to be tapped. And this movie showcases that talent well!!! With a good supporting performance by Kiefer Sutherland in an understated, bumbly doctor role that is far from the mad scientists of the past, the movie takes you on a journey that shifts, twists and reshapes itself - literally - and never lets you down. The effects are marvelous! From the moment Sewell wakes up in a seedy hotel and has no idea who he is, you follow on a trek that is a maze within a maze within a maze. Filmed in Australia, this one is no SCI FI should miss!! A film that requires watching again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Preety Cool movie i must say!
Review: I liked this one, while not as great as the director's own
" Crow", this one's a preety entertaining and good one i must say for myself. It's about some guy named Murdoc who is stalked
by weirdos from another dimension who want him, it's confusing but entertaining for one thing. This movie is like a mix of
" The Fifth Element", " Matrix", and " Hellraiser" all rolled
into one. If you like the Matrix then rent this one, it's worth a look.
Rating:
Summary: 'STRANGERS meet the KNIGHT'
Review: Rufus Sewell is our befuddled knight in the altogether - at least as the movie unfolds. No idea whatsoever WHY this movie is so - so underrated, it is far superior to the "other one" [.......matrix.......], but somewhat similar in theme. It's slightly Kafka, slightly Raymond Chandler, somewhat Clive Barker, and so much more. A detective story? Yes! A love-story? Yes! The art direction is superb, and so are the actors in various guises, especially Keifer Sutherland doing a chilling tribute to Peter Lorre. There's also the lovely and finally recognized JENNIFER CONNELLY as the mysterious love-interest; Richard O'Brien ["Rocky Horror Show"], Ian Richardson the evil Mr. Book and William Hurt as the relentless detective searching for a serial killer - yes, that element is also present.
Not confusing, neither frustrating, it's a unique world of deja-vu with a final gut punch that rivals the original "Planet of the Apes". A must for the serious avant-garde movie fanatic - and an excellent companion piece to "The City of Lost Children".
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