Post by Dracula on Sept 26, 2021 19:13:59 GMT -5
Reminiscence(8/25/2021)
You know, for how much we complain about the lack of non-franchise blockbusters from Hollywood we sure are bad at actually welcoming original science fiction movies when people actually make them. Reminiscence, Warner Brothers’ newest $68 million dollar science fiction noir directed by “Westworld” co-creator Lisa Joy sure looks like the kind of thing we say we want to support but it’s looking like it’s going to end up being a pretty major box office bomb though that’s partly because of the film’s simultaneous HBO Max launch (which, admittedly, is how I watched it). I for one certainly wanted to like it but… what can I say, the movie’s just a total snooze. I will start with the positive: the movie looks pretty good. Set in a not too distant future where Miami has been half flooded as a result of climate change the movie builds a pretty interesting looking world with skyscrapers rising above water level and humans working around them in various ways. The cinematography is also really sharp and you can certainly imagine a really good movie playing out in this world but this isn’t that movie.
In fact a big part of the problem here may simply be that the film was so busy worrying about world building that it forgot to make an actual compelling mystery plot for the film. In fact it’s not hard to think of this as feeling more like an elaborate television pilot than as a film unto itself and you can imagine a world where this world was instead used to create a weekly series instead of a self-contained film which needs to tell a bit of a cleaner and more streamlined story. As science fiction a lot here is familiar; it’s future-noir aesthetic certainly brings Blade Runner to mind, the idea of using machines to replicate memories was used more entertainingly in Total Recall, and the crime/action story against a near future reminded me of Minority Report… so I guess I’m saying Phillip K. Dick was probably owed a credit on this thing. But that also could have been overcome with a better characters and storytelling but that’s not really here. Hugh Jackman seems to have been cast here more for his marquee value than for his appropriateness for the role in question as I’m pretty sure this character was supposed to be a touch sleazier than muscular action hero/song and dance man Hugh Jackman is going to bring to the table. Watching the movie is downright depressing; you can see a lot of hard work and good intentions being thrown at a project that was just half-baked at its core and the resulting film will be forgotten almost immediately.
** out of Five
You know, for how much we complain about the lack of non-franchise blockbusters from Hollywood we sure are bad at actually welcoming original science fiction movies when people actually make them. Reminiscence, Warner Brothers’ newest $68 million dollar science fiction noir directed by “Westworld” co-creator Lisa Joy sure looks like the kind of thing we say we want to support but it’s looking like it’s going to end up being a pretty major box office bomb though that’s partly because of the film’s simultaneous HBO Max launch (which, admittedly, is how I watched it). I for one certainly wanted to like it but… what can I say, the movie’s just a total snooze. I will start with the positive: the movie looks pretty good. Set in a not too distant future where Miami has been half flooded as a result of climate change the movie builds a pretty interesting looking world with skyscrapers rising above water level and humans working around them in various ways. The cinematography is also really sharp and you can certainly imagine a really good movie playing out in this world but this isn’t that movie.
In fact a big part of the problem here may simply be that the film was so busy worrying about world building that it forgot to make an actual compelling mystery plot for the film. In fact it’s not hard to think of this as feeling more like an elaborate television pilot than as a film unto itself and you can imagine a world where this world was instead used to create a weekly series instead of a self-contained film which needs to tell a bit of a cleaner and more streamlined story. As science fiction a lot here is familiar; it’s future-noir aesthetic certainly brings Blade Runner to mind, the idea of using machines to replicate memories was used more entertainingly in Total Recall, and the crime/action story against a near future reminded me of Minority Report… so I guess I’m saying Phillip K. Dick was probably owed a credit on this thing. But that also could have been overcome with a better characters and storytelling but that’s not really here. Hugh Jackman seems to have been cast here more for his marquee value than for his appropriateness for the role in question as I’m pretty sure this character was supposed to be a touch sleazier than muscular action hero/song and dance man Hugh Jackman is going to bring to the table. Watching the movie is downright depressing; you can see a lot of hard work and good intentions being thrown at a project that was just half-baked at its core and the resulting film will be forgotten almost immediately.
** out of Five
