That wraps up a lot of the feelings I had towards Superman. Honestly, Singer putting the movie in "god" mode every few minutes, and just stopping the movie to show Routh hovering in the air with the heavy score behind him, it was just the most annoying thing possible.

And I agree that Lois Lane is completley shallow and dumb, all she cares about is the hunk, Clark gets no attention at all in the film.

i didnt find lois shallow; she chose her boyfriend over superman even though its supes kid. clark gets attention. he gets bitched out by her on the way out of the planet.

she is kinda stupid but thats how she always is.

Gattaca


Human aspirations take on two forms: the desire for the physical (that which we can perceive with our senses, that which is to us a 'concrete' reality), and the desire for the spiritual (dreams, hope, love, faith). Science has always been forced to fight to make sure that it does not entirely dispense with the spiritual, and art has strained to incorporate the material as part of itself. When successful, the combination benefits us all. We get films and plays that say something that is fundamentally true about human nature, and we get an understanding of the world around us that would have been impossible without the exercise of the imagination for scientific purposes (Einstein always insisted on the necessity of the imagination, and even religion, as part of the scientific mindset). At the two extremes, we get stunning failures. We have art that is meaningless because it does not speak to us in any meaningful way, music and cinema that has no grounding in reality and cannot be understood by us because there is nothing about it worth understanding. And we get science at the service of ideas that dehumanize us, that disregard our spirit and dreams.

Gattaca gives us an example of something that has already happened many times before: the desire for the perfect physical entity, whose existence is preferred to that of the 'normal' human being. The interesting thing about such ideas is that they start off with a concept of a perfect human being, which is nonsense, and apply this concept to reality, which cannot accomodate such an idea, because the two are fundamentally at odds. Moreover, the idea of perfection is a dream. Science, when it aims for perfection without considering the imperfect subject, is dangerously removed from reality and too reliant on its own dreams.

The only difference between the film and reality is that, in the film, that dream of science appears to come closer to reality. But of course it's not. Hawke's character, citing Jerome's accident, states that you cannot control fate. Precisely. Reality will not accomodate any dreams wholly, and will always provide proof of their invalidity. When you meddle with genes, you are not creating a new society; you are creating the appearance of a new society. When, before, segregation and prejudice occurred along racial or ethnic lines, in Gattaca, it is along genetic lines. Hawke's character states that prejudice has been made a science. Exactly: science has given into a false dream, and has decided to operate within that parameter. And within that context, it is not a matter of serving humanity, but of bending humanity to serve science's own dream. If that can only happen in a few cases, then prejudice in favour of those who come closest to the dream is legitimate.

At its core, Gattaca looks back to the racialist science of 18th and 19th century Europe and America, which insisted on classifying human beings along racial lines, with the white man at the top, and everyone else progressively below him. Above all, we have the crimes of the Nazis as an example of how science can be bent to conform to fundamentally prejudice notions about humanity. The black doctor in Gattaca smiles when he reads that the couple wants a "fair-skinned" boy. As hard as the film tries to show us all the different races, given humanity's racist past and present, it is safe to assume that in a world such as Gattaca's, within a few generations, the majority of humanity would probably be white, and majority male.

Vincent, Hawke's character, demolishes the entire scientifc structure of his society by possessing a dream. Given that Gattaca's society is based on a scientific dream, the presence of another dream becomes a threat to its hegemony, and indeed, is essentially a "why". Why can't someone travel to space if they want to, and if they have the wits about them? Vincent displays a great deal of cunning and wit in making his way through life to achieve his goal; his success is as legitimate as anyone else's, and in fact, much more praiseworthy, because he ran against the odds. This should not make us think that he is weak: he is absolutely not weak. This is not an underdog winning the big fight. From his society's perspective, he is weak, but that's only because his society emphasizes the material and physical. But that's only part of being human; as human beings, we have our hopes and fears, dreams and loves and faiths. Those things are at least as powerful, and in significant ways, more so, than the material and the physical. That does not mean that the physical and the material are not important, but they are important in a different way. We need both to function as full human beings. Consider a painting: the artist needs to be aware of the physical environment that he or she is drawing, as well as of the physical apparatus he or she needs to draw with (the paints, the canvas, the brush, his or her own eyes and fingers). But the artist cannot free the physical object from its physical constraints and imbue it with something more unless he or she uses his or her imagination. Most of the people in Gattaca look at their world as it is, and accept it. Vincent (the name means 'victor' or 'conqueror') triumphs because he combines the world he sees around him with the world of his imagination, and in doing so, brings about the creation of a new world, namely, one in which someone like him can travel to space. Jerome is lifted up by Vincent's dream because it realizes his dream as well, namely, that of reaching his potential. In a significant way, Jerome becomes fully Jerome through Vincent, because their dreams are made to become the same. Irene (Thurman's character) is also lifted up by Vincent, because in him, she has an example of someone who, like her, is weak, but who has triumphed inspite of the limitations imposed upon him. And on a broader level, we are all lifted up by his dream, because in making his dream real, he makes real that which we all aspire to: the actualization of our dreams and the triumph of our hopes over despair.


This is one of the best science-fiction films I have ever seen.


A

An exam answer deconstruction of Gattaca. Sums it up pretty well.

Yes!! Thanks for the review. I only saw Gattaca this year for the first time and was awestruck by how good it is. One of the best and most underrated films of the 90s.

Gattaca is excellent and very underrated. Agree on the film's grade with Box.

However, Box, how come you write an essay on Gattaca's message, but neglect aspects like acting, the look of the film etc. because it's them that contribute to the film being as great as it is.

Oh, well, the film is uniformly good. I mean, it's visually stunning. What I love about its visuals is the same thing I loved so much about Minority Report: it's never overdone. It's close enough to our world right now, and yet, it's clearly a different world at the same time. This gives it a tremendous degree of authenticity.


The acting is wonderful. All three lead actors have to play characters who are restricted from birth, and who have to free themselves from their confines. Hawke is perfect for the part because he is able to project that vulnerability and 'softness' his character needs. Thurman is perfect in conveying vulnerability beneath a facade of strength, and Law gives the film's best performance, trying to retain his sense of pride and dignity while resorting to drinking in order to shield himself from the fact that he has failed to become the perfect man everyone expected him to become.

The doctor and Gore Vidal also play their parts well: the doctor has a son who is imperfect, and Vidal has just murdered a man. Both of them are imperfect in some way. When they look at Jerome/Vincent, who is by all appearances perfect, they see someone who is superior to them. They marvel at what he has and is doing, while knowing that they don't have that kind of strength.

The subplot involving the brother is also very well handled. It basically covers in ten or fifteen minutes an idea you can easily expand into a separate movie: the father who is so disappointed that he refuses to have his son named after him, the height measuring that confirms that Vincent's brother is expected to be better than him, and two rescues that prove otherwise.

Box. How the hell do you type so fast? Do you have like 4 pairs of hands?

Gullimont, lol, no, no extra pairs of hands. I wasn't aware that my typing was fast





Me too! I'm kinda upset that I didn't come across this film before, and I honestly don't know why I haven't seen it before. I suppose it's proof that the film is indeed underrated.

Have you seen Dark City, Madgez? That's another superb sci-fi from 1998, and also underrated. Ebert did name it the best film of 1998, though.

That is a great movie alright. Love the way Matrix Revolutions rips off Dark City's final fight scene.

It wasn't raining, though!

Correction. Partially rips off.

Glad you liked Gattaca. What's upcoming on your list of things to watch?

Glad you liked Law in it. I actually think it's his career-best turn so far. Very captivating and touching.

Kung Fu Hustle


This movie is so weird.

It is very refreshing, in that it's quirky as hell and as goofy as can be, but I'm not sure if that's always the film's strength. There are some parts were it is way over the top, such as the landlady chasing the hero dude like road runner. I mean, it's plain bad CGI, and anyways, the idea is, well, dumb. However, it's great to see someone take a light approach to the kung fu genre, parodying it while at the same time somehow managing to honour the genre.

What I do like about it are the many characters that inhabit this pseudo-1930s Shanghai world (I'm assuming it is 1930s Shanghai). The people who live in the building are wonderfully brought to life. Unfortunately, they do not re-appear at the end of the film, and as a result, the film suffers quite a bit at the end. In fact, relatively speaking, the ending (well, the end-fight) is quite average and predictable. During the duration that they are on, however, it's pure gold. Consider the odd hairstylist, or the kung fu couple! I dare you not to fall in love with that landlady! And there're the three kung fu fighters in the building at the end, who are refreshingly unique, unlike any others I have seen in previous kung fu films (the part where the landlady berates one of them for wearing read underwear is hilarious!!!). Though, it's important to consider that this film is much more than a mere 'kung fu/'martial arts' film. Actually, I think this film might just have created it's own genre, whatever that genre is :-).

One of the film's strengths is its ability to give characters depth in a very short time. If you consider just how many unique characters are brought to live in just 1 1/2 hours, it's remarkable. The mute girl, for example, obviously has no lines, but she is overall barely onscreen for more than three or four minutes in total. Yet, you can accept her as a full-fledged character, because of the director's and writer's decision to attach to her a set of significant features which allow us to 'make sense' of her. In a film where characters talk a blue streak, and where you have a landlady whose blows can get you killed, this silent girl is clearly a representative of meditation, quietness, and peace. The childhood memories enforce the idea of innocence, and the lollipops and ice cream add, well, sweetness. Heh, a very nice point is made using obvious, but not stressed, images. You don't have to read this much into it; the girl is hot, she's obviously nice, so of course she would represent the 'good'. But it's crucial to consider that the film does have, beneath all its quirkiness, a sound moral core.

Oddly enough, the one thing I didn't care for were the fighting scenes. It's been done so many times that the only parts I enjoyed were those with the landlady fighting. It's awesome to see someone like that taking on the bad guys. I mean, when was the last time you saw anything but lean, muscular guys taking on each other? The decision to revert to precisely that kind of stuff is what brings the film down at the end. Where have all the residents gone? Why are they not fighting? I think it was a terrible mistake to have an ending where the quirky characters don't get to re-appear and fight the bad guys. The film had been leading up to that, only to let us down. It doesn't take anything away from the great first two-thirds of the film, but it diminishes the value of the film as a whole (the moment the old guy appears and onwards, I think the film begins to decline). Additionally, when the end is quirky, it is bombastically so; I mean, Buddah appearing? The guy turning into a frog? Come on. A frog??? I wasn't even sure at that point whether this was meant to be humorous or not. Everyone at the end seems so unnaturally serious, it's as if the film has lost its sense of humour.

But again, the overall film is beyond words to describe. It's plain fun and funny to watch, and that's that. I felt like the idea for the film came after someone watched the Matrix films, and decided to take the opposite approach to the same idea ('the chosen one' blah blah blah). The heaviness of the Matrix films, which bog them down, is counteracted by the light-heartedness of this one (except for the ending). And to boot, this film manages to be as profound as those films (ok, the sequels, heh). It's like the quiet, relaxed kid in class whom you'd never expect to have a better mark than the brooding, babbling intellectual who always raises his hand and puffs himself up. But of course, we know who ends up winning ;-)

One thing Kung Fu Hustle does affirm is just how vast the range of Chinese cinema has become and is becoming. Yimou Zhang's films have shown us that poetic cinema is not dead, only that it has moved away from the West and taken up residence in China. In the case of Kung Fu Hustle, we see how old genres can be given new meaning and purpose. We also get to see how weird a sense of humour Chinese filmmakers can have


B+

Very good review, i love kung fu hustle, one of my favorite films of the decade.If you want more discussion in this thread you should post your controversial thoughts on Raider's of the lost ark.

Lol!

You want Box to be skinned alive?

Oh and I agree on Kung-Fu Hustle (the grade too). Man, I now agreed with Box on two films in a row, something unholy is going on here

North by Northwest


The element of horror in Hitchcock's films always has to do with the extraordinary imposing itself upon the ordinary. In Read Window, for example, you have an ordinary photographer who gets caught up in a dangerous game of voyeurism; in Notorious, an American woman, because of her father's dealings with the Nazis, gets caught up in a dangerous game of deception; and in Psycho, a woman at a hotel becomes the victim of a psychopath.

Additionally, Hitchcock always employs ordinary things and imbues them with a sinister quality. The telescope in Rear Window becomes a symbol for all kinds of things, not least among them the camera, and its usage tells us something about human beings that is discomforting (what do we know? when is it right to make assumptiosn? why are we so curious about the lives of others?). The result of this 'extraordinization' of the ordinary is the creation of tremendous suspense that is always present in Hitchcock's films from beginning to end.

You have this quality of Hitchcock's in North by Northwest. The film is one of Hitchcock's best, and one ofthe best period, because it masterfully displays Hitchcock's ability to make ordinary things extraordinary, to create suspense out of that, and to say something profound about us along the way (whatever it is that is being said). An advertising agent finds himself in a ludicrously odd situation, being mistaken for someone who, as we find out, never even existed. The film begins innocently enough. It soon becomes dark, and we as audience members are completely befuddled: what on earth is going on? Because the lead is Cary Grant, and because Grant is so immensely suave and likeable, the entire situation is handled almost with ease, as we see this guy trying to navigate through an odd and tense situation without losing his sense of humour. He is made drunk by the kidnappers, and is charged by the police with drunk driving. Nobody believes his story, of course. That's because the story itself, as it turns out, is a fabrication too: the kdinappers are not who they say they are. They too have taken on false identities.

We are in the same situation in this film as we were in Vertigo: layers upon layers of identity which create an inexhaustibly vast network of identities and persons-fictional or real- that end up creating an environment in which we are never certain if something is what we are told it is. Have you ever found it difficult to accept that a Hitchcock film with a good ending really has ended well? When Grant and Eva Marie Saint embrace at the end, is it really believable that things have turned out well for them? There is no doubt that it has: they have gotten together, and will probably marry. But we can never get rid of that sense that something is not right. That feeling is the most assured proof of Hitchcock's status as a master of suspense. No director before or since has managed to achieve this so well so often, and the secret lies in the above-described extraordinariness of the ordinary in his films. A fertilization plane is a harmless object; in this film, it becomes a deadly weapon. It is terrifying to observe a perfectly innocent scene turning so horribly frightening in so short a time, but there we have it. And when we do, it is absolutely riveting. Hitchcock does it again in the scene at the UN, where a meeting ends in murder, and repeats it with that spectacular scene on top of Mount Rushmore.

This is one of the few films I've come across that deserves a frame by frame and scene by scene analysis. How Hitchcock manages the Thesean task of getting us out of that labyrinth he constructs is baffling to me. North by Northwest came towards the end of his career, and it forms the culmination of his art. Much of what Hitchcock did throughout his career (the blonde woman, issues of height and falling therefrom, shifting identities, etc.) comes together perfectly in this film. The script is splendid (and surprisingly full of sexual innuendos for its time, I found), the acting is top-notch, everything is well crafted.

The film also probably, though I'm not sure about this, contains more great scenes than any of Hitchcock's other films. That fantastic plane/field sequence and the equally masterful Mount Rushmore scene are just two examples, but the train scene, the auction house scene, the drunk driving scene- those are all an absolute joy to watch. Sitting back and watching Hitchcock at his best is like reading Shakespeare's tragedies or listening to Beethoven's symphonies; you are always aware, even if unconsciously, that a master is in command.


A+

Hitchcock is class!

I'd rank this just behind Rear Window but ahead of Vertigo.

I wish they had North by Northwest in the Hitchcock Box Set I bought.

Citizen Kane



From the time of its release until fairly recently, Citizen Kane was talked up by various people in an attempt to make up for its dimsal reception when it was initially released in 1941. Its designation by the AFI as the greatest film of all time brought, I think, a kind of backlash with it: what exactly made this film so special? The truth is that any other film, had it been given that title (with the possible exception of Casablanca), would have received a backlash. At any rate, it's entirely useless to discuss whether this is the greatest movie of all time; there is no such thing, and whoever tries to give a direct answer is merely engaging in speculation. There is no doubt, however, that this is one of the greatest films of all time.

Disregard for a moment its technological, technical, scriptural, and visual innovations. Those will guarantee the film a permanently important place in cinema for as long as cinema exists (as with Birth of a Nation, for example). Disregard also the mythology that has surrounded the film, about this being a story of a young visionary and his friends given free reign by a studio to do whatever they wanted, and him giving the world what is without question the greatest directorial debut in cinema. Truffaut and many others attempted to imitate the success of Welles' debut; thus far no one has been able to match him (no one has been given that kind of opportunity either). What we should look at is the evidence from the film itself.

Based on the film's contents, this is still one of the greatest films of all time. You have, at the basis, an absolutely fascinating story: a famous, rich, important man has died, and a reporter is sent out to discover who he really was. The news reel at the beginning wonderfully encapsulates the man the public knows (the reel, btw, uses footage that deliberately ranges from early cinema to the 1930s; we even have footage of pre-talkies. 'Kane''s innovations put it ahead of its time; its homage to the past expands it range even more). But how about the real man? Because the man is dead, we automatically know that we will never get the whole story. Failure, in a way, is assured from the outset. However, was is important is the search itself. Welles tells Kane's story using the perspective of those people who remembered him. His life, therefore, is transmitted to us in a second-hand fashion. This is a very effective strategy becauses it allows us to meet Kane the newspaper man, Kane the adopted boy and heir, Kane the husband and lover, Kane the politician, and Kane the old, lonely man. No single person could have had enough access to his life to give such a varied account, since some characters came at a later phase, and others were engaged with him only on a professional or personal front. The diverse viewpoints give us a comprehensive view of the man.

By the end, we get a good idea of what we think he was like: a solipsistic man, not necessarily selfish, but someone who viewed the world always through the prism of his own self. That much is clear.

But what exactly is Rosebud? His sleigh, yes. The symbol of everything associated with it: childhood, innocence, etc. Things that, as the reporter says at the end, Kane lost or never had. But beyond that, what is it he lost or never had? We never get an answer. What I find interesting is that so many people are quick to point out that Rosebud is Kane's sleigh's name without realizing that the reporter does not find that out. That should be a dead giveaway that we don't have a direct answer either. Throughout the film, the reporter has acted as our representative on screen. His viewpoint is ours (he's even in the shadows most of the time, as if he doesn't really exist), and his knowledge is our knowledge. Like him, we don't really know what Rosebud stands for. We can speculate all we want, but we will not get an answer. There are many things that he lost or never had: a normal life, a loving family environment, a sense of freedom, selflessness perhaps, love, true human relationships. Kane being dead, he can't tell us what he was exactly yearning for. I will venture a guess here: he himself probably did not know either. This is where the film reveals something fundamentally true about human nature: the feeling of loss or inadequacy comes naturally to us, but an articulation and explanation of the reasons behind those feelings is something that is beyond the capacity of most of us to come up with, because human feelings are too complex for any one explanation to successfully account for them all.

Having said all this, what about Citizen Kane's technical achievements? Innovation is a great thing, obviously, but when we're talking about art, it's useless unless it serves a film well. In this case, the various daring then-new angles, or the astonishing use of light and darkness, or the complex script, all serve the purpose of telling the story as well as possible. This is the reason why Citizen Kane remains as watchable as it is (that is, if you have even an ounce of patience to sit down and actually watch the film). The film's techniques have been copied plenty of times since, to the point where we do not recognize them as particularly innovative (in order to do that, you need to look at the films released prior to Citizen Kane, and compare them to Kane- you will be amazed at the difference). But they remain effective because they are not mere gimmicks. The use of light, for example, is incredibely effective in adding to the atmosphere of a scene, or to underscore a point Welles is trying to make. In the opera house, for example, during Susan's opera performance, everything except for Kane's intense face is dark, while she shines. That underscores that to Kane, the only two people in that room are him and her, and even more so, just him, himself and through her: he watches her to see if she will perform well enough not to embarass him. She is under the spotlight, quite literally, but also in the sense that he is judging her to determine whether she is succeeding or failing.

Every frame of Citizen Kane can be analyzed in this fashion. This is a remarkably dense film that needs to be unravelled over and over again, with each viewing revealing something new. When I first watched the film, it was out of curiousity, to see what all the fuss was about. I was happy with what I saw, certainly. But it's only now that I am beginning to appreciate its incredible mastery.


A+

Citizen Kane is amazing stuff.

Hitchcock is probably my favourite director. I honestly don't know how to rank his films; there are so many great ones.

I'd say his best are: Notorious, Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, and Psycho

The second group would include: Rope, Rebecca, Birds, Strangers on a Train, etc.


Beyond that, I don't know which would come first, second, etc. Notorious is a personal favourite, but then again, so are Vertigo and N/NWest and Rear Window


But God, what a resume!






Did you notice the way light is used in the film? I can't believe how much Welles does with light and darkness in the movie! That scene where the reporter is in the library, and the librarian is standing ot the side, and the light from the window is shining on the table and chair? What an incredible image!