-- Miscast down the line. Ralph Fiennes is convincing as a small time hustler, but a cop? Angela Bassett is a fine actress and convincingly tough, but I didn't buy that this one-time waitress could transform herself into such a formidable fighter, even by the loose standards of this kind of movie. And there was really a time people thought Juliette Lewis was sexy? Really? Strange days indeed.
-- Very lazy plotting, with two separate stories just sort of happening concurrently, with no reason I can understand. They're not really related, except that both feature the same sf device and there's a very casual connection. Still, you could sever that connection completely and still have the same movie.
-- If you can't nab the mystery bad guy in ten seconds after understanding what the story is, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
-- Yet another movie that criticizes voyeuristic tendencies in it's audience, which I've always found to be hypocritical beyond belief, as after all it's in the context of a movie, and movies by their very nature invites voyeuristic participation. The movie is a secret sharer in the very thing it's criticizing.
-- Interesting that the movie got it exactly wrong: for better or worse new communications technology didn't atomize individuals further, it leveled the playground. We're not all voyeuristically living other people's lives; we're all on display with the rise of blogs, webcams and the like. (I'm not saying that's a great thing, necessarily.)
--That doesn't make the movie bad sf; what makes it bad sf is the lack of engagement with the future. There's no real examination of how the device would really change society, or how humans would really react. It merely becomes a kind of extended metaphor for what the movie is reacting against in the world of the Nineties, when it was made. Contrast BLADE RUNNER.
-- Finally, I hate movies where people clunkily describe background and setting and motivations etc. to each other. Very lazy screen writing.
An empty exercise in style.
-- Very lazy plotting, with two separate stories just sort of happening concurrently, with no reason I can understand. They're not really related, except that both feature the same sf device and there's a very casual connection. Still, you could sever that connection completely and still have the same movie.
-- If you can't nab the mystery bad guy in ten seconds after understanding what the story is, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
-- Yet another movie that criticizes voyeuristic tendencies in it's audience, which I've always found to be hypocritical beyond belief, as after all it's in the context of a movie, and movies by their very nature invites voyeuristic participation. The movie is a secret sharer in the very thing it's criticizing.
-- Interesting that the movie got it exactly wrong: for better or worse new communications technology didn't atomize individuals further, it leveled the playground. We're not all voyeuristically living other people's lives; we're all on display with the rise of blogs, webcams and the like. (I'm not saying that's a great thing, necessarily.)
--That doesn't make the movie bad sf; what makes it bad sf is the lack of engagement with the future. There's no real examination of how the device would really change society, or how humans would really react. It merely becomes a kind of extended metaphor for what the movie is reacting against in the world of the Nineties, when it was made. Contrast BLADE RUNNER.
-- Finally, I hate movies where people clunkily describe background and setting and motivations etc. to each other. Very lazy screen writing.
An empty exercise in style.