That Rebecca Hall is a paragon of pulchritude is unarguable. She has this endearing overbite that lends her sibilants a lisp, so that "space" comes out "thpathe". Love it.
The imagery -- that is, what is seen on the screen -- is magnificent. No kidding. Raindrops in slow motion. Sunflowers opening and closing. Dark laboratories (too dark) and splendid vistas of landscapes that go on to infinity. Crisp closeups of glistening teeth and watery eyes. Applause for the photographer, Jess Hall.
Sadly, much of the story makes no sense. It begins coherently enough. Johnny Depp is a scientist who has his brain uploaded just before he dies. Then, in a quest for more power to do what he thinks is good for the world, he demands that his electronic brain now be permitted to take over the internet, and once that's achieved, the rest of the electricity in the entire world. His image appears on monitors and TV screens. He performs miracle cures with nanotechnology. He's going to save the earth.
So far, so familiar. We've been in this territory before. There was HAL in "2001", the movie "Frankenstein," the runaway zero-toleance computer in "Collosus: The Forbin Project", and other examples. It's kind of interesting, although drawn out and inexplicable to the ordinary mortal.
Then it shifts gears and pits a gang of Luddites against the neurologically altered community that Depp has created for himself and his wife, Hall, in the middle of some desert wasteland. These myrmidons are without emotion and evidently immortal. You shoot them down but their wounds heal in a few seconds. This too is familiar. There are the pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," the zombies from "Night of the Living Dead," and countless others.
There is a big shoot out at the end. During this, the story leaves any familiarity behind and reaches for Terra Incognita, for the stars, for the galaxy.
It becomes utter nonsense with no explanation given for the events, not even the usual scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo you get in B movies: "Captain, we've activated the parabolic node of the epsilon warp indicator." "Some kind of nuclear power, I suppose." These little CGI wisps rise up from the ground and into the clouds and then pour down as nanotechnologically ripe drops that fall on everybody and everything. The nanocytes reproduce like a virus. But what the hell difference does it make? Nothing happens anyway.
There's a final scene in which the now dead Depp describes the earth of the future, "water so pure you can drink from any river," and we're treated to a cinematic tour of landscapes that have no freeways and no McDonalds. But what does this sequence MEAN? Depp is defunct, and the uploaded virus has killed all the programs, if that's the word, that he's created.
It looks like a thoughtful movie but I don't know what it's trying to say because it seems to be suffering from expressive aphasia or else I'm too dumb to understand it. Maybe it's a different language. Martian, maybe.
The imagery -- that is, what is seen on the screen -- is magnificent. No kidding. Raindrops in slow motion. Sunflowers opening and closing. Dark laboratories (too dark) and splendid vistas of landscapes that go on to infinity. Crisp closeups of glistening teeth and watery eyes. Applause for the photographer, Jess Hall.
Sadly, much of the story makes no sense. It begins coherently enough. Johnny Depp is a scientist who has his brain uploaded just before he dies. Then, in a quest for more power to do what he thinks is good for the world, he demands that his electronic brain now be permitted to take over the internet, and once that's achieved, the rest of the electricity in the entire world. His image appears on monitors and TV screens. He performs miracle cures with nanotechnology. He's going to save the earth.
So far, so familiar. We've been in this territory before. There was HAL in "2001", the movie "Frankenstein," the runaway zero-toleance computer in "Collosus: The Forbin Project", and other examples. It's kind of interesting, although drawn out and inexplicable to the ordinary mortal.
Then it shifts gears and pits a gang of Luddites against the neurologically altered community that Depp has created for himself and his wife, Hall, in the middle of some desert wasteland. These myrmidons are without emotion and evidently immortal. You shoot them down but their wounds heal in a few seconds. This too is familiar. There are the pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," the zombies from "Night of the Living Dead," and countless others.
There is a big shoot out at the end. During this, the story leaves any familiarity behind and reaches for Terra Incognita, for the stars, for the galaxy.
It becomes utter nonsense with no explanation given for the events, not even the usual scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo you get in B movies: "Captain, we've activated the parabolic node of the epsilon warp indicator." "Some kind of nuclear power, I suppose." These little CGI wisps rise up from the ground and into the clouds and then pour down as nanotechnologically ripe drops that fall on everybody and everything. The nanocytes reproduce like a virus. But what the hell difference does it make? Nothing happens anyway.
There's a final scene in which the now dead Depp describes the earth of the future, "water so pure you can drink from any river," and we're treated to a cinematic tour of landscapes that have no freeways and no McDonalds. But what does this sequence MEAN? Depp is defunct, and the uploaded virus has killed all the programs, if that's the word, that he's created.
It looks like a thoughtful movie but I don't know what it's trying to say because it seems to be suffering from expressive aphasia or else I'm too dumb to understand it. Maybe it's a different language. Martian, maybe.