Saturday 13 February 2010

Dark City - We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.....


Dark City is a strange one. Good film, Intelligent script and original Ideas (at least to me), but still difficult to pin down. Therefore 'Period Scifi' is the label I shall give it.

The story focuses on a group of aliens who are on earth to study Human reaction. To do this they constantly change the environment and situations using a skill they call 'Tuning'. The Aliens themselves are pretty good Richard O'Brienesq (as he is one) looking creatures. Although when they are all together in the same room, they do appear to be a cross between Hellraisers Cenobites and Toy Story's Green Aliens. 'Tear my soul apart OOOOOHHHH!'

The setting is very sterile and grim to look at and kind of reminded me of a less colourful Dick Tracey. At the time it's look reminded me of The Matrix in that I was thinking that that film did it better or even looked better, so was interesting to read afterwards that the same sets may have been used in places. And where as in the Matrix we have Neo as the link between cultures, in this film we have "John". More indication then that this film didn't quite have the budget let alone the Kung Fu of that film.

All in all, a clever film, for fans of Blade Runner, Brazil, Matrix, Meaning of Life, City of Lost Children, Time Bandits (it's really just the way the buildings change that is making me quote Gilliam/Monty Python movies)
 

1 comment:

Rob said...

You don't get this very often; a large scale, hard science fiction, studio movie.

But The Matrix came along a few years later and proved you can have three times as many philosophical ideas in the same, and have it share the screen with automatic weapons and kung-fu.

Will we see it's like again. Hmmm...