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elmadman_99's Replies
Indeed it was!
It's a review from back when the film originally came out and they were pushed for print space back in the day. I think everything had to be limited to 250 words back then.
Having said that - I just came across the review in some notes I had - and its a review that I always enjoyed greatly. I didn't write it, but I really wish I did!
I aim to please... !
Yes 'parkerbot' I have to agree with you on that one - movies are - by their very nature - works of fiction.
As a result I don't see the need of the filmmaker - Anderson or anyone else - to bend themselves into odd contortions to point out the fact - It might have been better told as a 'straight' - albeit fictional - story.
If the runtime was in need of 'filler' as you suggest - it might not have hurt to simply introduce another quirky subplot to be resolved - and thereby deal with the issue on it's own terms.
But that said, everyone is an armchair critic, and I never made a single penny as a filmmaker.
So it goes. Better luck next time, Wes.
There 'isn't any doubt about it...
Hehehe!
That's well said indeed 'FilmBuff' By all means do post again.
No that's not the movie I am talking about - The one I am referring to is as follows:
https://moviechat.org/tt0283632/They
It is from 2002 and is directed by Robert Harmon - Who directed the original 1986 'The Hitcher' with Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell - and stars Laura Regan, Marc Blucas and Ethan Embry - where a psychology student (Regan) finds all her childhood fears and phobias becoming real after a traumatic event.
IMO it is a movie which is most comparable to the 2023 movie 'The Boogeyman.'
Try either of these two links:
https://kickasstorrents.cr/split-image-1982-1080p-webrip-2-0-yts-yify-t4465175.html
1080 copy
or alternatively:
https://kickasstorrents.cr/split-image-1982-720p-webrip-yts-yify-t4465086.html
720 copy
Enjoy one an all.
Cheers for now.
IMO the movie that this one is most comparable to is the Robert Harmon directed movie 'They' from 2002 - Although the plotlines are slightly different - both movies appear to have the same 'feel' and hit a number of the same beats.
Elisha certainly seemed to have done more movies since leaving the TV show... but having said that she seems to have disappeared from screens of late.
Not sure what Marshall Allman (LJ) is doing of late - but he seems to have had a large number of guest starring spots on a number of TV shows.
I wonder if Allman and Cuthbert get same questions in real life... 'I saw you in Prison Break / 24... Excuse me but does your character only exist to get kidnapped on the show?'
I imagine the response to be something like... 'I work as an actor, I'm trying to make a living here...'
Elisha certainly seemed to have more range and have done more movies since leaving the TV show... but having said that she seems to have disappeared from screens of late.
Not sure what Marshall Allman (LJ) is doing of late - but he seems to have had a large number of guest starring spots on a number of TV shows.
I wonder if Cuthbert and Allman get same questions in real life... 'I saw you in 24 / Prison Break... Excuse me but does your character only exist to get kidnapped on the show?'
I imagine the response to be something like... 'I work as an actor, I'm trying to make a living here...'
Good point 'Seperatrix' I like where your thinking is at!
Thanks,
That's very well thought out indeed - A pricey trip all around for Neal, then - The price of Neal's 'helluva nice watch' - probably covered the price of any destruction done to the second hotel.
That's some good accounting right there,
Anyone else should feel free to post.
Cheers for now.
That's a good point (about not being held accountable due to a quick escape) but I think it would be more interesting if we could tot up the expenses in terms of the dame done during the trip home i.e.:
1. The price of the rental car (on Neil's credit card)
2. The cost of the front of the motel
3. Any other expenses the duo racked up due to destruction on the trip...
Hi MovieChatUser497,
OK, that's a good point and hopefully we can get a discussion / debate started here.
I was thinking more in terms of the destruction the duo caused on the trip - The rental car is a good start - what about the destruction they did to the front of the motel?
Are there any other expenses they racked up that anyone else can think about?
Please post with any thoughts.
Debbie... Poor girl... Never even saw it coming...
There are more such moments connecting the virtual and "real," like the scene where Hathaway intuits that somebody's spying on him and a colleague in a restaurant, then gets up from the table and wanders through the service area (in a long, unbroken handheld shot) until he locates the surveillance camera control board that's feeding images off-site. The movie's climax is a time-machine trip, catapulting us from the 21st century to maybe the 18th. It's intimate, emotional, vicious: flesh is punctured, blood spilled. As Davis' character puts it: "Is that tangible enough for you?"
The movie is a sound and light show, first and foremost, but it's also a sneaky eulogy for a dying way of living and seeing: rage, rage against the dying of the real! The filmmaking prods you to contemplate the physicality, the tangibility, of what's onscreen—to think about actions as actions, people as people, things as things. Sunlight and streetlamps are searingly bright, gunshots are deafening, landscapes and skylines awesomely vast. When men grapple in a cramped diner and someone's head smashes against a table, or when Hathaway repeatedly slams the flat end of an axe-head against a metal screen, or when bullets rip through a cargo container or a screwdriver plunges into a man's neck, you flinch, not just because the sound effects are loud and the camerawork tactically "messy," but because these primordial actions are contrasted against the electronic violence carried out by unseen cyber-criminals. The bad guys don't directly assault existing facilities, organizations and institutions; they undermine or confuse them until they implode, bringing in gunmen only when absolutely necessary.
The film's prologue is the best example of virtual treachery causing actual mayhem. It's a gem of wordless exposition that finds a visual/metaphorical way to explain how hackers slip past electronic firewalls and spread a malware virus into nuclear plant's computer system, shutting off cooling fans and causing core rods to overheat. You don't have to know much about computers to understand what's happening. You can figure it out by watching CGI images of pulsing dots swimming through fiber-optic cables and circuit boards (in point-of-view shots that evoke a Stalker Cam in a horror film or the shark in "Jaws"), then spreading and multiplying like cancer cells.
You could call this movie "Michael Mann's Greatest Hits" and mean it as a slam or a compliment, depending on your feelings about the director—but all the hits have been remixed and rethought. As written by Mann and Morgan Davis Foehl, photographed by Stuart Dryburgh ("The Piano," "Ameila"), and cut by a team of editors, "Blackhat" has enough fighting, shooting and brooding to satisfy fans of "Collateral" and "Heat," plus a bumper crop of trademark Mann images: daytime and nighttime skylines, existentially empty roads, cops and criminals posed against post-industrial landscapes, soul-mates having deep conversations in restaurants, reflections in rear-view mirrors and picture windows, brazenly off-center closeups, bespoke suits and designer sunglasses. These Mann-erisms feel newly poignant because they're celebrating light, space, architecture and flesh, even as the movie's heroes obsess over virtual conspiracies, and keep an eye peeled for coldblooded killers dispatched by hidden masters.
The world of ones and zeros that the "The Matrix" showed us 15 years ago is no longer fanciful. "Blackhat" is mainly about what happens when the real world is annexed by the virtual: what it does to geography and relationships; how it signal-jams our species' sense of time as a series of self-contained moments, and substitutes an existence that can feel like an endless, intrusive buzz. When "Blackhat" goes silent—as when the camera settles on lovers' hands in post-coital closeup, or when the newly furloughed Hathaway pauses on airport tarmac and savors the open space—it's powerful, because you've been given a gift rarely bestowed in the world beyond the movie theater: a moment's peace.
Indeed! This is the case...