1 star out of 5
Director Wally Pfister pfists the moviegoing public with this boring, incomprehensible piece of garbage. I knew there was trouble in the opening seconds when, in a movie with Morgan Freeman in the cast, somebody else was doing voiceover narration. (Don’t worry, don’t worry, about a half hour in, ol’ Morgan gets to read a letter off-screen.) Let’s also give some blame to Christopher Nolan (one of the executive producers) who really likes overly complicated horseshit. (See Inception. On second thought, don’t.)
But really, the lion’s share of blame must go to Johnny Depp. I would not have gone to see this movie if he was not the lead actor. I tend to trust Johnny Depp. He has cool friends: Keith Richards, Tom Waits, Tim Burton, the late Hunter S. Thompson. Couldn’t he have asked one of them—ok, Hunter, you’re off the hook—for their opinion on the script? Or maybe after The Lone Ranger, his inner circle has basically said “You’re on your own.”
Depp is too handsome to be playing some artificial-intelligence super genius. (He is a bit puffy, but I’m not sure that was for the role.) Rebecca Hall, as the wife, is too beautiful to be his scientific partner; she has the look of a gorgeous French actress bravely doing an American accent. (Turns out she’s actually British, do, points off.)
The movie doesn’t start out terrible, but at no point is it actually good. For the first half, it kind of muddles along, with too much talking, surprisingly slow pacing, and some not-at-all original debating about technology: whether it is, you know, good or bad. There are anti-tech terrorists led by, well, I thought it was Rooney Mara but because this is a shitty movie we only get Kate Mara. And then Johnny Depp gets turned into an operating system but there’s no Joaquin Phoenix to fall in love with him. As we just learned from Scarlett Johannson in Under the Skin, if you’re artificial intelligence you have to say aloud a list of every English word to show that you’re learning, so we get that tedious scene here too.
In the back half, the movie goes from watchably mediocre into something increasingly stupider and stupider, finally transcending to a truly higher level of stupidity. It’s 2001 and Elysium and Source Code (they even say the words “source code” a few times) and it is absolute junk. Johnny should’ve kicked this one to Richard Grieco.
One of the first people I met who went to your university Jack, was an Artificial Intelligence guy. I remember only having one conversation with him. I was sitting on the floor of his room, in the 2am. The conversation was minimal, as the hour I think I was there he was mostly communicating to NYC AI guys, bouncing from phone to pc messages. He soon graduated, 1989, and I’ve never discussed the meme since then.
Therefore, jack, would you happen to know an AI person who could guest post onto SiW with a layman’s detail of depth on AI? Thanks.
Signed,
Tartan Supporter
Awesome movieteller Linklater has a new one. I’ll save you the time, Jack. Entertainment Weekly already has the scoop.
There have been some great movies that capture the idea of childhood in a particular moment in a boy’s life. For example, Stand By Me. But Richard Linklater didn’t want to limit himself to one moment, or one age, or even one decade, as it turns out. For Boyhood, he cast a child (Ellar Coltrane) as his protagonist, Mason, and then built a story around him that he continued for 12 years, until the boy went off to college. It’s not a documentary, like the 7-Up series, but a complete, well-crafted character study. Not only do Coltrane and Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei, who plays Mason’s sister, grow up literally before your eyes, but the parents — Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette — also age and grow and learn.
Gary, I don’t seem to know any AI specialists, but what if we found an AI-enhanced computer (IBM’s Watson perhaps) to write about it from an insider’s perspective.
Linklater interests me from time-to-time but is this strong enough to end my post-Dead-Poets Ethan Hawke boycott? We’ll see.
Watson idea sounds fine. I went to the wikipedia page, and it speaks to me a jumble of interdisciplinary. Facial recognition popped out as something that felt a little concrete.
Was talking about that Fulgham book recently with a friend, “All I ever learned about life i learned in Kindergarten.” May as could be “All I ever learned about ______ I learned in Linklater’s “Waking Life”.
And Hawke in Before Sunrise? dreamy That scene of the girl in the record shop, they had an odd european touch to listening a test on vinyl? the booth of sorts? Choice way to listen to music. i took the hint
I apologize Jack. I pulled another 40 hrs without sleep, and got too chatty. Besides, cool people keep their mouths shut. I’ll try.
So….you really liked this movie? 😉
The first sentence made me laugh out loud. Glad you told it like it is!