Films/DVD Asylum

With the exception of Minority Report, we're pretty much in agreement.

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Audiophilander

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In Reply to: Minority Report - great, I, Robot - v. good, MIBII and WWW - horrible.(nt) posted by mkuller on July 22, 2004 at 21:55:18:

I wanted to like Minority Report, but unfortunately there were just waaaaay too many precious coincidences, continuity problems and scientific impossibilities for me to suspend disbelief and enjoy this film. BTW, my wife didn't like this one either; I mention my wife because we usually see the same films, but don't always agree. There are some films that I like and she doen't and still others which we both tend to be far more forgiving of, but in this instance it was definitely two thumbs down with a couple of clothespins on our noses thrown in for good measure!
Of course, that said, everybody's mileage varies; I'm really glad that you enjoyed Minority Report and I'm sure that there are a lot of folks who concur with your opinion of it.
AuPh

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Another way to watch minority report - Bulkington 09:53:40 07/23/04 (4)
Logically it's horribly flawed: von Sydow's character could not possibly hope, merely by paying a guy to hang out in a hotel room with incriminating photos, to set in motion an eventual murder whose prognostication would lead to its being committed. The paradox is a closed circle with no genuine causal impetus. Had Cruise's character been given more conventional leads prior to his crime's being "pre-coged", the premise might have been believable.
That said, I think this was a sort of return-to-form for Spielberg. It was a very well filmed and well-paced thriller, and for that I liked it. And while there's something dissatisfying to me about the second half, I think the better "reading" of the film is one in which its denouement is actually a Brazil-like dream rather than reality. It's not fresh, so I don't remember exactly, but there's some line about the criogenically frozen criminals having pleasant dreams, and I think the suggestion is clear that it's quite possible that the tidy happy ending of the film is just that.
- Hi Bulkington. Please tell me what you think... - orejones 11:28:16 07/23/04 (1)
  ...about what I posted re this film: I�d enjoy discussing it with you.
  Thanks. Regards
  BF
  - Minority Report (Open in New Window)
  - Huh - Bulkington 06:59:21 07/26/04 (0)
    Makes me want to re-view it. A lot of the parallels you mentioned escaped me. I particularly liked:
    Water, that symbol of primal unconscious, is used wisely in this film: future seers are in a pool and, in the climax of a prediction, when images of a crime-to-be are being formed, Agatha goes under the water, as if she was drowning; and her mother, in one of the root knots of the film, died by drowning, too; and then, Anderton�s misfortunes, what almost killed his soul and kept him emotionally dead for such a long time, started when he was under water in a pool, when he momentarily went out of conscience about his kid.
    Who wrote the screenplay, I wonder? I'm starting to think that maybe a lot of what's good about this film had less to do with Speilberg than with the screenplay, because one can imagine this film having been done better by someone else without the camp and maybe with some slight conceptual tinkering.
    Another critique I forgot to mention above was the unlikely practice of pre-trial and -judgement. Perhaps they've stamped out organized crime in this world (though its illicit drug trade suggests otherwise), but certainly in this future, as in our present, there's an interest in, say, questioning perpetrators in order to apprehend potential accomplices in or, as we witness in the film, accessaries to a murder.
    Also, the film opens by establishing a distinction between crimes of passion, which the pre-cogs foresee with short notice, and premeditated crimes, which they see far in advance. Anderton's crime is seen well in advance, suggesting that it's premeditated, but it isn't. Certainly he's thought often about killing whoever was responsible for his son's disappearance, but there's no necessary connection between the anonymous perpetrator in his mind's eye and the set-up who becomes that man only upon discovery and further becomes his son's murderer only after the false confession that drives Anderton nearly to the point of killing the man our of passion, not premeditation. And, again, there's no logical reason why Von Sydow's planting this guy in a hotel could result in Anderton's finding him and killing him--a causal chain absolutely necessary for a pre-cog to be able to foresee any such murder occurring. What if it were Von Sydow's premeditation that resulted in its having been foreseen so far in advance? That's interesting, and it was probably worth exploring, but Anderton still would have needed some kind of impetus outside of his crime having been foreseen to lead him to the crime in the first place.
    I haven't seen Solaris in a while, but wasn't there something Solaris-like about the ending? And wouldn't that compound the argument that, like in Brazil, the happy ending occurs entirely in our hero's head?
- The whole eyeball thing was over the top and so implausible as to be laughable. - Audiophilander 10:39:54 07/23/04 (1)
  Unfortunately, Spielberg went for the cheap thrills & gross out effects and expected folks to leave their minds and any semblance of "logic" at the door (i.e., fast pacing can cover a multitude of sins that are painfully apparent in repeated viewings). For instance, there's no way one could do a retina scan on a decomposed eye, which is exactly what Cruise's eye would be after the passage of any time and in consideration of the manner in which it was handled. The eyeball rolling across the floor scene had an almost Keystone Kop quality to it; it was predictable & lame. The fact that the security was tight when tension was desired and lax when a resolution was needed was far too precious. The spider-bots were cool, but the whole scene and bathtub set-up didn't really work, and again way to precious in terms of a last minute resolution.
  IMHO, AI-Artificial Intelligence, the film that Steven Spielberg completed prior to Minority Report is FAR and away the better SF film. I do believe that Minority Report is a "return to form" for Spielberg, but that carries baggage as well as kudos. Few Directors are as good at creating and resolving tension, developing interesting characters and producing believeable effects as Mr. Spielberg, but by the same token few are as sloppy when it comes to recurring continuity gaffs, precious coincidences and obvious audience manipulation, too. There are many of his films I dearly love, but I'm often frustrated with his sloppiness as a filmmaker, especially since it's obvious how passionate he is about his craft.
  Cheers,
  AuPh
  - Good crits. - Bulkington 13:22:59 07/25/04 (0)
    I agree on those points. I don't like the Brazil-like quality of the cops either. One impressive feature of Minority Report to me was its attempt, over and above most sci-fi films, to create a plausible, palpable future. The camp you cite and the heavyhandedness and possibly even the allusiveness of its "Big Brother" elements betray the artifice and, I think, keeps the audience at arm's length.
    Interestingly, I liked AI less, but that has more to do with its having fallen farther short of my expectations than did Minority Report, which, frankly, exceeded them on some points. AI fell flat for me, and I couldn't help wondering "what would Kubrick have done?" when I saw it. I haven't seen AI since it was in the theaters, though. Maybe I'll give it another look.

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