Strange Days (The Coli Movie Club)

[Ghost Utmost]

GRAFX: The visual was Basic.
BREAX: The acting was Basic.
TRAX: The soundtrack was Basic.
LYRIX: The writing was Dope. Overlong, but really picked up steam and pulled me in once it got going.

The crime thriller layer was key to making this something decent. It could easily be one of the schlocky old Sci Fi movies but it rose above cause it laid atop the dystopian wasteland instead of being defined by it. Like it could have been set even further in the future or in the past - with still cameras as the medium - and it still woulda worked.

My attention span being addled because the internet, I did get frustrated with the pace at times. It's not the movie's fault but as times change, the enjoyability of older movies can decrease.

Three Eberts

 

[FlyRy]

It's not the movie, it's the fact that there's a sitewide banner announcement for it on every page

Yeah also that. We let the shyt bubble quietly, and then we blew



*but we kept our cool:not my business though:

that banner got new dudes like

 

[MartyMcFly]

that banner got new dudes like

 

[cook]

ummm how do u watch a tag?

click on it then click watch.

added everyone to the list that replied. if you got missed, quote this post

 

[sun raw]

Good choice, I had fun watching this

Good post.

A couple things:

The way I see it, setting the movie in the near future rather than the distant future is almost like it's saying "you see how bad things are now? Look how much worse things will get in just a few years." It's almost as if they're taking these aspects of the early '90s and exaggerating them to the point of it almost being a nightmare. Like racial tensions have gotten worse and the LA riots are now something that happen everyday. Everyone's only out for themselves and fukk everyone who gets in the way. It's not the distant future because that implies society's advanced on an upward slope, this is a society on the brink of ending, at the edge of the apocalypse.

The playbacks basically allow the users to experience the physical sensations of the recorder. Lenny says it's "life. It's a piece of somebody's life. It's pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex." It's basically like being in someone else's body, you get to experience everything that they do and feel. I don't think the movie is about the effects of new technology on society. Or at least, it's not entirely about it. It's using this new technology to explore issues relating to spectacle. All of Bigelow's films are about spectacle in some way, which is why she's working within the action movie genre. Her first movie is a 20-minute short in which two men beat each other up while two semioticians talk about the scene in voice-over. Strange Days is not the first and only time that Bigelow does the whole "escapism as a drug" thing, you see a bit of it in Point Break, you see it in The Hurt Locker.

I've got an almost "told you so" attitude towards reactions to Kathryn Bigelow in that it took her until The Hurt Locker to really get the recognition she deserves when she'd been making some badass movies since the 80s.

Also the movie's got a great soundtrack

 

[Malta]

Will watch tomorrow, however the Movie club needs this -

 

[kp404]

Will watch tomorrow, however the Movie club needs this -

Don't give me any ideas

 

[iaknet8m]

Pretty cool movie. Super 90s in a good way, especially with all the scenes in the club. It made me nostalgic actually. I liked the idea of the clips, and apparently it was really hard to film those scenes. I wasn't even thinking about it while watching since I'm so used to how easy it would be to do that nowadays. Some of the scenes and dialogue were a bit cheesy but I liked the characters and the plot.

 

[YouMadd?]

Watching tonight

 

[ℒℴѵℯJay ELECTUA]

loosely based on kurt's last days?

 

[92Inc]

I don't know what movies most of you have and haven't watched but for this week, my pick is one of my favorite movies by one of my favorite directors...

Strange Days

It's on netflix instant, you got no excuse now.



Starring Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Point Break) and co-written by James Cameron.


Mod update - How to join:
Just reply in here that you'd like to be added to the list. Also, watch the following hashtag #movieclub

This is a pretty casual club, there's a movie every week, if you get time to watch then come back to share your thoughts and discuss with the brehs, if not, then hopefully you catch the next week's movie.

add me

 

[choc_cardigan]

This movie has one of my favorite lines

Cheer up. The world's about to end in ten minutes anyway.

 

[re'up]

Hard to get through this for me, first time watching it, but I love Kathryn Bigelow, 'Point Break', and 'Zero Dark 30' are my favorites from her. This is dated, that grungy, washed out 90s look with everyone looking like the 'California Love' video, Angela Basset was an odd one to use as a romantic interest, no chemistry. Everyone looked so dirty all the time. Intriguing premise, 'Minority Report' owes a lot to this movie I think. Ralph Fiennes was surprisingly bad, and Sizemore was hamming it up, no traces of his subtle menace in 'Heat' that same year. The plot was pretty basic, and I figured the twist pretty early, and I'm not great at that. Very cheesy moments with the SQUIDS and Fiennes addiction. There are good things in it, but this is not a good movie, and it hasn't aged well, compare this to 'Point Break', shot 3 years earlier yet feels almost timeless in comparison when viewed today. All the dystopian plot points are unneeded, besides the fact the movie actually is kind of prophetic in that Biggie and Pacs murders happened less then a year later, and the LAPD were very much involved in some way with both, corrupt cops, activists, coverups. It's a timely movie for 1995, on the heels of the riots, and people probably looking for a social change that never occurred. Interesting novelty from the past, but I'd saw it's very much one of her lesser works.

 

[pickles]

click on it then click watch.

added everyone to the list that replied. if you got missed, quote this post

I watched this already, how do I join? Are we going to discuss it after everyone has watched it?

 

[cook]

I watched this already, how do I join? Are we going to discuss it after everyone has watched it?

talk about it whenever. people are already writing reviews. i'll add your name to the list, theres no real official "joining" anyone can stop by the thread and talk about the movie