Monday, February 02, 2009

Mini-reviews, The 13th Floor and Clerks II

The Thirteenth Floor:
An SF movie tasting of Bladerunner and The Matrix. If it had come out a year before The Matrix instead of the same year (1999), I think it would have been much more successful.
It was a bit cliche-laden, admittedly. But it presented the simulacrum-reality theme nicely, and it was very nice visually. Also it has some really excellent acting performances of the type of the one-body-with-two-different-minds.

Clerks II:
I'm not sure if I'm the biggest Kevin Smith fan in the world. Well, technically I'm pretty sure I'm not. But I like alternative cinema on principle, and his work is pretty good. Dogma for instance, I liked. Clerks II is pretty good and pretty funny, but if you really listen, the acting is mostly just "pretty good", and the dialogue is... faintly stilted.
It does have one very strong thing going for it, though, both acting-wise and visually: Rosario Dawson. Top-notch actor, and so hot my TV melted. Rrrrrrrrrrr.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There exists an even older version about the theme of "simulacrum-reality", written by Daniel F. Galouye, titled in German "Welt am Draht" (might be translated as "Wired World").

And the well known filmmaker Fassbinder made a film based on this story in the seventies, as far as I remember.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, it's the same story that 13th Floor is based on.

strum the sky said...

re Ms. Dawson, a little-known gem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-ZHAjFSWtM