My Review: Transcendence (5/10)

"We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them."

Transcendence is one of those rare films where you can't quite grasp what exactly it is that's missing, but somehow it fails to find a connection with most audiences. Wally Pfister seemed to have all the right ingredients for his directing debut. He had a terrific cast including  Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, and Kate Mara, and a strong screenplay that Christopher Nolan even considered to use before going on to make Interstellar. We also know that Pfister can handle the visuals because he has been the cinematographer for Nolan in all his films since Memento. The film looks great and has a strong cast, but the characters and the story simply didn't draw me in. For a film that tries to be thought provoking, I found it extremely difficult to stay awake or even care for the premise.  It tries to build suspense and make us consider how dangerous our technological advancements have become, but it succeeds at neither. I don't want to get into spoiler territory either, but I found the final act incoherent as it was completely changing the message it was giving all along. I was really disappointed with this film and found it quite boring. 

He may seem like the main character, but Johnny Depp doesn't get much screen time in this film. He plays Dr. Will Caster, one of the lead researchers and entrepreneurs in the field of Artificial Intelligence. He works alongside his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and they are currently trying to create a sentient machine with human emotions (which is referred to in the scientific community as Technological Singularity, but Will likes to call it Transcendence). Paul Bettany is Max Waters, one of Evelyn and Will's best friends and fellow researcher. Their work has received a lot of attention, but not everyone is happy about this. A radical anti-technology organization led by Bree (Kate Mara) will do what it takes to stop them before they continue having success with their experimentation. 

The performances were solid, but the story just felt flat and failed to engage me. I didn't really care for any of the characters either. Most of the actors were underused, and the only noteworthy thing about Transcendence was its visuals. The inconsistencies in some of the characters is what really hurt this film in my opinion, and I think they simply tried to tie things up too neatly at the end by redeeming some of things that had been done earlier on. The film also seems to have some pacing issues as it drags during several scenes and feels way too long. The film lacks thrills and feels unfocused making it hard to follow at times. I usually like smart sci-fi films, but this one felt all over the place and could have used some of that Artificial Intelligence to help with the production of the film so it would be more coherent. It never transcends from the screen to our brains in the way it so desperately tries to. 

My Review: In Time (7/10)

¨For a few immortals to live, many people must die. ¨

In Time is the latest Andrew Niccol sci-fi futuristic flick where people are genetically developed to grow until they`re 25. People don`t age more than that, but the downside is that they are only guaranteed one more year of life. Once they turn 25 a clock starts ticking on their arm with a glowing neon light counting down the days. Time has also become the new currency as people work and are paid with time, and they also buy products with their time (bus ticket fares cost two dollars for example). The premise is a very interesting one as we see rich people living practically immortal lives as they continue to buy and buy more time. They don`t age so  they can be over a hundred years old and still look like a 25 year old. In one scene we are introduced to one of the character`s family and we see his mother, wife, and daughter all lined up looking like they were all recent college graduate friends. On the other hand it has become increasingly difficult for the poor to live past 26 since the cost of life exceeds their earnings so the people in the ghettos don’t have much life expectancy. That is precisely how the rich want things to balance out because according to them ¨for a few immortals to live, many people must die.¨ Niccol, who also directed the 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca (a much stronger film than this one) and wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed The Truman Show, perhaps has made one of his weakest films, but it never fails to entertain nevertheless with its engaging premise. Yes, there are many plot holes and if you dig in too deep some things might not make sense, but nonetheless I had a great time playing along with the premise and receiving the clear social message Niccol`s was trying to lay out.  

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) has been 25 for three years now managing to survive in the ghetto at a day to day basis along with his mother Rachel (played by the hot Olivia Wilde) who should be fifty, but looks like his girlfriend. Will`s life changes when he runs into Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer), a very wealthy man who apparently has arrived in the wrong neighborhood. Will saves Henry from a group of time thieves led by Fortis (Alex Pettyfer), but he didn`t really want to be saved. Henry tells Will that he is tired of living and that men were never meant to be immortal; his body might be 25 but his mind is old and weary. He gives away his time to Will (over a century) and commits suicide, not before telling Will to use his time wisely. Once Henry is found dead, the police (known as timekeepers) begin to investigate the alleged murder and Will becomes their prime suspect. Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) begins to pursue Will who has now traveled to the best neighborhood (called time zones), New Greenwich. Will doesn`t understand how the time keepers are so interested in investigating a suicide when there are hundreds of deaths everyday in the ghetto that they simply decide to ignore. That is when Will discovers that there is something wrong with the system and it`s time to balance things out. He meets a millionaire banker named Phillip Weis (Vincent Kartheiser) and ends up kidnapping his daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), in order to escape from the timekeepers.

From this point on the sci-fi flick begins to take a classic Robin Hood-ish turn as Will begins to steal time from the rich and give it to the poor. The action becomes non-stop, although predictable, but it doesn`t mean it becomes less interesting. I really was entertained with this movie and really enjoyed the premise although I recognize its many flaws and see why many people didn`t like it. The futuristic look of the film is also worth a watch considering that Roger Deakins (the best in his field) was in charge of the cinematography and it`s very stylish. The lead performances from Timberlake and Seyfried weren`t among my favorite; I think the best performance comes from Cillian Murphy who is great in his relentless pursuit of the fugitives. He is not the typical villain we see in most action films. The rest of the cast really doesn`t get enough time to show off their talents as they get little screen time. Once the premise is set the movie loses some of its groove, but I was still entertained and had a decent time. This might rank among Niccol`s worst projects, but it still is a fine good movie; although probably not worth watching again.

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My Review: Inception (10/10)

¨Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange. ¨

Inception is one of the reasons I love movies so much. This is a really intelligent and smart film that never fails to entertain with amazing visuals, good action sequences, and an excellent cast. Christopher Nolan is without a doubt the best director in Hollywood right now. Nolan`s worse reviewed film is The Prestige and that movie was brilliant so that is saying a lot about a director who seems to turn everything he touches into gold. He revived the Batman franchise making it more realistic and believable and made an even better sequel. The Dark Knight was a character driven film that studied the psychological consequences behind each action, Inception is a very different kind of movie that focuses more on the storytelling than on the characters themselves. When Nolan was approached by the studio to try to make it in 3D, he declined saying he wanted the audience to focus on the storytelling and not be distracted. 3D serves for movies that don`t have a smart plot and only want to focus on the visuals, however Inception works so well and the visuals are so amazing that they are better than anything I have seen on 3D (yes including Avatar). Even so, the special effects aren`t the reason why this film is so engaging. The reason people want to see this over and over again is because Nolan has written a smart plot which took him more than 10 years to write. It is a movie with several layers and depths, a film that you won`t want to take your eyes off the screen for even a second, it engages you from the very beginning and draws you into it, it is like a maze you need to solve. In a summer full of remakes and sequels it was really good to see something so refreshing and original, the best film I have seen since Nolan`s The Dark Knight.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobbs, a fugitive who can`t return to the States to visit his kids because of an incident that isn`t explained until halfway through the film. He specializes in retrieving hidden secrets from the subconscious of people`s minds and he does this by invading their dreams. While he is extracting secrets from Saito (Ken Watanabe), a millionaire who owns an oil company, something goes wrong and he fails to get all the information he needed. Saito then convinces Cobbs to work for him and he promises him that if he does this one job he will fix his situation in the United States so that he can reunite with his kids again.  This time instead of extracting a secret, Saito wants Cobbs to plant an idea on someone`s mind, in other words he wants him to perform inception. Cobb`s partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), says that inception is impossible and that it can`t be done because the victim will know that the idea never came from him, but Cobbs says that it`s possible. In order to perform inception on Saito`s corporate rival Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), heir of his deceased father`s oil empire, Cobbs needs to assemble a team. First he finds a young architect named Ariadne (Ellen Page) who is in charge of creating the world in which the dream takes place in, next he hires Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who can create the most powerful sedatives to keep his subjects asleep, and finally he hires Eames (Tom Hardy), an expert in impersonating people. Together they have to try to perform the difficult task of inception, but Cobbs has been having trouble keeping his personal issues outside of the dream world and his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), keeps on invading the dream world and putting the entire mission in danger.

The cast is excellent, but the film really isn`t character driven, we are drawn more by the story and the many layers we have to uncover. Nolan has created a maze and we are the one`s who have to pay close attention in order to understand the plot. While Cobb teaches Ariadne how the dream world works, Nolan is actually using Page`s character to explain to us the complexities of this world he created. It is like in The Matrix where Fishburne`s character explained everything to Neo. This is the most original sci-fi film I have seen since The Matrix and I loved every second of this movie. The two and a half hours fly by and the ending leaves you wanting to watch the film a second time. In a time in which Hollywood is running out of fresh ideas, Nolan comes in to bring a refreshing film. When Cobbs tells Ariadne to ¨never recreate places from your memory. Always imagine new places!,¨ it is like Nolan is trying to tell screenwriters to come up with fresh ideas and recreate new things. The story isn`t the only refreshing thing about this film. The visuals are also extraordinary and the action sequences are breathtaking. It is exciting to see how Ariadne begins creating the dream world, and the action scene where Arthur fights off the guards in a gravity free hotel is amazing. This is a movie you must see. The best of the year and as good as The Dark Knight was.

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