Heavens Gate (1980)-Michael Cimino’s ill fated epic western-was perhaps the first to gain notoriety, and Ishtar (1987) followed this later in the ’80s.
I learned a lot about the media and how studios would eventually combat bad buzz by following the production of a certain movie named Waterworld.īy the time the bad buzz about Waterworld started to grow, the infamous Hollywood Turkey or Bomb was nothing new. Hard lessons have been learned along the way, and bad production buzz can cloud the public perception of a film before it had even been completed, and subsequently doom its box office chances. Things are very tightly controlled now, and information about troubled productions that go over budget and over schedule will not leak out if the studio doesn’t want it to.
This was a time before the likes of Ain’t it Cool News and Dark Horizons, with the internet mainly consisting of message boards discussing the few sci-fi TV shows that were worth watching way back when. All the same, happy viewing readers.There was a time long ago when we had to get news about forthcoming movies from magazines and newspapers. But after being told to remember Orpheus and Eurydice more than once means someone doesn’t trust their audience. A savvier watcher will catch on to all the references, one that even the script thinks is deep. I only wish it was in a more unique creation. The sight of a high-speed monorail train, flying over flooded regions was rather cool to see. There are some interesting ideas afloat, like that climate change has shifted Florida’s coast into Venice-like waterways. Now do I regret watching this? The answer would be a no for me. Joy, however, just likes to use her imaginary recall mechanism to do whatever she feels. This has no continuity error no shift in perspective that seems incongruous to whom this is from. This is done much better in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days.” In that film, the headgear projects the first-person account of a memory. The problem is we are seeing it from a third-person perspective, not from his eyes. In one scene we are seeing a memory from a guy who has snatched our damsel. Where the director loses me is her use of a high-tech remembering device as a lazy shorthand to introduce flashbacks. In fact, the later has the same 50s mystery thriller feel, complete with a lounge singing seductress and a protagonist with a shaky past. Although films like “Gatacca” and “Dark City” utilized this to greater effect. They were common in the 1990s, even in this genre. Much of this is like her work on “Westworld.” Hollywood doesn’t do this kind of movie much anymore, the middle-budget flick. All of the set pieces feel like they were lifted from a basic cable show of the late 2000s. It is clear that Joy began in television. Although everything is done very mid-tier and dispassionate. This is “The Maltese Falcon,” “Chinatown,” the Harrison Ford film mentioned in the intro to this article. Drug kingpins and dirty politicians litter this version of Miami. The lady works as a nightclub singer who suddenly disappears, leaving our hero heartbroken and searching for answers. Infatuation begins on the part of Nick.įrom there we are treated to old clichés you find in detective fiction. In an instant, fireworks ignite between them, love at first sight. One evening, a tall blonde bombshell in a slinky red dress comes in just as Nick is about to close up shop. He works with a fellow vet played by Thandiwe Newton.
All this makes for an intriguing premise. One that also allows him to watch these play out. A veteran of some unspecified war, he now uses a machine to let people experience being in the past. Hugh Jackman plays Nick Bannister, a Dashiell Hamment name if ever I heard one.
“Reminiscence” comes to us from the mind behind the television series “Westworld.” Writer/director Lisa Joy flexes her chops in a feature debut. The latest of which just dropped in theaters and HBO Max. Many films have tried to evoke its singular brand of gumshoe voice-over and heady visual spectacle. That was typified back in 1982(my birth year) with “Blade Runner,” the quintessential sci-fi noir. One particular style of film has cropped up again and again: the future film noir. This can be about said future leaps forward changing ourselves in a singular sense or how we interact with each other. It is, first and foremost, seeing how technology affects us as humans. Science fiction is a rather malleable genre, one that can be used to fit any given story.