Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia.
If anything, Hollywood has boiled that concept down to a science over the past few years, as this film is basically a summary of everything that’s wrong with the industry in a neat, 148 minute package.
It thinks it’s meta and self-aware by pointing out how cynical and cheap franchise filmmaking is.
That might sound similar set-up as 22 Jump Street, but this film proceeds to be cheap and cynical itself without saying anything substantial beyond its own set up, so it embraces what it’s trying to criticize.
Everything in this movie is structured as an excuse to show stuff you’ve seen before, there are little to no original concepts or ideas that push the franchise in an interesting direction.
It’s mostly a rehash of the first film (mixed with some stuff from Reloaded and Revolutions in the second half), except the action isn’t nearly as good, it’s more predictable and convenient, the performances are nowhere near as memorable (that’s what you get from replacing your 2 best actors), it looks uglier and more synthetic, the pacing isn’t as tight, and it’s a lot more dull because of how much it overexplains itself.
It also ditches the cyberpunk aesthetic, and replaces it with something a lot more bland and boring, stripping the franchise from a lot of its personality.
It’s honestly quite an accomplishment when you think about it: the original is one of the best, most successful, big budget films ever made that still maintained a strong artistic and alternative impulse.
This, on the other hand, couldn’t be any more lowest common denominator if it tried to.
It’s a parody of itself and modern blockbuster filmmaking.
I suppose that was Lana Wachowski’s goal to some extent, but it isn’t very compelling to watch.
3/10
"2046" might suffer from its episodic structure and incoherent development, but aesthetically, it's by far Wong Kar-Wai's finest achievement. It shares the same sense of longing of "In The Mood for Love", but at the same time, serves in many ways as its polar opposite. Instead of focusing on two characters and the obsessive repetition of the same actions, images, and sounds, this time we explore the personality of four different women through a relatively wider sonic and visual palette. The beauty of platonic love is replaced by a compulsive need for sex and human contact, as if Chow Mo-wan is trying to repress the moral restraint that set him and Su Li-zhen apart. He became some kind of playboy, but still keeps missing all the important trains in his life. He then pours his desires and frustrations into an erotic sci-fi series called "2046", where all the women he met are depicted as "androids".
The film bothers to visually show us the world of Chow's stories, with simple yet highly evocative vintage sci-fi sets and beautiful costumes. After the premise, you would expect the two realities to reflect each others. However, they seemed to belong to two completely different films. I wonder if Wong Kar-Wai had shot those sci-fi scenes for some other purpose and tried to forcefully fit them into an "In The Mood for Love" sequel. Other than sharing the same actors, there is close no relation to events in Chow's life.
WOW this is one epic racing movie! I found this movie by accident a few hours ago and i have to say that this is one of the best racing movies i have ever seen!
The animation is beautiful. I can see that those 7(!) years in production have certainly paid off. Its over the top, realistically impossible and i love it! This is a movie that has to be watched at a big screen tv and at 1080P. Anything else will be an insult to this beautiful movie that deserves nothing else.
Considering that this movie was in production for 7 years i feel that the story could have been better. Most likely most of those 7 years were spent on animating the movie. The movie relies very heavily on the animation and not the story. Also there are a few cliché characters in the movie, but they are not that annoying. All in all the animation really is really the one thing that carries this movie forward, which is why i gave it a perfect 10.
A few years back i saw the movie Speed Racer and although there are some similarities with that movie this one is nothing like it. Its easy a hundreds times better. Whoever likes fast cars, explosions and anime should watch this movie. You won't regret it.
