Re: [*FSFFU*] Strange Days movie

From: Geoffrey D. Sperl (gamgee@geocities.com)
Date: Tue Dec 02 1997 - 00:03:16 PST


MARINA YERESHENKO wrote:

> Judging by the fact that people seem to either hate the movie or love
> it,
> it must have been really outstanding. You have to trully stir people's
>
> feelings to make them start using words like "idiotic".

I don't think I used "idiotic"...and I never said I hated the movie.
Hate is too strong an emotion to be focused on a strip of film...

> First, there was nothing unbelivable about
> Basset character's "devotion" to the guy. In my opinion, this is
> what's
> called _friendship_. Maybe it does not happen too often, but it does
> exist. I'd like to have a friend like her myself. Besides, they show
> things like that between male friends all the time and no one finds it
>
> strange.

I'm thinking more along the lines of co-dependency. Those two did not
have what I would like to think of as a healthy friendship, and the
forced romance was even worse (why can't Lenny just get his life
together without a mother figure in Bassett or a whore figure in
Lewis?).

> About the guy's self-destruction, it's even more realistic.

No, I don't think so. If it were realistic, the movie would be taking
place after Lenny's funeral...no one like that would last as long as he
did - especially after leaving the police force (both the cops and the
criminals would want him dead).

> I'm glad there is an action movie
> where tough men can be upset about a rape victim, even if she's not
> their
> sister or girlfriend as it usually happens.

Agreed. The movie had vast potential there...too bad they couldn't stay
focused (but that's a consistent James Cameron problem through all his
scripts).

> And finally, bad box office is not always an indication of
> worthlessness.

That's true, and no one's arguing that. Some of us are simply saying
that we would have liked to have seen a good film. Instead (IMHO) we
got a mildly silly morality play of a movie that felt like it belonged
more in Bill Bennett's _The Book of Virtues_ than in SF.

> I've heard that Tank Girl did not make a lot of money,
> either, but I think it's way more interesting than all the Batman
> flicks
> combined.

Actually, please don't combine Burton's films with Schumacher's Adam
West retreads...and _Tank Girl_ was seriously lacking in its translation
from comic to film (but that's another story).

- Geoffrey

--
"Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect

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