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Richard Linklater's A SCANNER DARKLY gets scanned by a few more people!!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with two more test screening reviews for the upcoming Richard Linklater doing Philip K. Dick flick A SCANNER DARKLY. The first up is spoiler free, the second is loaded with spoilers. The only problem is the second one is a full review and the first one took a page from Matt Stone and Trey Parker's SOUTH PARK commentaries. I'd call it review-mini. So, first up is the spoiler-lite version. See you below for the big one.
We were first ANYWHERE to see it today in SM @ Laemmle 4 Plex. RDJr. and Winona do some fine acting. However the narrative slogs along. Lots of talking head expository stuff. Sometimes the flourishing animated details seem to slow things down. But the viewer is always getting a taste of the characters' tweaky POV. Linklater gave the actors room and the comedy scenes rock. WoodyH has a blast and he is funny. But it's Downey's movie. Keanu's a dud. He doesn't transcend the two-dimensional toon format, playing second fiddle to his "scramble suit".
And back. Okay, for those brave enough, here's the more indepth review. The review comes off as mixed-positive. I think we're going to be getting a rather widely split audience on this one. The subject matter is dense, questions are left unanswered... It's gonna be a movie that pisses some people off and make some other people gleefully happy. I'm dying to find out which side of the fence I fall...
A Scanner Darkly Review
(Caution: This review will contain plot spoilers)
Tonight my wife and I saw a preview of “A Scanner Darkly” in Santa Monica. After waiting outside in line for about an hour (we showed up exactly when we were supposed to, but there was already a line all the way down the block, and they kept letting 18-22 year olds, who better fit the demographic for some focus group they were going to do, go ahead of us), we were escorted inside to a pair of seats in the very front row of this rather ratty little theater. As for the probably thirty people in line behind us? Well, I guess they waited an hour just to be sent home. So if my review seems overly negative in parts, it might just be because we were treated so awfully by whatever market research group was doing the screening.
Anyway, the film started right away, with no previews or anything. The guy introducing it said it was a work print that might have some unfinished scenes, but everything looked finished to me. I haven’t read the Phillip K. Dick novel this is based on, so I’m not sure how closely the plot follows that; I’ll just describe the movie I saw. The setting, if I recall correctly, is 8 years in the future in Anaheim California. We are told that twenty percent of the population has become addicted to drugs, including a new super-addictive, super-dangerous drug called ‘D.’ There is a network of undercover spies trying to trace the source of this drug, all of whom wear special camouflage cloaks that constantly cycle through different appearances, so the spies/cops don’t even know the identities of each other. Why? I guess it has something to do with the scanners – but are the scanners part of the same government, or another player? If this was made clear in the movie, it passed me by. Honestly, the morphing disguises seemed to be designed more to allow a Shocking Surprise at the end of the movie than to actually make sense within the context of their world.
Of course, what’s most notable about this movie is that it is filmed in that same cartoon-painted-over-real-life process that we saw in “Waking Life,” and for the most part, it was pretty well done. This effect allowed the movie to look a lot like a moving comic book – the characters had a lot more detail and texture than traditional animation, while still looking like animation rather than live action. Sometimes in scenes where the camera moves a lot, this effect can be a little awkward – things on different planes don’t seem to move quite right – but it allows effect like the above-mentioned camouflage suits to work a lot better than they would in a traditional live-action movie.
A surprising amount of this movie exists on the level of stoner comedy. Because so much of the population is on drugs, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Junior get to spend their screen time acting silly and stoned, which isn’t really that much of a stretch, so they pull it off pretty well. Keanu shifts between hanging out with them and hanging stoned to his undercover job as a cop who used to have a normal family life until… he banged his head on a cabinet? Unless there are forces at work I don’t understand, that is about all it took for him to withdraw from life and work as a cop to try to infiltrate this stoner circle, all the while getting more and more addicted to the drug himself. Keanu is more or less playing Harrison Ford in Blade Runner or Tom Cruise in Minority Report, but, well, Keanu is no Harrison Ford, or even Tom Cruise. He’s just as serviceable here as he was in The Matrix or Constantine, so there you go.
So, again, spoilers for the end of the movie: it turns out that Keanu’s boss at the spy agency is… Winona Ryder, his stoner-girl buddy who was almost his girlfriend, but wouldn’t let him touch her, but pretended to be a prostitute so they could have sex, I guess! And the whole time she was setting him up so he would get so burnt out on this ‘D’ that he would have to go to the detox center/work farm where… it turns out they’re actually manufacturing the drug! So now Keanu is on the inside, but possibly too brain damaged to ever recover, and Winona Ryder is feeling guilty, and doesn’t know if she can go on with her police work? So, what happens next?
Well, that’s the end of the movie. As the lights came up and a few people started clapping, I found myself feeling like I had just seen 2/3 of a pretty decent movie, but they had forgotten to show the last reel. The movie ends with a lot more questions unanswered than answered: Who exactly are the scanners? Are they just part of the police, who are filming everything all the time, or what? Why is the detox place growing the drug? Is it to make money, control the world, pacify the masses, get more detox business? Why does Keanu take a sample of the flower at the end? What purpose does Winona Ryder think it will serve to send him there, if he’s so brain-dead he won’t be able to spy, and doesn’t even know he’s supposed to? Does it work? Maybe in the novel, things feel more settled at the end, or at least the lack of loose-end-tying-up feels satisfying, but my wife and I left the theater feeling cheated out of a complete movie (and with neck cramps from staring up from the first row).
So in summary: the movie works pretty well visually (although there are no big explosions or car chases or anything like that; it’s not that kind of movie), and is fairly watchable most of the way through, if only for Robert Downey Junior’s over the top paranoid stoner. However, I didn’t feel like the movie told me a complete story; if this had been the 90 minute (it was a short flick) premiere of the “Scanner Darkly” TV series, I would probably tune in next week to see what was going to happen. As it is, I didn’t think the story was complete enough to be compelling sci-fi, or action packed enough to be mindless popcorn fun. But what do I know? I’m not 18-22.
Call me Mraig
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I shall brag about my position, even though a wise man once said that first was the worst.
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By getting to see the first 30 minutes of the film (Up through the bit with the bike) at NY Comic-Con on Saturday night...
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there are a few things everyone does once in their life. be born. go to school. go to college. get laid. get a blowjob. have anal sex (i'm a giver, thankyouverymuch). post first in talkback.
this is my talkback first.
that is all. -
i guess i'll just have to wait instead of trying to make a long post out of it. drat!
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Seems like a bit of a deutschbag really, I'm not deterred, bring it on.
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Frankly, if the review has more than four words and those four words aren't, "Go see it now!"...then I'd have to question the moral character of the reviewer. Big-time Deutschebag. So, this being said, you're all privy to a unique happening- SeppukudKurosawa's first ever review of a movie for AICN. GO SEE IT NOW!
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That's what? A German bag?
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Let's get down to brass tacks. Does Winona whip out her animated titties? I think all reviews (especially if it's a movie with Miss Ryder and/or Miss Johanssen) should have a prerequisite "TITTIES" or "NO TITTIES" at the beginning so half of us don't waste our time reading these reviews ;)
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"everything is not ok", indeed. This is my most anticipated movie of the summer--let's hope it's as trippy as it seems.
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Well, the spoiler review indicates that the story seems to be followed pretty closely. As long as the visuals work AND the sense of paranoia is intact, this should be one of the better PKD movies yet. Can't Wait!!
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You're just bitter because you're not 22 still.. hahahahaha. I hate lame fucking reviews like this.. Put some thought into it "douchebag." Spend more than 10 minutes in your outlook.... This guy should be banned... I could have had a 5 year old finger paint a better review.
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hahahahahahahahahahaha, dude you're hilarious!!!!!
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"and it turns out that soylent green is people..." WHY oh WHY do you FEATURE such complete disregard of the storytelling institution? Damn. You didn't even have a particularly strong spoiler warning. BUT WHY INCLUDE THAT ONE PARAGRAPH AT ALL? The review would have been all it needed to be without the total ending-spill. Have you no decency? Have you no humanity? Have you no respect for the movies you pretend to celebrate? You are "editors". Edit, damn you. You big filthy ape... it was Earth all along!
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just plain ol' didn't get it.
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you know those old full motion PC games, especially, under a killing moon. this movie has that same cheesy quality. the scenes take place on static sets, no car chases, no explosions. just weird dialogue and low sound.
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Feb 28, 2006 1:51:02 AM CST
Why adapt SCANNER DARKLY, PKD's 1-note anti-drug novel?
by heywood jablomie
Better Linklater should've tackled UBIK or PALMER ELDRITCH or even FLOW MY TEARS (set up, at one point, in the nineties, with Robin Williams--blecccch!)
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Feb 28, 2006 1:52:28 AM CST
why adapt SCANNER DARKLY, PKD's 1-note anti-drug novel?
by heywood jablomie
Linklater should've chosen UBIK or PALMER ELDRITCH or even RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH, or the once-long-in-the-works FLOW MY TEARS (which at one point, in the nineties, was gonna have Robin Williams--blecccch!--as the copper).
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...there are better PKD novels that could have gotten this sort of adaptation love. Nevertheless, I'm holding out hope I'm going to dig this.
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I don't feel like writing down a laundry list right now, but a lot of nagging questions the second reviewer had were explained in the novel. They are mostly directly from Dick's (or "the narrator"'s) mouth, which might explain why those scenes didn't translate so well to the movie.
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No seriously, it's a good book and it won't detract from the movie experience.
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Cos he makes the ladies and the gay guys do the sex wee. IN THEIR PANTS. I guess the same can be said for Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Freddie Prinze Jnr.
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Seriously, I don't get what that last guy said that is pissing people off. That he didn't love the movie? So what?
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...There's something about his vacant, dazed presence that works very well in those films about an "everyman" thrust into weird, otherworldly situations. A notable exception is his Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula. That is definitely a performance Reeves should have been made to contemplate on the Tree of "Whoa".
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... and apparently there was a minor glitch at the beginning of the animation process, where the animators didn't have a coherent style plan for the animation, and things were going VERY badly. So they had to change the locks, sieze their workstations, and start over. Apparently, from one of the original team, the original team was trying to "make better animation than they were being asked to." But the revamp allowed the new team to set up standards of style, so that the look would be uniform throughout the film. Linklater was so traumatized by the experience, he says he's never going to make another animated film again. But all in all, the mistake only cost about another million for the movie, a ton being saved on sets, makeup, accomodations for stars (they shot the raw footage withing a few weeks.) As for the reviewer above ... he's obviously never read a Dick novel. The point of the Dick novel is expressed by Dick in his afterword (pick it up and read it, it's a powerful little essay) in that it is focusing on the Identity of one individual, the tragedy of his mental disintigration, and the affirmation that he is still human, valuable, still identified as a cop, doing a valuable job, even if he's been reduced to a brain-damaged farm-worker. It's not about the drug dealers, or the police agencies, it's about one guy and his sense of who he is. The "larger picture" doesn't matter. The reviewer really didn't "get it".
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.... because Dick's focus is an unexpected one for most film-goers. I myself found Linklater's "Waking Life" intolerable, on first attempt, but a second, more relaxed viewing allowed me to enjoy it as an amused observation of wacky life-rationalizations from different people. But I think a lot of folks are going to be disappointed that it isn't another "Matrix".
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Better late than never, I guess.
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And, oddly enough, that's not the first time I've said that particular sentance today...
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...is a perfect example of the type of feedback they need to studiously ignore. It's a response sheet from someone who saw 'sci-fi' and expected all the dumb trappings of big budget popcorn flicks, instead of a thoughtful PKD adaptation.
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That was funny, thankfully back in the day I rented the SEGA CD. I didn't buy it.
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It sucks to see a director with so much potential, never fully rise to it. He has a great mind. The IDEA of Waking Life was fantastic. But, for my money, once I'd seen five minutes I didn't need to see anymore. It's boring. Beautiful, but boring. Linklater's films don't every really go anywhere. They're like college thesis' turned into films. Full of grand theories, but ultimately lifeless. It's a shame. He's truly gifted. But, just can't make films gel. He lets them go off in tangents that never get focused. Don't get me wrong, he's made some solid films- Dazed and Confused, School of Rock. But, that's why it's such a shame. He's got undeniable talent. I just wish it was more focused. Look at the train wreck Bad News Bears. Great idea. Billy Bob as the low life baseball coach. But, poorly executed. The thing that made the first film so great was the laid back filmmaking style. The remake was far too polished. Too much like a corporate vision of 'dirty'. It's 'dirty', but not really. The kids are all perfectly 'ragtag'. But, they don't look real. They look like an attempt to look 'real'. And, Billy Bob...wow. Awful. The great thing about Walter Matthau was that through all the drinking and passing out and foul mouthery (!), you could see the 'heart of gold'. Billy Bob just comes off like an ass. I felt the same about Bad Santa. I enjoyed the film more than Bad News, but still felt like Billy Bob's character was not worth the happy ending it gave him. Anyway, I hope Scanner is Linklater's opus. It finally connects the dots for him. But, from the above reviews, it doesn't seem likely.
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...which isn
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Sorry, but those reviewers miss the point completely! The first is a zero and the second one... what more he wanted? An explication note at the end of the screening pointing to all things he didn't undestand first hand? If it's faithful to the book it can't be THAT difficult to understand, holy God! That's the death of cinema nowadays, everything has to be spoonfed or people don't get it! And so people ask why there are so crap and dumb movies in Hollywood today! Of course, the movie going public is getting used to dumbness, when you ask to a bit more of reason, damn! They freak out! I wish people with a bit more of brain got into the screening and can write a proper review of it. As for Downey and Harrelson, the fact that they had problems with drugs doesn't make to play nut stoners like Barris and Luckman any easier. Barris is, of course, the most talkative character in the book, and Downey fits all his characteristics, just seeing his previous roles, so it's clear that movie goers will connect more with his dark but very funny character. Keanu has the least talkative and more the observer character in the flesh of Bob and Fred. We see that world through his vision, and being Keanu much more a passive actor, it fits too. And, as the second reviewer say, if he is serviceable there as he was in The Matrix and Constantine... Whoa! I'm so there!
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First he admits at the start that his review will be bitter or negative because he feels he was "mistreated" by the demographics company that was monitoring the preview. Second he admits they were told at the start that this was a work copy that might be somewhat incomplete and then he complains the end of the film seemed like it was missing "the 2nd reel." So dork, do ya think maybe the ending was one of the things that had stuff unfinished so far? Duh! Most of his complaints were padded with "maybe I missed it it but..." and "I guess it got passed me..." So because you were too busy fuming about not being in the research companie's demographic and missed a few key points that means it was a bad film? Forget this guy, I still want to see this movie!! Oh and Mcbane...Keanu does not make me do any type of sex wee in anything, especially my pants. Stop generalizing about everyone just so you can be a Keanu hater. You really don't need excuses to be a Keanu hater dude.
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. . . is that we have no idea whether all those "unanswered" questions were left apparently hanging because of deficient storytelling, or because the reviewer was too dumb to figure them out. I'd put the odds of the latter at about 10-1.
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Real easy to be unclear while quoting odds. It's 5-1 you'll get it backwards. Or is that 1-5?
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Glad you guys are enjoying my review... I just wanted to clear up a few points: first of all, my problem with the movie is not that there wasn't an explosion every five minutes or that there was so much dialogue my poor little head exploded. I can appreciate a cerebral movie on its own level, and I can appreciate an action movie on its own level, but I didn't feel that this movie worked on either. As I admitted in the review, I have not read the novel, and maybe if I had, some of the points I brought up would have made more sense. But I believe that a movie should be judged as a movie, and that the audience shouldn't be punished for not already knowing the story going in. Maybe I was biased for whatever reason (watching trippy animation on the big screen from the far side of the front row while trying to crane your neck far enough back to actually see the whole screen can be a little off-putting), and maybe this movie was just too subtle and intelligent for my tiny little brain. If so, I'm sorry. But my impression of the movie is that the creator(s) were maybe a little too amused by the idea of a society where everyone is stoned all the time, and maybe not enough invested in storytelling. As I was getting up to leave (SPOILER ALERT - is that clear enough to everyone? I AM NOW GOING TO BE GIVING A SPOILER OF A PLOT POINT) the guy sitting beside me was talking about the movie to his girlfriend, and he said, "There was a lot of stuff in the book that they didn't really talk about in the movie. Like, in the book, the Keanu Reeves character as a cop doesn't know that he is the same person as Keanu Reeves the stoner." So if the movie comes out and other people don't have the same problem I did with it, that's great. But maybe, just maybe, the fact that a movie is based on a great book doesn't always mean that it comes out as a great movie. Also, keep in mind that the purpose of that screening was to get feedback to tweak the final product. Maybe some of my concerns will be fixed in the final edit. Like I said in the review, this was not an awful movie; it was a pretty good movie that had some flaws that kept it from being a great movie.
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You still started your review basically saying it might be negative because of the problem you had with the polling company and that put me off right there. I agree with you 100%, although I enjoy a film made from a novel/story that does well in keeping close to the source materiel I do agree that reading the source materiel should never be required in order to understand or enjoy the movie. Was it your impression that perhaps the stuff that made little sense might not have been in the film but perhaps was a "missing scene" that might be added or did the editing seem to flow right but the plot just had logic holes? It's hard reviewing a "working copy" as for you know, whole scenes are just not in the film yet (although usually there would be storyboards or something to indicate that).
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Do I think there was any of the movie literally missing? No, everything I saw looked pretty polished and complete, and I don't think they would have bothered showing it to us if there had been important scenes left out with no indication that something should be there. I just felt that there were connections that should be made but weren't. For example (SPOILER TO FOLLOW) there was a single scene that showed Arctor (Keanu)'s life before turning into a stoner by day, spy by night. He was talking to his family, he went to get a glass of water, and then he hit his head on a cabinet. The voiceover suggested that this was the pivotal moment when he went from his old life to his new life - but that's the only information we got. Did the pain he felt right there make him realize he was bored with mundane suburban life? Did he suffer literal brain damage that caused his personality to split? (Again, the idea of him not being aware of his two lives DID NOT figure into the movie as far as I could tell - the only thing I heard about it was the person beside me explaining to his girlfriend that that element WAS in the book). Did him hurting himself get him hooked on pain medication? Did he lash out in that instant and kill his family? The movie didn't say; there were oblique references to it later on (e.g. he claimed to have two daughters, and his boss says, "No, I don't believe you do."), but we never get any explanation as to why the flashback we saw was important. Maybe I am being too dense by expecting every question to be answered, and maybe the answer was in a line of dialogue that I didn't properly connect, but my reaction was that, overall, the movie's story felt incomplete. If the point of the novel was a psychological perspective of Arctor's mind, I don't feel that the movie gave it to me. When I think back on it, I remember the R. Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson characters pulling the same kinds of hijinks that twenty-something stoners pull in real life, and I remember their dialogue being clever and entertaining, but I don't find Arctor's character particularly memorable; his voiceovers felt to me like a rehash of every grizzled burnt-out cop from Raymond Chandler novels to Jack Nicholson in Chinatown to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. I recognized him as a member of that familiar archetype, but not as particularly vivid or standing out in any way. Anyway, I've given my feelings on the movie, and people can do with them what they will, and see for yourself when the movie comes out in a few months.
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SPOILER TO FOLLOW ------ Arctor IS the most complex character in the story and that's why is so difficult to understand him.I read the book and it doesn't explain why Fred let his family after that incident. It only describes that moment and we don't fully understand his motives, why he left his past behind. In fact, it seems that even Arctor doesn't know why, he doesn't remember that he, indeed, agreed to sacrifice himself to get their final purpose. We see the happenings through his mind, but his mind is confuse at the maximum and he can't be even aware that he and Arctor are the same person. His personality was split by Substance D but before that his life is never explored. In my opinion it makes sense that they don't fully explain his life because, as we are seeing things happen through his eyes, how could we know if Arctor himself doesn't know it? A he says at some point in the book: " What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside." As you can see, you couldn't want to get an archetype, or a vivid character or funny lines from him. We are witnessing the life of a dead-alive man, who gave up everything "without even knowing it".
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Distracted is, of course, much more likely, as you're obviously intelligent enough to get the movie. I'd be shocked and dissapointed by Linklater if in fact the movie does not make what's going on in at the end perfectly explicable to someone who is watching the movie in decent circumstances rather than the trying ones you've described. TOTAL AND COMPLETE SPOILER FOR BOTH BOOK AND MOVIE FOLLOW!!! The book makes completely clear all of the following, and not by Arctor's internal thoughts but in scenes of dialogue: the origins of Substance D are officially mysterious but the govt. suspects it is being grown by New-Path; they sacrifice Arctor's brain so that he can infiltrate the facility in hopes that some vestige of his old self will kick in and he'll recognize the SD plant and smuggle out a sample to his former colleagues. Implied: this would be necessary to get a search warrant and/or do scientific reserach on the drug's origin. Beautiful touch that may not translate to film: Arctor seems to be vestigially aware of what he's truly doing but is so brain-dead that his overt conscious motivation is merely to bring a gift to his friends.
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.....When I first saw it in a Charles Shwab add.
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is actually very dark, coming as it does from Dick's great sadness at seeing the destruction of several of his close friends' minds, health and lives through heavy drug abuse. if (as indeed it sounds) this film's sticking close-ish to the novel, it ain't no Matrix and so Mrag & anybody else looking for explosions are going to be disappointed. also, for those moaning about spoilers, he hasn't divulged all the most important points of the denouement - if you pay attention ('cos it sounds like these points may not be completely obvious - a la Blade Runner), i'd wager you'll still be surprised at the end when the penny drops.
if it's like the novel, this'll be MUCH darker and more sombre than any previous PKD movie. don't expect explosions, bring a brain and a heart, and you'll be in the best position to enjoy this movie and judge whether or not it delivers. -
but he did clearly mark the spoilerage.
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Seems to me this Mraig guy is just plain not smart enough to get such a complex movie. I could be wrong - I haven't seen it yet and maybe he's right on the money - but I absolutely HATE IT when people put down complex movies because they DIDN'T GET IT - THIS IS THE REASON HOLLYWOOD MAKES DUMB MOVIES - and the rest of us have to suffer!
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