1995 AMARA thread VOTE FOR THE WINNERS - CLOSED

I voted.

Done!

1995 Watch Diary #2

Underground



Holy shit this may be my favorite of the year. Hilarious and touching, using its three hours to take us on a ridiculously entertaining journey through the history of a nation and people. Also features one of the best weddings ever featured in a movie.

1995 Watch Diary #4

Strange Days



An incredibly stupid movie that seems to think it is smart. The blunt dialogue in which characters straight up tell their feelings to each other - SUBTEXT BE DAMNED - is annoying, but it really falls off the rails in the never-ending finale sequence, which somehow goes on for over forty minutes. Bigelow and editor Howard Smith make the GODAWFUL decision to cut two simultaneously occurring events sequentially, which means that we watch one (pretty dumb) action scene play out in its entirety before moving to another (incredibly, unbelievably MORONIC) action scene finish out the movie, dragging the movie to a standstill.

And ye gods, those action scenes in the finale are so fucking dumb. Look, the first one isn't *that* bad - even if it involves a man with a giant fucking plank swinging it so hard that he turns around and gets stabbed in the back by someone with a knife! - but the second commits to such a level of idiocy that I can't possibly fathom how this fucking thing got made. Let's avoid major spoilers and just say that it involved people shooting in a crowd. At least six people get shot. NOBODY FUCKING NOTICES!!!!!!!

But is the movie's aesthetic and vibe and look and all that jive good enough that I can forgive the movie? In short, no. The cyberpunk setting is conceptually intriguing, but the film doesn't do a single thing with this sci-fi tech that couldn't be done with a handheld video camera. Cellular is pretty much the same damn movie, except it is fun, because it knows how stupid it is and plays along with the silliness.

As for AMARA nominee Angela Bassett... why? She's not bad or anything, but she's a big shrug of a performance to me. That puts her above JJL's terrible turn in Dolores Claiborne, but it puzzles me that something so forgettable and utterly unremarkable generated such love.

Edit: Let's talk about the *themes* of this movie for a moment. The film is blunt and preachy and I hate it. Oh, cops are bad - but it's just the bad apples in the end! Oh, we can experience the lives and memories of other people through magic brain technology - but we'll just use it for scuzzy pornos and not tackle anything interesting with the idea. It's all so simplistic.

THREE DAYS LEFT

If you voted in the nominating stage, I expect a ballot