Solaris

I saw this on Friday. Did anyone else see it, and what did you think of it?

__________________
**** the Lakers!

Steve, I though it was dull and stupid. Whatever it is Soderbergh was trying to say, it meant nothing to me. Every once in a while I see a hard-to-understand movie, and I can't wait to see it again to get a fuller understanding. This one I don't want to waste even one more second discussing.

I read that this received the all-time lowest rating from CinemaScore's exit polls. Something like an F in both gender of all three age brackets. Ouch.

I liked this Solaris a lot.

It was a good variation on Tarkovsky's original, though I still prefer that film more of the two. Soderbergh's movie is less dense and more spelled-out than Tarkovsky's, but not to the point of most American remakes - there was certainly a theater full of confused patrons at the screening I saw yesterday evening. It's still appropraitely dreamlike, and the themes are well examined. Clooney was excellent, as were Natascha McElhone and Jeremy Davies. The music and Soderbergh's own cinematography were perfect, and the visual effects of Solaris itself were just right as well.

I plan on seeing it again in the theater. I think it's easily the best major Science Fiction film since Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995).


Grade: A

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

I havn't seen it yet. I bet most of the American population won't like it simply because they won't get it. I can give you 99% assurance it won't even walk the ground with Tarvosky's original. I am glad that someone in Hollywodd still has the guts to come out with something meaningful once in a while.

__________________
You're not hopeless...

Eat poo Henry, eat poo.

__________________
"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

I'm not trying to be elitist, but it's the truth. People nowadays don't want to think about anything, they just want to be entertained. Is that wrong? Absolutely not. I happen to look for more in a movie then some guy running around firing a gun and jumping out of airplanes. I find that quite boring. I think most people will go in expecting an epic love story with sci-fi action.


And please, CinemaScore is all but a harsh reminder that people's tastes have greatly changed. People want flashy distractions, And there is nothing wrong with that, it just isn't for me.

For example, I watched 2001:A Space Odyssey in one of my classes. Being a junior, I was hoping that people would maybe put a little thought into what was going on. INstead of trying to understant the meaning of the film, they simply shrugged it off, calling it the "worst movie ever". It depresses me. I can't imagine them watching Solaris(original) with *gasp* subtitles!

Edit:May I also remind you that we are all afraid of what we don't understand. Don't forget that i didn't like Mulholland Drive. You could say that I didn't "get it" in a way. Peronally, I just didn't get what he was trying to say in the end, what his point was. The movie was all well and good, but I felt incomplete after watching it. But I have been giving it a fair chance and rewatching it several times.

You're next post kept saying people, you're first post said Americans. There are a lot of thoughtful movies that do well in America. We're all not very dumm kinda personables...sheeze.

Oh well, if I said only Americans, then I didn't mean it as just America. It happens all over the world. But it isn't out in any other country right now, is it? Maybe Canada? I really am not sure.

BTW, I did see both versions, and I liked the original quite a bit more. I thought that the remake was good, but not great. This is supposed to be an emotional movie, but unlike the first, it didn't get me to feel anything at all. Clooney's portrayal was just fine and I am a big fan of his, especially when he does comedy. I have read some reviews that slammed it pretty hard, yet Ebert thought it was done very well. I guess it is in the eye of the beholder. If somebody asked me if they should see it, I would say yes, but not estatically.

That is what I am worried about. One thing about Soderbergh, I always enjoy his movies, but I never find much emotion in them. I woulda loved to see Aronofsky take a stab at this, but I'll settle for Fountain.

I loved the movie, but I won't deny that the audience around me was hostile. You could feel the recoil of everyone sitting close to you, it was electric. I digress. It fascinated me, and even though one thing in particular didn't make a lick of sense, I think it's one of the better American movies this year, and probably the best studio movie that'll be released this winter (excluding Gangs of New York, which I'm hoping will knock the socks off everyone who skips that second showing of Lord of the Rings to see it). And Clooney is my generation's Cary Grant. Soderbergh is coming ever closer to being our Howard Hawks. And Jeremy Davies' performance reminds me of Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love - he's playing the same character he always does, but it seems brand new because of how it's presented. Wonderful.

What didn't you get, and why do you not want to give it a second chance?

The reason a lot of Americans won't 'get' it is because of exposure, no more and no less. The American Film Institute is treated to the tune of $100,000 per year. To put this into perspective, the British film institute recieves $50 million. In America, it's an 'event' when a subtitled movie reaches a multiplex; elsewhere in the world, most notably France, it's a common occurence. It sounds like you're saying that Americans are underexposed by choice, and I don't think that's the case.

I didn't mean only Americans, that was just a little brain messup. It is the world over. But as far as I know, it isn't out in any other countries right now.

Exposure? I'm afraid I don't see what you're saying; it's in plenty of theaters and the marketing hasn't been lacking.

As for "underexposed by choice" -- yes, they ARE. If America were to show repeated interest in certain films on a smaller scale, those films would be expanded. That's how it works. When Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon starts selling out shows in the handful of theaters it opens in, they look into expanding further. Next think you know it's approaching $100 million domestically.

It is almost always a choice. It's like a survey; they test something out on a small percentage of the population in an attempt to prove that enough people will be interested in it to justify wider release.

By exposure, I meant a lack of well-distributed 'art' films readily available to the general public. If there were more Waking Lifes and The Fast Runners in the multiplexes, American film culture would be much more able to easily interpret movies like Solaris.

Crouching Tiger's success tells me that there is an audience for more 'specialized' movies when given the proper marketing campaigns. The problem with moviegoing in America is the fact that large media superpowers & conglomerates own distribution rights to every movie. Since large media superpowers & conglomerates don't want to lose money, 2 out of 3 movies are pedestrian trash because similar ones did well before.

I see it as trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Elsewhere in the world, film is a respected and beloved art form, as intensely important to many as painting or music. But as with everything else in America, it's simply another way to get paid. Business interests take precedent over artistry; this is why it's very seldom that a movie making a profound artistic statement is seen in the multiplexes - 'it hasn't been proven to make money, so we're not even going to give it a chance.'

Miramax buys hundreds of movies every year at foreign film festivals...the problem is that they only release a quarter of them. The rest remain in obscurity, undistributed and abandoned in the void. It doesn't help that many of the foreign films they release are recut and systematically edited in order to make them more 'commercially viable'. If an art dealer told Renoir to change a color in his painting because, historically, test viewings of paintings with orange in them didn't sell, would that be acceptable? I submit that the American people are smarter than that.

We can't stop the art!

Chris, have you considered websites as works of art? They can't all be stupid fun. They're not all just stops for information on the super highway. Many .com and .net sites truly are MASTERPIECES!

You must work harder on MovieForums! I suggest a splash of red here and a dot of yellow there. You must encourage everyone to post only intelligent, insightful, IMPORTANT posts that make profound artistic statements about movies and life and the world of today! We must give our souls to MovieForums, for many centuries from now, there may be online museums showcasing the FIRST websites in the world, and you, CHRIS BOWYER, may one day be the Michelangelo of classical internet!

We can't stop the art! Work hard, Chris! Work hard! Show 'em what you've got! LET THIS PLACE BE KNOWN. One day, it shall be worth billions! It will live forever!!!!!

I was really looking forward to this movie, and I got to see it today.

I'll tell you my thoughts on it...
just as soon as I wipe the sleepies from my eyes, and the dried drool from my face.....

__________________
it's better to have loved and lost
than to live with the psycho
for the rest of your life

Straight and to the point...

The more I hear:

"I like art."
"I hate art."
"You are stupid."
"No, you are stupid."
"This movie was good!"
"This movie was not good!"
"It was art and I like art."
"It was art and I hate art."

The more I hate opinions. To each their own already. Can't you people just take the opinions of someone else and sayd, without even trying to convince them otherwise, "well, to each their own, I disagree with you"? The end of the story?

Sigh.

__________________
www.esotericrabbit.com

I guess so. End of story.