ALT: Joel Kinnaman as Tak Kovacs in a dark, strange world, wearing a blue coat and shirt; he's looking around in wonder. Oh god, I didn't know whether I could get past the first episode: I love dystopian futures, but this seemed hackneyed... Altered Carbon has the feel of sometimes The Hunger Games , sometimes Harry Potter , often Repo! The Genetic Opera or Gotham City or Narcopolis .There's martial arts, comic booky treatments, digital effects and story content. Some of it is dumb, and the names for things in the future are lazy: The Array is the internet, a sleeve is a host, ONIs are basically smartphones, Poe is like TNG's Data, Meths are the 1%, and paying my chip-implanted fingers is technology that's already here. The "strong, independent woman cop" is the lamest character attempt/trope out there, and the actress is terrible. The producers seem to be trying to appease audiences on every front rather than trying to make a solid, consistent produ
This week I saw two films of similar structure, although it was quite coincidental. One was Finnish, The River (Joki; Jarmo Lampela, 2001) about 6 people's lives one Saturday morning. The other was Nine Lives (Rodrigo Garcia, 2005), a collection of vignettes about 9 women and a particular moment in their lives. The former was interesting in that, like Crash and Magnolia, it revolved around one interconnecting event; the latter, while less intentionally connected, was outstanding on two levels: the performances were completely riveting, and the narratives were totally accessible and hardhitting. The last one, entitled "Maggie" with Glenn Close, just about killed me (I won't go into detail for fear of creating a spoiler). It's going to be one of those films I don't forget. Having gone through some of the experiences portrayed myself, the stories were that much more poignant. While it might be labeled a chick flick or feminist by some, see it for the actors' craft. As my dad used to say on the Piece of Crap Movie Rating Scale: terrific!
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