Here's a bunch that inkhuldra e-mailed me; won't be including them in the archive:

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"Sweet November"
Their love, like this mawkish weepie, was doomed. But don't blame Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron.
By Stephanie Zacharek

Feb. 16, 2001 | Because, in "Sweet November," Charlize Theron wears madcap hand-knit scarves wrapped around her fragile swan's neck, because she turns cartwheels on the beach, because she cuts her hair with a Flowbee, you just know she's harboring a deep, dark secret. Nobody in the movies has that much joie de vivre and gets off scot-free.

"Sweet November" presents double trouble for Theron and costar Keanu Reeves. It would be hard to be any actor trapped in a wilted remake of the 1968 romance weepie that starred Sandy Dennis and Anthony Newley. Reeves and Theron face additional obstacles. They're two performers of great charm and grace, actors who clearly know what they're doing even when they're feeling their way through the mist of lousy material. But there are plenty of moviegoers and critics who are dubious of their talents; Reeves especially has long been the target of naysayers, and, as so often happens with young actresses, Theron's sheer attractiveness seems to stand in the way of the acceptance of her as a serious performer.

But seeing what they do in "Sweet November" -- how their facial expressions cut across the grain, pleasingly, in the movie's sappiest moments, or how their body language manages to fill in extra layers of feeling between lines of bad dialogue -- is almost enough to make the movie bearable. (Readers who avoid movie trailers and TV ads might want to stop here; I don't want to spoil anything, but the rest of us probably couldn't help noticing Theron's dark under-eye circles and ashen complexion during certain clips in the movie ads, the universal Max Factor shorthand for "The Grim Reaper lurks.")

Whether you can even tolerate "Sweet November" will depend largely on your affinity for Hollywood-formula hankie soakers. If they're not paced like death, they can be primally, if sometimes eye-rollingly, satisfying, like last year's "Autumn in New York." In director Pat O'Connor's hands, "Sweet November" is more tasteful than that picture, and it would be more enjoyable if it were tackier -- it tries to soft-pedal its melodrama even as it slings some pretty hardcore hokum our way, like Theron's asking Reeves earnestly what his "secret dream" is.

The story, for all its hippie-dippie pretensions, follows fairly traditional lines. Theron plays Sara, a saucy free spirit who doesn't have to work for a living. (A lover and rescuer of all animals in need, natch, she used to run her own pet-related business, but got out before it "got too big.") Reeves is Nelson, a driven hard-guy advertising exec who causes Sara to fail her written driver's test by asking her for an answer he doesn't know and then failing to stick up for her when she gets busted by the proctor. As a result, she stalks him -- but in a lovable, nonpsycho sort of way, you understand. Mostly, she just wants him to be her driver when she stages a daring puppy rescue from a research lab.

Before long, she's invited Nelson to move in with her only for the month of November; we learn that she's had previous monthlong lovers or, perhaps more accurately, special projects -- people whom she's taken in and indoctrinated with her carefree ways, changing their lives in the process. (The requisite outlandish but true-hearted transvestite friends who always come along with this kind of movie are of course present here too, represented by Jason Isaacs as the friendly neighbor who might be wearing denim or sequins depending on his whim. After losing his job, Nelson takes Sara up on her offer, reluctantly at first, but he's quickly won over by her zest for living and her mismatched thrift-shop demeanor.

In the script (written by Kurt Voelker, adapted from the earlier movie's script by Herman Rauscher), Theron gets the real raw deal. When we first see her, she's hurtling into the Department of Motor Vehicles to take that test, stumbling on her stiltlike gams and spilling groceries willy-nilly from a paper sack. She's a walking caricature, but you can't help warming to her. With her Kewpie-doll eyes and Roaring '20s curls, she's a gangly screwball pixie. But later she's called on to deliver some real stinker speeches, and her loopiness feels too aggressively written. At one point, she and Nelson look out on the city lights of San Francisco, and she lets loose with some doggerel about being elated to see life going on all around her. Even so, Theron manages to maintain some semblance of dignity for her character, and her satiny glow helps soften the picture's glossy, high-melodrama sheen.

Reeves matches Theron note for note, and in the end -- perhaps because there are fewer hyperdramatic demands placed on his character -- he ends up being even more likable, and more believable, than she is. In his early scenes, Reeves plays a stone-cold ad guy as a cartoon version of the kind of actor critics and viewers have often accused him of being: wooden, remote and overly cool in a bland way. But as the story heats up, he warms to it gracefully, like a dancer hitting his stride. His facial expressions work as a counterpoint to the movie's screwier scenarios. His eyebrows telegraph his incredulity at Sara's goofier shenanigans, and you realize this is a leading man you can trust. He's not one of those guys who fall for the spacey beauty just on principle.

At this point, the critics and viewers who've written off Reeves as a no-talent aren't likely to ever change their minds. If this performance and his creepy redneck turn in "The Gift" don't turn people on to his subtle spark, then it's simply time to write them off. Still, "Sweet November" isn't quite the right vehicle for Reeves as a romantic lead. He doesn't have a particularly broad range, but he's possessed of an exceptional, level-headed sweetness that's his alone, and a sharper, drier, more angular story would serve him better.

Would he be able to pull off a tart romantic comedy? A scene in which he lavishes Sara with 12 silly gifts, including an oversize bottle of smelly perfume, suggests that with his straight-man awkwardness -- as much a part of him as those mesmerizing coal-glitter eyes -- he might be able to deliver the goods.

As it is, "Sweet November" does neither of its leads any favors. But they fill their roles admirably, and then some. Time and again, in a movie that repeatedly threatens mawkishness, you can sense them gently steering away just in the nick of time. They ride this mediocre and overly sentimental little picture like a gust of wind, a lark, instead of a matter of life and death, and that's what makes all the difference.

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"The Gift"
A certain magic moves this ghostly Southern Gothic nail-biter. Forget the cards: It's all about Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves and some great acting.
By Stephanie Zacharek

Jan. 19, 2001 | Contemporary Hollywood movies are either in a deplorable state or undergoing a miniature renaissance, depending partly on whom you ask and partly on how the planets happen to line up on Fridays. But good performances are eternal, and no matter what else you say about it, Sam Raimi's "The Gift" has more than its share of them. As a package, this ghostly Southern Gothic thriller is never as visceral as it needs to be, and it throttles toward a conclusion that astute viewers may be able to predict from the very beginning.

Yet it's an odd case. If you love actors, it's the sort of thing you might be tempted to see a second time, even after you've found out whodunit, just to examine more carefully the way the performers -- particularly the mesmerizing Cate Blanchett -- weave shining silken threads around what's essentially a pretty uninvolving narrative. There's a fair degree of magic in "The Gift"; it just doesn't come from the story or the structure.

"The Gift" is so top heavy with terrific actors that it's almost an embarrassment of riches, like a Southern manse laden with so many expensive imported trappings that it feels out of place in its neighborhood. Raimi isn't quite sure what he wants the movie to be: a supernatural thriller with a messy emotional wasp's nest at its core or a straightforward spookfest, complete with misty, mossy murder scenes and a scruffily menacing bad guy, played by a surprisingly unnerving Keanu Reeves. "The Gift" ends up being too much of both and yet not enough of either, a project that's too taken with its own classiness to be effective. At the beginning, "The Gift" has a dewy, chilly sheen that suggests it may be more challenging than you can immediately see on its surface; I wondered if Raimi hadn't found a clever way to work some of the moral complexity of his terrific 1998 drama "A Simple Plan" into an otherwise mainstream thriller. "The Gift" offers a few startling and gorgeous visuals -- for example, a specter of a corpse floating among trees, a dream-time mix-up of the worlds of air and water. But even though Raimi, working from a script by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, makes you think he's about to turn "The Gift" into something more than just a workaday tale of the supernatural, he seems to change his mind halfway through, faking depth by assigning phony psychological motivation to a few of the characters. The conclusion feels contrived and tacked on rather than startling. You're left with the feeling that Raimi started out wanting to make us think and then simply lost steam, settling for an ending that would simply deliver a comfortable level of shock value.

But even if you've figured out where "The Gift" is headed, the actors keep you watching closely. Blanchett is Annie, a psychically gifted widow with three young kids who makes a meager living reading fortunetelling cards for locals in her tiny Georgia town. Her clients rely on her not just for her readings but also for her warmth and wise counsel. She's as far from a flaky psychic as you can get, a down-to-earth single mom with the patience to try to help others with their problems, even though she's having trouble getting over the loss of her husband. She spends a lot of time counseling Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi), a deeply troubled local who can't move forward with his life until he faces up to a nasty secret in his past. And when Annie's friend Valerie (Hilary Swank) comes to her in distress, her face swollen and bruised, Annie obliges in reading her cards but also tells her firmly that it's high time she left her abusive, redneck husband, Donnie (Reeves).

Meanwhile, Annie's young son is having trouble in school, and she finds herself summoned to meet with the charming and mild-mannered school principal, Wayne (Greg Kinnear), who's engaged to local sexpot Jessica (Katie Holmes). Jessica disappears suddenly, and Annie becomes drawn into the investigation when she starts suffering from weird dreams that may reveal what has happened to Jessica.

This ensemble of actors manages to make the gimmicky small-town setup work without camping it up. Kinnear probably doesn't need to play another earnest straight-guy role, but he's still a pleasure to watch here, and Holmes, playing a seductress who has barely lost her baby fat, says as much with her wickedly arched eyebrows as she does with her lines. Reeves' disaffected scowl and loping gait are only the outward trappings of a more subtle sense of menace. There's also a hardness around his eyes that suggests suppressed rage and an unwillingness to reason, and it's terrifying, especially coming from an actor whose aura is usually so gentle and charming.

Ribisi's performance is the hardest to get a handle on. His character, a shy, stammering, mentally unbalanced grease monkey, seems badly conceived, even in a picture where all the major characters are stereotypes. But Ribisi manages to give even a rather heavy-handed character some subtle contours. His shambling awkwardness, and the way he can barely bring his eyes to meet Annie's when he's talking to her, make the character seem like a real person instead of a plot device.

Blanchett is the picture's guiding light. There's so much delicacy and control in her performance that she could almost fool you into thinking "The Gift" is a much better picture than it is. Her features have a pleasing irregularity: When she's composed, she radiates an almost otherworldly elegance and composure. But when she smiles, her features take on a goofy, rubbery quality, and her beauty is all earthling. Blanchett's line readings have a deceptively gentle potency. The notion that, as grounded as she is, she needs to get over the loss of her husband is one of the movie's most plodding contrivances, but Blanchett seems to carry Annie's sense of loss right beneath her skin -- it's more a current rushing through her than a burden. Blanchett has brought an uncanny meticulousness and sensitivity to both her small roles ("The Talented Mr. Ripley," "Pushing Tin") and her big ones ("Elizabeth"). She's an actress with a sixth sense, but there's nothing supernatural about it. She's a master of the delicate and highly underrated art of knowing just what to put where, and when.

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Waking the Dread
by J. Hoberman

Nasty as pond scum, The Gift is a creepily effective button-pusher that owes a bit to the original Cape Fear both in Sam Raimi's ruthless direction and Keanu Reeves's unexpectedly robust performance as the most violent redneck peckerwood in a steamy Georgia town. In the same spirit with which the woods are populated by threatening loonies, Raimi fills his movie with little jolts. Not that these cattle-prod flash-forwards (or -backs) are necessary; the director, reprising a few tricks from his Evil Dead days, can extract a chill from the sound of a leaky faucet.

Having parachuted into the bayou from points unknown, Cate Blanchett plays a fortune-teller with an incongruously svelte wardrobe and three little kids to raise. The character oscillates between glamorous outsider and widder woman of the swamp, secular-humanist shrink and New Age mystic. Indeed, she's the town therapist, reading cards to advise the sick and the abused. Like her, the movie is at once superstitious and liberal. When Blanchett tells a battered wife (Hilary Swank) to leave her husband (Reeves), she makes an implacable enemy. Reeves assumes the burden of fundamentalist ignorance, tormenting this creature of Hollywood as a satanist, "no better than a Jew or a nigger."

Although the sanest person in town, Blanchett is nevertheless vexed by visions and nightmares, and when the rich vixen engaged to the local school principal turns up missing, she's called upon to turn psychic detective. The Gift slows down with a trial that naturally devolves on the star, then rallies for a muddled ending. Greg Kinnear gives a properly stricken performance as the wimpy principal while, as his AWOL fiancée, Katie Holmes reveals a side of herself that would make the hounds howl back on Dawson's Creek. The Gift was cowritten by Billy Bob Thornton, who, busy elsewhere, evidently bequeathed to Giovanni Ribisi his signature role, the village idiot who doubles as Blanchett's guardian angel.

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'Watcher' not worth watching
By Andy Seiler, USA TODAY

Can't anyone stop the serial killing?

Not just in real life, in movie theaters. The Watcher is just the latest (and one of the silliest) in a string of these gruesome outings, which can be reduced to the most basic formula:

- Serial killer threatens to kill someone. Detective has clues but can't save young female victim, who's then graphically murdered.

- Serial killer threatens to kill again. Detective has clues but can't save this new female victim either. Yikes, another deliberately sickening murder scene.

- Serial killer threatens to kill again. Detective has clues, but once again, he doesn't arrive at the scene in time.

And so on, until the serial killer finally gets around to the only woman in the movie who is given star billing. The detective, who by now we're starting to think is a bumbling idiot, saves her at the last moment while barely escaping with his own life.

Ruin anything for you? Only if you were hoping for something original.

This time the setting is Chicago, and the detective is heavily medicated FBI agent Jack Campbell, played by James Spader. Spader is too good for this material but may have relished the chance to play a drug-addled, guilt-ridden guy who says things like: "I'm lucky to find my way home from the grocery store, and when I do, most of the time I've forgotten my groceries."

Other talented performers who do their best but get lost in the bloody sauce are Keanu Reeves as the charming lady-killer (figuratively and literally); former Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson as a tough FBI boss; and Marisa Tomei, getting further and further from her Academy Award, as Spader's unlikely therapist.

It is all well-executed by first-time director Joe Charbanic, who tricks up the pedestrian plot with arty saturated color in slow or fast motion.

But it's still the same sick story. Even the small touches seem stale. Reeves' character taunts Campbell by photographing each victim and giving him 24 hours to save her. Campbell then does a lot of Blowup-style analysis of the photographs while searching for clues. He finds them — but never in time. After about the third murder, you'll be ready to throw popcorn at the screen.

The most annoying blunder? The soundtrack. The filmmakers obviously tried to borrow from Reeves' blockbuster The Matrix, but all the distracting techno pop songs have nothing to do with what's going on in the movie. It's as if somebody is playing a completely unrelated CD inside the theater.

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Sappy 'November' is still sweet
By Mary F. Pols
Contra Costa Times
Published: Wednesday, February 14, 2001

There are those for whom seeing "Sweet November," the new love story starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, would be a hellish punishment. And then there are those of us — mainly women — for whom it is a guilty pleasure.

We know it's bad, but we don't care. We'll plunk down our money for it the same way we buy In Style magazine every few months. It's a "Calgon-take-me-away!" kind of thing. Escapism. You either get it or you don't.

So maybe "Sweet November" should be judged on two separate scales. It's pretty dreadful, borrowing heavily from the more manipulative elements of "Love Story" and the more twisted aspects of the male-female relationship in "Pretty Woman," with a splash of "Dharma & Greg" cuteness. But as escapism, it's rather gloriously trashy, with two very appealing stars who look lovely while roaming beautiful San Francisco settings and falling in love in a way that people only do within the entertainment world. Sometimes, that's all you want.

It's a remake of an apparently much-loved but little-seen movie of the same name from 1969. The director is Pat O'Connor ("Circle of Friends"), who knows his way around romance. Theron plays Sara Deever, a charming woman who likes to take men under her birdlike wing for a month at a time and teach them how to be free-spirited and silly, just like her. She sleeps with them, feeds them vegan bacon and then, at the end of the month, the relationship ends, no strings attached.

She offers her November slot to an unpleasant workaholic advertising executive named Nelson (Reeves), whom she first meets while taking a DMV test. She believes he needs her help to loosen up and learn to enjoy life. It's unclear whether Sara requires all her patients to be total hunks like Nelson. We're told only that Mr. October was extremely shy and that he graduated from the School of Sara early.

There's something inherently creepy about this whole arrangement, but Nelson doesn't put up much of a fight, beyond calling Sara "Moonbeam" and making a few other amusing we're-so-different references, a la every love story from "Bridget Loves Bernie" right on up through Dharma. External circumstances involving his career ultimately do cause him to cave, though, and soon he's snuggling with Sara and the puppies she's rescued from a lab in Oakland (directing him to drive there, she tells him to get on "the 80," lingo straight out of L.A., not S.F.), wearing the funky clothes she gives him and enjoying their day trips around Potrero Hill.

Nelson starts smelling the roses and being nicer to small children and waitresses. He even learns to be open to her cross-dressing neighbor, Chaz ("The Patriot's" Jason Isaacs, somehow maintaining his dignity within an embarrassingly stereotyped role). Sara is a heck of a therapist for men.

Like Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," she occasionally practices her trade in the bathtub; there's even one soapy scene where Sara sits behind Nelson and wraps her legs around him. Like Richard Gere in "Pretty Woman," Nelson has a colleague (Greg Germann of "Ally McBeal") who mysteriously finds the new girlfriend a threat and acts boorishly as a result, an absolute rip-off of Jason Alexander's "Pretty Woman" character.

In order to play Sara, who has a dark secret involving ill health, the customarily hearty Theron lost buckets of weight from her long lanky frame and acquired a wardrobe of hippie sweaters and fetching scarves. She opens her eyes very wide, like Dharma, and her mouth even wider, like Julia. In her early scenes in the movie, she frequently clutches grocery bags to her chest and eats incessantly — candy bars, nuts, whatever is at hand — possibly because the filmmakers wanted to illustrate her hunger for life, or possibly because Theron the actress was starving to death. The outspoken actress has said publicly, to her credit, that she feels better with a few more pounds on her body, but she's never looked more ravishing than she does in the first half of "Sweet November." Strike me dead, Gloria Steinem.

Two things save "Sweet November" from utter disaster. The first is Reeves' unexpected gift for playing a believably besotted dude; the second is Theron's unexpected gift for charm. True, she's being forced into a dishearteningly kittenish mold of womanhood, but something natural gets through all the posturing the script forces her into. There's one scene where you hear her voice saying, over a shot of the San Francisco skyline, "Look at that, Nelson, that's life; it's just happening around us all the time." It's an awful line, but she's almost convincing. Almost. Say what you will about this overexposed and sometimes off-puttingly cool actress, she does give her all to every part she gets. Moreover, the pair have rather nice chemistry — it's their second outing together; she played his wife in "The Devil's Advocate" — and there may well be a few sniffling people in the audience by the time their November draws to a close.

Valentine's Day may be over, but there's still something out there for us sap-inclined types.

Rating
2 out of 4

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http://www.moviefilmreview.com/street-kings-or-training-day-mark-ii.php

http://www.moviefilmreview.com/street-kings.php

http://www.moviefilmreview.com/street-kings-3.php

"In this densely populated ensemble piece, Reeves stands out as the only actor whose damaged character evokes sympathy and avoids cliché."

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-11-24/film/pippa-lee-desperate-housewife/

http://www.loveromancepassion.com/movie-review-walk-in-the-clouds-starring-keanu-reeves-and-aitana-sanchez-gijon/

personally, I'm in the camp that thinks Reeves did make a good Arctor, character-wise. Physically, maybe Paul Giamatti would have 'looked' more like Arctor, but after seeing American Splendor, the images just don't work for me. Giamatti was Pekar, he can't be also Arctor.
Besides, as I often say, perception is everything. Two people reading the same PKD story won't get the same images in their head. That's the genius of Phil ;)

http://tvdvd.in/a-scanner-darkly-reviews/

A Scanner Darkly Reviews

by admin on Oct.03, 2010, under Indie & Art House
A Scanner Darkly

Set in a not-too-distant future where America has lost its “war” on drugs, Fred, an undercover cop, is one of many people hooked on the popular drug, Substance D, which causes its users to develop split personalities. Fred is obsessed with taking down Bob, a notorious drug dealer, but due to his Substance D addiction, he does not know that he is also Bob. Based on a classic novel by Philip K. Dick. Starring Keanu Reeves (“Constantine,” “The Matrix” trilogy), Academy Award-nominee and Golden Globe-winner Winona Ryder (“Girl, Interupted,” “Mr. Deeds”), Academy Award and Emmy-nominee and Golden Globe-winner Robert Downey Jr. (“Good Night, And Good Luck” “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang”), and Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominee and Emmy-winner Woody Harrelson (“North Country,” “The People vs. Larry Flynt”). Directed by Academy Award-nominee Richard Linklater (“Before Sunset,” “Dazed and Confused”). Filmed in live-action, and then animated using the same critically acclaimed process that Linklater used in his previous film, “Waking Life.”How well you respond to Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly depends on how much you know about the life and work of celebrated science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. While it qualifies as a faithful adaptation of Dick’s semiautobiographical 1977 novel about the perils of drug abuse, Big Brother-like surveillance and rampant paranoia in a very near future (“seven years from now”), this is still very much a Linklater film, and those two qualities don’t always connect effectively. The creepy potency of Dick’s premise remains: The drug war’s been lost, citizens are kept under rigid surveillance by holographic scanning recorders, and a schizoid addict named Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is facing an identity crisis he’s not even aware of: Due to his voluminous intake of the highly addictive psychotropic drug Substance D, Arctor’s brain has been split in two, each hemisphere functioning separately. So he doesn’t know that he’s also Agent Fred, an undercover agent assigned to infiltrate Arctor’s circle of friends (played by Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane, and Robert Downey, Jr.) to track down the secret source of Substance D. As he wears a “scramble suit” that constantly shifts identities and renders Agent Fred/Arctor into “the ultimate everyman,” Dick’s drug-addled antihero must come to grips with a society where, as the movie’s tag-line makes clear, “everything is not going to be OK.”

While it’s virtually guaranteed to achieve some kind of cult status, A Scanner Darkly lacks the paranoid intensity of Dick’s novel, and Linklater’s established penchant for loose and loopy dialogue doesn’t always work here, with an emphasis on drug-culture humor instead of the panicked anxiety that Dick’s novel conveys. As for the use of “interpolated rotoscoping”–the technique used to apply shifting, highly stylized animation over conventional live-action footage–it’s purely a matter of personal preference. The film’s look is appropriate to Dick’s dark, cautionary story about the high price of addiction, but it also robs performances of nuance and turns the seriousness of Dick’s story into… well, a cartoon. Opinions will differ, but A Scanner Darkly is definitely worth a look–or two, if the mind-rattling plot doesn’t sink in the first time around. –Jeff Shannon

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 (out of 164 reviews)

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Chris Pandolfi
October 3rd, 2010 on 8:56 am

Review by Chris Pandolfi for A Scanner Darkly
Rating: 4 out of 5
Here’s the interesting thing about Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly”: for a film about heavy drug use set in the not too distant future, it’s probably one of the most honest and complex anti-drug stories ever told. I say this in spite of the fact that I found the specifics of the plot incredibly difficult to grasp. All I could comprehend were the general bits of information, most of which were gathered from trailers and commercials. Apparently, a fictional drug called Substance D rules the streets of Orange County, California. It’s a highly addictive, brain-frying narcotic that has a long list of negative side effects. It’s also an illegal substance, one that undercover cop Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) has gotten quite familiar with in his attempt to locate its main distributor. Upon infiltrating the home of a group of pill popping slackers, he starts using in order to blend in. Unfortunately, this drugged lifestyle eventually leaves him unable to distinguish reality from hallucinations.

Through the cinematic process of rotoscoping, Linklater has enabled the audience to feel the exact same way as Arctor does. Each frame of film was traced over and stylistically repainted, making the world the characters live in–as well as the characters themselves–look half like a cartoon and half like the physical realm. It was an absolutely incredible look, and I found that it gave the story an added dimension by representing a kind of realistic unreality (if that makes any sense at all). In that sense, it’s almost symbolic that the undercover cops wear scramble suits, which are high tech cloaks with anatomical images that continuously shift from one to the next (apparently, a single suit can project millions of appearances). The state of the world these characters live in is ruled by uncertainty and deception. Arctor is ultimately tested, not only in terms of what he believes to be the truth, but in terms of his state of mind, as well.

I now understand why that rotoscoping process was used for an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel. Only he could have written about the life-destroying effects of an addictive substance. Likewise, only this kind of film can do justice to the point he was trying to make, namely that you can’t trust anyone, especially when you’re addicted to a powerful drug. Unfortunately, elaborating on that point would give too much away; I will say that all in this movie isn’t exactly as it seems, and more than a couple of characters have hidden agendas. There are a number of truths hidden amongst the film’s eccentric style, and by the time you get halfway through, you’re completely lost.

However, this is the kind of movie you don’t mind getting lost in, even if you have no idea what’s going on. I have to admit that while I understood the underlying message of the story, I barely understood this film as a whole. Watching the sequences unfold and listening to the characters interact is almost as brain scrambling as the evil Substance D is. This is especially true of the conversations between James Barris (Robert Downey, Jr.), Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), and Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), three of Arctor’s equally spaced out friends. Their esoteric banter flows seamlessly from topic to topic in an Altered Consciousness sort of way, filled with anti-establishment ramblings that almost come off as poetic. It even gets comical at times; during a road trip to San Diego, Barris claims he left the front door of their house unlocked and attached a note for burglars to read (which, supposedly, was all part of an elaborate scheme to record the intruder and solve the mystery behind the Substance D ring).

There are some interesting moments shared between Arctor and his girlfriend, Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder). Their relationship revolves around their mutual abuse of Substance D, which doesn’t exactly enhance their moments together so much as it leaves them in a perpetually dazed state of awareness. Their conversations are almost as esoteric as those of Barris, Luckman, and Freck, the only difference being a small degree of intimate, meaningful language. One also gets the sense that Arctor is trying to understand Donna as a person, specifically why she’s behaving in certain ways. He knows how devastating the effects of Substance D can be, and he fears that maybe she’s going too far with her usage. The two show genuine concern for one another, even when they find themselves lost in a conversation about drooping, floating cats.

Despite the free flowing course the story takes, everything does come together by the end. “A Scanner Darkly” is one of those movies that can cleverly hide behind a hallucinogenic facade in order to convey a serious message. If you’re considering seeing this movie, you have to be willing to get jerked around somewhat, especially when it comes to your expectations for solid characterizations and straightforward storytelling. I think I knew all along that I’d find this film confusing; the ads made it perfectly clear that this was a very unconventional project. But in the end, I didn’t really mind; the story takes on the form of a seriously warped puzzle, and I welcomed the opportunity to put the pieces together and figure things out for myself.

Let me end by quoting the tagline from Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth”: “A world where everything seems possible, and nothing is as it seems.” I find this to be a fitting way to describe the world of “A Scanner Darkly.” If you see it with that quote in mind, you just might come away with a better understanding of it.

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Lisa Shea
October 3rd, 2010 on 9:49 am

Review by Lisa Shea for A Scanner Darkly
Rating: 5 out of 5
This is a movie you definitely want on DVD – because you’ll want to watch it first with just the movie playing, and then after that with the audio soundtrack that includes director Richard Linklater, actor Keanu Reeves and most importantly the daughter of Philip K Dick. The insights that she provides into the movie and the storyline are priceless.

It’s important to realize that Philip K Dick usually wrote about characters, not action sequences – and specifically, he wrote about those in society who did not “fit in” well. If you look through his stories, you’ll find they often feature people who are misfits, who society overlooks or forgets. In A Scanner Darkly, the featured ‘oddballs’ are druggies hooked on Substance D – a drug that is never really described, but apparently causes paranoia and hallucinations.

The key here is to sit down with a glass of wine, a big bowl of popcorn and settle back for a character-driven story. This isn’t a Rambo or Dirty Dozen story – it’s about how people relate to each other, in many subtle ways. It’s a study of interactions.

I really appreciate that this was done in a combination of real life acting and animation. It floors me that in modern times anyone might look down on this because it is a “cartoon”. Is a Renoir less worthy than an Ansel Adams because a Renoir was done by hand? Animation isn’t inherently kiddie. Hand drawn works can contain quite mature topics. In this case it is *ideally* suited to the story – because a main aspect of the tale is that the characters never quite know what is real and what is imagination. Are the bugs really there? Can he trust what he sees? All signs point to NO. The viewer is caught up in this same confused world. If this had been live action, then ‘odd things’ would have instantly stood out. But the point of a drug haze is that everything seems ‘unreal’ – and so odd things fit into that flow much more smoothly.

If you don’t know druggies, rest assured that characters like this are quite average – and this story is in essence an autobiography of Philip K Dick’s life in the 70s. He lived in a house just like this with his two brothers after his divorce. He lost his wife and two young girls. He was very paranoid that one of his house-mates was a narc, spying on their druggie activities. One of his friends did think bugs were crawling on him. At the end of the movie is Dick’s actual ending to the story – a list of his friends who were damaged or slain by drugs. Included on this list are his ex-wife and himself.

So what you have in the movie are the druggies at turns being nice to each other, being very cruel to each other, mistrusting each other, and turning to each other for help. One of the druggies – Bob – is actually a narc cop code-named Fred. He’s gone undercover to figure out who is supplying Substance D to the area. Unfortunately, he’s gotten himself hooked during his undercover work. Even worse, part of what Substance D does is to destroy your brain – so he’s developed in essence split personalities. The Bob-Druggie part forgets most of the time he IS a narc. The narc half of him, when he’s in the police station, knows he’s spying on this group of druggies but forgets that he is one of them. So when the narc is told to specifically spy on “Bob”, he literally doesn’t realize that this is him.

Here’s where the movie – trying to stuff a dense book into under 2 hours – has some problems. If you haven’t read the book, it’s not clear at all that Narc-Fred forgets who he is when he goes undercover as Bob. It’s a big twist in the book, but in the movie it seems clear to the watcher that it’s the same person, and it’s not made clear in the story that he’s forgetting his “other half”.

Other than that, the story is really pretty straightforward, plot-wise. The druggies are paranoid about the world around them and plug on with their lives. The cops are trying to figure out who the supplier is, so they bug the house and try to get that information. Like most Dick stories, there’s a twist, although to be honest I thought it would be a much larger twist. Also, like most Dick stories, there’s little female presence and the ending is only slightly hopeful. These aren’t happy-go-lucky romances that he writes – they are dark warnings about where society is heading when it marginalizes those who don’t fit in perfectly.

If you’re confused about the movie, I definitely recommend reading the novel. That might be easier to grasp and give you more insight into the characters. Then go back and watch the movie again – taking it slow. Pay attention to the nuances of what they say, and how the characters relate. See how they feel society is treating them – and then take a look what society actually does with these people. Maybe they aren’t quite so paranoid after all – maybe there is some resaon for how they feel.

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cassdog
October 3rd, 2010 on 10:36 am

Review by cassdog for A Scanner Darkly
Rating: 5 out of 5
I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. It is not a movie glorifying drug use. It is a disturbingly accurate portrayal of the paranoia, confusion, selfishness and loss of personality that comes with the territory of being a junky. All told in a mildly sci-fi, hallucinatory and even humorous manner with a slight twist at the end. But don’t be dissuaded if this sounds too heavy. It is quite entertaining, humorous and filled with great performances.

I am a little surprised at some of the reactions to this movie from people that couldn’t understand it, or had trouble visualizing the movie with the unique animation, or didn’t see the change in tone to a darker story that was blaringly obvious. To me the animation style was essential and even the scatter suits were reminiscent of the visualizations one gets on psychedelic drugs. The two doctors which were competing just like the two halves of his brain was amazing. The scene where he looks around his bosses desk and his visualizations aren’t quite right is spine-tingling. The confused, paranoid, stoner scenes were brilliantly funny and equally disturbing but also very easy to follow. The performances particularly by Robert Downey Jr. were dead-on accurate, extremely entertaining personalities.

So don’t be dissuaded by reviewers criticizing the specifics of the arresting animation, or who were confused by the plot and therefore thought it was thin and hard to follow. The problem in these cases lies with the viewer. This is a deeply emotional, easy to follow but very entertaining look at the drug subculture.

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N. Durham
October 3rd, 2010 on 10:47 am

Review by N. Durham for A Scanner Darkly
Rating: 4 out of 5
Richard Linklater may seem like an odd choice at first to bring Philip K. Dick’s classic story to life, yet with his pretty faithful screenplay and innovative film techniques, Linklater makes perfect sense to direct A Scanner Darkly. Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, and Rory Cochrane play drugged up, strung out friends hooked on a drug called Substance D in Orange Country, California in the very near future. Reeves is Bob, who unbeknownst to his friends, is an undercover spy for the government looking to gather info on the group, and wouldn’t you know it that his two personalities begin to split until he doesn’t know what’s what. For the most part, Linklater nails the paranoid tone and feeling of being an addict, and the performances, particularly from Downey and Cochrane, are superb. Even Reeves goes beyond his typical, wooden self and gives a great performance. The biggest drawback of A Scanner Darkly is also it’s biggest draw however: Linklater’s “roto-scoping” technique (giving it the graphic novel look) which he used in Waking Life, doesn’t always suit the story and tone. When the comedic elements strike, everything is brilliant. However, when the more serious and heart breaking elements of Dick’s story come into play, the animation feels gimmicky. Despite that, A Scanner Darkly is still one of the best sci-fi movies released this year, and regardless of whether you are a fan of PKD or Linklater, this is definitely worth seeing.

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Vincenzo Francis
October 3rd, 2010 on 10:54 am

Review by Vincenzo Francis for A Scanner Darkly
Rating: 5 out of 5
Something which continues and builds upon what we have alread see? No my friends; great filmaking is something entirly original. What we have here, is a completly original movie complete with a star-studded cast. The plot isn’t that insane-anyone can watch this movie and really walk away with more than with what they took in.

Oh, and this is one of the most gorgious Blu-ray titles I have yet seen! Honestly, the transfer will blow you away! Total eye-candy.

ASD is one of my favorite Keanu and non-Keanu movies ever, and it feels good to read these reviews .

thanks again.