SPOILERS There is no Blue Fairy who can turn robut Pinocchios into real boys. All the governments in the world create mandatory Communist China style population controls after the ice caps melt in global warming, flooding New York City and leading to mass famines in Africa, but the whole human race becomes extinct anyhow so who cares one way or the other. Robuts get created for seemingly few other purposes except as sex toys for warped Freudian libidos and to have something human-looking that we can destroy horribly to express some sick Freudian thanatos. The little robut kid's human mother dies and the friendly ETs can only bring her back to life for one day before she's dead forever. For the final turn of the screw, David the little android hero of this film dies along with his mother at the end of the film. Any parent who lets their kids see this nihilistic gothic horror story pretending to be a fairy tale should be charged with child abuse. I can't believe anybody as optimistic about life as Spielberg normally is could have created a film this grotesque and evil beyond redemption.
Reviews
3 Reviews
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
(2001)
Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here
5 August 2002
Warning: Spoilers
The Thin Man Goes Home
(1944)
The Great American Dream
8 January 2002
All the Thin Man films are great to watch, but this is one with which I find a bit easier to identify. Riskin, the writer of this film and long time scriptwriter for Frank Capra, was also the guy who wrote "It Happened One Night" and "Meet John Doe". This New York City born writer's attraction to average Joe small town values over Cosmopolitan glitz and decadence obvious in those two films is plain to see here. This is probably the image a lot of successful urbanites had about moving to the suburbs after WW2.
This is sort of an odd bird among Thin Man films in a couple of ways. First of all, Nick is astonishingly sober for a change. Don't look for any of those scenes of Nick and Nora trying to drink each other the table at some New York nightclub in this one. In fact, the nightclubs and high rises are totally gone as Nick takes Nora the glamorous New York socialite back for a visit to Nick's hometown, which bears a fairly strong likeness to Andy Hardy's. Nick's father is a retired M.D. not unlike the ones in the Norman Rockwell paintings. He wanted Nick to follow in his footsteps as a small town doctor instead of becoming a big city policeman and this is the first time the two of them have gotten together in years. This father-son reconciliation is the explanation for Nick's sudden uncharacteristic attraction to a sober, healthy lifestyle.
Nick's father is actually fairly proud of Nick and keeps a scrapbook about all his adventures. The whole town knows about Nick Charles the famous Detective. I sort of see invisible images of G.I.s returning home from WW2 in a lot of this movie. Nick's celebrity as a tough, smart local boy who went off to bring gun toting gangsters to justice in the big city of aristocratic sophisticates and Broadway nights is not very far removed from how most Americans probably saw the guys who went off to liberate Paris and Europe in WW2. Nora fits into that picture as a sort of "Mrs. Miniver" figure of what American's admired about European sophication brought back home to meet the folks.
The homecoming hero vision of Nick peacefully turning into a happy coach potato in a post war suburbia however is not what we want to see. What everybody loves about the Thin Man films is their contrary to Hollywood stereotype revelation that life after marriage can actually be exciting. Nora decides to get Nick off the coach with an "I Love Lucy" sort of plot twist that spreads a rumor around town that Nick is secretly working on a detective case. The result of course is that all the various local characters with small town secrets to hide think he's after them and all the mystery murders and skeletons start coming out of the closet like we've all been waiting to see. Nick and Nora are such a fun couple, aren't they?
This is sort of an odd bird among Thin Man films in a couple of ways. First of all, Nick is astonishingly sober for a change. Don't look for any of those scenes of Nick and Nora trying to drink each other the table at some New York nightclub in this one. In fact, the nightclubs and high rises are totally gone as Nick takes Nora the glamorous New York socialite back for a visit to Nick's hometown, which bears a fairly strong likeness to Andy Hardy's. Nick's father is a retired M.D. not unlike the ones in the Norman Rockwell paintings. He wanted Nick to follow in his footsteps as a small town doctor instead of becoming a big city policeman and this is the first time the two of them have gotten together in years. This father-son reconciliation is the explanation for Nick's sudden uncharacteristic attraction to a sober, healthy lifestyle.
Nick's father is actually fairly proud of Nick and keeps a scrapbook about all his adventures. The whole town knows about Nick Charles the famous Detective. I sort of see invisible images of G.I.s returning home from WW2 in a lot of this movie. Nick's celebrity as a tough, smart local boy who went off to bring gun toting gangsters to justice in the big city of aristocratic sophisticates and Broadway nights is not very far removed from how most Americans probably saw the guys who went off to liberate Paris and Europe in WW2. Nora fits into that picture as a sort of "Mrs. Miniver" figure of what American's admired about European sophication brought back home to meet the folks.
The homecoming hero vision of Nick peacefully turning into a happy coach potato in a post war suburbia however is not what we want to see. What everybody loves about the Thin Man films is their contrary to Hollywood stereotype revelation that life after marriage can actually be exciting. Nora decides to get Nick off the coach with an "I Love Lucy" sort of plot twist that spreads a rumor around town that Nick is secretly working on a detective case. The result of course is that all the various local characters with small town secrets to hide think he's after them and all the mystery murders and skeletons start coming out of the closet like we've all been waiting to see. Nick and Nora are such a fun couple, aren't they?
The Thirteenth Floor
(1999)
"Matrix" for Sane People
2 January 2002
I enjoyed "The Thirteenth Floor" far more than "Matrix". I'm a happily married adult. I do not consider Reality to be controlled by an Evil Cyborg Conspiracy (probably not by coincidence resembling the Drug Enforcement Agency) which is the basic worldview of "Matrix". I personally think Keenu Reeves running around with machine pistols engaging in psychotic suicidal acts of armed terrorism against the Establishment displays the mindset of folks who fly jets into the Pentagon. As a professional soldier in the U.S. Army, that aspect of "Matrix" really didn't appeal to me.
"The Thirteenth Floor" isn't like that. It's more like one those Star Trek holochamber episodes set in Dashiel Hammett's 1930s. The violence is kept to about a "Maltese Falcon" level, and the good guy isn't a terrorist. The vision of the human future it leaves you with is humanity friendly, unlike the rather morbid view of Ultimate Reality in "Matrix".
The idea of having our own private little 1930s virtual reality to step into is something an American Movie Classics/ Turner Classic Movies fan like myself could really get into. I would love to see a "13th Floor" sequel or series someday.
The only thing that really bothered me was the wuss premise that 1990s folks taking possession of the 1930s folks ala Sam Becket in "Quantum Leap" was inherently wrong. I would think that would depend on whose identity you put yourself into and what you did with their identity while you had it. The "reality is unreal" bit didn't bother me at all. I've pretty much suspected that for years.
"The Thirteenth Floor" isn't like that. It's more like one those Star Trek holochamber episodes set in Dashiel Hammett's 1930s. The violence is kept to about a "Maltese Falcon" level, and the good guy isn't a terrorist. The vision of the human future it leaves you with is humanity friendly, unlike the rather morbid view of Ultimate Reality in "Matrix".
The idea of having our own private little 1930s virtual reality to step into is something an American Movie Classics/ Turner Classic Movies fan like myself could really get into. I would love to see a "13th Floor" sequel or series someday.
The only thing that really bothered me was the wuss premise that 1990s folks taking possession of the 1930s folks ala Sam Becket in "Quantum Leap" was inherently wrong. I would think that would depend on whose identity you put yourself into and what you did with their identity while you had it. The "reality is unreal" bit didn't bother me at all. I've pretty much suspected that for years.
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