I like a lot of things about "Nirvana" - the ambiance, the soundtrack, most of Lambert's performance, the central "quest" of his character, and the general depiction of a future world in which most human meaning and connection has been subsumed by virtual realities.
I don't rate it as high as I might for a couple of reasons: 1) The actual depiction and rationale for Solo's abrupt shift to self awareness isn't convincing at all, and neither is the depiction of the game itself. Seriously in an age of immersive games like Skyrim and Crysis, or even World of Warcraft (for the 90's), who would want to play a dreary game like this? (It is kind of clever that Solo reminds me so much of Mario). If you want to see a real depiction of an immersive VR game that you can believe would seize the collective imagination of a huge worldwide audience, watch "Avalon".
2) Some of the smaller roles aren't acted, depicted, or scripted very well ("Joystick"? Really?). I will gladly admit that some of this might be an issue with the dubbing in English, but I have to respond to the movie I saw, not whatever it was like in the original Italian - this is why I always prefer to hear the original voice acting and read subtitles if I can.
3) Let's face it, the screenplay just drags in spots. I can sympathize with the balance the director had to maintain between mood, ambiance, and action, but I don't think the end result was as good as it could have been for about half the scenes. Again, the gold standard for me in this kind of subject is "Avalon", which is equally moody and full of discussion and ambiance and empty silences, but never drags.
Still, if you want an "art house" movie version of "The Matrix", this might be worth your time, and you might disagree with my reaction to the movie's pacing and some of the dialog and end up enjoying it more than I.
I don't rate it as high as I might for a couple of reasons: 1) The actual depiction and rationale for Solo's abrupt shift to self awareness isn't convincing at all, and neither is the depiction of the game itself. Seriously in an age of immersive games like Skyrim and Crysis, or even World of Warcraft (for the 90's), who would want to play a dreary game like this? (It is kind of clever that Solo reminds me so much of Mario). If you want to see a real depiction of an immersive VR game that you can believe would seize the collective imagination of a huge worldwide audience, watch "Avalon".
2) Some of the smaller roles aren't acted, depicted, or scripted very well ("Joystick"? Really?). I will gladly admit that some of this might be an issue with the dubbing in English, but I have to respond to the movie I saw, not whatever it was like in the original Italian - this is why I always prefer to hear the original voice acting and read subtitles if I can.
3) Let's face it, the screenplay just drags in spots. I can sympathize with the balance the director had to maintain between mood, ambiance, and action, but I don't think the end result was as good as it could have been for about half the scenes. Again, the gold standard for me in this kind of subject is "Avalon", which is equally moody and full of discussion and ambiance and empty silences, but never drags.
Still, if you want an "art house" movie version of "The Matrix", this might be worth your time, and you might disagree with my reaction to the movie's pacing and some of the dialog and end up enjoying it more than I.