June 6, 2009

Dark City

Title: Dark City
Year: 1998
Director: Alex Proyas
Writers: Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs & David S. Goyer
Starring: Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O'Brien
Music: Trevor Jones
Length: 100 minutes / 111 minutes (director's cut)
Synopsis: a man wakes up with no memory, apparently a murderer; oh, and aliens control the world
How I saw it: on video many times (have on DVD), most recently (director's cut, rented from Netflix) August 2008
Subjective Rating: 10/10 (Favorite of my favorites).
Objective Rating: 10/10 c. 3.9/4 (Great).

This is such a bizarre and interesting movie. Sutherland's acting is a little off, but otherwise everything is nearly perfect.

As for the director's cut, there are two major changes, and both are significant improvements. However, there are also a million other tiny changes, adding a line or two of dialog here and there that contributes nothing and sometimes makes the flow of the scene awkward. There's a lot more explaining, of things that never needed explaining; just sort of introducing details for the sake of explaining them. It still gets the same 10/10 as the original version, but I'd have to say it's not quite as good.

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