A Scanner Darkly

Another one based on a novel by Philip K. Dick…and another one I have yet to read.
It was made in 2006…which surprised me…I thought it was older than that.
Takes place in the future, I can’t recall how far exactly…or if they even tell you?…Basically, a big majority of the country is addicted to drugs…in particular, this new drug, Substance D. Police surveillance is very invasive and intense…Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is meant to go undercover as a drug user…make friends with other drug users (Robert Downey Jr, and Woody Harrelson).
Arctor ends up getting hooked on drugs himself and falls in love with a girl, Winona Ryder, who is providing him with the drugs.
He ends up totally immersed in this new lifestyle…and the hemispheres in his brain are no longer functioning properly…causing him to lose the ability to distinguish between himself as a cop and a drug addict.
I was actually really impressed with the acting in this movie…aside from Keanu Reeves. I’ve never really been a big Keanu Reeves fan, and…I just wasn’t feeling it. Woody Harrelson especially was hilarious. Robert Downey Jr. was really quirky and odd. Even Rory Cochrane was hilarious with his portrayal of a heavy drug user…his facial expressions were just priceless.
The animation was really neat…and I’m sure took an incredibly long time to complete…but I think it was worth it. It made it different…added to the whole…I dunno. I felt like the whole movie I was wondering what was actually real. Were these people believing what they were seeing? Or seeing what they were believing?…kinda thing.
The beginning was a little slow, but it definitely worked itself out in the end…I really loved the ending.
Arctor is sent to rehab to recover…after the cops supposedly figure out that he is actually addicted to drugs too. We find out that their intention all along was to get Arctor addicted. The reason being that the number one rehab center, where people addicted go to recover, is suspected of actually manufacturing and distributing Substance D. In order to get anywhere near the center, you need to be heavily addicted to substance D. The girl, Winona Ryder, who he fell in love with as his drug dealer…was actually his boss. This was unkown to him, because everyone in that field of work wears these scramble suits that make them look like multiple people at once and change very frequently. She was one of the ones most responsible for setting him up. Their hope was to get him in the center, and hope that he still had a little bit of sense left in him, enough to find proof and be able to relay it back to the cops. He is actually sent to do farm work in the rehab center, and stumbles across rows and rows of blue flowers…which just so happen to be what they use to make substance D. The movie ends with him tucking a blue flower into his boot, and saying that its for his friends when he gets to go back and visit in a few months, at Thanksgiving…and that’s how its left off. I really liked the ending…I was hoping that they were going to put a twist in it.
I also liked…after the movie ended, but before the credits, there was a scrolling list of people dead/damaged because of extensive drug use. It was good, overall…and I think I liked it more than Blade Runner…which I’m not sure if that’s strange…from the ratings I’ve read, it seemed like Blade Runner got better reviews…but I found this more entertaining…and had more ‘huh…’ moments :P

8.7/10

Little Otik

I have no idea how I heard about this movie…but I’m glad I did. It’s based on this Czech fairy tale about this couple who can’t have a child. In desperation to make his wife happy, the husband carves a baby out of a stump he dug up that resembles a child. When he gives it to his wife, almost immediately I think he realizes that it was a bad mistake. She immediately attaches to it, and cares for it as if it were real.
She puts a huge amount of effort into creating this lie that she’s pregnant…different sized pregnancy stomachs and everything…I’m sure she’s convinced herself that she’s pregnant. After she finally “gives birth” the husband comes home to find the baby alive…haha yah, wtf this wooden baby is now breastfeeding…
She keeps the baby hidden from others…obviously if people saw they would be very suspicious and well…that’s not normal…
The baby, who they named Otik in case that wasn’t obvious, grew at an extremely fast pace, and had an incredible appetite…for flesh…dun dun dunnn XD
At the same time as this whole thing is unfolding, the next-door neighbor, a little girl, is reading a Czech fairytale. The fairytale is eerily similar to what the girl is observing next door.
First of all, the stop motion in this film was fantastic, and I wish that there were more…all the scenes with Otik were done with stop motion.
Something I think the film could have done without would have been…when the girl was reading the story out loud…they took us and actually showed us scenes from what she was reading…and, it just felt redundant to me, because most of them ended up happening in real life anyway. I mean, that could have been done on purpose, well, I’m sure it was done on purpose, but it just didn’t work for me…personally.
I think I need to look into more of this directors films…talking to a few people, they’ve said that a couple of his other films are actually much better…so, if I enjoyed this one as much as I did, I think I’ll enjoy the others.
Funniest moments in the movie…the dinner times at the next door neighbors house. Every single meal was absolutely disgusting! Haha. That, and the father in that household, it just cracked me up.
Annnd one more thing, the ending. I loved how it ended. We are read from the book, that the way that Otik is killed is by an old woman with a hoe, a gardening hoe…and she slices his stomach and everyone/thing he has eaten comes out. They end the movie with the old woman, hoe over her shoulder, marching down the stairs, determined look on her face, with the little girl practically hanging off her legs, protesting and screaming for her to stop. (:

7.8/10