djalex

I am a Linklater fan but not a fan of this. On the + side it does leave you with a bit of feeling nostalgic for what may have happened for you in real life but only because you are saying to yourself "thats not what it was like in a punk club i the 80's" at the screen. It has smudges of Linklater's touch that you might have wanted when you sought out this film to watch. The major problem out of many is Its full of cliches borrowed from the movies and its not based on any reality. its like a commercial for an adolescent fantasy for what some kids older brother may have been doing in the 80's based on the bulls**t stories he overheard him tell people to impress them. At best It gives you the feeling you are watching a teen sexploitation film from the 80's that ran on hbo on a loop so you got used to it and liked it because it reminded you of when you were 12 and that film was always on. None of the college age characters look their age. Every single woman is a babe who's purpose is to be chased for sex or is to deny sex to the men. I dont mind that their is no story because thats what linklater is able to usually pull off ( a kind of moment in time without the annoying hollywood narrative overdrive). I can't remember a single character's name and had a hard time remembering the differences between them. It was an effort to listen to them talk about what they cared about or to care about them at all. Every setting is a film set that has no basis in reality. If this movie was in a different genre handled by a different director these overly fake sets, settings and wardrobe could be seen as forced on purpose to make a point about Americas love for its idea of itself. But this isn't that genre or type of film or the point at all. The poor directing, casting (not the actors performances but their obvious age discrepency) art direction, props and wardobe are not serving anything but to make a really insulated limited film in the same way a tv commercial or music video is made simply to sell one emotion and associate it with a cheap product that needs to fly off the shelves fast. I would love to see a filmmaker who criticizes hollywood and Americas addiction to its fake narratives about itself make a response to this type of cliche factory that is Everybody Wants Some. What would it be like if Paul Verhoven made this film with these same terrible choices the way he did with Starship Troopers to mock hollywood while making hollywood, thereby, both succeeding in the genre while simultaneously mocking it and the audience for buying into it. Or it would be great to see a dark response to this cliche filmmaking with a film by Michael Haneke or Von Trier showing the destructiveness of these boring cliches being forced down our throats over and over. Everybody Wants Some has a few charms if you do the work to extract them from its horrible media cliches. This film is not nostalgia for anything that can be believed to have happened in real life its simply a post card from bad 80's movies about bad 80's college movies and it feels like a commercial about that post card. Shallow dead pop with little entertainment value in dialogue, sequences or events of any kind.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

this film has great lighting in it. great set design if it was just for looking at a set. its the first attempt to mix film noir with sci fi creating the space noir genre. thats it. THIS IS THE MOST OVER RATED FILM IN THE HISTORY OF FILM. In fact, this film is a perfect failure on almost every level. The basic problem: it undermines its own premise. no animals but they have fur coats and leather and tasty joints to eat noodles out of ,,,yum! the world was destroyed so most people live off world except the opening shot looks like detroit in its hey-day not to mention the streets are packed and there are construction lights everywhere (there must have been an infrustructure stimulus packaged passed). the dialogue is horrendous "we scarred each other pretty good didn't we [giggle giggle]? we sure did!" . the genius scientist (jr) is also a naive idiot. the main character is not interested in anything that is going on and has no impetus to be involved in the movie at all. the opening scene where the rival bounty hunter is killed should be gripping and its just a guy getting shot. this film took me 8 times to watch before i completed it without falling asleep. then i saw the directors cut and it was even worse. how this makes anyones top ten sci fi films list is beyond me other than the fact that the lighting and cinematography are amazing. its a series of still photos and should be presented as such.

The actors are all great. its the characters that are bland. I almost thought this film was stupid and then I realized its genius... this film is about how Americans are stupid and entitled and have no problem solving skills are basically uneducated and just react to fear. its like funny games. its a big metaphor for how most people in america are incapable of looking at a problem and coming up with solutions. just throw stuff at stuff or just jump is the best the characters can do. None of them have ever seen somebody climb down from a great height. none of them know anything about frost bite. they even have a lighter and don't try to makea signal fire or just to keep away the wolves. its amazing. its a perfect example of how Americans just mindlessly enter situations they feel they are entitled to and then just throw a tantrum when it doesn't work out. brilliant.

this film is entertaining and a surprise. it has its dumb elements but they don't interfere with your being engrossed in a nearly non stop chase. quirky and cute and fast and fun. One of the best action movies to come around in a long time. don't expect to learn anything or become aware of some social issue but you believe it all enough and care about the characters enough to enjoy yourself.

I am a horror, zombie and sci-fi fan and this satisfies all of the above with originality and great tension. The acting and directing are very good in this movie. The concept is really clever as well. There is one moment near the end that makes this movie an 8 and not a 10. MAYBE CONSIDERED A SPOILER: The DJ finally figures out what to do and right in the middle of building this moment up to a crescendo the writer/ director has him go into a preachy diatribe about war. It completely ruins the turning point of the story. It has nothing to do with what the characters are going through and is clearly the preachy voice of the filmmaker intruding in on the story and tension. Otherwise the movie hooked me and kept me guessing with great tension. I really hated that they ruined that with dialogue about men wanting war. In the very very end we are left to an ambiguous fonal moment that we think we know the answer to. I think we have had enough endings in films like that for a while I would have liked to see a clever execution of the very end they hinted at. of course filming this last moment would have probably cost as much as the whole movie so i can understand them leaving it to the imagination.

I gace this film a 5 and not a zero because of the fine work of the actors, editors, cameramen and other technicians. In fact, even the directing is good for its purpose. This kind of film puts me on the fence because the acting, directing, and editing are all very good in a lot of these kinds of films. You believe its happening while you watch and you suspect this kind of thing could possibly happen... at least while the film's tension is making you grit your teeth. On the other hand, the whole point of the film and what it suggests is what ruins it. This is torture porn or what I call "The cruelty genre" where humans have absolutely no regard for another human and behave in ways that are very unrealistic in the scope of real life situations. The films character's become so focused on their cruel needs that nothing in the real world intercedes like hunger, boredom, fatigue, distractions, changes in loyalty the fact that someone might sneeze. once the cruel characters start their mission they become demons that never faulter in their quest to inflict harm on the protagonists and this is just stupid. We have seen films make a fine point with extreme violence and the social monsters we create in neglected environments (clockwork orange). How many more of these films do we need to see where the only point is pure manipulation of the audience. The only point is tension itself. There is an old commercial made in the states for Dupont by the agency Young & Rubicam where a voice over tells you how a material made by Dupont is incredibly temperature neutral. They show a metal box made of this material. they show a bunson burner boiling water. they put a baby chick in the box and place the box holding the live chick in the boiling water and the voice over speaks very languidly about the product. the tension is enormous as you feel you are watching this poor little chick die. then they take the box out and the chick is perfectly fine. They sold me. amazing. what is this film selling me? fear and hatred toward the neglected class? please. How many more filmmakers are going to try and say the same thing using human cruelty as their medium. if you need to see this message expressed watch "Funny Games" it has a point and it makes you squirm. IT is probably the last film that should ever be made about callous and mindless cruelty.

The main character is distractingly sensual and hot looking with a pretty face a hot body and a breathy voice. In the first 30 minutes It just annoyed me to death knowing this was about a real murderer's crimes and I was watching a pretty actress prove she can act. The movie tapped into a few irritating cliches as well to remind me it was garbage. Eventually, with great patience and effort I bought into the hot-chick as investigator and thought she did a good job with the character. Timothy Hutton was the best actor in the whole movie and toward the end I felt mildly entertained. I am not a fan of the concept of dead victims egging on investigators to solve their murder. This would have been a much more compelling film if the lead looked like a real person and not a pretty-little-actress and if they could have expressed the main characters destructive obsession/ ocd about the case without the japanese demon ghosts.