Johnny Mnemonic

Again, like I have said in many of my posts.... This is my first time seeing Johnny Mnemonic. To be honest, I really liked it. Not only was the plot line incredibly interesting, it was nice to see Ice-Tea playing a serious role (that's not a joke, he was the leader of the Low-Techs). What was weird though, was to see Keanu Reeves playing an almost identical role as the one he played in The Matrix (the 'one' who was sent to save the world). On another note, the movie was really intriguing in the way the director portrayed the future with the issue of human information carriers. The way that people can simply have implants in their heads that act as hard-drives that are capable of storing information that can be transported is phenomenal. It is almost analogous to e-mail. This movie was made in 1995, when the Internet was in its infancy, so the directors were really visionaries in that aspect. Overall I really enjoyed this movie. Johnny Mnemonic made me think about how people in the past as well as present envision the future and its digital capabilities... it's wild. I really enjoyed the film, if not for it's special effects, the way the viewer is forced to see a wild and wonderful vision of the future is spectacular.

Total Recall

Again, this was the first time I'd seen the movie and again, I was very impressed. As of last week I had not seen an Arnold movie that I enjoyed (sorry all you Terminator and Jingle all the Way fans), however Total Recall was less of an Arnold movie and more a just plain mind intriguing movie. It was great. I love films that make you so uncertain of what's going on that it's entertaining, like Memento and Reservoir Dogs. The fact that throughout the entire movie, the audience was forced to question whether Quaid was in a dream or actually experiencing this secret agent lifestyle is amazing. The writing was superb. When this film was made, virtual reality was in its infancy and that its possibilities were endless, and I suppose still are. Total Recall explored the doors that virtual reality has opened: alternate realities, false memories, etc. I am upset that this was the first time I'm seen this film, I wish I had seen it long ago so that I could have re-watched it a hundred times so I could figure out exactly what happened. To be honest, even after class discussions, I still have a hard time believing that from the second Quaid entered Rekall that he was in a dream. Regardless, I foung this movie thought provoking and extremely entertaining. Bravo Arnold.