HorusEye

I enjoyed this film although I'm in no ways its target audience. It's a teen film, primarily for chicks, but I'm having a cold and my wife isn't home, so perhaps I'm a little more sentimental than usual.

It starts off like any other coming of age yarn. Clary, our protagonist, is littering the house with drawings of her womb, a clear sign that she's on the verge of Growing Up. Luckily, she runs into the right people first, and they teach her what she needs to know about tattoos and black outfits with buckled boots, and all that other stuff that makes you cool and adult. A romance story is fired up right away as well, between Clary and this guy Jonathan with the cool sticky hair and silky British voice, and the two seem a little naive in that they don't pick up on each other's signals, but I guess that takes some life experience.

The story is very simple, utilizing all the expected elements of the genre, but does manage to keep them fairly fresh, and the plot has sufficient twists to stay interesting, although most of them have only minor impact on later turns of events. At some points it meanders a little and several scenes could have been cut out without affecting the plot at all. It would have suited the film to be a little bit shorter.

The characters are all exceptionally pretty people, and most of them have no character flaws either, yet it didn't become annoying like it very easily does in such cases. Clary is sympathetic enough for one to care about her, and it helps keeping you involved in the story despite the often predictable setup.

All in all, it had good entertainment value, and I think I only zoned out briefly a couple of times. Worth a watch, just don't expect anything from the Deep End of the pool.

While this beautiful noir sci-fi thriller at times appears to have streaks of b-movie material in it, the intelligent story, beautiful cinematography and perfected goth-noir tone makes it one of a kind. It predates The Matrix, yet surpasses it in many ways, in its philosophical exploration of reality, perception of reality, and the workings of the human mind and soul (without turning pretentious or boring). Wachowski Brothers played it safe when making The Matrix. Alex Proyas has far more guts than the brothers put together, and his movie remains unpredictable and wondrous throughout, solidly tied together by the visual style that seems to be the director's strongest side, and without having to resort to endless fight sequences in order to create suspense. Dark City doesn't need Kung Fu - it's got suspense oozing from its very fabric, and keeps you wondering what happens next.