A cold, bleak, paranoid thriller. I am a sucker for practical effects and this delivered almost too well, I made faces of digust more than once. The atmosphere of paranoia and dread was well made.
If there's people still heatedly discussing the ending like their lives depend on it forty years later, it's a good film.
Saw in theaters. Enjoyable interpretation of a classic vampire story. Having read Dracula over the summer made it even more fun to compare the plots, you can see how this started with the original Nosferatu as a Dracula ripoff but became just enough of its own thing to keep its own identity. The rats, plague, and identity of Orlok as a primal animal evil as opposed to the refined aristocrat stereotype was fun.
It's worth addressing the sexual undertones since…
Very solid action movie with bits of commentary on military police, privitized public services, and the general commodification of everything, down to your dead body.
It doesn't really get into the details of any of those critiques, but I mean, it's RoboCop. It's meant to be so over the top that any attempt at being more nuanced would've probably come across as pretentious.
Also massive fan of the use of stop motion for the military murder drone, and generally awesome practical effects throughout. The satirical television segments were all also fantastic.
Thoroughly enjoyable. For a movie that hinges heavily on being self-aware and satirical, it manages to still feel genuine instead of unnecessarily cynical.
The actors say the most vile, narcissisitic, cynically disillusioned bullshit to each other, which only works because the movie contrasts that with a sense of wanting genuine connection and artistic effort. I imagine when I rewatch this one day going through some jaded midlife crisis it will hit even harder.
Overall I really enjoy the way it…
