a scanner darkly
Last night I went to see
A Scanner Darkly, and I
loved it. I read the book a long time ago, so much so that I only vaguely remembered the plot, but a quick trip to wikipedia
cleared that up. I felt the film adaptation was true to the book, but that's based on vague memories jogged by wikipedia, so who knows. I do know that knowing the story
did not ruin the film for me at all. There were so many other good points, namely:
*
casting. I truly cannot think of any other actors better suited for these roles. Typically, I am neither a Keanu Reeves fan (despite his presence in a number of my favorite movies, go figure) nor a Woody Harrelson fan. But in this film, Keanu did what Keanu should have done, and was who Keanu should have been, so it worked. Woody Harrelson was really, really good. I think he just played himself. Robert Downey Jr., whom I normally like, was pretty spectacular. Winona Ryder, she was fine. Rory Cochrane fit in really well, and as a whole, I thought they all worked great together.
*
rotoscoping. I love good animation of all types, and I
really dig rotoscoping, especially when it's done really well—which this is. I haven't seen Linklater's
Waking Life, which is also rotoscoped, but I think it'll be in my Netflix queue soon. I don't think this movie would have been nearly as stimulating, and therefore thought-provoking, without the rotoscoping.
*
score. I don't typically buy soundtracks unless they're really, really, really super good and can be played over and over again without me ending up hating it...and I believe I'll be purchasing this one. It's a bunch of Radiohead/Thom Yorke, plus some remixes of the score by DJ Spooky and Jack Dangers. Good stuff.
Multiple thumbs up.
Labels: movies
