Dark City

Dark City is super weird and unique, but in a way that still holds together and makes sense. You don't hear much about it, but it feels like a classic that everyone should see.

I had a hard time finding the theatrical release of Dark City. I own the DVD, but for some reason I only know where the case is, and not the disc. You can only torrent the director's cut. The library catalog lists only the theatrical release, but when you get it, it turns out to be the director's cut.

I thought it would be easy to rent it from YouTube, but it took me an hour to get it to work on my Apple TV, only to find out that that's the director's cut, too. So I rented the theatrical version from iTunes, and spent another hour getting *that* to play. And then realized after I saw the movie that I should have kept the library version so I could a. see the differences in the director's cut and b. hear the commentary. But I don't have it in me to request it again and wait another six months for it to come in.

You don't hear a lot about Dark City. I really only knew about it because I had a friend that liked it. The movie is super weird. I feel like everybody should see it just to have the experience.

The alien guys were creepy. I wonder why they didn't use the bodies of any women. Jennifer Connelly's performance was weird and annoying. You could say that it had something to do with the fact that she was playing someone whose memories had been swapped around a bunch, but the same was true for all of the characters, and nobody else was acting that way.

I liked the way they slowly revealed things. I didn't mind that they told you at the beginning what was going on. There were still lots of things to find out. It seemed weird that they would have a pool anywhere in the city since they had a phobia of water.

The power beams coming out of their heads were kind of hokey. The syringe being full of instructions for how to defeat the aliens was a cool surprise. I thought it was just going to have John's original memories. I can't say that I *liked* the overall look of the movie, but it was interesting. I couldn't wrap my head around what the aliens were *doing* exactly, what the point of swapping everyone's memories around was. It seemed random and pointless. Maybe they could have explained their logic more.

I wonder if we're supposed to think that their experiment of seeing if someone imprinted with a killer's memory would turn into a killer had failed. John didn't become a killer, but he also wasn't imprinted. It is an interesting question overall though, how much memories make a person.

The aesthetic reminded me of City of Lost Children. It's too bad that they were all stuck out there in space and wouldn't ever get to go back to Earth.