Quote Originally Posted by Wheeze View Post
It's very much like 2001. It is of its time and has been copied so much by others that watching it now, it seems cliched.
BUT...you had to be there. Genuinely ground breaking when it came out and a truly atmospheric film. Think of it more as Film Noir rather than science fiction.
I love it but probably because I was there and it was at a great time in my life. Would be very interested to hear what a young reviewer who's never seen it makes of it. Me and Graham.... too old, hoary and stuck in our ways to be truly objective about it.
I recognise that.

I have paid my dues to cinema and most of the fine arts. I have seen all Eisenstein's films and the classic great silent films and everything Bergman made and so on because everything in life is context and relative. You can only understand Woody Allen if you know Bergman.

And yes I knew what I was watching would have been breathtaking in 1982 but in 2012 I was listening to the dialogue thinking "OK I've got the picture. Do I care enough to watch all 112 minutes of this?" The visual impact at the time of, say,The Seven Samurai or Citizen Kane or A Bout de Souffle might have been equally breathtaking (ha ha!) but I think because those films are character driven they retain their interest even though their revolutionary film techniques have subsequently been endlessly plagiarised.

Because I go to the cinema I see a lot of film trailers and I am struck by the viscerality of cinema today; but my favourite film of 2012 was A Royal Affair- character based with an intelligent script and an interesting and partly factual story.

But I am old.