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Vr stranger things meaning12/11/2023 Look for "tapehead," "jacking in" and the movie's spin on "playback" to appear in the vernacular.Īt the same time, depending more on mood and character than logic, the movie backs into an ending that is completely implausible. It creates a convincing future landscape it populates it with a hero who comes out of the noir tradition and is flawed and complex rather than simply heroic, and it provides a vocabulary. "Strange Days" does three things that will make it a cult film. She sees through his scam-artist's facade and saves his skin. Nero gains a companion for his quest: Mace ( Angela Bassett), who drives an armored limo, and met Lenny when her husband was murdered. He wants to raise some money, maybe because that will increase his stature in Faith's eyes. Although Jeriko One's murder has pushed the city into anarchy, Lenny Nero's priorities are private. It's revealing, how a scene like that seems so much more sad and distressing than the more graphic scenes of violence we see all the time in the movies: Bigelow is able to exploit the idea of what is happening she forces her audience to deal with the screen reality, instead of allowing us to process it as routine "action." The plot is in the noir tradition, with updates out of recent headlines. In one, which is disturbing and graphic, a man attacks a female victim after first forcing her to wear the headpiece - so that she experiences her own death through his eyes. Other scenes go much further, exploring more twisted horrors. As the "virgin brain" in the nightclub experiences the sample tape, he watches - and we watch him, defenseless and without inhibition. Working from a screenplay by Jay Cocks and James Cameron (director of the "Terminator" films), Bigelow turns scenes like this into a critique of the central paradox of virtual reality: You cannot share someone else's reality without abandoning your own. The pacing is relentless, and the editing, by Howard Smith, creates an urgency and desperation. Leonetti's point-of-view shots are virtuosic (especially one in which a character falls from a roof in an apparently uninterrupted take). Director Kathryn Bigelow (" Blue Steel") and her designers and special-effects artists create the vision of a city spinning out of control. "How'd you like to be him? How'd you like to have a hot girlfriend like that? How'd you like to be her?" The movie is a technical tour de force. Then Lenny points out a couple dancing on the other side of the room. He lets him have a taste, and we see the mark's face as he turns soft and narcissistic he thinks he's a teenage girl having a shower. This is like a piece of someone's life - straight from the cerebral cortex"). In a set-up scene in a club, he sells playback to a timid businessman, seductively explaining the technology ("This is not like TV, only better. Lenny leads us into grungy nightclubs and scummy hotels, dealing with the pathetic needs of his customers. Lenny used to be a cop, but now he's a loser, surviving by selling contraband tapes and not asking too many questions about how the "playback" was obtained. Fiennes plays him as a wheedling con man, forever offering "the Rolex off my wrist" to tough guys who much rather would beat him to a pulp. Now she belongs to Philo Gant ( Michael Wincott), who manages rock stars, including Jeriko One, who was "one of the most important black men in America" - until he was shot dead, inspiring riots. The camera caresses Fiennes' face during these VR sessions his face reveals surrender to pleasure as he forgives himself everything.īut Faith has split. "Jacking in" is the new drug of choice, and Lenny Nero is addicted to it himself he likes to play back tapes of happier days, when he was still with Faith ( Juliette Lewis), the woman he loved. Santa gets mugged on Hollywood Boulevard. The movie paints a Los Angeles that stands midway between the futuristic nightmare of " Blade Runner" and the mean streets of 1940s film noir. But isn't that what we do during all the thrillers we attend? Get entertained by the sight of violent action? By making the process explicit, "Strange Days" requires us to think about it, which is more than all but a few movies can or attempt to do. This is a scruple "Strange Days" does not share, and some of its scenes are deeply disturbing, involving the audience as voyeurs during scenes of death. He doesn't deal in "blackjack" - the word for snuff films. The tape is for sale, but Lenny Nero ( Ralph Fiennes) doesn't want to buy it.
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