this movie is the fucking mad notes. i sat enthralled from start to finish. my friend who was gonna join me for 5 mins while we had a smoke ended up sitting and watching it too, unable to pull himself away.

for those not in the know, scanner darkly is richard linklaters (school of rock, dazed and confused, waking life) latest movie and is a 'sequel' to his movie, waking life. waking life uses a new type of cinematography where by the director films the movie normally and then animates over the top of it in unusual ways. makes for some excellent visuals.

and this is no different.

i wondered how they would follow up waking life, my favourite movie, because it was so damn good in so many ways. and now i know. they threw in some excellent actors (and a few shitty ones who are still famous). we had keanu reeves in the main role with grat support from both robert downey junior, woody harelson and that bloke whats off CSI (so im told).

they then added a proper story which is somethng waking life distinctly lacked. this story is, basically, a story of lifegone wrong in the not too distant future where everyone takes loads of drugs and lives in a world of addiction. there is a new rug called D or something... and its like crack and LSD in one. this causes the characters to be absolutely blitzed most of the time and whakced out the rest.

you could turn this movie on at any point and still be engrossed by it. it has excellent visuals, a wonderfully bizzare story, some great monologues and simply a feeling of anticipation. wait till you see the guys who wear the suits that change continuously.

all in all that has shot into my top 10 alongside waking life and i reccomend everyone watches it. finally a movie where keanu doesnt make me want to punch myself in the nuts.

9/10.

Im sorry but I so so dissapointed with this one..
The reasons:
i) dull dull story line that never got off the ground until right at the end then it finished... suddenly.
ii) Reaves hasn't shook off the 'Matrix' style of acting.
iii) The animation which was used so well in 'Waking life' didn't add anything to this film.
iv) I found I couldn't connect with any of the characters and found it difficult to follow any meaning to them.

I found after lookin forward to this one I was sorely let down.

its not AS visual as waking life but then again, waking life was set in a dream whilst this is reality. and whilst the story is slow the spaces are filled with oodles of weirdness and awesome scenes... also, its a subtle storyline. it takes a while to realise he dosnt know which criminal he is and that affects the movie.

and im not sure what you mean about the characters? were they dull? wooden? over the top? 2-D? i dont get it...

and reaves is reaves, what do you expect?

I enjoyed this one quite fully. I am a big Philip K. Dick fan, and I have to say this is one of his better and most heartfelt works. Of course the movie wasn't as good as the book, but that is true of every Dick story that's been movitized. Have to say it was a better translation than Paycheck or Minority Report.

I Love This Film So Much. Not Only Is It An Excellent Adaptation Of An Excellent Novel, But Its Great In Its Own Right. However IMO I Think That At The Start He DOES Know What Criminal He Is, But Soon, Thanks To The Drugs Gets Too Confused To Know And I Think That's Partially The Point.

The Only Thing That Disapointed Me Was That Dispite Being In The Scramble Suit, You Could Still Tell That It Was Winona Who Was 'Hank', As The Faces Still Resembled Hers. Out Of The 4 People I First Saw This With, None Of Them Had Read The Book Or Knew The Story, But 3 Of Them Guessed Hank Was Her Quite Early.

Plus I Was Chuffed They Left My Favourite Bit Of The Book In It Where The Alien Comes From Another Dimension To Read His Sins For All Eternity

hmmmm, weird. i watched it with some friends and none of us guessed who she was, however we were very, very stoned.

and yes your favourite bit is hilarious.

This film was a difficult one - I really can't say whether I like it or not. I mean, on a basic "watching it" stance, I found it boring as fuck - but the main reason for this being that a lot of the paranoid, sketchy conversations are exactly the type of conversations I've had before with friends while stoned out of my fucking mind - and in all truth, people stoned speak a load of utter shite - I don't need to watch a film to realise this.

But then, using exactly the same argument in another way - it was interesting to see how effective the writer managed to convey the utter dispair, confusion, paranoia and self-obsessed bullshit that comes from using drugs.

So yeah, I personally saw a boring film that wasn't particularly saying anything new, but I could appreciate how to a lot of people it would be quite an eye-opening and potentially even 'inspired' film. Meh. :dance:

I watched this again yesterday, awesome movie. For me, Its the Bob arcter (Keano reeves) monologues that make it so damned cool.Its just so fucking poeticly dark. For instance, The bit where he wakes up after the gun shot and says' what happened?....'. It gave me a real feeling of the characters bewilderment, It is here he first has ideas of being manipulated, the cross chatter is in effect.
This is one of those movies that I feel I could (and will) watch at least 5 times more.

Ive just ordered this purely on the basis of Skellys review, so it better be good or Im going to come round and force you to watch all of Keanu's shit movies :D