BEFORE: Martin Donovan carries over from "Aftermath", and here are the linked actors who are going to get me through the rest of the summer season, and September as well: Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris, James Corden, Ron Funches, Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Rooker AND Steve Agee, David Denman, Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Asa Butterfield, Aubrey Reynolds, Barry Watson, and Fred Willard. I realize that's only 16 actors, and there are 24 movies between now and October 1, but some of those actors will be in three or four films. And I found my path to connect with Fred Willard, so that means horror films will be here before you know it.
THE PLOT: The inventor of the Rememory machine, which allows people to see their memories as they actually were, dies in his office. Was it murder? Sam Bloom investigates by using the machine "borrowed" from the inventor's wife by looking at the memories of others involved.
AFTER: You might think that the loose theme for the week is something about loss and grief, and it is, from Sarah Connor grieving for her son in "Terminator: Dark Fate", to Blake trying to get back his lost love in "Killing Gunther", and of course Roman AND Jake in "Aftermath". That trend continues tonight, but another loose theme is "Films that I first found on Netflix, but scrolled off from that service before I could get to watch them, so now I have to rent them on iTunes". Hey, that can be a valid theme.
This is set in some near future, where a tech guy has built a company based on his machine that can record and play back people's memories as if they're movies. This is a bit crazy, everybody knows that tech guys build companies around electric cars and sending themselves to space. Through sessions that are part psychotherapy and part re-traumatizing people, the company has been putting test subjects through the wringer in order to capture their best and worst memories on little glass slides, because hey, what's more durable than thin pieces of glass?
The tech guy is found dead in his office one night, and it's up to a mysterious little person, Sam Bloom, who lives in a boathouse down by the docks (this becomes important later when it's time to dramatically start throwing things into the ocean) who showed up for the launch of the memory machine to investigate his murder. It was murder, right? I mean, there were bullet holes in the wall, but not in the body, go explain that one.
Somebody steals the memory machine, but Sam Bloom steals it back, and he starts going through the glass slides from the test group to figure out as much as he can about their memories. He also starts using the machine on himself, so he can record the traumatic car crash that took the life of his rock star brother, and it's very important that he find out what his brother's last words were. The movie tells us that the device can show people their memories as they really happened, not filtered through years of misinterpretation, emotion and other memories that might have gotten in the way, this is the pure, uncut memory.
But the device also has a flaw, using it has a strange effect on the subject - digging up those old memories can cause hallucinations, which can make it difficult to tell the present from the past, plus if the memories are really good, they could become addicted to watching them, and if they're bad, they get re-traumatized. One test subject killed herself, and that was just from looking at her old tweets.
Sam Bloom tracks down some of the test subjects, from piecing together their glass-slide memories. What's weird here is that he then makes little miniature figurines for each one, so he'll have a visual represenation of the compiled data. (A little person working with miniatures, I see what you did there...). He could just write everything down, but where's the fun in that? But NITPICK POINT, it takes time to build and paint these little figurines, and that's time that could be spent, you know, solving the case.
I suppose there's a larger point to be made here about whether we all just become a collection of memories at some point. One character looks back on the book she didn't write, the large family she didn't have, and suggests that maybe at some point we're all just big balls of regret over the paths we never took and the things we never got around to doing. Well, which is it, are we memory piles or remains of unfulfilled dreams? Like yesterday's film, "Rememory" just wants to put every character in a constant state of grief and guilt, then just leave them there.
The catalyst here is a car crash, just as yesterday's was a plane crash. In both cases, the accident has repercussions that last for years, decades even, and no matter what happens, people have to learn to deal with that accident, because there's no changing it. Viewing the trauma again or remembering it better serves no purpose, so when they say that the memory changes or fades over time, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Even those final words from Sam's brother turn out to be a non-starter, no great revelation was forthcoming.
The art seen in a gallery scene is from photographer Brandon Kidwell, who's known for his double-exposures, and also designed the film's poster. What's really weird is that I play a game on my phone called Color by Number, and that exact image of a man's head combined with another image of him walking through a forest, popped up in the game just a few days ago. What are the odds of that?
And hey, it's the year of Dinklage again, just like it's also been the year of Ingrid Bergman, the year of Oprah and the year of Chris Messina. Time travel, prison movies, civil rights, serial killers and superheroes, it's definitely going to be a weird time trying to parse this all out in late December.
Also starring Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Julia Ormond (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Anton Yelchin (last seen in "Like Crazy"), Henry Ian Cusick, Evelyne Brochu (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Matt Ellis (last seen in "Good Boys"), Colin Lawrence (last seen in "Dreamcatcher"), Chad Krowchuk (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Gracyn Shinyei, Scott Hylands, Courtney Richter, Kathryn Kirkpatrick (last seen in "Okja"), Carrie Anne Fleming, Andrew Herr (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Jordana Largy, Stefania Indelicato.
RATING: 5 out of 10 trips to the beach (which everybody seems to regard as a fond memory, but I just don't get that...)
No comments:
Post a Comment