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Alex Proyas

I, Robot – Alex Proyas (2004)

In 2035 mankind is supported by robots on many fields, from household to the design and development of products. Robots become more and more advanced and the driving force behind this development created three laws that, when they are lived up to, prevent robots from getting the upper hand over humans.

Then the professor dies and a troubled officer of the homicide department (played by Will Smith) sets out to investigate.

“I, Robot” is a hardly surprising, but decently made, film in which some main questions and dangers of robotisation and artificial intelligence are mentioned. Of course this mostly leads to an American moralistic action film, but that is hardly surprising too.

The Crow * Alex Proyas (1994)

“The Crow” is one of the classics of my youth. It had been a long while since I saw it, since I have the film on VHS. Time for a rewatch on DVD!

The film caused quite a stir in the day, because the main actor actually died during the recording of a shootout scene. The rest of the film was made with earlier recorded footage. This drama gave the film quite some attention. Then there was the fact that the main character was “a friendly rocker”, alternative but good and when he comes back from the dead with his white painted face and black cloths, he appealed to us alternative youth.

“The Crow” is a revenge thriller which starts with two young lovers that are murdered by a group of hip criminals. The guy returns to avenge the murder of his wife-to-be. The film still looks nicely dark and gloomy. Here and there it is a bit too ‘theatrical’, but with the use of music and camera work, the film still ‘works’. Especially the shootout scene is still emotional. The snappy lines of the ‘bad guys’ are still cool and partially because Propergol samples this film a lot, I remember a lot of lines and scenes.

Yep, a true classic!

Dark City * Alex Proyas * 1998

A wonderfull film that I have seen long ago, but not reseen it on tv. The story is about a city that is made and maintained by an extraterrestial race called ‘the strangers’. They experiment with humans to find out what makes humans different from themselves, a search for the soul. In order to do this they swap memories and change the city to see if this effects a persons personality. At midnight everything is put to sleep and the strangers ‘tune’ a new city. Buildings arise or disappear, strangers go out to erase or add memory with the help of a human doctor (Kiefer Sutherland). The strangers don’t like the light, so everything is always dark, it’s always night. One human seems to be uneffected by the powers of ‘the strangers’ and even has the ability to ‘tune’. Naturally he saves the world.

A great film with a strange atmosphere. However ‘thrillerish’ it is brought as a comedy, but of course not one of these hilaric ones. Really wonderfull!