The Film…
The Players…
Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell, with Timothy Spall, Noah Taylor, and Tilda Swinton.
The Plot…
David is the owner of a large publishing company. He’s upwardly mobile, knows all the right people and a bon vivant. He’s also in prison, accused of murder and wearing a prosthetic mask. He never killed anyone.
However there was the time he met Sofia, and that was good. It was the last good thing he remembers.
It’s been said that of all the liars the most pernicious is memory.
The Intro…
“In dreams begin responsibilities…”
– Delmore Schwartz, 1935.
“It was a very cold clear fall night;
I had a terrible dream…”
– Lou Reed, 1990.
The Rant, pt. 1…
First off, sorry for the delay. I had a dentist appointment. Always floss, brush, and rinse. In that order. Hard lesson learned. Moving on.
Psychological dramas are a fickle sort. Some lay the tension bare so one can barely keep up. They are the modern psychodramas; the sort that make you scan, scour and perhaps rewatch, say with Nolan’s Memento or Singer’s The Usual Suspects. That pair are offbeat, and that’s the way I like my psychodramas. The puzzles. The teasing. The ones when the third act concludes you ask yourself “What’d I miss?”
All good psychodramas should be a brain puzzler. They poke and they prod your expectations whilst upsetting your balance. F*cking with expectations. Misdirection, and the feeling in your tummy one has when opting to take the SAT a third time. Again: What, did I miss something? Psychodramas demand you later to army-crawl on the floor looking for that missing puzzle piece you later find stuck under your arm. Otherwise Ravensberger owes you a refund.
Here’s the rub. The psychodrama is not necessarily about the protag. Well they mostly are, but it’s ideally about you and how that may hit different, how you look at things. Perceive them. What was seen, what was missed, what was explicit and what was implied. That’s never about the principal, that’s about you. Your beliefs. That at heart are how psychodramas work, regardless of execution, characterization or even dappling with a sub-genre like the films above. It’s all about you, bucko.
Most modern psychodramas have a lot to digest. The forerunner films like Carol Reed’s The Third Man and Hitch’s Vertigo creeped along at a dreadful pace, which was a good thing. No info dump, just creeping tension. Still that brain puzzler feeling. With The Third Man I wasn’t sure that Harry Lime even existed. By extension Jimmy Stewart may have been chasing Madeline’s ghost. I missed something. Was there a hole? Hence the mystery element, which probes your mind and to hell with the principal character’s trifles. I hope I’m making this clear.
In these modern cinematic times I believe we’ve grown beyond all that time waiting for the big reveal. Recall the last few scenes of The Usual Suspects. It was a mystery at first glance, until all the pieces of the puzzle revealed itself, hidden in plain sight all along. For those who caught the film we knew there more going on. Sure, said reveal was awesome, but director Singer laid Suspects as a mystery first and a psychodrama a distant second. I’d go so far to say that the movie toyed with the audience. Getting the story at last was nothing short of an orgasm. Right. But there was a lot of ground to plough, and the reward for all such scrutiny came to the fore. A release, and then a quick shudder. Be it a Nolan, Shayamlan, or Hitchcock film shouldering such density and later gratitude, it’s all about that release. That “Ah ha!” moment that made the whole mental game worthwhile, even if it disappoints. I’m talking about cracking that “What’s really going on here” code. If one does so in time it makes the whole endeavor worth your time. The reveal isn’t the prize, the journey is.
Proper psychodramas do not have an easy out. Contemporaries like Following, 12 Monkeys, and Drive keep their cards close to their chest. You don’t even know you’re watching a psychodrama until well into the second act. In fact most of the best such films not only sugar-shock your brain, but also screw with your perceptions against a foreign environment. Dumped into a story out of your comfort zone. It often adds to the continuing puzzle and makes your head spin like a top on an ice rink. Offbeat and off kilter. Lulling most psychodrama fans into thinking they’re not watching one. Often uncomfortable, like that missing piece. To solidify my theory I have a few older examples of flicks that might prove a point. A theory mind you, and the following may screw with you in a humorous way. I’m going to share a few psycho-dramas that at the outset were not labelled a such. These dramas aim to pull up the rug. Like with Vanilla Sky they 1) defy expectations, and; 2) are not casual in their delivery. Shakespeare did this often; keep the drama bubbling underneath, but teasing with humor before any tragedy happens. Then it all sticks like an overshot dart board. So sit back and don’t relax. Just a small prick. The Bard was an expert at psychological warfare when constructing drama. Felt like director Crowe caged a few hint from ol’ Bill.
Vanilla Sky was dense, with plot lines, expectations and/or misdirection. To give you a better idea of where I’m coming from here are a few unconventional psychodramas that bucked the trend. Highlighted here for that creeping density, warped perceptions and existential tomfoolery. I wish to illustrate that some S/F, theatrical adaptations of and even trad dramas are all psychodramas. You may have seen such flicks before, and they all inform Vanilla Sky (of which I may expound upon later). Not all psychodramas hit the same way twice, but they do hit. Consider the following a primer. No shock, but I suggest you scan the following films to grok what I’ve been all about. Let my leeway fizzle out in a blaze of story.
(Somewhat of a spoiler: Vanilla Sky has a sci-fi bent to its delivery. I’m not talking about aliens, space travel or meddling in God’s domain. Sometimes a sci-fi device doesn’t come across as sci-fi at all, but rather as—you guessed it—psychodrama. Don’t get me? Here’s a few examples that indeed buck the trend. Check this out. Consider the following as a primer for Sky).
John Carpenter’s version of The Thing. It’s a S/F kinda movie, what with that alien virus infecting any unwitting humans. Yes Rob Bottin’s disgusting F/X demanded vomit. Yes most of the cast were drunk (for real) and off their nerves. And that ominously calm dog with the blank stare. Everything was set up all knurly; an intruder was in the midst. We knew it was, and that’s it setting up a classic psychodrama trope: paranoia run riot. Who is the alien invader? Everyone and no one. Who do you trust? No one unless you have to. Yes, the parasite infection was gruesome, but so was a desperate Kurt Russell armed with some dynamite and a ready flare aimed at his “friends.” Now back off!
However Carpenter’s take on The Thing was not a S/F horror gem. More a cult hit last and box office poison first (it was released the same weekend opposite one of the most thoughtful alien movies ever, Spielberg’s ET). His Thing was beyond some exercise in S/F horror; it was an Antarctic take on 12 Angry Men (there are exactly 12 principals), all trying to uncover who the invader was. Who’s the killer? What’s the truth? Who is not what they say they are? Who goes there? And there is no way to escape this crucible. Mind-bending, nail-biting, awesome, and puzzling. Despite all the creepiness, the film was an exercise in paranoia not paranormal. The grisly scenes of alien infection were more like wallpaper. It was the paranoia and claustrophobia that was front and center, capped with a signature Carpenter downbeat, ambiguous ending.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s existential Solaris is a s/f story in the loosest of terms. Sure, psychologist Kelvin travels to the scientific spacelab orbiting the titular planet, and there’s where the device ends. Based on Polish writer Stanislaw Lem’s novel the story was about the potential problems having one species trying to communicate with another. Tarkovsky’s execution in an exercise in “a drama of grief and partial recovery” (quote courtesy of AllMovie). Not anything s/f about that in the slightest, but I think this iconic movie also informed Sky. Alienation? Recovery? Existentialism? All and none.
Lastly, but not leastly (is that a word?), Ridley Scott’s magnum opus, Blade Runner. It’s set in the faraway year of 2019, and there are rogue androids loose in a ruined LA, which Harrison Ford has to put down. That’s it for the sci-fi thing. The rest of the time the flick is drenched in solipsism, identity, social commentary and a Fritz Lang sense of a how the future may betray humanity. The source material is even more harrowing, making one question what room they’re in.
Are those sci-fi? Decidedly not, on all three accounts. Duh, but they’re all psychodramas, wrapped up in the illusion of alien viruses, conversing with a sentient planet and killer androids. Not all such films are steeped in psychobabble and the man behind the curtain. On the contrary. It’s all about self-discovery. Perhaps your self.
Vanilla Sky also took cues from the above films to a certain degree. Tom Cruise never did battle with Replicants, but he did battling with a sideways psyche. Before and after.
Recall it’s never about “them.” It’s always about “you.” And that’s somewhat puzzling.
The Rant, pt. 2
So what the hell is it about the world of dreams?
They twist and warp and form your imagination, but are meant to be a balm to an overstimulated brain. All that waking stimulus from driving, work, socializing and the Switch takes its toll on one’s noodle. As Sting once sang, “Too much information running through my brain. Too much information driving me insane.” Yep. Which is why we need sleep at days end and dreams to clean it all up so we can face reality once more. Sky follows this direction. Somewhat. Please hang on a bit.
Most experts claim that dreaming defragments all the disparate input over one’s typical day. Sets things in order to get on with the next day. Kind of akin to your palette after eating a pickle. Clean slate. I agree with this theory, but I agree with another theory more. It’s like going to the car wash minus the polishing. This may sound weird (and it is), but I got hip to a more clinical, practical angle about why we dream. It has less to do with a nightly defrag, revisiting forgotten memories and more to do with a cerebral car wash.
Warning: Science Content!
Courtesy of a 2019 article from Scientific American: “Researchers surmise that sleep cleans your brain during REM sleep. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) may flush away harmful proteins and toxins out of one’s system. Thereby “cleaning” the brain, so one may face the coming day clear-headed and refreshed.” A mug of coffee may help, too.
An answer and still a question about dreaming is for, but we can all agree a nice shower cleans you up a perks you up. May be why it takes a catapult on workdays, but later ready to face the day after a good scrub. Also why on your lazy days and ditch a bath you soon become all too aware you smell like moldy ass asa well as what you had for dinner last night. Talk about being in a funk.
I adhere to my defrag theory; the brain needs to sort out, file away, and maybe prepare for the coming day via some frontal lobe AnyList app.Something happened to me recently and well after scanning Sky. Maybe you may follow; it always happens to us at least once. It also might be a shared excuse why it takes a catapult to get us out of bed some mornings. We call them nightmares, but not all are about monsters, financial ruin or showing up to class naked (done that, been there on all fronts. Avoid tequila). Time for said science that pokes at us all. Patience is welcome and cringing is mandatory.
Ever have a dream so vivd it feels like reality? Sure you have. For me the worst kind of lucid dreams are about being at at work, or back in high school naked. Kind of a rip off. But did that really happen?
Well something happened to me other night, and it really f*cked with my sense of reality. I knew it was a nightmare of the worst kind, and I was still dressed.
I’ve taken to listening to music in bed. Clamp on the noise-cancelling headphones, scan an artist on an old iPhone, and kill the lights. I listen to whatever mood I’m in, regardless of genre. I say “old iPhone” because I have an outmoded, unplugged, white iPhone 6¹ which I use as an oversized iPod in my car to hear my music. All it’s good for, really.
Was listening to the Rolling Stones. One of their many greatest hits albums while I d*cked around with the iTunes store. You know how Spotify happily suggests related artists of a certain style? Well the iTunes store does the same, although sometimes left of center. I’m don’t get the algorithm Apple uses to push music, but it often recommends some doozies. For instance I’m a Miles Davis fan. So once with the help of iTunes it suggested Lee Morgan, John Coltrane…and Beck. Huh. Go fig.
iTunes suggested that I check out this single by Ke$ha. What the hell. Not a big fan, but her stuff was silly and fun and what the hell. iTunes played a song by her I never heard before². Back in the day I had heard “TiK ToK” and “We R Who We R” on the radio. I’m no snob, and found that as ear can candy I decided to download the mystery song for all of 50 cents³. Listened a bit, dug the beat and crapped out.
The following morning I reached for old iPhone to plug in and jam out to my new purchase. My mutant iPhone was missing. I looked under the bed. No dice. Found it in my car (must’ve slapped it back into place for the next day’s ride. Often do that after synching the thing) I looked for the song. No dice. In fact no music at all. I opted to listen to NPR on my morning ride instead of the phantom Ke$ha single. Asked my coworkers about if they ever fall asleep while with their phone. Most said yes. One of my co-workers is a big K-Pop fan, and has often crapped out scouring Spotify for the next big Seoul-ful band. Sorry for that clever pun, but not really.
Anyway when I got home that night I wanted to hear that song. I had uploaded it to the the iPhone, but it wasn’t there. Nor was it on any of my devices (EG: SE, iPad, MacBook, iMac, etc). No song. I even checked my bank account for the 50 cent purchase. No dice, again. I abused the iTunes Store, and knowing Ke$ha’s mystery song was tucked in there somewhere I chose work down the line. Her first album Animal dropped in 2010 when I first heard her electro-trash pop tunes, so into the Animal tracks I scanned. The very first track suggested was the one I never heard before, “Your Love Is My Drug.”
Never heard it until the phone suggested it, far removed from the Stones. What the hell?
It began to dawn on me, and I’m going to assume you saw the superscripts. May I explain? I am wearing pants.
1. That old, white iPhone 6 had its teeth pulled years ago. No Wi-Fi and its SIM was lost long ago. So how was I able to access the iTunes store?
2. I had never heard that Ke$ha song before, until that fateful night. “TiKTok” sure. “Your Love Is My Drug” never.
3. Purchasing a single from the iTunes store has never cost 50 cents. Ever. Usually a buck to a buck and 30.
Ho-lee sh*t. I was dreaming. It felt so real, from switching from the Stones to adjusting my headphones to fooling around with dead iPhone. I don’t wear pants in bed, so I made the logical decision: I downloaded the album. My subconscious was trying to tell me something and I wasn’t going to let my id run riot. Hail Ke$ha.
Dreams may feel important, even when they may f*ck with your waking perceptions. It’s unfortunate that David Aames only has no waking perceptions of his reality.
Please. Read on and try to stay awake…
The Story…
“People will read again…”
Such is the mantra publishing magnate Davie Aames (Cruise) keeps telling himself. He inherited his esteemed from his late father, and he always tried to live up to him. His image, rather. Never fully comfortable in his father’s shoes, he made a slick, playboy image to distance himself from…himself?
David’s friend with benefits Juliana (Diaz) pesters him about why he won’t just give it up? David’s always stressing about work and fulfilling some imaginary obligation. It’s his company—despite the endless scrutiny from the “Seven Dwarves”—and should take pride in his station.
She’s right, and when David’s best buddy Brian (Lee) introduces him to Sofia (Cruz) at his birthday bash Juliana’s suggestion comes to the fore. Take stock of yourself, put the best face forward. The one that get’s Sofia’s notice.
Before David’s handsome visage gets cracked and his secret resolve broken.
The (Nervous) Breakdown…
Alright. I am not going to lie here. The following review will be littered with potential spoilers and I’m not going to redact anything. So please if you don’t like me spilling the beans I suggest you just scroll on down to The Verdict. I’ll give you some leeway, then maybe you can check out Vanilla Sky on your lunch hour.
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Still here? Cool. I appreciate your curiosity. As it’s been said: on with the show.
Where, oh where to begin? Okay, let’s try this. Sci-fi makes for nasty psychodrama sometimes. Recall the former, but only metaphorically nasty.
Sky was the most un-Crowe Cameron Crowe movie I’ve ever seen. We Bought A Zoo was less obtuse. At least that trifle never pulled up the rug on you. With Sky he seemed hellbent on f*cking with your head via a flying mallet to the solar plexus.
Out front, I saw Sky in the theatre. I found it engaging. Years later on DVD it was curiosity. This time out I was armed, meaning John Carpenter and company does with his movies. Precious little subtlety and fists bared. I saw the holes this time.
Cameron is a dedicated director with a signature aesthetic. Namely his best films are autobio. …Say Anything sings of lovelorn high school romance. Singles was a love letter to his hometown of Seattle. Almost Famous was, well, autobiographical. All of those films were wistful, nudging and satisfying via an ensemble cast. Sky also had such a cast, but were wallpaper against David’s vision quest. Crowe’s stock in trade is appealing kind yet sometimes brittle fare far removed from Sky, and that’s okay here. For now.
Established directors are allowed to stretch some legs and exit their comfort zone to try some new angle. Hell, even esteemed auteurs like Steve, Hitch, Stan, and even Carpenter try to skip a beat once in a while, but there’s are their own films with the joie de vivre of their fingerprints. Crowe is a great director, so as long as he does not wander out his comfort zone. Psychodramas are not oeuvre, and it showed. And it was a remake, before God. Usually a paint-by-numbers effort. There have been many films based on pre-existing sources, and that’s no surprise. Kurosawa was known to cull from Shakespeare for his Throne Of Blood and Ran (Macbeth and King Lear, respectively). The Cohen brothers Depression-era take on Homer’s epic The Odyssey—possibly one of the greatest road trip tales ever—O Brother, Where Art Thou? was sprightly and funny with a sardonic twist on the epic poem. Even Spielberg took a stab at reinventing the wheel with Always and West Side Story.
Such is pretty standard fare in Hollywood. Reinvent. Even Hitch did this with the aforementioned The Man Who Knew Too Much, by his own hand. Journeyman director Brian dePalma’s delightful take on Scarface that most folks weren’t aware it was a remake. Heck, even veteran director of all things cinema Peter Yates (Bullitt, Breaking Away, Suspect, etc) tried his hand with fantasy with the cult classic Krull. It didn’t work. Not of his element. He even fired himself twice from the project, until he realized he was the staid director of this cheese-tastic canard of a movie. Still fun though.
Not long after Crowe’s take on Sky 2004 dawned. The Year Of The Remake/Reboot/Sequel/Prequel. Up to 40 films through the meat grinder. I Am Legend, Dawn Of The Dead, The Ladykillers, Walking Tall, The Alamo, The Stepford Wives, Around The World In 80 Days, The Manchurian Candidate, Vanity Fair, The Grudge, Alfie…you get it. Sometimes even the most brilliant storytellers falter, either by being misguided, greedy or just plain clumsy. With Sky director Crowe did not falter. He just couldn’t hack it, with no Glaive to cut a direct line. EG: constructive story. Sky was not supposed to be linear, but it should not have required crib notes.
The above films had an overall casual feel, despite their tenor. Some were tributes. Love letters to the Bard, Homer, Jerome Robbins and the original copies with appreciation and elan. Despite the cash grab thanks to audiences’ blissful ignorance those filcks were more-or-less easygoing in their delivery; they already had a map. Sky was determined to prove the source material missed something and needed correcting. I never saw Sky‘s inspiration, Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), but I’m willing to wager that its delivery was not as strained as Crowe’s version. Strained as much all the dang hints Crowe’s forced apples through the film exclaiming all is not as it seems.
And there were hints riddled in Sky that hollered sh*t may be rotten in Denmark. Recall I warned of spoilers? I have a laundry list of eggs that might clue you in. We got at the outset David leads a complicated life, but it’s delivered via cue cards. To his credit Crowe may have had a heavy hand, but I had fun pausing the disc over and over spotting the oddities. Here. Sorry, this is for the best. Struggle and it’ll hurt more:
- David’s registration sticker on his Porsche: 02/30/01. Last I knew February had a maximum of 29 days.
- Speaking of cars, why did the dream sequence start with David driving a Ferrari, and in real life he drove said Porsche?
- Jules & Jim, The Red Balloon, and To Kill A Mockingbird. A triad of tales regarding a love triangle, loss of innocence, and a picture of an ideal father. Stuff David is familiar with, even though he isn’t.
- That recreation of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan cover art, with that vanilla sky looming.
- Seven Dwarves for seven doctors.
- One, then two pairs of tweezers.
- The hologram of Coltrane playing his version of “My Favorite Things.”
- A snap of a young Russell?
- Hell, even Spielberg making a cameo. The most successful movie director ever.
Stuff like that. Hints. Many. David may be—for lack of a better word—nuts. There was a Jekyll and Hyde dynamic going on, but minus a singular personality.
Tom Cruise is not known for psychodrama (except for Magnolia). His work is firmly grounded in comedic and action roles, with a sprinkling of “regular” drama (EG: Rain Man, A Few Good Men, and Born On The Fourth Of July). Sky was a different path, and it felt like he was a square peg. I know that David was rigid due to his outrageous circumstances, but I’ve never seen Cruise so uncomfortable in his own skin. This probably was a plot device, but being brittle is not the same as being haunted. Even the most troubled psychodrama protags need to be relatable; have our sympathies. Consider Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, or even Guy Pearce in Memento. These examples show an average joe as a victim of circumstance, but no matter what they earn our sympathies.
David Aames did not. He’s entitled. He lives in his own world. Selfish and immature. K to the quick said that David was very self-conscious. The kind of guy who needs to get roughed up at the local bar for liking the wrong sports team. Cruise is not likable with Sky, which loses the audience. Perpetually alone in a crowd of his own making. I failed to connect with guy, so there’s that. Which is why Sky has this cloud hanging over it, so to speak. The film is cluttered, but not uninteresting. Cruise’s schizo approach does a fine job moving the plot along at a steady pace. But a rider must know when it’s time for a fresh horse.
Yes, Tom smirks. He smiles. He leans on his usual charming self. None of it fits. There is no grease. In the endgame he doesn’t fit in. It may have been deliberate, but it was not a friendly handshake. Still I can’t deny he did a good job with what he was dealt. The creature that was Aames wasn’t truly in touch with his own reality. Again, that may also a vital plot point. For everything in Sky the motivation gets scrambled, but then again…
Remember the puzzle aspect of psychodramas? They’re all here with Sky. Puzzles upon puzzles. In fact, when you think about it the flick had no real plot, and was saturated in “What’s going on?” So much so Cruise didn’t even know. Sky was a hall of mirrors. Reflections upon reflections. What Aames sees as real and what we see as false. All those hints above? Pieces of his psyche. I’ve tilted at enough windmills here with Cruise. What about the rest of cast? Glad you asked.
Despite Sofia being the apple of Aames’ eye, it’s really Juliana that sets things in motion. Like Tom Diaz isn’t really known for dramatic roles. She’s a comedic actress, witty, effervescent and has great timing. Heck her Hollywood debut was opposite Jim Carrey in The Mask. Yet she doesn’t feel out of place in David’s world. In fact she may be the center of the winding gyre that is Sky. She’s the chess piece that gets the game going.
At the outset we know that Juliana is a bit…off. She appears to have separation anxiety esp regarding David. She’s volatile, she’s insecure, she shadows David as a stalker might. Worse of all David is dismissive of her. She’ll always be around for casual sex, fluffing his petty ego, and ready to f*ck around with him at a moment’s notice. K suggested that Juliana is the jealous type, and tries hard at it. Despite her being so coquettish she is venom, and the kickstarter for Aames’ trip down the rabbit hole. For the first time. Diaz was icky, which was a high mark against her usually fun performances. Here Diaz is overall passive aggressive, crazy, and David’d id. She seemed comfortable with her role. Scary.
Sofia? She’s a phantom. For surreal. She had a wistful connection to David. That was her delivery, with chemistry to spare. Might have worked so well since Cruise was dating Cruz at the time. Small wonder why her Sofia filled Aames’ chevalier life so perfectly. She was David’s muse, backed by her confidence that David’s waking life will turn out right. She’s always there when he needs her. She always says the right thing (under all those subconscious constructs). She grounded David, who was always rudderless All a dream. A notion. A fantasy that Juliana could not promise, or was not allowed to promise.
Christ this gets all icky. It’s like some kind of existential nightmare. Not unlike director Crowe’s fevered cinematic muse.
Funny that. Crowe’s motivation was still important regarding Sky‘s alignment with the story. It follows a very strict 3 act structure. As Freud surmised about the human consciousness it is comprised of three parts. The ego, the superego, and the id. We started our story with Aames’ all about his life, and only his. Sofia (or whomever, maybe whatever) was the superego. David’s conscience, which may explain after their introduction he lays off on being a bratty dick. Until so when under the mask.
Now let us take a walking tour…
Isn’t curious in today’s movies New York is regarded as some palatial estate? The Big Apple gets laid out as a potential goldmine, rife with opportunity, diversity, and bold attitude. That doesn’t mean The City has a soft, white underbelly. Consider films like The Devil’s Advocate, The French Connection, and especially Taxi Driver (FYI: all that garbage was real; the trash collectors were on strike). It can be grimy and subversive. I’d like to think that Crowe used those ideas to tentpole Sky. Sure, everything in David’s work is calm and snuggly, but underneath the comfort the truth lies like the “mask.” Mainly Crowe had all of Manhattan as his palette, and he sure seemed hellbent to splatter paint here and there. All misdirection and shades of grey, not unlike David’s crisis. Crowe was very creative with the settings. We know how winter feels, and all of a sudden Central Park is blanketed with snow. Looks beautiful. Odd, yet another abstract clue. David’s life should’ve been a wonderland in reality. It was kind of sad and a bit wrenching. This dynamic fueled the film. Nothing as it seems, but we all hope for the better. That’s what I carried away with Sky, plus the puzzle pieces, the duality
That being said Sky was shuck-and-jive. Everything was ephemeral. The puzzle did not let up until the butt-end of the third act, which echoed the feel of the sci-fi psychodramas highlighted above. And then the sci-fi hit tricking us, sending us on a collective ear. Getting serious did not do credit to Crowe’s usual warm delivery. In the endgame Sky was a lot of things. A lot of puzzles; lots of pieces. Second guessing. What did I miss?
This was a challenging watch obviously. There was so much to digest. This was a rewatch for me years after that show at the multiplex. Then it was entertainment. Twenty-odd years it was a mission. There were so many scenes screaming details I was determined to see. Blame the inspection sticker. From David stalking amongst the magazine covers, to the silenced bar, to watching Diaz dance in those leather pants (J/K, but not really) it was all a puzzle. It was exhausting. A good read, but exhausting.
K got hip to the overarching theme of Sky: Never give up hope even if there isn’t any.
That’s a fine point to end on, then…
“Corrina, Corrina.
Gal, where you been so long?
Corrina, Corrina.
Gal, where you been so long?
I been worr’in’ ’bout you, baby,
Baby, please come home?”
— from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
The Apology…
Again, I’m sorry that this installment was so late. Call it a confluence of family matters, work matters, K matters (her apartment sprung a leak), time lost by such and yes a trip to the dentist’s. That and my TV acting up, and trying to find a reliable online DVD rental service since Netflix screwed over most of its subscribers (including yours truly) via their wobbling streaming service.
One more thing: when you purchase a DVD it’s yours. There’s no subscriptions, you can watch it anytime, and they’re a lot cheaper and more reliable. Hard copy usually is.
Just saying.
The Verdict…
Rent it or relent it? A mild rent it. The film was too disjointed, and there are quite a few differences amongst disjointed, obtuse and misdirecting storytelling. Psycho-dramas or otherwise. I suggest Cameron should focus on his strengths as a solid filmmaker and not try to emulate Hitch.
The Stray Observations…
- “I’m just the opening act.”
- Never has Cruise’s laughing meant so much more.
- “I can be your friend.”
- K noted that caring and worrying are the same thing. Very astute.
- “I like your life.” “You can’t have it.”
- I wish for a TV like that.
- “He’s got a good voice!”
- You’re doing it wrong.
- “I am Sofia.”
- Row, row, row your boat…
- “I can’t…wake up.”
The Next Time…
Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise’s working lives are as different as night and day.
Excuse me, as Knight And Day.
