Vanilla Sky (2/5)
Posted on 29 Apr 2011
Cruise and Crowe take all the good will and cash they earned with Jerry Maguire and put out the most bizarre big budget film of the decade. Wall-to-wall pop music does its best to make things soft and cuddly, but the material is dark and nasty. Credit to Diaz who puts up a riveting performance as the obsessed homicidal girlfriend (I was just complaining about her in Knight & Day). There are so many fascinating ideas and scenes in this film, it is too bad that Cruise and Penelope manage to be such a gross couple on screen, and, Crowe simply pushes the confusion too hard in the last reel to keep us involved. Oh, making a film where the really hot and powerful (Cruise’s character) steal the hopes and dreams of the mediocre (Jason Lee’s kind, hapless writer character), and then flush them down the toilet in a grand ball of existential, psycho-therapeutic vintage Ferrari pity, is super depressing for the 95% of us mediocre Ford Foci.
Jaron Latona
19 May 2012 (22:01)
What continues to drive me nuts about this movie (and apparently it’s just me) is that it’s a remake of a Spanish film…that also has Penelope Cruz in the same role. She got paid twice for the same role. TWICE.
That, and apparently if you make a movie in Spanish, it’s not art. Until you make it in English. I’m bitter.
Zadok
21 May 2012 (07:25)
At least Americans finally discovered Cruz, though.