Weird experience. It was a really intense, nail-biting movie (even though I knew what was coming), but I don't think I'll remember anything about it even tomorrow. The reviewers are right: it's heavy on the allegory, a very old-fashioned sci-fi movie. 'Terrorists' are mentioned explicitly a couple of times, but 9/11 is all over the film from the opening voice-over.
Dakota Fanning terrifies me. She was funny and interesting, but I have this feeling she's going to grow up completely bonkers, useless to the world. I don't get that sense from Haley Joel Osment, for what it's worth.
The older kid was good. Tom Cruise did just fine, though I find him increasingly opaque lately (this was very effective in Collateral but I think Mann is just Cruise's style). John Williams's music was unmemorable.
I don't know, it was a long day. Even the music I did today seems hazy, as if spied through a thick fog.
Who gives a shit, anyhow?
If Dakota Fanning is that cute little blonde ten-year-old, I saw her on Leno, or Letterman, or some such piece of crap, by an astonishingly fortuitous coincidence. She pretty much typified the word 'precocious'. She was flighty and urbane in the manner of your average Hollywood socialite. Doesn't say much for Hollywood socialites, but it looks really smart on a ten-year-old. I predict she will grow up into a slightly-more neurotic version of Drew Barrymore.
Posted by: saurabh | 01 August 2005 at 02:06 PM