| C | SXSW 2015 |
A lot of people apparently liked this film, but it didn’t grab me. I liked a lot of the directorial and musical choices. The script was okay. My biggest problem was the depiction of this new, super, augmented reality technology that (per the movie’s description) “blurs the line between reality and virtual reality.” No, it didn’t, not by a long shot. So I had to believe the main character was an idiot to confuse the two. (He was also popping a lot of pills, so maybe that played into it. This movie is really about how drugs blurred his line between reality and fantasy.) So unfortunately, the choices how to depict the technology prevented me from suspending my disbelief and buying into this movie.
On top of that, the Q&A was odd. One woman stated she was not a fan of the movie and asked why the female characters were terrible people. But in my opinion, the men were even more terrible–in fact, the only reasonable character was female. Then some other guy made an observation that was basically a rehash of the answer the director gave two questions ago. And on top of all THAT, this was the worst (actually, only) bad food experience I’ve had at an Alamo Drafthouse. Yeah, this was the low point of the festival for me.
(Originally rated 3 stars.)
