It's a great film until the last Act reveal of the killer. How many times do we have to see "the BFF is really the bad guy" cliche? The acting, though, is wonderful. The direction is perfect (between Strange Days & Point Break, Bigelow really proves she is just as good as any male director when it comes to helming an action project). The film really entertains you!
Spoilers… The only thing I wish they did differently was explore the cop death squad idea, which turned out to be a red herring (even though it applies to the two featured officers very literally and who knows how many more), as I find it would have strengthened the need for a people’s revolution as well as made the Max reveal more gripping. I thought it was amazing as is though.
Old-Guy-Rants Well, her films are usually about ppl living on fringe of society, bad ppl, mostly bad men. And she doesn't write the films just directs em
Strange Days is one of my favorite films of all time. Katherine Bigelow may have won an Oscar for The Hurt Locker, but this earlier film of hers is criminally underrated.
@@emilepelletier8176 I'm going to guess it's because none of these actors are actors people normally go to see a movie for. And also because of the adult nature of this film, it's unlikely to be shown to kids. So people have to hope they hear about it after they become adults when they're probably not spending as much time watching movies.
@@jedijones when this movie came out Angela basset was huge from what's love got to do with it and waiting to exhale, Juliette was big from natural born killers and from dusk till dawn among other movies, Michael Madison still had s cult following from reservoir dogs and Ralph finnes was big from Schindler's list and the English patient..these were all big actors from big movies in the 90s..it was kinda shocking it didn't do better considering the cast alone. If I remember also it was not marketed very well for what it was and the reviews for it wasn't that great, and not a lot of people were seeing it. People also took kids to see r rated movies all the time back then. I was 12 when pulp fiction came out and if you were accompanied by an adult you could get into an r rated movie..I'm not saying it's a good thing but people let their kids watch pretty much anything back then.
Saw it opening weekend in a big theater. I was blown away and actually thought it would win the Oscar for Best Picture! And a nod at least for Bigelow who clearly has an eye for pulse-thumping action. Ralph Fiennes is an amazing actor, especially here. A complex and passionate character who is forced to regain integrity by the end. One of my all time favorite movies. Angela Bassett and Tom Sizemore also great in this.
Neither one of them mentioned that Strange Days was a movie where the "main action hero" was a flawed character, trying to rescue someone that had no interest interested in being rescued, and in the end it would take a stronger character to rescue him, a concept that was far from cliche at the time this film was made.
Cuz it was ahead of it's time and I don't think it was ready to come out when it did, I feel if it came out in 2005 it would've done better in theaters
Strange days definitely kinda predicted the future in a way I loved it and I loved the chemistry between Bassett and fienes. Gosh Julianne Moore looks so young and remember when Banderas was the it guy in the mid 90s
Love Assassin's as well, yes it's a corny take a break from thinking movie, just enjoy Stallone and Antonio mess around. Dead President's was excellent regardless of what they say
I actually read the first draft of Strange Days and Assassins well before they were produced into films and both were better scripts then they were movies. A funny thing about the script for Strange Days, director Kathleen Bigelow demanded it as part of her divorce from James Cameron!! He and Jay Cocks wrote it years before, but Bigelow fell in love with the project and thought that she was the only director could do it justice!!
“Dead Presidents” is a great film with one of the best music soundtracks of any movie ever made. I haven’t seen “Strange Days” but I’m thoroughly intrigued.
Strange Days rules. Great acting, Interesting plot, It sucks you into the movie and you loose track of time. It's to bad they dated it with Y2K because if they didn't you really wouldn't be able to tell when this movie was made. A lot of the plot points are still valid. I give it 9.5 out of 10
@Dickum N Lickum the V: Emperor Of RU-vid. Actually, there's a scene where a rapper is on TV declaring the end of the world. I interpreted that as Y2K!
While I'm more in agreement with Ebert on "Strange Days" -- it's too thought-provoking and interesting of a film to give a thumbs-down to -- I do agree with some of Siskel's criticisms, like Juliette Lewis being miscast, and the plot not quite living up to the sensational premise. Ebert is right that Ralph Fiennes is tremendous, however, and carries the film with ease.
I loved Dead Presidents!! Strange Days, I just couldn’t get into. I remember thinking at the time, all this is supposed to happen in four to five years?? I know it’s scifi, which I love, but I just couldn’t detach when I saw it. Both films have OUTSTANDING soundtracks!!
That was my same reaction. It also came at the tail end of a bunch of other dystopian movies that came out that same year. And it was just like, "Okay enough. I get it. The future sucks."
These critics shared some interesting points on Strange Days. But as for me I absolutely loved the film. It also had a kick-ass soundtrack. One of Bigalow's best.
Just wanted to add movies in the 90s are amazing . Even these 3 films are great compared to today my dad loves dead presidents like loves it . I want to see it.
I have two big problems with Strange Days: one is that setting it explicitly in 1999 dated the movie in a way that keeping it ambiguous similar to what most Black Mirror episodes do. The second is the rape/murder scene. I understand the point that the movie is trying to make but it's too much and it feels somewhat gratuitous. Also, on a structural level, this is the most upsetting/disturbing moment in the movie and it comes almost an hour before the movie ends. The problem is that the most disturbing point SHOULD be the recording of the black people being murdered by the cops that happens at the end of the second act. This should be the lowest point of the movie when the heroes witness this crime but also realize just how dangerous their predicament is not to mention that it's the main plot of the film. However, because we saw a far more horrifying moment in an earlier subplot, the main plot loses the impact it should have had. I truly believe that if these two aspects had been fixed, especially the second one, then the movie would have made a lot more money and would be remembered a lot more.
We should all agree that an innocent person being raped and an innocent person being executed are both horrible acts of violence and injustice, and it seems strange to split hairs over which is worse or "too much, even for a movie." Although it is interesting that the execution is treated as the footage that could turn the world upside down, and a brutal rape isn't I think the entire movie attempts to glorify and stylize violence, showing the similarities between customers buying 'squid' videos of extreme experiences, and the appetite of movie/entertainment audiences seeking out the same thing I'm assuming the year 2000 was really important to Boomers and Xers because a lot of pop singers and other entertainers of the day treated it like a symbolic threshold. And the movie is clearly not set in the 21st century, where an incriminating video could be near-instantly uploaded online for the whole planet to see
@@gc3k oh my God. Yeah the coming of the year 2000 was such a big deal especially when someone casually mentioned it to me as a kid in 1983. I didn’t realize that it was the near future. I was bad at math. Still am. But the number alone, because it was part of all these sci fi tropes, evoked this idea that we'd all be instantly transported to a world with flying cars. That's basically the sleight of hand this movie does. Somehow the year 2000 will have this technology that wasn't even remotely on the horizon in 1995. In actual 1999 all everyone could talk about was "the new millennium". But there was the fear of the havoc the Y2K bug would wreak. Instead of the future world we were all hoping for this computer glitch would instantly transport us back to the 1300s Instead. As you may imagine January 1st 2000 was basically like December 31st, 1999.
I love how Roger questions of surviving sticking your head out of a cab while being hit by a bus AND holding up a table during an explosion in Assassin 😂😂😂 I’m so surprised nobody has commented on that
Assassins was a garbage movie, Dead Presidents was not a bad film i gave that a moderate thumbs up cuz of the performances of Larenz Tate, Keith David & Chris Tucker & I'm with Roger Strange Days was a terrific film
I wonder what the production behind Assassins was like. It sounds like the Wachowskis wrote a Hollywood John Woo movie, but were hamstrung by the studio and other influences, and the movie ended up being flat and boring
I can understand both of their opinions on Strange Days. The film is a technical masterpiece but the plot is deeply flawed and the final twist is seriously underwhelming
I definitely agree with Siskel about the characters being subservient to the production and concepts and obscure music from the 1990s. The movie is still good but it's more concerned with its "big ideas" than with storytelling The funny thing is the movie keeps bloviating about how scary the new year is gonna be and how the world's about to end-- but on Dec 31 1999, at 3am Los Angeles time, it's already 2000 somewhere, so it didn't end did it
havent seen the film dont know what they are talking about. but i can certainly tell you that here in Oklahoma i have 100% seen huge violent windy storms that literally came out of nowhere in just seconds on bright sunny days and just completely blow by and vanish in 15 minutes.
These left brain oriented critics like Siskel could never understand something this creative like Strange Days and before it's time. Hell, they hated Blade Runner and both movies are now classics.
So, real talk- who the fuck remembers Persuasion, compared to how many remember Strange Days? Hell, who the fuck remembers Persuasion compared to Dead Presidents? There's a clear split between shit that's daring and takes a chance and actually delivers (or big ambitious films that sometimes don't work because they're so big and ambitious) and milquetoast middle-of-the-road pablum that makes one thing memorable and the other thing forgettable. Or, to put it another way, Inception, Black Swan, The Social Network, True Grit, and Winter's Bone all lost to The King's Speech.
I have walked out onto movies in my lifetime. One was The Empire Strikes Back during its original theatrical run when I was 4 years old and got scared. The other was Strange Days. The premise of the technology was the best part, and the movie didn't even do as much to sell us on the possibility as the trailer did. The characters were obnoxious stereotypes who behaved without anything resembling sense. Finally, it had the single worst rape scene I've ever seen in a movie. The idea of what was happening in the scene - a woman being raped and killed while plugged into the rapist/murderer's experience and pleasure - was so horrifying that it didn't need to be shown. If it was going to be shown, the idea should have been to emphasize the pain and suffering. Instead, it was shot just like a sex seeing and thereby just completely missed the storytelling Point as well as being just ethically twisted and gross.
