Minority Report (2002)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: When Spielberg dies, this won’t be even in the top ten films mentioned as his most memorable. In any retrospective of the Philip K. Dick adaptations, this film probably won’t be one of the first ones mentioned. Considering Tom Cruise will likely continue reaching for cinematic excellence after he has grown beyond the use of his physical body to await Xenu’s return, there’s a very real possibility this won’t even rank in the top thousand memorably Cruise roles*.

And, for the life of me, I can’t quite figure out why any of those things are true.

It is far and beyond the best adaptation of Dick’s work ever produced, and yes, I count Blade Runner (1982) in that equation (although I don’t care for it, which I understand already renders me suspect) and Total Recall (1990) (which I ultimately kind of like). It takes a kernel of an idea—which is all Dick was ever really good for—and flushes it out into an actual story that sticks with you.

There’s not a genre which Spielberg hasn’t conquered, so it’s almost a tragedy that he hasn’t done more hard-boiled detective stories. He didn’t even need to include any of the Dick-ish trappings present here.

Cruise may still be working through his post-Mission: Impossible II (2000) malaise, but he’s approaching his later day renaissance with the vigor even his detractors must grant him.

*As I type that, I feel like I’m being unfair to Scientology. I might have saved this revelation for my eventual review of Top Gun: Maverick (2022), but I’m struggling to think of any religion not built on a foundation of abuse. Only one religion has its adherents speaking out against the horrors of motion blurring on HD TV sets. So, even though it might not bring me the kind of power of a Cruise or the horrors of a Kirstie Alley, I may need to keep a more open mind.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener

Have I Seen it Before: I’m not entirely sure I’ve stopped watching it at this point. The film is so amorphous that I seriously wondered if Kaufman was still shooting the film, years after Hoffman died, and with a ten year head start, is still sending reels to upload to Netflix. 

Did I Like It: After saying something like that, I have to say no, right?

There are a lot of interesting visuals in this film, and they illicit a lot of feelings ranging from melancholy to deep melancholy. Some may say that Kaufman—a screenwriter making his first, and to date only directing attempt—is a gifted storyteller in need of a visual stylist like Spike Jonze to complete the package. This isn’t the problem here. He needed a tighter screenplay, which, honestly, he has provided other directors with far less effort.

That crack about melancholy above is maybe unfair, but only just so. There is much to identify in here. At it’s core, it deals with the blurring of lines between fiction and reality (I think) and that is a topic I have spent at least a little bit of time working out myself. The yearning for some kind of human contact beyond simply the romantic (again, I think) cuts deep with anyone on the north side of thirty and has spent a goodly chunk of their life in the same committed relationship.

Even the image of the schlubby Hoffman wandering through his life trying to write something real, while trying to find the right person to play himself (again, I can only guess) feels like I’m personally being called out, but that can’t be universal, right? It even took me most of the first forty-five minutes of the film to get over the fact that Hoffman and I essentially have the same haircut.

I just wish all of that could have fit into something I might understand as a story. I know Kaufman can create brilliantly structured stories, and that makes whatever I just saw all the more disappointing.