Immortal
by Enki Bilal
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DVD details
Actor: Charlotte Rampling, Fr??d??ric Pierrot, Linda Hardy (II), Thomas Kretschmann, Thomas M. PollardDirector: Enki Bilal
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-06-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: FIRST LOOK PICTURES
DVD Reviews of Immortal
DVD Review: Not Cooked Long Enough
Summary: 2 Stars
I saw this movie some time ago on cable and jotted some notes down...
'Immortal' suffers from wanting to be Blade Runner. The tie-in to Ancient Egypt and their pantheon was interesting but I missed how that made any sense.
A hi-tech hourglass ticks away. What does the cat goddess think of Horace's procreative trysts?
Intricate plot that is vague somehow. Dialogue written by 'B'-level college creative writing students. CGI characters all look like more like cartoons/anime except for the 'immortals' who didn't seem to fit with the animal heads. Hot bodies, though, for unrated film, they didn't need to cover up Horace's privates. Romance between the 'hero' and the lead female was too forced (literally). Seemed to make light of rape.
The exchanges between the main character guy and Horace were overlong and it was never clear how Horace inhabits him. The doctor (?) female pursuing the alien female protagonist seemed to have zilch character development. Then there was the inexplicable series of shark/squid-like villain accoutrements that were laughably ineffective, though they looked cool in their evil way.
The main problem with the film is that the emphasis really is on surfaces and the 'stylized future reality bit', rather than a story. It reminded me of latter day George Lucas, where the plot gets sketchy, the dialogue gets more stilted, the humor scarce, but everything looks and sounds really cool.
Immortal is sexy, or at least tries, but the reasons it's sexy seems to be to keep focus away from the half-baked plot. The story line gets lost in the jumbled script, half-mentioned, and unfocused. Horace wants to procreate? So he takes over the male protag's body?
The whole thing would've made a great, highly stylized porn movie, but it's obvious they wanted to spice up the story with sex but didn't want to bother with the messiness of making the story at all sexual or make the sexual make sense.
Overall, the movie 'outcools' itself by looking good while saying very little. Blade Runner, though highly stylized, defined a genre of future Earth depictions white tell a very compelling story about the core nature of what it means to be human and, ultimately, the nature of immortality.
'Immortal', on the other hand, is an ancient Egypt fanclub flick, part cartoon, part real that looks simultaneously slick and, at times, ridiculous (Horace talks out of his throat and I swear I could see an actor's eyes peering through his beak at one point).
Given another year or so of massaging, editing, and developing the script, effects, etc. the would make an interesting film, but the kernel of the story focuses on Horace rather than the couple who are.. spoiler alert....
getting back together at the end (ironically, sine she has lost her memory - yet again).
Too many gimmicks, magic pills and magic powers make this movie a two star joint.
DVD Review: Immortal
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this movie a few years ago and only got to see the last 1/2 of it. It is an interesting story. But it never did explain where the gods where going.DVD Review: Why Does Horus Suddenly Appear?
Summary: 4 Stars
The Good Things
*Very excellent special effects. Visual imagery is so spectacular throughout the film that it is hardly ever dull (even though there's no real action to it).
*Good filming style with lots of vivid imagery.
*Excellent production design. Lots of funky sets, costumes, props, and loads of really cool flying cars.
*Fascinating characters. Lots of emotion; good acting and pretty good writing.
*Very interesting concepts throughout. Some content concerning eugenics. Some parts seem to question the definition of humanity.
*Good music.
The Bad Things
*Rather strange, somewhat confusing story. Definately warrants multiple viewings, however.
*Gets a little slow at some parts.
*Not for kids or the extremely squeamish; contains bloody violence, swearing, nudity, and sex.
The Questionable Things
*I don't get why so many characters were completely computer-generated; it seemed to make everything look more fake and confusing.
Easily comparable to "The Fifth Element," but I consider this to be a little superior in many ways. "Immortal" is what science fiction should be about; intriguing visions of the future and of other worlds. It's also got some deep content concerning the nature of humanity. The storyline suffers from being a little too strange, confusing, and slow at parts, but I was very pleased with the visuals and the emotions of the characters. If you're interested in good sci-fi, I'd reccomend at least renting this.
The DVD has excellent video and sound quality (the video is just a little grainy, but it adds to the overall grittiness of the film). It includes a thirty-minute making-of feature and a couple of trailers. The copy I have came in an awesome metal steelbook case.
If this review has not been helpful, let me know how I can improve for the future.
DVD Review: Dark visions of the future
Summary: 4 Stars
A strange cross between animation and film with very a black and white
comic book feel to it. The God Horus of Egypt as a semi-Immortal alien
leaves a "hero" behind in the Greek classical tradition. The blue hair
child-woman and the freeze dried Russian revolutionist are caught
in a plot that exploits them. Strange aliens and monsters
of several sorts roam about in this movie, but their is little Quetin Tarantino gore here. The result is well done sci fi movie.
DVD Review: Great visuals, incredible story, rather poor execution
Summary: 3 Stars
I was just perusing Amazon when this recommendation came upon my screen. The cover alone captivated me. So I took the next step to start reading reviews and found it got fairly decent reviews. I'm a pretty big science fiction buff and the premise sounded hugely unique, that sealed it for me, I had to try it.
So my friends and I sat down to watch this movie and we all agreed that the visualizations were well done. Except for one point... when the film shifted from having real humans to having CG humans and then it shifted back and forth. In a few scenes it was humans interacting with CG characters, but those were few and far between. The change was so sudden that it just felt weird, and we were left wondering why the director thought this was a good idea. Later we theorized that it was probably the people that had some sort of disease that was referenced in the film. However, I would've liked to have gotten more explanation on this. Then we saw the senator and thought maybe it wasn't all for those people. Ultimately... we got confused.
Most of the script is pretty interesting and conceptually it's quite enthralling. The black mark against this film is that they leave a lot of questions out there. Such as why the gods are doing what they do? I realize it's to mate with a female, but what's the point of that? They never really explain the reason for the need... just that they want to do it. It certainly brings up some very interesting parallels to history and the birth of demigods, which are fraught throughout historical writings. It is pretty obvious that the director is into history, especially the religious kind judging by his name. Enki is a Sumerian/Persian deity and "Bilal", I assume, is some perversion of the name Belial, also of Persian origin.
If you pay close attention to the film, you'll follow it on a decent level. But there are parts that you just get lost with. This obviously happens when the gods are speaking Egyptian and there are no words on the screen to tell me the translation unlike in "Stargate." Imagine how lost you would be watching "Stargate" with no translations! That's kind of the effect I walked away with on this film during those scenes.
Overall it's a decent movie. I think the director was a little over ambitious in creating this world. It felt like he tried to cram thousands of years of history into a two hour package and hope that the audience could fill in the gaps logically. I mean some of it was obvious, like the flying car stints, I can definitely figure out they are influenced by films like "The Fifth Element." Only he tried to combine the design with like a 1920's styled vehicle and an electric subway type of design... only all this is in the air. See, that kind of thing I can backtrack. The strange mutants because of a disease were a little harder to figure out, since I really don't have much of a historical reference for mutation other than the atomic bombs being dropped and the accident at Chernobyl. Either way, I think you get my point. The world is too big for people to just figure out on their own. The visuals do make up for this in their own way, because it's a beautifully dark film in its own right. I say give it a chance, but I hardly think it's worth owning as I don't see it to have all that much re-watch value.
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