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IlyaG
Reviews
Today's Life (2000)
Highbrow and emotional story
Today's Life is one of the few entertaining short films that's more about plot and less about symbolism. In just 13 minutes, it tells the story of a future NASA-like agency that sends out space ships filled with cloned astronauts to explore the far reaches of the galaxy. These clones are supposed to lack any memory of their life before being cloned, and function only as robots.
This is an emotional story because both the main character and the audience knows that he is about to be "terminated" once he finishes the job. It's a highbrow story because it makes the audience question the morality behind human cloning. Are human clones simply disposable objects without a soul, to be thrown away when they are no longer needed?
This is exactly the kind of story that belongs in the short film format rather than as a theatrical motion picture. Only this format allows the filmmakers to concentrate on just one character, with virtually no dialogue, relying mostly on the acting of the man who plays him to drive the story forward. It's like one of the better episodes of the Twilight Zone.
Big-budget visual effects (which were professionally created for the filmmakers free of charge by the effects wizards behind Star Trek) and an emotional, orchestral musical score highlight this human drama about a clone who finds his soul.
Fatal Instinct (1993)
Hilarious, yet flawed
Written in the style of Airplane!, Top Secret! and The Naked Gun, this is a hilarious spoof that I find quite entertaining. There are numerous laugh-out-loud jokes and scenes throughout the movie (like when the characters suddenly begin talking in Yiddish), yet there are those that desperately try to be funny but aren't (such as the entire court room scene near the end). This movie is considerably funnier if you have watched the dozens of movies Fatal Instinct is spoofing. If you've not seen them, however, you will not be lost in the story. You'll merely sit there not realizing that you've just seen a comedy bit.
As for the rest of the movie, it's filmed on what appears to be a shoe-string budget. But then again, there's nothing in the film requiring a big budget to begin with. The cinematography feels cheap and the direction is sometimes boring, but the actors (particularly Assante) provide great performances. The storyline is ridiculously boring, and there are some spoof jokes that seem incredibly out of place and unfunny (such as when Sean Young's character takes the Ravine family rabbit for a roller coaster ride, a la Fatal Attraction).
Good jokes in the dialogue and original, if cheap, side gags distract from a poor overall screenplay. This isn't the best movie in the genre, but it holds it's own. This movie is probably even better than one or two of the Naked Gun films. Fans of the genre will be thoroughly entertained by it. Others might not appreciate the humor.