A Masterpiece!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I have watched this movie twice so far, its at best an average thriller. I see quite a few high ratings for this movie and they usually refer to the fact its made by a female director. I think if it was made by a male director it would have an average rating. This isnt even her best movie, I much prefer Near Dark. The movie itself was written by James Cameron however this is not in the same league as Terminator or Aliens as far as quality or action goes. The story is quite straight forward, its a police corruption movie with the back drop of the turn of the century, with a sci-fi twist. There are a couple of plot twists within the film but nothing that is too surprising. There are a few reasons why I haven't rated this as above average. First off is the running time. It really doesn't justify taking up the best part of 3 hours. The reason? Quite a few scenes are almost like music promo videos of some once popular band from the 90s. So much of the movie seems to take place in a concert venue. There are maybe three different scenes when Juliette Lewis is on stage and this doesn't add to the plot at all. There are just far too many of these scenes. Also the director uses slow motion far too often and inter cuts other scenes with images of the city in chaos for no real reason. When you start to look at your watch throughout the movie and begin to notice all of these things which eat into the time of the movie its quite frustrating. This is basically a decent 90 min movie stretched out to almost twice its length by baggy content screaming to be cut out. As far as the main protagonists, we have a male lead who is supposed to have been a cop and is now part of the criminal underworld. However he is so incompetent during the fight scenes its laughable. How can he possibly have been a cop when hes so soft? Angela Basset is the side kick and if we are to believe this the toughest thing in the movie. We see her beat up groups of men and women well over 6ft tall, all 5 ft 4 inches of her. It doesn't seem believable when you notice the height differences. If people rated the movie as it is instead of inflating the score because of who directed it, because of their gender, which is also a form of prejudice, this would be reflected in the ratings. Its an average movie best watched with your finger on the fast forward button. There are better, shorter movies and you could probably fit two of them in instead of watching this.

Although this movie was made twenty years ago, it is very telling of where society of present day is heading. This sci-fi thriller is very suspenseful and tackles many topics connected to today. I was moved by the portrayal of of cop relations with African-Americans. Just having it being represented in this film shows that police brutality has been a recurring issue for quite some time. This film is reminiscent of George Orwell's novel 1984 in the since that it is foretelling of the future if technology and power structures are not kept under control. However, I feel that the portrayal of the squibs was a little corny. I Other than that, I found it to be a pretty decent film.

And if your memories could be recorded in a disc and you could see and feel everything again as you were right back on that specific moment? That's the premise for STRANGE DAYS! We are in L.A. at 30th December of 1999 and the new millennium is about to begin. In the black-market you can buy a new "drug" which can drive you into POV experiences of other people's lives, seeing, hearing and feeling what that person recorded. And it could be anything, from someone making sex, running at the beach, making an assault or even the "blackjacks": violations, murders and even the death of the person who was recording! That's a voyeuristic kind of experience but also an addiction that could be easily compared to a drug...But that's just the premise of the movie, and the most interesting part of it in my opinion (In fact I watched this film for the first time back in 1996 and that was the only thing I remembered from it...). So the 2000's new years eve and this "new drug" are just the context to what is in fact an action thriller about cops, the abuse of authority, and the tension between cops and black people in L.A...I enjoyed the movie, but also the soundtrack! It has some nice kicking rock songs of the 90's (including the ones sung by Juliette Lewis!) and it made me feel like 20 years ago listening to those songs. The acting is also fine, especially from Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett. I score it 7/10.

Before going into this review, I was under the impression that this film was going to be an action-packed, futuristic, sci-fi experience when in reality it more closely resembled a "what if scenario" of the world (or apparently just LA) going down the drain. It plays on a lot of people's fears about the end of the world and conspiracy theories, especially back then with the uncertainty of ringing in the new millennium. With that out of the way, I found the concept of being able to record memories and loading them onto disks to be shared to be very intriguing because of the possibilities for asynchronous communication. While not being able to communicate instantaneously, it should be noted that the sharing of memories and even physical sensations gave users the sense of looking through another person's eyes (or living in another man's shoes). The film's take on virtual reality was something I'd never seen before played out. As seen in the film, this can and was easily abused, being illegally marketed in the form of a digital drug and using them as surveillance to spy on people.