Another Earth

Just got home from this film and I really wanted to like it but I give it an over all C+ (like 79.99999)

I still like the overall concept of this film but I feel the two biggest factors going against it are Mike Chaill (Director, DP, Writer, and Editor) and Brit Marling (star, writer, and producer). I understand it was their film but they were too involved. Mike Chaill should have yielded the DP and editor roles off to someone else. I was disappointed with the cinematography overall and felt that it could of been shot from a freshman in film school. The editing could of been chopped a lot too, get rid of all the shots walking and thinking.

This film is a good example of someone really pushing the auteur theory but who is still a long ways to go from being the next Francois Truffaut.

If you haven't seen it yet, I'd still would recommend it on the basis of it being an overall decent story with a semi original concept. Just don't get sucked into all the Sundance hype.
 
TheDingo said:
Gawd, I don't know where to start, but here are my favorite features of this film...

- Bad shaky cam ( Is this an earth-quake scene? )
- Focus appeared to be optional in many shots
- Non-existant lighting ( Who needs lights, when it's more realistic to not use any )
- Bad color-timing with optional sand-paper grade 80 look thrown in for some reason
- The story may have been written by the director and lead actress when they were 8 years old ( which would explain a lot )
- The science portion of the film was verified by pre-schoolers who confirmed that a 2nd planet Earth will always orbit our Moon
- Terrible dialog
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wow, these were also my favorite!

while I admire the efforts of the filmmakers, I came out of it with a sour taste in my mouth.
 
TheDingo said:
I can't for the life of me imagine why this film won the Sundance Alfred P. Sloan Prize for outstanding film with science, technology or math as a major theme.
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Well, I can't find evidence with a quick search, but I swear it was mentioned in the Sloan-sponsored panel on portrayals of science in film at Sundance this year that 'Another Earth's' development was also partially funded by a Sloan grant, like described here - http://www.sloan.org/program/18/page/42. So they backed it from the beginning then gave it an award.
 
TheDingo said:
...I saw this movie tonight, and I thought the innovative use of brain-damaged helper-monkeys to spasticly zoom and pull-focus at the same time was sheer genius. I hope those monkeys were not overworked when they did the color timing, because I could tell they were trying their best to stay awake during the boring parts that lasted about 91 minutes.

I can't for the life of me imagine why this film won the Sundance Alfred P. Sloan Prize for outstanding film with science, technology or math as a major theme. Maybe they gave all the judges a life-time supply of hookers and blow?

Gawd, I don't know where to start, but here are my favorite features of this film...

- Bad shaky cam ( Is this an earth-quake scene? )
- Focus appeared to be optional in many shots
- Non-existant lighting ( Who needs lights, when it's more realistic to not use any )
- Bad color-timing with optional sand-paper grade 80 look thrown in for some reason
- The story may have been written by the director and lead actress when they were 8 years old ( which would explain a lot )
- The science portion of the film was verified by pre-schoolers who confirmed that a 2nd planet Earth will always orbit our Moon
- Terrible dialog

Surprisingly the audio was ok ( so they must have spent some of that $200K budget on a real sound guy ), and the acting did not bother me too much, which might have been an indication of how much I hated everything else. This misguided film makes "Blair Witch" look like "Avatar" in comparison. I never realized how stupid film reviewers can be sometimes. Ugh!
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I was wondering the same thing...just from seeing the trailer. It looks boring..plus the guy from Lost who kidnapped Kate :( yeah I dont like him.
Anyways How does a film like this end up in a high profile film festival....was there a lottery.
Agree with you on the audio sounds really good. But I will post a thread about that soon .The more I look at films the more I can " see " the audio.
 
I just saw it and actually thought it was pretty good. The drama was well-maintained throughout and the acting was good, for the most part. I was fine with the lack of scientific explanation. That was really just a backdrop without much bearing on the film. The few times it was mentioned by anyone in the scientific community, they were just throwing out broad theories as they were still unsure of exactly what and how this was happening. The cinematography was pretty poor. The lack of lighting and HD camera work wasn't a great choice. I saw crew member shadows on more than one occasion and there was a decent amount of focus hunting. It looked to me like a mixture of 16mm, a cheap HD cam, and a little DSLR mixed in. It almost seemed like it was shot poorly on purpose, as an artistic choice or something. I'm fine with hanheld and natural-styled lighting, but it usually takes a lot of work to make it look like you did nothing. I think this guy actually did nothing and just started shooting. Other than those technical faults, I think the movie played out pretty well. Some of it was slow, but it was all just adding to what the character was experiencing. There were a few very good scenes. And about the guy from Lost, every time I saw him I thought, "hey it's Ethan!" Some of his performance wasn't great either.
 
Watched it on blu ray tonight. Loved it. Im a big fan of given-circumstance sci-fi...a la MOON.

Sure, there are gonna be a lot of camera nerds saying that they hated it because of some unmotivated crash zooms. Whoopee. Im sure if i went to an astronomy forum they would be whining about the angles of the sun's light hitting Earth2. This is a great story, with a fairly original idea! This kind of script could've gone very bad very quickly if it were not carefully directed, so I don't blame Cahill for taking on as many roles as he did.

Efforts like these should be applauded. These filmmakers are not unsimilar to many folks on this forum. They had a great script with fitting execution: they ended up with a great little movie and the rewards of mainstream distribution. Good for them.
 
TheDingo said:
...I saw this movie tonight, and I thought the innovative use of brain-damaged helper-monkeys to spasticly zoom and pull-focus at the same time was sheer genius. I hope those monkeys were not overworked when they did the color timing, because I could tell they were trying their best to stay awake during the boring parts that lasted about 91 minutes.

I can't for the life of me imagine why this film won the Sundance Alfred P. Sloan Prize for outstanding film with science, technology or math as a major theme. Maybe they gave all the judges a life-time supply of hookers and blow?

Gawd, I don't know where to start, but here are my favorite features of this film...

- Bad shaky cam ( Is this an earth-quake scene? )
- Focus appeared to be optional in many shots
- Non-existant lighting ( Who needs lights, when it's more realistic to not use any )
- Bad color-timing with optional sand-paper grade 80 look thrown in for some reason
- The story may have been written by the director and lead actress when they were 8 years old ( which would explain a lot )
- The science portion of the film was verified by pre-schoolers who confirmed that a 2nd planet Earth will always orbit our Moon
- Terrible dialog

Surprisingly the audio was ok ( so they must have spent some of that $200K budget on a real sound guy ), and the acting did not bother me too much, which might have been an indication of how much I hated everything else. This misguided film makes "Blair Witch" look like "Avatar" in comparison. I never realized how stupid film reviewers can be sometimes. Ugh!
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This made me LOL.
 
I didn't think it was that bad either. Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but I found it to be an interesting story. I watched the whole thing. I like that "her other self" showed up to see her at the end. I was confused for a second then was like oh cool. I dunno, it was something to watch and there are much worse things out there.
 
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