There were plenty of good things about Uzumaki. Strange, beautiful imagery. Innovative bits of editing. General weird occurrences--people turning into giant snails, crematory smoke forming giant twisting spirals in the sky, a whirled-up corpse in a washing machine. I noticed a lot of David Lynch influence on Uzumaki, as has been noted by other reviewers, particularly in the use of disturbing extreme close-ups (the man eating the spiral fish cakes), in the establishing shots of the town, and in the use of music at times, but Uzumaki's definitely got its own unique style as well. Act 4, I thought, was particularly brilliant, with the bizarro comic-bookish montage of still images to finish out the story, slightly reminiscent of La Jetee.
But bad acting. I couldn't tell if it was intentionally bad to create a comic effect, like David Lynch uses to such great effect sometimes, or if it was just bad acting. It seemed like a little bit of both.
No dramatic tension. There were characters on screen, and they were doing things and walking around and driving around, and sometimes interesting stuff was happening, but there just wasn't any reason to care about any of them. Likewise, there wasn't much of a story I could care about. And while the imagery was fantastic, it wasn't enough to hold my interest for an hour in a half in an uncomfortable theater seat. I often seem to have the same reaction to David Cronenberg's and Peter Greenaway's films. No real emotional content.
Uzumaki could have been a brilliant short film, but there's not enough meat to make it a compelling feature.
Why is it that every theater that would screen a film like Uzumaki seems to have such incredibly cramped and uncomfortable seating?
But bad acting. I couldn't tell if it was intentionally bad to create a comic effect, like David Lynch uses to such great effect sometimes, or if it was just bad acting. It seemed like a little bit of both.
No dramatic tension. There were characters on screen, and they were doing things and walking around and driving around, and sometimes interesting stuff was happening, but there just wasn't any reason to care about any of them. Likewise, there wasn't much of a story I could care about. And while the imagery was fantastic, it wasn't enough to hold my interest for an hour in a half in an uncomfortable theater seat. I often seem to have the same reaction to David Cronenberg's and Peter Greenaway's films. No real emotional content.
Uzumaki could have been a brilliant short film, but there's not enough meat to make it a compelling feature.
Why is it that every theater that would screen a film like Uzumaki seems to have such incredibly cramped and uncomfortable seating?