The Girl From Monday
Director: Hal Hartley
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 0.5
Muddled mixture of 1984 and Brave New World as people in the future (which looks ... a lot like today!) have sex to increase their consumer power and the companies and police have taken over. Unfortunately for Hartley, despite the earnest intent to critique our society, this is closer to his Amateur than Henry Fool, operating on a level in which I'm not sure if he's trying to be funny (towards the end, the characters take out silly looking cops with kung fu) or serious (which ... he can't be, because he can't be that bad a filmmaker) or aiming for some rarely achieved middle ground. The acting is as silly as the dialogue, and the technique - all slanted camera angles and filters and obnoxiously repeated images - detracts from the picture, drawing constant attention to the way in which the film is made instead of what the film is trying to say (if it's even completely sure of what it wants to say, and the entire thing isn't a joke).
