Very disappointing...

best movie i've ever seen.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It feels like there was too much edited out of this movie, that doesn't mean that I didn't like it, well told story, should have been longer, nice acting, music, dialogue, well directed.

Dark City couldn't be a better title for this movie because the movie is very dark. The lack of bright colors are obvious and create this dark ambiance. The least we can say is that Dark City is a weird movie with a lot of strange things happening. It's all well shot, there is no doubt about that, but I'm still not satisfied completely. The special effects are sometimes very basic, even for that time, and that could have been done much better. The story is so strange that it takes a while before you understand what is really going on. The acting is not bad though, especially from the main character played by Rufus Sewell. All in all it's an okay movie to watch once but I wouldn't call it a cult movie.

I made the mistake in watching this movie because of the high rating, which is a mistake I may never make again. As the movie began I thought that the writing was supposed to be ironic, like it was being overly cliché on purpose as a joke, but then as the movie continued I slowly began to realize how uncreative the characters and dialogue were. Were there any jokes at all in this film? because the only thing you caught me laughing about was how predictable and banal the story line was.The characters were also bland, which could have been somewhat excusable considering the theme of erasing people's memories and personality, but this never even happened to any of our main characters. The main characters were completely immune to the main plot of the film and were still inexcusably shallow. The main character, the human with the same powers as the aliens, is supposed to be a human who is apparently "more evolved" and thus closer to the alien species, and this is how he has powers. It really makes no sense in general, but it also raises a lot of questions like why nobody seemed to notice his abilities until he was an adult who got abducted by aliens and lived multiple lives until finally he notices that he has incredible power during another one of many memory implant procedures.The obvious bad guys were both uncreative, self-contradictory and unrealistic. The "aliens" were, a bunch of screeching, cold-hearted (and yet still irrational), pale- skin, long-black-coat-wearing humans. They have powerful telekinetic abilities, but this didn't stop them from behaving like your typical slow-chasing, inefficient, knife-wielding villain. For a supposedly collective species, they sure were awful at working together and coordinating with each other. For an incredibly technologically advanced species, they sure were primitive in their philosophy and even naive in their science. For an alien species, they sure were anthropomorphic, both physically and behaviorally. For experimenters, they sure were willing to ruin their experiments and to be needlessly cruel to their valuable test subjects. There seemed to be no real method to their madness either. It was as if they expected that replacing people's memories every midnight would somehow one day give them a great insight but they had nothing that resembled a scientific method. Why this would be the way that the aliens chose to study humans is beyond me. Also beyond me is why they would go to such great costly lengths for such small returns.To top it all off, the entire story makes absolutely no sense; The very concept that the movie attempts to get at is completely contradicted by the ending of the movie. The idea is supposed to be that humans have "souls", that we are more than just our memories. John tells an alien that "what makes us human" won't be found in the brain and that the person whose memories he was implanted with "was never him". What does John then proceed to do with his power? He acts out the wishes of the person whose memories he was implanted with. What made him who he was, in the end, was nothing more than those memories. When he is free to do anything, to be "himself", he still reenacts the implanted memories by creating the beach and by meeting his fake wife. His wife and everyone else are then implied to behave exactly as how they were supposed to, rather than how they would "freely" want to act according to their "soul". The movie is an absolute mess that got nothing right.

Dark City is one of the greatest cinematic gems ever made, incredibly original, creative, philosophical and thought-provoking.The visuals are beyond amazing and it's safe to say that this is at least the most beautiful movie of the 90's. The cinematography, goes hand in hand with the strange set-design, and the gloomy lighting. You can pause nearly every second of this film, take a picture and pin it to your wall...But it's not just the look, it's also the content that's amazing, Dark City tells a story about...well i don't wanna spoiler that, you have to watch it.I mean it's worth your time for Trevor Jones incredible soundtrack alone, every piece of music in this film is great and fits the style perfectly (even Trevor Jones seems to have the own opinion that this is his greatest work, or why did he copied nearly every track for the movie Desperate Measures?) Even the editing has something special, mostly at the start of the film, there is a cut nearly every two seconds, but it's not too fast, it's so that we feel as if we where in the same situation as our protagonist.The characters are also very good, which has to be expected in a movie with that kind of theme. Rufus Sewell is great, same for Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt and especially Richard o'Brien (wo's voice and movement are incredible) and Kiefer Sutherland in his best role to date, i forget nearly every time that he is Dr. Paul Schreber, that's how good he is.I always say people who never heard of this film, to imagine a mosaic, and you get one little stone at a time until it's complete and you finally understand what's going on, because there is one picture in this film near the conclusion in which everyone knows what i'm talking about...I could talk way more about this incredible gem and i love it since i saw it the first time.But before i finish my thoughts here's a little tip, if you have the chance to see the director's cut, watch that version, it's not THAT different from the theatrical release, but it never tries to hold you hand. (There is a monologue at the beginning of the theatrical cu, which tells you a few things that are way more effective when you have no idea what's going on at all) I love Dark City, and everyone who thinks that Matrix, or Inception (which i also like) are the smartest movies ever made, than they haven't seen this one...