Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Dark City!

Alex Proyas is best known for directing an entire capeshit movie like a Sisters of Mercy music video.

>i once mouthed the en-word while rapping along to the radio
ONE, NOTHING WRONG WITH ME

This is a shame because, presumably after he turned 15, he went on to direct this week's greatest movie of all time. Some have called it the patrician's Matrix. None have called it anything else, because that's what it is. Dark City dropped a clean year before the Wachowski Brothers' Ghost in the Shell-meets-Total Recall ripoff and is smarter, better and kinoer.

DESPITE ALL MY RAGE I AM STILL JUST A RAT IN A CAGE

WARNING: watch the director's cut. The studio mandated an expository voiceover in the original release that gives away too much of the plot. I mention this not because plot is important but because it plays better when you share the protagonist's fog of confusion about his predicament for much of the runtime.

We've all been there amirite?

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub in a scene that might incline you to suspect this will turn out like Saw or perhaps another Urban Legend. Fortunately he appears to have all of his kidneys, but suffers from memory trouble. Thus begins a journey of awakening that sees him flee from Nosferatuesque mystery men, cross paths with William Hurt's noir detective, Kiefer Sutherland's eccentric Igor and Jennifer Connelly's hypnotic nightclub singer, and discover secrets that will blow his mind.

Jennifer Connelly is in this movie :)

The titular metropolis through which this journey winds its idiosyncratic way blends the aesthetic influences of German Expressionism with the art deco retro of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s to create a wonderfully anachronistic space that seems familiar yet strange, remixed the way a dream is said to remix memories and events. It's really quite a lot like Gotham City in Tim Burton's Batman duology, if the atmospherics tended less toward operatic pulp camp and more toward sepia sadboicore - less Bat Out of Hell, more Deathconsciousness.

An overlooked component of movie magic is the architectural escapism by which we can spend time in achingly sad cityscapes devoid of litter and winos.

Sadly yet hilariously, the movie goes full retard toward the end and resolves in a comical anime battle, perhaps because Proyas still had a bit of Crow to flush out of his system. This left-field black mark on the project would be a killer for any less a kino but Dark City more or less recovers in its final denouement, which even salvages a little ambiguity and mystery that almost brings us full circle. It's an underrated balancing act to pull off, since too many mystery movies wrap everything up too neatly, and in so doing kill off any lingering resonance in the mind. As the credits roll, you feel the Dark City is still out there somewhere, awaiting your return.

Hundreds of Billy Corgans live beneath YOUR feet.