Listening

source: Listening

Why would you film your movie like this? I just am dying to know. Scenes are either all blue, all yellow, or all green, and have moments of blinding glare that hurt the viewer's eyes. Why can't you just use natural colors? Also how about we hold the camera still? The colors and wobbly camera are both nausea inducing, and make the film look cheaper than it even is. The characters are college guys with poorly written lines and they really ramp up their immaturity. They meet the female lead on campus, and the token obnoxious sidekick starts staring at her nonexistent rear (which we get a closeup of) and acting like a fool. I'm not meaning to insult the actress but it's just really absurd and forced the way the reaction about her body was written, when really there isn't much to notice about it. This comes a couple scenes after we're introduced to the lead character's wife, who is a joyless ball and chain who acts like she wants nothing to do with her husband anymore. What a rough break for any female who got a role in this movie- you can either play the cold "no fun zone" wife, or the obligatory sex object whose purpose is only to show skin and elevate the male characters. The "eye candy" character at least ends up being decently insightful with their experiment, a trait which is described in the movie as being "more than just a hot body." I understand indie film-making isn't always on par with a more experienced crew with a larger budget, but there are some pretty obvious ways to not make your film so hard to look at, and maybe that's worth the extra effort. The premise is kind of cool, so maybe it could have been a decent book instead.

I got to this movie by chance, just looking at sci-fi titles. Its actually quite a well made film. The story is engaging, the characters are intriguing and the acting is good. Its very difficult to find good sci-fi in the last few years. In this JJ Abrams era every sci-fi is the same, the story is the same, the actors all look alike, the characters are full of clichés and boring stereotypes that only teenagers may find interesting. Thats why Im happy to ignore a few flaws in movie Listening, which offers something outside of the cookie cutter scene. Cool movie.

Interesting idea but falls completely flat. I know, "Sucks" is pretty harsh but let me count the ways. 1. The Evil CIA/Government has hidden cameras all over the labs of these college students. When did this happen? how did they know there were working on this mind reading hardware? No explanation what so ever. 2. You are going to let an untrained college student inject your spine with a huge needle with nanotubes? Something completely untested by them on even lab animals. If you don't kill him you may paralyze him but that doesn't seem to worry them in the least. 3. Getting kicked out to the street but no one seems to mind. 4. Acting is so wooden I thought I was watching Pinocchio 5. Strange random lighting and lens coloring with no real reason...what the hell? 6. Computer blow up but are seen working 5 mins later... wow, that's cool. 7. Government testing mind control and give the target a gun with loaded bullets ... why not leave blanks? You would end up with the same results ... Come on how stupid. Overall the movie sucks so bad the talent-less"director"/writer should give up now and do something else with his life and stop wasting everyone's time with this garbage.