Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Adam H. Kerman" Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv Subject: Re: Dream Scenario (2023) Date: Mon, 27 May 2024 19:28:34 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 92 Message-ID: References: Injection-Date: Mon, 27 May 2024 21:28:34 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="cf28ace197a560320630a9a5fa59b045"; logging-data="203917"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19Rr78t89AmJw6OYk/iWbinhJUo5HnoDsc=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:HHMpTdTWTJrpJ0yn9IcBzihV+B4= X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Bytes: 5265 Arthur Lipscomb wrote: >On 5/26/2024 11:40 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote: >> From A24, Toronto-based production with some locations in Montreal. >> Produced over five weeks at the end of 2022. >> >> I found this in the library, knew nothing about it. The cover said it >> was a comedy and Nicolas Cage has never been funnier. >> >> Uh >> >> It has tiny moments of comedy but this is an attempt at horror, with a >> shared dream scenario that Cage's character Paul Matthews enters with >> no idea how. The dreamer experiences Paul but Paul does not experience >> the dreamer. >> >> It's really not good. >> >> Sophie (Lily Bird) has a dream in which her father Paul appears. >> Clothing keeps falling from the sky and then a body, but Paul just >> stands there, ignoring the crisis, and then ignoring Sophie as she >> floats away. Soon, numerous people experience dreams with Paul standing >> there oblivious. >> >> Paul is upset because he's not helpful but he's not all that engaging in >> real life. He's a professor. Janet (Julianne Nicholson whose delightful >> freckles have faded; I wish she'd get them back) is his unsupportive >> wife. I thought they made her too extreme. Significantly, she never >> dreams about him. >> >> Paul has been neglecting research in his field since he was a graduate, >> but someone he was a student with took his ideas and developed them. >> She's going to publish in a prestigious journal. Paul is jealous. It's >> not quite clear how much work, if any, he'd done on them in grad school. >> He's been thinking about writing a book for decades. >> >> Paul's students start dreaming about him, but at first, the dreams may >> have violent imagery in them but Paul is not interacting. >> >> The owner of a marketing firm Trent (Michael Cera) thinks he can use >> Paul's abilities for product placement in dreams just by getting people >> to think about Paul with the product while awake. One of his employees >> Molly (Dylan Gelula, a very attractive brunette in her late 20s playing >> early 20s) tells Paul that she's dreamt about him and in the dream, he's >> sexually agressive. Soon, more women have dreams like this. >> >> Later, the dreams people are having about Paul have him instigating >> violence, usually killing the dreamer. >> >> People are now terrified of Paul. He's still experiencing any of it. >> >> Paul is now shunned. His students won't attend class and he loses his >> job, and his wife loses her job. He's banned from his daughter's school >> and cannot see her perform on stage. >> >> Paul tries to make an apology video after finally experiencing one of hs >> own dreams, a figure who looks like him tries to murder him. The video >> is terrible and backfires. His marriage ends. >> >> Eventually a guy sees him in a restaurant and beats him up. Everyone >> stops dreaming about Paul. No explanation. >> >> Later, an engineer figures out how to exploit the shared dreamscape for >> commercial reasons now that Paul proved it existed. Product placement is >> directly in dreams. He's figured out how to get people to direct their >> minds into someone else's dream. >> >> I have no idea how the time shift works because he uses the example of >> putting himself into the dream of a Korean boy. How can you possibly >> know when someone elsewhere is in a dream state and receptive, let alone >> sleeping? >> >> Paul writes a book Dream Scape for the French market. They try to promote >> him as Freddy Kruger and entirely change his book into something else. >> Another failure. >> >> In the end, he teaches himself to enter Janet's dream. She's being >> burned and he rescues her, then floats away as Sophie had, and wishes >> the dream were real. >> >> Amber Midthunder is in this. > > >I liked it more than you did, but it definitely could have been a better >movie. I wonder if maybe the issue is Cage was miscast and a different >actor would have brought a better dynamic to the part. Although what >Cage brought to the part may have been exactly what the directed wanted. I'm not objecting to performances. The story utterly lacked a plot. There's a shared dreamscape. His image enters the dreams of other people. It's not him. He can't interact. Stuff happens to him for no reason the script bothers to explain.