Review of Vanilla Sky (2001) by . S — 25 Aug 2011

After seeing it for the second time, I gotta admit, "Vanilla Sky" is such an enormous and beautiful movie than it's original 1997 Spanish movie "Open Your Eyes", so this is a remake, and we always hear the title in the movie almost all the time. Think of some films like Memento, Mulholland Drive, Total Recall, Eternal Sunshine, and even Inception, and you just didn't saw anything special yet! Like I just said, this movie reminded me of those films I just said, and putting it more on a modern and in an everyday life basis.

The movie stars such actors like Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. These people don't play our minds, but they bring us and even me, to a world where dream is the reality and vice versa, kinda like "Inception". The opening and closing words is of course "Open Your Eyes", maybe it tells us about waking up into what I just said, reality into dream.

Before that, I wanna talk about why this film works. The performances are truly great, Cruise is as good as this kind of role, like in films like "Jerry Maguire" and "Magnolia". Cruz and Diaz had some good chemistry with Cruise, and there is a surprise here wherein the other one is the other one, I don't know? And also Kurt Russell, as Cruise's doctor, that simply gives him some words of advice and maybe about existence too? Oh, the direction is also bizarre and artful, that I don't think the original dares to blow it up. And also, I just love how they added some entertainment and mind bending games here to make it more interesting as we do focus about David's life and lovelife. And most importantly, whatever the film goes beyond complexity, still a lesson will be learned here, that life and love is as usual the same and it would never die as if you would die too.

And yes, I have seen first the original Spanish film, and I like this more because of it's viewpoint message to it's character. And I told you also at the beginning that I've seen this twice, and I never got that bored or tired feeling, it gave me more of an explanation and answer on why he dies and lives and dies again and so on and so forth. If I have an another website, I'm for sure gonna be able to talk about some revelations and secrets of this movie.

Now, if someone is gonna say to you "Vanilla Sky" is confusing and jumps in and out of scene, then they could go wrong. In fact, the first time seeing time blew me away, and again the 2nd, just gave me liberty for this movie. And yes, this is an exception, I don't usually give 5 stars to some remakes, but this one, I just can't let it go. Two big enthusiastic enormous and gigantic thumbs up!!

Last thing, this movie could have also called, "Open Your Mind"! Changing the eyes to mind because this movie is more than brains than seeing it without brains. Ah, whatever, it is just amazing and fascinating all the way through.