It explores the human experience at the turn of the millennium with wisdom and profundity. Vanilla Sky is powerful, haunting, and deeply moving. For someone that has clung to those niches and has tended to stick to straightforward original storytelling, he is remarkably adept at adaptation, nonlinearity, inventive visuals, and provocative, ambiguous storytelling. This creative production marks Crowe's only real work in a genre outside of comedy-drama and romance. The dialogue and highly imaginative plot are adapted from Amenábar's film, which cast the then-unknown 23-year-old Cruz in the same role she plays here. Vanilla Sky boasts the desirable qualities of a Cameron Crowe movie: three-dimensional human characters, compassion, contemporary relevance, and a great soundtrack utilizing a wide array of pop/rock music.īut it doesn't ask Crowe to tell this story from scratch. Fitted with a plastic facial prosthetic that looks like a blank mask, David tries to keep things afloat with Sofia while also looking into Life Extension, a company offering cryogenics-fueled resurrection services, first applied to a dog who's now a celebrity. Severely disfigured facially, plagued by blinding migraines, and subjected to power grabs by the board of seven old timers whose disdain for him is an open secret, David finds himself relaying his unbelievable story to a psychologist (Kurt Russell) from prison, about to stand trial for murder.ĭavid's is a fascinating tale with the line between dreams and reality firmly blurred. The pleasure is indefinitely delayed when David is involved in a car accident. Instead, she quickly fills that role for David, clicking with him deeply even as he seeks to delay their pleasure. While dodging her, David meets Sofia (Penélope Cruz), a dancer he thinks might be the last "semi-guileless girl in New York City." She came to the party with David's best friend (Jason Lee), who thinks she could be his dream girl. Ten years later, he has a great job that begins whenever he gets there, a killer bachelor pad in the heart of Manhattan whose decor includes a Monet original, and the type of existence that sees his birthdays observed by parties featuring a John Coltrane hologram and Steven Spielberg in the flesh.Īt the party in question, 33-year-old David is accosted by his friend with benefits, Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), who isn't happy to not have been invited. David inherited the business after both of his parents were killed by a drunk driver. After a lucrative return to the Mission: Impossible well, Cruise reunited with his Jerry Maguire director on a film Wikipedia calls a psychological thriller and IMDb classifies as a fantasy, mystery, and romance.Ĭruise plays David Aames, Jr., the son of a publishing magnate and adventurer. Since earning an Oscar nomination on his first collaboration with Crowe, Cruise had tested his movie stardom on movies riskier than his running string of blockbusters: a supporting role in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and the lead in Stanley Kubrick's final work, Eyes Wide Shut. Vanilla Sky was not the typical Cameron Crowe movie, nor was it a project that leading man Tom Cruise would make at most points in his career. It is easy to forget that Crowe actually began the century on a high note: Vanilla Sky, his 2001 English language remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish drama Abre los Ojos ( Open Your Eyes), drew mixed reviews but grossed $100 million domestically and another $100 million overseas, milestones increasingly meaningless yet at the same time decreasingly obtainable for this filmmaker. In the ten years between those flops,Ĭrowe only gave us the respected but soon forgotten We Bought a Zoo and a documentary about Pearl Jam. faced significant, substantial critical disdain as well as moviegoer apathy on the romantic dramedies Elizabethtown and Aloha. The writer-director of Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, and Say Anything. The 21st century has been fraught with disappointment for Cameron Crowe.
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