druidistic (spoilers are a real time saver)...Imagine a world, in the not so distant future, where people resemble CGI renderings of the "Team America: World Police" puppets...So lemme get this straight - natural resources dried up and the global economy collapsed as the 3 sentence text intro narrates for us. And yet, they were able to link up a continental metro system and keep it up and running? mmkay.Dandruff shampoo is used to read and manipulate the minds of the masses. Altho the shampoo doesn't eliminate dandruff, it is used by everyone (actually half of everyone), including bald people, ... unconditionally. (What did you think of my conditioner pun?) Maybe that shampoo is their only option because of a future shampoo monopoly. I mean, You can't just not wash your hair in grungy dysfunctional dystopiaville. Or maybe the hot blonde in the brainwashing ad was just too convincing. I don't know, everyone uses the same shampoo, just go with it.And listening in on your thoughts (as provided somehow by shampoo) from the other end is some dude at a desk. There's a one-to-one ratio between people on the shampoo and people being controlled. Half the population controls the other, but hey, they just work there, what else can they do?Look, I understand it's an art form and you gotta take liberties, but c'mon, this is just too dumb to be serious. I dunno, maybe I'm just too left brained for this one.The main character is just a "normal" guy us simpletons in the audience can identify with. Ah, how pleasantly belittling.The music was as empty as the blank expressions on that blonde girl's face.It was so dark I could barely see half the time.Some of the voice acting felt flat, forced, like read from the script. Comparing it to a cheap video game would be a slight exaggeration, but it made me think of such nonetheless.I used to enjoy dystopian movies, but I guess I'm getting burned out. What are they supposed to represent? The evil corporations? The ones that put high fructose corn syrup in everything? Little known fact - the only reason we know about high octane sugar is because they're required to give us an ingredient list.

MartinHafer Most of you are familiar with Jib-Jab--the comedy site that uses WEIRD animations for greeting cards and comedy clips. It's a very peculiar and distorted style you just have to see to understand. Well, with the film "Metropia", it looks like someone used the Jib-Jab software to make a feature-length movie. So, you have a BIZARRE sort of CGI with strange, jerky animation--animation that is very, very gray and dark as well.Trying to explain what I saw in "Metropia" is very, very difficult. The film is just plain weird and the plot is beyond words...but I'll try. It's set in a dystopic Europe in 2024. Everything is gray and muted...and oppressive. All the cities of Europe have become connected through their subways and everything seems dull and mirthless. The hero, or at least the main character, is a bald guy named Roger. He begins hearing voices in his head and you later learn that it's caused by a shampoo marketed by some evil corporation. None of it makes the least bit of sense and it seems like a look inside the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic. He has some odd adventures and meets an odd woman who he's not sure whether to trust or not--but he's hypnotically drawn to her. The film is filled with adult language and nudity. However, the nudity is among the least sexy nudity I've ever seen--practically as appealing as elderly porn! The people are distorted, strange and unattractive and seeing them nude is just icky. Because of this, you might want to think twice before showing this to your kids or mother!As far as the overall product goes, it is an interesting experiment--but an unappealing one as well. The film is completely bereft of energy and fun and is an endurance contest to finish. Not pleasant but innovative...and creepy. This one has practically no commercial appeal and is just plain odd... By the way, Stalingrad Station is in Paris, if you really care.

laojim This film certainly is grim and grimy to look at but it is interesting and I consider that high praise. It reminds me a bit of Red Spectacles in which Mamoru Oshii has all of his film in black and white with a good film noir look, except for the spectacles, which are of doubtful utility and doubtful provenance. In this film the femme fatal is colorful and most of the rest of the crowded herd is as bland as the scenery.What is missing here is motivation for the grand sweep of the underlying conspiracy. Like Douglas Adams wrote, "Was it just some bug eyed monster trying to take over the universe for no very good reason." In this case our hero seeks to find out why he is malcontent and why he hears voices and finds answers to both but no real solutions and this is unfortunate, because while his problems are his own the portrayed conspiratorial play has no clear purpose, unless it's just to take over the world to make money, but that is a tired and threadbare plot played out in Washington every day. Ho hum.But his search and his Orphic trek through the underworld of a Future Europe is interesting and worth looking at. It is also interesting as a computer graphic style using live actors and reprocessing them, apparently, to cartoon proportions. This is something you get used to soon enough and so has no obvious reason, except that it is kind of neat. Perhaps I missed something.

Gin-ster My subject line says it all. The film has an interesting animation style that kept me guessing, is it photography plus animation? Is it some incredibly realistic computer graphics plus obviously-animated human figures? But apart from some mild interest in the mechanics I found it overwhelmingly dull. It was quite derivative - as others have mentioned here, it was reminiscent of Blade Runner, with a 1984 theme. It also did not make a lick of sense. Despite some blather about the society being oil depleted etc. it was not clear how that related to anything, and it seemed to be about the evils of corporate capitalism controlling the political system (or something) but at the same time this evil entity seemed to be forcing people into very un-materialistic living standards. So it many have had socially critical points to make but they were made in a nonsensical way with lots of borrowing from far better fare.