Mike
Spoiler Ahead! This is without a doubt one of the slowest moving, boring movies I have tried to stay awake through. the monotone and almost monochrome atmosphere of the flick is the perfect anecdote for an insomniac. Not to mention the tired old plot of the evil prince or black knight captures the fair maiden and then the White Knight has to come and rescue her. Same olé, same olé. And not to mention the unrequited love from the white knight, again, same olé. The director should be shot for unleashing such a dragging pace to a movie that does display and exhibit some wonderful cinematography and clever use of shadows, camera angles and excellent film noir narration. The fight scenes are almost laughable with how much punishment the star takes and then within a few hours is completely rehabilitated and ready for action. While most humans would be laid up in a hospital after being kicked repeatedly and severely about the head, shoulders and body. Oh well it is a movie after all. Albeit one that I watched free with my NetFlix streaming subscription and an Apple TV. I'm beginning to understand why these movies are on the NetFlix service. Maybe I'm showing my age but we just went to the theater and saw 'The BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL' and I highly recommend it to lovers of the cinema. Nice pace, great acting and wonderful story.
thomas998
Imagine Diane from Cheers, the self centered over intellectualizing character, now imagine she was trying to make a film moire movie. This would be it. If you just looked at some of the shots without any sound you would think Hmmm.. this could be a good film. Now if you turn on the sound and listen for anytime at all you quickly realize that the person that made the film knows nothing about films beyond what they read in a book. I was continually thinking is this thing a foreign film, it was that bad.If you don't remember Cheers, then think of Mr. Beans Holiday... remember the DeFoe character that made the horrible movie... well imagine that horrible movie without Mr. Bean saving it. That is what this movie is. I'm not saying anything about what the movie is other than it is an attempt to make a dark moody film about a hit-man going back home.... at least that's about all I could get out of it.
Vlad Mitrache
This is the first time I feel the need to comment on IMDb, to write some sort of a review and, as it so often happens, it's not because of a really excellent film, but a truly appalling one.Take the narrating style the youngest might relate to the Max Payne video game series, a cast of virtually unkonwns (which is not a bad thing in itself), poor dialogs, some dark scenes but not many enough, and make a film out of it. Don't worry about the bad acting, the length (way too long), the lack of immersion (the lead character has to be one of the lest interesting I've seen in a long time - couldn't care less if he died) or the often ridiculous solutions they find to certain problems the lead character finds himself in.I wouldn't have written anything if it hadn't been for another review here, giving it 10 stars. I gave it four, but maybe three is closer to what I feel about it. Not only do I not wish to see it again, but the mere thought of it takes me dangerously close to wanting to kill myself. Oh, and a so called noir film is nothing without a good soundtrack - not the case here. The ending song sounds like it was more suitable to a western movie.It's not romance, it's not action, it's not noir, it's not good. That would be my review if it weren't for the minimum of 10 lines.
FilmFan2222
Review: The Perfect Sleep by Scott Weinberg Mar 12th 2009 // 12:45PM I don't pretend to be any sort of scholar where film noir is concerned, but like most movies geeks of a certain age, I was bitten by the bug and went a little crazy. All of a sudden my Netflix queue was swollen with films by Jules Dassin, Robert Siodmak, and Anthony Mann. I must have gone through at least 50 titles, but my very favorite remains the first noir I ever saw: Otto Preminger's practically perfect Laura. As most old-school movie freaks can tell you, film noir generally deals with several key components: Crime, paranoia, sharp shadows, hard-boiled dialog, elaborate conspiracies, femme fatales, sudden violence, and a foreboding sense that fate is a cruel mistress indeed. (Like I said, I'm no scholar, but you can get a great noir lesson right here.) But nowadays we don't seem to have much use for film noir, unless (of course) it's used as a stylistic choice in movies like Sin City and Watchmen. (Hey, I guess Frank Miller and Alan Moore dig film noir, so maybe you should too!) And then there are indie films like The Perfect Sleep, which aim to come across as both a traditional film noir and an affectionate homage / satire of the genre at the same time. If the flick is just a bit too clever for its own good on one or two occasions, well, I suppose that's preferable to most movies, because they're generally way too stupid for their own good.Tailor-made for open-minded noir buffs who wouldn't mind seeing the beloved genre blended up with a dose of martial arts mayhem and just a touch of supernatural strangeness, Jeremy Alter's The Perfect Sleep takes a little while to warm up to. We open with whom we assume is our grizzled hero, just as he's about to get beaten up by a gang of wise-ass henchmen. Then we jump straight back into a slightly convoluted flashback structure in which all the essential rules and players are introduced before we end up back at square one.And that's when things get really twisty. Anton Pardoe plays the unnamed protagonist, and while the flick (to its credit) never comes out and states that its reluctant hero is virtually immortal, it soon becomes obvious that the villains are just a little "extra cautious" when he enters the room. Plus, it turns out that the nefarious evildoers (something about an old grudge, a recent kidnapping, and a whole lot of bad blood) have a whole lot of martial arts experts on the payroll -- while our inscrutable, invincible anti-hero has a colorfully evil doctor as his only sidekick. All one need remember is that Ms. Roselyn Sanchez plays the femme fatale / object of multiple affections, and suddenly the various schemes, betrayals, and motivations make a lot more sense. (In other words, she's gorgeous.) I could waste this paragraph explaining the densely-layered plot threads, the amusingly pulpy tough-guy banter, or Alter's unquestionable gift for throwing shadows and light together, but The Perfect Sleep is a fine little indie concoction that's best left for the viewer to sift through. Pardoe does a great job of delivering even the pulpiest of dialog, and the supporting cast is particularly excellent: Michael Pare pops up as a violent cop, and adds a lot to the proceedings when he does, plus we're treated to a wonderfully sick performance by Tony Amendola as a character best described as "Dr. Hit-man." Amendola steals every scene he's in and left me wanting more of this bizarre lunatic.Of course I had a few nitpicks (the narration is maybe a bit too self-aware, some sequences a touch over-stuffed, a small handful of lines perhaps a little too florid), but it's tough to notice a few speed bumps when you're riding along with a filmmaker who clearly loves the same sort of movies I do. The Perfect Sleep is an undeniably odd mixture of 80% noir, 15% action, and 5% random homage, but I suspect that the film fans it was made for will definitely appreciate it.The Perfect Sleep opens on 3/13 in Los Angeles, with other markets to follow in a week or two. It looks like Magnolia plans to release it when DVD time rolls around, so that's good news for everyone. And here's a link to the film's official site.www.theperfectsleep.com http://www.cinematical.com/2009/03/12/review-the-perfect-sleep/
