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Look (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:35
Fresh:21
Rotten:14
Average Rating:5.8/10
Consensus: Though Adam Rifkin’s voyeuristic film sometimes feels like only a clever gimmick, it's for the most part a compelling thriller with political overtones.
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis:
The Post 9/11 world has forever changed the notion of privacy. There are now approximately 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States generating more than 4 billion hours of footage every...
The Post 9/11 world has forever changed the notion of privacy. There are now approximately 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States generating more than 4 billion hours of footage every week. And the numbers are growing. The average American is now captured over 200 times a day, in department stores, gas stations, changing rooms, even public bathrooms. No one is spared from the relentless, unblinking eye of the cameras that are hidden in every nook and cranny of day-to-day life.
Shot entirely from the point of view of the security cameras. Adam Rifkin’s Look follows several interweaving, story lines over the course of a random week in a random city. Lookis a film about the things that people do when they don’t know they’re being watched.
Based on the premise that everyone has secrets, Look takes us on a voyeuristic journey into the most personal parts of ordinary people’s lives. Everyone is guilty of selective deception. We all hide aspects our lives from those around us. It might be as benign as picking your nose in an empty elevator or perhaps something much darker. Look poses the question: Are we always alone when we think we are?
A high school English teacher tries his best to be a decent husband, a department store floor manager uses the warehouse for more than just storage, a Mini-Mart clerk has big dreams, a lawyer struggles with a sexual dilemma and sociopathic brothers ruin the day of random strangers they come in contact with. Look tells five private stories which unfold before the prying eye of the covert camera to chilling effect.
Look around you and wonder…who is watching? --© Captured Films
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Starring: Rhys Coiro, Hayes MacArthur, Giuseppe Andrews, Spencer Redford
Starring: Rhys Coiro, Hayes MacArthur, Giuseppe Andrews, Spencer Redford, Heather Hogan, Jennifer Fontaine, Jamie McShane
Director: Adam Rifkin
Director: Adam Rifkin
Screenwriter: Adam Rifkin
Producer: Brad Wyman, Barry Schuler
Composer: BT
Studio: Captured Films
Reviews for Look
Rifkin has a cynical view of human behavior and he plays it for cheap titillation and bleak humor, which is mean-spirited at best and glib at worst.
By the end, you're ready to call for the abolition of video surveillance, if only so that you can stop watching all these irritating characters.
The effectiveness of it in capturing our attention attests to very fine writing and editing which serve the mockumentary framework with immediate gripping power.
Like Short Cuts absent Altman's metaphysical heft, Look is an oddly compelling little film.
It brings up lots of questions to ponder and mostly succeeds as a fascinating, if frightening statement on the way we are.
Not much is what you get with this bargain-basement attempt at Altman. It has 'direct to video' written all over it
Once or twice a year, if we are lucky, a movie comes out of seemingly nowhere and grabs ahold of us, with thoughts and ideas that stick in our heads long after the credits have rolled out and the lights in the auditorium has illuminated again.
Look isn't processing, critiquing, or even warning; in the end, it's just recording.
It seems somehow entirely appropriate that the city of Las Vegas would be the place where writer-director Rifkin’s film would earn its first Grand Jury Award.
This could have amounted to nothing more than a clever trick, but it's much more than that.
The whole thing feels so heavily scripted that it brings down the overarching impact. The misguided route raises the question of what kind of juicy stories might be produced by the real thing.
Starting out like goofy comedy tinged with a police show, 'Look' soon shows its capable colors. Implications are there to be read, frightening or reassuring.
The performances feel natural, improvised, and it's easy to believe this is the world we inhabit.
Rifkin's film is surprisingly compelling, if not up to dealing with the larger political issues it raises.
Latest News for Look
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