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Look (2007)
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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
This is a great example of what you can do with not a lot of money as long as you’re willing to think outside the box.
If the idea is that we're always being watched, why does it seem that in this movie, no one's really paying attention?
The performances feel natural, improvised, and it's easy to believe this is the world we inhabit.
If Crash had been this interesting it might have deserved that Oscar; this movie lacks polish but that is precisely what makes it work. It's a very interesting experiment, one which I found entertaining, nervewracking, and rewarding.
Rifkin skillfully interweaves plotlines in a way that makes this currently much overused device seem perkily adroit rather than tiresome.
The effectiveness of it in capturing our attention attests to very fine writing and editing which serve the mockumentary framework with immediate gripping power.
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.
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.
A skillful examination of the things people do when they think no one's looking.
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.
This could have amounted to nothing more than a clever trick, but it's much more than that.
With its emphasis on its interweaving stories, the movie offers no commentary on the phenomenon of increasingly pried-apart privacy, positive or negative.
It brings up lots of questions to ponder and mostly succeeds as a fascinating, if frightening statement on the way we are.
Latest News for Look
December 13, 2007:
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