Listening

source: Listening

Why would you film your movie like this? I just am dying to know. Scenes are either all blue, all yellow, or all green, and have moments of blinding glare that hurt the viewer's eyes. Why can't you just use natural colors? Also how about we hold the camera still? The colors and wobbly camera are both nausea inducing, and make the film look cheaper than it even is. The characters are college guys with poorly written lines and they really ramp up their immaturity. They meet the female lead on campus, and the token obnoxious sidekick starts staring at her nonexistent rear (which we get a closeup of) and acting like a fool. I'm not meaning to insult the actress but it's just really absurd and forced the way the reaction about her body was written, when really there isn't much to notice about it. This comes a couple scenes after we're introduced to the lead character's wife, who is a joyless ball and chain who acts like she wants nothing to do with her husband anymore. What a rough break for any female who got a role in this movie- you can either play the cold "no fun zone" wife, or the obligatory sex object whose purpose is only to show skin and elevate the male characters. The "eye candy" character at least ends up being decently insightful with their experiment, a trait which is described in the movie as being "more than just a hot body." I understand indie film-making isn't always on par with a more experienced crew with a larger budget, but there are some pretty obvious ways to not make your film so hard to look at, and maybe that's worth the extra effort. The premise is kind of cool, so maybe it could have been a decent book instead.

I got to this movie by chance, just looking at sci-fi titles. Its actually quite a well made film. The story is engaging, the characters are intriguing and the acting is good. Its very difficult to find good sci-fi in the last few years. In this JJ Abrams era every sci-fi is the same, the story is the same, the actors all look alike, the characters are full of clichés and boring stereotypes that only teenagers may find interesting. Thats why Im happy to ignore a few flaws in movie Listening, which offers something outside of the cookie cutter scene. Cool movie.

Interesting idea but falls completely flat. I know, "Sucks" is pretty harsh but let me count the ways. 1. The Evil CIA/Government has hidden cameras all over the labs of these college students. When did this happen? how did they know there were working on this mind reading hardware? No explanation what so ever. 2. You are going to let an untrained college student inject your spine with a huge needle with nanotubes? Something completely untested by them on even lab animals. If you don't kill him you may paralyze him but that doesn't seem to worry them in the least. 3. Getting kicked out to the street but no one seems to mind. 4. Acting is so wooden I thought I was watching Pinocchio 5. Strange random lighting and lens coloring with no real reason...what the hell? 6. Computer blow up but are seen working 5 mins later... wow, that's cool. 7. Government testing mind control and give the target a gun with loaded bullets ... why not leave blanks? You would end up with the same results ... Come on how stupid. Overall the movie sucks so bad the talent-less"director"/writer should give up now and do something else with his life and stop wasting everyone's time with this garbage.

Terrifyingly bad that is. The premise of the movie has potential, but the "science" portrayed is a little silly and illogical, even so within the logic of the movie. But hey, I was trained by a Buddhist monk to muster massive amounts of suspense of disbelief, even if the movie doesn't make sense according to it's own rules. But no amount of meditation is going to cover up the huge problems with the script and editing. It's all over the place. Scenes are disjointed, and dialogue is as well. Sometimes dialogue is completely nonsensical, as are are some cuts and scenes. (The dialogue is so weird at times that two sentences uttered one after another did not have any coherence whatsoever) Some scenes don't need to be there, and some scenes that aren't there should be there to make things flow better, or show a better development of motives and story. In other words; the movie takes too long showing us things that don't matter, and happily jumps over major plot developments, which are explained in a singe, short sentence or can be easily deduced, but it would have been much better to actually see those scenes instead of the ones that do nothing. At other times scenes just seem to make sudden, weird turns. Characters switch motivation or emotions for seemingly little or no reason at all. There are also massive plot holes. There is a glaring one that makes the entire movie pointless, but there are many. It starts out OK-ish, but gets worse as the movie progresses. I had a couple of laugh out loud moments because the movie is unintentionally hilarious at times, especially in the second half of the movie. The camera work is decent at times. They throw in some annoying lens flare effect in some scenes, as well as use different color filters for every scene. I tried to figure out if the lens flare and use of colors had any significance, but much like the editing and dialogue I couldn't make sense of it. The sound is OK, music is generic, and so are the effects. I had to force myself to finish this one. Two things kept me going; more potential unintentional hilarity, and the far fetched hope that the movie might ultimately make an interesting moral or philosophical point. Despite what some reviewers claim, it doesn't, it's just a jumbled mess.

I wanted to watch this movie tonight because all the technology within this movie is in our real world and not just Hollywood. The movie is worth a 10 to me because I'm a software developer and a fan of neural lace biotechnology. I also could relate to the married man's relationship with his wife and daughter. The movie had an outstanding story and I thought the acting was also very good. From the start of the movie to the very end, my suspicion and curiosity gradually increased on what was about to happen in the next scene. Any tech fans will love this movie. Non technical individuals will probably view it as a poor movie. Married women who are contempt with a normal, white picked fence, linear life that includes a stable marriage, you probably will not like this movie.

The movie is written and directed by the same guy. That usually means that if it's going to be bad, it's going to be really bad. Good news: it's not bad. But it's not that great either. The story follows two students researching brain communication. Of course the bad guys are interested in this and they are already in trouble as they have been using stolen lab equipment from their university. More than that, there are marital problems as well. This could have been a good idea if not for the paint-by-numbers story, which is obviously written by somebody who went to writing class, but didn't have the time to develop their own style. The good part about the film is that the actors play well, the direction is reasonable - although I don't know why every damn frame has to have lens flares (another reason to hate J.J., probably) and the story is captivating. The only major problem is the lackluster script. Everything gets revealed way too soon and in the moments where tension was needed, story gets resolved by impossible means. Bottom line: nothing in this film is great, but it had something, a potential that somehow failed to get realized. Good start, interesting second act, confusing third and a really really bad ending.

Two closet cases--one a true sociopath living with his sick granny and the other married with a beard wife and child--decide to make an internal Facebook/Mind Control in their pursuit of money and fame. Along the way, the obvious sociopath stabs his friend in the back several times to get there faster and symbolically consummate/end their relationship because he wants to try being straight. The other pal finds religion in the Far East trying to get over him but fails and comes back to nuke everybody. It's a new kind of gay Romeo/Juliet Frankenstein with a twist. The actors are true B-film actors and exhibit the style of acting one finds in high school productions and first year college types. Speaking of Hollywood, some old rich queen with connections must've financed this so he could do a Tab Hunter on the two main actors. It's not even cult material. It's just a yawn from one end to the other. I would watch it if you're trying to fall asleep. For gay people, it's an embarrassment. I thought they'd gotten over the closet/evildoer theme centuries ago, but I forget the younger gens are redoing the 1950s all over again and are on their way to sociopathy.

"You're trying to read the contents of an entire library by walking through the aisles. You gotta open the books to know what's really going on inside." What if someone else could read your mind? Does that thought scare you off ? Or can you see some perspectives and opportunities in this technology? And how long would it take before a government would order their secret service to focus on it and obtain the required technology ? Before you know it, you're in the middle of a "Big Brother" situation. You're not only monitored visually, but also your personal thoughts are intercepted. Or worse, a certain dictatorial mindset is being penetrated into your consciousness. Every power-hungry nutcase starts drooling after seeing this method. That's the basic idea of "Listening". A technological innovation with far-reaching effects mixed with a personal crisis. Ultimately, my general feeling about "Listening" is of a disappointed nature. The film had so much potential and opportunities, but because of some faint situations and a fairly implausible denouement, it's reduced to a laudable attempt. Let there be no doubt, the original idea is far from bad. A revolutionary development in the neurological sector, realistically portrayed with an abundance of technical equipment and commented upon in a complicated jargon. Although the latter tends to sound like outright gibberish sometimes. Could this technology be achieved in reality, this clearly would lead to the bankruptcy of the mobile telephony industry. Most of the scenes take place in a messy garage. However, these are the most compelling fragments in this film. Also they used a remarkable wide range of colors. The various chapters are filmed in a different flashy color. This requires some adjustment and it started me worrying about the color scheme of my television. Every time a blue, red or yellow fragment appeared, I checked my settings. But in the end this gave the film its own personal touch. The disadvantage of a low-budget film is of course the low budget (how surprising) what leads to a limited use of stunning visual effects. This becomes abundantly clear with the stereoscopic images during a telepathic connection. The only things remaining are the characters and the philosophy behind the story. The core idea behind the story is crucial in order to make a low-budget movie successful. If it doesn't look impressive, the story must be intriguing enough to make it interesting. As I said earlier, the idea was interesting enough and had plenty of material to provoke discussions. I can imagine that this will be debated widely. Unfortunately, the whole is a bit weakened by the poor worked-out personal problems that David (Thomas Stroppel) and Ryan (Artie Ahr) are facing. There are also a few illogical things and there are some unfortunate developments. I thought it was a bit cheap that the first used telepathic thoughts were of an erotic nature. An attempt to substantiate the theory that a man is thinking about that, most of the time ? And the fact that an ancient Buddhist meditation method is able to withstand this high-tech magic, was a bit too easy. And safety precautions during the grand finale were a joke. But besides these tiny flaws, this was a not so unkind cyberpunk movie. More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT

The movie reminds me a lot of Primer, but Listening tries to take it up one more level. While the concept in Primer seems mostly talk, this movie movies around with you a lot more. A group of broke college students sacrifice everything for their experiment to harness the power of the mind. In a lot of ways the story works like the social network. Two kids who come up with a great idea, and everything is cool until they figure out they changed the world, and in that moment they change (Although the movie attempts to put morals behind the change) The philosophy of the movie is pretty cool, but at times feels like it's going all over the place which makes the movie seem longer than it really is. I actually love very low budget Hard Sci-Fi films like this one that fully draw the fiction from actual fact, but there are moments where the movie bites off more than it can chew, Ironically, not with the Science part, but with the social commentary about young genius who create something they loose control of. I did love the story and the characters in the story, no matter what, everyone was likable and you want to root for them throughout, but I would wait to stream this online one a day when you have nothing better to do.