They Live
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.27 You Save: $6.67 (45%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.62 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of They Live
Movie Review: B Movie Blessing
Summary: 5 Stars
A John Carpenter movie is a lot like a Big Mac--not the most gourmet of offerings available, but almost never unsatisfying. "They Live" is among his lesser-known gems, a high-concept if low-budget sci-fi outing that pits Carpenter's counterculture sensibilities against the rabid consumerism of the 1980s. Here, wrestler-turned-actor Roddy Piper shines as a drifter who stumbles upon a terrifying secret: the aliens we've watched the skies for have not only already invaded, they've taken over. Years before the overrated "Matrix" films would posit that our reality is not our own, "They Live" imagines a world in which the bulk of humanity unwittingly has become enslaved through a combination of mind control and marketplace manipulation. The joke is that the aliens don't want to kill us; they simply want to turn us into product-buying sheep, distracting us as they swipe our natural resources, all with the help of a handful of superpowerful human sellouts. Carpenter's satire of America's yuppie mallculture hits home, right down to the notion of only the poorest and most dispossessed among us being able to see the truth (with the aid of special sunglasses that penetrate the aliens' electronic disguises). "They Live" is as funny as it is biting, with quite probably the best fistfight ever filmed, and features all the hallmarks of Carpenter at his best: a terrific score, a plot that crescendos to a cool climax, and a visual style that supplants the lack of big Hollywood dollars.Movie Review: A must-have sci-fi classic!
Summary: 5 Stars
In spite of the fact that the film's protagonist, Roddy Piper [Nada], wears his pants too high and gets far too many crotch and butt shots for my liking [the film was shot in 1988, which might explain things], "They Live" is a campy scifi epic about a down-and-out construction worker who finds a pair of sunglasses [cheap sunglasses, actually] that enable him to witness an extraterrestrial invasion of earth.
With this in mind, your suspension of disbelief will be pushed to its limits. But if you hang on loing enough, it just might change the way you view the world.
Orwellian in theme, the film utilizes repetitive and primitive symbols, words and simplistic character sketches to portray a world in the throes of succumbing to brainwave manipulation [think subliminal advertising, which works, by the way], set up by extraterrestrials as a humane way of getting what they want from earth without actually killing anyone.
Everything - except for the aforementioned jeans worn by Nada - remains relevant today. Commercials that attempt to manipulate perception of reality. An overwhelming and omnipresent federal government. Capitalism gone arwry. Selling out everyone for personal gain. The list goes on.
In the end, the film's campiness, lack of subtlety and over-the-top superficiality mirror the very advertising that drowns out our sense of humanity.
So I guess the aliens won, given out current state down here on earth.
Movie Review: Man sees so many hidden messages downtown.
Summary: 5 Stars
Drifter, Nada (Professional Wrestler, Roddy Piper) walks into town for a job. He winds up at a construction site where he meets a black man, Frank (Keith David). The boss lets Nada know there is no sleeping over night in the construction site. So Frank directs him to a mission with hot food and showers. Nada and Frank don't always see things the same way. Nada notices that a construction site worker was at the church across the street until 4:00 in the morning. When he sees the man go back again, Nada decides to check it out himself. The choir is a reel recording. Writing on the wall says, "They Live, We Sleep". Inside the chapel, the cult of men are trying to send messages to people through the television. At night-time, these police-like men with a helicopter, go after the cult in the church and others on the street, including the homeless. From the now-vacant church, Nada takes a box of supplies. In the alley, he discovers in the box is nothing but sunglasses. But when he tries on the sunglasses, everything looks different. A common billboard to the naked eye. But with the sunglasses on, he reads the word, "OBEY". Just about everything around him has a hidden message posted. "WATCH TELEVISION", "BUY", "STAY ASLEEP", "WORK 8 HOURS", "SLEEP 8 HOURS", "PLAY 8 HOURS". There are so many hidden messages everywhere he looks. Even the people look different. DVD only has a chapter selection.Movie Review: This movie changed how I look at the sky
Summary: 5 Stars
When this movie first came out, I was young and pretty far down on the trickle-down side of Reaganomics. The X-Files were not out yet, The Matrix had us all, and carbon footprints were not words much used in common discourse. For me, this movie exploited an undercurrent of paranoia about the world in which I was coming of age, a sense that things were not right, that they hadn't been right in awhile.
The protagonist is doing the best he can with what he has during an economic downturn. Though he's not particularly interested in religion, he sort of runs into vaguely apocalyptic religious types and tries to ignore them, benignly, until the police try way too hard to shut the preachers down. The seemingly-misplaced overt fascism leads him to the truth.
Carpenter's production values, humor (somehow both dry and juvenile), strong judeo-christian themes, and cheesy keyboards are not for everyone, but this movie makes a strong statement about humankind's place in the world and about how to go about living. It explores many of the same themes explored in The Matrix, but They Live feels - at least on first watching - much lighter, partly because the production is much less slick and the violence is, for lack of a better word, sillier. However, the cheese factor did not vitiate the movie's lasting effects which, for me, were downright creepy. I watch advertising more closely, and, when I hear a helicopter that I can't see? I go inside.
Movie Review: They STILL live!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ah, the trashy beauty & squinty-eyed honesty of the B-movie! Going where even the biggest Hollywood directors feared to tread, John Carpenter delivers a thoroughly enjoyable popcorn movie that's more subversive & scathing than a dozen big-budget Serious Films. His relentless vision of America as consumerist Yuppie hell, run by & for the bottomless gullets of the rich & powerful, remains as relevant today as the day it was released.
When Rowdy Roddy Piper puts on that mysterious pair of sunglasses, amusingly reminiscent of those X-ray specs in the old comic book ads, he sees the contemporary world for what it is: a resource & playground for greedy, soulless ghouls in Armani suits, the evolutionary apex of the vulgar, the self-centered, the one-dimensional man (and woman). In that regard, nothing's changed since the 1980s; if anything, it's only gotten worse. God knows what those sunglasses would reveal today!
True, it's made on a low budget, and it's often quite rough around the edges -- but you don't want anything too smooth & polished, especially if it means watering down the message. It's one that needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Those greedy, soulless ghouls are still here -- and they don't come from some alien world, either! Although the worldview that drives them is certainly alien to anything truly human & humane.
5 stars? Yes -- for the raw thumb-in-your-eye to the powers that be -- highly recommended!