Reminiscence

There’s something to the vision of a flooded Miami in a noirish coat of night-time lighting, with a bumbling love-struck Jackman infatuated with the beautiful femme fatale Rebecca. It brings to mind Blade Runner and Sin City, and Rebecca singing on stage in a red dress even brings back memories of the animated Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But the potential for a nice, touching love story is cut off at the knees by the film’s clumsy and uninteresting detective storyline, which also diminishes the significance of the interesting formalistic stylization. (10/19/2021)

A clever noir crime movie about memories embedded in a (future) sunken Miami, suffers from being too fragmented. Lisa Joy knows what she wants to say, but lacks the ability to tell a story that her husband and brother-in-law have. She’s a bit more of a copy-cat than them. The story would benefit from dark, dirty visuals. The polished post-apocalyptic Miami is too pretty to make Jackman depressed. More blood would help, R-rating is a must with any good noir movie, this is too clean. But despite all that, I give it a thumbs up and I’m sorry that it bombed in the movie theaters. Lisa definitely deserves another chance. P.S.: Rebecca Ferguson was simply born to play divine femmes fatales. (08/26/2021)

I appreciate the attempt at a distinctive old-school neo-noir set against a specific futuristic backdrop, but unfortunately Reminiscence doesn't work as a satisfying cinematic spectacle and drags tremendously. I myself barely finished it for the third time, and this genre is practically "for me". You could see the effort, but it didn't work. (06/16/2022)

Hugh Jackman searches his own memories to find out what happened to his love, Rebecca Ferguson, but he may not be prepared for what he finds. Lisa Joy delivers a visually appealing combination of science fiction and noir that perhaps borrows too much from other films, but the two hours pass unexpectedly pleasantly. (08/25/2021)

Noir is a genre that has that magical quality where if such a film fails in style, it becomes terribly funny. And with Reminiscence, I was chuckling like a madman at times. By which the film proves once again, among other things, how that famous "best unrealized screenplays" label doesn't guarantee anything, because it's just a crappy rip-off of Strange Days (despite there being no comparison). With more capable direction and especially set design, this could have withstood a lot, because the subject matter isn't entirely bad; but just the way it all feels artificial and cheaply staged makes it stand out for how stupidly written, acted, and produced it is. Still, I'm glad someone took on this retrofuturistic neo-noir without trying to "instructively" look down on it, which is rare these days. (11/19/2021)