His So-Called Lives

Rating: 6/10 (6 August 2016)

Do you look at all the possible choices before you, and figure they all have some appeal, but ultimately fatal flaws? Me too, and so I often cannot pass on streaming a video from Netflix and look for a book instead. There's something about the physical DVD's just showing up and then you have a commitment to spend your short life together (well, its short life aka running time.) When you stream you can so easily jump to another entirely different feature.
So it was I chose to stream this movie. And I mostly stuck with it, for its visual lure. There's enough art direction to keep one's eyes fixed, and the story itself shuffles between alternate stream/dream/universes in the main character Nemo's life.
But less is spent on any sci-fi angle, rather it allows triple the romance. Even more so, as some streams have their own branched rivulets in them.
Thinking too much about the film deflates it I feel. Is Nemo == omen backwards or does it tie to a recurring death-by-water tarot card of sorts that pops up in the alterna-universes.
Leto is good again, and helps carry the soul of the film. He's prettier than his three leading ladies. The too easily dismissed model minority model, the wounded bird that wounds others and then the love of his life, who pushes a modern taboo for blended families with benefits.
Eminently watchable but ultimately ephemeral. Like our own lives? Well the voodoo Maori-esque hypnotist might have snuck into my subconscious. Nice work by Allan Corduner.
I did find myself wondering if the writer/director wanted to set up something more contrasting immortality versus mortality, where the decisions to lead one to one's demise, but they do nonetheless lead one. He's named Mr. Nobody, but a world full of everlasting nobodies tunes in for this life story.
Anyways, not as rewardingly twisted as "Donnie Darko" was for alienated adolescents of all ages, but time better spent than looking for old flames on Facebook, surely.