The Invisible

TheCentralScrutinizer · 07 Oct 07 :: 19:39

Yep, can you say T&E?

magicalturkey · 07 Oct 07 :: 19:47

He cries so GOOD!

TheCentralScrutinizer · 07 Oct 07 :: 20:17

Yeah, he can blubber all over me anytime.

Illinoisguy1 · 07 Oct 07 :: 20:45

TeeJay wrote:

Wonder if Illinois could find out what it made at the German box office.

$663,146

According to http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?pa … isible.htm

TeeJay · 07 Oct 07 :: 21:00

Thanks, Illinois. That's pitiful, but just what I expected. Buena Vista did a good mess-up-job with this one. What were they thinking when they moved the release date forward a month before they released it in the end? Oh, wait, I know! They weren't thinking.

-TeeJay

Illinoisguy1 · 08 Oct 07 :: 16:15

Just saw an ad for the DVD on VH1 this morning. I didn't see any scenes with Chris though.

TeeJay · 08 Oct 07 :: 16:18

Well, Chris isn't in the movie that much, so I'm not surprised. So I guess they're making feeble attempts at pushing the DVD, huh?

-TeeJay

magicalturkey · 08 Oct 07 :: 16:46

So I guess they're making feeble attempts at pushing the DVD, huh?

Very, very feeble. I don't know anyone who watches VH1 on a regular basis and I haven't seen anything on the bigger networks. If it wasn't for this website, I wouldn't even know this movie existed.

herrommance · 09 Oct 07 :: 01:08

So is it going to be another one of those movie where I watch it once all the way through. Then for ever only watch the Chris scenes?

Mutant_Enemy_Girl · 09 Oct 07 :: 07:25

Most likely. It's not horrible, but not wonderful, either. And like Tina said, Chris isn't in the movie much. I guess if you haven't seen it before maybe you should rent it before buying.

TeeJay · 09 Oct 07 :: 09:27

It's not a terrible movie. I wasn't bored or anything when I saw it. It's just not very well done. It could have been so much more, but the way they cut it together just makes it a heartless mess when you look at it that way. Paige, I think you're right in the demographic they were going for, so maybe you'll even end up liking the movie. I myself don't see it as a movie I can't watch more than once or twice, but I will probably not watch it all that often.

-TeeJay

herrommance · 09 Oct 07 :: 14:19

I have plans on just buying it. It is a Chris movie...so I dont care about how good the movie is. Haha I bought FVJ, and I knew how bad that one was. All for Chris lol

TheCentralScrutinizer · 09 Oct 07 :: 16:05

I'm probably going to rent it first to see if the EXTRAS (read, deleted scenes) are worth the purchase price. If we get back the Chris scenes that we know were cut, I could be pursuaded to buy it. I didn't hate the movie, I just didn't love it. It's better than FVJ, but not even as good as JF, if that makes any sense.

Illinoisguy1 · 09 Oct 07 :: 16:44

Here's the DVD back coverart.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 09 Oct 07 :: 16:49

And the back cover art features a Chris scene that was deleted. Go figure!

magicalturkey · 09 Oct 07 :: 16:50

Maybe that means we will get to see him in the extras.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 09 Oct 07 :: 16:53

Yeah, I thought it was 13 deleted scenes, which gave me hope that Chris's 4 would be back. But what it actually says is 13 minutes of deleted scenes. They'd better be back. I'm kinda tired of hating on Goyer. It would be nice to see him do something right for once in this entire mess.

Illinoisguy1 · 09 Oct 07 :: 16:56

Can anyone make out the running time. IMDB says it has a running time of 97 minutes. But the DVD looks like it lists either 102 or 112 minutes.

It's right below the "Visit video.com" towards the bottom.

magicalturkey · 09 Oct 07 :: 17:13

I think it says 102

TheCentralScrutinizer · 09 Oct 07 :: 17:18

Either way, they obviously put stuff back. If this is the same as the screeners that have been circulating, maybe it's an extended cut AND we get deleted scenes too. That would be cool.

Illinoisguy1 · 09 Oct 07 :: 17:28

If so then it's surprising that nowhere on the DVD artwork does it say anything about an Extended Edition or even Director's Edition. I mean it would be a selling point.

Perhaps it is something that Disney did without the knowledge or permission of the director. Or perhaps IMDB is wrong regarding the running time.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 09 Oct 07 :: 17:31

I might be inclined to agree that someone got it wrong if I hadn't had a converation with a guy on IMDb who said that some stuff had been restored. He said the original running time was 98 minutes and the extended screener he saw was 111 minutes. He said the old man was back in and described at least one of Chris's scenes that was restored.

magicalturkey · 09 Oct 07 :: 17:55

I just looked at the credit lines at the bottom and Chris' name is in there. He's not a big name so they probably didn't put it in to get publicity of a big actor in a little part, so maybe he actually is in it more than we thought. They only add the main actors and big names to that, don't they?

TheCentralScrutinizer · 09 Oct 07 :: 18:14

Well, we know how much he's in the theatrical version. Not much. Billing doesn't always equal screentime. They can bill you 3rd or 4th, which is where he is, and still cut out half your scenes, which they did.

Illinoisguy1 · 10 Oct 07 :: 23:58

Another review of the DVD, this time from dvdtown.com.

No doubt, I could go on from now until tomorrow telling you everything that's wrong with "The Invisible," but in the end it's one's gut feeling that counts, and I liked this 2007 release. It's a ghost story with no scares. A thriller with no thrills. And a romance with no romance. And yet... When it was over, I felt I had gotten to know the characters and sensed their pain. Sentimental? Yes, with an ending that moved me as much anything I've seen in a long time. Not a great film, to be sure, but one I was pleased with having watched.
While Director David S. Goyer has made films like "ZigZag" and "Blade: Trinity," he's mostly known as a screenwriter of such things as "Blade," "Dark City," and "Batman Begins," and it's the dark tone of these movies that shows up in "The Invisible." Writers Mick Davis and Christine Roum based their script on the novel "Den Osynlige" by Mats Wahl and on the Swedish film of the same name. Then Goyer added his own noirish touches, making a film so heavyhearted and melancholic, it will not appeal to everyone.
The movie's subject is death; although, to be fair, the movie does more than explore the tragedy of dying. It's far more introspective than that and delves into the subject of death in life, being "invisible" while still alive. In that sense, the film is more a symbolic parable than a straightforward ghost story, which audiences probably won't expect. So, give Goyer credit for doing what he wanted rather than what Hollywood formula dictates. Whether Goyer succeeded or not, you'll have to decide for yourself. For me, a lot of it worked.
The film centers on two high school seniors from very different backgrounds. The first character is a young man, Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin), a child of privilege, whose father has died; he is being raised by a cold, possessive, perfectionist mother (Marcia Gay Harden), who has the boy's life mapped out for him. The second character is a young woman, Annie Newton (Margarita Levieva), a child of misfortune, whose mother has died; she is being raised by a cold, indifferent father.
Nick is outwardly a model student, but inwardly he resents the world his mother has outlined for him, and in rebellion sells essays to other students to raise enough money to leave home as soon as he graduates. Annie is a tough delinquent who steals cars and jewelry and spends her nights with a hoodlum named Marcus (Alex O'Loughlin). Through a tragic mistake, their lives cross, and Annie murders Nick. Almost.
Annie and several of her hooligan friends attempt to rough up Nick for what they think is his involvement in turning Annie in to the police for a jewel robbery, but the beating goes awry and they wind up thinking they've killed Nick. They dump his body down a drainage hole in the forest and leave him for dead. But Nick isn't dead, and he finds his spirit suddenly lingering somewhere between life and death. If his body dies, his spirit will die, too. So he needs to find his body and, more important, find someone who will find his body and help him survive. Unfortunately, in his spiritual state, he cannot easily communicate with the living.
OK, you already see elements of "Ghost" in the story. But not really, because director Goyer is more concerned with the inner lives of the near-murderer and her victim. Since Nick knows who tried to kill him, he seeks out Annie to do what he can to get her to confess to the crime and lead the police to his body. In Nick's observing her, though, Nick learns that he and Annie have more in common than first meets the eye.
"The Invisible" is a quietly sad and lonely film about quietly sad and lonely people. At first, we see only the good in Nick and only the bad in Annie. As things go along, we begin to feel less concerned about Nick and more sympathetic toward Annie. Meanwhile, even Nick, who must rely on his murderer to save his life, begins to understand Annie and himself better.
The story moves slowly, the director preferring to establish a melancholy, somewhat enigmatic mood rather than hit us over the head with rousing action. For audiences used to nonstop movement and whizbang special effects, this film will seem like a long haul. After Nick's disappearance, a charismatic detective (Callum Keith Rennie) enters the picture, but after a few scenes, he disappears from the narrative. Likewise, we initially see much of Nick's best friend, Pete, (Chris Marquette), but then Pete finds less and less screen time as well. What it boils down to is a picture about Nick and Annie, and perhaps it would have been better for the filmmakers to have left out the peripheral characters altogether.
In a perverse way, "The Invisible" plays like a kind of fantasy version of "The Graduate," updated for the twenty-first century. It's about a sense of emptiness and alienation in a hostile, alien world, highlighted by the director's constant crosscutting from sterile city life to misty forests, both of them devoid of any serious interrelationships.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived," wrote Henry David Thoreau. I suspect the filmmakers were attempting to convey a similar idea. The movie is about redemption, about learning to live, and about doing that "one good thing" that can turn one's life around.
Personally, I'd rather watch a film that's about something, anything, out of the ordinary, something that attempts to make me think and feel, even it fails, than to watch a film that merely goes through the same motions as every other film that came before it. "The Invisible" makes that sort of attempt, and although it doesn't fully succeed, it kept me interested far more than most films I've watched this year.
Video:
Viewers may disagree over the film's content and worth, but they can surely have few qualms about its DVD image quality. Buena Vista's high-bit-rate, anamorphic reproduction makes this 2.35:1 ratio transfer sparkle. Colors are deep and natural, with truly intense black levels. It's really too bad that so many LCD TVs don't properly display inky blacks because the black levels in this picture need such displays for a viewer to appreciate them. Skin tones are a trifle glassy and dark but still show up as fairly realistic, and overall detailing is excellent. In the end, you get near-flawless standard-definition video quality, and that counts for a lot in one's enjoyment of any film.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio doesn't quite match the high standards set by the video, but it's close. There is a clear, clean midrange; a deep, well-defined bass; a good stereo spread across the front speakers; and a decent, if not exceptional, amount of activity in the surrounds, mainly in terms of musical ambience.
Extras:
How much you will like the extras depends upon how much you like audio commentaries, because this one's got two of them. The first is with director David S. Goyer and writer Christine Roum and the second is with writer Mick Davis. The first commentary is what we usually hear, but the second, with Davis, is a bit unusual. Not only did Davis write "The Invisible," he also wrote the Swedish version of the film, and he says this is the first time he's seen the American version, so it's new to him, too. He provides a unique experience, although he is a rather reserved fellow and goes silent for long stretches. I also wonder if it was the filmmakers' frustration with audiences not understanding their picture that prompted them to do two separate commentaries. Who knows. Next up is a series of eleven deleted scenes in anamorphic widescreen, totalling over thirteen minutes, with optional commentary by director Goyer and writer Roum; and that's followed by two music videos, "The Kill" with Thirty Seconds to Mars and "Taking Back Control" with Sparta.
The extras conclude with sixteen scene selections and a chapter insert; Sneak Peeks at seven other Buena Vista products; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Thoughts:
Although I have not seen the Swedish film upon which the filmmakers based "The Invisible" and, therefore, cannot make comparisons, I do know that David S. Goyer has made a decent film, one that simultaneously explores the human psyche while keeping its feet planted in the paranormal. Viewers are more likely to compare it to "The Sixth Sense," not coincidentally also from Hollywood Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment, but they won't find the same type of glossy entertainment here. "The Invisible" is not a film that every viewer will want to see, but give Goyer credit for doing it his way and at least partially succeeding.

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