Hacker Cinema
Insomnia
2002 · Film · 118 min
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.
3 positive1 mixed2 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
I believe that The Dark Knight Rises is pretty close to a bad movie. It does have qualities but it barely makes the cut. The rest varies a lot but outside of the more grounded ones (Prestige, Insomnia and The Dark Knight), I find most of their stories and characters very artificial and cardboard. Odyssey is very sanitized but it works very well because the characters and events are by definition representations of ideas.
Still, his movies try to be stimulating even if they don't land, and they all have great moments filmed in ways you've never seen before and that's good enough for me.
I'm not sure if I should recommend the film Insomnia. You'll either like it because you can relate or might be traumatised all over again!
What do you guys think about the movie Insomnia with Al Pacino and Robin Williams?
Maybe you're just totally misguided on what a producer does, which may be the joke you're trying to make that nobody knows what a producer does. The producer would be closer to the president of the board while the director would be the CEO.
This is false. It seems you don't know what you're talking about. OTOH, I have worked with multiple studios including Fox (now 20th Century), Searchlight, Vendome, Canal+, and Lightstorm.
The executive producer is similar to the CEO or other executive; hence the "executive" in their title. They are in charge of the overall production, but not the creative aspects of the film or episode, and usually are not involved in the day-to-day operations. A regular "producer" can be anyone involved with the day-to-day operations of this production, and this title was once given out like candy. (Look at the credits for Top Gun: Maverick, for example: David Ellison is credited with a "producer" title despite having no actual involvement with the movie beyond being the CEO of one of the studios funding the production.)
The director is not involved with hiring crew, unless they also act as a producer (aka, the "auteur" school). These days, many directors also executive produce their own films (e.g., Nolan, Cameron, etc.), but many don't (e.g., almost all Disney movies). The director gets to provide input as to who gets hired, but quite frequently the main crew and cast will already be attached to the film. Notably, directors can and do leave films all the time (e.g., Rogue One, Justice League).
Who the creator/founder equivalent is really differs between projects. Sometimes, the producer has the idea and staffs around it. Sometimes, the director has the idea and also acts as a producer or just staffs the producer out to someone. Sometimes, it's the studio's idea and staffs everything out.
This is true for a few films, but the vast majority of films start with a screenplay that has come across the producer's desk. Auteur directors might produce their own ideas (e.g., Lucas, Shamalayan, Nolan, Cameron), but even they will usually start with an idea they acquired from someone else (Shamalayan: Old and Cabin at the End of the World, Gunn: Guardians of the Galaxy, Nolan: Insomnia, The Prestige, Batman Begins, Spielberg: almost all of his films, etc. Look at IMDB to see the production credits they have far exceed the films they actually direct).
I do not watch a film to be blown away by how brilliant another person is, I watch a film to experience a story. If the story is any good, he will not need all these convoluted technicalities. I like other films of his like Insomnia or The Prestige
> Williams was great in just about anything he was ever in, I wouldn't attribute that to Nolan.
I don't know, I might. You don't even see Finch for half the film, only hear him, and the villain left an impression on me not unlike Kiefer Sutherland's villain in Phone Booth (an otherwise unremarkable film). I can't think of another villain role that Robin Williams performed, probably because nobody was brave enough to take that kind of risk with a heavyweight positive actor -- Insomnia came out a few years after Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society, which helped establish his mastery of drama, but nobody wanted to make him the bad guy. Nolan did, and it was very satisfying to watch.
(I take that back, One Hour Photo was great, too. I knew I was forgetting one.)
I suppose I'm in the cult. About the only complaint I can lodge against Nolan is that the exposition is heavy handed in a few of his films, which he spoke to in the article, and I agree he was forced into that position with the intense story he's often trying to communicate in a film's runtime. He's also not a cinematographer, and has generally worked with Wally Pfister or Hoyte van Hoytema.
I would disagree if you're saying the cinematography won't be remembered; van Hoytema's work on Interstellar and Dunkirk is something I remember quite positively even while typing this comment. I would also disagree on character development, as Nolan directed Robin Williams into one hell of an antagonist in Insomnia, a spectacularly underrated film.