1984 (1984)

"Hey you, in the blue! Stop thinking like that!"

Genre: Sci-Fi Drama (UK)

Starring: John Hurt (The Proposition; Dead Man), Richard Burton (Equus; Where Eagles Dare)

Directed By: Michael Radford (The Merchant of Venice; Il Postino)

Overview: In a world oppressed by the tyranny of the state, one man rebels within his mind. In a world where Big Brother is always watching, Thought-Crime is a serious matter.

Acting: The roles of John Hurt, Burton, Hamilton and others was honestly spectacular. There's so many heavy Oscar moments in this film that I loved how everyone handled their role. This director also did the recent Merchant of Venice that I go on and on about in one of my Top 5 lists. Radford rocks.
Rating: 9

Cinematography: The effects of the cameras are claustrophobic, they certainly add to the overall feel of the film, with such moments as the Two-Minute Hate, Winston's story about the gross hooker, that intense green wide-open hillside. This is all imagery, and the symbolism really gets through to you. Nice, real nice.
Rating: 8

Script: The writing in this is pretty good, if you've read the book. All the right quotes are there, everything important is said, but so much nuance is left as an unknown to the degree that I think this was intended for readers of the original. That's sad. Movies shouldn't hint at a book's content, they should be their own thing.
Rating: 7

Plot: The story suffers. When I first saw this, I hadn't read the book, being a young 15 or so year old kid. I read it, loved it and watched it again, figuring everything out as I watched, thinking, "Oh! I see what they did there!" For the simple reason that this makes little sense without having read it, I'll drop it a few. Let me tell you though, it's a nice vision of Orwell's if you DO know the story, so read it then watch, otherwise Buyer Beware.
Rating: 7

Mood: The bleak and bombed out landscape was only made bleaker by the constant haze of the massive televisions, even sitting there in the streets like billboards, constantly droning statistics. Did they capture the essence of this, my favorite book ever written, in such a way as I could appreciate? What do you think?
Rating: 10

"Pawn takes Queen... 2+2= Ω ... Bacon is the enemy..."

Overall Rating: 82% (Orwell, Well, Well!)

Aftertaste: Such memorabilia of those good old days when I was young and naive, learning about how much society is out to take my soul unless I didn't do anything about it. My favorite quote from the book: "Orthodoxy is Unconsciousness". Hey, if you show this to your kids quick enough, they may just do something about fixing the world we live in, just a little. Make 'em read it first, or they'll be lost.