davej%yang.earlham.edu@uunet.uu.net (09/29/90)
_Wild at Heart_ was an excercise in weirdness, and one that I enjoyed. I've only seen it once, and it's the kind of movie that takes MANY viewings to soak it all in. The sad fact is that this generation REQUIRES that there be extreme everything. As I once saw in _My Dinner with Andre_ (its implicity is its beauty), "You have to take people to the top of Mt. Everest in order to make them feel." Sad but true, isn't it? _Total Recall_ had one purpose as I could tell. It made a certain audience think about their reality, it made them think.... "Wow, maybe this isn't a Coke I'm drinking?!" The idea that reality could be a dream is quite old, at least for an intellectual audience. Arnold was the vehicle to bring this trite idea to a new audience (Rambo). All soap boxing in the corner, though, he did do it quite well. As long as you take it for what it is (Arnold first, science fiction second), it is a pleasant movie.