The Perfect Sleep

The Perfect Sleep is a prime example of a B-movie film noir. It recalls the methods of Tarantino in that its direction shows a love for movie making. Unfortunately the downs of this outweighs the ups.

What we have here is a deliciously gorgeous picture, well shot, but also equipped with a screenplay which tries too hard to be something that is out of reach. The story is convoluted, messy, with pretentious dialogue, and too many characters whose functions are minimal. It is a delightful film to look at, but an impossible one to invest in. It is as if the makers of The Perfect Sleep would rather have the viewers acknowledge that they are watching a movie rather than be involved.

I enjoyed watching one illustruious image after another, but I could not follow this movie at all. The Perfect Sleep is basically a film that likes to show off, but not everything gets through to us.

I would say the narration was inane but, that would mean it had to have sense or substance, which it didn't.

The storyline was little more than that contrived by a ten year old boy with constipation while sitting on the pot.

If we still had coal fires we could use the lacklustre script and wooden acting to light the fire.

If vitality is the characteristic which distinguishes living things from nonliving things, we may now bury this and not bother with a wake.

I would like to say that this digital diatribe had no redeeming features at all but, it does have one, a visual one, and that is the beauty of Roselyn Sanchez.

"The PERFECT SLEEP".... could be The Perfect Title, if it refers to the reaction it elicits from viewers! One can only apply powers of divination as to director Jeremy Alter's intent. Location Manager on a number of high-profile films, long before and since, "Sleep" seems to be 1 of only 2 obviously ill-fated forays into film direction. (How about: "Location Managers Gone Wild"?)

Seems ro me that, in its conceptualization at least, "Sleep" was destined to become a larger-than-life, neo-classic, film noir, somnambulant visionary dreamlike masterpiece!!!!! Sorry, Jeremy, only in your "Perfect Sleep" dreams! From beginning to end, the central character delivers an incessantly droning voice-over monotone narration. Was this intended to lull the viewer to sleep or some semi-hypnotic state? Desired or not, that is the effect it had on me!

Looking at the finished product, the execution didn't achieve 10% of what was envisioned. There were a few moments when it seemed "Sleep" was, at last, awakening, but they were fleeting moments, indeed. The movie locations were the only 10* element IMO. Mr. Alter does have a good eye, I'd rate all other visual aspects 6 to 8*. Every other non-visual aspect, and I've run though a dozens in my mind, rates 1 to 2 Stars. Overall: 4**** "The Perfect Sleep"

ENJOY!!! / DISFRUTELA!!! .... If You CAN!!!!!!

I've just finished watching this... it's in my VLC player for two days. The main reason why it took me so long to go through it is that I find things that I love about it, and on the other hand I find things that I can't believe are so very poor and almost make vomit... and so this dichotomy makes the movie a hard piece to swallow.

I'll try to name a few of the negative aspects first:

1. The plot line seems confused and overly complex, and the poor graphic details of the movie make it pale and uninteresting to look at (which, if it where not the case, could help create interest on the viewer's part to keep pace with the strange and intricate family drama)

2. There are hardly any other actors apart from the characters; this means there are little to no extras, no population, no sense of society... all it looks like is a void and empty sequence of dark scenarios with little to no discerning features whatsoever... Making the whole thing a little too often look like a sequence of amateur theater shoots. In other words, the director and producers did not bother to put any effort into making the environment of the film credible. It isn't at any time delivering any kind of veracity to the possibility of the story ever finding an imaginable realm where it could take place.

3. Things don't seem too thought out. The main character is a prince, or some kind of bastard descendant of a ruler... but he does not behave like one. You can hardly piece together how he lived his life, why he is hunted down (right at the beginning), or why is his brother convinced that he is somehow responsible for his father's death. I mean... it doesn't feel like a noble family's intuitive dynamic at all, certainly not like the type on a Dostoievsky novel.

4. It looks like it's a student project, because the acting is so over the top, on a few of the parts... Other, elder, actors are brilliant. The difference is astounding. There seems to be no effort to push the younger actors into delivering a real credible performance. It feels very strange.

OK, on to the good parts:

1. The dialogs. They really present a vocabulary experience that is close to film noir classics, and and times is so poetic and powerful that it actually makes you think of Russian novels. It seems to be very well written throughout, but poorly executed. I almost need to close my eyes to the sad spectacle of the movie, to listen to the character's amazing discourse on some parts. The main character is poorly crafted, I thought... It lacked coherence in it's actions, some real sense of integrity, I feel the way it is both shown and interpreted is very silly, exaggerated and completely nonsensical.

2. Some of the acting is amazing, Tony Amendola especially! I rarely see such talent in an actor... he was the only one (maybe alongside Patrick Bachau) that picked up the text and brought it to a credible output... and he stands out brilliantly.

3. The fighting. Well, I thought fights here would be ridiculous... in the context of the dramatic feud that takes place through the plot. But in the end, they are quite contrary, almost the best this film has to show. They seem well rehearsed, well executed and choreographed, and look pretty cool. Too bad the scenarios in which they take place are so lame, and incoherent... Where it not for that, the fight scenes would be some of the most consistent I've seen.

4. The sense of sympathy. The core idea of this film seems to be so appealing, I can almost imagine this script beating the crap out of a Frank Miller adaptation of Sin City. I can compare this title to "The Spirit"... "The Spirit" has a million dollar budget, looks brilliant, but it's absolutely horrible (week and whack storyline, terrible acting, horrendously tedious and terrible directing), but "The Perfect Sleep" - if it had better and more consistent casting and directing - and the visual investments of "The Spirit" could have been a fabulous work of art. It feels like something that should be re-done by some serious experts, because I believe there would be much better ways of delivering the script.

In the end, it's hardly worth watching unless you don't have anything better to do. I hope this helped... My vote of 5 goes to the writers and the initial concept that could have been brilliantly executed, to the idea that could have been... And an incentive to Pardoe, who imagined it, to learn from this experience and do better next time.

The Perfect Sleep, while not a brilliant film does represent the ever-shrinking genre of watchable neo-noir. While it's certainly flawed, it lacks much of the intentional overly complex that robs many similar movies of their enjoyability (why watch a movie that's needlessly hard to follow?). Then again, it's not exactly a movie you can switch your brain off for.

Normally someone would put some sort of plot synopsis here, but if you've ever seen any type of noir film you know such an endeavor is pointless. They're usually a bit hard to follow and that can be part of their intrigue. Most noir-ish films rely heavily on the dialog (usually in ways that most people would never use in regular conversation), characters of moral ambiguity, and comparably lavish sets. The Perfect Sleep is no different, with the possible exception of most action sequences involving martial arts. Not sure I'd seen that before.

All in all the film comes out looking a lot like a seriously less flashy and more intelligent version of Sin City or The Spirit (the latter being complete garbage). That's actually a big plus for me as a fan of (some) noir films. While I enjoyed Sin City I always felt like it was just trying to do too much visually that took away from an arguably cool story, so that actually works well for me. Aside from the somewhat vague plot I'd say this would be at least enjoyable for fans of the genre. You don't see too many of these films these days and you see ever fewer done well.