Vanilla Sky Reviews

What a strange movie Vanilla Sky is, not just from Tom Cruise, who normally doesn’t star in things so daringly outrageous, but from Cameron Crowe, who frequently works best as a writer-director of character-focused stories that highlight a transition period in the main character’s life. So here we have the makers of Jerry Maguire, a perfectly fine and serviceable romantic comedy, getting their creative hands on a remake of a Spanish language art-house feature. Moreover, I really enjoyed it.

Based on Abre Los Ojos, Vanilla Sky practically deconstructs the “Tom Cruise” image and affords him a chance to give a truly original performance. He meets the task with great aplomb, which truly surprised me. I have long regarded Cruise as a movie star, granted he’s a great one, but a limited actor, frequently given to scowling and looking intense in place of creating a real character. There have been some exceptions: I adore Legend, I think his work in Interview with the Vampire is great, and he’s never been better than he was in Born on the Fourth of July. So I didn’t walk into with Vanilla Sky with a lot of expectations about what was in store.

Color me happily surprised when what emerged was a film in which Cruise plays a playboy with more money, fame and toys than God, and these don’t even begin to satiate his need to consume and conquer more. After an accident disfigures his face, this God-like rich boy is brought down to the mortal plane and forced to face the ways in which he discarded and used people. It is once he awakens from this turmoil and tries to pick his life back up that unexplainable events begin to happen. Did he have something to do with a former lover’s death? Is he truly the master/author of his life, or is someone else pulling the strings behind the scenes?

I can’t begin to summarize the plot in a limited space, nor all of the twists that it takes on, but I will say that it ends up going to daringly obscure places that I didn’t think it would when it began. But the heavy symbolism did strike me as odd. This rich, spoiled man truly found his life recreating album covers and scenes from movies? How saturated colors are in various scenes, in retrospect, seem to answer these questions. And while Crowe is clearing going for a level of David Lynch-like weirdness, he, unlike Lynch, actually feels like he needs to answer every question and explain every strange twist and turn. I believe if some of it was left up to our imaginations that Vanilla Sky would have emerged a better film.

But Crowe was smart enough to think outside-of-the-box and ensemble a strange cast of actors who we wouldn’t immediately think of for these roles. I’ve already mentioned Cruise who begins the film as the movie star we think he is, and ends up a paranoid man who has dismantled that perception with several small choices that are very smart. Supporting him as the two romantic leads are Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz, carried over from the Spanish original. At this time Cruz was relatively unknown in to American moviegoers, and her sexy, quiet work here is quite lovely. She manages to deliver some very oddball lines with sincerity and depth, I’m thinking of the one where she tells him that they’ll meet in their next life as cats. This more sane, rational character stands in stark contrast to more obsessive and unstable ones she’s famous for (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Nine).

But the true acting revelation amongst the supporting players is Diaz, getting in touch with her inner Fatal Attraction and creating a sympathetic, deranged yet poignant character in the end. She’s sexy, vivacious, neurotic and dangerous with equal measure, making each twist and turn believable and it made me wonder why she delivers a truly great performance only once every few years. Other supporting roles are taken up by actors who are always interesting in any project that they do. Kurt Russell, Noah Taylor, Timothy Spall, Tilda Swinton, Alicia Witt, Michael Shannon all create a unique cacophony of voices that work in tandem with the general strangeness of the film as a whole.

You’ll notice that throughout I have mentioned that Vanilla Sky is odd, and described it with a variety of synonyms. Perhaps the best word for it is: hallucinatory. Or maybe love-it-or-hate-it could work even better. It doesn’t matter to me which camp you fall into, because I think we can agree on one thing as we discuss a film like this. It’s hard to shake the overall impression and numerous images long after you have watched it. And I think that for that reason alone, Vanilla Sky is worthy of a recommendation and a mention as something truly special. However you take the word special though, is entirely up to you, since we all know which category I have fallen in.

In my next life I want to come back as this mole. Seriously, this mole. I mean, you'll have to wear bikini tops to work, or loose-fitting shirts so I can breathe

VANILLA SKY - Em Nova York são narrados em flashback fatos angustiantes da vida de David Aames (Tom Cruise), um jovem empresário que é dono de um império editorial. David tem sua vida modificada quando conhece Sofia Serrano (Penélope Cruz), uma bela jovem por quem se apaixona .Tal relacionamento desperta ciúmes em Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), uma "amizade colorida" de Davis, que quer muito mais que mero envolvimento sexual com ele. Um dia, após sair da casa de Sofia, David encontra Julie, que usando o pretexto de querer conversar com ele o convence a entrar no carro dela. Em um ímpeto de loucura, e cega por se sentir preterida, ela lança o carro por cima de um viaduto. Ela não resiste ao impacto e morre. David sobrevive, mas fica com o rosto bem desfigurado e entra em coma, ficando neste estado por três semanas. Ao se ver David fica traumatizado e oferece qualquer quantia para reconstruírem seu rosto. Repentinamente realidade e fantasia se confundem de forma assustadora.

Amazing movie. It started out so inconspicuously and ended so brilliantly. I am becoming more & more of a Tom Cruise fan. Cameron Crowe did a wonderful job.

Alarm ...

You open your eyes, and a little humidity around forever. The room is dark: the first rays of the sun newly risen recently painted space in the soft golden-pink palette. Exhausted after sleeping hand automatically reaches for the alarm clock to turn off so familiar to you female voice. Quite casually getting up from one of those funny poses, where you always wake up, you stately stretches and mentally want to pick up the remote. Ideas become a reality - television remote control in your hands and getting up, you begin to slowly wade in a bathroom by turning off the remote control on the way coming to the floor doroguschy widescreen TV ...

It's no secret that the Vanilla Sky - a remake of Spanish film "Open Your Eyes" with deservedly moved in here and Penelope Cruz. To say so explicitly, and the forehead is not quite fair to tape Cameron Crowe, for the veteran director added to his creation more than the arrogant excuse of "Made in Hollywood" and the constellation of American actors. Script creator Jerry Maguaera, "" Almost Famous ", but on this day," Elizabethtown "is recognizable very easily thanks to the bright palette of films, always excellent sound, characters, radiating a kind of vital energy that really can be caught in humans.

But David had already got out of bed and continues to trend toward the bathroom ... The audience-pioneers opened the eyes of this picture of Cameron Crowe and they are ignorant, like myself, David, what awaits them further.

That vanilla sky, which draw himself while watching, feeling like a true artist of his inner world and the perceptual system, created mixed strokes. Allusions - faithful companion seen. Many of the issues raised is under a fertile ground for reflection. Each event is issued, ideally, every gesture, glance, word that became part of the story, where the established tenets of its own perception can become a victim of the quantitative confirmation of a theory and the existence of no less meaningful rebuttal. This subtle detail, and with each viewing them becomes only greater.

Who is this David? Rich, owner of a major magazine publisher, whose birthday may well congratulate himself Steven Spielberg (look carefully in order not to miss the pleasant hint), a charming, handsome, but the victim of a situation, insane crazy people around him or selfish, neither as a whose feelings? Dreamer or playboy?

All other David painted for himself personally, not trying to look deeper, whether it's friend or lover Julie Bryan, and only fleetingly in Sofia he caught something that is clean, innocent, virginal, unspoiled money, status, city, and like any child pulled his hand the unknown. But that's the irony - David Ames - a large child, and who knows what will happen when he played enough with it. She is in his view - his own sketch in pencil and is not an angel, and people. Still, it is naive in Sofia Ames saw a ray of hope, hope for true love.

Brian - probably the only one who can call David a friend, but one if he was? He envies the young white Eames envy or let the gossip about him behind his back? There is no denying that this is significant for the main character a man, but whether the rights of David, podpuskaya this person so close?

"We made love four times last night" - Julie
"Is it good?" - David
"Two - well, three - very good. But four ... "- Julie
"Four - incredibly well?" - David
"Four ..." - Julie
"Four what?" - David
"Hold me and I'll go, but you can go back and talk with the resourceful brunette" - Julie
"Four - what's that?" - David

These lines are almost completely describe Julie and the position in which it is located. 4 times - this is more than just a word.

«What if God was one of us»

By David lives in his own little world and not pay attention to paint real life. He is a great artist, creator, designer of this world, but something has changed, when he met Sofia, everything changed when he sat in that car. Trying to recover the past and head in the clouds, or open his eyes and down to earth? He made his choice.

And yet David, as a hostage of his own mind, makes its journey, the audience looking at a holistic picture of the master Crow. Curiously watching the touching, scary, mysterious story told against the backdrop of autumn ever in New York. Observe, as without the excellent cast under the wing of a wonderful director becomes unforgettable brightest characters; prejudice to the Hollywood actor drop out of themselves, like the fallen leaves of autumn tree. And finally, a magnificent playlist with Paul McCartney's, Radiohead, REM and others caught a photographic memory of every scene, with its own magic, and after such a weightless, as each song sounded, view, arrive at the story itself, perhaps, discover something new, something that may have always hovered near something for my soul.

This movie again and again returns to the seats, and each time whispering sweet charm that was given us life, which must be treasured every passing second, smiling in the sun, barely peeping through the clouds in the very cloudy weather.

Just take a summer sunset on the roof of his house.

Just open your eyes.

Vanilla Sky is a dark psychologically disturbing film that reminds me of films like Eyes Wide Shut, The Fountain, Mulholland Drive and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind but all in different ways. Of the people I have spoken and the reviews I have read about this film, personally I think that Vanilla Sky is a very enjoyable film. I mean, I love psychological films that just get inside your head and you get gripped all the way through. It has a very dark twist and with a shocking and powerful climax which I couldn't believe!


To be fair, I think Tom Cruise was the best choice to be in this film because David Aames is his kind of character especially the way Tom is with women in real life. In fact, this film led to his marriage separation with Nicole Kidman because he had an affair with co-star Penélope Cruz. David Aames is a young man who recently became the owner of his late father's publishing company. One night, David meets a young woman called Sofia Serrano through his best friend Brian Shelby and David's ex girlfriend Juliana Gianni starts to become jealous when she discovers this. After that, the tables begin to turn and it starts to become more personal. Cameron Diaz's performance as Juliana was really awesome too. Diaz did surprise me as Juliana because I don't think she would've been very good at playing a dangerous character but I was wrong, she did a fabulous job! Juliana is a very sexy woman who can pull all the men she wants to but she is a very dangerous woman when it comes to David talking to any other woman. Penélope Cruz was awesome too as Sofia Serrano. Cruz reprised her role as Sofia in Vanilla Sky when she starred in original Spanish version Open Your Eyes so Vanilla Sky is, in fact, a remake of that film. Why Penélope Cruz received a Razzie nomination for her role in Vanilla Sky, I have absolutely no idea!


Cameron Crowe creates something that he did a very good job at but I feel Vanilla Sky would've been a better film from a director like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, David Lynch or even the late Stanley Kubrick because this film does suit the style of all four of those directors mentioned. Crowe managed to make something disturbing, thought-provoking, shocking and very emotional.


Overall, Vanilla Sky is a very enjoyable psychological thriller that I believe should've earned more credit than it got.