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This is a fairly interesting, but slow-moving, sci-fi drama that was made for German television by director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  Definitely a bit long at over 3 hours.

The story involves a high-tech company that operates a virtual-reality computer called Simulacron.  When the project leader dies, his replacement, Fred Stiller, starts experiencing strange phenomena such as a colleague disappearing without a trace and no one remembering that he ever existed.  Stiller finds himself in the middle of a nightmarish situation where he cannot distinguish fantasy from reality and he doesn't know who he can trust.  

This movie reminds me of a cross between Kubrick (specifically, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Cronenberg (without the gore), 1984, and COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT.  Overall, it is a thought-provoking film.  Unfortunately, it is often tedious with long scenes of people sitting around on art-deco sets, smoking cigarettes and having dull conversations.  I think it's a good movie, but it could have been better if they kept the running time to around 2 hours.

I got my 2-disc DVD-R copy from the wonderful Super Strange Video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvlQ8TQsmQA



  

  

I rented it a week ago, just couldn't get into it. I'm on a shortened attention span pretty much all the time these days.

I loved it, very thought-provoking and way ahead of its time. The reason its three hours long is that it's a TV miniseries, it wad originally broadcast on back to back nights. That's how I watched it, an hour and a half at a time. Three hours at a stretch might have been a bit much.

Barbara Valentin, yowsa!

(http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image12/worldonawire03.jpg)

Public Television gave us "The Lathe of Heaven" but also "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" re sci fi