Every year, critics, and everyone else who love movies, make a top ten list of their favorite films. If you are a serious critic, you put a serious film as your number one film. So, when I was watching Siskel & Ebert as they had their annual Best of Show for 1998, when most of their fellow critics were naming Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love, and Gods & Monsters, I was floored when Gene Siskel named Babe: Pig in the City (which I’ll write about next month) and Roger Ebert named Dark City, a science fiction movie, as their respective best films of 1998. Science fiction is a genre in which even the best of films are ignored until years later. 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture. It is usually seen as an excuse for action sequences by many critics.

However, I don’t think that way. While science fiction, like every genre, has its share of silly films, there are plenty of great and serious science fiction films. One of those is Dark City. It combines the genre with film noir to tell an original story. A man wakes up in a hotel room with no knowledge of the past and a dead body on the floor. That would be enough to make a great character study there, but then you realize there is more going on below the surface. He is actually part of an experiment by aliens whose culture has died. They watch people interact and, every so often, change the city. They make poor people rich, change people’s jobs, and even move buildings around.

Most of the time, you have to guess at why critics love films so much. This time, Roger Ebert did a DVD commentary on Dark City. Now, he has done commentaries before, for Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and a few others. However, most of those are for films where the cast and crew are dead. This may be the film I know about where he offers commentary for a recent film. He really does offer some good insight. He talks about the challenge of acting when some of your tools are taken away and how some of the moving sets are real. While I don’t see Dark City as the masterpiece that Ebert does, I do think it is a great film. It does have some incredible visuals. I don’t think the story works completely, but it still works enough.

Dark City was directed by Alex Proyas, who is still probably best know for making music videos and The Crow, the film on which Brandon Lee was killed. Dark City did not do well at the box office, making only half its budget. He has not had very much success since Dark City. I Robot made some money thanks to the involvement of Will Smith, but probably not enough for studios to take chances with Proyas. In the dozen years since then, he has only directed a music video, a documentary, Knowing (which I thought was terrific, but Ebert was one of the few critics to applaud) and Gods of Egypt (a horrendous flop that I didn’t see). After losing over $100M it is hard to believe that a studio will take a chance by giving him free reign.

Ebert: From Original Review: “If it is true, as the German director Werner Herzog believes, that we live in an age starved of new images, then Dark City is a film to nourish us. Not a story so much as an experience, it is a triumph of art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects–and imagination.”
From Great Movies Essay: “Dark City by Alex Proyas resembles its great silent predecessor Metropolis in asking what it is that makes us human, and why it cannot be changed by decree. Both films are about false worlds created to fabricate ideal societies, and in both the machinery of the rulers is destroyed by the hearts of the ruled.”

Oscars: None

Ebert’s Top Ten of 1998: 1. Dark City
2. Pleasantville
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. A Simple Plan
5. Happiness
6. Elizabeth
7. Babe: Pig in the CIty
8. Shakespeare in Love
9. Life is Beautiful
10. Primary Colors

Next Month: Babe: Pig in the City