tastella-297-435269 The dialogue is stilted, the acting is just awful, the back story is sketchy---especially frustrating in a film that hangs on its back story---and the "futuristic" props are so cheap as to be comical. The social-scientific concept of the movie sounds rather intriguing when read in summary on Wikipedia, but it's not fleshed out in the film. Worse yet, there's no connection established between that concept and the extra-terrestrial aspects of the story. Overall, this movie lacks a coherent plot, on top of stunningly poor execution. Indeed, the best thing about this film is the titles design. So watch those and move on---don't waste the next 80 minutes of your life.

groggo I admire the delicious political cynicism of this film, but it's too bad a lot of 'art-house' critics inject profundity into films where no such profundity exists. It always reminds me of James Joyce's remark after reading a particularly pontificating, over-analyzed-and-intellectualized critique of Ulysses: 'Sounds good to me; wish I'd thought of that'. (I'm paraphrasing).Whoever said this is a 'Hartley film' is probably closest to the truth. You either 'get' the guy or you don't. Personally, I'm in the latter camp. I keep watching Hartley's films and he doesn't make me swoon (regrettably, because I hate Hollywood crap and want indie makers to succeed).In 'The Girl From Monday,' I was confused from the get-go. The voice-over and 'establishment' shots just didn't place me at all. The acting was sub-par. If you're going to throw satiric barbs at a juicy target like capitalism, you'd better have actors with more conviction and irony in their voices. I wanted this film to register with me, but it didn't.

Alex Caulfield Is this Hartley following Godard's footsteps and becoming "political"? Political commentary is never interesting, unless it is executed in an interesting way. Luckily, this is one of those cases.I'm amazed at the quality of the shots considering they used a DCR-VX2000 for this movie. How many cameras did they use? One I suspect.Hartley's World is that of an intelligent essayist, specially since he quit making movies like "Surviving Desire" and "Trust". "Theory of Achievement" was heavily influenced by "La Chinoise", as much as the form of a "short" could take it. Here we have the same intent, but turned into a fictional narrative. It works, but only if you understand the reasoning behind it.

widmerpool It has a promising plot line, and some quite interesting performances and direction, but overall I felt the film lacked substance. Except for its unique idea of sex-for-points, it's filled with simple notions such as "advertising is bad" and "freedom is good." Both are valid beliefs, but neither are explored with much originality.It played out like a weak version of an excellent novel or short story. Great soundtrack, though.(BTW, I believe the opening credits read "A Science Fiction by Hal Hartley," not "A Science Fiction Film by Hal Hartley," as the first reviewer wrote. Not sure exactly what he means by that, but it is probably significant to Hartley.)