You know, Hollywood should just fire all its directors and make trailer editors take their places.

Case in point: Vanilla Sky. The trailer gets five stars. It shows you everything without telling you a goddamn thing, and leaves you nearly salivating for the movie itself. The movie... well.

Let's get into that.

Vanilla Sky was primed to be possibly the biggest movie of the fall, with an all-star cast, a prestigious writer-director, and a premise both obvious and mysterious. David Aames (Tom Cruise) is a millionaire playboy and heir to a magazine empire, a member of the idle rich who has it all: women, money, cars, and the fact that he looks like Tom Cruise. Though we might despise Aames for being a person who has never experienced what it's like to be deprived of anything, ever, we instantly sympathize with him in a clever opening dream sequence accompanied by voice-overs of Aames talking to his psychiatrist. Yes, he's had it all handed to him. Is he a bad person? No. Shallow? Well... maybe a little, but in an enjoyable way.

Aames wakes up from his dream to find himself in bed next to Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), a friend and "fuck buddy" who obviously wants to be a little more. Aames ain't hearing any of that noise. Sex is sex, and if a woman comes to your place offering you her body, and if she so happens to be a blonde knockout, you go right along with it. If you're lucky enough, you go right along with it four times in one night.

Things change drastically for Aames when his buddy (Jason Lee, playing the part of Jason Lee) brings a guest to Aames' birthday party. The guest is Sofia (Penelope Cruz, in perhaps her first appealing English-language performance), a saucy and knowledgeable woman who instantly entrances Aames with her wit and.. duh, her sauciness. Aames avoids the increasingly demented Julie with the aid of Sofia, and one night of romantic (but chaste) bonding later, Aames is deeply in love with Sofia, as only movie people can be.

Disaster strikes, in the form of Julie finally going off the deep end and committing the unthinkable in a spectacularly filmed sequence. You've seen the previews, so you know what I'm talking about. David's life is... changed dramatically, and slowly his reality begins to unravel. Is he crazy? Is there a conspiracy against him? Did he murder someone? What, exactly, is really going on? To tell you more would be to spoil key points of the movie.

How, in the name of God, does such a wonderfully conceived movie fail in such a disappointing way? Hard to tell.

The acting in Vanilla Sky is nothing short of superb. Tom Cruise inhabits Aames with the perfect blend of cockiness and honest charm necessary to make the role sympathetic, and after the movie's pivotal disaster takes place, he dashes in a healthy dose of everyman frustration. Penelope Cruz is, as was said before, finally living up to all the hype we've had stuffed down our throats since Woman on Top. Jason Lee is Jason Lee, and Jason Lee is always a blast to watch. Add a Lee invective to a grocery list and it becomes prime comedy.

Did I mention the supporting cast? Only Cameron Crowe can pull together such undisputed acting heavyweights to fill minor and supporting roles. Diaz pulls off the right amount of spookiness for the scarily desperate Gianni, and Kurt Russell, as Aames' post-accident therapist, comes across as a character so genuine (even in the surprise climax) that the man deserves a nomination for his efforts. We've even got Noah Taylor, Tilda Swinton, and Alicia Witt taking roles that grant them no more than ten minutes of screentime.

The sense of style, the blend of rock-techno music, and the cinematography are stunning. The dialogue is intelligent, never once insulting or talking down to the audience. When Aames quotes Mark Twain, he does not stop to explain that he has quoted Mark Twain.

So what went wrong?

Well, were this the freshman effort of a director, it would be worthy of much higher praise. We have come to expect more from Cameron Crowe, however, and it is obvious that Crowe is not familiar with nor comfortable in the suspense-thriller genre. The feeling of surreality prevails in much of the latter half of the film, but is never wound tight enough to give the audience the sense of immediacy needed to keep them breathless. The conclusion of the film is an abrupt step into science fiction, and as such feels out of place. Vanilla Sky is a noble effort, but it just doesn't provide the mindfuck climax to make it a truly great movie

And if I forget to call you a nasty name in the course of this, let me just say that you are a filthy, puss licking slut.

Ahem

On to the counterpoint.

This is just a minor point but "most anticipated film of the season" I think you said. Didn't you say that about Ocean's Eleven? Let's not fall into clichés yet, my friend. Neither of us is fat and neither of us is dead so we gotta keep things fresh for now.

The story was very Hitchcockian... maybe even like a Bradbury work. In that respect, I can totally dig on the film. Nobody ever placed this movie in a certain genre. We see the trailer for this movie and place it where we're most comfortable putting it. Obviously, you categorized it as a thriller. I can see that... but above all else, I saw it as a story of survival and values. Broken hopes reinvented through a whirlwind of emotions and experiences. Yet the movie had balls and true grit.

It was like Steel Magnolias with a big hairy dick.

It's hard to sympathize for a rich guy who has everything but he was never a snob. He was actually a very down to Earth kinda guy. He knew where he came from and was a truly kind and good person. His views of casual sex were different than the norm. Someone who is a stranger to casual sex situations may not agree with his actions... they may even condemn them and find his fate fitting. That's all up to personal judgment. Which, ultimately, is where the heart of this movie lies. This film isn't pretentious enough to tell you "feel this way about this" or "feel this way for this person". You're given everything in an almost objective light and are allowed to make your own assessment. What you get out of it depends a lot on what you take in. Have I confused anyone yet? Yes? Good. I liked this movie a lot, but that may be because I learned things about myself watching it. So, I guess Ken and I disagree on the overall quality of the film. That's fine. You guys know he's an Uncle Fucker, right?

I agree that the acting was superb. I haven't liked Tom Cruise this much in a film since the sex scene on the subway in Risky Business. Jason Lee was stupendous. But Penelope Cruz? Maybe if I was physically attracted to her, I could agree with you. Unfortunately, I am not and thus her acting is nothing but a migraine just waiting to hatch in my brain. Couldn't they have cast Salma Hayek? She has big boobs and can speak English a lot better. Who's with me on that? Besides Penelope, the acting was fantastic.

Even though it was a remake of a Mexican film, Cameron Crowe was still able to throw his own touches in there. The music is so obviously Cameron Crowe as well as some of the dialogue. Lee's "O.J. Land" line is nothing short of genius. The strongest touch, personally, is the fact that the Twin Towers of NY were kept in the film. I got a chance to ask Mr. Crowe about this a couple weeks back when he was in Ft. Worth and he said that he felt that leaving them in was his way of honoring the spirit of the film. That to "wipe them out" would feel too insensitive and would thus negate the whole point of the film. I couldn't agree more. I could go on sucking Cameron Crowe's dick here but I won't.

This film actually touched me... and I don't mean in a place that a bathing suit would cover. It was a movie that made you think and in some cases forced you to face yourself. It was a great experience for me. I recommend it highly.