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Director: Alex Proyas

Alex Proyas came from music videos and made The Crow and Dark City in succession, both of which build entire cities as sets and light them like 1920s German cinema. Dark City in particular anticipates several ideas The Matrix would popularise a year later.

The Crow is inseparable from Brandon Lee’s death during production, and the film was completed using doubles and early digital compositing.

His later studio work, I, Robot and Gods of Egypt, is less distinctive. Dark City’s director’s cut, which removes the studio-imposed opening narration, is the version to watch.

Gerard Butler as Set, a nine-foot-tall Egyptian god with gold armor, standing in an ornate temple setting.Alex Proyas

Gods of Egypt (2016) Review

Gods of Egypt (2016) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A hundred and forty million dollars of genuine visual ambition attached to a script nobody appears to have argued with. Gerard Butler is the only person on…

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Dark City (1998) film posterAlex Proyas

Dark City (1998) Review

Dark City is the most underrated film in the history of science fiction cinema. It arrived in 1998, one year before The Matrix, explored several of the same fundamental questions about manufactured reality and the nature of consciousness, and was…

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