From Westworld to Weird Science to Ex Machina, movies have long acknowledged the unfortunate reality that many leaps forward in technology are spurred on by straight men trying to find new ways to simulate getting laid. Benjamin Dickinson's Creative Control joins that dubious heritage, set in a not-too-distant future in which transparent phones and tablets have become the norm. Advertising executive David (writer-director Dickinson) is tasked with developing a campaign for Augmenta, augmented-reality glasses which look only slightly less douchey than Google Glass. Dissatisfied with his girlfriend Juliette (Nora Zehetner) and crushing out on his best friend's partner Sophie (Alexis Rasmussen), David creates a simulation of Sophie in his glasses, and soon loses his grip on which Sophie is real, a situation worsened by his own heavy boozing and pill-popping. Creative Control is shot in glorious black-and-white, which always makes New York look better and also complements the vector-graphic aesthetic of the glasses nicely. But the film's most important innovation is the use of Reggie Watts, playing himself as an outside-the-box tech guru David hires and then subsequently ignores.He doesn't get nearly enough screen time, but if anyone can show us how the seemingly inevitable arrival of augmented reality can be used for things better than facilitating the male orgasm, it's Reggie Watts.
Comments are closed.
