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Reviews
Magnolia (1999)
Falls flat of director's obvious goal
This is *exactly* the type of film that I love. Intertwining lives and the psychological consequences. However, I found this film actually fell a little flat. It had an absolutely Great beginning. It had a pretty good ending. The cast was good. Tom Cruise puts in the most amazing performance of his career to date. But the entire long middle ... it was a struggle to sit through it all. I had to fight off urges to give up on it, or fast forward to the end. The film did not grip me, and I simply failed to find any character to connect to. The director was trying very hard to build it up as "coincidental meetings" and their affect on lives ...but it just didn't reach past that normal-movie-characters interacting with each other level. There didn't seem to be anything too terribly coincidental about it. The closest you come is a meeting of a cop with a druggie. Both "main" characters and that One is happenstance enough to land on the "coincidental" level. Just one.
To me, a good example of coincidental movie character moments is a scene in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" in which main characters from two seperate plot lines accidentally get photo's mixed up at a booth. That's good coincidence. A different example would be Mike Figgis' "Timecode", in which many characters interact with each other as they pass by each other, several of which you would not have guessed knew each other until they interact.
Magnolia ? Something in their interactions just "falls flat" of that coincidence line. However, there are some very powerful scenes, mostly near the end. All in all, the film is worth the rental price just to see Tom Cruise show us he can actually act.
My Name Is Joe (1998)
Portrays an intense and honest realness
There is something very brutally honest about the acting of Peter Mullan. There's a sort of untamed undertone of violence sizzling at his seams that burns through the characters he portrays. Mr. Mullan has the unique ability to seem very gentle, but on the edge of bursting at any moment. Match that with the directing ability of Ken Loach, and you've one very believable, intense film!
Timecode (2000)
Fun Film Voyeurism 101
I had a great deal of fun with this video. I rented in on VHS, and am now buying it (DVD for the soundtrack control). I watched the film twice over, and caught so many more things the second time than the first. The first part of the viewing you spend trying to figure out how all these characters connect to each other, and then you relax into the flow of them popping in and out of various corners of the screen. Amazing timing ...just Amazing timing for one-take. Julian Sands' entire purpose in the film seems to be to distract the other actors and see if they get lost. This makes his background-character entertaining. I found myself backing the film up several times in certain places because as I was paying attension one thing, I suddenly realized the scene was slowly changing in another corner and I was like "wait a minute...what's happening over _there_..?". Over-all, the four simultanious corners of action are not that hard to follow. Mike Figgis uses sound to take you every place you need to go to figure out what is happening. I found the performances of Jeanne Tripplehorn and Saffron Burrows particulary well done. Both are on screen through most of the film and keep up character perfectly. Not a film for people who do not like to use their mind while watching. Mike Figgis does not spoon-feed his viewers (thank you). All in all very inventive and well done !
The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1998)
The slow dissection of a life's innocence lost.
At what point do we lose our innocence? Is it the one moment of actually having sex, or is it a build up of smaller things through life that slowly take it away? This film has the effect of juxtaposing two views on the question: with Adam & Eve, we have complete innocence up to the moment of having sex ..then they are thrust out into the modern adult world and expected to somehow automatically know how to survive in it. The discovery of Sex does not give you the automatic knowledge of how to deal with all its possible consequences. Interweaved with that, Figgis puts scenes from a man's developing life. Events shown that each eat away a little bit of innocence we may not have even realized we still have. The slow disintegration of Innocence through time. The effect of both instances is numbing. The most amazing scene for me involves two twins, unaware of each other's existence (both played by Saffron Burrows), who one day cross paths with each other in an airport. The set up is stunning. This scene begs the question: if you met up with another version of yourself, a version with a different background & different formative events --would you even be recognizable to yourself? Would you be able to relate to that other you as a person? How much have the events in our lives formed us, and how much really is biological? The only quarrel with this film I have is a series of scenes in which Mr. Figgis employed a slow fade-in/fade-out method. This was very eye-painful to watch, the fade is at such a rate you feel as though you are just slow-blinking before falling asleep. Thankfully, this is only done briefly in the film. Over all, excellent filmmaking!
Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
Unnecessarily depressing with no good character enthrall.
Unfortunatety, I found this movie slow, boring, and unecessarily depressing. For some unknown reason I failed completely to feel any sympathy whatsoever for the main character. Something, I suppose, about the degree of patheticness. All so very self-abusive and sadly the performances did not pull me in. In general, I like Nic Cage and Elizabeth Shue. Mike Figgis has definetly since developed a great sense of filmmaking. This film, however, I simply found to be far too incredibly Hollywood-Formulaic (at its time of release) and predictable. It's not that I feel no human compassion for people who would be in those circumstances --but something about the way it was drawn and performed just failed to grip me. I guess we can't love them all. . .
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
scary bit o actiony fun, some fodder for ethical debates.
Here and there I will take in a scarier-than-my-usual movie if some friend insists on it, or something in the advertising manages to catch my attention. That's what did it this time: I read an interview with Saffron Burrows and she expressed that there is some confusion in the ethics and reaction to her character. Everyone seems to hate her character, and she didn't think the character was that bad. I must say I agree with her.
But first: The film en whole is a very basic bit of `ooo where is the thing that's about to EAT me' fun. Human error drops human to the bottom of the food chain. It does better than average at suspenseful scaryness because not only are you continually surprised at how clever these sharks have become, but also the crew is in a large mostly-underwater facility with them. They're being attacked in their very living quarters! Watching this film in my bedroom, even in the middle of a desert (Texas), this point was still disconcerting.
The ethical debating fodder orbits around the fact of how much dislike the other characters, apparently as well as much of the audience, throw upon the character of Dr. McAlester. The main problem I had with this is the fact that the main common-sense-error her character made, she appears to have made in conjunction with another character. But nobody throws any blame or dislike upon him for it at all. Very strange. There is also the fact that the error was made in good intention ...they were, quite frankly, *blinded* by their good intensions. But the root of people's reaction seems to be bedded in cold fear of ALL general genetic research. So sitting within this shark-attack basic action flick, here we stumble upon good subjects to get caught in late night debates about. But of course, that's not for everyone. It's a film you can watch just to watch people get munched, or a film you can watch to just to argue with your friends about.
Miss Julie (1999)
where's the Oscar for this one?
Nothing outside of Saffron Burrows and Peter Mullan exists while watching this film. I sadly missed it in the theatre, but rented it just recently. The intensity of the interplay between Julie & Jean, and the play of chemistry between Saffron & Peter, completely absorbs. No room, no telephone, no kitten getting into things, no knock on the door. A physical sex scene that feels like a mental rape. A servant Aristocrat and an Aristocratic servant: how far does a social role penetrate our being? The air of the film brims with violence, loathing, mutual envy and lust but...no gun, no breast. The emotional manipulations between the characters manipulate the viewer's emotions much more than any weapon or nudity could. The performance of Saffron Burrows is absolutely astounding. One moment you loathe Julie, the next you just want to comfort her. Peter Mullan works in perfect tune with Burrows and even when the characters onscreen are at odds, there is perfect harmony within the player's performances. Through the film you feel as though you can see through layers and layers of this character Julie and at the end are left numb, but awe-stuck. Thank You Mike Figgis, Saffron Burrows, Peter Mullan and Maria Doyle Kennedy! (now, to pick up kitten's fun. . . )