by Dean | Jun 30, 2013 | General
Re Traffic (2000), I like this movie’s thoughtful rejection of the U.S. war on drugs, but not its relative lack of sophistication. Michael Douglas’s newly appointed drug czar has a teenage daughter constantly hungry to shoot up, and Douglas’s wife (Amy Irving) has known about it for months without breathing a word to her husband. Two DEA agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) are stupid enough to let their sole informer in a big narcotics case get poisoned while eating breakfast. A married socialite (Catherine Zeta-Jones), attempting to protect her little son from her drug-dealing husband’s creditors, knows exactly how to deal with assassins and aggressive pushers. All this and more are too improbable to pass muster. One critic complained that Traffic is insufficiently exciting, but in my view the trouble is that it’s naively, immaturely written.
It’s ambitious, though, however indifferent I am to director-cinematographer Steven Soderbergh’s gussied-up style. Not that this style is never powerful, what with its handheld camera, bright light and graininess. It’s just that it’s rather showy and generally unnecessary—in truth, neither good nor bad. By contrast, the acting is often superb. Cheadle and Guzman, to give two examples, offer some nice variation and even nicer facial play. Douglas and Benicio Del Toro are winningly manly, perfect as authority figures.
![Cover of "Traffic [HD DVD]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XHEJXKXVL._SL300_.jpg "Cover of \"Traffic [HD DVD]\"")
Cover of Traffic [HD DVD]
by Dean | Jun 27, 2013 | General
There is a lot of darkness in Francois Truffaut’s films, but he never had a well-developed sense of tragedy. We see that in 1972’s Two English Girls. He could certainly handle pathos, though, and we see this too in Girls’ terrifically lyrical framework. The film tells of Claude, a Frenchman who slowly becomes amorously and then sexually involved with Muriel and Anne, the two English girls of the title. It’s a lesser movie than Jules and Jim and even The Story of Adele H. (both by Truffaut) because it’s rather talky and most of the acting ranges from bad to mediocre. But, like other Truffaut films, it is guileless, humane and personal—in its own way, rewarding.
Two English Girls (Les Deux Anglaises) is based on a novel by Henri-Pierre Roche.
(In French with English subtitles)
Two English Girls (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jun 23, 2013 | General
The plot of the new Fast and Furious 6 (2013) has Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s cop approaching Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his ex-criminal crew to help him vanquish the toughest, smartest international crime team, based in London, you’ve presumably ever seen. Dom agrees to it since this may be the only way he can reach his still-alive lost love, Lettie (Michelle Rodriguez), who seems to have some connection with the London-based baddies—and is now an amnesiac (!)
Not surprisingly, so much propulsive action goes on in Justin Lin’s lark that it ends up diluting its thrills. Yet some of this stuff is irresistible—the cutthroat fight between Lettie and a policewoman (Gina Carano), for instance. And the main villain’s act of blowing up the bridge the London police are standing on as they fire at his getaway car. As for the auto chase material, I loved the shot of Tyrese Gibson leaping from one speeding car to another and that of hapless Lettie getting flung into the air before Toretto’s silly, superheroic rescue of her. And the wicked tank is cool too.
Now this:
The movie has a way of making British folks look bad; what’s up with that? Dom is hypocritically religious, though it’s interesting that religion is in the film at all. Moreover, I found myself wishing Furious 6 was a little less stupid—Dom’s crew locates the tough, smart crew for a final battle with a bit too much ease (etc. etc.)—for all the fun it supplies.
I give it a B.
Fast and Furious 6 Premier 6 (Photo credit: ahisgett)
by Dean | Jun 20, 2013 | General
Sooner or later we come to understand that quality in life is what we want and will strive for. For young Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) in The Graduate (1968), this quality is represented by the daughter of the forty-something mother Benjamin is adulterously sleeping with. The graduate changes in the course of the film and, unlike Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), was never interested in mere Acquisition in the first place. It’s no wonder the seducer can’t keep seducing.
The Graduate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jun 16, 2013 | General
It’s increasingly hard for movies to be interesting. A Danish picture with a lot of English dialogue (as well as a lot of subtitles), Susanne Bier’s Love Is All You Need (2013) is wispy and largely unimaginative—in short, a yawner. Not at all is it redeemed by the southern Italy shots and the absence of sentimentality. The characters, especially the men (played by Pierce Brosnan, Kim Bodnia and others), are depicted not only in a shallow way but in a laughably, almost stupidly shallow way. The dialogue reveals so little about them you’re tempted to wonder why it even exists.
Bier has done far better than this in the recent past—with Open Hearts, for example—but it was slightly easier in the recent past to make interesting movies. I suspect audiences will not long tolerate being bored.
English: Brosnan Pierce at Cannes in 2002. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jun 14, 2013 | General
Artistically the 1973 sci-fi farce, Sleeper, is one of Woody Allen’s best films. Except for the physical comedy, it’s hilarious. Nevertheless:
Woody wants us to know 1) he is justified in his (1973) atheism, 2) sex is sort of the summum bonum in life, and 3) his movies do not always end well; sometimes the endings are flat.
In sum, I can’t say I really enjoy Sleeper.
Cover of Sleeper
