It's mumblekorea! Well, that may be a stretch--this film does have a bit of a plot and some action of sorts, but it's still about self-absorbed twenty-somethings who talk a lot and have romantic misadventures.
And it's funny and appealing, like the best mumblecores. However, it violates one key rule of the genre: it's nearly a half-hour past the recommended maximum 90 minutes, and as a result, we are more than ready to be finished with these people by the time the end credits finally roll.
But hey, get this: the film seems to have come to New Haven before opening in New York! I find no evidence of anyone at the Times having seen it! Ha-ha!
This puts me in mind of Zelig: an ostensible documentary about someone famous years ago but now sunken into utter obscurity. Except that Gertrude Berg really existed, and the character she portrayed in radio and on television was equally real to huge audiences, including many for whom the program provided an introduction to positive and nonstereotypical Jewish-American life.
Gee whiz! It's not bad enough to be in a land where you hate and/or fear and/or mistrust every living man, woman, child, and alley cat, and they all hate and/or fear and/or mistrust you right back--noooooo! they have to put a crazy motherfucker in the Hummer with you who's apt to get you all killed.
Director Kathryn Bigelow blows things up real good, but also gives us all the suspense we can handle--I lost count of the my involuntary inhalations or exhalations. One of the best flicks of the summer.
As is this. Actually, this is several excellent films of the past--the DNA of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Invasion of the Body Snatchers is obvious, but I also detected traces of Duck Soup and Dr. Strangelove, and the guy I saw it with aptly noted Solyaris (or maybe Solaris--I forgot to clarify).
Two things the trailer didn't prepare me for: how big the comic element would be and how much of the time Sam Rockwell would be acting against himself. He does it brilliantly, and it would be interesting to know the technical specs. And of course Kevin Spacey as the voice of HAL--er, GERTY--is perfect casting.
What's wrong with this picture/these pictures? In the April-September romance I saw two days ago, the hot, generous of spirit, and ultimately smart teenager falls for a much older love who is selfish and cynical and looks like Larry David; in today's iteration of the dynamic, the hot, selfish, cynical teenager falls for an older love who is generous of spirit and smart and looks like Michelle Pfeiffer. Is it just me, or is there a fundamental inequity here?
Could it be that we testosteronic types recognize that women are so much less shallow than we that they're able to overlook aesthetics (and, apparently, character) and find the good qualities that we don't even suspect in ourselves? Or is that just our misguided fantasy?
Incidentally, when I walked into the theater Friday, the crowd before me numbered three, two of whom could have been competing in a Larry David Lookalike Contest. When I walked into the theater today, there were two, both Women of a Certain Age, neither of whom would have been mistaken for Ms. Pfeiffer.
Wow, this puts things in perspective, huh? I mean, yeah, people were talking and crinkling plastic wrappers throughout the film, but no one shot me down as I left the theater, so it could have been lots worse.
Yet another Michael Mann film that I admire a lot more than I like. I recognize the excellence of the filmmaking and of the acting, but it just didn't move me much, aside from the fact that I felt as if I'd seen so much of it before.
Oh, and show of hands: who else thought of the same flick I thought of when Billie (Marion Cotillard, with what I guess is a French-Native American accent), under interrogation, gives the dumb Chicago flatfoot (or maybe he's a fed--hard to keep track of jurisdictions) a four-digit address on Addison?
This doesn't. Unless its goal is to be my least-favorite Woody Allen film ever, in which case, to be certain, I'd have to watch The Curse of the Jade Scorpion again, and that ain't happening.
I've already wasted too much time on this, but let me just say this: if your thesis is that everyone not born and reared in New York is a boob and the only salvation is moving to the city, then when you have a New York character ostentatiously correct the grammar of a hinterlands hick, be sure that the hick's grammar was wrong and the "correction" is correct. And no, there's no chance that it was an intentional character-shading moment.
