TimeForLime Reviews

Laughing Sinners (1931)

A Tribute to Hair, Makeup & the Publicity Department

[10 March 2012]

Fans of 1930s-1940s films HAVE TO see Clark Gable in this film. Before his studio handlers figured out how to make him a stud, he was unmemorable and frankly not all that handsome. Weak chin and all that. In this film, the camera seldom shoots him straight on.

Just three years later, Gable would star with Claudette Colbert in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and rock the hearts of female fans everywhere. And then in 1939 there was ,,, ,,, GONE WITH THE WIND.

The other User Reviews here for LAUGHING SINNERS a/k/a COMPLETE SURRENDER are more than sufficient; no need to repeat what they've already said. My hope is that you'll watch this as the BEFORE photo of Gable, and then see what the backstage experts of Hair, Make-up Studio Publicity were able to do with this (almost) sallow-faced young man -- to create the AFTER Gable that was to come. No wonder they hand out Oscars for the Great Ones in categories beyond just Best Film, Actor and Director.

Bee Season (2005)

Members of an academic family search for significance.

[5/10 · 5 October 2006]

Caution that this User Comment gives away the film's secret. How anyone could think it's an unfathomable secret, or that the four characters' coming of age are unclear, is beyond me.

Smartly done, with strong performances from the four major characters, BEE SEASON portrays a fairly typical academic family -- typical that is, based on my experience. Everyone has IQ, everyone is motivated. School is not complex. It's life that is bewildering. Daughter Eliza is rather a good speller and gets to enter lots of spelling BEES. (We can only hope that the authors didn't have George Bernard Shaw's Eliza Doolittle in mind ,,,,, ) The engine of such campus families is either father professor or mother professor, or perhaps both. If you've seen WONDER BOYS (2000) then you know the type, as portrayed by Michael Douglas. In BEE SEASON, the engine is (only) the father.

This family is special. The father is Jewish and the mother a convert to Judaism. He is blessed with an innocent belief in his academic pursuits but fails to see that his pounding enthusiasm is taking its toll on wife, studious teen-aged son, and precocious 11-year old daughter. On the surface there is little bickering. They live a near-ideal suburban life and they work very hard at it, with no little sincerity.

The story teller (novelist Myla Goldberg) asks us to accept just one bit of magic, because only one is needed. And that is that the family members besieged by his intellectual power and general competence in many things, each one, has undertaken a search for God. That is what the film is about. It is no more complicated than that. The script is heavy-handed and there is no way the co-directors are going to let you miss the point.

We the audience are asked to observe and evaluate the execution. Within the film we are asked to find out what each character means by "God." Outside the film, we are asked to decide, "Is this story well told, or not well told?" We do not ourselves necessarily have to believe in God, only to go with the flow This search for God and union with God is what father professor (Richard Gere) talks about, but has lost track of through the demands of repetitive teaching and sharing. He thinks he is still on the trail, but in fact he is sidelined. But they, Juliette Binoche and the two kids, are not just talking about it, they are doing it. They are searching for God, each valiantly and earnestly in their own way. Each, influenced in some way by the original fountainhead. the father and influenced in turn by his religion and deep knowledge of that religion. He teaches that the journey towards union with God can be hazardous. Perhaps one or more family members find that out.

If the father had been sensitive and not bludgeoning -- in the way that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are bludgeoning in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966), but without such intensity or evil unconcern -- he might have, in equal yoke with his wife, brought the family together and enabled a joint search, not necessarily for the same God, but in a supportive union.

Part way into the film, you see that wife Miriam is slightly obsessive compulsive. She over-arranges items in the kitchen. I won't continue the unveiling because there is still lots to see, lots to enjoy. But I put it to you that similar blatant clues and foreshadowings are everywhere.

I feel almost 'proud' of each family-member's individual accomplishments, but I have to say that as a 'family unit' they give new meaning to the term "dysfunctional." But herein lies the second blessing. Even with all they do wrong, even with every signal they miss, they are genteel, thoughtful, peace-loving. I think we could benefit if there were more such families. It's just that more of them would have to have a collective sense of what they were on about.

My rating 5 of 10.

Capote (2005)

CAPOTE (2005) ,,,,, Looking back at the 1950s in America

[8/10 · 11 July 2006]

This is a VERY minority opinion. With respect both to CAPOTE and GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK, two look-back films of 2005 ,,,, I felt for both films a cloud of doubt. WHO CARES? Of course I care because I was alive in that era. More aware of Edward R. Murrow than I was of Truman Capote.

When I read IN COLD BLOOD, it ranked for me with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and PEYTON PLACE (Yeah, I know). To a young kid, all three books were about times and places far way but credible. These places had to be true because the writings were so vivid.

As is reflected in the voting for this film, the 18-34 age group knows of Capote and Murrow only on an exception basis. I don't believe it is the norm to know about them. This would be true, also for Bobby Darin (BEYOND THE SEA - 2004) but not for Ray Charles (RAY - 2004). Ray Charles appears to be much better known.

Where does that leave POLLOCK (2000)? I can't say. I know in my public school, CAPOTE was discussed, very discreetly -- as if he had done something slightly wrong; but POLLOCK was unheard of. The broad middle class hungered for blood, but certainly not for bohemians from Manhattan / East Hampton who spilled, dribbled and spritzed paint and got paid for it.

"Bulah, do you KNOW what goes on in Greenwich Village?" To get a feel for the times, try MONA LISA SMILE (2003). We are all just looser and mostly better informed these days because there aren't so many heresies -- or at least the heresies are different.

Did this pallor of obscurity -- ALLEGED obscurity -- affect the films themselves? Well I found GOOD NIGHT to be crisp, credible, continuously interesting. Whereas I found CAPOTE to be a bit of a 'museum piece' right off.

The was a biography done for the A&E Channel about Capote with the title TRUMAN CAPOTE: THE TINY TERROR (also 2005). This documentary is rentable from NetFlix. I learned MORE from this documentary than from the film, because it covers a longer period of Capote's life. Thus the declines in his health and fortunes -- which for the most part occur after the film closes -- and which one learns about only from the CAPOTE bonus tracks, are perhaps easier to understand if you can get your hands on that 'Biography'.

All this being said, and the drift here is more negative than positive, THE FILM IS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. Philip Seymour Hoffman, it seemed to me, "got it" just the way Jamie Foxx "got it" in RAY.

Even more than Hoffman, THE FILM "GETS IT." You weren't supposed to write about such things in such ways back in 1959, ,,,, and you weren't even supposed to 'go to the source' and know about killers and the like. CAPOTE helps to spell that out for us I think the strongest point in the film is the suggestion that Capote fell to the temptation of CREATING news by involving himself in it. (I don't want to create an unfair SPOILER here.)

That's another thing you weren't supposed to do back in '59. News believed itself to be dispassionate -- more like the 'scientific method' that we learned about in high school. To see how reportage has changed, you could compare the coverage of Watergate (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN-1976) vs. Monicagate. Reporters seem now to have an 'obligation' to tidy up the news if it doesn't fit our icons. ,,,,, Oops, now that's getting into current heresies.

And, importantly, IN COLD BLOOD was a book, not a newspaper column. That gave (the real) Capote some 'elbow-room.' For some parallel film interpretations of random killings, a particularly lurid favorite of American journalism, you could compare to CAPOTE the film treatments of the Starkweather-Fugate murders. Check out Terrence Malick's BADLANDS (1973), and the disappointing STARKWEATHER (2004); or better the 1993 TV production with Tim Roth and the indelible Fairuza Balk, MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND,,,,, and viewed again from 30,000 feet in NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994). This latter film examines what the 'media circus' has become. And to it a degree, it all traces back to the headwater of Truman Capote's genius (or at least his flair.)

So Close to Paradise (1998)

Any Non-Official Film in China is an Underground Movie

[8/10 · 1 August 2004]

I believe that what reviewers of this film may have missed is addressed on the DVD in the Bonus Section. As recently as 1998, the government of China, officially the PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, had strong policies about approving the production and release of commercial films. This should be read as CENSORSHIP. As a consequence, a film like SO CLOSE TO PARADISE could not be scripted nor shot if it was done through channels.

To get this film done AT ALL, the director had to rely on cameras and film that were begged or borrowed. And actors, for the most part, were paid ,,,,, NOTHING. If there is some clumsiness, especially in the film's first half, chalk it up to factors such as this, which make movie-making less than ideal for someone with a story to tell. A story, mind you, that is critical, via the art of story-telling, of the government, of social policy, and of progress towards China's vaunted goals of building a perfect society.

A recent report in major USA newspapers (recent as of July '04) addresses the frightful gap in wealth between China's rural poor and urban rich. In this film, the gap is the motivation for two men to move to the city to look for work. (A figure to keep in mind is that, despite all the manufactured products we Americans buy that bear the label MADE IN CHINA, the number of (rural) peasants in China is still 750 million!)

Other Users have described the film. I would only add that the greater emphasis is on the fate of those two men; one confines himself to "honest" hard work -- and gets nowhere. The other slides easily into a life of crime. A social observer might say that these choices and their consequences are mirrored in the life of young men and women in the very poorest parts of America's cities. China has no monopoly on this terrible no-win situation. I'll leave that for each viewer to explore through this movie.

Those looking for a film PRIMARILY about the plight of women in China will, I think, not find it here. However, these choices are presented as gender-neutral. If you start poor in the city, where do you turn?

How to Deal (2003)

There HAD to be a worst movie about love. This is it.

[4/10 · 4 January 2004]

You can pretty much choose sides from the other User Comments here. No need to rehash it all again. If there is ANY sympathy for boys or men here, I missed it. I say: This is a whiny, preposterous fem-biased look at several inter-related love relationships, told by Mandy Moore at the center. I say: if women were described this way non-stop for a whole movie, this film would be ripped from the malls and somebody would have to start apologizing.

As talented as Moore is, she needs to put a lot of "pout" on just to get through this film.

Why? Because Dads, Moms, new boyfriends, boyfriends of friends, parents of sister's boyfriends -- everybody is just so inept, shallow, faithless, and NOT to be counted on. NOBODY COMES THROUGH FOR US KIDS.

About the only people who really understand love, or can practice it with any decency are teen girls. And even they confess, it's hard to do. (A show of hands if anyone believes that -- besides teen girls.)

And just when you think the film will deliver a laugh or an insight, all it can manage is one of those cheap, spur-of-the moment comments that kids make up in the hallway between classes when there really isn't any time to think things through.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

Laurel Canyon (2002)

How to Have Even Less Fun and More Pain

[5/10 · 23 August 2003]

Instead of renting LAUREL CANYON (2002), which few critics are praising, here's how to have even less fun and only slightly more pain.

Watch TADPOLE (2002) twice, the story of a bright, 15-year old preppie trying to get into the pants of his step-mother, played by SIGOURNEY WEAVER.

Haul out your copy of FLIRTING WITH DISASTER (1996) and put up the scene where BEN STILLER and his troupe of traveling crazies visits LILY TOMLIN and ALAN ALDA, the aging, hippie Schlichtings who are still doing the drug thing.

Oops. It's Alda once again. This time his hospitality scenes in EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU (1996) where he and GOLDIE HAWN play the rich, loving, ultra-liberal Dandridges.

Screen any two FREDDIE PRINZ, JR. films. For maximum excruciation, I recommend SHE'S ALL THAT (1999) and DOWN TO YOU (2000).

And to finish it, and yourself, off, go join THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE (the 1999 French version is easier to find than the 1951 original), grab Adele's hand, AND JUST JUMP before you find out what really happens to her. You won't find out much if you wait around for the end of LAUREL CANYON either.

OR, decide that all 103 minutes of pain ARE WORTH IT to you to see GRANDMASTER FRANCES McDORMAND do her thing. I think not since JEANNE MOREAU (JULES ET JIM - 1962 etc.)has an actor so homely been so sexy once she puts herself in gear. This woman is a treasure!

In Praise of Love (2001)

In Praise of Philosophy 101

[5 August 2003]

No one, and I mean NO ONE, who has survived the first freshman all-night bull-session between post-acne cream nudniks who have just prepped for their first quickie quiz in Philosophy & Western Thought is going to buy this film.

At least not as profound social commentary.

I recommend instead that you unplug your Sony audio recorder -- ever hungry for more moralistic anti-capitalistic, anti-American sound-bytes -- and crank up instead your minds' eye recorder for beautiful images of French art in the 20th Century.

The first half of the film recollects time and place of the French New Wave Cinema. No need to pin it down. Let Director Godard just take you on a Senior Citizen's bus tour of the moments you have traveled through already, the monuments you have passed by, and the shadowy mementos of a film era that needs no dusting off, so long as we strongly remember that its work is done.

The second half if the film recollects turn-of-the-Century painting, returning over and over to still life, in both straight-forward and tongue-in-cheek ways. The plot overlays a story of compound betrayals, both in the NOW, and in the era that the NOW is trying to mine, and exhaust and corrupt; but for me the message is that France is too sturdy for all that. The shoreline, the fishing boats, the by-ways, could withstand a dozen wars, a hundred invasion of treacherous film-makers, a thousand conveniently forgetful name-dropping intellectuals, and keep on being France.

Just don't buy the Philosophy 101, part, OK. Spoken by several characters, centering about a tall, 3/4 beautiful and 1/2 educated woman, crouching down into her inappropriate sports car. Is there anyone more declarative, arrogant, and uninformed than such a human? Anyone quicker to point fingers? Anyone freer of accountability to truth and experience?

This film is impossible to enjoy if you keep your rational gears engaged; impossible NOT to enjoy if you let the RIGHT hemisphere of your brain take over. Life is too short not to get it right.

Paid in Full (2002)

A nice update to NEW JACK CITY (1991)

[5/10 · 4 August 2003]

This is the story of a soft-hearted drug dealer, as far UP the chain as you can go before you leave the Harlem neighborhood. The NEXT level is the guys, not part of the story, who deliver it in multiples of kilograms, and sell it the Afro-Americans, one community at a time, for breakdown and distribution.

There is one exception to this structure. Early in the film, we meet one super-dealer, played by NYPD-Blue station chief Lt. Tony Rodriguez (2001-2003), Esai Morales. (Morales seems to have gained so much "gravitas" between this film and the TV series you wonder if this film has been in the can for awhile.)

The name you know in the cast is Mikhi Phifer (he plays DR. GREGG PRATT on TV's "ER") but the name you will come away with is Wood Harris. You might have seen him playing third fiddle in REMEMBER THE TITANS (2002), the Denzel Washington feel-good film. Like TITANS, this is another true story, by the way.

The film tries to link itself to SCARFACE (1983) and even goes so far as to have the characters view that film on the big screen when it first came out. Trust me: this is not scarface. It is not Florida, not Cubano. AND ...... The scale of their operation, their life-style, ambitions, family orientation, neighborhood emphasis, and sheer abilities puts them much more on a par with Wesley Snipes NEW JACK CITY (1991).

Realizing that JACK CITY was supposed to portray a dealer who went a little power crazy, I found Snipes' performance over-heated, and didn't enjoy THAT film even the second time around. Wood Harris has a more moderate part to begin with, and he gives a credible performance as an underwhelming street kid who keeps on growing sufficiently to meet the demands of the job. Even though he is ultimately selling death in little glass bottles, you want to like him, want him to prevail over his more hot-headed, flash- and violence-oriented competitors.

"Maintain and stay low", he says. That might have been good advice even for corporate giants like Drexel Burnam and Enron.

But, like all bio-corporate organisms, the rule is, "Grow or Die." Wood's character makes the mistake of reacting the way you or I might in similar circumstances. Harlem is my beat. Harlem is enough. Why do I have to aggrandize, to bloat, to grow ever bigger? Can't I just be top dog on my own turf, he asks.

Rent the film. Find out the answer.

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

Now it can be told. This film is a mess.

[5/10 · 30 July 2003]

*** SPOILERS ***

Near the end of this film, Paul Newman is playing a tense game of poker in his bar while the overwhelming forces of evil gather round in the darkened street outside, intent on burning him out or shooting him dead. "I call," he says, to end the hand, and promptly lays down HIS cards. Is this story-telling at its best, or film-making at its sloppiest? By this time in the film, you know this is just sloppiness.

Director Huston labors valiantly and too obviously to make still another film about the Western code of the gun becoming obsolete at the turn of the century. Railroads and telegraph coming in, servants of regional and national companies rather than mom and pop entrepreneurs; administrative systems of government and law enforcement rather than marshals on horseback and circuit court justices; law books and defense counsel rather than kangaroo courts and quick-tempered frontier justice.

Where will there be a place for men like "Judge Roy Bean", who built towns by stealing capital from those that the self-righteous disapproved of, and then doing away with their protestations by hanging them on little or no pretext.

He was a form of Robin Hood, only he robbed the helpless criminals to finance the sanctimonious, with a 40% commission for himself.

But just as we settle into a style that MIGHT have developed into something, despite the plot's drawbacks, Huston decides it's a Disney family comedy, and dumbs it down with a lovable beer drinking bear that knows exactly who to gore and slash and who to kiss and cuddle.

No, it's a romance. With scenes right out of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) you can practically see the boys out with Ms. Katharine Ross on a bicycle, only this time its Victoria Principal, and it's a see-saw and a swing instead of a bicycle. But the cuddle positions and camera angles are the same. Oh my grief.

No it's an extended anecdote about how brave men of the outdoors can't handle married life. The once-dangerous, once-feared members of Paul Newman's posse become impotent, castrated, henpecked husbands, socially and then even politically inept at the hands of their devious, scheming wives. The wives were originally wholesale priced whores delivered to town in bulk and married off at gunpoint by the Judge to lower the stress levels within his jurisdiction. A decision that backfired to say the least.

And so it goes. For probably 20 or 30 minutes too long. Until Director Huston seems to "wake up" and realize that he had a story to tell -- alas not a new one, nor did he have a new angle. He tries to rescue things by dumping the plot into the hands of Newman's never seen, now 20-year old daughter. I leave it to you to watch for blunders in the final resolution.

Here are two example. A light-framed woman shoots off a .45 with no kick whatsoever. And another camera angle reveals that she is not even in the scene. She was either spliced in post production, or filmed on another sound-stage. Either way, she had no idea where to look so that her eyes could track the action. NOW THAT is not good story-telling.

I rented this film to round out my John Huston experience and I am still a devoted fan. But I sure think he was "out to lunch" on this one. You can't lay all this at the feet of the dated style of 1970s film-making.

Read My Lips (2001)

An Olympian start ... but a Pedestrian finish

[5/10 · 28 July 2003]

***** SPOILERS ******

With 32 reviews at 7/20/2003 and growing, there is little to add. My sad report is that this film falls apart after the the 70% mark. It is great in the main, but NOT great all the way through.

Its pluses are good energy, sound shaping, camera and lighting, and until the proverbial shark-jump, terrific editing and direction. A very interesting choice of protagonists: imagine a THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR or a BONNIE & CLYDE without pretty people.

But then when the stage is all set for Paul to rip-off Marchand drug money (?) at a questionable dance club, under the general advice and guidance of the more intelligent lip-reading Carla, one editing mistake follows on the heels of another. The gangster scenes are tedious and clumsy and the plot itself wallows in indecision.

One reviewer asks about a sub-text: Paul's parole officer's wife goes missing early in the film. Is this a distraction? Why do we care? I found it, yes, distracting, but clearly it was a signal in case we didn't get the film's point from other cues.

For a cautious woman like Carla to venture out, to "walk on the wild side", to "cross the line", turns out not to be such a moral leap after all. Because the parole officer -- the epitome of legality and moral rectitude, turned out to be a greater criminal even than the ex-felon that he was charged with supervising. A profound counter-point it certainly was not!

For those who have seen it and want a one sentence plot analogy, this film could be compared, loosely, to the Heather Graham/Luke Wilson misfire, COMMITTED (2000).

Thrill to the best parts, snack and chat through the laborious ending. French cinema is still as inventive and courageous as ever.

Basic (2003)

Well I Liked Every Minute of it

[25 July 2003]

Recalling what John Travolta did WELL as the dogged investigator in THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER (1999), he reprises that role in BASIC (2003). This is a more fun and less full-of-itself film.

He starts slow as the alcoholic Don't-Tread-On-Me military misfit/drop-out but soon reveals both a lot of spit-and-polish, and a load of talent as an investigator/interrogator. And again he teams up with a female, although I'd rather have seen him pair with Maddy Stowe again.

The film, for me, combined the best of RASHOMON (1950) wherein the same reality is seen differently by different participants in the same event.

And COURAGE UNDER FIRE (1996), the Meg Ryan / Denzel Washington film, which required Denzel to overcome strong squad loyalty, get tight-lipped, hard-trained men (and a woman) to talk, to piece together "what really happened out there."

Giovanni Ribisi as the wounded soldier in the hospital is so good -- he reminds me of Vincent D'Onofrio in SALTON SEA (2002): you have to look very closely to see that it REALLY IS Ribisi.

So the plot trips over itself. So what? I never said the film was perfect. I'm just telling you it's a hunk of fun.

Guilty by Association (2003 Video)

Interesting New Talent, but that's all that was good

[3/10 · 23 July 2003]

Indeed this WAS bad. I felt it was two films. The inside film was a poorly scripted, poorly directed, very poorly shot crime-doesn't-pay film that ran about 67 minutes after whatever was mercifully cut out. Many scenes in the first half seemed to be shot in some "zoom" mode which was distracting and irritating. The characters were too much in your face. You wanted the camera to back up about four to six feet.

Then someone added some post production footage with Morgan Freeman that appeared to turn the film into a whiney pseudo-documentary about gang violence. The resulting combination was the second film.

The documentary talked about murder -- every 34 minutes. The death rate among young American males -- the highest in the world. (Baloney: try living in Liberia or The Congo or Rwanda.) And the prevalence of gangs, especially in Washington, D.C.

The shameful part was that THE PROTAGONISTS IN THIS FILM WEREN'T GANG MEMBERS. They were just drug dealers. So apparently the film-doctors that were sent to rescue this film did all their work by phone and email AND NEVER EVEN SAW THE INNER CORE FILM.

How bad is that?

Using the NetFlix 5 star scale, I have this film a "2", and then down-graded it to a "1" because of the confusion of format and film identity. This translated into about a "3" on the IMDb 10 point scale.

Why a "3"? Because there are worse films than this. The audience is introduced to two or three interesting young African-American actors. They were new to me, but maybe others would recognize them. Some of the slightly older ones could be rappers: I don't know. But seeing new faces was a treat. And the girlfriend wasn't too bad, although her lines were confining.

So a low "3". But as the other reviewer advised, so do I: STAY AWAY!

Redeemer (2002 TV Movie)

Not much meat....full of cliches

[5/10 · 23 July 2003]

** MILD SPOILERS ***

Here is a film that parallels Denzel Washington's 1999 THE HURRICANE.

But with some important differences.

The prisoner is a nobody, not a once-celebrated fighter.

The rescuer, rather than being a precocious schoolboy, is an adult, a writer who has turned to teaching fiction to pick up some extra dollars, and to try to put his life together.

And the "enemy, or hardship, to be overcome" is not just "the system", but all the people and circumstances that conspired to put the prisoner in jail some 20 years earlier.

Unraveling those people and circumstances constitutes the heart of the story.

The characterization is uneven. Perhaps the only steady, well-defined person is the dysfunctionally bitter sister of a murder victim from a bungled robbery shown at the film's outset.

The dialog is pretty good, but the plot development relies on stringing together dozens of cliches from other prison films, rescue films, and films showing teachers working with at-first reluctant classes, such as THE PRINCIPAL (1987), SISTER ACT (1992) DANGEROUS MINDS (1995), THE SUBSTITUTE (1996), etc.

Matthew Modine (BIRDY-1984, MEMPHIS BELLE-1990) saves the day, recognizing the limitations of his material, and forming a nice union with his co-star Obba Babatunde (HOW HIGH-2001). Babatunde, in turn, gives an excellent turn as a burned out Black Panther who is still mistrustful of anyone who appears to be too white, too helpful, too soon.

Breaks for commercials are painfully evident.

What appeared to me as a loose end was the sub-text of Modine's character trying to sell himself back to his ex-girlfriend. "I need you to structure me," he says. "No," she says, "you need to do it yourself." But was there something to come after that?

This is a good film to supplement a larger film like 12 ANGRY MEN (1957, 1997). People who claim too glibly that "the trial determines guilt and innocence" may be speaking correctly from a de jure point of view, but from a human standpoint, they may be very mistaken.

One reason is because of the enormous control that the Police have over evidence. Another is the huge control that the District Attorneys have over the Police.

DNA testing, which is setting a great many incarcerated prisoners free, is only one example of how trial outcomes may be challenged years after a prisoner is put behind bars. This film gives another example.

Jerry and Tom (1998)

If you comb the open bins of used book stores .....

[5/10 · 22 May 2003]

You know who you are.

This has the approximate flavor of WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD (2002). Only less.

William H. Macy can do his thing even if he's on screen for less than five minutes. Not his STATE AND MAIN THING (2000) thing. No, his other thing, where you just know he was born with one chromosome too few. He's the best in the business at this.

Ten Danson is a surprise addition to the cast. I think I've never, EVER, seen him so fine. Thespian fine, not foxy fine. In the grand style of Jeremy Davies (THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL-2000; SECRETARY-2002) or Todd Field (BROKEN VESSELS-1998). Like he finally woke up and decided to do one great thing before it was all over.

Maury Chaykin did his usual disappearing act. In fact, except for UNSTRUNG HEROES (1995), when has he not?

Sam Rockwell. I could give away a lot to those in the know by saying that this should have been his movie. (They used to write Broadway musicals just for one person -- KISMET for example.) I don't know how he blew it. Maybe being in the company of Charles Durning and Joe Mantegna had something to do with it. Rockwell stumbled -- slightly. It's STILL "a Sam Rockwell flick".

There wasn't enough of Sarah Polley or Peter Riegert. However, it was comforting to know that they were in PLAN B if the plot or director needed to call upon them. You see what I'm saying -- great casting.

I'd be curious to know if this was filmed in "digital". (I'm not up on technical.) Some scenes on my screen seemed over-perfect.

That leaves director Saul Rubinek. By me? I love this sub-genre, so I'm giving him a "5" for general audiences and a "7" for fanciers of this breed. (Actually that's an oxymoron because this breed of losers-at-work comedy CAN'T breed.)

Jimmy Breslin started it all, I think, with THE GANG THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT (1971). And, as another reviewer correctly points out, a failing of this film is that it isn't clear enough about it's own identity. Is this another Breslin offspring or not? I'm side-stepping that because there is so much to enjoy either way.

I've always been a fan of Rubinek's character work. Even when he had to take the heavy fall as ADA Jed Kramer in the film abomination BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (1990), that sell-out of Tom Wolfe's Great American Novel of Manhattan Americana.

I'd like to see Rubinek get some coaching before his next outing: he has some great ideas, but as a late-comer -- and already 55 years old -- he's understandably anxious to show off all his tricks at once. His made-for-TV BLEACHER BUMS (2002) is much better because it aspires to so little (a/k/a CHEAP SEATS (2002) in some markets).

Prowlers of used book stores, please catch BLEACHER BUMS: you will know what to look for despite its feeble showing (only 57 votes as of 5/21/2003). And no coincidence: it also casts Riegert, Durning, and Chaykin. Lo and Behold.

There are at least two other films I've seen recently portraying mentor and novice hit man. And that doesn't count TRAINING DAY (2001) which is mainstream and mega-star. I think this one will stick with me the longest because Mantegna and Rockwell make such an odd combination. And "odd" ..... That's the point, isn't it?

The Doom Generation (1995)

A review for viewers over the age of 30 ** SPOILERS **

[3/10 · 9 May 2003]

** SPOILERS **

For the older folk, I might explain this film as EASY RIDER (1969) meets KALIFORNIA (1993).

It is a road movie, of sorts, starting out with two kids WHITE AND BLUE going somewhere, not purposeful in any sense like Hopper and Fonda, but rather Quickie-Mart kleptos who have no vision of where to go or what to see. That's the EASY RIDER part.

They are joined by a menacing type, RED, (that's where the KALIFORNIA analog comes in) who quickly displaces WHITE as the alpha male. He turns WHITE, to an extent, into the C.W. Moss character of BONNIE and CLYDE (1967) -- but not completely.

WHITE still remains the romantic if not the visceral lover of BLUE, the woman-in-the-middle. (BLUE'S behavior would have qualified her to make a "blue" movie in the 1960s. She measures fidelity in minutes.)

So we have the full team, RED, WHITE and BLUE. Get it?

RED, a young man with "Jesus" tattooed where no tattoo should be at all, is so obscenely uncouth he proves to be "exciting," in a sort of 1950s Jack Kerouac / Ken Kesey Hells Angel biker kind of exciting. He is handy to have around too, and puts to death each threat that the more naive BLUE and WHITE get themselves entangled with but can't handle.

They, the original kids WHITE AND BLUE, are living testimonies to the advice: "Don't write checks with your mouth that your body can't cash!"

Confused yet? So maybe it's more like JULES AND JIM (1962), an agreeable menage a trois? Alas, a couple strips from the cutting floor of JULES AND JIM would be worth more than this whole film.

BLUE, played by the wonderful young actress Rose McGowan, is "on something"? for most of the film. She is thus either morose, icky, horny, asexual, off her feed, thirsty, hungry, or re-doing her lipstick that goes easily an inch back into her mouth. WHITE is almost an idiot savant, loving everything he sees as if he were on LSD -- which he is not, "look man, MY HAND, it's so beautiful. YOU are so beautiful. WE are so beautiful." And so it goes.

RED is the only interesting character. But he is so hateful. He reminds me a bit of Rob Lowe's Alex in BAD INFLUENCE (1990), playing to James Spader's wimpy Michael Boll -- that would be equivalent to the duo of WHITE and BLUE. You KNOW he is right, but you know you want to say, "Get thee behind me Satan."

I apologize if I have made this film sound interesting or worthwhile. Here, on the way out are some unsubtle clues to emphasize that this film is not for our age group.

An encouragement that appears at the very end:...............: Go out and buy the fu**ing soundtrack album

Special thanks given to legitimate suppliers, as well as these...............: * black death cigarettes * death cigarettes * roadkill premium beefsteak jerky

The last infantile joke-line I tend to believe...............: photographed on location in hell

and, I regret to opine it was probably conceived and written there as well. My rating is "3.0" out of 10 -- one of my lowest ever.

Ignition (2001)

Bill Pullman as James Bond. What's not to love.

[6/10 · 29 April 2003]

This review contains ** SPOILERS **



Bill Pullman as James Bond! What's not to love? I give this film a "6" just for chutzpah.

The only thing missing was an evil man like Ernest Stavro Blofeld sitting in a big chair, stroking a cat.

For a refreshing change, Pullman is neither a loser at love nor a wacky genius. Instead, he is the standard issue law enforcement officer in disgrace. Busted down to U.S. Marshall (no disgrace in my book), he gets a baby-sitting job with a Federal judge.

It starts off like GUARDING TESS (1994) with Nicolas Cage and Shirley MacLaine. The guardee, a recent appointee to the bench played by Lena Olin, doesn't see a need for protection, and doesn't want Pullman around. But, conveniently, a car bomb near-miss endears him to her and now she is all in favor of his professional attentions.

It is at this point that we learn that the film will be faster paced than, but not as high in quality as, GUARDING TESS.

But soon, we find out it is not a "babysitting" film. It is a film about secrets, about military cover up. Will it be like THE PRESIDIO (1988) with Sean Connery and Meg Ryan; or more like THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER (1999) with John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe and James Cromwell? Well, you have to fork over to find out.

BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE. After you have had your fill of incredible escapes, unbelievable revelations, reluctant patriotism, touching parenting, and the repeated overcoming of some of the world's nastiest criminals (our own armed forces) -- not to mention Annie Oakley marksmanship on the part of an untrained shooter -- you are then treated to still another kind of film FOR NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE.

This final transformation is what endeared this film to my heart: it turned into a Bond film. My lips are sealed but I will say that, for budget purposes, they skipped the usual downhill skiing scenes and the airboat races through the crowded harbor of Monaco. But you do get the rest of it.

I wish I could rate this an "8". If only there were separate scores for "fun" or "camp" ... ...

Big Trouble (2002)

Seen five times; still side-splitting

[8/10 · 18 April 2003]

** MILD SPOILERS -- JUST TO EXPLAIN WHAT THE FILM IS ABOUT **



Action comedy can't get much better than this.

There are three action themes ARTFULLY interwoven: a contact hit by klutzy out-of-town killers, plus a mock "hit" game played by three good-natured teen-agers, plus an almost serendipitous back story about stupid-as-can-be won't-never-work thieves robbing thieves.

Mostly fast-paced. The sound track for me was faintly reminiscent of the original BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984) track insofar as it is multi- cultural, brassy, driving the film over the slower parts to give you a sense of motion, motion, motion.

There are plenty of stereotypes: actions we know will happen because of the (type of) people who are doing them. The same with some dialog, and some one-liners.

The film also establishes characters who do not deviate, do not grow: people will behave as the film quickly tells us they will behave. NONE OF THIS MATTERS. The plot, the energy is always ahead of these stereotypes. The key characters do grow, in satisfying if simplistic ways. Making this a big, huggable, 85-minute action sit-com, if you will.

Each time I screened this I saw something new. More important was the pleasure of the film: each time, by the point all the sub-plots were launched and interwoven and complexified, I was rooting for all the outcomes I knew would occur.

Rated 5.5 as a film and 8 as a comedy. Great comedies are hard to come by!

A POSTSCRIPT: Some User Comments have compared BIG TROUBLE favorably to RAT RACE (2001). I think this is BETTER than RAT RACE. It doesn't reach for any profundity or nobility. It just gets it on and then goes home.

Partners (2000 TV Movie)

Another male bonder.....Not all that bad

[5/10 · 13 April 2003]

In brief, this is the same story as MIDNIGHT RUN (1988) with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, MY BLUE HEAVEN (1990) with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis, and NOTHING TO LOSE (1997) with Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins.

It is a story I never get tired of hearing or seeing. Two men from wildly different backgrounds are thrown together. Each distrusts the other. Each believes the other to be nemesis. In some cases, one intends to rob, defraud, or escape from the other.

Then there is bonding. Idealization. Disappointment. Denigration. A second building of trust. Utter mutual dependency. Resolution. And end.

Everything depends on the set up, the chemistry, and the acting. I thought this was well done, considering that everything was B-team. Vanessa Angel did not seem up to her role.

Except for David Paymer, who is certainly NOT B-team. If you saw him in FOCUS (2001) with William H. Macy, you know of David Paymer as an A-team dramatic character actor. Casting him in this film was an odd bit. He held his own.

I wouldn't spend $30 for a DVD of this film but it is a nice 90 minutes while you are doing the laundry or baby sitting (after they have gone to sleep) or hanging out with friends.

Big Bad Love (2001)

For some of us BIG BAD LOVE is a Scrapbook of Our Lives

[7/10 · 10 April 2003]

This review contains ** MINOR SPOILERS **.

I commend this film especially to: those of the Vietnam War generation; those who read and enjoy Southern fiction; those who keep wondering who and where America is.

I rate this a "7" out of "10". More for its vignettes, its people, its postcards from the South; and less for a single story from start to finish

The central character, Barlow, is a failed writer, and a Post-Traumatic-Stress-Syndrome Vietnam veteran to whom no attention is paid

In this regard, he is like the vast majority: untreated, unidentified, forgotten. He is remarkable for other vices, other problems, but not for the disrupted sleep, the nightmares. He shouts "Corpsman" even when he imagines surprising his estranged children with a buy-me-love present that their Mother won't even pass on to them. There is no attempt to explain the symmetric scarring on his back.

The townsfolk know him as an erratic man, a heavy drinker, a divorcee who is chronically behind in his support payments. He works from time to time as a housepainter. He paints carefully, and fills the air with erudite quotations from the great thinkers, philosophers, and Southern novelists who are without equal in any other part of the USA.

There is much to criticize in this film. Professional reviewer Roger Ebert has put his hand on many of the flaws, as have IMDb members. I urge you to surmount those flaws, to slog through them as Barlow no doubt slogged through the inhospitable jungle of Vietnam.

Find what is worthwhile in these 110 minutes. For me it was a mix of the most thought-provoking (and usually unnerving) themes and styles of at least three films: Nick Nolte's WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN (1978); Robert De Niro's JACKNIFE (1989); and Darren Aronofsky's REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000).

What is going to happen to this wastrel? In real life, probably nothing would. In film, the pieces are set before you; we expect something will emerge, especially as heavyweights Debra Winger and Rosanna Arquette do not usually show up unless there is something to be accomplished. But will there be enough energy for a true change? For a "quantum jump"? After all, people really don't change much, especially adults. Epiphanies are not a dime a dozen. That Hollywood sells them to us at a rate of one or more per film is part of what makes them true dream-merchants.

Here is where the "scrapbook" aspect took over for me. I did not care so much for the issue of how valid was the plot. I did not bring a videocam to the party. I brought an old-fashioned Kodak "Brownie", to take simple snapshots of each milepost along the way. These produced a fascinating story evolution. There are, as you would expect, stories, plural, interwoven. The story of Barlow is determinative.

When you rent this film, you may want to bring your own "camera." Especially at the mid-point, and near the film's end, the photos for the scrapbook of YOUR life may tumble quite rapidly one after another.

Goin' South (1978)

For fans of A NEW LEAF (1971) with Elaine May and Walter Matthau left wanting a bit more

[6/10 · 11 March 2003]

** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS **



This film is very much a comedy. Deputies shoot bank robbers at point-blank range and nobody dies. Ore mines collapse and no one is injured. Men marry women and no one has sex. BUT IT'S OK. This is A NEW LEAF transplanted from New York City to "a post Civil War small town," somewhere near the Mexican border.

WAIT A MINUTE. Don't send me angry letters. A NEW LEAF is to die for. This film is not. But as I watched it, I began to feel I had "been there before." Even before I realized what the story was about, my heart began to tell me it was "deja vu all over again."

Nicholson is uneven. There are several times in the film where I felt, "no one else could have done that bit as well." Other times when the old director-actor bugaboo showed through. Mary Steenburgen, in her debut, seemed to "loosen up" as an actress even as the plot gave her a chance to loosen up. This is NOT the same as Elaine May who is loose as a goose from one end of A NEW LEAF to the other.

The film tries to capture the classic old-Disney, Doris Day, semi-tomboy, I'm-too-busy-to-think-about-sex female, cast adrift in a man's world. It even succeeds in selling us on an old silent film cliché: the bad guy is the RAILROAD COMPANY which is going to take the land her pappy left her. But somehow, Steenburgen's character doesn't quite carry that off. It is to her personal credit that she creates a new heroine even as the film fails to place her squarely in the traditional place.

In fact, I tend to think that this is her film, rather than Nicholson's. That is only because he is so talented, so polished, that we take for granted the huge talent that is "underneath" what we see. We are always slightly aware of the hidden part of Jack's talent, of the iceberg UNDERWATER. And I say this even if he's not superior in this film.

Kudos to Christopher Lloyd and John Belushi for portraying corrupt deputy sheriffs. I doubt that anyone could write or act the part that Belushi had in 1978. Times have changed. His absolute restraint made him all the funnier. He was a stereotype but he never gave way to the clichés of that stereotype. Well, almost never.

A fresh young Danny DeVito didn't have enough screen time to give us anything to comment on. DeVito was actually more visible in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975). Veronica Cartwright (TV's L.A. Law) has a thankless part as "the other woman".

The middle part sags a good bit--another reason that the film is no NEW LEAF. There are extra scenes we don't need, and minor action sequences poorly filmed. I sort of wish someone other than Nicholson had directed this.

BUT IF YOU ARE LIKE ME, and have a now 31-year old chasm that has never properly been filled, since Henry Graham wooed Henrietta Lowell so that he could get the carbon off the valves and return his red playboy's Ferrari to the streets of NYC, then this film is for you.

Venus Beauty Institute (1999)

Lots of girl talk: love with a hard edge; like it is. ** SPOILERS **

[8/10 · 25 January 2003]

I disagree with the critics who find this film to be mostly about the menagerie of pitiful, youth-crazed females who come to the Venus salon for magical potions to hold on to their youth. Take that, of course, for comic relief, but there is much more to this film.

I think there IS a real love story here. Middle-aged love, love the umteenth time around. It's not so easy. This film looks at a woman, and I guess it looks at the woman's point of view as well. She is in control. She chooses the time and the place. Only it isn't love. It is "flings" as the translator calls it. We call it "casual sex."

Angele works as a beautician because she "likes to help people." Or maybe she does because she disfigured an important lover in the past, and is still making amends. She doesn't want to move up to management, despite her age (40 and climbing), despite advice to do so by the mangeress of the house.

She just wants to be "one of the girls." That's this persona she clings to, and she's better at it than the twenty-somethings that surround her. Only they are happy, mostly, and she is not. Her control gives her safety, but not very much passion. She has the sacrificed the "head over heels" kind of loving that is so energizing and young-making.

We join Angele's life at that moment of change, when someone comes along and gives her back what she has been dishing out. A man arbitrarily approaches her, quasi-stalks her, and says, out of the blue, "I love you!"

Now, this is just the thing that one of her girlfriends fantasizes about, a "zipless" love out of left field that leads to perpetual union, happily ever after. But Angele is dumbfounded. She's put off balance. And in effect, this is where the love story begin, and where the film starts to pay off.

Although we learn later that her suitor, Antoine, has a nice body, he does not present to her the dark, ruthless, knowing, three-hour bang that she's used to. This makes it easier to blow him off, to comprehend him as a younger man with "an obsession" -- her words -- rather than an answer to her unasked question.

That's something else I liked about the film. Besides depicting the hard life of people deciding whether to take yet another risk on love in middle age, the film both by words and silences points up how many questions are not asked. People have their life-coping strategies, and they are so full of flaws. The writers and director, keep you ahead of the game, so you usually see what questions should be on the table.

Arriving at the set-up point of this film, we see that Angele's question should be, "just how much longer can I nourish myself with one-night stands before I get in trouble, or my partner pool deteriorates, or I have to start giving little gifts, or the inhumanity of it all makes me drink too much, etc."

But soon after, other questions percolate to the top. "Have I already gone past the point of no return? Can I love again? Can I respond to an impetuous man, like I could as a child? Like my girlish peer beauticians still can?

Or is that even a fair demand to put on myself? Shouldn't HE find a way to reach ME, that is unique to me, Angele, as who and where I am in my life? Shouldn't HE make more of an effort than just to apply his cardboard templates from HIS last romance to me?

Selectively, the film acts out these questions with efficient little skits and interchanges. The positive and cumulative results of these bits and pieces signaled to me that this film was driving towards a good outcome, as opposed to a romantic tragedy of roads not taken or plans not met.

'You should f*ck more and plan less," says one of Angele's more disagreeable men. Will that be her fate, that she can no longer command the resources and lucky breaks to climb out of the pit she has dug for herself?

I doubt when you are 20 years old you can every imagine how life's options can become so narrow by the time 20 more years go by.

Therefore I am prepared to believe that the "hard edge" will seem unreasonable to younger viewers, but perhaps more responsible to other, older viewers

Although this was not their primary purpose, the dating by the manageress Madam Nadine, and the awkward flirtation between the Aviator and Marie could be used to show that dating gets even harder as further years pass bye.

To wrap this up, I found the pushing and shoving of uncertain love, the tenuousness, the false starts, the failure, and restarts, in this one French film, to be more convincing than all the love treatments in Vanilla Sky; Monster's Ball; Crush (2001); Shallow Hall; Proof of Life, combined.

I rating this an EIGHT ("8") reminding me that French films still have a lot to teach me (at least) about love, after all these years.

Get a Job (1998)

A typical rock bottom starter film that's not so bad

[5/10 · 16 January 2003]

Suffer along as a lazy, 20-something LA pothead suddenly learns that his lifestyle has been cut off by his father's death and he has to find work or be disinherited in 30 days.

Sound familiar? Sure, but this time it's fun because you're also suffering along as director, cast and crew figure out just how to put all this together before the film runs out.

I recommend this only for the jaded film-buff who is amenable to watching a "cult" type film--even though it's certain that it will never achieve cult status.

Many of the cast play two roles. Doesn't matter.

Only a few sets. Doesn't matter.

There are some hilarious moments here, made the more pronounced because they are surrounded by a fair amount of hum-drum, mediocre sound, iffy camera work and stilted delivery.

But when they are cooking, which is often enough, they give you a warm feeling -- one that you've no doubt had before. "Cult" films are fun. YOU are the rare one, the knowing appreciator.

They are putting on this asinine show just for YOU. It gives an intimate feel, like minor league baseball, that you just don't get with studio releases.

Currently rated a 3.6 with 10 votes (01/16/03), I'm weighing in with a 5.0 rating, on the terms suggested above.

Enjoy.

For da Love of Money (2002)

A Day in the Life of Deja Vu.....** MILD SPOILERS **

[4/10 · 26 December 2002]

Once again we journey for laughs to the now-familiar neighborhoods of Los Angeles, to be with young African-American men of indeterminate age and employment. Again they are slightly better spoken than last time, their homes are in slightly better condition, with MUCH deeper set-backs. But now there are far fewer guns, hardly any swearing, predicaments that are sterile and more like I Love Lucy, less like the 'Hood" of the early 1990s.

I'm rating this a "4" for an earnest first effort. The writer - director - lead, who identifies himself only as "Pierre", plays the role of "Dre", a plain young man to whom life happens. During this one day, his friends and neighbors think he has become special because they think that a robber on the run has stashed stolen money in his back yard garbage cans--and that he knows it, and therefore has control over that "found wealth".

"Dre", an unfortunate name choice in my opinion, given the cross-over between rap stars and film stars, doesn't know anything about this cash, and thus the set-up. Men and women alike want him for what he has. Although he doesn't know where the sudden "love" is coming from, he is sturdy and centered enough--like the characters Ice Cube often plays--not to be bowled over by their attentions.

But how funny is it to see these extreme neighborhood stereotypes, one after another, fling themselves at Dre, each with their "schtick", only to fail miserably? The formula is somewhat analogous to scenes in those martial arts films where the hero or master stands in the center of an imaginary circle. One by one, any number of ferocious losers attack from the outside of the circle with some specialized move or physical technique that is bound to fail.

So there were these problems in the film. The feeling conveyed that "we've seen this all before", the derivative nature, the pallid, washed down, sanitized, cleaned-up quality; the production line appearance of the skits.

But then, as the film went on, valiantly endeavoring to amuse us, it turned the other way, it got a bit gross. Having established its own standard of boyscout cleanliness, it suddenly did a reversal. It dipped too far into dirty jokes, including a radio announcer who said he he would play a piece that would make the ladies "wet" and pull their pants off. I won't give away all the jokes, except to say that the seduction scenes were truly bad.

So why a "4". why not go lower? Because this is a first effort. Because this is a field with very high standards, including the works of Paris Barclay, John Singleton and Ice Cube's FRIDAY series. There have been other entries in this sub-genre, and, compared to those lesser lights, this one should be given its due.

2 Days in the Valley (1996)

The is not PULP FICTION, it's CLUE..........for dysfunctionals

[5/10 · 24 December 2002]

2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY.....(1996).....rated R.....104 minutes

I had seen this before, and read ALL the USER COMMENTS here. What was bothering me: where was everybody getting the PULP FICTION comparison?

OK, I guess compared with IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE or FORREST GUMP, it's PULP FICTION. But true lovers of irreverent multi-themed half-baked serio-comic screwed-up hilarious edgy murder mysteries can do better than that.

Is it even a mystery? Sure it is. Will everybody die? Will the audience lose patience? Will any good come of this?

I was reminded over and over of the film CLUE (1985). Sub-groups of the whole cast rushing from scene to scene, uncovering more and more of the total picture. A new death here and there. Lots of confusion. Enough silly silliness to set your teeth on edge.

This is an unpleasant story about a lot of pleasant people. James Spader is such an excellent nerveless killer. Marsha Mason couldn't be any more motherly. Jeff Daniels, as usual, majoring in the minors--get this guy off the Police Force before he hurts somebody. Charlize Theron shows Barbie Doll where to get off.

But all entangled, they have to dance to a story written and directed by John Herzfeld that reminds us of those terrible times in CLUE when THAT talented cast is literally sliding across the floor, trying to apply their brakes before they crash into each other or the thin partitions of the plot.

I enjoyed this more the second time through--especially the performances of Danny Aiello and Glenne Headly who are supposed to be "like us", the "good guys".

Nah; we aren't really that noble and good. We are probably more dysfunctional, like the whole story. This is our story, whether we live in Los Angeles or plain old Our Town.

What a great film to watch when you finally start dating that someone who accepts you for what you are instead of what you were supposed to be!

The Salton Sea (2002)

As Great a B Film as You Could Ask For

[8/10 · 1 December 2002]

A 10 for the casting. A 10 for Vincent D'Onofrio--you won't believe what can do with his specialty role. You have to see it for yourself.

A 9 for everyone playing at the right level, with no up-staging, no one gunning for the basket. An 8 for this modern day film noir, putting junk and junkies just about where they ought to be. An 8 for Deborah Kara Unger, just for being so lovely, and for an appearance all too rare (alas not for her part, her lines or her performance).

A 7 for Val Kilmer, upholding what had to be a difficult, multi-dimensional role. From other posters you already know what he's up to in this film. A 7 also for B.D. Wong, breaking off from his all too familiar and frequent appearances as the know-it-all psycho-something on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. A 6 for pacing, flow, plot.

And, only a 5 for art direction. Too much darkness. Too much crowding. Perhaps a few too many characters. Many of the characters were NOT high and there seemed no need to portray the world they saw through such a darkened lens. The film possessed all the "noir" it needed. No need to rub it in with under-lighting.

I'm glad I saw this. Frankly, keeping in mind that this is still a "B" film, I enjoyed it as much if not more than the more mainstream, heralded, and obviously popular THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (2001).