davemart Reviews

Miller's Crossing (1990)

a masterpiece of loyalty and betrayal

[10 June 2001]

The Coen brothers are quietly the best filmakers working today. This film is the best example of what they're capable of in a body of work that is unprecedented amongst their peers.

Gabriel Byrne delivers the role he was born to play. The story focuses on Byrne's friendship with Finney's character and the illicit affection he has with Finney's love interest, Hardin. Torturro as Hardin's brother steals every scene he is in.

The film is beautiful to watch with some of the most intellegent symbolism ever captured in a mainstream picture. Impossible to predict and filled with the always intelligent Coen dialogue, this movie demands multiple viewings and stays with the audience long after the conclusion.

Swimming to Cambodia (1987)

The best monologue ever captured on film

[5 June 2001]

Spalding Gray calls his version of performance art a "talking cure." The facts, opinions, insights, fears and hopes drawn from the epiphany he received from his experiences in the Asian Rim shooting "The Killing Fields" and his education of the plight of the Cambodian people circa early to mid seventies is overwhelming. This is a story of the human condition as told by a master. He is Dr. Frankenstein creating the monster that is ourselves through a tapestry of wordplay that never seems overwrought or cumbersome in the slightest. This movie is one man reading from a standard notebook, behind a plain table accented with a glass of water and shadowed by a ceiling fan and selection of maps. Demme's use of lighting and Laurie Anderson's soundtrack provide all the dramatic power needed to sustain Gray as he literally helps us all better understand life, humanity and our responsibilities to each other while we spend time on this planet. Intense, funny, heartbreaking and invigorating; this movie inspires and changes all who watch it.