Elegant Distractions

This is an earnest film that tries so hard to be important that it forgets the audience. It also steps carefully to avoid following the tracks of Backdraft. Perhaps too carefully.

The primary drawback is that the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix) pursues no goal, and therefore is never opposed by a viable antagonist. In this case, a likely candidate for antagonist would have been fire itself but fire has been reduced to a supporting role, going about it's job as the firefighters do theirs.

Which is all too bad, since this movie has a level of authenticity you can sense even when you lack first-hand knowledge of fighting fires. Not a lot of physics-defying leaps or running through thousand-degree infernos.

John Travolta puts forth his typical charismatic performance, this time in a restrained fashion. Does he ever play a follower?

This is a film that could have been terrific but the story is just a series of events rather than a journey for the protagonist.

Posted by director at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) | Categories: Film

Took the Spousal Unit to see Sin City on Friday. Let's just cut to the chase: she hated it. "It was the first movie in a long time that I couldn't wait to end," she said shortly after the credits rolled. If you think this is a girly reaction see below.

Read somewhere (William Goldman, perhaps?) that the use of narration is the first sign of a weak script. This film didn't use narration so much as internal dialog. Far more of that than words between characters. While I wouldn't say I enjoyed this aspect I did get used to it.

Our daughter said the story structure mimicked Pulp Fiction and she is right, of course. (We taught her to be right about these things.) Multiple short stories that touch each other ever-so-slightly.

This would be OK if the short stories had maintained some semblance of classic structure. The audience often had nobody to empathise with, although Bruce Willis' Hartigan worked well for a short period.

Visually, the film looked like a noir Sky Captain. I found the style appropriate while the occasional use of color had me searching for a pattern. Didn't find one, except to draw attention to some aspect of a scene. Most of the blood was white so that when it was red the violence felt more pronounced.

My wife asked what the point of the movie was? If a theme exists, it may be expressed as, "People live mean, pointless lives and trying to do otherwise is equally pointless."

As pointless as the movie itself.

Posted by director at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) | Categories: Film

Let me explain something about my wife. She grew up a tomboy to a certain extent, sometimes even wishing she were a boy. You know that beer commercial where the bride catches the groom in the coat closet watching sports only to join in? That's my Spousal Unit.

She will often prefer Terminator over more girly fair such as Ella Enchanted.

That she is very much a girl is something I have appreciated for many years now even when she gets in the mood for a good romance. So, I dropped Spanglish into my NetFlix list.

Pros
How about a nice round of applause for making a father who is neither a jerk, a philanderer, an incompetent fool, nor an ogre (in the non-Shrek sense). Brave and daring stuff these days. How far have we come that this rates as an original concept?

Cons
Glorifying and normalizing illegal immigration. Nobody ever questions the status of this little family. The housekeeper's daughter gets a scholarship to a private school, later applying to Princeton all while living illegally in this country. Nobody bats an eyelash.

Normalizing extramarital affairs. While this film doesn't simplify or attempt to smooth over the pain of an affair, it does when it comes to reconcilliation. A few tears, hugs and promises and before long it's like nothing happened. Anybody outside of L.A. buy that?

Remarks
Tea Leoni has abs like I never did, even playing high school sports. Yoga, it would seem. She also happens to be a fun actress to watch. Adam Sandler stayed more in control than usual. Cloris Leachman was the real treat and nearly stole the show.

The scene, played in trailers, where Leoni cries,"Good guy [pointing at Sandler], bad guy [pointing at herself]" rang familiar to me. My wife complained on more than one occassion that moms have to deal with the nitty-gritty daily mess only to have dads swoop in like fun super-heroes.

Not a bad movie but I'm glad I waited for the DVD.

Posted by director at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (4) | Categories: Film