Reviews

How can a movie be both controversial and gentle? This one does it with a near-perfect structure. No one wants their daughters to be athletes. Apparently most cultures don't want their daughters to be small-breasted, either. Here we see a bunch of superb actors we've never heard of before portray folks of different cultures living fairly humdrum lives until their female children want to, and have the potential to, become professional soccer players. The structure around the parallelism of the two cultures is wonderful. There is no condescension. Both cultures are seen as modern and valid. (And yes, both are silly, too). One flaw: the Hindu wedding ceremony seemed to involve hundreds of relatives but not one child among them.

Mulholland Dr. looks like David Lynch had several movies in the works at one time and, lacking the skill to make sense of any one of them, shuffled them together. At the outset the movie looks like an okay, but badly acted story. The only question is, are they acting like bad actors or are they really bad? The story develops a certain mystery potential for a time and then takes a turn for the incomprehensible. Hey, Dave, you already had the mystery set up, the confusion and random plot twists are not necessary. You could have made an okay, if not brilliant, movie by going with the first plot twist rather than letting it get out of control.

This is a Canadian movie. Canadians will understand this comment, no other nationality will. They're striving for Third Prize in the duct tape contest because Third prize absolutely suits their needs. This has been the canadian credo in countless Olympics and other international convocations. The script is banal because, well, ever seen the Red Green Show?...comedy thrives on the banal. While the TV show is often hilarious, the movie is kind of in the Bob and Ray tradition: "If this gets any funnier I might actually laugh out loud." As Canadians we don't understand why other countries find our humour funny. But, witness SCTV; the overwhelming Canadian content of Saturday Night Live, plus the fact that there is not a single sitcom without a Canadian star or Writer and you see what I mean. This is a Canadian movie.

Mindless chasing and shooting. This one leaves plenty of your mind unoccupied to wonder such things as: How can a guy shoot a three-quarter inch rope with a handgun and miss everything with a shotgun? Why is RuPaul in this movie for 15 seconds? Would the feds really honour a verbal agreement to let you off after you've shot up a lot of folks and a lot of Atlanta? Could a limo really keep up with a Ducatti? Is it true that all you've got to do to get a semi out of your way is to lean on the horn?

I figure Woody peaked with this one. The New York Angst thing doesn't play well outside New York and college towns. He rehashed several of his idea since then with Selig being his only high point since. Finally his lifestyle put me off so I haven't seen any of the recent ones, nor will I.

Didn't age well. This may be in the running for stupidest cult film. I realize that the "special effects" et cetera were supposed to be hoakie but they are actually way beyond hoakie now. It's a good video to have running in the background while you play Yahtzee.

This unaccountably hard-to-find movie is based on James Leo Herlihy's novel of the same title. The book and the movie do not necessarily tell the same story. The performances are top-flight in a story that wouldn't hold together at all well these days and was hard to swallow in 1962. Definitely worth a look.