As a one-time suburbanite now living happily in Manhattan, I can attest that Radiant City tells it like it is. The film ends with a surprise that you won't see coming and I won't spoil.
Jim Brown and Gary Burns hang a powerful antisuburban diatribe in the form of statistics, expert opinions and pictures worth a thousand words on the experiences of the Moss family.
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VarietyKen Eisner
VarietyKen Eisner
In the end, helmers have some nifty tricks up their verite sleeves.
The cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin's eerie, sometimes monumental images italicize the experts' statements, making the suburbs seem like an asphalt-and-Sheetrock dreamscape where democracy goes to die.
The faux-documentary aspect of Radiant City is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off. If anything, the movie's observations about the corrupting social influence of cluttered mall spaces get undercut by the fact that Burns and Brown feel the need to INVENT characters to prove their truth.