Reviews

It's funny to read some of the comments here that say Moore is

just another gun hater who is trying to deny Americans their right to

bear arms. He never says this, nor does he imply that the high rate

of gun ownership in the US is to blame for the high number of gun

related deaths. Instead, he makes the case that Americans arm

themselves and kill each other at such an alarming rate because

of the climate of fear that they live in, one that is continually fed by

a media and culture that promulgate a notion that we are

threatened by crime and vicious predators far beyond what the real

statistics show. Not surprisingly he also points out that

government and corporate criminals are much more of a threat

than the bogeymen we are brainwashed into fearing.

As for the laughs at the expense of some of his interviewees, I

think it has always been one of Moore's favorite tactics to let his

interview subjects hang themselves with their own ridiculous

comments. You just need to let some of these folks talk long

enough before they eventually show what they really think..i.e.

Charlton Hestons' comment that the amount of gun deaths in the

U.S. is probably attributable to the mixed nationalities......blacks,

hispanics, non-whites.... that make up the American population. A

great film that couldn't have come at a better time what with the

current sniper business in the D.C area....is there any reason

anyone should be able to purchase a long-range sniper rifle?..

along with the current anti-Iraq fear mongering by "President" Bush

to distract us from the real problems we face at home.

Three words....."Man Facing Southeast"......a great Argentinian film from 1986. When I saw the ads for K-Pax, it sounded oddly familiar but I didn't make the connection. After seeing it though it is indeed a complete rip-off of MFS. And it again shows Hollywood's total lack of invention. While the original had an air or mystery and wonder about it, this is just another series of sugar-coated homilies about how we should try to appreciate what we have instead of wondering about what else may be out there. Wow.....that's so deep.

As a devout fan of "Run Lola Run" I was excited to learn of "Winter

Sleepers", Tom Tykwer's film that proceeded "Lola." While this film

doesn't have the frenetic pace of Lola, it almost matches it in it's

thoughtful examination of fate, love, death, chance and the odd

coincidences of life. I guess that just about covers it, ehhh? This is

a film that moves at it's own pace that gradually draws you into a

world that you can't quite figure out; that reveals its' mysteries as

the lives of several disparate characters overlap and intrude on

one another. I don't think it would be fair to go too deeply into the

plot since this would ruin the movie, leave it to say that this is just

as stylish a film as "Lola" but in a much different way. It's moody,

mysterious and draws you into a world you think you know but can't

quite understand...just like real life. I highly recommend it.

While I may agree with many of the comments about this being a stylish, well acted independent film; in the end this story just doesn't hold up. I won't go into too much detail since it would spoil the story for those who haven't seen it, but at the end of the movie there are all sorts of loose ends and unexplained or inconsistent relationships. It's a movie that holds your attention while you're watching it but just can't stand up to close scrutiny.

After a recent Vonnegut reading binge I was eager to see Breakfast of Champions when I saw it on the video shelf. A great cast, a director (Aland Rudolph) who has made several films I've enjoyed (Choose Me, The Moderns, Trouble in Mind). Sadly, BofC is quite a disappointment.

Two things really stick out for me. Although Bruce Willis was quite good as Dwayne Hoover, too many of the other characters, notably Harry LeSabre (Nick Nolte) and Wayne Hoobler (Omar Epps) are portrayed in frenetic over the top performances. OK...we get it that there are all sorts of crazies running amuck in Midland City, but the point Vonnegut was making in his novel was that this madness is displayed in the "normal" everyday way that we live our lives in America. The values (consumerism, greed, violence) and actions that are considered normal in the United States are themselves proof that we are all suffering from a form of madness...showing these fine actors jumping around and uttering indecipherable gibberish shows only that they are annoying.

The film also has a problem in creating a consistent point of view. In the novel the author guides us through Dwayne Hoovers' unfolding madness and is actually a character in the book. The movie can't give us the background information the books' narrator did and I would guess that anyone who hasn't read the book will find the movie tough going...perhaps downright incomprehensible.

Lastly, as a great fan of Kilgore Trout (Vonnegut fans know him as a character who pops up in several Vonnegut novels) I thought Albert Finney did quite a nice job; he had just the right air of unkempt, curmudgeonly, insane genius that makes Trout my favorite Vonnegut character of all time. Still, it's hardly enough to save this mess...I admire the effort in bringing Breakfast of Champions to the screen, but in the end it's likely that this is an unfilmable novel.

Magnolia presents itself as a wall to wall canvas of screaming, shrieking, overwrought, hysterical twits who are all bedeviled by regret, guilt and pain. PT Anderson is certainly a gifted filmmaker but perhaps he should leave the writing to someone else or at least find someone with the balls to tell him he needed to edit this overlong mess.

A look at the cast will tell you that the performances were excellent, and they were. I just wish that every scene didn't involve an over the top shouting match or long digression into the sins that have been committed and the pain that they have caused.

I also think that Anderson fails miserably to create a story that parallels the bizarre tableaus that open the film. The opening sequences are wonderful in showing how fate can bring together people and circumstances that even the most optimistic believer in a cosmic puppeteer pulling our strings would scoff at. But the story that then develops lacks any of the stuff that these opening fables display. I kept waiting for some form of cosmic convergence to display itself, but instead all we get is waves of regret from morally challenged characters who see their past spread out before them and now seek absolution. Throw in an out of left field biblical plague near the end and all you end up with is a cadre of Anderson devotees who will marvel at his genius when all it really proves is that he has actually read the Old Testament.

I will say that the music by Aimee Mann was great and I'll be looking for the Soundtrack CD. In short, a good movie to look at and listen to (the music, that is) if the actors would have shut up or toned it down it may have been