Oh I Want to Be An American...

Rush Hour 3(dir. Brett Ratner)[rewatch]
I was amazed at how much I remembered from my first viewing since it really has little semblance of a plot and I've watched a ton of movies in between that viewing and this one. I guess it's true that the classics just stick with you. It wasn't quite as beautiful this time around with it's bad-goodness and I might have to dub The Game Plan as my guilty pleasure of the year now. The performance weren't as intricate and nuanced as I once remembered them to be. It's decent in a bad-good way. I slightly recommend.
**1/2 out of ****
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead(dir. Sidney Lumet)
Had to watch the Miami Vice ending on Youtube for the 50th time afterwards just to make sure that I wasn't in a shitty mood. I don't know what to say about this. It's pretty much an (over)acting showcase so it wasn't engaging in any sort of profound way and the performances ended up being all over the place. Marisa Tomei, while getting some points for being naked in practically every scene, is simply awful in her "big" scene. The whole goddamn movie is basically a string of "big" scenes, where all the actors overact their asses off and don't resemble anything remotely human. There's nothing wrong with the notion of actors overacting if they're still able to create something that resembles a human being, but in this film, they just basically move around and be as dramatic as possible at given moments. Sidney Lumet in some interview on Variety's website talked about how he basically just let the actors work and didn't give much direction in terms of performances. This could easily be just the director being modest, but after watching the film, what he said is most likely true. He basically let his actors run amok with no sense of control or direction. There's also scenes within the film that are supposed to ring tragic but end up falling flat like Andy pouring rocks on his table and the conclusion to the film due to being unable to connect with it because of the performances. The only actor that came out of the film with any respect from me was Michael Shannon, who almost gleefully plays the burglar's sleazy brother-in-law. There's a brief patch towards the end, where the intensity of the film's activities almost matches the actors' and I would probably say this is easily the best portion of the film and then the ending quickly follows and back to feeling indifferent as ever again. The film's character problem is not a matter of them just being merely unlikeable, it's a matter of not being able to detect any sense of humanity in any of them in order to recognize them in an emotional way. I haven't even touched upon how stupid the structure of the narrative is. The film is told in a non-linear format much like a film like Reservoir Dogs. It serves no purpose and I don't understand why Lumet decided to direct this script outside of probably trying to prove that he's still hip with these crazy kids like Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino. The film as a whole basically registered with a long and drawn-out thud. It was bad.
*1/2 out of ****