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 ****

Oh William...

Network(dir. Sidney Lumet)
First hour was grand. Second hour not so much. Mostly due to the fact that the satire becomes just as extreme as Howard's banter on his show. It's got the passion of a fire and brimstone preacher, but it also got the mind of a schizophrenic screaming it's head off about how the apocalypse is coming. While I'm not a huge fan of television, I can't help, but feel that this film's hatred toward that medium and how it even can be deadly is preposterous. This is almost the equivalent of Jack Thompson's crusade against violent videogames that he claims to be conditioning and training children to become killers. This is clearly a creation of a group of men that don't understand the medium of television so they decide to create this fiery sermon about the evils of it. They do hit some points of criticism that stick like Faye Dunaway's character's affair with William Holden's Max. Easily, the most effective part of the film simply because it's so tragic and serene, but this turns into a crazed rant about television much like the rest of the film. William Holden's performance, however, lends a sense of gravity to this story to keep it from spiraling out of control. He loves her, but she doesn't love him because she was raised on television and he was raised on life. There's a depressing quality to Max telling her, "I want you to love me." A cry from the writer that is out of touch with a society that is in love with television. This should have been the focus point of the film not Howard or even the network. This is supposedly Paul Thomas Anderson's favorite movie. In the making of documentary about Magnolia, he even shows it to the cast and crew. It is easy to see why since Magnolia has a similar "message", but concerning the movies. His film is far more subtle and you care for pretty much all the characters(except for maybe Stanley since I felt he was contrived). While Howard, you can't really care for him. You admire him for his passion, but you can't help to think that he is too extreme much like this film. The end was probably aiming to be tragic, but it registers with a thud. Howard is so out of a touch that he almost seems to be living on a totally different plane of existence so what happens to him isn't as tragic as it could have been. A flawed, but still good film.
*** out of ****