My version of Robert Zemeckis’ Contact uses the same source material but starts at the 33-minute, 25-second mark and ends at one hour, 26 minutes, and five seconds. It’s a marvel of economy. Let me explain myself.
I shan’t belabor the point – apples and oranges and all that stuff – but how in the hell do The Jacket and The Grudge score roughly the same with critics?
I had more fun at Holes at age 32 than I’ve had at an “adult” movie in ages, and Louis Sachar’s screenplay features a number of subtle but important improvements on his novel, and it’s a model of efficiency and pacing. It’s going to take a damned good batch of movies to knock Holes off my list of 2003 favorites.
Sadly, M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable hasn’t held up well, suffering from an inability to transcend its conceit.
Back in November, I fretted that Lost would suffer from what I dubbed the “endless hit-TV-series death march. “Oh, my prescience!
A man’s hand holds a Polaroid photograph, but who would want to commemorate such a gruesome scene? The picture shows a body lying face-down on a floor, blood everywhere. This might be a crime-scene photo, but that conclusion doesn’t feel right.
Every element of Cold Mountain – from plot points to names to lines of dialogue – shows the heavy hand of the writer. The plot doesn’t unfold naturally and from the characters; for the story to turn out the way it does, for it to achieve any sort of resonance, everything in the movie has to happen exactly as it happens, and most of the developments are matters of dumb luck.
I agree with Roger Ebert’s assessment of Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven as “bottomless,” with the disclaimer that it’s as much a function of the movie’s open-ended nature as its depth. The filmmaker’s debut has no clearly articulated subject or thesis, and it’s so wide-ranging, with so little guidance from Morris, that its effect and meaning will depend a lot on who watches it and where they are in life. Plus: People I Know and Invincible.
In Inside Man, director Spike Lee and screenwriter Russell Gerwitz announce early that nothing too traumatic will befall any of the characters, and then they keep that promise; they implicitly give the audience permission to enjoy the film.
Brevity is the soul of wit, that motherfucker Shakespeare once wrote, and even though he’s wrong, I’ll keep this short. RogerEbert.com editor Jim Emerson has created the Contrarianism Blog-a-thon. I will enlighten you on how to be a conventional contrarian.
