:: Thursday, June 05, 2003 ::

The last couple of movies I saw in a theater are:
"Down With Love" 8 of 10, one of those wonderfully synthetic widescreen sixties pictures, like "Move Over Darling", or "Pillow Talk", which invariably starred Doris Day and Rock Hudson or DD and RH clones, and the roles Ewan MacGregor and Renee Zellweger inhabit are likable clones as well. Directed by Peyton Reed, who helmed "Bring It On", the black vs. white cheerleader feud film from a couple seasons back, and also partially responsible for "The Upright Citizen's Brigade", one of Comedy Central's inspired and cancelled satire series, "Down With Love" has been incorrectly criticized in the press because some reviewers simply thought you couldn't "spoof" one of those sixties comedies.
I say you can, brilliantly, and Reed has done so.
Renee is better than she was in "Chicago". Ewan gets better with each movie. David Hyde Pierce does a spot on impersonation of Tony Randall, who shows up in the film for good measure. There is a trend developing where movies from the sixties are being "culturally blended" into our theaters. "Far From Heaven" from Todd Haynes and "Catch Me If You Can" from Spielberg were released last year. I expect as boomer directors age, more and more "homages" will be made to the studio film. As Todd says in his commentary on the "Heaven" DVD, which was inspired by Douglas Sirk films, he wanted the locations to look like sets and the sets to look like locations.
When a character in a film is in the back seat of a car, and the background is backscreen projected behind the back window, the artifice is complete, we know we are watching a movie, and the characters know they are in one. Spielberg and Haynes are not really joking in their respective films, however, and Reed is. "Down With Love" is a tasty confection.
"The Matrix Reloaded" 5 of 10 A not very inventive "middle part" to the Matirx trilogy. "The Animatrix" DVD is better. My favorite character, Agent Smith, is back, with a slew of clones, and there are some exciting setpieces, but Agent Smith is underused, even with his evil twin hordes, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen this all before somehow. (In the fourth or fifth matrix perhaps.) Viewing the trailer for the third Terminator movie before seeing the film also contributed to the Deja Vu feeling. Now that it's two years after the first Matrix hit the multiplexes, (and it didn't really blow me away till I saw the DVD to tell the truth), the flying bullet and digital Depalmarounds are ubiquitous, the freeway chase seemed to pale in comparison to, say , the one in "Minority Report", and there were far too many dank and dark shots of the ships and of Zion. Zion reminds me of the Krell's domain in "Forbidden Planet" mixed with the Road Warrior films, specifically the third one.
Anyway, not that impressed. In fact, I have "The Animatrix" on pause, and you can go see some of those on the Animatrix website. Very interesting stuff, especially the 2nd Renaissance films.
:: Michael Nyiri 7:43 AM Leave a Comment on this Post ::
...