Somewhere [2010]

A world famous actor stumbles through the course of a few days looking for meaning – when his daughter is dropped off.

The acting was solid – the tired and lonely quality of the performance was not lost on me. Stephen Dorff was great – that was fairly surprising to me – not that I can recall something that he was in. The directing was a lot of just let the camera sit and let’s watch – so it felt very lazy – because not much happens – Sofia Coppola was smart to use that technique but considering not much happens – I wish one style would have changed – but that’s not what the movie was. The two scenes with the twin pole dancers were shot in an uncomfortable way. It felt like a letter from Sofia to her father or something along those lines about how she felt isolated as he was famous. Ultimately, I felt like this movie fell short of its potential and abandoned any narrative structure for a considerable more style over substance - and it was a frustrating film.

If you want to watch this movie and you are sensitive to SPOILERS – please look away.

By the end of the film – I was frustrated with it. They portray the main character as needing a direction – and when he gets his daughter for an extended period you start to think “this is that missing direction he needs” – but it’s not. He drops her off for camp – apologizes – and you expect that he’s going to correct his direction and make his life about his daughter. Yet, at the end of the movie he checks out of the hotel – abandons his car in the middle of the road out in the middle of nowhere and walks away – and gives a smirk to the camera. Thusly, abandoning his daughter at camp – and honestly – I don’t get it. The smirk is what gets me – I get the “fuck the world” kind of rebel attitude – but it just felt like it was misdirected and made an odd twist to what was expected.

Weekend Viewing - Feb 12-14 (part 1)

Public Enemies [2009, directed by Michael Mann]

The story of the FBI’s hunt for John Dillinger.

My problem with this film is the stop-n-go narrative – the characters were mostly unsympathetic and unlikable – and no discernable theme or insight that makes you stand up and enjoy the film on anything other than a base level.

What I did like was Dillinger’s girl, Billie – she was really the only likable character and the one you wanted to see her storyline come to a satisfactory conclusion. The action and gun fights were very good – and the locations were especially nice (one of them was a block away from my grandfather’s house). Yet, a sloppy story, sloppy direction and virtually no characters to care about make me give this a generous 3 out of 5.

Man Bites Dog [1992, directed by Remy Belavaux, Andre Bonzel & Benoit Poelvoorde]

A documentary film crew follows a charismatic yet unrepentant serial killer on his murder sprees.

This film firmly evokes disgust while shining a light on how the media often will promote and somewhat glorify the villains in society. It is a very effective and thought provoking critic on how we as a society lose focus on what’s really important when it comes to violent crimes. Often the main focus is on who’s doing these crimes – the Jeffery Dahmer’s, Ted Bundy’s, Ed Gein’s all get movies/documentaries made about their exploits and their victims are footnotes just like this film. We see the killer’s crimes in this film so much – and know so much about him – yet we know nothing about the victims. I give this film a solid 4 out of 5.