karney

(spoilers) Just saw a screening of this at the Egyptian in Hollywood, with Cage & Franco & Suvari appearing afterward for a Q&A session. Basically you've got a story of a hustler (Franco) who was groomed for the biz by his mother. He's trying to escape the life but his mom and his new girlfriend (Suvari) are trying to keep him in it. The film was strangely truncated- big parts of how the Suvari and Franco characters formed their relationship doesn't show up on screen, so the 'love' story that forms the spine of the story doesn't really have any resonance for the audience. I think Cage let his actors have a little too much reign in their choices, but it may be the fault of the script for not fleshing out the relationships. Some of the scenes were very compelling and even funny, especially one where Sonny dresses up as a policeman and does a trick for a woman who wants to do some roleplaying. All in all though, we're just not as engaged as the filmmakers want us to be in the central relationships of the film. Peripheral relationships are almost more fully realized than central ones throughout the film. Harry Dean Stanton especially is wonderful.

On the surface, this film is a meticulously constructed sci-fi thriller, but given the setting in 1988 at the height of the Cold War, for me it was about the possibility of death falling out of the sky, just as the jet engine falls out of the sky and into the Darko family's life. Just as the "Virgin Suicides" perfectly captured what it feels like to be a 14-year-old boy, I felt this film did a wonderful job of capturing what it felt like to be in high school in the late 80s. To me all of the sci-fi trappings were just a metaphor for the uncertainty of living in this time. The genius of this film, though, is that no one interpretation is definitive--it's vague enough that you can put your own emotions and ideas into it.

Although Powaqqatis and Koyaanisqatsi are two of my all-time favorite films, this one was sorely disappointing. Except for a few images that were used to brilliant effect, Reggio just didn't achieve his goal of using images with which we're all familiar to make his points about war and conformity. Okay, men are machines who will do anything we tell them to. Got that in the first two minutes. What else do you have to say? Not much...I think it's a generational difference in some ways; at 62, the director just doesn't have the same connection to the images of popular culture that those of us under, say, 40, do.When the film succeeds, it succeeds by focussing on the same subject matter as the first two films: the human face and scenes of natural phenomenon that we don't ordinarily see. The slow-motion smoke, a seething sea, faces of all races exposed to appear the same, these were the few worthwhile, fresh images in the film. But faces from the wax museum? An athlete preparing for a race? We've been glued to the electric box for decades, now, Reggio, there's no way you're going to surprise us with an image we've seen before no matter how much you distort it. One can only hope that this director with a unique vision has at least one more masterpiece in him....