Film Criticism – Or Something Like That
Comments: 3
Regarding Stephen Soderbergh’s new film Full Frontal, the critics are apparently unanimous:
Stephanie Zacharek in Salon:
Julia Roberts and David Duchovny can’t save this funny mess about the split between the movies and the real world – or something like that.
… and Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Press:
Shot partly on consumer-model digital video, it’s a heavily improvised riff on artifice and reality in Hollywood (gee, we’ve never seen that before) in which an ensemble cast faces the reality of their own plastic lives (or something like that).
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Posted to Film • 2002.08.03 (Sat) • 12:49
Comments
Posted by tomas 2002.08.04, 03:04
FilmCritic.com disagrees:
Whatever anyone says, I’m hesitant to believe that Soderbergh can make a bad movie.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2002.08.04, 06:00
Well, if one believes the New Yorker, he did.
Posted by jh 2002.08.06, 15:47
Zacharek is becoming one of my favourite film critics, and Zoller Seitz is no slouch either. But what good’s a critic if you don’t disagree with them once in a while?
I was really picking up on the use of “or something like that” as the kind of knowing hipster shorthand that lets a writer avoid precision. That two respectable critics used the phrase in their reviews of the same film means that it’s not just a cliche but a fully paid-up member in good standing of the Phrases To Be Avoided Club.
As for Soderbergh’s films, I haven’t seen many but have enjoyed those I’ve seen. I remember being captivated by “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and thought “Kafka” was not bad at all (considering all the things that could go wrong). “Gray’s Anatomy” was an good adaptation of Spaulding Gray’s monologue (although the juxtaposition of the ‘ordinary’ people who had suffered various eye traumas was condescending and uncalled for). “The Limey” is worth seeing although I think it’s been terribly overrated (see it for Terrance Stamp and a wan, almost haunted Peter Fonda). Yes, the editing is interesting but the second coming of Eisenstein it ain’t.
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