Tag: 2006
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Which Way Is Up: Michael Mann’s Miami Vice
The simple truth is that I hated Michael Mann’s Miami Vice on first viewing. On a technical level, it was marred by hideously poor sound — for which I blamed the particular theater I happened to see it in, but a friend of mine had the same complaint about a totally different venue, suggesting something […]
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Le fugitif: Guillaume Canet’s Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One)
Guillaume Canet’s Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One) enjoyed a surprisingly wide US theatrical release for a French film without huge English-speaking stars (except for Englishwoman Kristin Scott Thomas, perfectly fluent in French). Roger Ebert rightly compared the tightly crafted thriller with The Fugitive, placing it squarely in Hitchcockian wrong-man-accused territory. Pediatrician Alex Beck […]
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Dreams and memory in Satoshi Kon’s Paprika
There’s a huge interest in Japanese manga and anime in the US, but it’s rare for an anime feature film to get a theatrical release. From the name and poster alone (indeed, what caught my own interest), one might not even guess Paprika is foreign-language, let alone anime. Anime is a medium, not a genre, […]
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M. Night Shyamalan squanders the last of his goodwill in The Lady in the Water
I don’t know where to start with this one. I’ve been a M. Night Shyamalan fan from the very beginning, even when the role was better described as apologist. Even to a fan, nearly every film comes with a “yeah, but…” disclaimer: The Sixth Sense is an excellent piece of slight-of-hand with some genuine emotion, […]
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Too Much Reality: Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep
Michel Gondry is a treasure; endlessly inventive and thankfully prolific. His music videos (especially Björk’s “Bachelorette” and The White Stripes’ “Fell in Love With a Girl“) and films (Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) are all personal favorites, with “Bachelorette” and Eternal Sunshine especially moving me deeply. But I found myself a […]
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Michael Mann’s Miami Vice movie is stylish but slight
Miami Vice is decidedly slight on character and depth, which is not surprising considering the source material. It is quite so, however, considering writer/director Michael Mann’s track record once leaving the iconic 80s tv show behind. The deep characterization in all his crime dramas ranging from Thief through Collateral elevate them above the ultrastylized and […]