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cody-shepherd
Reviews
The Good Night (2007)
Not bad, but victim to a classic blunder
Making a movie about dreams or dreaming is tough, and it shows in this one. The difficulty with dreams in any bit of fiction is that they can't be held accountable; that is, by definition, there isn't any kind of direct correspondence between dream occurrences and narrative significance. A dream (singular) here and there can enrich a narrative with symbolism, causality, subconscious, but when the dream becomes plural then almost universally a story starts to break down. Having gritted my teeth through movies like Waking Life and The Cell, to name a few, I've come to associate "dream" with "lazy" in cinema.
That being said, I had to see what Simon Pegg and Martin Freeman would do in a movie together. And the bottom line is, due to these two guys, the movie is worth a watch. Don't may more than $4 to see it.
What you get really is a movie without consequences. You have Martin Freeman obsessed with a dream character. OK, kind of interesting, but there's not enough dimension to his girlfriend (Paltrow), who just seems like a nag, or his friend/former bandmate (Pegg), who, granted, is extremely funny but ultimately without Pathos, to really make his dream obsession a truly engrossing psychological/sociological study.
And again, what happens here is that the dream sequences, and even the obsession with them, because of the, by definition, incommensurable quality of dreams, their inability to be authentically expressed through proxy (language, film, journals, etc.), leave us as audience members bereft of any feeling of causality, arc, or direction.
Also, as a sidenote, the pseudo-documentary format that the film opens with and halfheartedly maintains is confusing and ultimately misdirecting. It ends up looking like the mistake of a novice director.
Martin Freeman performs his lines well, Pegg is funny, DeVito is a pleasing eccentric, and Paltrow isn't as annoying as she usually is (however Cruz is somewhat intolerable), so the movie is worth seeing once, if you've got nothing better to do.
Miami Vice (2006)
Really good.
This isn't an action film, this is a good film.
I was skeptical at first. Colin Farrell tends to play the same character over and over, and Jamie Foxx, despite his talent, is often cast as the new Wesley Snipes. Strangely, both of those tendencies carry over into Miami Vice, but somehow the movie manages not to suck. Quite the opposite. It's really really good.
Over 130 minutes and somewhat thinly spread dialog means that an attention span is required. Also, it helps to have an appreciation of the visual and aural potentials of the film/video medium, as the movie is absolutely stunning in both respects. Furthermore, Mann uses a digital camera instead of celluloid, so the (narrative) action seems more real, or at least more apprehendable, somewhat like cinema verite, or the show COPS.
What is truly amazing here is the feat Mann has accomplished, whereby the production - the shots, the soundtrack and sound quality, the editing - is so masterful, at once brand new in technique but nostalgic in content, that it manages to endow what would otherwise be another cop drama (read: Lethal Weapon) with all kinds of emotional layering, narrative originality and character dynamic; the things that make movies great.
If you look for movies to appeal to your endocrine system rather than your brain, then maybe you'll be disappointed by Miami Vice. But if you like good movies, i.e. complexity without convolution, aesthetic without aloofness, tension without banality, then you'll probably thoroughly enjoy this one.