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Reviews
Running with the Bulls (2003)
Like Watching a Car Wreck
Midway through "Running with the Bulls," I thought, "this is like watching a student film." Then I realized that even compared to student films, this is still excruciatingly bad. The jokes--all three of them--are obvious and done to death. Goldberg's preoccupation with documenting every iota of his existence is meant to be amusing, but it's merely annoying. Goldberg wrote, directed, starred and composed the music for this film so his presence is inescapable and ultimately claustrophobic. Comparisons to Woody Allen are inevitable, but Allen surrounds himself with talented actors and postcard-perfect shots of New York. Perhaps Goldberg will figure out in time that he needs an ensemble to balance out his brooding.
A sad footnote: John Glick, Goldberg's friend in this film (and in real life, for all I know) was tragically killed in July 2005 by a distraught young woman who attempted suicide by ramming her car into his. She survived; Glick and his two companions didn't.
In Good Company (2004)
Willy Loman Meets "The Graduate"
I passed up "In Good Company" when it was in the theaters because the prospect of 90 minutes of romance between That Seventies Guy and Scarlet the Starlet was less than compelling. Had there been truth in labeling--that this is really a male bonding film and a send-up of corporate rapaciousness and idiocy--the film might have had me and countless others lining up at the local multiplex.
While many critics have noted-- and correctly so-- that the film pulls its punches when it slaps on a too pat ending, I think it deserves high praise for what it attempts to do and for what it isn't. There are no superheroes, international spies, recycled 60's TV characters or teenage boys losing their virginity in "In Good Company." It's about the world of work and what it's like to live with the Damoclean sword of lay-offs dancing above your head--you know they're going to get you, you just don't know when.
Rather than patiently wait his turn to be bounced, Dennis Quaid's character is determined to go out with a bang. He needles his 26-year-old boss, the winsomely neurotic Topher Grace, and practically dares him to fire him. But even when Quaid commits professional suicide by acting as a truth teller at a corporate pep rally, Grace cannot bear to let him go. He loves Quaid or more accurately the American dream that he represents--house in Connecticut, lovely kids and wife, the kind of "Father Knows Best" household that Grace, as a child of the generic 90's broken home, never had.
Paul Weitz is similarly mesmerized because every time Quaid opens his mouth to upbraid his young boss, characters react as if some profundity issued forth. In truth, nothing he says is very deep or thoughtful--he's just better than Grace at massaging his clients because of their common history. Grace's Carter Duryea may be young, but he's charming and has flashes of brilliance: part of his genius is that he's figured out how to make his awkwardness work in his favor. He's tough when he has to be, but basically a nice guy.
That's what Quaid is supposed to be, but he comes off as irrational and sentimental, instead. When he hears that an underling called a female client "sugartits," his reaction is one of "What'cha gonna do?" Even if his employees are unproductive, they've got a home for life. His real talent, it would seem, lies in being a father. When he punches out Grace for sleeping with his daughter, he's delivering a reminder that photogenic as the young couple may be, 26-year-old corporate execs with six-figure incomes have no business messing around with college sophomores. Quaid is interested enough in her welfare that he takes out a second mortgage to pay for her NYU tuition. That seems to be the central message of "In Good Company"--careers can come and go, but it takes a family to raise a child.
Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000)
More Angst than T&A
I saw this on cable and would have been sorely disappointed if I had viewed it in a theater. It's not a very satisfying film because it's so monotone and devoid of energy--all strippers are depressed, self-hating junkies who grow more pathetic as they age. Even the facial expressions are frozen in a way that's more typical of 40-something actresses than of silicone-enhanced 20-something dancers.
The movie is ostensibly about strippers, but it's really about five actresses working overtime to create their characters and show that, despite their age, they can take their clothes off with the best of them. It's hard for these well-known TV and movie actresses to submerge themselves in their roles, and apart from Kristin Bauer who plays porn star Nico (an allusion to Warhol's Queen of heroin), none of them really succeeds at it. We're supposed to be applauding them for having the courage to strip bare in front of an audience, but it's clearly an ego trip for these women to show off those personally-trained bodies in which mainstream Hollywood has lamentably lost interest.
What would have been truly courageous, I think, would have been to use talented unknowns in the lead roles, but that too poses the risk of leaving the audience with five characters in search of a coherent storyline.
The problem may be too many story lines that go nowhere--notably, Sandra Oh as a talented poet whose verse is good enough to get her a university fellowship, but who seems not to know it. She meets a college instructor, and there's a flourishing romance, until he realizes how uncomfortable he is with her stripping and bails from the relationship. The break-up is established through a long, mournful scene in which she dances in the club, knowing he's present in the audience. The camera never really strays from her face, which makes for claustrophobia rather than intensity. Another subplot that fizzles involves Daryl Hannah's seeming rendezvous with death in the former of a stalker who sends her expensive presents. What happens when they get together is both ambiguous and anticlimactic. Sheila Kelley's character is so underdeveloped that it could have been omitted it entirely while Jennifer Tilley's repulsive punk dominatrix suggests she's way over her head.
I can't help comparing this film to HBO's plucky "G String Divas," a documentary in which the women were no more likable but far more interesting. A number had university degrees, and several saw themselves as entrepreneurs stashing away cash to beat the system. There was a contemptuous, carnival-like atmosphere in which the men were there to be fleeced and discarded. Some women had kids; some were lesbians; some were bisexual and involved in complicated relationships. At the end of the day, it seemed like a business rather than the sado-masochistic playpen for decaying flesh that "Dancing at the Blue Iguana" makes stripping out to be.