sparrow70 Reviews

Go Go Tales (2007)

The Killing of a Gourmet Hot Dog

[6/10 · 31 May 2008]

I was excited to see this brilliant ensemble cast do their magic in Go Go Tales, but I found myself unexpectedly being served a gourmet hot-dog from actors who are capable of playing much more challenging characters. What makes a gourmet hot-dog anyways? Is it made from the lips and a**holes of kobe beef? Is there fois gras blended in with the questionable parts of top-shelf carcasses? I don't think it is an accident that right in the middle of Go Go Tales there is a scene with gourmet hot dogs being cooked the gourmet way - in microwave ovens, while the beautiful go-go dancers cook themselves in a faulty tanning bed.

This isn't to say that Go Go Tales was badly acted - it was very well acted for what it is - a meandering vignette of a failing second rate strip joint; a metaphor for how even the most exotic dreams and aspirations are subject to blandness like anything else. It plays out like a cabaret stage production, a bit of aimless vaudeville salted with an undercurrent of subtle existential humming: A page out of Cassavetes' Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Like 'Chinese Bookie', this film offered more pleasure for me in the thinking about it afterward than it was to watch.

I can't say that I didn't like it, and I can't say that I want to watch it again. But for a gourmet hot-dog, it wasn't terrible; it was mostly just a regular hot-dog made with some Hoskins, Dafoe and a dash of Modine, thrown in a microwave and served in the bawdy atmosphere of a musky strip club.

The Illusionist (2006)

Nothing to write home about

[6/10 · 6 January 2007]

While I found this film watchable, I also found it to be rather flat. It was pleasantly shot, but I think I would have been rather more excited at the conclusion of a Sigmund Freud biopic set in Vienna. The Illusionist was more than a touch maudlin and I couldn't help but feel that Philip Glass' score was a retread of many other scores he has put together in the past.

Norton carried the film exactly as I expected: I wasn't surprised and I didn't end up feeling particularly connected. This movie was a predictable romantic period piece with a little bit of cgi thrown-in to spice the paste. Overall I left feeling that this will be one of those films mostly forgotten after a years time.

For a movie with so much magical content, it didn't manage to leave any with me to take home or remember.