if talent here though, mainly most actors would give five air life to work with Allen, but mate talents such as Ferrell, Radha, Badmith Mitchell, Amanda Wallace Shawn can't dig a wooden script.
centers around a dinner con-
between a group of friends.
whether life is comic or tragic.
spark debate, he furnishes a
Melinda, a divorced mother
as to New York. The friends
urn telling Melinda's story as
agedey or comedy. Two separ-
arios unfold — one with
a pill-popping, suicidal misfit,
ner with Melinda in the center
ve triangle.
Allen's trademark wit shines but all too often the plot unfolds big soap opera. The characters absorbed it is impossible to nationally in the outcome of the while this film is purportedly interplay of comedy and the comedy is nowhere near emotional, and the only tragedy is the filmmaker's abilities seem finished so much these days.
Primer
Movie (✩✩✩ 1/2)
DVD (two stars)
PG-13,78 minutes
How often does an original film come out? While we can argue all day just how many creative films come out each year, I'm sure we would all agree that too few are released. So what happens when a truly intelligent and inventive movie comes out? Well, then you have Primer.
Primer is notable for several reasons. The first is that it won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival last year. The second is that it won despite having been made for about $7000. That's just more than half the price of a Kia Spectra.
In an age of bloated sci-fi flicks (*Star Wars III anyone*) with costs pushing $115 million, it's refreshing to see a film that was made on a budget that actually uses science to explore moral dilemmas, which is the purpose of science fiction anyway.
The film revolves around a group of engineers who spend their weekends trying to invent the next big thing. They dink around in a garage, talk shop and fight among themselves. Eventually two of them realize that they stumbling onto something big and begin working on their own. The two, David Sullivan and Shane Carruth (who also wrote, produced, directed, and scored the film) eventually
find out that they've invented a machine where time travels backward. By sitting in the machine for six hours, they go back six hours in time instead of forward. They know it works because they see themselves leaving the machine.
So what do they do? What anyone would do — try to get rich. They go back and start trading stocks, but eventually greed conquers all. They begin to travel back multiple times, until there are multiple "thems" existing at one time. So they begin to drug themselves in order to keep themselves from ruining their future plans in the past.
Sound confusing? It is. But inside this Rubik's cube of a film reside a litany of questions about self, causality, trust and avarice. It's not easy to wrap your mind around this movie, but at least it's one of the films out there that doesn't assume the audience is stupid.
—Will Lamborn
Suspect Zero
Movie: (✩)
DVD: (✩1/2)
R,99 Minutes,DVD Rental
From the director of The Shadow of the Vampire, E. Elias Merhige and starring no less than Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart (of Erin Brockovich) and Carrie Ann Moss (of The Matrix trilogy), this serial killer film falls short of what could have been a decent thriller.
Detective Tom Mackelway is mysteriously linked to a serial killer who seems to be one step ahead of him at every turn, killing the criminals Mackelway pursues and leaving notes at the crime scenes. The usual psychological breakdown ensues, as he is dragged down into the mind of the serial killer, discovering why this man is killing the people he is, and how Mackelway himself is mentally involved in the murders. Although well made, with some nice shots and beautiful scenery and camerawork, the filmmaking lacks any storytelling qualities that would interest an audience. The characters are underdeveloped and one-dimensional, which essentially takes any emotional connection out of the film.
The idea behind the story could have been better executed if the film hadn't relied so much on Aaron Eckhart, who doesn't have the presence of a leading man, and Moss plays a non-character who
should either have been brought more into the foreground, or left out altogether. Kingsley always gives a semi-decent performance, and he is the best thing in the film, but you wonder why he put his name down to this, after last year's amazing House of Sand and Fog. But even if the film had focused on better characters and performances, the script didn't give the actors much to work with, and gradually gets worse and worse, which by the third act is tiresome.
The best way to see this film is to watch Silence of the Lambs and Seven, because just about all of the material in this movie seems to be taken from them.
The DVD package isn't bad for a film such as this, and better films often have fewer extras, it boasts a four-part featurette on the making of the film, an alternate ending, which is always interesting and a commentary by the director. As well as this, there are a few other bits and pieces such as trailers and previews, but overall the special features don't make this a DVD worth getting, because it's not a movie worth watching.
Michael Boyd