Crime Makes For Good Entertainment
Well I'll be brief, but today I watched a couple of DVDs looking at characters on the so-called "wrong side of the law" having themselves a fun time, namely Quentin Tarantino's Palme d'Or winning classic Pulp Fiction and Steven Soderbergh's highly successful caper remake Ocean's Eleven. Pulp Fiction is a film I must have seen a dozen times and it's my equal favourite movie ever (alongside Apocalypse Now, and I've only seen the inferior-say-fans-of-the-original Redux cut, and American Beauty). It just kicks ass in every way, even if it falls short of perfection only by failing to quite maintain the quality of the first segment (with the Vince & Mia date) throughout the still-better-than-anything-else-ever-made second and third segments. I don't give films an A+, but if I was to make any exceptions it would be for this and those other two films I listed. I just can't get sick of them, and as they're so dissimilar I can't really seperate them into any order of favouritism either.
Ocean's Eleven meanwhile is a film I've seen only twice before today and it's been a while since my last viewing; despite much of the film being familiar the first 15 minutes felt new to me. I seriously didn't recall them at all. Basically, this movie is awesome. The first act lags a little in that while it's trying to maintain that cheeky cleverness that it does so well later on it doesn't quite work yet because, until the characters all come together, the film seems to be without any cohesive rhythm. That said, the pay-off is so god-damn worth waiting for. This movie exudes coolness. I mean, even just shots of George Clooney standing beside Brad Pitt in an elevator looking "confident" in their expensive suits makes this movie seem "cooler" than the average flick because you see them like that and you just know that these likable characters are too smart not to win. And how they get there is quite an oh-so-cleverly-plotted ride.
Director Steven Soderbergh is one of the ten best working in the business today, and something I noticed is that while many filmmakers concentrate on creating the types of visuals that enhance the story but leave much of the sound in the film as purely functional for the audience's visceral experience, Soderbergh goes one step further and seems to craft the sound so that it adds something through contrast between scenes just as effectively as his cinematography (don't be fooled by the DoP credit going to Peter Andrews, it's just Soderbergh's pseudonym). And the closing sequence following the heist is so damn beautful both visually (esp. the silhouettes against the fountain) and in terms of the very old-fashioned musical score that it once again emerges as being a class above your typical Hollywood movie. This is a well-earned B+, or 4 out of 5.
Ocean's Eleven meanwhile is a film I've seen only twice before today and it's been a while since my last viewing; despite much of the film being familiar the first 15 minutes felt new to me. I seriously didn't recall them at all. Basically, this movie is awesome. The first act lags a little in that while it's trying to maintain that cheeky cleverness that it does so well later on it doesn't quite work yet because, until the characters all come together, the film seems to be without any cohesive rhythm. That said, the pay-off is so god-damn worth waiting for. This movie exudes coolness. I mean, even just shots of George Clooney standing beside Brad Pitt in an elevator looking "confident" in their expensive suits makes this movie seem "cooler" than the average flick because you see them like that and you just know that these likable characters are too smart not to win. And how they get there is quite an oh-so-cleverly-plotted ride.
Director Steven Soderbergh is one of the ten best working in the business today, and something I noticed is that while many filmmakers concentrate on creating the types of visuals that enhance the story but leave much of the sound in the film as purely functional for the audience's visceral experience, Soderbergh goes one step further and seems to craft the sound so that it adds something through contrast between scenes just as effectively as his cinematography (don't be fooled by the DoP credit going to Peter Andrews, it's just Soderbergh's pseudonym). And the closing sequence following the heist is so damn beautful both visually (esp. the silhouettes against the fountain) and in terms of the very old-fashioned musical score that it once again emerges as being a class above your typical Hollywood movie. This is a well-earned B+, or 4 out of 5.
posted by Steve @ 10:29 PM
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