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Reviews
Over the Hedge (2006)
A remarkable paucity of fart jokes!
"Over the Hedge" came as a pleasant surprise both for what it was and what it was not. Dreamworks managed to put together a computer-animated feature with a name cast that largely avoided the tiresome pop-cultural references that bog down the genre and make it feel like you've taken your child to "Scary Movie 8: The Cartoon!!!". The few explicit nods to the adults in the audience--Bill Shatner's "Rosebud!" brought tears to my eyes--were restrained and well-done. Fans of Steve Carell and Allison Janney will have many reasons to smile, if not laugh out loud, and everyone else was able to be lovable without ever being cloying, a neat trick. My two-year old was as enrapt as I was: my "Wow! Nick Nolte DOES sound exactly like a bear!" vs. her "Wow! Bear is mean!" In short, a perfect distraction for a sweltering afternoon. The purveyors of "Shrek"-dreck should be taking notes. Be sure before you take the little ones that you're comfortable exposing them to the same Yosemite Sam/Tom & Jerry-level violence to which we were exposed. We turned out alright, right?
A Day in Black and White (1999)
A striking little film
What a pleasure...considering the sort of garbage that one usually finds on Cinemax late in the evening, I almost didn't watch this. It has an undeniably amateur feel to it, but I lost myself both in the dialogue and the great sight gags (the three boys running would have had the Marx Brothers absolutely howling).
Mr. Hall did a laudable job of staying one step ahead of me; every time I thought that I had figured out where a particular strain of conversation was going, he would derail it completely with an undeniable truth.
There's nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but, like all good art, it made me think.
The Limey (1999)
Soderbergh continues his retro explorations...
What a fantastic movie! They (meaning everyone except Soderbergh) just don't make them like this anymore--I kept expecting Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw to walk around a corner. Stamp is absolutely astounding, for starters. His dress, manner, and word choices are of a man who's obviously spent the majority of his life in prison. He's Austin Powers, only frozen in gaol instead of ice. Prison has also shaped the way he experiences time: while prisoners count the days, measuring each one meticulously, they are also "unstuck" in time, because each day is exactly like any other. Once he's back on the street, Soderbergh and Stamp make time fuzzy (snippets of conversations that haven't happened yet, decision-tree branches that may or may not become reality) in order to plunge the viewer right into Our Hero's head. It's an incredibly visceral experience.