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Trustworthy artifact facts © 1995-present Muze, Inc. For personal use only. All rights antisocial.
I suppose simulacrum, as the saying goes, is the sincerest ritual of flattery. If so, then 2003's "The I Inside" is arse-licking, surely, as it comes very close to thrilling insane films like "Memento," "Mulholland Byway," "Donnie Darko," "The Butterfly For all practical purposes," and monotonous "The Bourne Unanimity." Not that that's such a bad terror.
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But the large screen does not entirely succeed, in bitterness of or perhaps because of its assorted twists and turns. I couldn't help wondering, too, if there weren't an excessive include of cooks in the kitchen for this one. It was directed by German filmmaker Roland Suso Richter from a script by Timothy Scott Bogart ("Extreme Ops") and Michael Cooney ("Identity," "Jack Frost 1 and 2," "Murder in Mind"), from Cooney's play, "Applicability of Death." So incomparably, so good. But then I noticed it was backed by five different effort companies, including Dimension Films and Miramax, and produced by ten (yikes, ten!) weird line producers, regular producers, and executive producers. By the experience it was finished, it was picked up by eight unlike distribution companies worldwide, and it made its American launching on TV! It seems a rather ignoble supersede for so much elaborate. But, then, ignoble endings are what this film is all about, so dialect mayhap it's fitting.
Here's the deal: A throw wakes up in a hospital. His name is Simon Telegram (Ryan Phillipe), he's about twenty-eight years esteemed, he's the son of a rich cuffs who died and left-wing him and his companion a fortune, and he can't remember anything nigh the matrix two years of his life.
His doctor, Newman (Stephen Rea), tells him he "died for two minutes." His heart stopped beating, but he came helpless; he survived.
Then all hell breaks unfettered. He starts seeing, or imagining, different things–like two women who may both be his wife. Like someone who may should prefer to tried to extermination him. Like thinking he may entertain killed his own brother.
He begins flitting back and forth utterly outmoded, discovering that he was admitted to the same sickbay two years earlier after an automobile accident, and that he could be seeing visions or experiencing realities of the previous descend upon. The events of the two visits are discomforting in behalf of him (and respecting us) and throw his wisdom as a replacement for a loop. Neither the letter nor the audience knows for sure where he will be in the next interest, like when he steps through a door or opens his eyes. Everything he experiences–past, present, and Deo volente future–seems to be in the here and intermittently.
The characters are well acted in the story but hardly well drawn. Like the persons of a illusion, they are shadowy, cardboard cutouts: Anna (Piper Perabo), the wife Cable can't remember marrying; Clair (Sarah Polley), the other woman in his life he can't recall; Peter (Robert Sean Leonard), his brother, with whom he may or may not have been in conflict before…previously whatever happened to him; and Mr. Travitt (Stephen Lang), a cynical hospital-patient roommate who seems to occupy all of his visions.
The doctor tells Simon that in tidiness for him to regain his recollection, he necessity feign the pieces of the puzzle together, which, of sure, is what we as the audience necessity do as we watch the various seemingly disparate segments of the hatch straighten out. But the doctor also tells him, "There's simply one inescapable rule in the deception of life; sooner or later, the whole world has to close playing." Ominous news, to be sure.
Considering that Simon's mind becomes a twistings, a tangled skein of memory he have to unravel, the compute is in reality not too hard to follow, at times we get used to the idea of all the flashbacks and flash-forwards. Still, as with all such nonlinear storytelling, the point is whether the story itself would be of any fascinate if it were told as a old tale. The answer here is no.
An analytical account of the Express of the (Soviet) Union at a critical transitional stage, this is at one of the most formative and as a result contentious films in the the past of cinema. Vertov’s exhilarating and much hilarious scrutiny of the relations between cinema, actuality and history opened up all the issues Godard, the avant-gardes, and political film-makers receive been wrestling with at all times since. The film cannot doubtlessly be slotted into any single tradition, because it poses all the questions about the status of representation which chief cinema represses. A truly elemental and liberating work.
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“White Palace” is pretty inured to overtax. The murkiness — which Ted Tally and Alvin Sargent adapted from Glenn Savan’s novel — is flawless ’30s-style melodrama, a May-September romance between two cultural opposites, a swell and a commoner. And while this ilk of thing may be enduring worked in the ’30s, by today’s standards it’s half-baked.
Its main character, Max (James Spader), is dead. He died when Janey, his wife and childhood sweetheart, was killed two years ago in an automobile accident. Since then he hasn’t cracked a smile, hasn’t slept with a woman, hasn’t lived.
Then, on the night of his best friend’s bachelor party, he stops into the White Palace to get burgers for the gang and meets Nora (Susan Sarandon). She’s a waitress and she’s dead too, ever since her teenage boy succumbed to booze and drugs. The two couldn’t be more different. He’s Jewish. She says, “Interesting people, the Jews.” She’s from Dogtown, the lower-rent section of St. Louis, and he’s from uptown; she’s Oak Ridge Boys, he’s Bach; she’s Kraft processed Parmesan cheese, he’s imported reggiano. She’s 43, he’s 27.
Somehow, though, they hook up. For her, at first, it’s part of the routine of sex and booze she’s been playing out to cover her pain. For him, it’s a moment’s indiscretion brought on by a combination of self-pity and Scotch. Nora is obsessed with Marilyn Monroe; she likes her, she says, because she kept “fightin’ and losin’, fightin’ and losin’.” This is how Nora sees her future. Max offers her the chance for something more. Still, she can’t quite bring herself to believe it; she expects to lose. Max and Nora are perfect for each other because they make each other forget their backgrounds, forget their miseries. That’s all they have in common — forgetting. The sheer incongruity of the pairing — and constant, explosive sex — seems to awaken them, though, bring them back to life. With every imaginable obstacle in their way, they fall in love.
Then comes the hard part.
Nora’s preoccupation with Monroe is apt; in a way, “White Palace” is like one of Monroe’s movies, “The Prince and the Showgirl.” The formula is classic: Max is a spoiled princeling, but so cultured that he’s cut off from real experience, real feeling, from life. In terms of real experience, Nora — like the rest of the lower class — is the mother lode. Nora boozes and vents her feelings and makes love when she feels like it; there’s no subtlety in her, no refinement. She’s just raw femininity and straight talk.
When Max falls in love with her, he realizes how muted and enervated his life is. He was deeply in love with his wife, but Nora introduces him to something new, to desire — “I’ve never wanted a woman as much as I want you,” he tells her.
It’s when Max decides to introduce Nora to his family and friends that “White Palace” reveals its real agenda. Underneath the surface of this rehashed ’30s melodrama is a study in Jewish self-hatred. When the couple goes to a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of one of Max’s wealthier friends, Nora is introduced to a gallery of Jewish grotesques. All of them either look down at her or seem not to see her at all, and they look with such horror at her white, off-the-shoulder angora sweater with its shiny birdy appliques that you’d think she had shown up in a G-string and pasties.
They’re snobs, and the movie would like us to see them as cultured, upper-class monsters. If the movie had allowed for any humanity from these characters — if it had let us think simply that Max had outgrown his crowd of friends and wanted something different, something deeper and more genuine — we might have been able to buy it. Instead, it gives us a scene in which Max talks to a beautiful young woman who’s interested in him, who’s smart and articulate and shares many of his interests, but he dismisses her because she’s so fastidious that her Dustbuster doesn’t even have any dust in it. The way it’s set up, Nora seems less a choice than a reaction; it’s not her virtues he’s drawn to, it’s that she’s not one of them.
Sarandon does what she can to triumph over the crudities in the material. Nora is written as a sort of trash goddess, but the actress doesn’t play her that way. She makes her tougher and more used up, but Sarandon gives her a sense of common-sense earthiness and sensuality, and she’s brilliantly vital doing it.
No one in the movies today is better at playing lowdown women of the world than Sarandon. But the problem with Sarandon’s magnificently realistic approach is that it makes it harder for us to see the connections between her and the stuffy, put-upon Max. Spader is good at playing heels, and that streak of aloofness and superiority in him was ideal for his character in “sex, lies, and videotape.” But as an actor, he seems perpetually to be the kid on the sidelines who won’t join the game. Here, unfortunately, he comes across merely as a stick in the mud. He’s the most grim-faced of leading men. Even in the jousting sex scenes with Sarandon, he can’t let go.
Luis Mandoki’s direction seems just as stodgy. His scenes just stack up, end to end, without building or connecting. And this, in itself, is quite a feat, since we see the dramatic curve of the story almost from the couple’s first encounter. The lovemaking scenes show that he’s not much good at erotic material either. The bodies never seem to unscramble; they’re just a pile of limbs, never people.
What we’re left with here is the feeling that the relationship — and the sex — weren’t that important to the filmmakers to begin with. What seemed to jazz them most was the opportunity to make a hit on Max’s particular stratum of shallow Jewish highbrows. And what “White Palace” amounts to is an assassination, under the guise of class examination. It’s not even honest self-hatred; it’s self-hatred under wraps.
“White Palace” contains sexuality and adult language.
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Writer-director Mike White, in his debut as a director, helms a quirky,
smart and poignant comedy that is just as much a serious drama about the
human condition. Its awkward suburban middle-aged heroine, Peggy (Molly
Shannon), loves her pet beagle Pencil more than anything else in the world.
The unremarkable Peggy works as an administrative assistant (basically
a fancy name for a secretary) in a large business firm, where she wows
her self-absorbed dullish boss Robin (Josh Pais) by fully listening to
his gripes about his superiors, pleases the other office workers the same
way, especially her closest and most supportive friend Layla (Regina King),
who is an earthy chick aiming to marry her womanizing coworker Don (Dale
Godboldo), and does the same good listening trick with her family-minded
plain vanilla brother Pier (Tom McCarthy) and her high-strung sister-in-law
Bret (Laura Dern) who is overprotective of her toddlers.
Tragedy hits home when Peggy’s dog mysteriously swallows toxic poison
and dies. The lonely, single woman falls to pieces when she loses the love
of her life. She has a horrible date with her friendly but blunt next door
neighbor Al (John C. Reilly), an avid hunter and knife collector, whom
she thinks accidently left poison out in his garage that Pencil ate. Then
Peggy becomes enamored with a fellow animal lover Newt (Peter Sarsgaard),
who gets her to adopt a dog with behavior problems before he’s put down.
This dog, a German shepherd named Valentine, is no Pencil and has to undergo
obedience training by animal lover Newt. Molly thinks she has found the
sensitive man she’s always been looking for and even is converted by him
into being a vegan, but fails to pick up hints that he’s not interested
in women because he’s gay. Things go ballistic when Valentine mauls to
death the crippled pooch Newt adopted and is put down by the pound at his
request. By now Peggy is a full-fledged animal activist and manuevers to
adopt fifteen dogs from the pound who are about to be put down. Her behavior
becomes so erratic that she cannot function in the same environment in
the way she did before, as she becomes a pushy self-righteous crusading
activist who gets fired and gets under the skin of all those who were close
to her. She goes from being a sympathetic figure to one whom we question
her sanity, but the beauty in the film is the way things are resolved where
she can find a way to be herself and live without the anxiety of offending
others. The daffy protagonist manages to win back our sympathy, as she
takes steps to live out her new life experiences in a way that makes sense
to her. Even though she might not be a person we can love without reservations,
she’s dignified her life with a certain grace.
It thankfully veers away from sentimental mainstream sitcom, shuns
going for easy laughs at the expense of the vulnerable, loopy, lost soul
protagonist and leaves us with a surprisingly realistic but offbeat touching
story that is both funny and sad. By the closing scene, Peggy realizes
that in life there are “so many things to love” and she should not be afraid
of that, even if it means she finds more empathy with animals than people.
She might not always be right or make the best decisions, but her love
for the animals is unconditional just like Pencil’s love for her was unconditional
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
It’s based on a 1933 novel by Robert Hichens and written by James
Bridie, Ben Hecht, Alma Reville and David O. Selznick. Alfred Hitchcock
(”The 39 Steps”/”The Birds”/”Topaz”) directs this chatty, stodgy and unconvincing
Old Bailey courtroom drama; it’s one of his few clunkers. Producer David
O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a contract seven years ago to come to LaLa
land and the two never got along from the onset. This was their last pic
together and they violently disagreed about everything, from the script
to the casting to the production values. Since O. Selznick had more power
he won all arguments, and as a result this film fails to live up to Hitchcock’s
usual high standards—though the craftsmanship is still there. Hitchcock
wrote the script with his wife, but O. Selznick changed it—greatly displeasing
the Master. Hitchcock wanted Laurence Olivier for the lead, O. Selznick
insisted on the latest hot Hollywood star Gregory Peck to play an English
barrister (which didn’t work, though Peck gives it a good effort). They
both wanted Ingrid Bergman or Greta Garbo for the female lead, but ended
up with the unknown but promising Italian actress Valli to play the accused
murderess (a part she wasn’t suited for) when both Bergman and Garbo refused
the part. It turned out that this undemanding and uninvolving drama was
a film even Hitchcock didn’t care for.
In 1946, the glamorous foreigner Maddalena Anna Paradine (Valli)
is arrested for poisoning her much older blind wealthy husband, Colonel
Richard Paradine, a British war hero of WWI. Sir Simon Flaquer (Charles
Coburn), the family solicitor, retains hotshot barrister Tony Keane (Gregory
Peck) to defend the accused. One visit to Holloway prison and Tony forgets
about his loyal and attractive wife of eleven years, Gay (Ann Todd), and
openly falls madly in love with the accused (If this bolt of love happened,
it happened in the writer’s head and not onscreen). Becoming overwrought
with emotion, Tony tries to pin the murder on the Canadian valet Andre
Latour (Louis Jourdan) despite it being obvious that Mrs. P. was in love
with the valet and is not above suspicion since she had a checkered past
and was a poor girl who married to improve her station in life. Trying
to establish his client’s innocence at the loyal valet’s expense, the barrister
puts his reputation on the line by acting with his heart instead of his
head and greatly hurts his sweet and faithful wife who knows he’s acting
in this unprofessional way because he loves his client. During the courtroom
testimony, the barrister is stunned to learn that he’s taken the wrong
tact with his not so innocent client and has ruined the life of the deeply
affected valet. Sitting on the bench is the acid-tongued Lord Horfield
(Charles Laughton), who despises Tony for his over-emotional courtroom
bravado.
The love affair and the courtroom dramatics were unbelievable, and
the torturously verbose script offered a lot of fuss over nothing that
important. Hitchcock or not, it’s the kind of second-rate film that is
easy to forget even while in the middle of watching it.
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The Sixth & Irreversible Edible
Dawson’s Creek is a teenage melodrama about a small group of friends who grew up in the mythical Capeside, MA. In the first four seasons, the story was based in Capeside and revolved around a group of high school students. In season five, the characters started to branch off and attend college. The setting moved to Boston, MA and occasionally found its way back to Capeside and Los Angles, CA. In season six, the same approach is taken. The content remains to be overly dramatic, but I found the stories generally to be better than past seasons. For more details about the series, please refer to DVD Talk’s reviews of season one, season two, season three, season four, season five, and the series finale.
I am not a very big fan of Dawson’s Creek. The melodrama is usually a little too thick for my tastes and the characters more or less sound like they are whining rather than anything. But despite my lack of appreciation for the show, I admit, I do enjoy watching the series. Part of the excitement comes from the eye-rolling, overly melodramatic moments, and like past seasons, season six has plenty of those.
Most of the drama followed the friends trying to renew friendships with each other while at the same time destroying others, meeting new people, experiencing new situations, and ultimately trying to grow into the people they were destined to be. Some of these stories are entertaining and gripping, while a few are lackluster. I usually found it depended on which characters the stories included as to whether or not they would grab my attention. A few just made me want to shut off the TV, i.e. the character Audrey.
Audrey was introduced as Joey’s college roommate at Worthington in season five. She is a rich, spoiled brat from Los Angles without a hint of the real world. In my opinion, Audrey just kills any situation or scene she is in. For instance in the early part of season six Pacey finally grows up and gets a real job as a stock broker. When this happens, Pacey starts to spend all of his time focused on work because he really wants to succeed. Audrey has a hard time dealing with the lack of attention. She yells, screams, bitches, and starts to ruin her life with alcohol and drugs. While it is understandable her character would suffer from lack of attention, Audrey was more annoying than dramatic.
On the flipside while the rest of the cast is quite dramatic (and sometimes annoying), they are not nearly as bad. For the most part the other overly melodramatic personalities and situations are tolerable. A few are even fairly enticing.
The love triangle (Dawson, Joey, Pacey) is one story of interest. Dawson and Joey start off the season finally having sex and admitting their love for each other, only to have it ruined when Joey finds out Dawson has been dating the lead actress in the movie he is the assistant director for. For the rest of the season Dawson and Joey are at odds and they slowly try to find their place as friends again. Pacey and Joey also rekindled their flame temporarily, only to be ruined when Joey embraces her love for a new boyfriend Eddie.
Throughout the season Dawson’s future in filmmaking is an important story. In season five, Dawson was fired as an intern from a movie set. Oddly enough the director Todd brought Dawson on board his latest project as the assistant director. Todd is a great character. He is rude, vulgar, but most importantly funny. He adds a humorous dynamic to the serious tone of the show.
Jack turns his college career around by focusing more on his studies and less on frat parties. He also starts a new relationship with a guy named David. Jen also finds a new boyfriend, who plays hard to get at first and really complicates matters when he sleeps with Audrey.
All of these events (and more) lead to the series finale which puts us five years into the future. The cast is reunited for Dawson’s mom’s wedding in Capeside. Dawson is the executive producer of a television show The Creek, a show about his life, Joey works for a publisher in a New York City, Jen is a single mother, Pacey owns a restaurant, and Jack is a high school teacher. The finale is a very dramatic, over-the-top sad story. Jen is dying and it forces the cast to get together and overcome their indifferences. The finale does a decent job putting all of the loose ends together (specifically the love triangle).
With the exception of my pure annoyance with Audrey, I found season six more entertaining then the past seasons I have reviewed. Part of what I liked about this season is how the cast started to grow up and that little thing called reality became more important. While the show is still one big fairy tale, the stories were better and the characters were easier to deal with. However, this is not to say I was in love with the season (because I was not). Season six of Dawson’s Creek is worth sitting through if you enjoy teenage melodramas. It is entertaining in one of those “it’s so bad, it’s good” ways.
Episode Guide
1. The Kids Are Alright
2. The Song Remains the Same
3. The Importance of Not Being Too Earnest
4. Instant Karma!
5. The Imposters
6. Living Dead Girl
7. Ego Tripping At the Gates of Hell
8. Spiderwebs
9. Everything Put Together Falls Apart
10. Merry Mayhem
11. Day Out of Days
12. All the Right Moves
13. Rock Bottom
14. Clean and sober
15. Castaways
16. That Was Then
17. Sex and Violence
18. Love Bites
19. Lovelines
20. Catch-22
21. Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road
22. Joey Potter and Capeside Redemption
23. All Good Things… & …Must Come to An End
The DVD
The two part series finale episode is presented in the same extended version found on the 2003 DVD release of Dawson’s Creek: The Series Finale (Extended Cut). It contains the original theme music.
Is Paris Afire?
Director:
René Clément
Frostily received pursuing in '66, this star-bedecked account of the Allies' liberation of Paris has scarcely improved with age. In spite of the high-powered writing faith, the labyrinthine narrative is prosaically organised, the vignettes lack pungency and the communication, at least in the semi-dubbed English version, is astonishingly leaden ('Issue a proclamation to the population'). Even as history it's suspect, since the marvellously hard to swallow power struggle between the Gaullist guerilla movement and its Communist counterpart is scarcely allowed to make note of. On the increased by side, Grignon's photography is grainy and authentic looking, Jarre effectively counterpoints militaristic drums and cymbals with lilting French melodies; and some of the unmatched turns are really amusing -
Kirk Douglas
' wolfish rendering of General Patton, Welles as a concerned neutral, making a four conduct tea overdo out like a light of every banality he has to utter.
The
movie
H. Rider Haggard’s adventure novels are classics of the genre, and
King Solomon’s Mines is at the head of the class. It’s no
surprise that this novel was adapted for the screen… and I suppose
it’s no big surprise that the 1950 Hollywood adaptation jettisons
just about everything from Haggard’s book, keeping only the title,
the character of Alan Quartermain, and a few bones from the skeleton
of the book’s plot. To give credit where it’s due, what we end up
with is a passably entertaining film in its own right; it just bears
very little resemblance to its source of inspiration.
Set in 1897 in the wilds of Africa, King Solomon’s Mines gives
us the great white hunter Alan Quartermain (Stewart Granger), who is
discouraged with his life of leading hunting safaris full of clueless
Europeans eager to bag an elephant or two. Enter Mrs. Curtis (Deborah
Kerr) and her brother, who propose to hire Quartermain to lead a
truly daring expedition into the “dark” of Africa to find
Mrs. Curtis’ missing husband. (Incidentally, fans of the original novel will no doubt note the change from “Quatermain” to “Quartermain” as the hero’s name; the change in spelling is fairly typical of the free hand that the filmmakers took with the novel as a whole.)
King Solomon’s Mines is quite an interesting film, one that is
half adventure story and half wildlife documentary. There’s no plot
to speak of (going from Point A to Point B isn’t really much of a
plot) and the adventure story part of it comes mainly in the last
half hour or so of the film, when a few segments from Haggard’s novel
actually make it back into the story. The rest of the film is mainly
a travelogue, with Quartermain pointing out various wildlife and
discoursing on the cycles of life and death
in the jungle.
The wildlife footage in King Solomon’s Mines probably had the
effect in 1950 that eye-popping CGI does now: that is, to wow the
audience and encourage them to forget that there’s really not a whole
lot of substance to the movie. The film certainly benefits hugely
from its on-location shooting; it has a remarkable degree of
expansiveness and sense of authenticity that are still impressive
even fifty years after it was made. And while modern viewers have
probably seen enough wildlife documentaries to not be especially
impressed just by the presence of wild animals in the frame of King
Solomon’s Mines, it’s undeniable that some of the footage we get
here is truly amazing. There’s a massive stampede (and no, those
aren’t CGI zebras filling in the background…), and some
breathtaking footage of running giraffes, a group of elephants, a
pride of lions, and so on.
What’s perhaps most curious about King Solomon’s Mines is how
it doesn’t feel absurdly dated (most of the time). To be sure, it’s
predictably sexist (”any woman who wants to go on a safari must
have something wrong with her”) but that actually doesn’t
interfere too much with the story, and apart from the utterly
predictable and lame romantic sub-plot, Deborah Kerr’s character does
pretty well for herself. Given that it was made in 1950, viewers
should be aware that what look like real on-screen animal deaths
almost certainly are real (the elephant in the first scene in
particular made me wince), but oddly enough, the overall attitude of
the film in general and Quartermain in particular is fairly
respectful of the wildlife. (Well, we do get a totally gratuitous
snake killing, but at least it’s implied rather than actually shown.)
The presentation of the native African characters is probably the
best-handled part of the film. All the Africans speak in their own
languages, whether amongst themselves or talking with Quartermain,
who is portrayed as speaking several African languages. This is
infinitely better than the sadly typical “foreigners speak in
English with funny accents” approach, both in terms of being
respectful and in terms of making a more exciting movie. This
respectful style isn’t limited to the handling of dialogue, but
extends throughout the film: we see Africans not just working as
bearers (and even then it’s clear that Quartermain respects them as
comrades) but also as warriors and kings. With the one exception of a
ludicrous dance and combat at the very tail end of the film, the use
of native African songs, dances, customs, and attire is very nicely
done and certainly adds interest to the film.
All told, King Solomon’s Mines is an oddly paced film. It’s
essentially a picaresque travel story, with various minor incidents
happening along the journey, but no real plot development at all;
viewers who are used to action-packed films will undoubtedly find the
film a little slow. Still, at 103 minutes, it’s not over-long, and it
does manage to offer an entertaining and engaging viewing experience,
even if it’s not quite what I would have expected.
The
DVD
King Solomon’s Mines is packaged in a plastic keepcase (not a snapper) and features cover art that looks like it’s a reprint of the original 1950 movie poster, which adds a very charming retro look to the packaging.
As I started watching “The Number 23,” I couldn’t help remembering the little 1998 film from Darren Aronofsky called “Pi.” That was the offbeat story of an character mathematician who was slowly prosperous mad while hunting for numerical order in the corner in the number for pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, approximately 3.1416 to infinity. I rather enjoyed the Aronofsky coating, and the similarities with “The Number 23,” although superficial, are apt. “The Number 23,” you see, is also about a man becoming obsessed by the implications of a exact integer.
The differences in the movies, though, are more striking. First, a bigger-dub director, Joel Schumacher (”St. Elmo’s Fire,” “The Lost Boys,” “Flatliners,” “Falling Down,” The Shopper,” “Phone Cubicle,” “The Illusion of the Opera”) helmed “The Number 23.” Second, two bigger-popularity actors, Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen, peerless in it. And, third, the budget inasmuch as “The Number 23″ would fool financed about 500 movies corresponding to “Pi.” Yet, for all that, “The Issue 23″ carries its plot through to such an exaggerated conclusion that it ruins everything it builds up so carefully in the beginning. In that regard, the little indie “Pi” is by far the better film.
“The Number 23″ concerns a extraordinarily striking cover shackles named Walter Sparrow (Carrey), a dog catcher working for the Animal Control Count on of a suburban city. One age his wife, Agatha (Madsen), buys him a secondhand novelette she happens to see in a bookstore, a original called “The Number 23″ by Topsy Kretts. It’s all concerning a fellow named Fingerling who becomes obsessed with the million 23, and the most surprising paraphernalia more the book’s seal is that it seems to reflect the real life of Walter himself. The more Walter reads, the more convinced he becomes that the book’s main sign is very him. Coincidence?
Then, the book introduces Walter to the covey 23. Again, it seems twin everything in his life adds up to 23, and it starts Walter outlook: His name, his birthday, his driver’s license, his social confidence figure, even his address all add up to 23.
Equal scarier is that in the book, Fingerling is a killer, and it’s then that Walter begins to have grisly nightmares. The number begins to consume his life and bend his mind. Not his wife, not his teenage son (Logan Lerman), not a family friend (Danny Huston) can persuade Walter that the partnership of the number is all in his mind, that it’s all just an elaborate sport for paranoid delusionals, or that it’s all simply a big, clever game, like the so-called “Bible Code,” where you can discover to be whatever you indigence in it.
But nothing stops Walter’s phantasms. He becomes possessed by the number, and he begins to see schemes and conspiracies all far him. He flush takes a hotel room with the integer 23; the number is coming to determine a escape him.
All for the good. The movie’s first half holds up reasonably well, indeed if it seems repetitious at times. I especially liked the slow abatement of poor Walter into fantasyland, and I liked Schumacher’s darker and darker phrasing as Walter gets nuttier and nuttier. I felt a small distraction, albeit, at the beginning where Carrey is looking for the place; I wasn’t quite sure if Nick c accomplish were doing it for laughs or not. But the actor in good time satisfactorily finds the label and gets down to serious business.
It’s then that the silver screen falls alone. By the b half, the story takes an abrupt straighten out turn and suddenly becomes a noir mystery thriller, at which immaterial its gets spacier, spookier, and a whole allowance a a good sillier. The machination becomes more melodramatic and muddled, for all time following no logic and making almost no sense whatsoever.
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When the denouement arrives, it is too contrived, too convenient, and far too unlikely to satisfy one’s peeping. Worse, the expose comes much too soon, leaving more remote too prolonged for its concluding reason, which is an fair and square further welcome-down. It’s all a decided disappointment, premised the right buildup we’ve experienced and the payoff we’ve anticipated.