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Reviews
Slacker (1990)
A screenwriter's exercise, not really a story
People share their random thoughts as they walk through their lives, chat at coffee shops, and preach on street corners. Everybody's got a theory and they seem to have a suspiciously nihilistic throughline: it's the 90's and all the good reasons for getting out of the house have been used up by the anarchists, the radicals, and the rooftop snipers. As we meet dozens of characters in thinly connected vignettes, we get a vivid picture of a time, a place, and a group of people. As Richard Linklater himself says in the opening monologue, all the choices that we make in our lives create alternate realities spinning off into space, formed by the possibility that we could have made a different choice, thereby creating a different future. Deep? Oh yes. Is life really like this? Definitely. We meet someone in a convenience store for two minutes, get a picture of their life, formulate some questions about them, and then, poof, they're gone, and you never know what happened, just as we never know what happened to the boy who runs down his mother, the couple who weren't on the guest list, the roommate who disappears, or any of the other characters in "Slacker."
But is it worth a movie? Open question, as far as I'm concerned. With such a string of unanswered questions, the audience eventually tires and refuses to invest emotionally in anything, knowing that they will be, once again, left hanging. Sure, life is just like that, but, like Andy Warhol's day-long film of the Empire State Building, the experiment might be better in theory (and in one of the coffee table conversations so prevalent in "Slacker") than in practice.
20 Dates (1998)
A uniquely styled, occasionally amusing love story
Okay, okay, it doesn't take Janet Maslin to see that this is a scripted (or at least joyfully improvised) movie, but hey, I'll play along. I've always been a sucker for a movie-in-a-movie anyway. Myles Berkowitz has just found a more interesting way to tell a love story than most Hollywood products. Sure beats "You've Got Mail." Robert McKee's speeches are an inspired choice as a running commentary and, while I could have done with less of Myles' own running commentary, I found the whole idea rather charming once I suspended my disbelief a little about the format. It's not quite "Spinal Tap," but as a first go-round, I'd say, what-the-heck, give the guy a real budget and let 'im rip.
One minor quibble - I would have found the whole thing more believable if EVERY girl he dated weren't a total babe. Come on, Myles, you're good, but only rock stars and rich dudes are THAT good.
200 Cigarettes (1999)
Full of cliches, empty of story
It's easy to see that Risa Bramon Garcia is a successful casting director (and not a screenwriter) for dozens of Hollywood films: the best part about this movie is definitely the on-screen talent. Except that it's wasted in a lackluster script that plays heavily on stereotypes (the little virgin in pink, the punks who are actually nice guys, the rude girls from Jersey) and fails to create any sort of compelling story. After following these cartoon cutouts around NYC for two hours, we simply don't care what happens to them - they are a really whiney bunch of people, for starters. Note for future script reading: yelling does not equal real conflict, lead characters must be likable on some level, and, if you spend the entire movie setting up a New Year's eve party, for God's sake, show the party on screen! The Polaroid montage may have saved you money, but it didn't save the film.
One final note - the casting may pull in the teen set, but I was a high school teacher until two years ago and I GUARANTEE that virtually nobody under the age of 21 knows who Elvis Costello is.
Sorry, one more thing. Why, oh why, in this day and age, are we doing a film that is such a lengthy and impassioned advertisement for teen smoking?
Buffalo '66 (1998)
I cannot understand why this movie is so popular.
Everyone seems to love this movie and I don't get it. The premise is completely unbelievable. Now, I've known some co-dependent women in my life who might actually, on a bad day, behave like Christina Ricci's character does, but the problem is, we see no details from her life, examples of her decisions, interior motivations or anything else that might explain why she agrees to help out, then fall in love with this horror show of a violent, highly troubled brute. In fact, in typical Hollywood man-centric story-telling, the movie tells us nothing about her character at all!
I suppose everybody like this movie because of the wierd camera angles and the fact that they somehow managed to get the rock group "Yes" to part with the rights to one of their songs. OK, I can give them some points for that. Ultimately, however, the story does not ring true, does not surprise or engage, and does not manage to wrap itself up without the obligatory scene in a strip bar.