AT THE MOVIES: First of all, Netflix is great, and everyone should sign up for it. I've watched a ton of movies lately, so I thought I'd do some brief reviews of three of them:
Confidence (directed by James Foley): You've gotta like a movie in which seven or eight actors are on screen in the opening scene, and you know who all of them are (Edward Burns! Paul Giamatti! Luis Guzman! Donal Logue! Leland Orser! The guy who played Big Pussy's FBI handler!). Not to mention hilarious supporting turns from Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia, and a co-starring role for Rachel Weisz, one of the most beautiful women in movies. True, the plot is more than a bit convoluted and the ending is a mess, but "Confidence" (from the director of "Glengarry Glen Ross") has enough to recommend that it's worth a viewing. All that, and Tom "Tiny" Lister, Jr., (wrestling's Zeus) is in it too.
Capturing the Friedmans (directed by Andrew Jarecki): This fascinating, Oscar-nominated documentary tells the story of a Long Island family destroyed by allegations of pedophilia against the father and one of the sons. What's brilliant is the way it weaves its narrative with home movies taken by the sons during the trial, which took place in the late '80s, and the way that it shifts back and forth between alleging guilt and alleging innocence (much more effectively than the similar machinations of the fiction film "Mystic River"). I'd like to officially amend my 2003 top ten list to place "Capturing the Friedmans" in the top five.
The Battle of Shaker Heights (directed by Kyle Rankin and Efram Potille): Yes, the "Project Greenlight Movie." The popular HBO show gave birth to only the third most sorrowful Affleck-connected embarrassment of 2003 (after Bennifer and "Gigli"), but its quite a debacle nonetheless. Even leaving aside that the "Project Greenlight" formula is, from the start, absolutely doomed to fail both artistically and commercially, and that the only successful thing about it is that it results in great TV. (Why would anyone watching those two idiots struggle to produce a not-so-good movie actually pay money to go see it?)
I hate to say this, knowing my girl Erica Beeney wrote it, but "The Battle of Shaker Heights" is somehow even worse than I expected it to be- an absolute mess in every way imaginable. Motivations and character development are left unexplained and shift seemingly on a dime, the tone fluctuates dramatically, the 79-minute running time feels long, and- even though we saw the Miramax producers order the directors to recut the film in order to emphasize humor- there's none of it, anywhere. Not to mention, as Josh is sure to point out, it wasn't even really filmed in Shaker Heights.
Sports Guy, as is often the case, has the last word: "I can't wait to stroll into a Hollywood Starbucks some day and see Kyle and Efram from "Project Greenlight" standing behind the counter."