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GregFromOakland
Reviews
Suckerfish (1999)
This film is in a genre all it's own.
I thoroughly enjoyed this film and found it very engaging and funny. However the timing and pacing of this film most likely will throw off most viewers.
The story revolves around some highly unscrupulous sales reps for pet store products who find creative, humorous ways to shaft their competitors. It appears that Tim Orr must either have life experience being a sales rep or has done his homework on the topic because he exudes an instinct for the dark side of the trade.
There's also a subplot with Gerri Lawlor's character who is married to Tim Orr's character with a secret extramarital affair, which the actors manage to skillfully weave into the main plot.
The plot could have been about almost anything.
I had known that all the dialog and acting in this movie were improvised - no scripts. But instead of a series of vignettes that are comedic ("About Last Night" comes to mind) the structure of this movie is long form improv, or a series of improv scenes connected by a story thread which is also improvised, made up on the fly. With this form of improv everything which happens in any of the scenes must become part of the plot including mistakes.
In the theater, long form improv requires the actors to keep the story "straight" while it is evolving - and at the same time adapt to any new wrinkles that might show up. I'm not sure if that's how this film was made or not. But my experience was very similar to watching long form improv in the theater.
If you watch this like a "normal" Hollywood movie it could seem very disjunct. There should be a genre called "Long Form Improv" but I don't know of any movies but this that would fit.
Babel (2006)
I don't really know why they made this movie
Babel uses the scheme used in Traffic and Crash, which is to have multiple stories with a thread in common which isn't initially obvious. Unlike those other two movies Babel is basically a soap opera with a shooting here and a few close calls for some of the characters to give it some drama. But basically nothing really that important happens. Most of the drama comes from either miscommunication or stupidity.
The underlying message of this movie is "Gosh, strange things happen sometimes." Good, dramatic acting from a very good cast, the problems are with the story which is based on a really dumb accident, and overblown dramatic effects, especially from hand-held cameras.
Havana (1990)
Underrated
I just saw this one again on DVD and was surprised at how good it was. The acting, story and environment made it very easy to follow what was going on. I fail to see big holes in the plot: the characters are very well developed. What is created is a very sweet romantic thriller in a historical setting - the viewer knows that the revolution will take place so that part is anti-climatic.
The film didn't attempt to make the revolutionaries into the good guys - Batista's forces did come across as corrupt and arrogant though.
One mistake: Redford's character convinces the security chief he works for the CIA which is implausible since he's supposedly on assignment in Cuba and doesn't speak Spanish.