Full Frontal
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Movie Reviews of Full Frontal
Movie Review: Excellent Parts Dampered By Whole
Summary: 3 Stars
I know of a guy who, when he hit forty, went through a divorce. His response was to go back to college, literally. He walked away from the big bank job and everything else and started living as a 21-year-old all over again. Steven Soderbergh reminds me of that guy. Having made "Traffic" and "Erin Brockovich," it's like he decided to go back to college and make an edgy--and what student does not want edgy?--film on a film student's budget. I don't know what happened to the banker, but I know what happened to Soderbergh: he made "Full Frontal," and it succeeds more than half but not entirely.The effort has a lot of fine parts but the whole does not do them justice. This is a "day in the life of" dash between interrelated lives and the daisy chain of events that connects them; mostly they are held together by the shared experience of living in LA and working either in one of the media or in the fringes. David Hyde Pierce is extraordinary as a writer faced with an array of serious losses in this single day, unaware of one more that hangs in the balance. He is the moral touchstone in a town and film where soul is an endangered species. David Duchovny is the dark angel, a producer turning 40 in a town where that is a risky move. Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood come off as rather plastic, kind of slumming it with the indie crowd, but appropriately their story line is that of characters who are revealed to be in a film within a film about an actor in a television show, etc., etc. Catherine Keener careens throughout like a pinball spiked by the worst essences of LA., and as grating as she is at first, much comes to depend on how she will make it through the day. Nicky Katt's storyline is barely tacked on, but he makes the most of it as a small-time stage actor who has wisely not quit his day job.
The biggest problem in this project is the smugness in which Soderbergh revels as he deploys indie conventions that are no longer that special: grainy, choppy film; jumpy hand-held cameras; zoom shots that are engaged like someone hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes; location shots in all low-ceiling spaces; and the assumption that regular people use words that can't be said on television as routine discourse. It's kind of like he went out and bought jeans that were already worn and had rips in them, somebody else's jeans.
Movie Review: ER, WHAT WAS THAT AGAIN?
Summary: 3 Stars
From a quiet little picture called "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" to big punches like "Erin Brockovich" and "Traffic", Steve Soderbergh has charted quite a route. He even made possibly one of the most enjoyable big-name movies of 2001, Ocean's Eleven.Full Frontal was where he probably got his kicks doing something offbeat. Not many directors can, or would want to, knock off a quick, small-budget movie between major projects. But perhaps that's what makes Steven Soderbergh such an intriguing director.
To put it simply, Full Frontal confused me. Its look at Los Angeles movie-industry culture has a way of telescoping further and further outwards. Using the visual technique for which he won the Oscar for Best Director on Traffic (he again operates as his own director of photography on this movie under the alias of Peter Andrews), he separates the different storylines and worlds with different visual looks. Much of the film is shot on digital video, giving it a harsh, washed-out look. The movie-within-the-movie is on standard 35mm. And there are two move levels even beyond that, one featuring David Fincher and Brad Pitt.
I had trouble gaining full acceptance for Full Frontal. It covers its emotional resonance with layer upon layer of stylization and apathy. He holds the characters at arms length, never really showing any sympathy for their situations. Part of this is his visual style, which, while helpful in understanding the way the movie operates, tends to lend more of a documentary feel to the proceedings. Its wild tonal shifts can throw the viewer off ..., and Catherine Keener's behavior through the first two acts make it difficult to connect with her breakdown in the third.
Perhaps die-hard film geeks will rave about Full Frontal for its cleverness and its "offbeat"ness. But that cleverness comes at the expense of the emotion that lies at the heart of this story.
All style and no substance, which is probably what Soderbergh was going for. And for that, it works. But it's difficult to care.
Movie Review: diluted tenderness, lazy vocabulary
Summary: 3 Stars
When a script utilizes the f-word ten times in a scene at a traffic light, I find myself wanting to beam in a thesaurus. I do not care for excessive profanity, partially due to personal convictions, but also due to what repetitive profanity represents artistically--a lazy vocabulary. Passion and anger and shock and dejection and even annoyance cannot effectively receive proper expression by the same handful of vulgarities. In this story in particular, characterization is blurred by poorly articulated emotions.
Tenderness which peaks out during the final scenes might have resonated more richly had the script employed more creative lines and less repetion of a generic shock-word which typically dulled the audience's comprehension of a character's motives and intentions.
Nearly all actors involved served their parts well. Julia Roberts' role seemed underdeveloped (not her fault), and Nicky the Nazi felt cartoonish and tacked onto the otherwise love and lust driven plot.
Filming technique enhanced more than it detracted. Music was generally apropos. The varying storylines intersected well, and the concise production length enabled the viewer's sufficient emotional investment in each tale.
Movie Review: not too good but not too bad...
Summary: 3 Stars
...just make liberal use of the Fast Forward button!
As others have noted, this is a pretty disjointed random set of vignettes, many of them full of film school pompousness and indie cliches, but there are some gems here and there.
The really HIGH SCHOOL dead spots though, like the interminable scenes on the set of a contemporary artsy fartsy avant Hitler play, simply beg to be skipped through.
I recommend watching this film as a collection of notoriously uneven shorts. Just skip through the garbage and enjoy what gems you can find.
Certainly would not buy it though...God bless Netflix!
Movie Review: It's a bit out there, yet still entertaining.
Summary: 3 Stars
Ever since I saw `Traffic', I have been catching up on what I have been missing of the brilliance of Stephen Soderbergh. Full Frontal, though extremely stripped down and roughed out, is still interesting and entertaining enough inspire repeat viewings; and each viewing became more entertaining than the last. If you enjoy a mixed bag of interpersonal relationships with a bit of satire and improvisation that doesn't take itself too seriously, this is the film for you.