Friday afternoon matinee

I’m getting into the habit of trying to scoot out in time to see a movie every Friday afternoon. It’s not that hard to do, since I have only one class and usually pledge only three hours to work. The difficulty this week is in finding something that I want to see. I was sort of gearing up to go see Spartan over the last few days. David Mamet, William H. Macy, even Val Kilmer… this sounded appealing to me. And then I made the mistake of reading reviews in the New York Times, and now… I’m not as excited. Both the Times reviewer and the USA Today reviewer pointed to the same weakness, and now it’s set in my mind, so that this film is doomed from the start for me. Why do I read Friday reviews? When will I learn?

Often, I seek out reviews *after* I’ve seen a movie, particularly if I liked it. I think I often read reviews to try and validate my feelings and observations about a particular movie. Sometimes I read them for entertainment – that’s almost always the case when I consult Stephen Hunter at the Washington Post – but more often than not, I’m intrigued to see what the “professional” opinion of a film is. I like to know whether my own view and the reviewer’s is matched; in a way, it’s like having a really detailed talk about a movie with a very in-the-know friend, someone who says, “Oh, but did you catch how the grayness of the whole movie really accentuated the…” etc. etc. I just don’t know many people who regularly talks about the brilliance of a cinematographer’s work or keeps track of the writers behind the movie as actively as they watch the performances.

Anyway, USA Today actually rated Spartan lower than Starsky & Hutch (humorously, S&H received 3 ***’s, the same rating as The Passion of the Christ), though it did compliment Macy on being a native speaker of Mametese. My own experiences with Mamet are a little mixed – the first David Mamet film I ever saw was Glengarry Glen Ross, watched on election day 1998 in the Gephardt In Congress PAC office. My boss, then, was named Noah Mamet and claimed David as his brother — at the time, I didn’t know he was joking. Also: this was the first day I ever had Thai food. I totally didn’t understand the movie, partly because I kept missing chunks of it, and partly because I didn’t know anything about Mamet’s playwright history. Also, I sort of thought Noah was half-god, half-terror, so I may have been intimidated into believing it was over my head.

State and Main, which I saw because of William H. Macy, is a really fantastic film; Heist is one I’m not sure I’ve seen all of, but I’ve certainly read about it — it was featured in Art Linson’s book, as was The Edge and much Mamet trivia that makes me particularly interested to see the new work…

This may all be moot, as the movie starts at 5:25 in KC and I’m probably due at Lori’s house well in advance of that for family bonding. The only new movie opening in town, sadly, is Secret Window (which reviews all say is Brilliant Johnny Depp, Lackluster Script and Movie — gotta wonder, has there been threat of lightning strikes from on high if Johnny Depp is insulted, or is he really that good? I’m guessing it’s mostly number 2) — oh, and Agent Cody Banks: Destination London, a movie I need to tank at the box office in order to salvage my HSX portfolio from impending doom.