The Writer's Poke

The movie jumps starts with a Philip Seymour Hoffman fantasy and a Marisa Tomei nightmare. Actually, that's meant to be a joke, but I can imagine them meeting the first day, and then they have to shoot that opening scene. I can imagine the screenplay is pretty vague, saying something about a love scene in Rio for "Andy and Gina," and then director Sidney Lumet lays out his more specific vision for the two actors... not that the love scene is all that graphic, but it's an abrupt way into the movie, and it definitely does tell you something about Andy (Hoffman). Man, I don't like that big sweaty bastard from the beginning. Neither Andy nor Hank (Ethan Hawke) are all that easy to like. One does drugs, the other doesn't pay his child support. Neither have got lives together and neither have the economic resources to dig themselves out of whatever physical or psychological holes they find themselves in. And there are no lines the dudes won't cross. Hank has Thu...

Sometimes you watch a movie and you're pleasantly surprised, and sometimes not. Based on the reviews for this one, I realized I was probably going to be disappointed watching this one. Yes, it has Ethan Hawke, Angelina Jolie, and Kiefer Sutherland, but that doesn't mean that it is guaranteed to be a good movie. But you watch the opening 5 minutes, and you think, "Well, I guess anything can happen in this one," So you're ready for anything to happen. What ends up happening is FBI agent Illeana (Jolie) falls for Costa (Hawke). He's not necessarily a suspect, and the case seems closed when she does let herself drop her guard, but even so. Her lack of judgement is disappointing, and she ends up losing her job because of it. I found it hard to believe that a woman like Jolie would fall for a guy like Hawke, but maybe that's just me. And yet, was Illeana playing to long game? Was this all part of her plan? Did she seduce him in order to capture him? No. I think ...

Lisa Loeb's "Stay" was a very cool song to me when this movie originally came out, and I graduated college in 1994. Even so, I never saw this movie.  I'm sure the fact that this is a "romance" film, and that the romance genre has never been at the top of my favorites, is one main reason... It would take 32 years and an interest in Ethan Hawke films for me to finally see this one.  The movie does play the romance angle hard. In a normal romance, the two characters meant for each other can't just easily find their way to one another, but in this movie, the separation is teased a few times, and you start to wonder, Will they ever get together, or will "reality bite"? It's cute that the "Reality Bites" title is captured in the film, as part of the "In Your Face" program made out of Lelaina's (Wyonda Ryder) home movie camera documentary. In the end, almost everyone in the film actually "gets" something. Maybe it...