Console
best movie i've ever seen.
AshUnow
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
benno-das
I have no idea what I watched. I then wondered why I bought the DVD. It has "Terrific" and similar comments from movie critics of well-known American newspapers. What they were on while they watched this stuff or when they wrote the synopsis is not clear but it seems it was the same stuff the makers of this celluloid product had. They should have kept it in their private library and watched it every time they had the stuff. Why trouble poor movie viewers who want to relax or at least have a laugh or two at the end of a tiring day or week?
moonspinner55
Fragmentary mini-guide through Los Angeles-area egos and insecurities, a dissonant dissection of characters at the proverbial crossroads in their lives, unsure how to proceed and dragging others into their inharmonious webs. Under the unwritten rule that low-budget art-films with big-name players acting for scale must be edgy and provoking, director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough have crafted a multi-character portrait of tangled lives laid bare (hence the title); they actually appear to perceive these unearthed 'truths' to be honest and outspoken, but the phoniness comes through. As a television actor hoping to make the jump to features, Blair Underwood has a chance to broaden his heretofore limited abilities and show us something special, but--aside from a funny rap in the backseat of a limousine--he's stuck playing boy-girl guessing games with journalist Julia Roberts (in a Jane Fonda shag wig). There's a funny episode with a stage actor (portraying Hitler in a production entitled "The Sound and the Fuhrer") rebelling against his direction, but the marriage and employment woes of the others smack of Alan Rudolph's "Welcome to L.A." (with perhaps a bit more needling sarcasm substituting for satire). What Soderbergh does with the look of the film (utilizing mostly hand-held cameras) is far more interesting than the writing, however no new ground is broken either way because we have all been down this lonesome road before. *1/2 from ****
Cosmoeticadotcom
More than any other name brand director Steven Soderbergh switches his style and filmic vocabulary to suit the story at hand that he wants to tell. In no film is this more evident than in his overlooked 2002 film Full Frontal. Filmed on a shoe string between his larger budgeted remakes of Ocean's 11 and Solaris, this film was almost universally panned by critics. No, it's not one of the greatest films ever made, but it's certainly not as bad a film as panned, nor a bad film at all.This film revolves around the lives of some low level movie types who are all invited to a party for a film producer who ends up dead in his motel room due to his kinky perversions. There's a married couple, Lee and Carl (Catherine Keener and David Hyde Pierce), on the rocks- he's a depressed screenwriter who's just been canned and she's an adulteress who's getting banged by the star of the film Carl wrote. That star, Calvin (Blair Underwood), is having problems both in his real and reel lives. Calvin with juggling his many lovers, including Lee, and his character Nicholas, from the film in the film called Rendezvous, who struggles through life as an actor, until he gets a break in a Brad Pitt cop film (which is a film in the film in the film) directed by real life director David Fincher. Soderbergh, himself, also appears X-ed out as himself. In the mere film in the film, Rendezvous, Nicholas is being interviewed and pursued by Catherine, who is played by Francesca in the actual film (Julia Roberts in real life). Francesca and Calvin end up at the party for Gus the producer, along with Lee and her sister Linda (Mary McCormack), the hotel masseuse who earlier in the day gave Gus (David Duchovny) a blowjob for $500. Having felt guilty over her prostitution- as well as stealing an extra $500 from Gus- it is Linda who discovers the body…. Yet, one can only help but admire Soderbergh's willingness to adeptly go back and forth between the mainstream and his indie roots, especially since his critical and financial dufecta of Erin Brockovich and Traffic has allowed him to abandon the small film if he wanted. While there is truth to criticisms that Soderbergh has made too many remakes in recent years (and I, personally prefer the smaller, personal feel of The Limey and Full Frontal) I doubt that it's due to laze, merely a restiveness and desire to see how he can veer from already tried conventions. The DVD's features are worth checking out, even if the film is not what most viewers expect. Soderbergh is, along with Francis Ford Coppola, one of the few film directors adept at discussing both film and art in general, as well the making of the film under commentary. His explication of scenes, along with the screenwriter, is top notch, as is a feature that has the characters in the film being interviewed by Soderbergh 'in character'. I guess it's a testament to the vapidity and impatience of the American public that such a gem of a little film was lost in the harsh glare of criticism, but my gut tells me that this is a film like Orson Welles' The Stranger, Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger, or Coppola's The Conversation, that will only grow in stature in his canon through the years. Given its premature burial, in fact, that's really the only thing it can do.
dfle3
This movie isn't a total write-off, but it's really navel-gazing at the lint that accumulates therein. It utilises the conceit of a movie within a movie...in other words, there is 'reality' in the movie, and a 'pretend' part which is the movie within a movie. The lines between these two get blurred often.If you are familiar with TV shows like "The office" (whether the UK or the US version), you will know the kind of performances to expect and the manner in which they are delivered...dry, awkward at times, etc. The cinematography is also the kind that The Office would use...hand held, fly on the wall kind of stuff. The editing seems odd at times, too...you seem to lose a second of time every now and again, and I'm not exactly sure what that is meant to be about.Script wise, the characters seem to prattle on about nothing much at all a lot of the time, but occasionally you feel that they are saying something important. That sense of importance is lessened by the fact that the characters (if not the actors themselves) are just plain bored by what they are saying. You, the viewer, can feel their pain too. The topics of importance raised in dialogue could be something like "race" and its relation to popular culture and representation.The aspects of this movie which make it rise above being a total loss are the odd scenes...there are amusing scenes like that of a theatre actor who plays Adolf Hitler in a very odd way. If you are tuned into that aspect of this movie, you will enjoy such moments.Train-spotters will enjoy the cameo appearance in this movie of well known film and TV actors-people like David Duchovny (The X Files), Brad Pitt (Se7en) and Julia Roberts (Ocean's Eleven). Duchovny's character also provides some of the absurd humour of this movie.I suppose my main issue with this film is this: is it a satire? Of Hollywood? If yes, I'm not sure that such a satire can rise above what it attempts to satirise. In other words, I'm not sure that it is any better than what it attempts to satirise.Another hypothesis that occurred to me was that the director, Steven Soderbergh, was satirising lesser talents than himself. If yes, the fact that this film doesn't really seem to have found an audience-critical or commercial, perhaps- suggests, again, that Soderbergh is on the same level as those he was seeking to satirise. Even though I don't feel that this movie is much of anything, I have to applaud Soderbergh's magnificent debut movie, I think, "Sex, lies and videotape". That's a movie where he got things right...performances and script and tone etc. In this movie, it all just feels so self-indulgent.If you are into pointed critiques of cinema or Hollywood, I recommend movies like "Barton Fink" which was very successful, I think, in satirising a certain Hollywood 'type'. To a lesser extent, I recommend Peter Greenway's "The baby of Macon". That is not a terrific movie, but I think it has perhaps the greatest scene in cinema history...where the viewer is confronted by the very nature of representation (in the infamous rape scene from that movie).This movie had its premiere, I think, on commercial Australian TV at a very late timeslot. That was appropriate. That's where I saw this film-in fact I PVRd it. If you can see this movie cheap, that would be the way to see it, I think.33/100
