|   Frida and 25th Hour... | tugmcmartin
Aug 12, 2003 10:19 AM | | Saw both of these films this past weekend. Largely disappointed by both.
Frida: Great performances by Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, and Geoffery Rush. But the story, and thus the movie, was a total drag. Who read about this woman's life and felt like it needed to be told on the big screen? A pretty plain and normal life with your typical problems associated with marriage that were all her own making. The movie did little to make me more interested in Frida's works and wasn't so much about the artist as it was about the artist's life. I dunno, it was just a bland, boring movie that i couldn't wait for to be over. A couple of artistic things i liked about it: the colors were absolutely brilliant in many of the scenes. Often you couldn't tell if you were looking at a painting or a real scene. This was pretty cool. Also, i like the use of cut-scenes of paper models and string puppets. Thought that was very effective.
25th Hour: This being a Spike Lee movie, i was really expecting a lot more. I liked the idea behind the movie, showing a convicted drug dealer dealing with the last hours of his freedom and how he handles the situation. But to me, this movie was really conflicted from the very beginning of the movie. Did it want to be memorial/tribute to New York City and the American Spirit in the aftermath of 9-11? Or did it want to be about this drug dealer coming to grips with his past and his mistakes. I got the feeling that Lee was trying to make it about both, but it didn't really work. The 9-11 related scenes seemed forced and out of place and because of that, the message of triumph and continuance of the american spirit fell flat. Even the two monologues (one by Norton, a rant against New Yorkers... the other by the guy that plays Norton's dad, a talk about the ability to get lost in America and start over), while brilliant for what they had to say, just felt out of place. This made 25th Hour a film with a great message, but one that was poorly conveyed. Also, the performances seemed pretty pedestrian from what i've come to expect of most of the main characters (Norton, Pepper, Hoffman, and Dawson). Its worth seeing, but there's others i'd put above it on a wish list for a friday night at Blockbuster.
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