Monday, October 30, 2006

Movies: October 23 - 29

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972): This early Woody Allen movie takes the once controversial non-fiction book of the same title and turns it into a series of comedic vignettes about different aspects of sex. It is a potentially interesting idea, but I do not think it turned out too well. Because each vignette was fairly short the film moved along briskly (it also clocked in at less than 90 minutes), but few of the vignettes were engaging. The one with the giant Breast made me feel as if I were caught in a bad Philip Roth novel, but the one that is worth mentioning is the final vignette about what happens during ejaculation. It sounds a little gross, but Burt Reynolds led a crew inside a man's body and controlled all of the body's responses, so we're seeing it from the perspective of a crew trying to make everything work the way it should. This one was decent, but the rest were disappointing and not very funny.

The Sugarland Express (1974): Steven Spielberg made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express. Goldie Hawn stars as Lou Jean, a woman who helps her almost ex husband escape from a prison release program so they can go on the run and try to rescue their young son from the foster parents the state of Texas placed the child with. Much of the movie is Goldie and company on the run with a whole platoon of police cars chasing them. By platoon, I mean perhaps a hundred police cards all chasing. Spielberg does a very good job with the chase scenes and the movie has an Anti-Spielberg ending, but I did not feel I was given the opportunity to get a sense of the characters. As near as I can tell the state was completely right in taking the child and so it was difficult to feel for the "heroes" of the movie. Supposedly this is a true story, but I do not know much about the reality versus the movie. Despite the flaws of the movie, this is a strong debut for Spielberg.

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