Inside Man

[rm]

Finally just caught this on HBO. Really good. Perfect role for Clive Owen who is definitely one of those people that's surprisingly hard to cast if you look at all the stuff he's been in that just hasn't worked at all (or where he's been great but the movie didn't hold up -- like Closer). There's a tonal quality to his enjoyment of himself on screen that just begs to be used, but "smug asshole" just doesn't give him nearly enough to do.

Anyway, still filled with all those little Spike Lee tics that annoy the crap out of me as a viewer, but very, very solid. Summer of Sam remains my favourite of his, but this was seriously interesting and lean stuff.

Comments

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Huh. I didn't care for it - was actually terribly disappointed for a lot of great pieces that should have ended up as a better whole. For one thing I thought Jodie Foster's character was sadly wasted. But mostly it felt like Lee was trying to film a crime story as a slice-of-life film and realized about two-thirds of the way through that it wasn't working (not that it can't) but sticking with it anyway. Summer of Sam, OTOH, was a slice-of-life film with the crime story as part of the framework, which is why it worked.

Funny bit about SoS: when I got my iMac part of the promotional package was supposed to be a DVD of A Bug's Life. My DVD looks like A Bug's Life; that's what the screen printing on the DVD says. But you put it in the player and it's Summer of Sam.