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Reviews
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (2002)
A nice little documentary with heart
The most common search search string to find Short and Sweet Movie Reviews is "sweet movie." There's the key word match, of course, but apparently a number of people are just looking for an endearing little film to get them through the evening. "Heart" might be one of those, but it's not the romance these folks were probably looking for.
Still photographer Sam Jones made a little profile of Wilco, a highly respected Chicago band that still has yet to break big. As with so many lucky documentary filmmakers, he got more than he bargained for: the record company rejected their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot submission, leader Jeff Tweedy fired long-time member Jay Bennett, and the CD finally got released a year later in nicely ironic fashion. It's somewhat of an art vs. commerce story, but we're not beaten over the head with that chestnut, and there's something about a bunch of seemingly decent guys trying to make music their way that plays better than it reads. Although it won't make anyone forget The Last Waltz or Woodstock, it's also a refreshing alternative to seeing entourage-laden bad boys moaning that no one understands how tough it is out there. Best suited for Wilco and documentary fans, but also for the searchers of sweet little movies with a beat.
Ronin (1998)
Realistic action with lots of depth
Director Frankenheimer is both a Francophile and a car nut, and he combines these two interests very effectively in this post-modern soldier-of-fortune thriller. De Niro is very solid, as is the rest of the cast.
Frankenheimer's commentary on the DVD is a terrific education on the many decisions a director has to work through, and his rationale for the choices he made.
Ronin (1998)
Realistic action with lots of depth
Director Frankenheimer is both a Francophile and a car nut, and he combines these two interests very effectively in this post-modern soldier-of-fortune thriller. De Niro is very solid, as is the rest of the cast.
Frankenheimer's commentary on the DVD is a terrific education on the many decisions a director has to work through, and his rationale for the choices he made.
Stolen Summer (2002)
Shouldn't work, but does.
Anyone who watched "Project Greenlight" last fall (a documentary about a competition for novice screenwriters to direct their own low-budget feature film) would have thought that this was a complete train wreck, resulting in an unreleasable movie. Well, it was released, and the last laugh goes to director Pete Jones, who has made an uneven, sappy, but ultimately successful feature. The whole Greenlight saga now seems contrived and overblown, and emphasizes the highly selective, and therefore subjective, nature of documentary films and so-called Reality TV.
Oh yeah, the movie. Eight-year-old Pete O'Malley undertakes a quest to redeem himself in the eyes of a disapproving Catholic nun, and decides, using questionable logic, to help a Jewish kid earn his way into heaven by undergoing a Chicago lakefront decathlon. While there are plenty of technical grounds for criticizing the film (for starters, the lead kid actors are pretty weak), its relentless earnestness (and great performances by Chicagoans Bonnie Hunt and Aiden Quinn, plus Kevin Pollack and a small bit with Brian Dennehy) somehow wins you over. It shouldn't work, but does, and raises the hope that Jones builds on this learning experience to do something even better next time.