Tag / dennis quaid

by Jaime Rebanal

Traffic Review: Steven Soderbergh’s Finest Hour in the Mainstream

✯✯✯✯✯

This is arguably director Steven Soderbergh’s finest hour in Hollywood, not only because it is the film for which he had finally won a Best Director Oscar, but alongside Erin Brockovich it helped him break into the more mainstream territory. But even as we talk about how it only continues to make him one of the most fascinating filmmakers of his own kind, it’s also amazing to think about how this film does not allow confine itself to the conventions of popular cinema at the time, because it also feels like a film that breaks down against the very system which even allowed it to get made. Soderbergh, having already established a firm ground for himself starting up a new movement of independent filmmakers with sex, lies, and videotape, has also found himself stretching beyond normal once again in a film about the drug trade.

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by Jaime Rebanal

A Dog’s Purpose – Review

✯½

I’m not a fan of Lasse Hallström (the only film I remotely like being My Life as a Dog) because I consistently find his work rather sappy and manipulative in the worst sense, so upon the notion he would direct another dog film after especially resentful feelings from Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, I would only expect something along the same lines – a sappy drama that panders towards dog lovers and for kids at the same time, but can sweetness save everything like it did for some moments of Hachi? Whatever there is to say there, it’s unfortunately not the case here for I would have expected from the premise something fascinating with its existence in the vein of Nine Lives (which I’m kind of glad exists), but A Dog’s Purpose sadly isn’t that.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Truth – Review

✯✯½

Despite the underlying importance of its subject matter, Truth is nothing more than a slog to sit through from start to finish. Screenwriter James Vanderbilt of Zodiac fame seems to have headed down somewhere else afterward and now with him going behind the camera, what could only have come up was something that’d go either way on the map. In the case of Truth, something frustrating comes along and in turn dampens the impact of what was said to come afterward. There’s a fascinating story going behind it, and quite frankly it’s the underplaying of the subject matter that keeps it from being much more as a whole.

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