dimfeld

The film 12 certainly is groundbreaking in its presentation. The guerrilla drive-in is a brilliant idea, in which the projectionist displays the movie on a wall in a parking lot and sends the audio to your car radio through a low-power FM transmitter. Incidentally, the projectionist at the showing that I attended had not obtained permission to use the parking lot, and the owner of the building came out about halfway through the movie, but he allowed us to finish the viewing anyway. The audio and video quality falls short of that of a theater, of course, but it's an excellent method for showing films without having to sign with a distributor, which leads to the reason (in my opinion) that 12 doesn't have a distributor: the movie simply isn't very good, and comes nowhere near the quality of either big budget blockbusters or Sundance/Cannes fare.

Lawrence Bridges spent approximately 12 years in production and post-production on this movie (hence the title), and although it has some decent cinematography, 12 is neither enjoyable nor thought-provoking. The movie plays as if Bridges was trying to stuff many years of loosely related ideas into one feature. Basically, the lesser Greek gods are forced by Zeus to act out Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" under threat of death. The squabbles between the gods cause disasters in the city of Los Angeles, such as the Northridge earthquake and the riots that resulted from the Rodney King verdict. Bridges uses real footage that he filmed during these events, and well it is an interesting idea, the film does not segue well into these scenes. They seem jammed into the movie, and do not actually affect anything. As the movie progressed, I felt that it lost its purpose, and that I was just watching a mediocre performance of "The Importance of Being Earnest." The fact that the characters were Greek gods affected the movie only to a small degree; it seemed to be just another potentially interesting idea that should have been better incorporated. Some social commentary on the denizens of Los Angeles is in the script too, and this is generally effective, funny, and often quite accurate, but these flares of quality do not make the rest of the movie any more bearable.

Anyway, 12 is worth watching simply because of the novel format of the guerrilla drive-in. Don't expect anything particularly groundbreaking in the film itself, but if you don't enjoy it, at least it was free.

Most of Vanilla Sky was done well. The characters are interesting. The plot leaves the viewer guessing until the last five minutes or so, when the movie ends in an unfortunate manner. Basically, one of the characters just tells David (Tom Cruise) what was actually going on throughout the movie. Rather than letting him and the audience discover it for themselves, the movie simply tells you in a conversation. I found this quite disappointing. Now, I didn't have a problem with what the ending was. It actually fit quite well. I simply wish it was presented in a different fashion.

The only other flaw in this movie was the music. Cameron Crowe has a bad habit of using classic rock in his movies in rather inappropriate places. Most of the time it fits well, but there were a few scenes in which the music didn't fit the action at all. Classic rock is fine and appropriate for a movie like Almost Famous, which is about the music world, but for other movies, such as this and Jerry Maguire, sometimes a good instrumental is all you need. The music problem, however, was but a minor annoyance that only manifested in one or two scenes.

Despite the expository ending, I do recommend this movie. Better yet, see Abre Los Ojos.