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Cocaine Cowboys is narrowly focused on how Miami became the drug capital and the most dangerous city in the United States during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The film is lasciviously fascinated with the lavish lifestyle and the grotesque violence generated by the drug trade. Many obviously find such material quite fascinating. There's no denying that several anecdotes shared by dealers, smugglers, cops and veteran reporter Edna Buchanan are very amusing. Fans of TV's Miami Vice and Brian de Palma's Scarface are advised to rush to a theatre playing this film. They'll find that the real-life models of the fictional villains are even more flamboyant and vicious (the life of Griselda "the godmother" Blanco could be turned into a nifty fiction film). CocaineCowboys combines talking-head interviews with old TV footage in rat-tat-tat editing style. Shots of piles of cash and large stashes of cocaine are used as would-be punctuation marks; and there are more snapshots of bloody, perforated bodies than you've ever seen in your life.

Cocaine Cowboys is documentary film-making as tabloid journalism. Its cheap thrills provide a measure of entertainment but its reportage is devoid of context and thoughtful commentary. Director Billy Corben is a native, but as one born in 1979 his view of the material is decidedly second-hand. Towards the latter stages, Cocaine Cowboys strains to present Miami as "the city that cocaine built" by hyperbolically describing late-70s Miami as a "sleepy hamlet". There is some truth to the argument but it is a self-serving and simplistic one. Moreover, the content as presented here is likely to perpetuate certain ethnic stereotypes about the Colombian community and Cuban "marielitos" (Cubans who arrived when Castro allowed migration to the US through the port of Mariel in 1980).

This highly enjoyable feature would be most accurately described as experimental. What makes it so is that The Joy of Life is composed of several parts that are quite different from each other. Only the visual approach remains constant: static and depopulated vistas of one of the world's beautiful cities: San Francisco and the Bay Area.

The first part involves voice-over readings from the diary of a butch lesbian experiencing romantic and sexual longing. I don't know whether these are the experiences of a fictional character or those of writer/director Jenni Olson. The voice we hear is that of San Francisco-based filmmaker Harriet "Harry" Dodge (By Hook or by Crook). This part of The Joy of Life resembles the director's short Blue Diary, which is also included on the DVD. Part two is very brief. Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads his evocative poem "The Changing Light" while the screen remains completely black. Part three revolves around the complex production histories of two classic films with suicidal characters: Capra's Meet John Doe and Hitchcock's Vertigo. Part four concerns the Golden Gate Bridge as a suicide mecca (the film is dedicated to one of the over 1300 people who've jumped to their deaths, a friend of the director who committed suicide in 1994). The Joy of Life documents the failed efforts by suicide prevention advocates to erect a barrier to prevent people from taking the 220 ft. plunge. Ms. Olson is clearly an advocate of erecting a barrier, as it was done for the Eiffel Tower and other suicide landmarks around the world.

The Joy of Life is brilliantly executed and practically impossible to classify as a whole. It is a personal confessional, a poetry reading, an essay film, and a social-advocacy documentary. What holds it together is the filmmaker's love for San Francisco and its residents.

Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is the story of a girl extricated from her country and estranged from her family, subjected to "ridiculous" ritual, and trapped by duty. A girl subjected to constant scrutiny and supervision. An often lonely, bored and frustrated girl who escapes into acquisitiveness and hedonism. The French Revolution is kept away from her by custom and lifestyle thus the film, which adopts the protagonist's point of view, is not intended as a lesson on a most significant historical event. This intimist approach is only betrayed briefly, late in the film, when meetings between American revolutionaries and the French monarchy are dramatized to provide a bit of geopolitical perspective. Otherwise, Marie Antoinette is about the girl inside the Queen. It's bedroom scenes connect Marie Antoinette to Lost in Translation's Charlotte, alone in a hotel room in a foreign land and, even more dramatically, to the Lisbon girls of The Virgin Suicides, confined to their bedroom in suburbia. Miss Coppola has, in the span of three features and a short (Lick the Star, about a 7th grade "princess" being outcasted by her peers), developed a unified body of work linked by common themes. Whether transpiring in the early 70s or the late XVIII century, whether set in Detroit or Versailles, Sofia Coppola's films bear the mark of a true auteur.

Marie Antoinette is a sensory experience, an audiovisual feast. Cinematographer Lance Acord (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) covers the scenes with a varied repertoire of shots while the lighting is uniformly diffuse, somewhat somber at times. The occasional use of hand-held cameras is quite effective, as when Marie Antoinette walks towards the castle as people stand on both sides to welcome her. Also highly deserving of credit are the costume design by Milena Canonero (Barry Lyndon, Titus), the set decoration by Veronique Melery (A Very Long Engagement), Anne Seibel's art direction, and the original music composed by Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin.

Given the attention received, the film's music deserves further consideration. The opening credits are scored to the Gang of Four's hard-rocking "Natural's Not in It", a thematically-appropriate song about the commodification of love and being trapped by the social order, with the recurring refrain "this heaven gives me migraine". So much talk of "80s pop" when, in reality, the first half of the film is dominated by the music of Jean-Phillipe Rameau (1683-1764) and the period-congruent original score. Then comes a celebration of materialist excess to "I Want Candy" and a few judiciously selected snippets of 80s tunes. These accentuate what is, for the most part, an impressionistic portrait of the young queen.

Given the narrow focus, Marie Antoinette's greatest asset is Miss Kirsten Dunst, who's perfectly cast in the lead role. She's a charming actress who can credibly play a character over a twenty year span beginning in mid-adolescence and convey a whole range of emotions with ease.

It seems obvious to me, that the four years that passed from her narrow escape from Versailles until her beheading are most interesting and poignant. I think it's lamentable that the film leaves out a major, most tragic, and challenging final chapter in her life. As a result, the film ends on a shallow note, in that it doesn't concern itself with Marie Antoinette once she's surrendered her pampered, luxurious lifestyle. Given the abrupt ending, the lack of end titles providing a brief summation of her final days is perplexing.