Rencontres à Manhattan

Edward Burns is the kind of writer/director whose movies make you feel like you definitely could be one of the characters.

The feelings, insecurities, confidence, etc. of the characters you can see and make connections throughout the movie because of the way it was filmed, as if it were a documentary. It gave the audience a more unique perspective than most romantic films. There was much less of the "meant for each other" bull that you see in most romantic comedies. The characters were believable without tending towards cynical. The best facet of the movie is that it allows the audience to draw their own conclusions about love, sex, and these relationships without pushing too hard the director/writer's ideals.

A good film, refreshingly real, but without the big important moments (transformation, change, when characters learn something, etc.) it is ultimately forgettable. This movie doesn't teach an audience anything it doesn't already know, it simply confirms/denies our own viewpoints on relationships. Edward Burns seemingly takes a camera to real life people and shows the all encompassing exterior of their relationships with their lovers.

The lives and lovees of 6 New Yorkers by writer/director Edward Burns.

Heather Graham plays an unhappily married woman whose husband, Stanley Tucci, is cheating on her with Brittaney Murphy who is 20 years his junior. Meanwhile, David Krumholtz is attracted to Murphy but she can;t dump Tucci. Also Graham is attracted to Edward Burns but won't cheat on her husband. Burns is attracted to her and Rosario Dawson who is Krumholtz's ex-wife. Got all that? Trust me...it plays out very well.

It's all talk about sex, love, sex, relationships, sex, marriage, sex...too much about sex, but it's all interesting and the characters are well-drawn and believable. The acting helps. Graham is just great; Tucci is so-so but OK; Murphy is interesting--she can be really good and really bad, but more good than bad; Burns is VERY handsome and appealing (if a bit whiny); Dawson is wonderful and Krumholtz is interesting. They all work well together (and separately) and really put the script across. Even when a really melodramatic whopper is thrown in towards the end, it works.

Only two complaints--it's too long (Tucci and Murphy complain about the same thing FIVE TIMES!!!) and it's all shot with a hand-held camera which is way too jittery and annoying--I realize Burns used it to keep down costs but still...

Absorbing and realistic...well worth catching.

Edward Burns once again shows that he's an excellent writer and this is a pretty good film about the relationships of several people. Each character is well drawn out and the dialogue is especially good. Burns has the characters look into the camera and talk about what's going on with them and what they are feeling like its a documentary. I'm not a big fan of this technique but it does work okay here. Brittany Murphy is very good and shows a lot of natural charm and Rosario Dawson has an interesting role. The only part that doesn't quite ring true is Stanley Tucci as the cheating husband. Why would anyone cheat on Heather Graham? But for the most part its an extremely well written film and all the actors are very good. Nothing elaborate but very honest. You have to appreciate it for that.

"Sidewalks of New York" feels like a retread of Ed Burns' earlier works. Once again we have a bunch of intermingling couples who do nothing but talk talk talk and obsess about relationships and their personal insecurities with them. When I first saw "The Brothers McMullen," I was surprised at how drawn into the story I was. But this story (as was also the case with "She's the One") seems way too similar to "McMullen." Things that were forgivable in that film are growing tired and distractive: Everyone meets in a classical "cute" way from the golden era of cinema. Everyone coincidentally runs into each other at the most convenient moment. Most of the characters are forgettable, and their relationships are not very believable. The film isn't very funny, and most of the running jokes fail. The film also doesn't live up to its title in that New York is shot in a most un-passionate, unflattering way--this better not appear on any list about the best films depicting New York. Burns puts alot of trust into improvisation, apparently telling his actors to just "roll with it." But he seems to feel that realism and improvisation can substitute for substance, and this is not true--many actors rant on and blurt out lines that don't feel genuine, almost forced by improvisation, when Burns should have just shouted "cut" and done a retake. The phony "interview" moments when the fictional characters speak to the camera, react to something offscreen, or ask if they should "start over" come off equally unnatural. Performances are bland for the most part, save Dennis Farina. Heather Graham comes off particularly bad, at one point I even thought I caught her fighting a smile, ready to bust out laughing during a "serious" scene.

Once again, we have a self-hating, self obsessed older male jerk who has an affair behind his insecure wife's back, we have a young idealistic kid who romances a girl with immediate promises of love and marriage, and again we have Ed Burns meeting someone by fighting over a material object--in "McMullen" it was an apartment, in "Sidewalks," it is a copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

It's not that I hate this movie, its just that I see a lack of passion in it. It is almost as if Ed Burns doesn't trust his ability to move on, and that leaves us with total mediocrity. Grade: C-

I tuned in towards the beginning, watched a few minutes and said "hey this is cool, it's like real life". That high didn't last all that long, despite the neat idea of showing overlapping romances. Here's some of the problems - 1) nobody in the movie is all that sympathetic; 2) the deliberately amateurish directorial style, which includes short video cuts in the middle of nearly every extended conversation(!?), is unique the first 2 or 3 times but gets really obnoxious; 3) the preoccupation with talking sex to the exclusion of nearly anything else also gets old pretty fast. Dawson and Murphy are both attractive and try hard, but this whole thing started to seem false and/or pointless pretty quick. I wanted to at least watch the whole thing through since I was writing this, but sorry I just couldn't make it; maybe it got better after I tuned out. 5 out of 10. As a post-script, I watched The Brothers McMullen (not knowing it was an Ed Burns movie) and the same damn thing happened - it seemed great at first and then it wore out real real quick on me. Maybe Ed Burns should make 15 minute slice-of-life relationship movies.