Reviews

...go to the library and check out a book of Restoration Comedy--late 1600s-ish. You can be sure that Crane and Kaufman ate this stuff up while in college and probably look it over even now to keep fresh.

The situations? People going thru all sorts of tricks and scams in the name of love; parents making fun of their kids, kids making fun of the parents; guys trying to figure out how to break up with girls, true lovers stumbling along to marriage...sound familiar? Already covered by Etheredge, Wycherly, and Congreve. And very wittily, too.

I love "Friends". I watch the episodes over and over and still get a kick out of it. I love Restoration Comedy, too, and I think it is because it and "Friends" are so similar.

Watching "Traffic" was like watching two movies made by two different people: one who gave us the scenes with Benicio del Toro and /or Tomas Milian; and one who was trying to make "Dragnet".

Outside of Javier Rodriguez y Rodriguez and General Arturo Sanchez, the were no characters in the film--Miguel Ferrer almost made it. The rest were one dimensional figures representing moral righteousness, law enforcement, innocence, ignorance, clulessness.....

It made me think of a movie made specifically to make the middle class suburbanites say "Oh, my, drugs are a terrible problem! Look, those white preppie kids are even involved. And the issue is very complicated, too. I know so much more about it after seeing that movie!"

True, the cinematography was interesting--but even Aristotle knew that ya can't have a good play without plot and character. And that has not changed.

Hannibal Lecter is a Restoration spark, and Anthony Hopkins has done his homework.

The problem with "Hannibal" is that he has nobody to spar with. There may be an obsessive fascination between him and Clarice, but there is no exchange of wit: she has none, and his is beyond her. It is true that in "Silence of the Lambs" Clarice had to use her head; in "Hannibal" she is barely there.

I would love to see a Hannibal Lecter with a friend or soul mate, and with an adversary worthy of his time. The grisly aspects of Dr. Lecter's character have been over played to the sad detriment of his wit. He is oh, so much more than a killer.

Is there a screen writer ready to take up the challenge? Where is Etheridge when we need him?

Having read many of the comments about this film on this web site, I could see that there was a need for some lighter chit-chat about this interesting and evocative piece of work.

There are several sub-plots going on, some more compelling than others, depending on the viewer, I would imagine.

Some are as old as the hills: betrayal, coming of age, despair, death.

One sub-plot whupped me smack between the eyes, and as we communicate more and faster via internet, I'll have lots of company: getting together with old lovers. It's one thing if we happen to run into them, as in "Yi Yi", but quite another when we are prowling thru our old high school web sites and the various reunion dot coms--we can't help finding these turkeys. And that may not always be a good thing.

We always wonder what would have happened if.....often forgetting that not only do you and your old lover look like sacks of potatoes with reading glasses and gray hair, but THERE WAS A REASON THINGS HAPPENED THE WAY THEY DID.

"Yi Yi" gives us a very nice story around this theme; as it does with its other themes. And in watching the film tell the story of this and other happenings in the life of its core family, we notice that these people LOOK JUST LIKE US. They eat, live, quarrel, go to school, dress, and work JUST LIKE US.

So either people are the same all over the world regardless of culture and heritage, or, as P.J. O'Rourke wrote somewhere: The cold war is over and we won.

This is a nice movie--I think it is a "chick-flick", but not obnoxiously so. It is a good antidote to watching Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst etc, do their thang.

I first saw this movie in 1963 by hassling the cashier into selling me a ticket though I was under 18. I can't remember what I expected, but it was so interesting to me that I came back with a couple of underage friends--and got in again. This is a very sophisticated film not only for its time, but for now. There is no surprise ending or plot twist, but the use of the film-within-a-film allows the characters to relate to the outside world even though all the action takes place within one studio apartment. And what they have to say makes as much sense now as it did then. This is a film that could be re-shot with a minor change of clothing style and would look and sound cutting edge.

While "Traffic", in its glossy, artfully edited, mainstream way, explores the glossy, mainstream life of at least some drug traffickers, "The Connection", in its gritty, black-and-white, hand-held way, explores the gritty, hand-held life of at least some of the customers.

I would recommend this film for anyone who is interested in serious exploration of the drug culture. For people who think "Trainspotting" too mainstream--or at least too narrow in approach. "The Connection", too, is narrow, but it helps round out the picture begun by "Traffic" and"Trainspotting".