Jennifer Eight; 25th Hour

We rented Jennifer Eight (1992) because it was written and directed by Bruce Robinson, writer and director of the very very excellent "How to Get Ahead in Advertising" and "Withnail and I." It's said that this movie was his attempt to do a mainstream, formula film so he could get leverage to make other projects, but it was box office failure. And frankly, it feels like his heart wasn't really into it. Beautifully gloomy photography can't cover up the gigantic plot holes that destroy this film. I mean, a blind woman (or anybody, really) wouldn't notice that someone is in your bathroom with you, taking pictures of you in the tub? Come on! In fact, the sound design really sucked throughout. People are always walking noisily around Uma Thurman, the blind woman who can't hear the most obvious sounds. Halfway through the movie, Joe, who had put it on the to-rent list in the first place, suddenly said "I thought this was another movie! I remembered John Goodman being in it!" And he's not. The last comment on this really not good film is that it was brought to you by Diet Coke, which is drunk very conspicuously at least twice.

Next, we watched Spike Lee's 25th Hour, which we were both looking forward to. Frankly, I'm not a Spike Lee fan, since I've only ever liked Do the Right Thing and She's Gotta Have It. The rest of his oeuvre I've found either "meh..." or just not very good, though I admit I haven't seen Malcolm X, which Joe likes a lot. But 25th Hour had gotten excellent reviews, and we were psyched! But expectation has a lot of influence in how one receives a film, and if we hadn't been so psyched, maybe we would have liked it better. I thought it had a few good scenes, but I didn't like the spoken word pieces that popped up. Maybe as short films in themselves or in another film, but not as part of this one. It felt too completely disparate with the rest of the movie. The soundtrack was the most obtrusive thing I'd ever heard, trying to give drama to everything, even banal things like walking the dog (which, I know, is perhaps the point, but I found it simply distracting). It's one thing to build drama with music, but when it's on all the time, it becomes flat, like it's not even there because you learn to ignore it. Joe was less forgiving of the film. He said: "It's a muddled pile of poop!" This film seemed sponsored by Guinness, as it was drunk conspicuously a few times.