REVIEWS: SUNSHINE STATE, TADPOLE, THIRTEEN CONVERSATIONS... - I must be getting old. It seems like only yesterday I was sitting in London's fantastic Everyman theatre for a Kurosawa triple bill with just a quick intermission in-between films to refresh myself. Yesterday I watched three movies back-to-back-to-back and my head was so numb afterwards I felt like I'd just been forced to watch Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with my eyelids pried open like some Clockwork Orange droogie. Fortunately, I picked three pretty interesting films. Sunshine State has just about everything you'd expect from the writer/director of such great films as Passion Fish, City of Hope, and Lone Star: a community in conflict (along racial and historical lines), lost individuals struggling to carve out their identities, and multiple storylines that ultimately converge. Unfortunately, John Sayles' latest also lends itself to all of the usual criticisms of his films: the writing is (at times) didactic and preachy, sloth-like pacing, and uninventive camerawork. I've never had an issue with Sayles' straight-forward cinematography and slow pacing because his visual style has always been secondary to his writing, which features consistently sharp dialogue and fully-developed characters. (There may not be another filmmaker alive who cares about or invests more in his characters -- even the unlikeable ones -- than Sayles.) And if his speechifying sometimes seemed a bit preachy, at least it was always articulate, intelligent, and honest. With Sunshine State, however, all of these quibbles started to gnaw at me. The problem, I think, is rooted in the fact that Sayles tries to weaves together too many storylines without giving us one that is compelling enough to build the others around. The two main stories deal with women. Desiree Perry (Angela Bassett) returns home to Delrono Beach, Florida, to confront her troubled past; Marly Temple (Edie Falco) resignedly runs her father's seaside motel and diner and can't figure out her future. Meanwhile, greedy land developers want to buy Marly's property and turn the seashore into a strip mall; a former college football star returns to the area to cash in; and a banker with a gambling problem unsuccessfully tries to off himself while his shrill wife (Mary Steenburgen) works to stage the town's "Buccaneer Days" festival. Sayles is most successful when he concentrates on Marly and Desiree, played with fire and conviction by Falco and Bassett. But some of the peripheral storylines are never fully integrated into the narrative, which makes the film feel like it is meandering to its conclusion rather than leading us somewhere truly surprising. Lone Star (1996), which I think is one of the best films of the past ten years, had a similar number of storylines, but had the mystery surrounding Sheriff Charlie Wade's murder to hold all the pieces together. With a running time of 2 hours and 21 minutes, and a narrative that never quite feels unified, I can't help but wonder if Sunshine State would have benefitted from the perspective of an outside editor, rather than Sayles himself doing the cutting, as he has done on all of his movies except Matewan and Baby, It's You. That's difficult for me to say as a fan of Sayles' work, but it might be true. It's awfully hard to cut out words and characters that you created, even if it ultimately improves the film.

I'll have some thoughts on Tadpole and Thirteen Conversations posted tonight (or early tomorrow).

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