MOVIE CLUB: DIE ANOTHER DAY AND MORE
From: Sam Hallgren
To: Adam Kempenaar; Eric Baker
Subject: Baddest Movie In The Whole Damn Town

Maybe it's Timothy Dalton's fault. I don't think I've seen a Bond movie since "The Living Daylights." And despite Adam's contention that Mr. Brosnan is the best Bond of all time, I still don't have an interest in seeing "The World Is Not Enough" or any other Bond film. I have, tucked away in some compartment of my brain, a pubescent fondness for "Octopussy" and "For Your Eyes Only," which, together with the two Dalton Bond films, account for my complete Bond education. Maybe I saw "Goldfinger" on TV once, but I can't remember. Some might call me a philistine or a traitor to my sex. I came of age during one of the series’ darker periods, and I have never bothered to remedy that fact. So I get my guilty pleasures elsewhere. Or is Bond not a guilty pleasure? Am I minimizing the cultural impact of the series? Are their guiltless Bond gourmands out there?

As to the title of my post, I am not accusing the new James Bond movie of being a terrible movie (I haven’t seen it), nor do I suggest that Adam has implied as much from his review of the film. The title of this post in an effort to engage the readers (and Adam and Eric) in a conversation that may help me answer a question that occurred to me as I thought about the film I saw last night: "13 Conversations About One Thing." "13 Conversations," as Joey Cotton misogynisticly -- but accurately -- relates in the Feedback Forum, is a terrible film. Of this there is no question. According to his review on 8/20, Adam liked the film. He calls it "intelligent and engrossing." I found it intellectually lazy and pretentious. One of my least favorite combinations. There are characters in the film with interesting stories. Any one of them would have made for an interesting character study. Unfortunately the director, Jill Sprecher, has such a limited imagination that she can't find the means to tell a single story with a coherent arc. The first fifteen minutes of the film offer an intriguing visual aesthetic, and Sprecher sets a thoughtful and patient tone. But after carefully introducing her bruised and broken characters, she abandons them to an hour and fifteen minutes of self-indulgent conversation. It is a conversation Sprecher is having with herself; and it couldn't be less enlightening or interesting. The end is contrived, and a symptom of the film's half-baked "what-the hell" quality. Here are two recommendations that accomplish what Sprecher’s film could not (to show that I am not a slave to Aristotelian structure like Joey Cotton): "Waking Life" (sure it's pseudo-intellectual and indulgent; but at least it's honest about it); and "My Dinner With Andre" (it could be called "One Conversation About 13 Things;" it's fascinating -- like listening to your two favorite college professors having a wine-fueled conversation).

What I meant to say when I brought up "13 Conversations" (which, by the way, sits at the bottom of my "films of the year" list with "XXX"), was something about categorizing bad films. There are countless bad films out there; but how many TYPES of bad films are there. "XXX" goes in the "big budget/incompetent action filmmaker" pile (anything with Arnold after T2); "13 Conversations" goes in the "lazy and pretentious" pile ("American Beauty"); "Road To Perdition" goes in the "style over substance prestige picture" pile ("A Beautiful Mind;" "Forrest Gump"). And on and on. Give me some help here, guys. Bad films. What do we do with them? And which kind of bad film is your least favorite? This might be a good time to elaborate on the select group of films that get this response from me when the credits roll: "that director just shit on my face" (also known as the "Robert Zemeckis"). Details to follow.