"FULL FRONTAL" - Thoughts & Reviews Thread

[Mike]

http://us.ent4.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/miramax_films/full_frontal/_group_photos/blair_underwood1.jpg

I'm looking forward to this flick being a Julia Roberts fan and all. And I like that she's in a small budget movie for a change instead of some big budget hollywood movie (FULL FRONTAL had a budget of only 2 Million).

Unfortunately it's only opening in limited release on August 2nd (the top 10 markets), but I'm sure it will eventually end up in quite a few theaters.

Anyway, I'm excited about it and if it comes to a theater near me (I'm sure it will eventually) then I'll probably see it. But I haven't seen a trailer for it so I can't be sure.

Has anyone seen the trailer? Does it look good?

What does everyone else think?

[This message has been edited by Mike (edited 07-24-2002).]

[Jedi]

Well.. Personally I haven't seen the trailer but i guess Julia Roberts won't risk her career in a $2 million movie without being certain it's quite good.

[imagemaker]

I saw a trailer but it didnt show anything it just showed the cast names and a line that character says in the movie. I think it sounds great.

[notchreturns]

I have seen a few TV Spots pop up and it looks very interesting.

They showed a clip of the film when David Hyde Pierce was on Leno and it looks very low-budget, but pretty funny.

I can't wait, Soderbergh is a great director and he can't do wrong in my opinion.

[Strider]

Well, I saw a TV spot last night... it looks kinda interesting. I will probably check it out, but the main reason is only for Steven Soderbergh.

Strider

[Benny]

All I've seen is print ads, but still it looks interesting, even with Julia Roberts in it. I t will probably end up being her lowest-grossing film to date. I enjoy Soderberg movies, and this looks to be a return to the "Sex, Lies" territory. Hopefully it reaches my area this fall.

[dellamorte dellamore]

Looks like a vanity project,filled with inside Hollywood jokes that only people in the business will find funny or interesting.


And i doubt JR is taking any kind of chance with this one.What does she have to lose,she's already rich,and if she did need money that bad,she could always do another The Mexican.

[idealdiscountdude]

Soderbergh is a God in my books.

The man can do no wrong. I cannot wait for this flick. I just hope it expands very quickly so I can get to see it!!!! http://www.joblo.com/ubb/smile.gif

[thompsoncory]

Just because it is opening in 200 theaters opening weekend doesn't mean it won't make money. Look at AMELIE and MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. Both opened in (and stayed in) a small 250+ theater range for at least most of their run. AMELIE made $35 million and MBFGW looks to make around $40 million.

Also, for those interested, here are four clips from the flick I found last night:
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex1_vo.mov - 7.02 MB
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex3_vo.mov - 2.76 MB
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex3_vo.mov - 3.36
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex4_vo.mov - 4.20 MB


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[This message has been edited by thompsoncory (edited 07-28-2002).]

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[Hypothermia]

So far, there have been four "good" reviews out of 11 over at rotten-tomates.com -- and two of those were along the lines of "Eh, it wasn't horrible." And some called it "one of the worst films of the year."

Yikes. Here's hoping "Solaris" isn't shat on as much as this one.

(Yes, I admit it. I wanted this to be good. And, no, I haven't seen it. But, I am already disappointed. DAMN FILM CRITICS!)

[This message has been edited by Hypothermia (edited 07-31-2002).]

[Mike]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by thompsoncory:
Just because it is opening in 200 theaters opening weekend doesn't mean it won't make money. Look at AMELIE and MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. Both opened in (and stayed in) a small 250+ theater range for at least most of their run. AMELIE made $35 million and MBFGW looks to make around $40 million.

Also, for those interested, here are four clips from the flick I found last night:
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex1_vo.mov - 7.02 MB
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex3_vo.mov - 2.76 MB
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex3_vo.mov - 3.36
http://www.cinemovies.fr/medias/extraits/full_frontal_ex4_vo.mov - 4.20 MB


[This message has been edited by thompsoncory (edited 07-28-2002).]

[This message has been edited by thompsoncory (edited 07-28-2002).]

[This message has been edited by thompsoncory (edited 07-28-2002).]</font>

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING will make more than 40 Million. I'm thinking 50 Million at the LEAST... It's doing great and it isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

[XCoRyX]

Full Frontal looks absolutely boring,lackluster entertainment,and i for some reason smell an overhyped and overrated movie just because of the fact that a few BIG actors are in a small budgeted indy movie.I could careless if this film was ever even made.

[Tuukka]

Even the couple of positive reviews I have read make me want to NOT to see this film. It indeed looks like an inside Hollywood joke that is gaining attention not because it would seem interesting or good, but simply because it's directed by Sodenbergh and has some big stars in it. And reviews have mainly been either negative or so-so. I'm not intending to ever watch this film, not even if I could see it for free.

Solaris on the other hand looks very promising.

[Mike]

After all of the bad reviews I don't really care about this movie that much anymore. I'll have to see what other people say about it now before I'll see it. If it has some good word of mouth I might see it in theaters otherwise I'll just check it out on video. And I know it won't be nominated for any Oscars.

[Fergus]

Oh man, a devastating blow just came from the only critic I have any respect for: Ebert. He thought FULL FRONTAL was bad enough to give it *1/2 stars. And I didn't even bother to read the review. Now it seems all my wanting to see this film has floated away. You know, and I was really looking forward to it. Well, Soderbergh has definitely struck out this time. A waste of talent, time, and what little budget it has; my question is "why did he do this in the first place?"

I'm not too sure that Solaris is going to be great either, because I doubt it will surpass the original. I don't even know why they are remaking it, unless there's something new they want to bring out into the open that Tarkovsky never did. Oh well, I'll still be there to see it; my expectations just aren't that high.

[Scarface98.9]

Here's the review by Roger Ebert:
Every once in a while, perhaps as an exercise in humility, Steven Soderbergh makes a truly inexplicable film. There was the Cannes "secret screening" of his "Schizopolis" in 1996, which had audiences filing out with sad, thoughtful faces, and now here is "Full Frontal," a film so amateurish that only the professionalism of some of the actors makes it watchable.

This is the sort of work we expect from a film school student with his first digital camera, not from the gifted director of "Traffic" and "Out of Sight." Soderbergh directs at far below his usual level, and his cinematography is also wretched; known as one of the few directors who shoots some of his own films, he is usually a skilled craftsman, but here, using a digital camera and available light, he produces only a demonstration of his inability to handle the style. Many shots consist of indistinct dark blobs in front of blinding backlighting.

The plot involves a film within a film, on top of a documentary about some of the people in the outside film. The idea apparently is to provide a view of a day in the life of the Los Angeles entertainment industry and its satellites. The movie within the movie stars Julia Roberts as a journalist interviewing Blair Underwood; shots that are supposed to be this movie are filmed in lush 35mm, and only serve to make us yearn for the format as we see the other scenes in digital.

The doc is not quite, or entirely, a doc; there are voice-overs describing and analyzing some of the characters, but other scenes play as dramatic fiction, and there's no use trying to unsort it all because Soderbergh hasn't made it sortable. If this movie is a satire of the sorts of incomprehensible, earnest "personal" films that would-be directors hand out on cassettes at film festivals, then I understand it. It's the kind of film where you need the director telling you what he meant to do and what went wrong and how the actors screwed up and how there was no money for retakes, etc.

The other characters include Catherine Keener and David Hyde Pierce as Lee and Carl, an unhappily married couple. She leaves him a goodbye note in the morning, then goes off to work as a personnel director, spending the day in a series of bizarre humiliations of employees (forcing them, for example, to stand on a chair while she throws an inflated world globe at them). In these scenes, she is clearly deranged, and yet there is a "serious" lunch with her sister Linda (Mary McCormack), a masseuse who has never met Mr. Right.

Linda does, however, meet Gus (David Duchovny), a producer who is having a birthday party in a big hotel, hires her for a massage, and then offers her $500 to "release his tension." She needs the money because she is flying off the next day to see a guy she met on the Internet. She thinks he's 22, but in fact he's about 40, and is not an artist as he says, but a director whose new play features Hitler as a guy who, he tells Eva Braun, has "so many responsibilities I can't think of a relationship right now."

Meanwhile, Carl is fired at work ("He said I have confused my personality quirks with standards") and returns home to find his beloved dog has overdosed on hash brownies, after which he has a heart-to-heart with the veterinarian's assistant. All of these scenes feel like improvs that have been imperfectly joined, with no through-line. The scenes that work (notably McCormack's) are perhaps a tribute to the professionalism of the actor, not the director. Among the false alarms are little details like this: A love note that Underwood's character thinks came from Roberts' character is written on the same kind of red stationary as Keener's note to her husband. Is there a connection? Short answer: no.

One day earlier, I saw "Sex & Lucia," also shot on digital, also involving a story within a story, with double roles for some of the characters. With it, too, I was annoyed by the digital photography (both films have more contrast between shadow and bright sunlight than their equipment seems able to handle). "Sex & Lucia" was even more confusing when it came to who was who ("Full Frontal" is fairly easy to figure out). But at least "Sex & Lucia" was made by a director who had a good idea of what he wanted to accomplish, and established a tone that gave the material weight and emotional resonance. There is a scene in "Full Frontal" where a character comes to a tragic end while masturbating. That could symbolize the method and fate of this film.

And to think, people really think this'll get Oscar nominations (I always thought it looked like pretentious filmaking, like "Hey! Look at all the big stars in this low budget movie! Isn't that cool?! I'm an artist!")

[Turtle Club]

no


" Am I not turtlely enough for the Turtle Club? TURTLE ! TURTLR ! "

[bskutle]

Full Frontal"-B+
(#5 on Brian's "Must-See" Summer 2002)
An alternate title: "Only die hard Steven Soderbergh fans need apply." The latest from the "Traffic" and "Ocean's Eleven" director many consider the best America's got right now is a free-form about life in Los Angeles that has actors playing playwrites (the terrific David Hyde Pearce), actors playing demanding executives (Catherine Keener, good and brash as always), actors play masseuses (Mary McCormack), actors playing producers (David Duchovny), actors playing Hitler (Nicky Katt in the film's scene-stealing role), and actors playing actors (Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood). The film was predominantly shot on digital video, and it shows in the exceptionally graining look of the film, but that's the only thing that fails to impress as Soderbergh plays his actors like a fiddle as they bring the lively script by Coleman Hough to life in Soderbergh's return to the indie cinema from whence he came (back in '89 with "sex, lies, and videotape"), and has come back to every once in a while (with 1997's "Gray's Anatomy" and "Schizopolis"). Next up? A big-budget psychological sci-fi drama with George Clooney called "Solaris," produced by "king of the world" himself, James Cameron.

[Jedi]

Mmmmm! This film is drawing way less attention than anyone's expectations I guess. It's almost dead on the box-office , too!

[Mike]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Jedi:
Mmmmm! This film is drawing way less attention than anyone's expectations I guess. It's almost dead on the box-office , too!</font>

Yeah, audiences reactions have been really bad too. Plus I heard that the grainy camera footage is extra grainy and very distracting.
Instead of adding more theaters they are starting to take theaters away.

I am starting to care less and less about this movie, I don't even know if I'll rent it anymore.

[Jedi]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Mike:

I am starting to care less and less about this movie, I don't even know if I'll rent it anymore.</font>

I'll rent it for Julia. I don't like to miss something she's in. Besides.. I'd like to see how "far" Soderberg's gone in his "experiments" in this one.