|
Once you're knighted you can get away with murder.
I can imagine the pitch for "Slipstream". "It's like "Mulholland
Drive without the lesbian sex scene but with an Oscar winning
actor who has been knighted writing, starring and directing
it." ***
"Yeah…and the nice thing is if we don't like it we
can recut it and no one will be able to tell the difference."
***
If you like films that are confusing with little pay
off in a bizarre dream-like sort of way, you'll love "Slipstream"
written, composed, starring and directed by Anthony Hopkins.
"Slipstream" comes across as a bad imitation of David Lynch's
more esoteric films. Hopkins plays Felix Bonhoeffer a writer
stuck in a fractured sort of reality where his "reel" world
collides with the real world. This includes characters from
his own script that show up making accusations, actors that
are the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this piece stuck
in a horrible murder mystery that the writer has been hired
to rewrite. Add in the fact that memories from his past
keep resurfacing and interfering with his fractured world
and you've got a vague idea of what "Slipstream" is about.
Can you explain it to me, please? I like avant garde films
as much as the next guy (OK, more than the next guy since
I practically grew up on them) but this unusual stew is
a mess of pop culture references. I commend Anthony Hopkins
for making such a daring film but "Slipstream" reminds me
of the films I used to make when I was 10 years old (well,
except mine usually involved Frankenstein's monster as part
of the mix but, again, that's just me). ---
Image & Sound:
Luckily "Slipstream" doesn't look as fractured or flawed
as its clever attempt to impress us, the audience, with
its art school cinematic pretensions. Colors are as bold
as the imagination can make them with nice detail. ---
|
