MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: WITHOUT LIMITS (1998)

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RECOMMENDED - Meaning Strongly Recommended. A film that's good enough or historically important enough to demand viewing. WARNING: A few real stinkers are important enough to rate this label. And, on the other hand, lots of pretty good or pretty valuable films, don't quite measure up to our RECOMMENDED level. (See also UNIQUE, below.)

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LINK - To quickly find any Write-Up that includes an InterNet Link of interest for that specific film.

UNIQUE - Films that may not fit into the usual critical categories of Good, Bad or Indifferent, (certainly not indifferent!), but are worth watching because there just ain't nothing like 'em. Sui generis pics. (Phooey generis if they don't work for you.)

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POSTER - Hmm, I bet you can figure this one out.

(Hint: most of the posters will enlarge if you click on them.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT - sort of like those EAT THIS, NOT THAT diet books only with film instead of food as the topic. Sometimes, the substitute pick isn't the obvious 'better' choice, but one of those 'flawed-but-interesting' films that often get left behind.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID - some easy to miss element worth noting.

SILENT FILM - hey, figure it out (LOL)

. . . and DOUBLE-BILL - a suggested second feature.

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Friday, August 23, 2024

WITHOUT LIMITS (1998)

Like Oscar Wilde, Jean Harlow & Truman Capote, among others before him, Steve Prefontaine had the bad postmortem luck to have a pair of bio-pics released at nearly the same time and cancel each other out. From Disney 1997, PREFONTAINE (D.O.A. - cost 8 mill against a half mill gross), and from 1998 this mid-budget Warners pic (D.O.A. - cost 25 mill against 3/4 mill gross). Who was Steve Prefontaine, you ask? Exactly. (You now beat most film studio execs in perspicacity.) Top amateur long-distance runner of the ‘70s, he died young & unfulfilled, but was an intriguing free-spirit with his own ideas on sport & life philosophy that butted up against his college coach. An unknown Jared Leto played him in ‘97 (not seen here), and in ‘98 the better physically matched Billy Crudup. Written & directed by Robert Towne, whose PERSONAL BEST/’82 has this film’s proper title, while no spent creative force, had definitely left his personal best on screen in the ‘70s. Still, on paper, something of a catch to newbie producers Tom Cruise and past agent Paula Wagner, their second film, first without Cruise as star. (Towne had previously worked on Cruise starrer THE FIRM/’93, a film best not revisited.) And with Cruise & Wagner hot off the first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE/’96, Warners eager to do business with them. And the film? Very Cruise, it feels written for him. Very ‘80s in style. Lenser Conrad L. Hall, with a mystique to equal Prefontaine, nifty during multi-plane racing compositions, less distinctive elsewhere. On the debit side: grimly obvious soundtrack (brass fanfares, rock drumbeats); chemistry-free romance; little period flavor (not even at the 1972 Munich Olympics; attempts to integrate uplift & philosophy starved for oxygen. All of it, the good and the bad, unable to hold focus against Donald Sutherland's brilliantly eccentric coach.

DOUBLE-BILL: Why not the little seen PREFONTAINE? From Steve James, fresh off HOOP DREAMS/’94 and making his first feature film. Let us know what we’re missing in the Comments box.

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Friday, August 23, 2024

WITHOUT LIMITS (1998)

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