triple-x

An overacted, overdirected, overripe slice of ludicrous urban hysteria, Spike Lee's new film, his most bloatedly self-important and inhumanely void movie to date, is ostensibly about the melting pot fury of New Yawk life boiling over during the summer of 1977 (Spike tries to fit it all in: Studio 54, CBGB's, Plato's Retreat, race wars, neighborhood insularity, heatwaves, the Yankees, a talking dog right out of a beer commerical, etc.) when the serial killer Son of Sam was terrorizing the streets. However, the film is really about Spike's need to mercilessly provoke, even when the source material doesn't match his "ambitions." When given a strong script and a clear purpose, Spike Lee's films can be gripping (e.g., "Do the Right Thing," "Clockers"), but Spike is all over the map here, blindly shooting at every urban stereotype imaginable. This is auteurism without vision, a misguided attempt at overstylized "intensity" every bit as frustrating and miserable in its scattershot hugeness as past notorious focusless pet project disasters (e.g., "1941"). As a filmmaker, Spike Lee has truly lost his way.

Pleasant is the word for it: amiable, entertaining, likable, blissfully reassuring, lovely to look at, and ultimately toothless. I give it a 7 (marked down from an 8 for Fiona Apple's soporific trashing of Lennon's "Across the Universe" over the end credits)

A tired, tragically somber dying-wife drama, "Infinity" is a noble effort, but a chore to sit through. It was Matthew Broderick's directorial debut, and he proves utterly incapable of maintaining any sort of pace or shaping a single scene. Based on a true-life story and obviously made with the best of loving intentions, "Infinity" is a hard movie to hate, but impossible to like.