Inside Man

I had been looking forward to seeing Inside Man for quite some time. I like Spike Lee generally, and I have liked him from way before he became "accessible" to mainstream white America.

What I find now, though, is that his fiction movies are becoming less politicized. Not that that's a bad thing. And I wonder whether this stems from his greater involvement in documentary film-making in recent years. Perhaps now that he has an outlet for his political thoughts, he doesn't feel the need to bog down his fiction with it? It will be fascinating to see how he gets on with TV drama if his show about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina comes to fruition.

Anyways, that's a whole other ball game. For now, let's talk about the movie at hand, which stars Brits Clive Owen and Chiwetel Ejiofor alongside heavywight Hollywood Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. As much as I like Ejiofor, I was never a fan of Owen until Sin City and Closer. In both films he was a revelation, and I've come to quite like him now. He was good again in Inside Man.

This film combines several of my favourite things:
a heist plotline; a macguffin; a 1940s-type noir-inspired soundtrack, with shades of Herrmann and even Badalamenti.

Almost the whole of the plot is the heist, and I'd go on to say that this is a first-class heist picture. I wish Lee had left it at that. Because although I like macguffins, this one could have been dropped altogether, doing away with Jodie Foster entirely, and it would have been a far stronger picture. As it was, the last 15 minutes felt tacked on and a letdown after what was a blistering, exciting film up to that point.

That said, this is one of the best films I've seen in a long time, and it certainly deserves a place on my DVD shelf.

The scores
Acting: 16
Story: 16
Direction: 17
Enjoyment: 16
Involvement: 18
Total: 83

When the Levees Broke

Spike Lee's four-and-a-half-hour post-Katrina New Orleans documentary When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts has been on my must-see list since I first heard about it. I've got a lot of time for Spike, and while I haven't seen all his films, I've not yet seen one that I didn't like. I'm also going to add that, while some seem to think of Lee as a militant white-hater, I do not share that view and never have. I was pleased, therefore, that in this documentary it was quite clear that he did not see the New Orleans disaster as a "black problem", but rather as a human problem, with particular emphasis on the poor.

What happened in New Orleans was an absolute travesty -- you don't need me to tell you that -- but to see it all unfold is another thing entirely. This utterly avoidable human tragedy is really brought home when you hear the stories of people who had to sit there waiting for evacuation watching their elderly parents literally roast to death in the sun.

The first two "acts" of Spike's documentary exposé were totally compelling and kept me glued to my screen. I was, by turns, shocked, appalled, and in disbelief throughout. The pace flagged a bit in Act III, and then picked up again for the final hour.

We were privy to some intimate moments and heartfelt outpourings of grief from N.O. residents. And of course we got to see again some classic moments of the time: Bush being a total prick in general; Barbara Bush saying how everyone seemed to have done okay out of it; Kanye West saying Bush doesn't care about black people... It was all there.

This was an excellent, not to mention important, film. Obviously my scoring system doesn't really work so well for documentaries, so I'll come straight out and give it 73 points.