Reviews: Ocean's 13 and Paris, je'taime

I'm taking a little time off from defending Star Wars (although I will get back to it) to toss in my two cents about a couple of movies.


So, last night Steve and I went to go see Ocean's 13.

It was entertaining. There's not much else to it than that. It wasn't, by any means, a great film, but it was a fun way to blow a couple of hours. I doubt I'd ever see it again. I mean, it was sort of clever, but it just wasn't as clever as the original film from 1960.

The original was clever enough to respect the audience enough to let them not get away with the crime. Audiences would be rioting in the streets if the Clooney 11 lost all of their loot in the cremated coffin of a fallen comrade. But in the time of the Sinatra 11, people seemed to be able to laugh with them.

I just wish that if Soderbergh had to make a sequel to a movie, it should be "The Limey". The world of cinema needs more "Limey"'s and less "Ocean's" sequels.

I'd say more about it, but there really isn't all that much to say about this film.

So, having said that, we'll move on:


Paris, je t'aime.

I was really looking forward to this film and when I found out that it was playing in Salt Lake City I pretty much had to go see it.

The concept for the film is simple. A number of film directors each direct a short film about love in Paris. Then, someone takes them all and puts them together in a feature film. You end up with this wonderful mish-mash of sentiment, comedy and love. Each director was able to present a moment of love or hopefulness or what-have-you and if there was one that bored you or you didn't like it, before you know it, there's another segment.

I think the highlights of the film include the segment that the Coen brothers directed, Alexander Payne's segment and the segment that featured Bob Hoskins. (The one with Natalie Portman was good, it just wasn't the best.)

My little brother and I had a disagreement over what I thought was one of the best segments which was the one with Juliette Binoche and Willem Dafoe.

There were too many stories in the film to comment on each of them in any depth, but I would recommend the film to any lover of short films or of interesting film experiments.

I wish directors would get together and make more films like this. It seemed like an expanded version of the Scoresese-Coppola-Allen effort "New York Stories" but it was still delightful to see. I would really like to go see this film again. And maybe another time after that.