| Time Code |
| questions, comments? email [email protected] |
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| 1/2 |
| Rating: Mediocre Distributor: Screen Gems Genre: Dark Comedy Release Date: April 28th, 2000 (Limited) Rating: R Running Time: 97 minutes Director: Mike Figgis Cast: Salma Hayek, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Saffron Burrows, Steven Weber, Stellan Skarsgard, Holly Hunter, and Kyle MacLachlan. |
| Plot: Jeanne Trippelorn and Salma Hayek play lovers who are also independent actresses. Tripplehorn suspects Hayek of having an affair. Saffron Burrows is a distressed wife who is afraid her husband is having an affair. Stellan Skarsgard is a mentally disturbed (if you read between the lines that is) man who is having an affair with Hayek and is lying to his wife Burrows. Meanwhile, an indepedent studio led my Skarsgard and Steven Weber is interested in a film that is similar to the one we are actually watching. This is all done with four different split screens that track our different characters to their destinations which often overlap. I can't give away much more, except that nothing goes as planned. |
| Critique: I advocate creativity of course, but I would seriously like to know what Mike Figgis was on when he decided to make this film. The reason no one has done this before is because it would take too much money to make four different scripts (one for each quadrant). Even if you did have enough money for this operation it would be worthless because your attention would be on one quadrant and whatever is playing in the other three would be irrelevent. Figgis even highlights sections with sound to show which one you should be watching, however this still doesn't solve the latter problem. To avoid paying for four scripts Mr. Figgis decided he would have no scripts and let the actors make things happen themeselves with 1 about 90 minute take. This makes the film incredibly tacky, and totally uninteresting. Plus, besides the intro the top right quadrant almost never has sound so is meaningless. The top left quadrant is just Jeanne Tripplehorn sitting in the car the whole time... wow exciting. The bottom quadrants have most of the action, and by most action I mean a little bit of action. In fact, to call this movie boring at times would be a compliment. The actors tried I'll give them that, but that's about it. They could've mimed the whole thing and done a better job. It's obvious they at least had their hearts in it, while Mike Figgis is like a little kid who wanted attention and said look over here mommy, look what I made. At Time Code's best moments it is a guilty pleasure, however those moments are few and far between. review by supernothingman, questions or comments? email me at [email protected], thanks! |
| picture above from www.timecode2000.com (one segement of the four quadrants) |
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