29 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
29 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
there are movies that pose a question in its first five minutes and spend the rest of the time trying to answer it .
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then there are movies that spend the whole time posing questions and try to answer it all in the last five minutes .
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writer-director john herzfeld's two days in the valley falls into the latter category .
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weaving together a grabbag of seemingly unrelated characters , herzfeld's tries very hard to keep the audience guessing with a altmanesque series of parallel stories .
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hitmen lee ( james spader ) and his partner dosmo ( danny aiello ) pop a guy in bed while leaving his drugged wife becky fox ( teri hatcher ) lying next to him showing the audience where on her behind she got nicely pricked .
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an understandeably shocked becky runs out of the house the next morning before hailing down a couple of vice cops , ( jeff daniels ) and wes ( eric stoltz ) .
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a murder is not vice territory , flirting with asian prostitues is , but wes would rather play inquisitive detective .
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meanwhile , washed-up director , teddy ( paul mazursky ) is about to end his life .
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but before he can do that , he must find a good home for his dog .
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enter nurse audrey ( marsha mason ) , who takes the dog and teddy for a ride .
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stuffy art dealer , allan hopper ( greg cruttwell ) has kidney stones .
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while struggling about his fancy house , he switches between moaning in self-pity and dropping condescending hints about his loyal secretary's ( glenne headly ) plain appearance .
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don't be surprised if you find yourself asking more than once just what the hell is going on .
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you might like that feeling of cluelessness .
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herzfeld does answer all the questions in the course of time and pieces it all rather neatly in the last five minutes .
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the jigsaw puzzle assembled isn't stunning by any means though .
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the characters lack the stature or moral complexity of altman's real-life heroes in short cuts , even though they are interesting and funny .
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funny , that is if you aren't comparing them to the likes of tarantino's pulp chcaracters .
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the tie-up is tidy but nowhere near the squeaky clean resolution of ( director's name ?
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guy who also did last seduction ) red rock west .
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two days isn't a bad movie but there isn't much else to it than the screenplay novelty of the linkage of seemingly unrelated characters .
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it'll keep you guessing alright but you won't remember the answers five minutes after the credits .
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the flying inkpot rating system : * wait for the tv2 broadcast .
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* * a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha !
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* * * pretty good , bring a friend .
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* * * * amazing , potent stuff .
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* * * * * perfection .
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see it twice .
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