Full Frontal (2002)

I couldn't track the characters and after 20 minutes I didn't want to track them. I just wanted it to end--what was Soderbergh thinking? At first I thought it was supposed to be amateurish since it was a movie within a movie, but, when it went on and on with horrible lighting and terrible hand-held camera work, it was enough to make one want to run out screaming.

Fmovies: You know, for years I have been of the belief that Steven Soderbergh was a great filmmaker, because of Sex, Lies and Videotape, always waiting for his next great film, but it never comes. After watching Schizopolis, Oceans 11, etc., etc., and now finally Full Frontal, I have to say I think he's a fraud. How could anyone with even an ounce of artistic vision cast Julia Roberts all the time? She blows. I think Soderbergh is to indie film what Ringo Starr was to rock and roll. He was in the right place at the right time, but definitely not worthy of the indie-film-god status that seems to be associated with him. I think sans James Spader in SL&VT, we would not know Soderbergh's name today. Sad, really.

Steven Soderbergh's much-maligned digital satire of Hollywood took an unfair savaging at the hands of American critics, who seem to resent the fact that the man has become the single most interesting and consistently exciting film director currently working in America. Designed as a deliberately low-budget, quasi-improvised indie production to counter-balance the big studio production of "Ocean's Eleven", "Full Frontal" was shot according to a Dogme 95-like manifesto (the actors had to drive themselves to work and do their own wardrobe and make-up, all the locations are pre-existing), and is a cross between the confessional nature of "Sex, Lies & Videotape", the multi-story structure of "Magnolia" and the film-within-a-film framework of François Truffaut's "Day for Night". It's the tale of a day in the life of six Los Angelenos connected in some way to the film industry: budding screenwriters Enrico Colantoni and David Hyde Pierce; Pierce's sister-in-law Mary McCormack, a struggling masseuse, and wife Catherine Keener, a human resources VP on the verge of a nervous breakdown; black actor Blair Underwood and film star Julia Roberts. Soderbergh follows the day's events as if he were shooting a documentary, in grainy (post-produced) DV, intercutting it with 35mm photography of a film in production starring Underwood and Roberts, whose plot is supposed to echo the main characters' situations. The Chinese-box structure only really becomes comprehensible about a third of the way in, and what looks at first like a self-indulgent exercise in the mechanics of low-budget filmmaking quickly becomes a cinema masterclass as Soderbergh effortlessly navigates the veritable maze of referential layers between film and life to the point you can no longer distinguish where film ends and reality begins, throwing in a number of celebrity cameos (Brad Pitt, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, Terence Stamp reprising a scene from "The Limey") that blur the borders even further. You have to be open for it, but if you are you'll be richly rewarded.

Full Frontal fmovies. Even though it received 5 stars from many critics, this is the worst movie I have ever seen, including a number of porn movies. I have no objection to sex and can tolerate foul language but a movie should have some redeeming qualities and this movie has none. Basically no plot, no suspense, no romance, no fun, no good jokes, no good sex--just a sorry attempt by some excellent movie makers to be cute with no payoff! I rate this movie even worse than Burt Reynolds worst failure with Dom Deluise (when he and his cast appeared to be having a great time making an unfunny movie) because Soderbergh and crew have the skill to do so much better. I still don't understand why so many critics thought this was such a great movie. Must be some kind of Hollywood inside joke that they are not sharing with the rest of us!

I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed FULL FRONTAL. I'm not a big Steven Soderbergh fan and only heard bad things about this film so when I rented it, I was expecting more of Soderbergh's pointless films, like KAFKA, and instead was totally engrossed with the movie, the characters and mostly the hypnotic style and direction. Aside from the ending (the party scenes) and the unconvincing storyline with David Hyde Pierce, I liked everything else. I was mesmerized from beginning to end.

The great thing is how quiet this movie is. Movies are so noisy these days, mostly in order to numb people's mind to hide the fact they don't have anything more than visuals, watching FULL FRONTAL was like a cinematic vacation.

Beautifully shot, clever and at times engrossing (the Catherine keener storyline was my favorite). It's sad to see few people "got " this film.

In Spanish there's a saying that translates: "Grow fame and go to sleep". I think this happened with S. Soderbergh, where he took advantage of his surprising win at the Oscars Best Director competition and the success of his movie Erin Brockovich along with his pal Julia Roberts and her high peak in the moment he made this movie. Without those 2 mega successes he wouldn't convince many studios to make this movie, and none of us would ever seen it. The box office barely went over the movie budget.

A mix of troubled characters related all to the movie business create a confused and complicated web of feelings, relationships, weird behaviors and "rendevouz" that are let to almost pure improvisation by the director, and in retrospective it sounds very interesting but we haven't seen many movies with such a proposal maybe not because nobody has thought about it but because it's very hard to make it successful and achieve a fine piece of work. In this case I don't think that the weight of Oscars and fresh success help that much in accomplishing that nice piece of work. A very good and daring idea where all the actors were abandon to their own choices in make up, dressing and craft supplies. Niece piece of work... for the actors and crew who make it, in their own private screening or party, not for us who felt it was a waste of time and my $1 that cost renting it. There is some arrogant smell in the air that I felt heavily since I saw for the first time Mr. Soderbergh old fashion sort of feminine style glasses frames and it was strongly confirmed by watching this movie.

I don't remember in recent years a movie where I start watching the running time as early as I started with this movie: when it ran for 15 min I was already impatient, and for a good 1 hour or so I felt uncomfortable for not knowing anything of what was happening and not connecting but a couple of dots in the whole plot. Maybe that was the precise goal of Soderbergh, don't know. I felt bored watching a huge bunch of nonsense which might have make sense but at the end it didn't. Brad Pitt was quite right at the end: I don't know who did it. We strongly hope there's better to come from Soderbergh.