FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 4

This photo doesn't show it, but at this point
I'm really, really sick. As if that's going to stop me.

--- Pittsburgh

Thank god for Jeff Goldblum. Not that he's an amazingly deep actor, or an incredibly varied performer, or anything Oscar-worthly like that. But he is sincerely insincere, and for that, we love him. His new film, Pittsburgh, is a narrative documentary that looks at Jeff Goldblum's turn as Henry Hill in a regional production of The Music Man. Goldblum quickly gets himself in too deep, drawing scorn from his agent, the love of his girlfriend, and the skepticism of his best friend (Ed Begely, Jr.). The difference between Pittsburgh and the fourth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (where Larry David joins the cast of The Producers), is that Goldblum really did perform in the two-week production, which makes the line between reality and improvisation a lot harder to see. And that's all the merrier for the audience, since it makes the self-deprecation and parody more potent.

A couple of things don't work, such as a side-plot about Ed Begely, Jr.'s "Solarman 2000" (a portable solar device), and most of the training footage is spliced into an unsatisfying montage format. One also wonders exactly why Moby is in this film (amusing as it is to picture him as a sleazy rock star who gets off on pictures that his female fans send him of themselves masturbating). There are a lot of disconnects like this (which is bound to happen when you try to cobble together 400 hours of footage into a narrative), but when the movie sticks on point (and it usually does), it is hysterical. As the days grow longer and the performance approaches, the commentary on movie stars tackling real theater becomes more exciting, and the barbs (mostly at Goldblum's expense, e.g., the director's unkind words to him) grow ever more amusing.

There's a lot to like about Pittsburgh (the movie, at least), and it's a feel good comedy. And nobody (not even Goldblum) was hurt in the making of this film.


--- Lonely Hearts

For all the beautiful camera work and lush 1949 stylings, there's something very . . . well, lonely about Lonely Hearts. Todd Robinson does fine as a director, and he handles his actors well, but there's something oddly disconcerting about the script's dramatic structure. The violence is stark enough, but just as the troubled cop (John Travolta) is left feeling troubled at the film's end, so is the audience. It's not that justice hasn't been served, and it's not that Jared Leto and Salma Hayek don't channel pure evil as the Lonely Hearts Killers (Hayek especially) -- it is perhaps the lack of any real sideplot or anything beyond just the chase itself, and its Hollywood ending. The drama seems to have been sucked dry: we may study these characters, tortured individuals all, but we can't hope to understand them, nor are we really drawn into the struggle. There's just not enough for us to get attached to.

This is a good vehicle for all the actors attached (with the exception of James Gandolfini, who is, and will always be, a trademark character), and the vehicle itself looks slick. But by spoiling the end of the film at the beginning, and by a lot of other narrow-minded choices, Robinson doesn't actually take us anywhere, except around in a big, pointless circle.