Miami Vice

Did I post about "Miami Vice" yet? No? Well, I loved it, but I love Michael Mann. I still count it among his weaker efforts, but what some people cite as its failures I view as success, specifically the way it proceeds with minimum exposition, minimum explanation and minimum resolution. Kind of like catching an episode of, I dunno, "The Wire" midway through the season, but with no concern for making itself clear. In this sense "Miami Vice" is the polar opposite of most action movies, which are typically about as subtle and nuanced as a car wreck (captured by four cameras, and replayed countless times from numerous angles). Mann just lets things happen, and hopes you catch all the details. That's why I can't wait to see it again. After all, bits I thought made no sense in Mann's "Collateral" made perfect sense the second time around.

I was a little less enthused about "The Descent," a horror movie that works shockingly well, at least before the monsters show up. When tight-squeeze caverns and metaphoric monsters are pinning you to your seat, there's really no need to introduce actual albino flesh-eating cave dwellers. Not only do they give you, the viewer, an easy out by offering you something to root against, they simply don't stand up to the good old fashioned spelunking thrills introduced in the first half. Or the menace to the minimally but effectively drawn all female cast, whose relationship to one another (ostensibly as friends) is tense and ambiguous.

Still pretty darn intense, though.