Snap Judgment: Hitch a ride on nostalgia

Hey studios! I've got three documentaries from Netflix at home, and two of them are about architecture! Got anything more exciting?

Please?

Eh... didn't think so.



The Hitcher (horror, rated R, directed by Dave Meyers, written by Jake Wade Wall and Eric Bernt, based on an earlier screenplay by Eric Red)

First of all, what's with the movie's website (www.neverpickupstrangers.com)? Is this the new synergy between big-budget schlock and the Ad Council? When they get around to making another Nightmare on Elm Street, is the URL going to be something like http://www.SnoringCanBeASignOfSleepApneaCallYourDoctor.com? Anyway, the better news is that the film was directed by music video veteran Dave Meyers, meaning that it will likely combine the subtly effective camera placement from "Gossip Folks" with the mis en scene of "Get the Party Started" and perhaps a touch of the neo-Tarkovskyan imagery so well illustrated in "Bawitdaba." Plus it has Sean Bean. Sean Bean! How the hell did they get him in the movie? you might ask. The answer is simple: 3:30 A.M. bathroom ambush. Because when you wake up in the middle of the night with that intense bladder-draining urge, and you just want to finish the task and get back in bed, well then, you might just sign a contract if that's what it takes to get the studio lawyer away from your porcelain mecca.

The Good German (drama, rated R, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Paul Attanasio, based on the book by Joseph Kanon)

Soderbergh, as we all know, views a lot of his movies as experiments -- whether it's the experiment of making a super-low-budget, mostly improvisational film with a lot of famous actors, the experiment of releasing a movie in theaters, on DVD, and on TV at the same time, or the experiment of making possibly the worst sequel of all time and still getting people to show up. Here he's tried to carefully replicate every aspect of a 1940s studio film, using only equipment that was available back then (i.e., no zoom lenses, no wireless microphones) and no modern special effects or sophisticated location shooting. My guess is it went even further, such that he forced Paul Attanasio to write the script on a rusty Underwood typewriter, instructed his assistants to distribute old-fashioned cocaine-laced tonics to anyone feeling "a little tuckered out" on set, and relaxed at the end of a long shooting day with a visit to an opium den. (The one area of concession to modernity came, of course, in the area of acting -- it may have been verboten to use any cameras not found in Frank Capra's basement, but Soderbergh certainly wasn't going to prevent Clooney from dropping a few f-bombs or keep Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire from engaging in some nudity-laden bedroom hijinks.) And the results, as most people agree, suck. It's probably for the best, because if this had been a huge critical and box-office success it would doubtless have inspired the studio heads to begin a mass exhumation of all the directors in the Hollywood Forever cemetery (along with their former agents, who would positively pee themselves at offers of $2,000 a week salary for their clients, blissfully unaware that that amount was roughly half of the film's Red Bull budget).