Say, did you all catch that interesting flick on TV right at midnight? It was something about monkeys and Pan Am and space sandwiches and Hal Holbrook, I think... It was all very futuristic and shiny, but old at the same time. I wonder what it was?

Anyway, I'm going to start writing to catch up on the movies I've seen. Maybe I'll get to them all, maybe I won't. That's the fun mystery of Reviews On The Side! But I'll tell you now. [SKIP TO THE FIRST REVIEW if you don't want to know!] I won't.

Snatch (perfectly named to be a double feature with Dick) was fun. Not great, not brilliant, but a lot of fun. Guy Ritchie, the director and recently elected Husband of Madonna, is very good at weaving together various characters and plots into one amusing whole. His style is hyper and jerky, but in a good, non-Michael Bay way. (The Bay man won't die.) Some people can make a muddle of such a style (Michael Bay), but Guy's got the goods. (So does Steven Soderbergh, but I'll talk about Traffic in a bit.)

Snatch, like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, is about the good bad guys getting the best of the bad bad guys. Everyone's bad in these movies in one way or another, but there's a spectrum of badness that spreads out before us like a bloody casino porn rainbow. Or Congress. In Snatch, the protagonists are Turkish and Tommy, played effectively by Jason Statham and Stephen Graham. They are the least interesting people in the movie, though, which is by design. Around these small-time thugs dance an illuminating cadre of wackos and dummies. There's Brick Top (Alan Ford), a dangerous man who looks like a reject from the Britcom Are You Being Served? and who keeps pigs for a most unusual purpose. There's Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt, once again in skank mode), an verbally incomprehensible bare-fist-boxing gypsy. There's Boris the Blade (Rade Serbedzija), a Russian killer who "dodges bullets." There's Cousin Avi (Dennis Farina), a Jew from New York who makes his way to London—via a very Requiem for a Dreamesque mini-montage—for business reasons. There's Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro), a weirdo gambling addict. There's Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones), doing what Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) did in Lock Stock. And so on.

The plot has something to do with a huge diamond and a fixed fight. But that doesn't matter, really. Those are the seeds to Guy's grungy pearl, the devices around which he allows his characters to accumulate and interact. There's clockwork and timing involved, but I wouldn't call the plot intricate. It's more Simplex than Rolex. The movie is nicely cumbersome, like a dancer wearing leaden, thick-soled clogs. In fact, you could say the characters are like that, too. It's fun to watch everyone act as if they know what they're doing when in fact they're all stumbling and fumbling.

If you're looking for something meaty, this ain't it. It's pure fun. Go see it if you like oddball characters and tales of lowbrow intrigue and inelegant contrivance.

What a horrible way to start this review.

Steven Soderbergh (no relation to the cracker) was just nominated twice for Director's Guild awards... in one year. One nomination was for Erin Brockovich, and the other was for Traffic (see review you're currently reading). He got two separate nominations because both movies are completely different. Erin Brockovich was a conservatively-directed but engaging drama, while Traffic is an epic, stylistic art piece. Steven likes to pull this kind of stunt. Last year, Out Of Sight (which was actually 1998, but still...) was the more conservative but still stylistically cool movie, and The Limey was the experimental, artistic movie. I saw The Limey on DVD, so I didn't review it, but it was a mesmerizing and cleverly created puzzle. Traffic is more like The Limey in that Steven uses the artistic possibilities of filmmaking to help elevate the story from pedestrian to haute classe.

The only problem is it doesn't oomph. Traffic so needs to hit a mark and so strives to make you feel, but the characters end up being less interesting than the moviemaking itself and so the film becomes a painting to look at and admire but not to emotionally attach yourself to. However, do not think that means this is a bad movie. There's much to like.

Okay, so Traffic didn't connect with me. It turned out to be distant and unaffecting. But I truly enjoyed watching it for the filmmaking and for the grandeur of it all. Steven establishes different looks for his three main settings. There's a gritty, grainy, 16mm, yellow style for the Mexican sequences. The Ohio and Washington, D.C. s equences are a cool, crisp blue. And the scenes in California are warm and colorful. It looks strange at first, but once the pattern settles in, you become swept up in the scheme. What's semi-genius about this is that instead of having to take the time after each scene change to use character and plot to swing our mood back to where Steven needs it, the look of the film does it for us. It keeps the film moving and prevents it from being 4 hours (it's 2 hours 30 right now). Such a device should allow Steven to then give us more meaningful glimpses into character by not wasting time on scene establishment, but that, as I already mentioned, doesn't happen. I don't know why. Had Traffic had that little extra something...

There are still characters to enjoy, though, so don't get me wrong there. Benicio is the best in this one. In fact, his story arc, along with that of his police partner, Manolo (Jacob Vargas), is the most engaging and moving. Their part of Traffic alone could have been a separate, satisfying movie. I'm not suggesting that's what Steven should have done, because his goal is much grander than that. It's just that the Mexican story was the best.

Mirroring the Mexican cop story is the California cop story, with Don Cheadle and Luis Guzmán. They are fun and add a bit of comic relief to the whole movie, but not enough to be annoying. Also in the California sequences is Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose rich housewife Helena, I have to admit, was the least believable of the characters. I did not for a moment buy Helena's choice near the end of the movie. The logic was there for why she does what she does, but this is one of those instances where Steven could have provided more character to fold us more thoroughly into the movie.

The blue scenes follow Michael Douglas, whose Robert Wakefield has just been appointed the new Drug Czar by the President. Michael is good, but he's done this kind of thing before. His daughter Caroline, played by Erika Christensen, has a little drug problem of her own, which throws Robert's world into disarray. Once again, I should have been drawn into the Wakefield family trauma, because Erika does a nice job of making her drug use believable, but Steven lost me in the technicality of it all. Everything was there, but the emotion eluded me. Oh, and that's Amy Irving playing Barbara, Robert's wife. Who could have guessed?

When talking about the "sections" of the movie, I don't mean to imply that Traffic is like an anthology or something. It's not Steven Soderbergh presents the American version of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge: Yellow, Blue, and Rainbow! No, nothing like that. Like Snatch, the plots of Traffic all intertwine. Steven is master of that game, too, bringing all the threads nicely together. If I couldn't call Snatch intricate, I can call Traffic intricate. It really is beautiful how Steven choreographs the film. As is proven in Out of Sight and The Limey, Steven is a master of film craft. Traffic was beautiful to watch as a piece of film art. It was enjoyable and impressive. The emotion was missing to make the movie a powerful whole, but Traffic stands up as a successful film regardless. It would be something I'd watch again to enjoy the craftsmanship.

Oh, and get this: Every single shot, barring a couple where it was impossible, is hand-held. EVERY ONE. It's an unusual choice, but that, too, adds to the beauty of the movie as a piece of art. The hand-held camera is the one visual device that takes the disparate styles and stories and moods and holds them all together at first, until the rhythm of the movie settles and becomes a cohesive agent, too. See? The art of Traffic is terrific.

What Steven is trying to do here—and he's successful right up until you get to the lack of emotional attachment—is demonstrate the scope of the drug problem. Whereas Requiem for a Dream showed us the devastation of drugs on a very personal, individual level (did I mention again how powerful that movie was and that you should go see it?), Traffic shows us all aspects. We see the personal tragedies as well as the global; the user and the supplier; the Mexican and American governmental solutions or lack thereof; the different hurdles law enforcement agents face in both countries. And there's so very much more. Traffic is a genuine modern epic, exploring a major issue from just about every possible angle. It gets a bit preachy at the end with the Wakefield storyline, but the subdued message of the Mexican storyline counteracts this. It's a complex movie which could have been so damn confusing you'd toss your Swedish Fish into the air and make for screen 32 to watch Dude, Where's My Car? instead (review not pending). But as I've demonstrated, Steven knows what the hell he's doing, and succeeds in making Traffic a solid piece, sprawling as it is.

You can see now perhaps why I so desperately wish it had connected on an emotional level. This movie was close to being great.

I have four other movies to review (those being Chocolat, Cast Away, Finding Forrester, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?), but since Traffic took us so much space, I'll leave you with that for now. I'll try to get to the others very soon.

Oh, say, who wants to know about Disney's California Adventure, the new park opening Feb. 8? No one? Good!

California Adventure is fun, but not fun enough. Granted, the rides kept breaking down all day during the special preview last Sunday, which can strap a diaper on your experience, but if Disney is going to charge $43 like it does for Disneyland, people might be mighty disappointed, even with everything up and running. The roller coaster is really fun, as is the boingy boingy thing (my clever name for the ride that launches you 180 feet into the air in a couple seconds). And the Soaring over California ride was excellent, but too short. The attention to detail in the park is up to the usual Disney standards, but it doesn't feel like a Disney park. The lines for the rides are boring, so I guess the themed line concept (see the Indiana Jones ride) is out the window for now. And I just don't know if there's enough to do in the park. But it's still fun. Especially for free!

Time to go now. Happy February to you all if I don't make it back before then!

—Steve

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