Plagued by Before Sunrise
By The Stranger, an alternative weekly here in Seattle, is the best source for local news I’m aware of. It certainly beats the other weekly and both dailies. Perhaps there are better sources, but I don’t really know where to look. Some of their non-news columns are amusing and occasionally good. There’s much to like in the paper, and I’m glad it’s there every week.
Their film criticism, however, has long been nothing short of a disaster. From Jamie Hook’s vulgar Marxism, to Charles Mudede’s rambling Hegel-fests, it’s been a space for pseudo-intellectual wankery that contains surprisingly little information about, y’know, film. They’ve published some terrible and pointless reviews over the years. But now, they’ve committed their greatest sin. From their “recommended events” calendar this week:
‘Before Sunset’
(ROMANCE) Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, released in 1995, is arguably one of the greatest romances ever filmed. This sequel, which picks up nine years later, continues the run. Before Sunset is a natural extension of the love story that began on a train to Vienna, and it is required viewing for everyone who saw the first go-around. For those who didn’t? See part two anyway, then rush off to the video store. (Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave, 441-3080, 7 pm, $9.) BRADLEY STEINBACHER
For those of you who have the tremendous fortune of not having seen the noxious Linklater film (compared to which, Slacker is entirely watchable), let me offer an alternative suggestion: don’t.
Here’s the synopsis. Ethan Hawke plays a walking pile of tired gen-X stereotypes. He’s travelling around Europe. He meets Julie Delpy on a train. The next 90 minutes is a painfully over-cute courtship seen through a thick haze of anomie-induced whining and B-minus existentialism. Then, they get drunk, fuck, and go their merry ways. That’s it.
I intentionally avoid most movies likely to be really bad, because life’s too short–there’s a video store a short walk from my house that contains numerous treasures of world cinema I haven’t seen. So any list of worst movies ever that I create is likely to be woefully incomplete. Still, this movie belongs on such a list for me. I can only think of a couple of movies I seen that I’m quite certain are worse.
The idea of a sequel to it is capable of producing waves of nausea.