I was bouncing around on IMDB one day adding movies to my “seen this” and “gotta see this” lists. Somehow I got to Nurse Betty (seen this) and Neil LaBute (director) and his two early films. Both “In The Company of Men” and “Your Friends and Neighbors” (not seen this) sounded at the time like cynical cultural portraits that I just didn’t need to see. Maybe I was projecting. Maybe I was living it already. Whatever. The late ’90s had so much else going on - and it felt good to dismiss them, I love feeling superior to filmmakers. They can be so wrong in such a big way. And I’m just a guy without an audience sitting in his pajamas, typing on his blog, wondering what to have for breakfast.
So anyway, then I followed a link in their list of reviews for “Your Friends” and got to a rather lengthy (500 words?) review by Roger Ebert. And I just wanted to post a little bit of that for you here… This is the kind of review I like, full of analysis, context and humor.
Continue reading ‘A Symbolic Review’
