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Laurel Canyon - A moderately enjoyable film while watching it but a day later I really haven't thought about it. There were a couple of nice scenes (Bale & McElhone in the parking garage, and the resolution) but most of it was too formulatic and the characters not fleshed out enough for my taste. It is definitely not in the same league as Lisa Cholodenko's previous work High Art.
I also couldn't get past the fact that part way through I keep thinking that this is a reworking of the Hugh Grant / Tara Fitzgerald film Sirens. Another film that was more style over substance.
The Good Thief - I really enjoyed this fun film. This is all style over substance but it doesn't pretend to be anything else. It is a heist film much like Ocean's 11, which many people at the screening were comparing it to. In this film Nick Nolte creates a group of people to rob a casino in Monte Carlo of its art work the night before the grand prix. This is a reworking of the 1955 Bob le Flambeur.
The heist is secondary to this being a character film. Actually if you try and think too much about how the heist works you will begin not to like the film, just go with it. It has a very loose structure and a very good jazz/blues score. Because of this it plays more like a Mike Figgis film that being a Neil Jordan film. It might be one of his loosest films he has ever directed. And after the beautiful but claustrophobic The End of the Affair, that is a good thing. The photography is also very good, but it's hard to make the south of France look bad.
I'm not a Nick Nolte fan, so his acting and mumbling bothered me. But the rest of the cast is very good. Tchéky Karyo, who gets a much better film that The Core, Emir Kusturica, the Polish twins, Ralph Fiennes and newcomer Nino Kukhanidze all make this a enjoyable, fun romp.
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