Full Frontal (2002)

Some films, you know you'll like right away. And I can't exactly explain what hooked me about this film, but I was helpless in its grasp about the time that The Sound and the Fuhrer was introduced. It's probably my long-standing affection for movies about emotionally stunted people struggling to connect with one another (see: Punch-Drunk Love, Exotica, Human Nature), which to the film's advantage is stronger than my long-standing antipathy for movies about bored rich people (see: The Anniversary Party, The Great Gatsby). Also to the film's advantage is the loose, what-the-fuck vibe -- Soderbergh may have done this as a lark after his Hollywood-project slate, but if all directorial burn-off projects were as fun and unpretentious as this, my life would be much happier. It's aimless and indulgent and basically stunt directing, true... but it's the product of a confident talent and remains exciting and amusing even when (or, more appropriately, especially when) the conceit threatens to overwhelm the characters. (The film's best moments come at its most unwieldy and awkward -- the film-within-a-film-within-a-film, for example.) One of the year's most underrated accomplishments.

Grade: B+