A Glimpse Inside The Mind of Charles Swan III (Roman Coppola)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb

[Henry Gale]

A minor yay for an almost contently minor effort.

The film opens with the alluring proposition of planting itself within the very elastic and scattershot imagination of its protagonist, and the more it goes in that direction, the oddly easier it is to follow and invest in. But the more it progresses narratively, it slowly and strangely begins to abandon that approach to its storytelling and becomes surprisingly straightforward and increasingly unremarkable. So as much as it's a frustrating thing that by the end it almost feels like it doesn't reach its full potential, it's such a short, sincere, and passively experimental project that it's hard to really fault it for not being more than it is since what it does well isn't exactly routine stuff.

But it's also possible that I was just in a good enough mood to give it the benefit of the doubt for its shortcomings.

It's almost a strange thing to see Sheen actually acting again, not to mention holding his own in scenes where Schwartzman and Murray's own refined comedic sensibilities are designed to dominate. And I don't know where Katheryn Winnick came from, but she's kind of marvelous here. Both in terms of her general onscreen presence and having a face as perfect as a movie screen could ever hope for.

I adore CQ, but having not seen it years, A Glimpse Inside made me want to immediately rush to watch it again. Sure this new effort isn't nearly as satisfying, but it still very much inhabits and expands the same kitschy cinematic universe to leave me eager to see Coppola return to it again and again (and significantly more often). At least he can still help deliver something like Moonrise Kingdom within the same year as something like this. It just seems odd that his second directorial work in ten years, feels like the side project between this and Anderson's film.

[ledfloyd]

I honestly thought this was one of the worst films I've ever seen. The main character is just SO boring, even his fantasies are boring. And the aesthetics resemble a Comedy Central original movie. Just so incredibly awful.

[eternity]

Are we going to throw 2013 films into the 2012 forum? Okay.

I don't think I'm off-base to say that this is a terrible Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind knockoff with a passable but over-the-top 1970s flair. Not a good way to start the year.

[Stay Puft]

Are we going to throw 2013 films into the 2012 forum? Okay.

Well we didn't have one until today. But yeah a mod can move it there now.

[eternity]

Reminder to move this over to the 2013 board.

[Mal]

CQ was good. This movie is the opposite of good.

[Grouchy]

These people have no shame.

I didn't pay for this movie and I still want my money back.