The photography is really pretty. I liked the lighting and use of color, and the compositions were nice. The editing is outstanding. This movie wastes no time at all. I forget what famous filmmaker-guy said that you should always enter a scene late and exit early. I wanna say it was either Murch or Dmytrk. Either way, who cares? This movie does that. It doesn't waste time with pesky little things like establishing shots. It goes straight to the action. The transitions from one scene to the next are so good that there are times when you think that the first shot of one scene is actually still a part of the previous scene. You know how most movies end with some sort of big crane shot or something that signifies that it's time to go home? SWIMFAN doesn't. It ends on a shot which seems like it should be mid-scene. And it doesn't fade to black or even cut to black. It cuts to the credits already in mid-crawl. That's so cool!

All of this is great, but the movie also gets kind of wacky at times. There are a lot of unconventional techniques which are used to let us glimpse into the character's minds. Jump cuts are used quite frequently to quickly show a character's emotional state. This doesn't always work, but it usually does. There's also a scene in which a prop dollies with a camera. It's strange, but good.

I liked this movie way too much. I really want to see it again. I haven't been this excited about a movie for a while.

Mike, you aren't one of those fake movie critics hired by the studios, are you? You seem to like the movies everyone else hates.

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I have to agree with Mike on this one. I knew absolutely nothing about this going in, and was "pleasantly surprised". The story may be ludicrous, but the film holds together anyway, for all the reasons Mike noted. I too liked this a little too much.

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As to Mike's taste in movies, his comments confirm what I've suspected: that he and I are the B-movie kings of Film-Tech!!!

I too love Carpenter, for example. You either dig B-movies or you don't. Personally, I love them. I have much more time for either a B-movie or a very well done arthouse movie (The Piano Teacher, Ghost World, Magnolia, or classic stuff like Bergman or Antonioni, for example). I don't enjoy middle of the road; it bores me.

BTW, I think it was Robert Towne (screenwriter of 'Chinatown') who said that thing about getting into scenes late and getting out early; I could be mistaken, however.

One thing can be said for sure; arthouse and B-movies seem to have much 'tighter' direction than a lot of high-profile A-movies...the latter seem much lazier in this respect (let's just throw money at the screen), and seem to love as much padding as possible. As with anything, there are exceptions.

I do love B-movies, but I love big blockbusters too. It's just that B-movies tend to be seen less, so when I like one, I'll spend a lot more time trying to convince other people to see it. Everyone's going to see EPISODE II. There's not much point in recommending it to people, even though it's the best film to come out in a very long time. But no one's going to rush out to see a little movie like CQ, for example, so time is better spent talking about how cool that is, even though EPISODE II kicks its ass on every single level. But CQ's a great movie, and if you tell people that, maybe they'll go see it. I don't think I'm making much sense here, but what else is new?

Also, I think I like B-movies more than a lot of people because I'm very forgiving of bad writing as long as the movie has something else to offer. Lots of people aren't, and I don't understand that. Look at Ebert's review of FEARDOTCOM, which he gave 2 stars. He said it was bad, basically because of the writing, and then he spends the entire review praising the visuals, saying that they are worthy of 4 stars. I bet you anything that if the script was top notch and the visuals sucked ass, he would have given it 3 stars at the least. Why is that?

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