Moonlight Mile (2002)
Directed by Brad Silberling
As he copes with the death of his fiancee along with her parents, a young man must figure out what he wants out of life.
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What critics compared Moonlight Mile to
That Bertie is so intoxicating a fulcrum and spiritual focal point damns Moonlight Mile to a comparison to Almost Famous (and Pompeo resembles Kate Hudson's Penny Lane in more than just appearance) as a document of the fate of a smart kid thrust into an exciting new world populated by wounded young fatales and Yeats' lost children.
Not since Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous has a soundtrack been so plugged into the era it evokes, nor so obviously been used by a filmmaker so in tune with the music.
From my point of view, this is not a compliment, and I can only hope that the cool reception that has greeted Moonlight Mile, like the popular underperformance of Crowe's Almost Famous and Vanilla Sky will stop prompting so much critical hand-wringing about why these films don't fare better commercially and start promoting some skepticism about how well these pictures actually pull their aesthetic weight.
Director Brad Silberling's previous films -- "Casper," "City of Angels" and "Moonlight Mile" -- have all dealt with death as major themes; you may know that Silberling was dating actress Rebecca Schaeffer when she was killed by an obsessed fan in 1989, so it's understandable how his work would become flavored by thoughts of mortality.
I give Silberling ( Moonlight Mile ) credit for not allowing them to swallow the film.
Director Brad Silberling ("Moonlight Mile") takes on the challenge of translating perhaps the second most popular series of current children's books for the screen and succeeds most of the time.
Following up Moonlight Mile with another memento mori, Brad Silberling steadfastly resists the epileptic flash-edits that sink this kind of big-budget ship, but his direction is ultimately workmanlike.
Finally, director Brad Silberling ("Moonlight Mile") directs as if his life depended on it, reeling in his performers when necessary, or letting them fly hither and yon.
Director Brad Silberling (''Moonlight Mile") has essentially made a Tim Burton movie without the weird shafts of adolescent pain: The woeful tale of the Baudelaires, their orphaning and subsequent journey from one hapless guardian to the next -- chased all the while by the venal stick-figure Count Olaf (Carrey) -- is sad but not tragic here, a story of resourcefulness and fortitude in the face of amusingly grim events, narrated by the silhouetted figure of Snicket (Jude Law) with the tact of a first-year undertaker.