Heat is a puzzle. It asks a very big question: On the one hand, I think Heat is extraordinarily well-made. Michael Mann makes movies as well as anyone in America. Heat is very exciting in a plastic, sensual way, but on the other hand, I think it’s ridiculous. The basic premise that we live in a society where the cops and criminals are alike is nonsense. Anyone who has had their house broken into or has been robbed on the street knows what criminal violence is and that it’s loathsome. The danger here is that movies can be so compelling and entrancing that they can lead you to believe in things that you don’t believe and that are really not so.
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ETA: From Greencine:
David Thomson is guest curating and introducing a series of films based on his new book, The Whole Equation at the Pacific Film Archive, running today through January 30. In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Kimberley Chun chats with him and finds him "less intimidating and more down-to-earth than one imagines." Nonetheless, on a neighboring page, Max Goldberg remains skeptical of Thomson's most recent direction: "Questioning the limits of cinematic form is valid enough, but [David] Thomson can do it to the point of being reductive. With distributors, multiplexes, DVD manufacturers, and Blockbuster stores already limiting what most people can see, do we really need one of the nation's preeminent film thinkers playing the same game?"
The Chun interview is worth reading if only for the last question and answer:
BG: Do you have any guilty pleasures?
DT: I never feel guilty about pleasure.
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