Rating: 
Summary: Intermittently funny, but generally inane and faux chic
Review: "Full Frontal" is built on a remarkably juvenile screenplay by performance artist Coleman Hough; it's pretty amazing director Steven Soderbergh saw anything in it. It's literate enough, but about all the neurotic, postmodern things we've grown to loathe: weird sexual fetishes, the debate of "reality" vs. "unreality", that two-degrees-of-separation-in-LA material, and, finally, unnervingly, Hollywood mechanics. We did not need another ludicrous, didactic structural analysis of Hollywood.Boy do we get it. "Full Frontal" begins with an introduction of the characters through series of random, purposeless monologues drawn from different points in the film, then the opening scene of what looks like a big budget romance movie between an actor (Blair Underwood) and a journalist (Julia Roberts), just staged and false enough to let you know it's winking, before commencing with seemingly unrelated subplots that wink like an old creep with a pocket of butterscotch candies. Another journalist (David Hyde Pierce) is clinging to his magazine job and his marriage to a human relations executive of some kind (Catherine Keener) who is quite clearly deranged or a descendant of the inquisition: She conducts interviews, all day it seems, by throwing a plastic blowup globe at her applicants and demanding the names of all the countries in Africa. This story is intercut with the opening of a second-rate stage comedy about Hitler, with a lead actor (Nicky Katt) channeling Cary Grant and quoting Peter Ustinov; and a massage therapist (Mary McCormack) who eventually crosses the paths of all the characters. David Duchovny appears in a cameo as a kinky movie producer that proves he's pretty hard up in life after "The X-Files." Soderbergh is usually pretty savvy with a variety of film styles and camera lenses, but using cheap digital cameras mutes the small victories of comedy Hough's script does deliver. The hand-held jitter is agonizing as well. There's only so much of the follow-the-globe cam we can take. Mostly, though, "Full Frontal" is a painful (and refreshing) reminder that not every chic, self-absorbed New Yorker like Hough can waltz into LA and force audiences to acknowledge her obvious highbrow wit and trendy verbal gymnastics by inserting bizarre non-sequitors like vampires, marijuana brownies and guys crawling along hotel floors. Keener especially rants and moans her way into the pantheon of grating personas. It could be said that Roberts acquits herself in a small role - Roberts seems to be doing a lot of that lately - while Pierce most closely approaches a performance of resonance. Based on its less-is-nothing marketing campaign, Soderbergh and others basically knew "Full Frontal" was inside baseball, pertinent to the few, aimless for the rest. That knowledge doesn't excuse the film, particularly the ridiculous final scene that pulls back and back and back to reveal a couple of artists an hour past being "on it" and hip.
Rating:
Summary: Soderbergh does his Hollywood film..
Review: ...but I end up not liking it as much as Altman's 'The Player' or Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' and about the only thing going for this are the big stars doing small bit parts and cameos, ala 'The Player'. Catherine Keener and David Hyde Pierce however do flex decent acting chops here. Ducovney should have never accepted an asphyxiation role...those roles are difficult to recover from. I wonder what my favorite bitchy movie reviewer (and hero) Rex Reed would have to say about this?..."David D. Chokes in an anti-climatic Soderbergh film. Is Put on Hold"...
I don't like Blair Underwood. I don't know why. He's just not my type. Julia is wasted here. One should see happier Julia Roberts movies, not this bit of depressed and depressive effluvia. My overall advice: see side by side with 'The Player' and decide which is the better movie. I bet you'll go with 'The Player'..
Rating: 
Summary: Gee, I feel so inadequate...
Review: ...that I lacked the smarts, intellectuality, sophistication and suavity to cotton on to this aimless, plotless, anchorless and senseless flick. I guess you just have to be inside Hollywood heads to understand this parody of same. Us regular folks just aren't with it. How, indeed, that saddens me (not).
Rating:
Summary: The worst film I've ever seen.
Review: After about an hour into this film I asked my friend if we could leave. He wanted to stay because we'd already paid for the tickets. I told him that I didn't care taht I would want these couple of hours of my life back later. I was right.
There was nothing remotely entertaining about the film. I often enjoy bad art for the sake of bad art but this was undigestable.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious, Boring, Rudderless
Review: Apparently the script, sound equipment and several cameras were lost on the way to the set of this dull film. I imagine the director telling his actors: "More mumbling--more mumbling! I nearly understood some of the dialogue in the last take!" Then he turned to his cameraman and told him to slop another jar of vaseline on the lens. I could put up with some of the pretentious art-school escapades of this movie if the story was worth following, but there IS no story. A bunch of LA people with direct and tangenital ties to the entertainment business wander along for two hours--that's the story. Woopee. The one and only redeeming thing in this meandering piece of junk is the veterinarian who comes to check out David Hyde Pierce's sick dog and sticks around to eat hash brownies. I don't know who the actress is, but she is a breath of fresh air in the midst of this smelly waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: A Surprising and Entertaining Gem
Review: Be prepared to just watch the movie with an open mind. Walk away and then think about the entire movie and the effect that Soderbergh was going for. If you allow yourself, you may be surprised that your reactions DURING the movie may be very different from the ones you will have after going away and reflecting about the entire experience. I did not like the movie while viewing it. This is probably why you see negative reviews from many critics. Surprisingly, I changed my mind 2 hours later after spending some time digesting the entire experience. Shallow trivia first. David Duchovny was the best looking actor in the entire degraded digital video segments but then it is very difficult to make him look badly except by throwing a lot of intense makeup on him (i.e. Zoolander). In the 35mm film segments, I will have to concede that Brad Pitt did look quite handsome although Julia Roberts didn't come off too badly either. Still in my biased opinion David D. was tops in the natural attractiveness department. If he can look that good in those awful video segments, seeing him in 35mm would have been wonderful, but alas, it was not to be. Be warned the digital video segments are intentionally BAD. Very grainy, bad lighting, bad contrast, blurry, etc. which is why everyone in the video segments (except David Duchovny) looks so horrible. And they do look horrible, folks. I don't think they could possibly look that bad in real life. This is all intentional and makes a rather bald statement about "real" life. In a way this stament is also a cliche taken from movies that "real" life is ugly compared to a beautiful perfect, well lighted movie with beautiful actors. There is an extensive amount of time spent on the segments with Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood. These are the weakest parts of the movie in my opinion. Both the film within a film and the digital segments of these two actors were VERY boring and their conversations were excruciating to sit through because they meant absolutely nothing. I feel that this may have been exactly what Soderbergh wanted us to feel. That the film, "Rendevous", they were involved in was trite and the actors in "real" life were trite. Just as we suspect it is in most of the real Hollywood. This was the big message that he was getting across with these two. The other characters were all going about their daily mundane little lives which were also trite and boring but funny once you look back on it because they were very abnormal and normal in their triteness. They were all interesting in their own little boring ways. Gus (David) has such little screen time, it was very irritating since he is one of the best parts of the movie (in my opinion). Nicky Katt had the only truly funny part that made me laugh DURING the movie. He plays a two-bit actor playing in a rotten play about Hitler, "The Sound and the Fuher". He has some great lines that will bring out that belly laugh. Catherine Keener's character is very strange, boring yet not and in retrospect, very entertaining. (Contradictory or what?) You just have to go away to finally realize that it WAS funny and entertaining. David Hyde Pierce's role was rather poignant as a writer who gets the axe and is having a really rotten day. He isn't really funny but rather a sad and pathetic character that just goes with the flow. He is married to Catherine Keener's character who is basically an unhappy adulteress going through a mid-life crisis. As her sister, Mary McCormack, who is a rather bland character, goes from job to job as a masseuse using assumed names. Her concerns during the events of the movie are primarily a planned trip to Tuscon to see a guy she met on the internet who, unbeknownst to her, isn't who he said he was. Throughout the movie, she goes through her normal routine of running around giving people massages in their hotel rooms/homes. The scene with her and David D.(Gus who is also using an assumed name, Bill) is funny but in a quiet way. (Actually how realistic is Gus as a hot shot producer with lots of money NOT having a girl on each arm and needing a "release" from a masseuse? Not too likely. Especially anyone who looks like David D.) No, there is no actual nudity but Gus pitches a pretty big tent in the scene. Darn David D. is so cute in this scene. He also has my vote for best voice in the film. I won't give away the entire thing, but David's death scene is actually very poignant. The party and the discovery of Gus' body are the climactic part of the movie and there is some fine acting here especially by Catherine Keener. Mary McCormack finds Gus' body first and then gets her sister. Catherine Keener cries buckets when she sees him and I started getting teary eyed (and I had been prepared for this scene because I hate to see David die in films). It IS a very sad scene. Most of the overall acting was very low key and intended that way so don't look for any "great" acting histrionics. The Nicky Katt role is probably the only one you could classify as having a "heavy" acting requirement since he is supposed to be an over the top actor in this movie who thinks very highly of himself. Catherine Keener has a couple of great mements especially at the party and at Gus' death bed. Overall, the movie exceeded my expectations. I was prepared to hate it and probably would not have gone to see it if David Duchovny had not been in it. I suspect that most of the people who will see this movie will see it mainly to see their favorite actor or because they like Soderbergh's work. I also suspect the movie will have a much better reception outside of the USA. We are too used to flash and dazzle from Hollywood and can't get past that as a rule. It also takes an intelligent mind to appreciate what Soderbergh was trying to do with this film. As we can see by the attendance figures, not too many of those around.
Rating:
Summary: Thumbs down all the way
Review: By far, one of the worst movies I've ever seen. If only I could retrieve my 19 bucks from this movie. I can understand the concept of an umpredicted movie, but this??? Save your $$$ now by clicking the back button on your browser.
Rating: 
Summary: Try replacing your 'but's with 'and's...
Review: Coleman Hough's words are witty and incisive, and delivered with brilliance by the strong actors in this piece. I couldn't get enough of David Hyde Pierce's character, and the Hitler scenes are ridiculous. I felt like a fly on the wall during filming of a movie, especially during the scenes in Julia Roberts' characters' trailer.
Rating: 
Summary: Occasional wit amid the self-indulgence
Review: Done in cinema-verite style, the story of "Full Frontal" follows, in disjointed fashion, several people connected to the making of a film-within-a-film, "Rendezvous," as their loopy but not very interesting lives careen toward a climactic party scene. The film being made, starring Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood, is self-indulgent and pretentious (though at least shot on good quality film and easy on the eye, in contrast to the rest). The same, alas, can be said of the whole enterprise, despite some good performances, particularly from David Hyde Pierce, and witty dialogue. Grainy, out-of-focus and shaky camerawork is apparently meant to lend an air of authenticity but merely tries the viewer's patience, not to mention inner-ear equilibrium. Occasional moments of satire that hit their target and some surprising cameos from the likes of Brad Pitt and David Duchovny are not enough to make this one worth sitting through.
Rating:
Summary: Quite a "release"...
Review: Even casual Steven Soderbergh fans must have figured out his pattern by now: A film for the box office, a film for me. Director Soderbergh is in a unique position to retain indie "cred" ("Schizopolis", "The Limey") AND pump out box office hits ("Erin Brockovich", "Traffic") that earn him the freedom to do more personal projects. "Full Frontal" falls somewhere between "Welcome To L.A." and "The French Lieutenant's Woman" with its movie-within-a movie structure and self-absorbed Angeleans. Good performances abound, particularly from David-Hyde-Pierce as a neurotic Woody Allen type. Catherine Keener (as Pierce's straying wife, an HR director with a rather unique method of conducting applicant interviews) continues her legacy of caustic, self-loathing ice-queens (she's beautiful, and a fine actress, but will she EVER play a likable character?!) Julia Roberts is so low key that she is nearly unrecognizable, which I found oddly appealing. Nicky Katt is the funniest Hitler since Dick Shawn, and David Duchovny is memorable as the pivotal character who ultimately ties all the stories together (and helps Soderbergh play the biggest "in joke" af all time on "X-Files" fans who remember psychic Peter Boyle's vision of how Fox Mulder would ultimately meet his demise!). Don't blink or you might miss two almost subliminal cameos by Terrance Stamp, reprising his role as "Wilson" from "The Limey" in an oh-so-clever tie-in.
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