Sleep with Me (1994)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I enjoyed this film quite a bit and am surprised that it's not better known. It feels as if it could have been considered the quintessential nineties film that summed up the feelings of a generation, but somehow it was overlooked. It plays like a cross between Short Cuts and Clerks, with as much feeling and raw reality as a John Cassavetes film.The film is about a man who is in love with the wife of his best friend. The story unfolds through real-to-life scenes and dialog which gradually reveal more and more about the characters and their motivations. The plot meanders but never strays; we never feel lost. The film feels like real life and it is full of fun and memorable scenes and conversations which feel totally real to the point that you almost feel as if you are there in the room observing, rather than merely watching a film.The scenes are cut together with intertitles—similar to many old silent films—and it's done a charming way that I didn't feel was at all tacky or distracting. Perhaps their use was an afterthought by the filmmakers as a way to jump from one scene to the next, but it never feels as if we're being cheated out of anything. That's actually something that I wish was done more frequently, but it seems like films these days like to use other methods to transition between scenes instead. It's probably just as well, because the intertitles here made Sleep with Me feel more unique and original and helped me really get into each scene and enjoy the film.One of my favorite parts of the film is a brief appearance by Quentin Tarantino in what I consider to be his finest acting role. His performance here has often been called a cameo, but it lasts for several minutes and includes at least a few dozen lines of hilarious yet totally believable dialog, although the character is not essential to the plot of the film. While I love Tarantino as a director, I'm not normally a big fan of his acting work, but in this role he nailed it. Although brief, it's a part he was born to play.However, two of the things that I loved the most about this film were also the main things that I felt detracted from it overall and kept me from giving it a higher score. Those two things were the acting and the dialog. Although both of these aspects were typically great throughout the film and made it enjoyable, there were several instances in which they failed. Several pieces of dialog—including the very last lines of the film—felt wildly out of place and several bits of acting felt like they should have been scrapped or redone.I got the feeling that this movie was put together quickly and that very few takes were done for certain scenes, so perhaps that is why the acting and dialog were not always spot-on. Perhaps this was for budgetary reasons or perhaps the director felt the scenes we more spontaneous that way. Or perhaps the reason for these shortcomings was that the film had six different writers who, from my understanding, each worked independently to a degree to write their own individual scenes. In any case, these flaws don't ruin the film. It's not a perfect film, but none are, and this one is definitely worth watching.

As a modern romantic drama/comedy, there is nothing particularly unique about this one although it has some very witty dialogue. The thing that made it worth it for me was one scene set at a party one of the characters was having to celebrate the sale of one of his movie scripts. At this party one fellow is telling some other fellows how Top Gun is nothing more than "a man's struggle with his own latent homosexuality". He then proceeds to analyze all of the characters in terms of Maverick's sexual orientation. I always felt robbed of time, money, and I.Q. points for having sat through Top Gun in the theater back in 1986 but that one comic scene made it all worth it.

Spanning the time from the marriage of Joe to Sarah through the various stages of their marriage breakdown, this follows Joe's best friend Frank as he tries to hold his life together despite his love for Sarah.Written by about six different writers, each doing a different section. It all plays like the opposite of Friends. The group of friends are less polished and in some respects seem more realistic, however in other scenes their activities seem very far fetched and outlandish to be real. However at the end of the day the central strand of the story around Joe, Sarah and Frank is good and interesting. The only problem with this strand is that more time is spent watching Joe and Sarah experience problems rather than falling in love - this makes their relationship hard to support or believe in. Whereas in contrast Frank's longing for Sarah is shown to be developing and it makes it easier to support this.The film's main weakness is that the supporting characters are little more than fonts for witty banter and never convince as real people. Stoltz is actually quite good, however Sheffer is allowed more audience sympathy and comes off better. Tilly is excellent (and is very beautiful) she brings the torn wife to life. Of the rest of the cast there are plenty of indie faces, but the real stealer is Tarantino in a short cameo as a party guest talking animatedly about Top Gun's homoerotic sub text.Overall it is very rough around the edges and at times feels a little bitty, however it is refreshingly free of mushy sentiment and is quite funny.

I wonder sometimes about IMDb's "Weighted average" on movie ratings. This film has a "weighted" score of 5.7, but a real average of 7.0. What's up with that? Anyway, I liked this film. I had never heard of it, but taped it from cable some time ago. It is a quiet film, basically a character study. Eric Stoltz and Craig Sheffer did fine jobs as the male leads. I was impressed by the beauty of Joey Lauren Adams in a small role. (I was unfamiliar with her.) Most impressive, though, was the performance of Meg Tilly. She just exuded a semi-shy charm all through the movie. She seems to have dropped out of sight in recent years, and that's too bad. This film is worth a rental. I would buy it if it were on DVD. Grade: B+