Changing Lanes (2002, VHS)

Ben Affleck Sweetheart you can knock into my car, offer me a blank check baby and I will take it. No problem. Such is the premise behind a new and complex movie that takes you on a psychological roller coaster of emotion. The name is Changing Lanes and I am enthralled with this new flick. Characterization Samuel L. Jackson plays Doyle, an alcoholic trying to turn his life around. We meet him in an alcoholics anonymous meeting. He is determined to give up a life of booze. His wife and children are threatening to take off and leave him high and dry. He is scouring the city for a new apartment...

As a society, we ve become conditioned to making sure the other person pays especially when we feel we ve been wronged. It s become a part of our culture, especially in the media we view, that there must somehow be retribution enacted and in a visible way that makes us somehow feel vindicated. The consequences of this are all around us as we ve lost a great deal of compassion and instead revel in people s misfortune. Changing Lanes is the story of a small event in the lives of two men that takes on a life of its own because of their own self-centered view of the world and the inability to put.

Say what you will about movies that get up close and personal (and the fact that they aren t often big box office) this movie is worth watching! I don t know what I expected when I started watching it. I guarantee it was not this! Certainly after watching Michell s effort Notting Hill, the romantic comedy with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, Changing Lanes takes a turn to the left and keeps on coming down the highway, past the facile cuteness of romantic longing and right on down to the basics. Right here, right now. It is a movie that should make you consider your relationship with the person..

I ve been noticing, more and more, as the technology of special effects becomes increasingly sophisticated, that opening credits are taking on a life of their own. Very seldom are they something to fast-forward through, lest something crucial is revealed during those initial moments. Often they serve to establish setting and begin to establish the tone of the film. While this is not particularly new, the sophistication of the visuals gets better all the time. Such is the case with Changing Lanes. The opening scenes of congested freeways, hurried pedestrians, and general frantic activity are a.