January 25, 2001

Madison
Not Rated
Release Date - Sundance, 2001

The disappointment film of the day was Madison, which will likely become a high-profile seller with decent commercial potential. So why am I grumbling? Well, the film's director, William Bindley, is not very good yet. The cinematographer is not listed in the Sundance program or the film's press kit, yet he deserves major kudos for any success this film achieves, because it looks like a real movie, despite Bindley's consistent failures of coverage, matching and creation of space. It is one of the major first-time-director symptoms to make a movie that has too many close-ups. Madison suffers that malady.

The most bothersome part of the picture for me was the musical score (the writer of which also goes unnamed), which is about the most overt case of theft I have ever heard in a film. At my most generous moments, I decided that we were listening to a temp track because anyone with a soundtrack to The Cider House Rules, American Beauty and some adventure movie… I think it's The Right Stuff... could reproduce almost the entire soundtrack. The reason I am sure it isn't a temp track is that each theft trails off at the end with a little change of pace.