Fragmentary mini-guide through Los Angeles-area egos and insecurities, a dissonant dissection of characters at the proverbial crossroads in their lives, unsure how to proceed and dragging others into their inharmonious webs. Under the unwritten rule that low-budget art-films with big-name players acting for scale must be edgy and provoking, director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough have crafted a multi-character portrait of tangled lives laid bare (hence the title); they actually appear to perceive these unearthed 'truths' to be honest and outspoken, but the phoniness comes through. As a television actor hoping to make the jump to features, Blair Underwood has a chance to broaden his heretofore limited abilities and show us something special, but--aside from a funny rap in the backseat of a limousine--he's stuck playing boy-girl guessing games with journalist Julia Roberts (in a Jane Fonda shag wig). There's a funny episode with a stage actor (portraying Hitler in a production entitled "The Sound and the Fuhrer") rebelling against his direction, but the marriage and employment woes of the others smack of Alan Rudolph's "Welcome to L.A." (with perhaps a bit more needling sarcasm substituting for satire). What Soderbergh does with the look of the film (utilizing mostly hand-held cameras) is far more interesting than the writing, however no new ground is broken either way because we have all been down this lonesome road before. *1/2 from ****

I've seen a lot of bad reviews for this movie, but personally, I liked it. I guess the movie didn't have a definitive plot, but it was slightly quirky, which is a nice change of pace from the more serious films I usually watch. When I left the movie theater, everyone in there seemed pretty satisfied with the film But, everyone's entitled to their own opinion.

In Spanish there's a saying that translates: "Grow fame and go to sleep". I think this happened with S. Soderbergh, where he took advantage of his surprising win at the Oscars Best Director competition and the success of his movie Erin Brockovich along with his pal Julia Roberts and her high peak in the moment he made this movie. Without those 2 mega successes he wouldn't convince many studios to make this movie, and none of us would ever seen it. The box office barely went over the movie budget.

A mix of troubled characters related all to the movie business create a confused and complicated web of feelings, relationships, weird behaviors and "rendevouz" that are let to almost pure improvisation by the director, and in retrospective it sounds very interesting but we haven't seen many movies with such a proposal maybe not because nobody has thought about it but because it's very hard to make it successful and achieve a fine piece of work. In this case I don't think that the weight of Oscars and fresh success help that much in accomplishing that nice piece of work. A very good and daring idea where all the actors were abandon to their own choices in make up, dressing and craft supplies. Niece piece of work... for the actors and crew who make it, in their own private screening or party, not for us who felt it was a waste of time and my $1 that cost renting it. There is some arrogant smell in the air that I felt heavily since I saw for the first time Mr. Soderbergh old fashion sort of feminine style glasses frames and it was strongly confirmed by watching this movie.

I don't remember in recent years a movie where I start watching the running time as early as I started with this movie: when it ran for 15 min I was already impatient, and for a good 1 hour or so I felt uncomfortable for not knowing anything of what was happening and not connecting but a couple of dots in the whole plot. Maybe that was the precise goal of Soderbergh, don't know. I felt bored watching a huge bunch of nonsense which might have make sense but at the end it didn't. Brad Pitt was quite right at the end: I don't know who did it. We strongly hope there's better to come from Soderbergh.