Timecode

This is a very weird film. The screen is split into quarters and your shown four 'films' simultaineously, the four films follow certain characters which relate to each other one way or another. Only four cameras were used, one for each 'film' (digital cameras, big plug for Sony, those other thing are so last millenium) and they all ran in sync. Then on top of that the whole film was shot in 'realtime' and all the actors improvised around a script outline for all their scenes! The man responsible for this film is a guy called Mike Figgis (Miss Julie, Leaving Las Vegas) who both wrote and directed, produced and help with the soundtrack of the film. Also on the subject of the soundtrack, which is brilliant by the way, Skin from Skunk Anansie sings the end credits song 'Strangers' which is really cool.
Some of the concepts in this film have been done before, very long takes like those used in 'Rope' (Alfred Hitchcock) but Timecode is a little different in that the WHOLE film is done in one single take. Another good thing about this film is that Mike Figgis somehow managed to incorporate a sale pitch which explains the ideology behind the film, the use of realtime, spliting the screen etc., great bit of script writing.
Its very strange and difficult at first to keep up with everything thats happening, cos your trying to effectively watch four films at once. At times its difficult to stay focused and keep up with ALL the action (its hard to watch the opposite corner of the scene where something important to the storyline is going on while Salma Hayek and Jeanne Tripplehorn are getting it on! Salma and Jeanne win everytime) The sound that goes with the film doesn't always help either, throughout most of the film you can hear the sound from all four scenes, but the one that is most important is louder than the rest. For example, if on two of the sections people are having conversation but one sections conversation is more important you'll hear that sections converstaion clearly but at the sametime you can hear the other sections conversation but not clearly or loudly enough to make sense of it. This gets frustrating at times because you wanna know what their saying, especially if you go and see this film more than once. But what in someways makes this a frustrating film to watch is what makes it so fastinating. The fact that you have to think about whats happening and try and watch these four scenes keeps your interest throughout the film, it also makes you wanna go and see the film again in case you missed anything.
This film is so worth going to see, it a great piece of new experimental cinema and it combines abit of everything, which is one of its big strengths, its balance. While something dramatic is going on in one or more of the sections something light-hearted or comical is happening on the other sections. (however this can get you in trouble with fellow cinema-goers, especially if their all watching the dramatic bits and reaching for their tissues and your laughing your arse off at the action in a different section to the one their focused on!)

Timecode has a rather large cast list, and everyone in the film is brilliant (sometimes the hardest thing to act is normality) so i've tried my best to get as may of the names as possible. Here we go:

Holly Hunter (The piano, Crash, Raising Arizona), Saffron Burrows (Miss Julie, Deep blue sea), Salma Hayek (The faculty, Desperardo), Jeanna Tripplehorn (Basic Instinct), Laurie Metcalf (Scream 2, TV's 'Roseanne' it's Jackie!), Kyle Maclachlan, Stellan Skarsgard, Juilian Sands, Xander Berkeley, Aimee Graham, Golden Brooks, Viveka Davis, Alessandro Nivola, Richard Edson, Andrew Heckler, Danny Huston, Elizabeth Low, Steven Weber, Mia Maestro, Leslie Mann, Daphna Kastner and (finally) Suzy Nakamura.