So, Eros opened here in Chicago last weekend. Who would've guessed that a film featuring individual works by Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni would yield such mixed results? I suppose I was expecting a certain amount of disappointment, but not on this scale. Within its 108 minutes it somehow manages to demonstrate one of the greatest examples of film making this year as well as one of the absolute worst.

The best comes in the form of Wong Kar-Wai's "The Hand" which I almost wish was being shown on its own. Perhaps a typical entry for the director, whose films largely deal with a type of missed connection, be it romantic or other. But he directs this no less passionately than any of his other work, and manages to create a vivid masterpiece that actually lives up to the collective title of the film.

On the other hand,"The Dangerous Thread of Things" is not only the worst of the three, but possibly the worst film of the year. That it is directed by Antonioni, one of the masters of Italian cinema, is perhaps the most appalling aspect. This isn't just the result of the master being on autopilot. No, not with a film this bad. The only explanation I can offer is that he simply wasn't present at all throughout the entire process. This is the worst kind of softcore porn; the kind you might catch after hours on Cinemax. Working with no apparent purpose, Antonioni directs something that looks like a commercial, plays like hollow porn and ends with a truly embarrassing scene involving a woman dancing nude on a beach.

As for Soderbergh's: his would've been more at home as a particularly high-brow SNL skit and comes off not so much as insulting as totally unremarkable.