Commando (1985) [Director’s Cut] – DVD

Posted in1980s, 2010, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Schwarzenegger

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells
screenplay by Steven E. de Souza
directed by Mark L. Lester

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I first saw Mark L. Lester’s Commando as a young boy and even then I was rather surprised that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s eponymous hero, John Matrix, didn’t get together with his reluctant sidekick, Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong). She’s set up to be the love interest, but the filmmakers never pull the trigger. I was similarly baffled by the saccharine relationship between Matrix and his daughter, Jenny (Alyssa Milano). In my youthful naivety, I frankly thought this was too hokey for an R-rated movie, i.e., a movie intended for grown-ups. What audience of adults would buy into this? And I couldn’t believe that the film would be about her kidnapping and Matrix tracking down and rescuing her. It’s just the hero invading the castle and saving the damsel-in-distress? Hell, Star Wars wasn’t that basic. There had to be some socio-political nuance to the situation I simply wasn’t old enough to grasp.

The Spider Woman|The Voice of Terror [Sherlock Holmes Double Feature] – DVD

Posted in1940s, 2010, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)
***½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, Reginald Denny
screenplay by Lynn Riggs & John Bright, based upon the story "His Last Bow" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
directed by John Rawlins

THE SPIDER WOMAN (1944)
**/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Gale Sondergaard, Dennis Hoey
screenplay by Bertram Millhauser, based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
directed by Roy William Neill

by Ian Pugh My introduction to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes came courtesy of MPI's recent double-feature DVD, and as introductions go, one could certainly do worse. Plucking the detective from Fox's Victorian backdrop and throwing him unceremoniously into World War II, Universal's take on the Holmes series comes across as hell-bent on forging its own continuity and, moreover, its own sense of context. The first entry in this new cycle, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, begins with a title card explaining why the film makes such a dramatic departure from the previous two:

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) – DVD

Posted in1960s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, UK

***/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Peter Cushing, Veronica Carlson, Freddie Jones, Simon Ward
screenplay by Bert Batt
directed by Terence Fisher

by Jefferson Robbins I’ve wondered for a long time why I love the Hammer Film takes on the Universal monsters. I discovered them in my youth, so there’s the nostalgia thing; and they typically involve stuff a young man loves: disfigurement, cleavage, viscera, cleavage, death. But the communion is somehow deeper than that. Guillermo del Toro describes his youthful exposure to creature features in the language of a Catholic embracing Jesus: “At a certain age, I accepted monsters in my heart.” Yeah.

Maid in Manhattan (2002) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance

*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras D
starring Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Bob Hoskins
screenplay by Kevin Wade
directed by Wayne Wang

by Walter Chaw Less another version of the Cinderella story than a remake of the dreadful Ever After, Wayne Wang’s Maid in Manhattan (why Wang is trying to make the same kind of magical Manhattan love tripe as Nora Ephron is only the first of the film’s head-scratchers) manages ill-advisedly to remind of the Ally Sheedy vehicle Maid to Order whilst degenerating into the sort of dead-eyed quasi-political femi-bullshit tailor-made for divas in decline looking for a reason for their existence other than as subject of the next blaring headline. Ironic, then, that the central issues of the picture are resolved through snapshots of fake magazine covers.

Whiteout (2009) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Crime, France, Mystery, Thriller, Turkey

½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D
starring Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short, Tom Skerritt
screenplay by Jon Hoeber & Eric Hoeber and Chad Hayes & Carey W. Hayes
directed by Dominic Sena

by Walter Chaw The first thing you notice about Whiteout is that it looks like shit. Though it was shot on location in Manitoba (subbing for Antarctica), they could’ve saved everyone the trouble and shot it in a green warehouse for all that anything in the film resembles anywhere outside. Not unreal, merely artificial. Take the moment, for example, when unbelievably hot U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) and cohort Dr. John Fury (Tom Skerritt, well into the Kris Kristofferson portion of his career) discover the body that will be the centre of their stupid investigation into the film’s stupid mystery. The middle of an ice canyon, it looks more like something out of a Quatermass flick, sixty years old on a shoestring, and it only gets worse when we come to sepia-toned flashbacks trying to explain why Stetko is damaged goods and, therefore, hiding from herself at the bottom of the world. Everything seems to have been manufactured in a mainframe–even the performances. It’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and, brother, that ain’t good for something trying hard at edgy realism.

The Box (2009) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn
screenplay by Richard Kelly, based on the short story “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson
directed by Richard Kelly

by Walter Chaw As if to dispel any whisper of a doubt after Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales that whatever ephemeral magic was captured in his Donnie Darko was completely accidental, along comes Kelly’s third film as writer-director, The Box. I don’t know yet whether it’s the worst film of the year, but I will say that next to it Alex Proyas’s similar disaster Knowing seems like a goddamn masterpiece. It’s excruciatingly written, for starters, with the all-timer coming when vanilla paterfamilias Arthur (James Marsden), fresh from a 2001 light tunnel, says to vanilla materfamilias Norma (Cameron Diaz) first that “it’s beyond words,” then, a few dozen words later, that it’s “neither here, nor there…but somewhere in between” and that it’s a place “where despair is not the governor of the human soul.” It was around this time that I bore down like a Civil War soldier getting a limb sawed off and watched as The Box magically made its 115-minute running time feel like a day spent undergoing oral surgery. It’s that bad. Badly edited, too, as the awful script (based on a pretty good Richard Matheson short story)–which already jumps around haphazardly between cheap, moronic comparisons of itself to Sartre’s No Exit and egregious exposition that makes M. Night Shyamalan’s leisurely verbal masturbations look like Mamet by comparison–is matched by bizarre jump-cuts and senseless, arrhythmic pacing. Despite how long it feels, it’s over before it really begins.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Sean Bean
screenplay by Craig Titley, based on the novel by Rick Riordan
directed by Chris Columbus

by Walter Chaw You don’t have to have read Ovid to enjoy Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (hereafter The Lightning Thief), because, hell, no one involved in the production appears to have read him. In fact, having a cursory knowledge of Greek mythology will mostly serve to irritate you, as the picture runs roughshod over a whole other religion whilst merging many of its images with Christian myth in an attempt to somehow justify itself to an imaginary audience of affronted, I don’t know, Protestants? What other reason could there be to bastardize the Greek conception of the underworld by mixing it with Milton’s? Actually, in conception, the movie’s Hades (Steve Coogan) owes a lot more to Peter Jackson’s Balrog than to Blake’s illuminations, and suddenly director Chris Columbus’s motivations come into sharper focus. Not having any familiarity with Rick Riordan’s popular tween novels, the first of which is adapted for this film, I can only comment that I also didn’t appreciate a Stepin Fetchit character, Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), who fulfills a threefer function as talking animal/pet (he’s a satyr), token black guy comic relief, and uncomfortable throwback to the bad old days of sideshow coon. No better way to inject levity than to have a hilarious black guy crack wise, widen his eyes, and declare his everlasting fealty to massah. Maybe he exists under the same rationale as Jar Jar Binks and the Na’vi: that fictional creatures can’t be racist caricatures and, besides, this venomous stereotyping is in a children’s film, so we should all just relax. Regardless, The Lightning Thief could play on a double bill with The Blind Side for a cozy trip back to the ’30s in American cinema.

Lost: The Complete First Season (2004-2005) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Television, Thriller

Image A- Sound A+ Extras B+
"Pilot," "Tabula Rasa," "Walkabout," "White Rabbit," "House of the Rising Sun," "The Moth," "Confidence Man," "Solitary," "Raised by Another," "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues," "Whatever the Case May Be," "Hearts and Minds," "Special," "Homecoming," "Outlaws," "…In Translation," "Numbers," "Deus Ex Machina," "Do No Harm," "The Greater Good," "Born to Run," "Exodus"

by Walter Chaw From the two-part pilot, I gotta tell you, I don't trust it. I like the gore, I like the United Colors of Benetton centrefold models as castaway chic, I love Terry O'Quinn and invisible dinosaurs… What I don't like so much is this sinking feeling that "Lost" is a throw-it-all-at-the-wall creation cashing in on post-9/11 discomfort and zeitgeist Ludditism that was genuinely surprised to be asked to hang around for six years. Meaning I have my doubts that any of this cool-ass shit has been remotely plotted out to provide for a commensurately cool-ass resolution–especially since it's not on HBO and therefore not privy to HBO's seemingly bottomless roster of brilliant short-form, long-term dramatists.

It Might Get Loud (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Documentary, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
directed by Davis Guggenheim

by Bryant Frazer In the U2 concert film Rattle and Hum, Bono finishes speechifying about Apartheid in the middle of the song “Silver and Gold” by growling an acid faux-apology: “Am I buggin’ ya? Don’t mean to bug ya.” Then he says, “OK, Edge–play the blues,” and The Edge holds up his guitar and goes WEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE! Watching the movie with friends in college, I always savoured the absurdity of that moment. We imagined Bono scrunching up his face in a grimace and scolding The Edge for reverting to his ordinary clamour. “Aw, Edge,” he might say, “that ain’t the blues. That’s the same shit you always play.” And I’d collapse in helpless laughter.

Mystic River (2003) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras B
starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by Dennis Lahane
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Walter Chaw Opening like a Stephen King story of a group of friends falling from innocence into experience, Clint Eastwood’s latest elegy for the myth of man strains at the edge of hysterical, offering up a testosterone-rich soup of In the Bedroom parental melodrama that compels for its pervasive doom, but disappoints for its didactic simplicity. Still, there’s something to the tribal primitivism of the picture, the idea that man at his essence is composed of balanced portions of nobility and violence and that our society, perhaps, is no different–the past being the muddy headwaters of the titular mystic river. The picture is a rhyme of Eastwood’s A Perfect World, complete with spiralling shots of the sky through branches–the evocation of a Naturalism at war with any illusion of moral spirituality or humanism, with its heroes criminals shaded equally by the instinct to violence and the instinct to nurture.

Sundance ’10: Skateland

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance, Teen
***/****starring Shiloh Fernandez, Ashley Greene, Heath Freeman, Taylor Handleywritten and directed by Anthony Burns by Alex Jackson Anthony Burns's Skateland honours the hoary conventions of the "summer-after-high-school" genre (notice I'm not even bothering to explain what the movie's about), plays everything by the book, and never takes you too far out of your comfort zone. I think the film's power lies in Burns's willingness to allow for a cliché or a saccharine moment so long as it is truthful. Skateland closes with the hero kissing the girl to the accompaniment of Modern English's ubiquitous "I Melt With You," and I…

Sundance ’10: Boy

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, New Zealand, Sundance
**/****starring Taika Waititi, James Rolleston, Te Aho Eketone-Whituwritten and directed by Taika Waititi by Alex Jackson Taika Waititi's Boy has one thing to say and spends 87 minutes saying it. Its message is basically that best friends are poor substitutes for fathers. Eleven-year-old New Zealander Boy (James Rolleston) idealizes his absentee dad Alamein (writer-director Waititi), who has spent the past seven years in prison for robbery. Returning home to dig up the loot he buried before getting caught, Alamein casually re-establishes a relationship with Boy by feeding him beer and initiating him into the world of "men." In exchange, Boy…

TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Western Adventures – DVD + Jeremiah Johnson (1972) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 2010, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Romance, Western

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A+
starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Warren Oates
screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah
directed by Sam Peckinpah

McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)
****/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B+
starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane
screenplay by Robert Altman and Brian McKay, based on the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton
directed by Robert Altman

THE TRAIN ROBBERS (1973)
1/2*/**** Image B- Sound C Extras F
starring John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Rod Taylor, Ricardo Montalban
written and directed by Burt Kennedy

JEREMIAH JOHNSON
*/****
DVD – Image D+ Sound C- Extras F
BD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C+
starring Robert Redford, Will Geer, Allyn Ann McLerie, Delle Bolton
screenplay by John Milius and Edward Anhalt
directed by Sydney Pollack

by Walter Chaw From John Ford to Akira Kurosawa to Sergio Leone then back to the United States with Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, trace the odd, international lineage of the American western genre as the seeds of its completion are sown by Ford, only to be harvested a few decades down the line with a singular bloodbath south of the proverbial border. You could say that the western was already nearing its completion in the postwar films noir set in the sunshine and bluffs of the Old West: homegrown oaters by Anthony Mann and Fritz Lang; William Wellman’s Yellow Sky and Robert Wise’s Blood on the Moon; Budd Boetticher’s subversive Ranowns; Arthur Penn’s glass darkly Billy the Kid pic The Left Handed Gun; Brando’s filthy One-Eyed Jacks; and even Ford himself with terminal pieces like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers. But it’s through Kurosawa’s admiration and transfiguration of Ford’s themes–then Sergio Leone’s incandescent prism of dirt and blood that transfigured Kurosawa’s (and Ford’s) ideas about heroics and individualism into something poetically base–from which Peckinpah1 took his cues.

Sundance ’10: Me Too

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Spain, Sundance
Yo, también***/****starring Lola Dueñas, Pablo Pineda, Antonio Naharro, Isabel García Lorcawritten and directed by Álvaro Pastor & Antonio Naharro by Alex Jackson Daniel (Pablo Pineda) is a 34-year-old man with Down Syndrome who has recently graduated from college and gotten a job as a social worker connecting persons with disabilities with home- and community-based services. (I served my internship at a state-run agency like this.) There he meets and grows infatuated with the blonde, slightly older, sexually provocative Laura (Lola Dueñas), who does not have Down Syndrome. They find themselves developing a strong friendship, with Daniel trying to push it…

Sundance ’10: I Am Love

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Italy, Romance, Sundance
***½/****starring Tilda Swinton, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Pippo Delbono, Alba Rohrwacherwritten and directed by Luca Guadagnino by Alex Jackson What to make of the ending to Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love? It's not that it's inexplicable, exactly. I believe I understood what "happened" perfectly well. The issue, really, is with John Adams's score. It builds and builds and grows louder and louder until we half believe that wealthy Milan housewife Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton) will be dragged down to Hell by a gypsy curse. The audience I saw it with struggled to stifle giggles. They were emotionally manipulated to have a strong…

Dear John (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, War, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Henry Thomas, Richard Jenkins
screenplay by Jamie Linden, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
directed by Lasse Hallström

by Ian Pugh Movies based on Nicholas Sparks novels–sentimental drivel, functionally identical–usually just bounce off my chest, but we all have our limits. Once more into the breach as Princess Prettygirl (Seyfried) falls head over heels for Johnny Bluecollar (Tatum) in a spectacularly awful Harlequin romance that juggles metaphors about coins and the size of the moon while boasting only the vaguest understanding of the English language. Dear John is little more than a rehash of The Notebook, a movie I found tedious but, again, ultimately innocuous. Yet there’s a mysterious “x” factor at work in this one that attacked some vital nerve and reduced my brain to petroleum jelly. Could be that Lasse Hallström finally found the perfect vessels for the source author: Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum–actors, both, whose deadwood talents fail to stretch past sheer bewilderment. (I kind of hate Ryan Gosling as an actor, but he undoubtedly elevated The Notebook.) There’s a point very early on where Seyfried remarks, “Wow, you made a fire,” as her future beau demonstrates his ability to jumpstart a little kindling–and the complete lack of sarcasm (or really any emotion) in her voice led me to wonder if Tatum was going to club her over the head and drag her back to his cave. It’s not an unreasonable conclusion: most of these movies forge conflict out of the idea that women are property, and Dear John is no different.

Sundance ’10: Winter’s Bone

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Sundance
**/****starring Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey, Garret Dillahuntscreenplay by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellinidirected by Debra Granik by Alex Jackson Those who loved Courtney Hunt's Frozen River are welcome to a second helping with Winter's Bone. I fear it might signal the start of a new genre: grass-and-granola cinema nobly detailing the plight of the working poor crossed with pulpy film noir. (Granola noir, perhaps?) The problem with these movies is that grass-and-granola and film noir just do not mix. The "plight of the working poor" is grossly oversimplified when narratively expressed in noir terms. The gangsters in Winter's…

Sundance ’10: Smash His Camera

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance
**/****directed by Leon Gast by Alex Jackson Leon Gast's Smash His Camera isn't much more than bubble gum: it's kind of sweet for a while and gives you something to chew on, but it has no nutritional value. A hagiography of paparazzo Ron Galella, the film is so deliriously meta in conception that it feels like some kind of joke at our expense. We're told by one of Galella's critics that his photographs are interesting simply because he photographs interesting people--we look at them for the subject, not for the artistry. That's all quite true, and perhaps even so obvious…

Sundance ’10: One Too Many Mornings

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance
**½/****starring Stephen Hale, Anthony Deptula, Tina Kapousis, Jonathan Shockleyscreenplay by Anthony Deptula, Michael Mohan, Stephen Haledirected by Michael Mohan by Alex Jackson One Too Many Mornings is yet another semi-autobiographical romantic dramedy about two twentysomething males refusing to enter the adult world. It sounds a lot like the below-reviewed Bass Ackwards and Obselidia, but this one was made completely out-of-pocket and shot on the weekends over the course of two years. Considering the ultra-low budget, I'll admit there's a temptation to lower my standards. The filmmaking itself is stylish and inventive while essentially staying organic to the material--there's a fine…

Sundance ’10: Memories of Overdevelopment

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Cuba, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance
Memorias del desarrollo**½/****starring Ron Blair, Eileen Alana, Susana Pérez, Lester Martínezscreenplay by Miguel Coyula, based on the novel by Edmundo Desnoesdirected by Miguel Coyula by Alex Jackson Asked by a student why he left Cuba despite supporting and believing in his country's socialist principles, Latin-American studies professor Sergio responds that not being able to write what he wanted to write was simply unbearable. Now that he's in the United States, he's free to say whatever he wants--and nobody cares. It's a relatively minor moment in an aggressively polemic film, but it's an extremely important one just the same. Throughout Memories…