Bill Chambers, Author at FILM FREAK CENTRAL

About Bill Chambers

That’s My Bush! [The Definitive Collection] – DVD

January 2, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Satire, Television

Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
“An Aborted Dinner Date,” “A Poorly Executed Plan,” “Eenie Meenie Miney MURDER!,” “S.D.I.-AYE-AYE!,” “The First Lady’s Persqueeter,” “Mom ‘E’ D.E.A. Arrest,” “Trapped in a Small Environment,” “Fare Thee Welfare”

“What we’re sick of–and it’s getting even worse–is: You either like Michael Moore or you wanna fuckin’ go overseas and shoot Iraqis. There can’t be a middle ground. Basically, if you think Michael Moore’s full of shit, then you are a super-Christian right-wing whatever. And we’re both just pretty middle-ground guys. We find just as many things to rip on on the left as we do on the right. People on the far left and the far right are the same exact person to us.”
— Trey Parker, “Interview of the Meanest”; IN FOCUS, October 2004

by Ian Pugh I think “South Park” boasts the occasional flash of brilliance, but I resent that its more flagrantly political messages, particularly in the past few seasons, essentially boil down to ‘both sides are fucking crazy: here’s how it really is.’ Trey Parker and Matt Stone strike me less as philosophers than as contrarians who force their perceived sensible alternatives down our throats as the infallible Solution. It’s a shame, too, because Parker and Stone remain two of the most talented satirists of our generation, if not in terms of hot-button topics: The ending of the recent “South Park” episode “Stanley’s Cup,” for instance, attacked sports movies by reminding us that every game involves two teams with similar aspirations, and, of course, Team America: World Police‘s caustic parody of “Rent” is as concise and shocking a criticism of that musical as one will find. I’m not taking the stupidly dismissive “I like you better when you’re funny” position that Tucker Carlson had towards Jon Stewart on CNN’s “Crossfire”, but in the world of “South Park”, there are only three options when it comes to world events: left, right, and middle, the latter being invariably correct. Compared to the innumerable increments in the political spectrum of reality, three extremes are no better than two.

Conversations with Other Women (2005) – DVD

January 2, 20072000s, 2005, 2007, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, UK

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Aaron Eckhart, Helena Bonham Carter, Nora Zehetner, Eric Eidem
screenplay by Gabrielle Zevin
directed by Hans Canosa

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no real arguing with Conversations with Other Women–you either buy into its common program of relationship angst and mid-life crisis or you don't. Although director Hans Canosa tries to juice things up with a split-screen technique that's less unctuous than the description might suggest, it's still the same Woody Allen-ish trip through romantic failure via witty banter. There's an extent to which this can be entirely watchable, and at no point does the film grind to a halt and become a chore to sit through. Its concept is a tad far-fetched, however, and the insights gleaned from the chance encounter of two people at a wedding reception are nothing you can't find in the pages of any major glossy mag.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

December 29, 2006****/****, 2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, Mexico, Spain, Theatrical, War

****/****
starring Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú
written and directed by Guillermo del Toro

by Walter Chaw Brutal and ignoble, the antithesis of romantic, the violence in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth slaps metal against flesh like the flat of a hand against a steel table. It’s the only element of the picture that isn’t lush, that isn’t laden with the burnished archetype of Catholic superstition as it exists in eternal suspension with the pagan mythologies it cannibalized. By itself, this seems a metaphor for the pain and the magic of how fable turns the inevitability of coming-of-age into ritual. An early scene where hero girl Ofelia (Ivana Baquero)–a storyteller equal parts experientially innocent and allegorically savvy, making her the manifestation of del Toro’s ideal avatar–tells her prenatal brother a story about a rose that blooms nightly on a mountain of thorns touches in one ineffably graceful movement all the picture’s themes of immortality, aspiration, isolation, and the promise of escape held, sadistically, just out of reach. There’s something of the myth of Tantalus in Ofelia’s tale, as much as there is of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and the sagas of parental absence by the Brothers Grimm, which surface in the premise of a young girl traveling, as the film opens, with her pregnant mother into the war-torn Spanish countryside during Franco’s rule to join her wicked stepfather Captain Vidal (Sergi López) at his remote outpost. Ofelia will be reminded repeatedly throughout the film that there’s no such thing as justice or innocence left in the world, and that the best intentions are crushed by cynicism and rage. The question left as the picture closes has to do with whether Ofelia’s taken the lesson to heart, to say nothing of del Toro–or us.

The Year Without a Santa Claus (2006) – DVD

December 21, 20062000s, 2006, Authors: Ian Pugh, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Musical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound B
starring John Goodman, Ethan Suplee, Delta Burke, Chris Kattan
written by Larry Wilson and Tom Martin, based on the book by Phyllis McGinley
directed by Ron Underwood

by Ian Pugh I’m not really sure how anyone could consider Santa Claus the cure for December commercialism in this day and age, but it appears to be a popular sentiment right now. Before I knew that the network-television abortion The Year Without a Santa Claus existed, I suffered through The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, a film that carries the same awful message in a way that’s worth mentioning. Tricked by Martin Short’s Jack Frost into relinquishing the job of Santa Claus to him, Tim Allen’s Scott Calvin returns to the North Pole to discover that Christmas has become “Frostmas,” an overwrought celebration of capitalism with all the child-screaming and toy-grabbing that implies. With Jack-Santa having literally taken the “Christ” out of Christmas, Tim Allen strangely becomes a surrogate Jesus figure attempting to reclaim his holiday from the money-grubbing fat man of false jolliness, who of course represents the holiday season as we know it in reality. The Santa Clause 3 essentially amounts to an episode of Allen’s sitcom “Home Improvement”, which is to say not only that it’s terrible, but also that its attempt at a metaphor is crude and obvious–come on, Santa Claus saving Christmas from himself? In retrospect, though, I have to admit that its joyfully malevolent predisposition to be such a balls-out hypocrite is a real head-scratcher worthy of further dissection.

Dreamgirls (2006)

December 20, 20062000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Eddie Murphy, Musical, Theatrical

**/****
starring Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover
screenplay by Bill Condon, based on the play by Tom Eyen
directed by Bill Condon

by Walter Chaw Hailed as one of the more innovatively-staged musicals in the modern pantheon of such entertainments, Dreamgirls, transferred to the big screen, is nothing special in the way of something trying way too hard to dazzle. It’s the plain girl swathed in a gallon of makeup: there’s so much misdirection that you actually try harder to dig up a foundation that can’t bear the scrutiny. Said base for Dreamgirls is of course one of the most successful Broadway musicals (6 Tonys, 1,522 performances) from an era that counts “Les Miz”, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s dreadful operettas, and, what, “A Chorus Line”(?), among its chief rivals. You want to attribute its Broadway success to its spinning stage, choreographed and motorized $3.2M tower set, and coy deconstruction of bitch-goddess Diana Ross and her Supremes, but it’s hard not to wonder if it merely benefits from the relative quality of its competition. Then again, its success is likely the by-product of a fairly consistent mass appetite for cookie-cutter musical biopics, which have been self-satirized to near-total inconsequence first by VH1’s “Behind the Music” series, then to quickly diminishing returns at the multiplex by Ray and Walk the Line.

Sergeant York (1941) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

December 19, 20061940s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Romance, War

***½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, George Tobias
screenplay by Abem Finkel & Harry Chandlee and Howard Koch & John Huston
directed by Howard Hawks

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Before it settles into the martial flag-waver it clearly wants to be, Sergeant York is a terrific movie. Its story of Tennessee-born WWI hero Alvin York, heavily supervised by the man himself, is one of not just a military coup, but an evolving conscience as well–and if that conscience eventually cons itself into supporting that most pointless of international conflicts, the film is nevertheless a moving story of personal growth. Though it barely betrays the hand of Howard Hawks (it lacks the team spirit that courses through his oeuvre), the director tells the tale with the kind of conviction and nuance a lesser director couldn’t provide. The movie feels York’s progress from alcoholic ne’er-do-well to industrious would-be farmer and prospective husband, and instead of taking his emotions for granted, it expresses them with a noted lack of condescension.

1900 (1976) [Two-Disc Collector’s Edition] + La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000) – DVDs

December 18, 2006****/****, 1970s, 2000s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, France, Italy, Pseudo-Documentary, Robert De Niro, War, West Germany

1900
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini
screenplay by Franco Arcalli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871)
****/**** Image B- Sound C+ Extras C+
directed by Peter Watkins

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In this corner, Bernardo Bertolucci, weighing in with a massive budget courtesy of Alberto Grimaldi and a cast that includes De Niro, Depardieu, Sutherland, Lancaster, Hayden, and Sanda. Over here we have Peter Watkins, working for peanuts on a single soundstage with a cast of nobodies recruited from Paris and its environs. The fight, as it turns out, is more than one over who can make the longest movie (5hrs15mins for Bertolucci, 5hrs45mins for Watkins) or grab the most attention. The issue is: what are the conditions necessary for a revolutionary epic–moreover, what conditions get in the way? This is the real purpose of comparing 1900 and La Commune (Paris, 1871) (hereafter La Commune), for while each film throws down for the Communist cause, only one is conscious of the nuances. Where Watkins and his troupe constantly reframe the idea of what it means to foment revolution, Bertolucci thinks he’s got the idea–and proves, through mindless repetition, that he really doesn’t.

Lady in the Water (2006) + Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)|Lady in the Water [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

December 18, 2006****/****, 2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Revenge, South Korea, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

LADY IN THE WATER
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bob Balaban, Jeffrey Wright
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

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****/****
starring Lee Yeong-ae, Choi Min-sik, Kim Shi-hoo, Kwon Yea-young
written and directed by Park Chanwook

by Walter Chaw The creeping, inescapable feeling is that M. Night Shyamalan would like to be known as “M. Christ Shyamalan”: a guy who wants you to drink the Kool-Aid; a messiah with a shrinking flock preaching a platform that his increasingly deluded, astonishingly arrogant fables are actually themselves the secret to world peace. He claims to hear voices–the first couple of times he did so (here in the stray interview, there in The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, that abhorrent mock-documentary he did for the Sci-Fi Channel), I thought he was kidding. Hell, the first couple of times he did it, he probably was kidding. But I don’t think he’s kidding anymore. And there’s no longer any currency in playing this ethereal shaman card. Prancing about like a mystic while shitting away millions of other people’s money isn’t a pastime with longevity: it’s something only a zealot would do. I think he’s gone off the deep end, hubris first, overfed to bloating on a steady diet of his own press and the tender ministrations of yes-men too afraid to set off Shyamalan’s diseased persecution complex by telling him that while he might be good at a few things, Lady in the Water was unsalvageable. When Disney executives did approximately that, Shyamalan took his ball and went across the street to Warner Brothers.

The Holiday (2006)

December 13, 20062000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black
written and directed by Nancy Meyers

by Walter Chaw There are bad movies, and then there are Nancy Meyers movies (first What Women Want, followed by the similarly excrescent Something’s Gotta Give): chick flicks in the most damning, insulting sense of the patronizing term and reason enough to question the wisdom of ever spending money to see a movie. If you go to Meyers’s latest, not only are you about to watch what is easily the worst movie of the year–you’re most likely going to do it in the company of people who’ll actually like it. The Holiday is appallingly written and icky besides in that familiar way of this brand of Love Actually/The Family Stone yuletide romantic refuse, casting Cameron Diaz and Jude Law as lovers fucking away the hours inside a Thomas Kincaid painting while Diaz’s frumpy house-swap buddy, played by Kate Winslet, finds meaning in Santa Monica by propping up a fossil (Eli Wallach) and falling for a James Horner-esque composer of horrible soundtracks (Jack Black). Parliament on the Thames is featured as prominently as the Pacific Coast Highway to underscore either how vacuous the filmmakers are or how stupid they think the audience is, while Hans Zimmer’s soul-sucking, teddy bears-humping score saps away the last hints of credibility anyone has after participating in this gingerbread death march. If the opening voiceover narration by Winslet’s lovelorn Iris isn’t warning enough, consider that the narrative crutch used by Diaz’s emetic movie-trailer editor Amanda is a series of fake movie trailers about Amanda’s romantic imbroglios.

The Venture Bros.: Season One (2003-2004) – DVD

December 13, 20062000s, 2006, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Satire, Television

Image B Sound A- Extras C
“Dia de los Dangerous!,” “Careers in Science,” “Mid-Life Chrysalis,” “Eeney, Meeney, Miney… Magic!,” “The Incredible Mr. Brisby,” “Tag Sale–You’re It!,” “Home Insecurity,” “Ghosts of the Sargasso,” “Ice Station–Impossible!,” “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean.,” “Past Tense,” “The Trial of the Monarch,” “Return to Spider-Skull Island”

by Ian Pugh Lengthy postmodern discussions about the drug use in “Scooby-Doo” and the sexual habits of the Smurfs dominated the public mind long before Time Warner acquired the Hanna-Barbera catalogue. It was only a logical move, then, that TimeWarner’s Cartoon Network would devote much of its late-night Adult Swim programming block (“Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law”, “Sealab 2021”, and, to a lesser degree, “Robot Chicken”) to taking the old H-B anti-classics and filtering them through the fine mesh screen of a contemporary ironic eye. Look here, we’ve got an old superhero, he’s an attorney now, that’s pretty wacky! Check it out, we’ve turned the straightforward drama of “Sealab 2020” into angry surrealism! It works to varying degrees of success, primarily depending upon the individual show’s (or individual episode’s) willingness to move beyond the inherent ridiculousness of its premise. What can we say, then, when “The Venture Bros.” represents the kids-on-adventures serial “Jonny Quest”, a series centred on a family whose surname is a literal synonym for the characters being parodied? Are we meant to gasp when brilliant über-dad Dr. Benton Quest becomes Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture (voiced by Henry Fool’s James Urbaniak), an ignorant pill-popper, negligent of his teenage sons Hank (co-creator Jackson Publick) and Dean (Michael Sinterniklaas)? Or when bodyguard/second father figure Race Bannon becomes Brock Samson (Patrick Warburton), an emotionally-detected psychopath?

Eragon (2006)

December 13, 20062000s, 2006, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Hungary, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Edward Speleers, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Guillory, John Malkovich
screenplay by Peter Buchman and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal, based on the novel by Christopher Paolini
directed by Stefen Fangmeier

by Walter Chaw Fears that veteran F/X man Stefen Fangmeier’s directorial debut Eragon, a feature-length adaptation of a fifteen-year-old trying on Anne McCaffrey’s jodhpurs, would be the sequel to Dragonheart nobody wanted prove unwarranted, as Eragon is actually the sequel to BloodRayne that nobody wanted. It’s ugly as sin, with the much-vaunted dragon at its centre (voiced by Rachel Weisz), designed by skilled craftspeople from both Peter Jackson’s WETA workshop and Industrial Light and Magic, looking fatally inorganic to its environment. Not helping matters, the titular rider (Edward Speleers) resembles a younger, equally rubbery David Lee Roth and sports the acting chops of the same. Eragon is the towheaded farmboy who heeds a call to glory to save Sienna Guillory’s beautiful Princess Arya (“Help me Eragon, you’re my only hope”) while gaining a mysterious old hermit mentor (Jeremy Irons–the poor sod should’ve learned his lesson with Dungeons & Dragons) who dies during a daring raid on the Death Star–er, on the castle keep of Darth Vader, er, King Galbatorix (John Malkovich). Alas, this Luke Skywalker also has an Uncle Owen (Uncle Garrow (Alun Armstrong)), and his Darth Vader has a henchman (Robert Carlyle) who at one point kills an underling general and declares the second-in-command “promoted.” Eragon is a rip-off and a bad one, a carbon copy made on one of those old mimeograph machines: washed out, juvenile (even weighed against the not-exactly-mature example of Star Wars), and nigh unbearable for anyone so much as cursorily familiar with genre fare.

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

December 13, 20062000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Theatrical, Will Smith

*/****
starring Will Smith, Thandie Newton, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Brian Howe
screenplay by Steven Conrad
directed by Gabriele Muccino

by Walter Chaw They should pass out insulin plungers with the purchase of a ticket to the new Will Smith vehicle The Pursuit of Happyness, which sports a subtle tickle of plantation politics that’s overwhelmed by a sense of smug entitlement and ugly elitism. Inspired by the true story of Eighties Wall Street bootstrap wizard Chris Gardner, it’s a telling in a way of the Hercules legend, complete with insurmountable, fickle tasks and divine inheritance. Our mythological hero solves the Rubik’s Cube in the back of a taxi for the bemused delight of potential employer Jay Twistle (Brian Howe); deals with the abandonment of his frustrated wife (Thandie Newton); and figures out a way to retrieve a pair of the bone-density scanners (the sale of which were his profession pre-Dean Witter) stolen by the homeless peers he disdains. It’s true: the picture–even with its ghetto-cred misspelled title and restroom-to-boardroom fable–is intolerant of people consigned to the impoverishment the film contorts to assure us will be Chris’ plight for only the time it takes his uplift to ripen.

Dallas (1950) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] – DVD

December 12, 20061950s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Western

***/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey
screenplay by John Twist
directed by Stuart Heisler

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I hate to be a stuck record, but this is the third consecutive Cooper title I’ve seen that is at once without serious subtext and possessed of reasonable entertainment value. I suppose historians could make something out of Coop’s Southern rebel hero Blayde Hollister and his upward journey from post-Civil War guerrilla to Union lawman–I’m not qualified to judge the nuances of such a transference, though I can guarantee you that good times result. Plopping our man into the maelstrom of boomtown Dallas, the script does its best to bolster his uncomplicated man-of-the-west mystique and even hands him the girl of actual Marshal Martin Weatherby (Leif Erickson) as a going-away present. Nothing in the film is especially brilliant or resonant, but director Stuart Heisler manages the traffic to such a point that it moves in a steady stream without slowing down.

Porky’s Collection 1 2 3 [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

December 11, 20061980s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Teen

PORKY’S (1982)
**½/**** Image D Sound C-
starring Kim Cattrall, Scott Colomby, Kaki Hunter, Nancy Parsons
written and directed by Bob Clark

PORKY’S II: THE NEXT DAY (1983)
**½/**** Image D+ Sound C
starring Dan Monahan, Wyatt Knight, Mark Herrier, Roger Wilson
screenplay by Roger E. Swaybill & Alan Ormsby & Bob Clark
directed by Bob Clark

PORKY’S REVENGE (1985)
**/**** Image D- Sound D+
starring Dan Monahan, Wyatt Knight, Tony Ganios, Mark Herrier
screenplay by Ziggy Steinberg
directed by James Komack

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s nothing more obnoxious than someone being pointlessly revisionist and declaring some bit of cultural detritus a lost masterpiece. Still, I can’t help but be guardedly pleased to discover several inches of depth charted in the legendarily foul waters of the Porky’s franchise. By far the most notorious of the big-name ’80s teen comedies, it was widely attacked for its misogyny–a charge I can’t exactly support yet can’t entirely dispel, either. But as a critic friend pointed out, they’re the only movies that retroactively take place in the Eisenhower era to suggest that all was not well in the American Republic. In fact, the first two films insist on a pervasive racism in their small-town Florida setting, Porky’s finding a character casting off his antisemitic father and Porky’s II: The Next Day baiting the Klan upon stupidly wading into a censorship fight. Coupled with Bob Clark’s blunt-witted realism, it makes for intriguing viewing–which is not to say there wasn’t room for improvement.

Blood Diamond (2006) + Apocalypto (2006)

December 8, 20062000s, 2006, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Germany, Mexico, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

BLOOD DIAMOND
*/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Charles Leavitt
directed by Edward Zwick

APOCALYPTO
***/****
starring Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead
screenplay by Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia
directed by Mel Gibson

by Walter Chaw After sending Matthew Broderick to head a Negro battalion in the Civil War and Tom Cruise to witness–and survive–the end of Feudal Japan, director Edward Zwick dispatches Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly to Sierra Leone and its own diamond-fuelled Civil War to moralize endlessly from the superior ethical vantage afforded by time and privilege. (That they also lend a much-needed nougat centre to Blood Diamond‘s thin chocolate coating goes without saying.) The Denzel Washington/Ken Watanabe token this time around is the oft-similarly-abused Djimon Hounsou: as the DC Comics-sounding Solomon Vandy, Hounsou seeks to trade a rare pink diamond for the life of his son, who’s been molded by the evil Sierra Leonians into a soulless murdering/raping machine.

DIFF ’06: The Aura

December 6, 20062000s, 2006, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Spain, Thriller

El aura ***½/**** starring Ricardo Darín, Dolores Fonzi, Pablo Cedrón, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart written and directed by Fabián Bielinsky by Walter Chaw The late Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky's swan song, The Aura (El Aura) is a throwback in spirit and execution to the grim, inward-gazing paranoia dramas of the 1970s. Hero Esteban (Ricardo Darin) is an epileptic taxidermist who wakes up, as the film opens, in a bank vestibule; we proceed to follow him into a credits sequence that sees him resurrecting, in his meticulous craft, a fox for a museum panorama. The title The Aura might refer to that…

Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster (1965) – DVD

December 6, 2006****/****, 1960s, 2006, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

****/**** Image B- Sound C+
starring Marilyn Hanold, Jim Karen, Lou Cutell, Nancy Marshall
screenplay by R.H.W. Dillard, George Garrett and John Rodenbeck
directed by Robert Gaffney

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Now, I think we’re allowed to define these terms for ourselves (fans of exploitation movies being a friendly and decidedly unpretentious bunch), but the way I see it, there’s a sharp difference in style between B-movies and Z-movies. B-movies are your creature features. Their narratives are actually quite strongly defined and they tend to produce a rather primitive but potent and genuine emotional reaction from the audience. You can picture yourself seeing these films at a drive-in double feature or maybe a Saturday matinee. In contrast, Z-movies are all jumbled noise. The audience does not exactly have an emotional reaction to Z-movies, they just watch them in a sort of dissociated daze. You could never imagine seeing Z-movies at an actual movie theatre or drive-in. The only place where they could possibly play is on a local unaffiliated television station at three in the morning.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] – DVD

December 5, 20061950s, 2006, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams
screenplay by Eric Ambler, based on the novel by Hammond Innes
directed by Michael Anderson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Here’s another Coop-travaganza whose pleasures lie naked on the surface. Like Springfield Rifle, Michael Anderson’s The Wreck of the Mary Deare is largely uninterested in subtextual undertow or other fodder for term papers, announcing its true intentions by casting strong, silent Cooper opposite hard man-of-action Charlton Heston–the two movie stars least likely to quietly brood or have an Achilles heel to render them even a little unsympathetic. Though Coop has a shady past to overcome, it’s largely in the aid of martyring him to a system that refuses to listen; Heston, meanwhile, is possessed of the old I-have-a-hunch-to-trust-the-underdog brotherhood instinct that keeps us trusting despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Students of gender politics (assuming there are any left) might want to put it through the symptomatic wringer, but mostly it’s a couple of cool dudes laying down the law and fighting insurmountable odds.

The Ant Bully (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 4, 20062000s, 2006, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by John A. Davis, based on the book by John Nickle
directed by John A. Davis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover If you read reviews with any degree of seriousness, you’re probably not seeing that many animated kidpix anyway, and so remarking that The Ant Bully is several cuts below the genre’s low standards will fall on deaf ears. Still, I can’t imagine an audience undemanding enough to not see through the film’s cashing in on both the cachet of its source material (a storybook by John Nickle) and the CGI animation gold rush itself. The film is so unenthusiastic about doing its job that it’s completely transparent, exposing its worship of the dollar at every turn of the screw. Even the creators of Shrek and their ilk seem to want to make the movie: there’s no evidence of that with John A. Davis and his team of unmoved movers of pixels.

DIFF ’06: Starfish Hotel

December 4, 20062000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Japan

*½/**** starring Kôichi Satô, Kiki, Tae Kimura, Akira Emoto written and directed by John Williams by Walter Chaw Stylishly shot, enough so that the neophyte might mistake it for a sparkling example of J-horror, Starfish Hotel addresses that old saw of a character wondering if he's a "character" as mysterious events unfold around him. Handled with more care and intelligence by the first ⅘ths of Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction, Starfish Hotel acts as a survey of other pictures (most notably the mascot motifs of Donnie Darko and Kontroll) as it goes on its merry non-horror, In the Mouth of…