Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) – DVD

October 9, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, UK

**½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson, Murray Hedd, Peggy Ashcroft
screenplay by Penelope Gilliatt
directed by John Schlesinger

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover "Are you bourgeois?" asks a child in Sunday Bloody Sunday, hoping to catch an adult in an awkward moment, and the question is crucial to your enjoyment of the film. If you are well-off enough to have good taste and fine things, and are somewhat guilty about the freedom and power that entails, then it will seem a sober and mature work about life and love in the post-hippie '70s. If, on the other hand, you are just scraping by and worrying about where your next meal is coming from, the film will seem a self-piteous soap opera in love with the idea of defeat. There's no denying the skill and professionalism at work here–it's what mid-period Woody Allen wishes it were, but it never quite licks the question of what to do with bourgie liberal guilt, and thus waffles towards an underwhelming conclusion.

Daisy Miller (1974) – DVD

September 28, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Cybill Shepherd, Barry Brown, Mildred Natwick, Eileen Brennan
screenplay by Frederic Raphael, based on the novella by Henry James
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Daisy Miller is that rare literary adaptation that improves when considered next to its source. Not content to deliver the consumption porn that would later define Merchant-Ivory and their fellow travellers, director Peter Bogdanovich instead serves up a bittersweet evocation of an oblivious life lost and an all-too-conscious one wasted in check, employing the tools of cinema–not just art direction–to make his aesthetic/emotional case. Here, one feels the pressures of late-19th century mores as they close in on the title character and the civilized restraint that keeps its protagonist from acting on impulse; the costumes and furnishings, though lavish enough, are not the main event. And while the self-contained nature of the piece (endemic to the Henry James source) keeps the film from touching greatness, it's still very sensitive work in a genre that is normally beneath contempt.

Burnt Offerings (1976) – DVD

September 3, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image C+ Sound D+ Extras C
starring Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Burgess Meredith, Eileen Heckart
screenplay by William F. Nolan and Dan Curtis, based on the novel by Robert Marasco
directed by Dan Curtis

by Walter Chaw Plodding, ugly, moribund, Burnt Offerings is bolstered by a few great campy turns from a game cast that includes Oliver Reed, Karen Black, and Bette Davis in a performance that runs counter to the self-loathing roles of her Baby Jane/Sweet Charlotte days. Finding its way to the DVD format just a couple of weeks before another haunted house flick (Cold Creek Manor) debuts on the big screen, veteran television director Dan Curtis's horror quickie is one of those comfortable relics that doesn't scare so much as mildly chill, offering countless opportunities to shout at the screen without any sort of discernible payoff–until the end, that is, but even that shocker of a conclusion has been telegraphed since at least the midway point of the first act, muffling its surprise.

The Ωmega Man (1971) – DVD

September 1, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

The Omega Man
*/**** Image A- Sound B Extras D
starring Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, Rosalind Cash
screenplay by John William Corrington and Joyce H. Corrington, based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
directed by Boris Sagal

by Walter Chaw Its dialogue and score at constant war with the tickle of poignancy threatening to justify The Ωmega Man‘s cult status, Boris Sagal’s at times astonishingly awful adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic short novel I Am Legend is some kind of weird hippie elegy spiced with a few disturbing religious images and a lot of casual racism. The idea that Matheson’s vampires are now black-hooded (monastic and judicial) albino mutants living in an abandoned civic building, representative of not a new order but the oppressive old, is too clearly a lament for the doom of the flower-power generation. Frankly, the image of broken-down hippies trying to plant seeds in blasted earth in the middle of Easy Rider said it all with more elegance and brevity.

The Rose (1979) – DVD

August 10, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

*½/**** Image C- Sound C Extras C
starring Bette Midler, Alan Bates, Frederic Forrest
screenplay by Bill Kerby and Bo Goldman
directed by Mark Rydell

by Walter Chaw Lenny by way of John Waters, Mark Rydell’s The Rose is a film made obsolete by years of “Behind the Music”–this story of a Janis Joplin-inspired singer boozin’ her way into a theatrical grave counts a lack of vitality and anything resembling surprise as chief among its faults. Bette Midler’s performance scored an Oscar nomination in 1980, but it lands with a shrillness now that defeats its attempts at pathos and depth. Why we should care about a self-destructive blues siren with impulse control issues is one of those things unwisely taken for granted while by now, twenty-three years after the fact, the lessons of hedonism and the downward spirals of the performing kind are curiously tepid, delivered as they are with a bullhorn and a bad Otis the Town Drunk impersonation.

Loving (1970) – DVD

July 14, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B-
starring George Segal, Eva Marie Saint, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn
screenplay by Don Devlin, based on a novel by J.M. Ryan
directed by Irvin Kershner

by Bill Chambers The top ten winners in TOTAL FILM’s recent poll on the cinema’s greatest “bastards” (that would be in front of the camera, not behind it) were a fairly stock bunch: old faithfuls like The Sweet Smell of Success‘ JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) and Get Carter‘s Carter (Michael Caine)–who placed first–joined such choices that pander to currency while feigning esoterica as Internal Affairs‘ Dennis Peck (Richard Gere) and As Good As It Gets‘ Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson). But you will find few bigger bastards than the overlooked protagonist of Irvin Kershner’s Loving, Brooks Wilson (George Segal), a lousy husband and father who has to be among the most self-absorbed suburbanites ever to despoil the screen. In our introduction to him, he decides to have a smoke instead of watching his daughter perform in the school Christmas pageant–an event for which he was made late by a fight with his mistress. One of them, anyway.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966) + The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) (Anchor Bay) – DVDs

May 18, 2003Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Satire, Sci-Fi, UK

FAHRENHEIT 451
****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring
screenplay by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury
directed by Francois Truffaut

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark, Buck Henry
screenplay by Paul Mayersberg, based on the novel by Walter Tevis
directed by Nicolas Roeg

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The second film of Francois Truffaut’s “Hitchcock Period” (and the Nouvelle Vague legend’s first English-language feature), Fahrenheit 451 is swathed in dread and melancholy–a sense belying cinematographer Nicolas Roeg’s bright, elemental colour scheme and simply blocked mise-en-scéne, though a sense completely in line with Roeg’s subsequent work as auteur. The weight of Roeg’s compositions–and arguably the genius of them–is the way in which he uses the weak side of the screen to introduce an element of disquiet into otherwise innocuous situations. The brilliance of the man’s eye in locating the menace and ineffable sadness in the midst of the bright and the mundane.

David Cronenberg Re-examines David Cronenberg: A Retrospective Interview

March 9, 2003Posted in1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Directors: David Cronenberg, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Interviews, Sci-Fi

Cronenberg Re-Examines Cronenberg

March 9, 2003 | Offered the opportunity to visit with David Cronenberg a second time recently, I sat down with the legendary director the morning after moderating a post-screening Q&A with him at Denver’s Landmark Mayan Theater (where a sell-out crowd of over 450 was enthusiastically in attendance for a sneak of Spider) to discuss his work from student films Stereo and Crimes of the Future all the way through to what is arguably his best–certainly his most mature–film, the oft-delayed Spider. Dressed in casual cool as is the director’s habit, Mr. Cronenberg exudes supreme confidence; gracious in the extreme and unfailingly polite, not given to displays of false modesty or overly interested in compliments, his speech is pleasant and carefully modulated–a sort of intellectual detachment that has marked even his earliest, “tax shelter” work. It seemed clear to me that Mr. Cronenberg was not generally accustomed to talking of his earlier work on the junket circuit. Speaking only for myself, it was a wonderful break from the usual stump.–Walter Chaw

All in the Family: The Complete Second Season (1971-1972) – DVD

February 15, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Christopher Heard, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Television

Image B- Sound C-
"The Saga of Cousin Oscar," "Gloria Poses in the Nude," "Archie in the Lock-Up," "Edith Writes a Song," "Flashback: Mike Meets Archie," "The Election Story," "Edith's Accident," "The Blockbuster," "Mike's Problem," "The Insurance is Canceled," "The Man in the Street," "Cousin Maude's Visit," "Christmas Day at the Bunkers'," "The Elevator Story," "Edith's Problem," "Archie and the F.B.I," "Mike's Mysterious Son," "Archie Sees a Mugging," "Archie and Edith Alone," "Edith Gets a Mink," "Sammy's Visit," "Edith the Judge," "Archie is Jealous," "Maude"

by Christopher Heard It has to be stated at the outset that I am one of the world's most ardent "All in the Family" fans–I believe this television series to be the greatest ever. Producer Norman Lear bought the rights to Johnny Speight's British kitchen-sink comedy "Till Death Do Us Part" and relocated it to Queens, New York, and in so doing he unwittingly rewrote the books on the power of the medium. A show that weekly served up major sociological storylines, dressing them in darkly comedic depictions of the ugliness of racism and intolerance, in "All in the Family", you were laughing at Archie Bunker, not with him. And in the end, the moral right always won out over Archie's ignorance.

Shampoo (1975) – DVD

January 18, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant
screenplay by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty
directed by Hal Ashby

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. To put things in perspective, Tootsie is, arguably, a remake of Hal Ashby’s carefully cultivated 1975 classic Shampoo, except that it goes one step farther in feminizing the lead by putting him in drag–and takes a step backward in deciding the fallout of his deceptions. Making fantasy out of Tootsie‘s ending, Shampoo comes to terms with the reality of a lothario getting his foot caught in his own trap by giving the last word to The Beach Boys: “You know it seems the more we talk about it,” they sing of unfeasible marital bliss in the film’s closing song (“Wouldn’t It Be Nice”), “it only makes it worse to live without it.”

‘R Xmas (2001) + Serpico (1973) – DVDs

December 7, 2002Posted in1970s, 2000s, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Sidney Lumet, Drama, DVD, France, Italy, Thriller

‘R XMAS
***/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Drea De Matteo, Lillo Brancato, Jr., Ice-T, Victor Argo
screenplay by Scott Pardo, Abel Ferrara
directed by Abel Ferrara

SERPICO
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Al Pacino, Jack Kehoe, John Randolph, Biff McGuire
screenplay by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler, based on the book by Peter Maas
directed by Sidney Lumet

by Bill Chambers Arriving on DVD within a week of each other, Abel Ferrara’s ‘R Xmas and Sidney Lumet’s Serpico share a preoccupation with the fate of dirty money. Minimum-wagers are seen as honourable by Lumet, with Detective Frank Serpico proudly leading the starving-artist’s life from behind a cop’s badge, while in Ferrara’s view, there are few such romantic distinctions to be made between the haves and have-nots. But the corrupting influence of money defines the people we’re dealing with in both films, which, although they illustrate rather contained moral dilemmas, share a somewhat epic ambition despite rarely stepping outside their respective milieux. Watched back-to-back, they’re like Traffic pulled in two.

Goin’ Down the Road (1970) [Seville Signature Collection] – DVD

December 3, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, DVD, Road Movie

***½/**** Image C Sound B Extras A
starring Doug McGrath, Paul Bradley, Jayne Eastwood, Cayle Chernin
screenplay by William Fruet & Donald Shebib
directed by Donald Shebib

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover As close to a classic as Canadian cinema gets, Donald Shebib's Goin' Down the Road touches greatness without really trying; its virtue lies in its refusal to force things, eschewing the jackhammer editing and hard-lined composition of traditional cinema in favour of a hazy, genial approach to its look and feel. Under regular Northern circumstances, this would be a liability: our country's inability to make conscious aesthetic choices has reduced more than a few films to a thin bland soup. But here it works like gangbusters, passively recording the protagonists' misadventures with a combination of helplessness and sympathy as they thrash about, trying to claim an American dream in the midst of a Canadian nightmare. It's simple, lovely, and heartbreaking, and it makes you wonder how Shebib could have somehow managed to disappear into obscurity.

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) – DVD

August 1, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B
starring Linda Blair, Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, Kitty Winn
screenplay by William Goodhart
directed by John Boorman

by Bill Chambers Possibly the worst film ever made and surely the worst sequel ever made, Exorcist II: The Heretic is the last of an uneven trilogy to hit DVD. Understand that while I would only recommend a purchase to my arch-enemy, the picture is definitely worth seeking out in the way that one likes to see the Leaning Tower of Piza or Easter Island before leaving this world–it’s the greatest unnatural wonder known to cinema. I’ve now endured it twice (please send my Medal of Honor for self-sacrifice in the line of duty in care of this website), the second time so that I could compile a list of my favourite bits; apologies in advance if this review reads too dada for its own good.

Bad Company (1972) – DVD

June 15, 2002Posted in1970s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Jeff Bridges, Barry Brown, Jim Davis, David Huddleston
screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton
directed by Robert Benton

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover How the mighty do fall. By the end of the '70s, Robert Benton had lowered himself to Oscar-whoring with the tepid Kramer vs. Kramer–a fact impossible to reconcile with the promise he showed in Bad Company, his smashing directorial debut. Utterly distinct amongst revisionist westerns, Benton's marvel ditches the genre's boilerplate cynicism and revels in the freedom of lawlessness; instead of a clumsy knee-jerk finger-pointer, we get the joys and sorrows of life amongst scavengers. Having more in common with My Own Private Idaho or Going Places than with the pseudo-critical genre on whose margins it skulks, Bad Company lets us roam the landscape instead of following the road to town, and in so doing makes us feel things that no mere western could possibly make us feel.

Which Way Is Up? (1977) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD

*½/**** Image B- Sound B–
starring Richard Pryor, Lonette McKee, Margaret Avery, Dolph Sweet
screenplay by Carl Gottlieb and Cecil Brown
directed by Michael Schultz

by Walter Chaw An embarrassing Being There conceit married to blaxploitation and unionization, the Richard Pryor vehicle Which Way Is Up? strikes a lot of notes but without much rhyme or reason. It is offensive without being funny (save a bondage scene that pays off flat but has a hilarious use of sound) and excessive seemingly just for the sake of it. Pryor becomes a predecessor with this picture to Eddie Murphy’s penchant for playing a bunch of loud-mouthed characters in different beards in stupid gross-out bits of celluloid rubbish…without the production values Murphy warrants. Director Michael Schultz’s follow-up to such amusing counter-cultural flicks as Cooley High and Car Wash (recently re-imagined with Snoop Dogg’s The Wash), Which Way Is Up? tracks the exploits of Leroy (Pryor), a fruit-picker who accidentally falls in with a Unionization movement that earns him a job in the city and some fine women. Can a wearying morality thread questioning the corrupting nature of power be far behind?

The Gambler (1974) – DVD

May 8, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton
screenplay by James Toback
directed by Karel Reisz

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Somewhere near the beginning of The Gambler, we see Axel Freed (James Caan) teaching a college course in literature. Taking his cues from Dostoevsky, he announces that any idiot can say that two plus two equals four, but the man who says that they equal five is riding on sheer will. Whether he knows that the declaration is false or not is irrelevant–he is transcending truth to make his own rules. This deliciously summarizes not only The Gambler itself, but also the whole shaky decade of art-pop that was the Seventies. This was the era in which cartoon heroes jousted improbably with literature and politics and when a torrent of homages created whole films piece by appropriated piece. The Gambler‘s Freed is all too typical of the type, with its literary pretensions mixed in with a helping of macho declarations that could only come from a lifetime of hero-worship at the movies.

Watership Down (1978) – DVD

May 8, 2002Posted in1970s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image B Sound B
screenplay by Martin Rosen, based on the novel by Richard Adams
directed by Martin Rosen

by Walter Chaw Unsentimental and terrifying and set against lovely, John Constable-esque watercolour backgrounds, Martin Rosen’s adaptation of the Richard Adams novel Watership Down arose in that extended lull between Disney’s heyday and its late-Eighties resurrection. (This period also saw, in addition to Rosen’s film of Adams’s The Plague Dogs, Rankin & Bass’s The Last Unicorn and Ralph Bakshi’s most productive period, which included 1978’s The Lord of the Rings.) Watership Down points to the dwindled potential for American animation to evolve into what anime has become: a mature medium for artistic expression of serious issues. A shame that this flawed piece is possibly the pinnacle of animation’s ambition on these shores, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life notwithstanding.

Performance (1970) – DVD

April 26, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Gangster, Music, UK

Performancecap

***½/**** Image B+ Sound C Extras C
starring James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton
screenplay by Donald Cammell
directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg

by Walter Chaw Emerging in the middle of one of the most experimental, challenging periods in cinematic history, Performance–completed in 1968 but shelved until 1970–is a product at once ahead of its time and two years too late. Had its trippy-dippy, anachronistic cross-cutting and madly-inappropriate scoring appeared in 1968 (the year of Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead, If…, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the film to which it perhaps owes its greatest allegiance, Once Upon a Time in the West), Performance would’ve found traction and good company as a foundational film for the American New Wave instead of as a picture that, for all its foment and formal revolution, seemed hysterical against a maturing, more sedate(d) mainstream avant-garde parade of stuff like El Topo, Zabriskie Point, MASH, and Five Easy Pieces.

Breaking Away (1979) – DVD

March 12, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports

***/**** Image C- Sound C-
starring Dennis Christopher, Dannis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley
screenplay by Steve Tesich
directed by Peter Yates

by Walter Chaw For me, Peter Yates’s Breaking Away is the logical precursor to the particular nostalgia of Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story. It details in its limpid, lissom way small-town life through the prism of quaint friendships and a family with a sympathetic mom (Barbara Barrie), a curmudgeonly pop (Paul Dooley), and David (Dennis Christopher), their stargazer son.

Klute (1971) – DVD

March 4, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, DVD, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound B
starring Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi, Nathan George
screenplay by Andy and Dave Lewis
directed by Alan J. Pakula

Klutecapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Unexplained phenomenon of the 1970s: the non-stardom of Alan J. Pakula. Despite having helmed three of the decade's quintessential films (Klute, The Parallax View, and All the President's Men) and possessing a style that remains to this day sui generis, his name means less than that of directors far more craven. Perhaps he was too old to be ranked with the Movie Brats (though that didn't stop Robert Altman), or worked on studio films that might have seemed conformist at the time, but for my money, nothing–not even the more fashionable Blow Out and The Conversation–captured the strangled sense of betrayal and claustrophobic helplessness of the post-Vietnam/Watergate era better than the films of my man Alan J.. And his Klute serves as a reminder of what a director does, taking the raw material of a script and contextualizing it so that its events ring as more than a self-contained adventure.