Das Boot: The Director’s Cut (1981/1997) [Superbit] – DVD

***½/**** Image A Sound A+
starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, Klaus Wennemann, Hubertus Bengsch
screenplay by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the novel by Lothar G. Buchheim
directed by Wolfgang Petersen

by Walter Chaw The curious mental state of German submariners in the waning days of the Second World War is reflected in the general malaise of the United States in the weeks following September Eleventh and the hours preceding our unpopular pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Caught in the maddening doldrums between one act of unimaginable violence and its inevitable aftershocks, America’s implacable disquiet is one part anticipation of the inevitable, multiple parts cynicism, and, for a large portion of the population, a dollop of distinct lack of faith in the motives and competency of our leadership. A closer examination of the similarities pithy but perhaps unfruitful, sufficed to say that revisiting Wolfgang Petersen’s masterpiece Das Boot (in its Director’s Cut form) at this suspended moment in time is not only rewarding as great cinema can be, but also current and amazingly poignant.

David Cronenberg Re-examines David Cronenberg: A Retrospective Interview

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

Asunder (1998) – DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Blair Underwood, Debbi Morgan, Michael Beach
screenplay by Eric Lee Bowers
directed by Tim Reid

by Walter Chaw A courageously unpleasant role for “L.A. Law” heartthrob Blair Underwood, Tim “Venus Flytrap” Reid’s derivative Asunder is only otherwise brave for its remorseless abuse of otherwise innocent pregnant women–crossing a seldom-crossed line of taboo in American film unless it’s to punish a heroine (see: High Crimes, Crossroads, and so on) for having the child of a bad man. Billing itself as “In The Suspenseful Style Of Fatal Attraction And Unfaithful,” Asunder is every bit the rushed, formula production moldering on a shelf somewhere until either one of its stars hits it big (see: Ordinary Decent Criminal and Colin Farrell) or, as in this case, a higher-profile film with a similar theme makes an impact, thus giving the folks in marketing a hook.

The Beach Boys: An American Band (1985)/Brian Wilson: “I just wasn’t made for these times” (1995) [Double Feature] – DVD

THE BEACH BOYS: AN AMERICAN BAND
****/**** Image C+ Sound B+
directed by Malcolm Leo

BRIAN WILSON: “I JUST WASN’T MADE FOR THESE TIMES”
***½/**** Image B Sound B+
directed by Don Was

by Walter Chaw There are a handful of albums indispensable to a comprehensive understanding of the roots of modern music, and The Beach Boys‘ “Pet Sounds”–a sort of Apocalypse Now for band-leader Brian Wilson, a mad compendium of musical fragments (Bach’s progressions, The Four Horsemen‘s harmonies) that cohered into a Spector-esque Wall of Sound sparsity/harmony–is irrefutably among them. Intent on making definitive, album-length statements, spurred on by his obsessive competitiveness with The Beatles (“Rubber Soul” predates “Pet Sounds”, and though Paul McCartney cited “Pet Sounds” as a primary influence on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the release of that album is often blamed for Brian Wilson’s nervous breakdown), and sensing the opportunity in 1966 of being at the vanguard of the psychedelic movement with a follow-up album (the never-completed “Smile”), the story of The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson is as operatic and tinged with ironic destiny as an Aeschylean tragedy.

Sports Night: The Complete Series Plus Pilot Episode (1992-1993) – DVD

Image B Sound B
SEASON 1 – “Pilot,” “The Apology,” “The Hungry and the Hunted,” “Intellectual Property,” “Mary Pat Shelby,” “*The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail,” “Dear Louise,” “Thespis,” “The Quality of Mercury at 29K,” “Shoe Money Tonight,” “The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee,” “Smoky,” “Small Town,” “Rebecca,” “Dana and the Deep Blue Sea,” “Sally,” “How Are Things in Gloca Morra?,” “The Sword of Orion,” “Eli’s Coming,” “Ordnance Tactics,” “Ten Wickets,” “Napoleon’s Battle Plan,” “What Kind of Day Has it Been”
SEASON 2 – “Special Powers,” “When Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “Cliff Gardner,” “Louise Revisited,” “Kafelnikov,” “Shane,” “Kyle Whitaker’s Got Two Sacks,” “The Reunion,” “A Girl Named Pixley,” “The Giants Win the Pennant, the Giants Win the Pennant,” “The Cut Man Cometh,” “The Sweet Smell of Air,” “Dana Get Your Gun,” “And the Crowd Goes Wild,” “Celebrities,” “The Local Weather,” “Draft Day: Part I – It Can’t Rain at Indian Wells,” “Draft Day: Part II – The Fall of Ryan O’Brian,” “April is the Cruelest Month,” “Bells And A Siren,” “La Forza Del Destino,” “Quo Vadimus”

by Walter Chaw Taken as a whole, and a box set from Buena Vista allows one to do just that, Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night” takes on the character of an extended experiment that starts tentatively and ends as one of the genuinely valuable moments of television in the year before HBO and flagship show “The Sopranos” became the benchmark for quality boob-tubery in the post-post-modern age. Detailing the behind-the-scenes drama of producing an “ESPN SportsCenter”-esque news program, it draws inevitable comparison to James L. Brooks’s Broadcast News (and accordingly, during the first season, episode five, Felicity Huffman gets to knock over a production assistant à la Holly Hunter’s character in that film), but distinguishes itself with an understanding that in many ways, sports is an effective locus for the hot-button issues of modern society: misogyny, race, addiction, violence.

Mala Noche (1988) + Gus Van Sant shorts

***/****
starring Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Nyla McCarthy, Ray Monge
written and directed by Gus Van Sant

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The most amazing thing about Gus Van Sant’s debut feature Mala Noche is that it was made in the midst of the ’80s. While mainstream cinema was building cruelly childish whirligigs and the arthouses were smugly preoccupied with the pastel nightmare of suburban life, Van Sant was in the skids, training his camera on the outcasts of society and judging no one. His hero, despite engaging in a one-sided amour fou with a Latino migrant worker that would normally raise some cultural hackles, is an understandable creature of misunderstood desire–the film refuses to denounce him even as it avoids backing up his obsession in toto. Like Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, Mala Noche sets up shop in the space between the director’s camera and his subjects–a halfway-meeting that would never otherwise have made it in the distanced and vindictive climate of the ’80s.

Q&A (1990) + I’ll Do Anything (1994) – DVDs

Q&A
***/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Nick Nolte, Timothy Hutton, Armand Assante, Luis Guzman
written and directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the novel by Edwin Torres

I’LL DO ANYTHING
***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Nick Nolte, Albert Brooks, Julie Kavner, Joely Richardson
written and directed by James L. Brooks

by Bill Chambers When news of Nick Nolte’s arrest for driving under the influence of the date-rape drug hit the Toronto International Film Festival last year, just days after he’d made a strong showing there with Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief, I immediately flashed back to the time I met Nolte–“met,” alas, a figure of speech in this case: We crossed paths in the lobby of the Park Hyatt Hotel. His beanstalk frame sheathed in an emasculating banana-yellow housecoat, Nolte wore a pair of bookish specs that offset his craggy mug, and his snow-coloured hair stood unnaturally on end, as though he’d just seen a ghost. On his way to record interviews for Breakfast of Champions (and looking a lot more like that film’s Kilgore Trout than like the erstwhile Tom Wingo), Nolte growled this to a gawping me in passing:

Dreamers (1999) – DVD

½*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Jeremy Jordan, Courtney Gains, Portia Dawson
written and directed by Ann Lu

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a film-within-the-film in Ann Lu's Dreamers that underlines everything that makes Dreamers itself so terrible. Ethan (Mark Ballou), Dreamers' chief wannabe auteur, shoots a fantasy sequence involving an asylum-style treatment program for those who suffer from movie love; the idea would seem to be that would-be filmmakers are martyrs, regardless of talent. It becomes obvious that this aspirant has nothing else to put on film but annoyance at his frustrated ambitions, and we'd wonder who'd watch such an empty exercise in self-pity if we were not, in fact, watching one just like it at the time. I don't recommend that you become part of that elite club of Dreamers-watchers, because, despite an incidental evocation of squalid life on the fringes of film, it has little reason to live–save as a warning to all indie dreamers not to follow its shabby path to destruction.

Highlander TV Series: Season One (1992-1993) – DVD

Image CD+ Sound C Extras B
“The Gathering,” “Innocent Man,” “Road Not Taken,” “Bad Day in Building A,” “Free Fall,” “Deadly Medicine,” “Mountain Men,” “Revenge is Sweet,” “The Sea Witch,” “Eyewitness,” “Family Tree,” “See No Evil,” “Band of Brothers,” “For Evil’s Sake,” “For Tomorrow We Die,” “The Beast Below,” “Saving Grace,” “The Lady and the Tiger,” “Avenging Angel,” “Eye of the Beholder,” “Nowhere to Run,” “The Hunters”

by Walter Chaw It always struck me as the height of synergy that Queen would score a homoerotic cock opera involving swords and decapitations (and a first episode flat-of-the-blade ass-slap that would make Boy George blush), so, despite all of the things that are extravagantly wrong about the “Highlander” franchise moving to weekly television, the one thing that’s right about the transplant is the use of Freddie Mercury’s creepy ballad to immortal Scottish duellists as its theme song. Essentially a variation on that favourite fantasy of morbid teenagers–the vampire rock star mythos (live forever, fight clandestine battles with leather-horse foes, bed beautiful women and have a non-queer justification for not wanting to commit, pretend to have a cool accent, feel sorry for the small worries of mere mortals, look great)–the main difference in the “Highlander” universe is that the Highlanders aren’t capable of making new Highlanders. It’s as gay as a French holiday, is what I’m saying–not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Wes Craven Presents Don’t Look Down (1998) – DVD

ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C
starring Megan Ward, Billy Burke, Terry Kinney, Angela Moore
teleplay by Gregory Goodell
directed by Larry Shaw

by Walter Chaw The easy thing to do with the Wes Craven-produced tele-shocker Don’t Look Down is to add the addendum “because you’ll see this movie at the bottom” to its title. Broadcast on the Hallmark Channel as a zero-budget, zero-thrills bit of particularly fragrant, past-its-sell-by-date cheese, the plot involves TV-movie Ashley Judd-alike Megan Ward (and, indeed, the actress played Ashley in a TV-movie, Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge) as Carla, a woman who’s lost her feral hippie sister (Tara Spencer-Nairn–see her now in Wishmaster: The Prophecy Fulfilled!) in a freak sight-seeing accident and so develops a bad case of acrophobia.

Felicity: Season One [The Complete First Season Plus Pilot Episode] (1998-1999) – DVD

Image B Sound B+ Commentary A-
“Pilot”, “The Last Stand”, “Hot Objects”, “Boggled”, “Spooked”, “Cheating”, “Drawing the Line Part 1”, “Drawing the Line Part 2”, “Thanksgiving”, “Finally”, “Gimme an O!”, “Friends,” “Todd Mulcahy Part 1”, “Todd Mulcahy Part 2”, “Love and Marriage”, “The Fugue”, “Assassins”, “Happy Birthday”, “Docuventary”, “Connections”, “The Force”, “Felicity Was Here”

by Bill Chambers

“Starring Golden Globe Award-winning actress Keri Russell and today’s hottest young stars, Felicity introduces us to a wide-eyed college freshman and the most exhilarating journey of all–self-discovery. From co-creators and executive producers J.J. Abrams (Alias) and Matt Reeves, along with executive producer Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Tony Krantz, comes to Felicity, which explores the excitement and uncertainty of living in New York City–a setting where anything goes and anything can happen.”
–DVD liner summary for “Felicity: The Complete First Season”

I had what I consider a pretty good excuse to watch the well-hyped pilot of “Felicity”, a show that is not necessarily mine to judge: A year before, I directed co-star Scott Speedman in a short film–I like to keep track of the Ursa Major alumni. But, and the name-dropping/bean-spilling ends after this indulgence, Scott does not belong on a teen soap, per se–as far as my experience with him goes, the format is too rigid for his improvisational methods, which happened to lean towards the profane. It was a bit like observing a caged tiger throughout “Felicity”‘s run, though I’d bet my bottom dollar that the first time his character, Ben Covington, called someone a “dick,” it was unscripted. The moment sparkles.

The Civil War (1990) – DVD

****/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A
directed by Ken Burns

Logo: FFC MUST-OWNby Walter Chaw Almost forgotten amidst the lavish praise and hyperbole heaped on Ken Burns’s eleven-hour foray into the American Civil War is that the picture is among the finest of its kind ever produced. The Civil War is an indescribably informative, exhaustively researched and compiled work that particularly astonishes not for its depth of information, the audacity of its creation, or the logic of its organization, but for the amount of emotion it evokes in recounting familiar events.

The Santa Clause (1994) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

½*/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson, Eric Lloyd

screenplay by Leo Benvenuti & Steve Rudnick
directed by John Pasquin

by Bill Chambers Julia Roberts’s male equivalent in persecution vanity, if not box-office viability, Tim Allen has a ‘Cinderfella’ complex that vividly unveiled itself in the first big-screen vehicle built for the comedian-turned-sitcom star, The Santa Clause, a holiday stinker mysteriously elevated to instant-classic status after managing to outgross Speed, The Mask, Pulp Fiction, and Interview with the Vampire. That it spoke to the zeitgeist is just one of those things, ultimately beyond comprehension; why it actually sucks, that’s a little easier to break down.

Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition (1991|2002) [Platinum Edition] – DVD

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
screenplay by Linda Woolverton
directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise

This review was popular for its contrarianism, but to my current thinking it’s insubstantial and hurries through the movie to get to the DVD; I’d like to take another crack at it someday.-Ed. (6/14/17)

by Bill Chambers Disney solidified the comeback of 2-D animation after the success of The Little Mermaid with Beauty & the Beast, a throwback to the fairytale reimaginings that defined the studio in its heyday. Uncle Walt himself had, in fact, kicked around the idea of adapting the “song as old as rhyme” during his reign but threw in the towel when he couldn’t figure out a way to sustain kiddie interest in what is, in its classical tellings, the story of a monster and a hottie who dine together in the evenings.

Hellchild: The World of Nick Lyon – DVD

by Walter Chaw A DVD collection of short films written, directed, and edited by Idaho-born, German-based filmmaker Nick Lyon, Hellchild: The World of Nick Lyon is an often brilliant exercise in high John Waters trash augmented with actual filmmaking ability and an imagination as feverishly fecund and difficult to shake as a yeast infection. Lyon's work is equal parts deadpan and disgusting, a comic-book exercise in grotesquery that reminds a little of Sergio Aragones's "Mad Marginals" in its sprung logic (and sense of humour) and a little more of David Lynch (or Tim Burton) in its dark reflection of suburban America.

Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997) + Casper Meets Wendy (1998) – DVDs

CASPER: A SPIRITED BEGINNING
ZERO STARS/****
starring Steve Guttenberg, Lori Loughlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Michael McKean
screenplay by Jymn Magon, Thomas Hart
directed by Sean McNamara

CASPER MEETS WENDY
½*/****
starring Cathy Moriarty, Shelley Duvall, Teri Garr, George Hamilton
screenplay by Jymn Magon
directed by Sean McNamara

by Walter Chaw Taking place in a scary netherworld where up is down, black is white, and Steve Guttenberg, Rodney Dangerfield, Lori Loughlin, Pauly Shore, and Richard Moll still have careers, Casper: A Spirited Beginning is one long spiritless harangue designed for the kid with the helmet and the drool cup. Shockingly awful computer animation coupled with simply appalling acting wrapped around a plot that rips off Beetlejuice at every turn (newly-deceased goes through the process of denial before finding a handbook and a sympathetic morbid kid to help him/them adapt to the afterlife), Casper: A Spirited Beginning at the least honours the quality of those Harvey comics you used to read in the barbershop while trying to sneak a peak at the PLAYBOYs under the mirror.

Mickey’s House of Villains (2001) – DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
directed by VARIOUS

by Walter Chaw Just in time for Halloween, Mickey’s House of Villains collects eight animated shorts spanning sixty-some years while illustrating the creative flatline that Disney has experienced from its heyday to well into its current decline. The Mouse demonstrates, too, a tiresome reliance of late on loosely framed anthologies for their direct-to-video releases and this one is no exception, as a gallery of Disney rogues collect in a nightclub to plot the demise of proprietors Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, et al.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) [Ten Years – Special Edition] – DVD

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A+
starring Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

by Bill Chambers

"They were perfect strangers, assembled to pull off the perfect crime. Then their simple robbery explodes into a bloody ambush, and the ruthless killers realize one of them is a police informer. But which one?"
–DVD liner summary for Reservoir Dogs

I came around to being a fan of Reservoir Dogs after Quentin Tarantino's standing had crested and the backlash was kicking in. It's impossible for me to see now why I didn't take to it initially–solid flick, as they say. Stylish, knowing, but not necessarily pretentious. Well-performed. And moving, in its macho way: Let us not forget that Reservoir Dogs ends in tears and an embrace.

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996) – DVD

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring David Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson
screenplay by Norm Hiscock & David Foley & Bruce McCulloch & Kevin McDonald & Mark McKinney & Scott Thompson
directed by Kelly Makin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The mad Scotsman John Grierson, documentary king and architect of Canada's National Film Board, often made the naïve assertion that those who wanted to make Canadian fiction films should go to Hollywood and make them there. He would have been pleased to learn that in 1996, the Kids in the Hall did just that: left without any pop-film infrastructure on their home turf, they made a bid for Yankee stardom with Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, shooting a Hollywood film that's Canadian to the core–for good and for ill.

Speed (1994) [Five Star Collection] – DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels
screenplay by Graham Yost
directed by Jan de Bont

by Bill Chambers At the risk of calling it generic, Speed is such a perfect title for the film to which it belongs that you’re almost reminded of those unornamented yellow boxes dotting the aisles of grocery stores everywhere–the ones labelled simply “SALT,” “FLOUR,” “BRAN FLAKES”…you get the picture. Though “Speed” gives it permission to be about anything, the film, to its credit, actually practices velocity and momentum. It puts the action movies that preceded it on fast-forward, so that in each sequence is packed the sum thrills of a Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal joint. It’s one of the few films in which propulsion forgives stupidity because it makes the point-blank claim of being an amphetamine.