Gummo (1997) – DVD

April 2, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Linda Manz, Max Perlich, Jacob Reynolds, Chloe Sevigny
written and directed by Harmony Korine

by Walter Chaw Xenia, Ohio, America's middle-of-nowhere, is imagined by Harmony Korine (Kids) as the quintessence of Grant Wood's slightly canted take on the gothic at the heart of the mundane. It's a town out of step, recovering from a tornado which, an opening narration tells us, left people dead, cats and dogs dead, and houses ripped apart. In Gummo, his directorial debut, one of the tasks Korine sets for himself is detailing the psychological damage wrought on Xenia by two different forces of nature: the lingering emotional fallout from the almost-forgotten tornado; and the tragedy of being born with no advantageous DNA in an ever-diminishing gene pool.

The Perez Family (1995) – DVD

March 14, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, Chazz Palminteri, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Robin Swicord
directed by Mira Nair

by Walter Chaw Sensuous and lush with a hint of Isabel Allende’s magical realism in the bleeding of a man’s broken heart and a string of rose petals trailing a line along the belly of a new lover, Mira Nair’s lovely The Perez Family is all ripe colours, song, sex, honour, and dance. A long-lost father asks his wife upon their decades-long separation if their grown daughter remembers him: “She says she remembers dancing with you.” In The Perez Family, that’s only as it should be.

Get on the Bus (1996) – DVD

March 7, 2001Posted in1990s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, DVD, Road Movie

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
starring Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Ossie Davis, Charles S. Dutton
screenplay by Reggie Rock Bythewood
directed by Spike Lee

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Didactism is a treacherous course for a movie to take. Drive down that road and you chance accusations of propagandizing, as though taking a political position were a violation of some Hollywood code of enforced irrelevance; try as you might to avoid such a situation, be it through aesthetic compensations or the urgency of the issues at hand, overt politicking in a motion picture is usually–and unfairly–a good way to draw unfriendly fire.

In the Mouth of Madness (1995) – DVD

February 15, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Directors: John Carpenter, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness
*½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Sam Neill, Jurgen Prochnow, Julie Carmen, Charlton Heston
screenplay by Michael DeLuca, from stories by H. P. Lovecraft
directed by John Carpenter

by Vincent Suarez John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness opens as John Trent (Sam Neill) is being dragged into an insane asylum, with characters making vague references to a seemingly-widespread epidemic of madness. After Trent covers his padded cell, face, and clothing with black crosses (an image featured in the trailer and which hooked me, proving that while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it may not be worth 95 minutes of one’s time), he recounts the events leading to his current state, and the film proceeds in flashback.

Twin Dragons (1992) – DVD

January 22, 2001Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts

**½/**** Image C Sound B+ Extras D
starring Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Nina Li, Teddy Robin
screenplay by Barry Wong and Tsui Hark and Cheung Tung Jo and Wong Yik
directed by Tsui Hark

by Bill Chambers The day Steven Seagal inflicts two performances on us within the same film I’ll hang up my film critic’s apron and call it a life. Soap opera actors and fighting stars, you see, are not so much nonimmune as prone to landing the dual role of identical twins, and one muumuu-wearin’ aikido “master” is already too much to bear. But a couple of Jackie Chans, that I can and did handle: Chan’s 1992 action-comedy (emphasis on comedy) Twin Dragons isn’t as seedy as the similarly plotted Van Damme vehicle Double Impact. With action auteurs Tsui Hark and, purportedly, Ringo Lam at its helm, though, and choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) behind the stuntwork, one has every reason to expect more combat and spectacle than Twin Dragons actually delivers.

When Harry Met Sally… (1989) [Special Edition] + Prelude to a Kiss (1992) – DVDs

January 8, 2001Posted in1980s, 1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY…
***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby
screenplay by Nora Ephron
directed by Rob Reiner

PRELUDE TO A KISS
***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Alec Baldwin, Meg Ryan, Kathy Bates, Ned Beatty
screenplay by Craig Lucas, based on his play
directed by Norman Rene

by Bill Chambers Meg Ryan, the Princess of Perk, gets a makeshift career retrospective this month with the DVD releases of three high-profile gigs: When Harry Met Sally…, Prelude to a Kiss, and The Doors. I’m forsaking any further mention of The Doors to focus on the first two–delightful, whimsical films, unlike The Doors–and Ryan’s romantic-comedy stranglehold. Call it the curse of the button nose: the actress, who is more talented than anyone, myself included, is willing to admit, seems out of her element by a country mile in pictures that don’t require her to meet cute and kvetch over the subsequent courtship. And now that she’s pushing 40, Ryan is becoming to chick flicks what Stallone and Schwarzenegger were to actioners after Clinton got elected: we’re sick to death of seeing her in these Nora Ephron-type movies–yet, as Proof of Life, um, proved, we also don’t want to see her in anything but.

Mother Night (1996) + Waking the Dead (2000) – DVDs

November 16, 2000Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, War

MOTHER NIGHT
***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A
starring Nick Nolte, Sheryl Lee, Alan Arkin, John Goodman
screenplay by Robert B. Weide, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut
directed by Keith Gordon

WAKING THE DEAD
****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly, Molly Parker, Janet McTeer
screenplay by Robert Dillon, based on the novel by Scott Spencer
directed by Keith Gordon

by Bill Chambers In Timequake, the most recent and arguably most flawed of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novels (like many of his fans, I found it only intermittently readable), the author writes: “…I have never used semicolons. They don’t do anything, don’t support anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites.” Perhaps Keith Gordon’s Mother Night is one of the few artistically successful cinematic adaptations of a Vonnegut work because Gordon avoids semicolons in his filmmaking–there is no straining to cohere, here.

Me Myself I (1999) + Passion of Mind (2000) – DVDs

September 19, 2000Posted in1990s, 2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller

ME MYSELF I
**/**** Image B Sound A Extras C
starring Rachel Griffiths, David Roberts, Sandy Winton, Yael Stone
written and directed by Pip Karmel

PASSION OF MIND
**/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård, William Fichtner, Peter Riegert
screenplay by Ron Bass and David Field
directed by Alain Berliner

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With a bumper crop of "what if?" movies hitting screens over the past couple of years–enough of them, perhaps, to signify a genre–the time is nigh to examine, in the hope of capping, this Cinema of Regret, a marriage propagandist's dream. Both Me Myself I and Passion of Mind arrive (coincidentally?) on DVD this week, and each in its roundabout way encourages its existentially lost central character to attach sentimentalism to family values. Dan Quayle must be happy as a clam.

Not One Less (1999) – DVD

September 1, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, China, Drama, DVD

一個都不能少
Yi ge dou bu neng shao
***/**** Image A Sound B-
starring Wei Minzhi, Zhang Huike, Tian Zhenda, Enman Gao
screenplay by Shi Xiangsheng
directed by Zhang Yimou

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Zhang Yimou's Not One Less, while suffering from a disease of nonspecificity, nevertheless manages to make its points with style and grace. It's not an especially deep film, railing as it does against a poverty that has no known source and, thus, no possible remedy. But even as nonspecific as it tries to keep itself, the film does sink you deep into the problem of poverty in China. The film is at least a cri de cœur for the lost futures of China's rural children, trapped as many are between education and supporting their families. And the cry is voiced beautifully by Hou Yong's cinematography, giving even an impoverished village and dirty city the visual élan that is the hallmark of Zhang's craft. If some subtler analysis gets lost in the interim, you can't have everything.

Dead Again (1991) – DVD

June 28, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi
screenplay by Scott Frank
directed by Kenneth Branagh

by Jarrod Chambers A convicted murderer on death row, about to be executed. A stolen pair of scissors, he lunges–a woman wakes up screaming. It was all a dream, or was it? The door opens, a flash of lightning, illuminating a silver cross dangling from the neck of an attendant nun.

Sweet and Lowdown (1999) – DVD

June 19, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

***½/**** Image A Sound C+
starring Woody Allen, Blythe Danner, Judy Davis, Mia Farrow
written and directed by Woody Allen

by Bill Chambers Woody Allen movies of late are eager to indict the creepy misanthrope who's been a staple of the writer-director-actor's oeuvre at least since Allen stepped into the shoes of Annie Hall's Alvy Singer. But in the final analysis, Allen has continued to pardon his alter egos, deflecting blame for their shortcomings by casting a negative light on everybody they know, too. If Sweet and Lowdown, the movie Deconstructing Harry wasn't ready to be, is any indication, the Woodman's work is, at last, becoming more nakedly confessional.

The Green Mile (1999) – DVD

June 18, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Stephen King

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse, Doug Hutchison
screenplay by Frank Darabont, based on the serialized novel by Stephen King
directed by Frank Darabont

by Vincent Suarez In his review of The Thin Red Line, your host at FILM FREAK CENTRAL laments that viewers often are inclined to choose whether they prefer that film or its contemporary, Saving Private Ryan. I find that the same unfortunate phenomenon exists among those who’ve seen both of Frank Darabont’s first two films, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. (Curiously, Tom Hanks stars in each pair of films.) While the two share many traits (their prison setting, their writer-director, and their source material: short stories by Stephen King), they are vastly different films. For while The Shawshank Redemption is an institutional morality tale, The Green Mile is a death-row fairy tale.

F/X (1986) + FX2 (1991) – DVDs

June 15, 2000Posted in1980s, 1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Thriller

F/X
**½/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Diane Venora, Cliff DeYoung
screenplay by Robert T. Megginson & Gregory Fleeman
directed by Robert Mandel

BUY @ AMAZON.COM

FX2
**/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Rachel Ticotin, Joanna Gleason
screenplay Bill Condon
directed by Richard Franklin

BUY @ AMAZON.COM

by Bill Chambers F/X is only 14 years old, and yet it seems to be in a forgotten language like those modern-dress Shakespeare adaptations. I'm risking hyperbole here because practical effects are a dying art in the face of CGI. Today's motion-picture illusionist is primarily a computer animator, a trade that just doesn't lend itself to the sort of ingenuity the movie celebrates. The Tom Savinis of this world are rapidly becoming an endangered species.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) – DVD

May 22, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Tim Burton, DVD, Fantasy, Germany, Horror, Mystery

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon
screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker
directed by Tim Burton

by Bill Chambers Googly eyes that spring forth from a ghoulish figure. A burning windmill. Ghostly choir music. Jeffrey Jones. Sleepy Hollow is Tim Burton's Greatest Hits. The trouble with most compilation albums is that they're superficial, a bunch of songs connected by one flimsy context: retrospection. If this latest gloomfest from Burton doesn't make you yearn for the days when you were witnessing his directorial flourishes for the first time, we saw different films. The storytelling is as shallow as the setting is hollow.

The Bachelor (1999) – DVD

April 17, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A+ Sound A-
starring Chris O'Donnell, Renee Zellweger, Hal Holbrook, James Cromwell
screenplay by Steve Cohen
directed by Gary Sinyor

by Bill Chambers It begins with a misleading visual straight out of City Slickers: a herd of mustangs, all racing towards "a patch"–signifying single men trying to get laid. But no stud, we learn through voiceover, can evade marriage forever, and following the introduction of young entrepreneur Jimmie (Chris O'Donnell) and his happy, similarly-unwed circle of (male) friends, a quick montage intercuts scenes of holy matrimony seizing every last one of them–save Jimmie–with the wrangling of stallions.

Three to Tango (1999) – DVD

April 10, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Matthew Perry, Neve Campbell, Dylan McDermott, Oliver Platt
screenplay by Rodney Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna
directed by Damon Santostefano

by Bill Chambers Unsurprisingly, Three to Tango was written some eight years before it finally went into production–the film has a dated preoccupation with homosexuality as Golden Farcical Opportunity. (I suspect that Rodney Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna’s script, purportedly based on events that led to Vaccaro’s marrying his boss’s girlfriend, was fast-tracked only after The Birdcage became a box-office smash.) Imagine the insipid proposition of a politically corrected “Three’s Company”; why does hetero Oscar not speak up when his sexual orientation is first challenged? Because, silly: being gay is hilarious!

If These Walls Could Talk (1996) – DVD

April 9, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Television

**/**** Image C+ Sound B
1952: starring Demi Moore, Catherine Keener, CCH Pounder, Jason London
teleplay by Nancy Savoca
directed by Nancy Savoca
1974: starring Sissy Spacek, Xander Berkeley, Hedy Buress, Janna Michaels
teleplay by Susan Nanus and Nancy Savoca
directed by Nancy Savoca
1996: starring Cher, Anne Heche, Jada Pinkett, Eileen Brennan
teleplay by I. Marlene King and Nancy Savoca
directed by Cher

by Bill Chambers Is one expected to insert the If These Walls Could Talk disc into a DVD player, or lace it through the gears of an old-fashioned Bell+Howell projector? The three-act HBO anthology, which revolves around the abortion debate, was shot on stock that appears to be of Seventies vintage even in sequences meant to take place in the Fifties and the Nineties, contributing to its classroom-instructional vibe as much as the message-oriented scripting.

Double Jeopardy (1999) [Widescreen] – DVD

March 26, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ashley Judd, Bruce Greenwood, Annabeth Gish
screenplay by David Weisberg & Douglas S. Cook
directed by Bruce Beresford

by Bill Chambers Imprisoned for the murder of her husband, whose apparently dismembered body was never recovered from the deep blue sea, Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd, who’s very good) calls her little boy from a phone bank and hears him say this: “Daddy!” It’s Double Jeopardy‘s most convincing moment, relying as it does on the ignorance of a child–so persuasive, in fact, that you may wonder at film’s end if it had been imported from another screenplay altogether.