1990s Archives - Page 2 of 18 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital HD

July 24, 20181990s, 2018, 4K Ultra HD, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Schwarzenegger, Sci-Fi, Time Travel

Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

***/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong
screenplay by James Cameron & William Wisher
directed by James Cameron

by Bryant Frazer I remember the summer of 1991, when Terminator 2: Judgment Day landed in movie theatres with all the fuck-you noise, power, and momentum of a Ford Freightliner crashing from an L.A. thoroughfare overpass into a concrete spillway below. It was the year of Operation Desert Storm and the ending of the Cold War, the year LAPD officers were videotaped beating Rodney King. With the release of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” still a few months away, latter-day cock-rocker Axl Rose still led the most popular band in America. It had been a pretty good year for women in film, even if the material was grim–Jodie Foster helped open The Silence of the Lambs at #1 in February and Davis/Sarandon kick-started a thousand feminist (and anti-feminist) thinkpieces when Thelma & Louise arrived in May. But the main movie event of the summer was the testosterone-laden sequel to The Terminator. Serenaded by a hit single from Axl’s Guns N’ Roses, heralded as the most expensive movie ever made, and stuffed with apocalyptic imagery, T2 roared onto screens, smacked you upside the head, and stole your lunch money, then smirked about it as it strolled away.

Hana-bi (1998) – Blu-ray Disc

November 5, 2017****/****, 1990s, 2017, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Japan, Revenge, Romance, Thriller

Fireworks
****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Beat Takeshi, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima
written and directed by Takeshi Kitano

by Walter Chaw Nishi loves her very much, but when she tries to link arms with him for a photograph, he pulls away. He’s not comfortable with his emotions. He’s from both a culture and a profession that frowns on that sort of thing. When his co-workers talk about him, they do so in hushed tones and warn one another not to get too familiar, even in their gossip. He’s lost a daughter and his wife is very ill. They make allowances for him one day, and it results in the crippling of his partner. Nishi avenges him, but another young cop dies in the process. Nishi, dispassionate, empties his gun into the bad guy’s skull. But his partner is still abandoned by his wife and child for not being the man he used to be. None of this is how it’s supposed to work. Men are taught to be a specific way and promised rewards for their stoicism and brutality. I’m 44 years old. It’s taken most of my adult life to begin to unravel the ways that expectation and breeding have made it hard for me to tell my wife, whom I love in a devastating way, “I love you.” I was afraid to have kids because I didn’t know if I could tell them I loved them. I have two. I tell them every day. I make myself. Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-bi deals with the consequences of masculinity–perhaps the most trenchant exploration of the theme not written or directed by Walter Hill. The film understands that some men can only express themselves through motion, which isn’t enough in the best of times and is laughably insufficient in the worst of them. Of all the ’90s masterpieces of world cinema, Hana-bi is my favourite.

Hackers (1995) [20th Anniversary Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

June 23, 20171990s, 2017, Authors: Sydney Wegner, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound B- Extras A
starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Fisher Stevens, Lorraine Bracco
written by Rafael Moreu
directed by Iain Softley

by Sydney Wegner When a baby is born, a universe of possibilities opens wide in front of them. They don’t yet know how to move or talk, but they hold within them the capacity for good or evil and everything in between. No matter what, parents look at their children in those first moments of life and think, Here in my hands I hold a doctor, a scientist, a legendary artist, a Nobel prize winner, an Olympic gold medallist. Despite my own failures and shortcomings, I have given birth to a life that may manage to overcome all the shit I will put them through to become someone infinitely greater than myself. Maybe it will influence the lives of millions to make the world a better place. Though parents have a great effect on how they turn out, ultimately they are their own unpredictable and uncontrollable person. We know they’ll change something, that they will affect the people they come to know, that this one small thread they represent will alter the vast human tapestry in some way. Of course, we always hope it will be for the best.

Wishmaster Collection: 4-Film Set [Vestron Video Collector’s Series] – Blu-ray Disc

March 31, 20171990s, 2000s, 2017, Authors: Sydney Wegner, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror

WISHMASTER (1997)
***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras A
starring Tammy Lauren, Andrew Divoff, Chris Lemmon, Robert Englund
written by Peter Atkins
directed by Robert Kurtzman

WISHMASTER 2: EVIL NEVER DIES (1999)
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring Andrew Divoff, Paul Johannson, Holly Fields, Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister, Jr.
written and directed by Jack Sholder

WISHMASTER 3: BEYOND THE GATES OF HELL (2001)
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Jason Connery, A.J. Cook, Tobias Mehler, John Novak
screenplay by Alexander Wright
directed by Chris Angel

WISHMASTER: THE PROPHECY FULFILLED (2002)
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Michael Trucco, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Jason Thompson, John Novak
screenplay by John Benjamin Martin
directed by Chris Angel

by Sydney Wegner The Wishmaster saga begins with a quick infodump about angels and demons from narrator Angus Scrimm, the folklore giving way to a lush array of reds and purples and sandy earth tones as a sorcerer forges a magic red gemstone over the opening credits. In 1127 Persia, something is wreaking havoc on a crowded square; a skeleton rips its way out of a man’s skin and walks around to join several other horrifying atrocities. The sorcerer (Ari Barak) pushes his way through the screaming crowd to the King (Richard Assad), who’s being advised by a Djinn (a.k.a. the Wishmaster, played by a ferociously campy Andrew Divoff) that he must make a third wish to stop the violence. But the sorcerer manages to trap him in the gemstone, stopping the King before his third wish can grant the Djinn the power to rip through dimensions and unleash his Djinn brethren onto the earth. This prologue sets up a world of magic and fantasy and folklore the series never quite re-establishes. While the ancient imagery is vaguely referenced hereafter, the world of Wishmaster won’t feel this sensual or mystical again.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) [30th Anniversary] – Blu-ray Disc

January 26, 2017****/****, 1990s, 2017, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Thriller

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Michael Rooker, Tracy Arnold, Tom Towles
written by Richard Fire & John McNaughton
directed by John McNaughton

by Walter Chaw John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (hereafter Henry) is one of the great black comedies. At its heart is the basis of Judd Apatow’s gross-out flicks: body horror, deviant sexuality, deep ignorance-unto-actual stupidity, questionable decisions and their consequences, and brilliant bits of deadpan humour dependent upon timing and situation. Similarly, it derives its effectiveness from a keen observation of male heterosexual relationships and the peril implicit therein. The sole distinction, really, is that Apatow and his followers believe in conservative, family-values resolutions whereas Henry ends in essential, sucking nihilism. It’s a distinction that draws the line between something that’s considered to be a comedy and something that’s widely discussed as possibly the most unpleasant American film ever made. What most have identified as pessimistic, however, I would just call vérité, now more than ever. At least for me, Henry had about it an almost palpable air of taboo. Though shot in 1986, it was released in Denver in 1990, when I was 17. I read Roger Ebert’s cautionary, celebratory review of it, which made me afraid. When I saw it, I saw it alone. For its wisdom, it’s never quite left me.

Mister Johnson (1991) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

August 21, 20161990s, 2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, The Criterion Collection

Mrjohnson1

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Maynard Eziashi, Pierce Brosnan, Edward Woodward, Beatie Edney
screenplay by William Boyd, based on the novel by Joyce Cary
directed by Bruce Beresford

by Walter Chaw I’m not sure exactly when or why Aussie director Bruce Beresford became the cinematic spokesman for the African experience. It probably, in Hollywood’s peculiar racial calculus, had something to do with his appalling Driving Miss Daisy being the Oscar juggernaut that Do the Right Thing was not. Credit Beresford for the years he spent living in Nigeria and the stands he took in films like The Fringe Dwellers to work with an Aboriginal cast against counsel, but something nettles that, with the remake of “Roots” still warm and Beresford and fellow Aussie new-waver Phillip Noyce at the helm of half of its four episodes, somehow Beresford is the acceptable choice to tell these Black stories. This isn’t even an indictment of his pictures, mind, but rather an indictment of a system so heavily skewed towards one racial group and gender that whatever the quality of the product, there’s a good conversation to be had about the people making it. There’s dissonance.

Knightriders (1981); Monkey Shines (1988); The Dark Half (1993) – Blu-ray Discs

June 27, 20161980s, 1990s, 2016, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: George A. Romero, Disability, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Stephen King, Thriller

George A. Romero’s Knightriders
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Ed Harris, Gary Lahti, Tom Savini, Amy Ingersol
written and directed by George A. Romero

MONKEY SHINES
*½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil, Joyce Van Patten
based on the novel by Michael Stewart
written for the screen and directed by George A. Romero

THE DARK HALF
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, Julie Harris, Michael Rooker
based on the book by Stephen King
written for the screen and directed by George A. Romero

by Walter Chaw Knightriders, George A. Romero’s very own Fast Company, is another of the earnestly socially-conscious filmmaker’s earnestly socially-conscious films, though one without the benefit of a metaphor that holds any kind of water. It doesn’t even have an argument that makes sense. It feels like Romero over-identifying with the topic and losing the thread somewhere along the way–and padding the runtime with far too many pedestrian bike stunts. There’s something to be said for personal projects (Romero’s work seems like it’s all personal, frankly), but with that intimacy comes real peril. I will say Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a no-kidding masterpiece. It’s one of the best films ever made and perhaps the single most important Civil Rights picture, too. I’m partial to his Day of the Dead as well, for the cleanness of its execution and for the interesting things it has to say about identity and the military-industrial complex. It’s fair to wonder, then, if Romero is tied so inextricably to the zombie genre not because (or not just because) of timeliness (and that he essentially invented an entire subgenre with a legion of imitators), but also because without zombies, his stuff is only leaden and clumsy. Without zombies functioning as they do, as both grand bogey and versatile metaphor, Romero’s weighed down by a lethal payload of well-meant proselytizing, and just like that the flat artlessness of his films feels less “spartan” on purpose than “affectless” by accident.

Sorceress (1995) [Uncensored Director Approved Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

June 14, 20161990s, 2016, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Thriller

Temptress
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Larry Poindexter, Rochelle Swanson, Julie Strain, Linda Blair
written by Mark Thomas McGee
directed by Jim Wynorski

by Bryant Frazer If there’s any doubt what kind of movie he’s made, director Jim Wynorski dispels it in the opening moments of Sorceress, as B-movie bombshell Julie Strain appears frontally nude, lighting a candle and muttering a witchy incantation. Although she’s dead by the end of the first reel, her influence lingers as she taunts ex-husband Larry (Larry Poindexter) from beyond the grave in flashbacks and sexy visions that culminate in Strain’s Erica glaring up at him from her corner of a three-way, promising, “You’ll never be rid of me” as he watches, sad-faced and helpless, like a kid who dropped his ice-cream cone.

Bride of Re-Animator (1990) [3-Disc Limited Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD

June 10, 20161990s, 2016, Arrow Video, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

H.P. Lovecraft’s Bride of Re-Animator
**/**** Image B+ Sound C Extras A-
starring Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, Fabiana Udenio, Jeffrey Combs
screenplay by Woody Keith and Rick Fry
directed by Brian Yuzna

by Bryant Frazer Bride of Re-Animator is surely one of the biggest missed opportunities in the history of franchise filmmaking. Stuart Gordon’s 1985 classic Re-Animator wasn’t a fluke–it had been lovingly developed over a number of years by Chicago native Gordon, who initially planned to make it with his Organic Theater buddies. When they demurred, it was just dumb luck that landed the project with producer Brian Yuzna at the genre sausage factory that was Hollywood’s Empire International Pictures. The sequel, on the other hand, was developed as a directorial vehicle for Yuzna, who claims time constraints related to the financing precluded Gordon’s participation. So screenwriters Rick Fry and Woody Keith, who wrote Yuzna’s directorial debut, Society, hacked a new script together in a big hurry. The end result is hard to consider on its own merits because of the big question mark for Re-Animator fans: What could this have looked like if the original film’s creative team had been in charge?

Sonny Boy (1989) – Blu-ray Disc

May 1, 20161990s, 2016, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Esoterica, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring David Carradine, Paul L. Smith, Brad Dourif, Michael Griffin
original screenplay by Graeme Whifler
directed by Robert Martin Carroll

by Bryant Frazer David Carradine wears a dress and nobody says a word about it for the duration of Sonny Boy, a low-budget thriller set in a timeless Panavision desert where the preferred modes of transportation are dirt bikes and dusty pickup trucks. It eschews mainstream cultural signifiers–the one glaring exception is the blonde with tousled music-video hair and ridiculous outfits straight out of Desperately Seeking Susan–and instead dedicates itself to world-building, making its arid small-town environment a microcosm for the cold world outside. So complete is Sonny Boy‘s conception of a cruel universe in miniature that it comes with a downbeat theme song written and performed, right there on screen, by Carradine himself. (A lyric from said song* is engraved, I kid you not, on Carradine’s tombstone.) Carradine is the big name, but the whole cast is better than it needs to be, and that makes a difference. They add a recognizably human element to an otherwise demented scenario and, even more importantly, they keep a film that sometimes feels almost like outsider art from amplifying its self-conscious idiosyncrasies to the point of out-and-out parody.

Living in Oblivion (1995) – DVD|[20th Anniversary] – Blu-ray Disc

March 17, 20161990s, 2016, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Satire, Scream/Shout! Factory

***/****
DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B-
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, Danielle Von Zernick
written and directed by Tom DiCillo

by Walter Chaw A film carefully structured in three parts, Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion demands tired adjectives like “offbeat” and “quirky” while dancing dangerously close to hyperbole along the lines of “brilliant” and “incisive.” What it is, though, is its own beast–a meta-structure of dream sequences (the first two segments “are,” the third is “about”) concerning six takes of scene six–the devil’s number applied to the trials of filmmaking, including technical accidents, the egos of the stars, and behind-the-scenes relationships that threaten professionalism. With those plates spinning, DiCillo layers in elements of fantasy bleeding into reality (the second section ends with the oft-repeated scene sloughing into “reality,” then into dream), the final segment integrating spoof symbols (an apple, a little person) with a real symbol (the mother).

The Guardian (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

March 9, 20161990s, 2016, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: William Friedkin, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

*½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Jenny Seagrove, Dwier Brown, Carey Lowell, Brad Hall
screenplay by Stephen Volk and Dan Greenburg and William Friedkin, based on the novel The Nanny by Greenburg
directed by William Friedkin

by Bryant Frazer The Guardian, made in 1990 as an apparent attempt to cash in on director William Friedkin’s reputation as the man behind The Exorcist, is one of those terrible movies by a powerful director working at the low ebb of his career. The wildest thing about The Exorcist–one of the greatest horror movies–is that despite its defining influence on his career, Friedkin has never shown much interest in horror. (That’s one of the things that makes The Exorcist work so well: Despite the requisite special-effects outlay required to depict demonic possession, on one level The Exorcist is just the story of a problem and the professionals who are dispatched to address it; on another level, it’s a family drama about a single parent dealing with adolescent rebellion.) So while it’s understandable that either Friedkin or the studio bankrolling The Guardian would see commercial potential in a return to genre filmmaking, any attempt at out-and-out horror was probably ill-fated from the start. That the story being attempted (loosely adapted from a novel by Dan Greenburg) was so very woolly–the supernatural villain the title references is a sexy, polymorphous druid who takes jobs as a live-in nanny to steal babies from their parents–would have been an advantage in, say, a potboiler out of Charles Band’s Empire Pictures. In the hands of a no-nonsense craftsman like Friedkin, alas, it was a blueprint for disaster.

Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (1995) [Collector’s Edition] + Tales from the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood (1996) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 30, 20151990s, 2015, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Vampire

Demon Knight
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, Brenda Bakke
written by Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris & Mark Bishop
directed by Ernest Dickerson

Bordello of Blood
*/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras A
starring Dennis Miller, Erika Eleniak, Angie Everhart, John Kassir
screenplay by A.L. Katz & Gilbert Adler
directed by Gilbert Adler

by Walter Chaw I didn’t have HBO as a kid. Didn’t even have cable. When I went over to friends’ houses, I would spend a lot of time wanting to watch MTV to try to catch up on all the popular culture I was missing. “Remote Control”, the first Jon Stewart show, “Dream On”, “The Kids in the Hall”–each of them represent gaping holes in my pop education. Lump in the Walter Hill-produced “Tales from the Crypt” anthology program with that group of things I knew about but only by title and reputation. My first exposure to the EC Comics-inspired/adapted-from show was through reprints of “Tales from the Crypt” and “Strange Tales” comics during the early-’90s industry boom. Then Ernest Dickerson’s fantastic Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (hereafter Demon Knight) satisfied every single expectation I had of something seeking to honour the ghoulish, sometimes puerile depravity of William Gaines’s seminal source material. It’s as gory as it is corny and smart as hell for recognizing that those were the only requirements. Doesn’t hurt that the practical-effects work is goopy and inventive. Oh, and the cast is exceptional.

Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut (1990) [Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack] + Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions (1995) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 1, 20151990s, 2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charles Haid
screenplay by Clive Barker, based on his novel Cabal
directed by Clive Barker

CLIVE BARKER’S LORD OF ILLUSIONS
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Scott Bakula, Kevin J. O’Connor, Famke Janssen, Daniel Von Bargen
written for the screen and directed by Clive Barker

by Walter Chaw Clive Barker’s too-brief directing career, capping his time as the Stephen King-anointed prince of horror (“I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker,” went King’s famous endorsement), produced three cult classics: Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. His Hollywood trajectory traces the familiar tale of enfant terrible allowed full reign on his first project, only to find subsequent efforts bowdlerized by non-believers. Director’s cuts of Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions have circulated in some form over the years, with fans claiming–particularly in the case of Nightbreed–that masterpieces had been corrupted, hidden from sight. It’s the kind of intrigue that forms the basis of much of Barker’s work: the hidden grotto, arcane knowledge secreted away, art too beautiful for human eyes. There’s something of the fury of H.P. Lovecraft’s cult of personality in this–something more of the cosplay phenomenon. Each of Barker’s movies evokes the absolute acceptance that outsiders encounter at genre conventions: they are explosions of the internal, actings-out of repressed desires. Find in this explanation of the coda, surprisingly sticky despite the bad pun, to his short-story anthologies: “Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.” Clive Barker is the Douglas Sirk of splatter.

Aladdin (1992) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

October 12, 20151990s, 2015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
screenplay by John Musker & Ron Clements and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
directed by John Musker & Ron Clements

Portions of this review, including the first four paragraphs, were originally published on October 5, 2004.

by Bill Chambers Jeffrey Katzenberg may have revived the American animated feature while he was at Disney, but only one of the hits his reign yielded is worth a second viewing. Where 1989’s The Little Mermaid and especially 1991’s nauseating Beauty and the Beast tried to pass themselves off as Golden Age Disney (1937 (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)-1950 (Cinderella), for argument’s sake), before a certain stateliness loosened its grip on the house style, 1992’s Aladdin took its cue from Uncle Walt’s twilight years, the Sixties, when he was interested in telling–as he geared up to pass the torch, perhaps–mentor stories (The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book) and pop culture had finally caught up with his incongruous predilections for psychedelia and bohemianism. It’s a risk to emulate the period considered the birth of the studio’s Dark Ages, and Aladdin is the least spurious movie of Disney’s renaissance because of it.

The Fisher King (1991) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

August 4, 2015****/****, 1990s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Drama, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Romance, The Criterion Collection

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Amanda Plummer, Mercedes Ruehl
written by Richard LaGravenese
directed by Terry Gilliam

by Bryant Frazer New York City is cast against type in The Fisher King, where it plays an urban fantasy realm complete with castles, towers, villages, and wilderness. Kings and queens look down from their lofty aeries on the dirty streets below, where peasants defend their hard-won territory against barbarian hordes. Imposing forests of skyscrapers jut up from the concrete, cave dwellings yawn open at the base of the Manhattan Bridge, and the city’s homeless specialize in ad hoc musical theatre. The Holy Grail may be hidden in a fortress on the Upper East Side. And there are no dragons in New York, but the Red Knight is a motherfucker.

The Films of Hayao Miyazaki (1979-2001)|Spirited Away (2001) – Blu-ray + DVD

June 25, 2015****/****, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2015, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Japan, Romance, Sci-Fi, War

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro) (1979)
***/****
Buy DVD at Amazon.com|Buy Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Adapted from a Monkey Punch manga that was itself based on Maurice LeBlanc’s popular super-spy Lupin, Hayao Miyazaki’s first feature-length film The Castle of Cagliostro came about as an offshoot of his experiences producing television episodes of a popular Lupin series (1977-1981). As such, the animation and backgrounds are more simplistic, the story is more cartoonish (though the very basic Miyazaki hallmarks of a girl in transition, flight, and gadgetry are already in place) and one-dimensional, and the pace is more relentlessly breakneck than occasionally meditative. Beginning as a heist comedy and continuing as an impenetrable fortress/princess in a tower action adventure film, The Castle of Cagliostro is a light, irreverent slapstick exercise with a healthy share of nifty gadgets and derring-do. Missing is a sense of completion and the deeper examination of themes that one will come to associate with the director’s work, but The Castle of Cagliostro stands on its own merits; despite being shackled somewhat by the artistic and thematic requirements of an in-place franchise, the picture reveals the burgeoning promise of a filmmaker who would become the most important voice of the new anime medium. 100 minutes

Miami Blues (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

June 23, 20151990s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B
starring Fred Ward, Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nora Dunn
screenplay by George Armitage, based on the novel by Charles Willeford
directed by George Armitage

by Jefferson Robbins Remember when handheld camera was a technique deployed to signal disorientation, estrangement, and vulnerability and not simply “the way we shoot movies now”? In George Armitage’s Miami Blues, the otherwise-steady camera first comes unhinged when ex-con Frederick “Junior” Frenger Jr. (Alec Baldwin) orders newly-requisitioned hooker Pepper (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to roll over on her belly, presumably so he can employ her the way male prisoners employ each other sexually. He can’t, though, because there’s something different there, and an afternoon’s purchased pleasure becomes an affair. Armitage’s use of the camera is a punctuation, a chapter break in Junior’s story, reassuring us that while Junior is malevolent and unpredictable, Pepper won’t immediately meet the same fate as the Hare Krishna that Junior (kind of accidentally) murdered an hour before. Still, you should probably worry for her.

Insomnia (1997) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

October 21, 20141990s, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Norway, The Criterion Collection, Thriller

Insomnia2

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Stellan Skarsgård, Sverre Anker Ousdal, Bjørn Floberg, Gisken Armand
screenplay by Nicolaj Frobenius & Erik Skjoldbjærg
directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg

by Walter Chaw A rather astonishing feature debut, Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Insomnia is dour, surreal, nihilistic, and steadfast in its theme of masculine self-reflection. It’s as slippery to pin down and single-mindedly purposeful as its protagonist–a procedural only inasmuch as Oedipus Rex is a procedural. It’s a work of Expressionism, in other words: its exteriors are projections of its interiors in all their canted, perverse, blighted ugliness. An essential misnomer to call it a “noir,” Insomnia in its best moments is an absurdist nightmare that pinions male behaviour as these constant vacillations between violence and frailty. (This choice to discuss the world in terms of gender relationships is likely why it’s considered a noir at all.) It’s the movie that brought Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård to international prominence via a role that suggested a departure, hot on the heels of Breaking the Waves, though a quick peek at his earliest work (especially Zero Kelvin) hints at the volatility of Insomnia‘s Det. Engstrom. He’s the centre of a dark universe. Setting the film in a place above the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn’t set has the interesting effect of lighting Engstrom, as he commits his many black deeds, like a particularly ill patient in a doctor’s examining room.

Herzog: The Collection [Blu-ray Disc] – My Best Fiend (1999)

August 11, 20141990s, 2014, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Werner Herzog, Documentary, Scream/Shout! Factory

Mein liebster Feind – Klaus Kinski
**/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B+
BD – Image B+ Sound B+
directed by Werner Herzog

by Walter Chaw My Best Fiend is Werner Herzog trying to dispel some of the myths surrounding his career by magnifying a few of the myths surrounding Klaus Kinski’s. As such, it feels a lot more like a cheap shot than like a tribute, burying as it does Kinski’s indisputable genius beneath a lot of documentary evidence that Kinski was a slavering lunatic. And though Herzog betrays a definite affection for Kinski (nowhere more so than in a hilarious/warm reminiscence offered to the very proper German couple living in the apartment once shared by the director and actor), more often the piece is given to obfuscating outtakes and anecdotes. Consider the eclipsing impact that B-roll footage of a raving Kinski on the set of Aguirre, The Wrath of God and Herzog’s comments about the natives offering to kill the actor for him have on Kinski’s astonishingly reserved, haunted performance in the film. If you’ve never seen Aguirre, you’d think that Kinski was awful in it–and if you have seen Aguirre, your mind begins to blur what’s actually on the screen. It’s subtle, but it starts to resemble a snowjob akin to the belief, held by most (even those who’ve seen the films), that Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are splatter flicks, when in fact there’s more blood in Psycho than in those two films combined.