Made (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Sean Combs, Famke Janssen
written and directed by Jon Favreau

by Bill Chambers Even if Swingers were terrible, one would have to admire writer-star Jon Favreau for making a film about waiting around to be discovered instead of actually waiting around to be discovered. Made, his official follow-up effort (this time as full-on auteur), is not such a noble affair. A vanity project in the tradition of Under the Cherry Moon, Prince’s pretentious encore to his star-making Purple Rain, the film boasts of a more distinguished supporting cast, stronger tech credits, and a budget 20x that of its predecessor. And yet almost every scene lands with a resounding thud, due in large part to Made‘s alleged raison d’être: the anticipated reunion of Swinger Vince Vaughn with Favreau–who turns into a morose do-gooder whenever he’s in Vaughn’s radar. It’s like watching “The Odd Couple” starring a tooth and a root canal.

Children of the Living Dead (2001) – DVD

November 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, ZERO STARS, Zombie

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound C-
starring Tom Savini, Martin Schiff, Damien Luvara, Jamie McCoy
screenplay by Karen Lee Wolf
directed by Tor A. Ramsey

by Walter Chaw With the appearance of having been shot over a long weekend in someone’s backyard, Children of the Living Dead is a cynical attempt to cash in on George Romero’s zombie trilogy (and The Blair Witch Project) so stale and amateurish that it qualifies as a barely-releasable embarrassment to everyone involved, including gore-legend Tom Savini, who seems to have hit rock bottom in his extended cameo. The film starts just outside of the old house from Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead, with rednecks potting zombies in a field–a scene already familiar to fans of Dawn of the Dead, but robbed of all pathos and dread–and continues on through a series of disconnected vignettes that neglect genre imperatives like gore, nudity, and fear plus narrative film prerequisites like story, acting, directing, and script. Children of the Living Dead doesn’t even offer any puerile thrills.

Along for the Ride (2001) – DVD

November 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Romance, ZERO STARS

Forever Lulu
ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Melanie Griffith, Patrick Swayze, Penelope Ann Miller, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt
written and directed by John Kaye

by Walter Chaw For as bad an actress as Melanie Griffith is (Night Moves and Another Day in Paradise notwithstanding), it’s not entirely her fault that John Kaye’s Forever Lulu (inexplicably renamed Along for the Ride for its DVD release) is unspeakably awful. True, her Betsy-Wetsy kewpie doll elocution and its attendant dead eyes–which wore out their welcome almost the second she trotted them out for an incredulous audience about twenty-six years ago–are in full-bore here, but what makes Along for the Ride, in which she plays the title role, so abominable are such exchanges as this one:

LULU
Did you know that sometimes I ask my pillow late at night, “How much sadness do I have to feel?” And did you know that love is the greatest painkiller and that Marilyn Monroe wore a mask of tragedy over her pubic hair?

CLAIRE
You’re right, I should go talk to Ben.

Jurassic Park III (2001) [Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] – DVD

November 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola
screenplay by Peter Buchman and Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
directed by Joe Johnston

by Walter Chaw Jurassic Park III is completely critic-proof, a smirking cash machine with its amplifiers turned up to “11.” That it happens to be an amazingly tight little film (every single element of its first half predicts a correlative in the second) doesn’t excuse its bratty attitude. If Jurassic Park III were the insolent snot-nosed little punk it most resembles, it’d be turning out its lower lip whilst jutting an insouciant chin at potential critics and naysayers: “Go ahead,” the pipsqueak would say, “hit me with your best shot.”

Okay, here goes.

Deep in the Woods (2000) – DVD

November 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, France, Horror, Thriller

Promenons-nous dans les bois
***½/**** Image A- Sound A (French) C (English) Extras D+
starring Francois Berleand, Denis Lavant, Michel Muller, Thibault Truffert
screenplay by Annabelle Perrichon
directed by Lionel Delplanque

by Walter Chaw The newest generation of young Gallic filmmakers is involved in reinvigorating many of the thriller’s forms: the hybrid, HK-influenced actioner (Brotherhood of the Wolf); the Cronenbergian investigation of parasitic identification (A Matter of Taste); and the Hitchcockian psychosexual wrong-man intrigue (Mortal Transfer). Perhaps inspired by countryman Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita, and Leon (a.k.a. The Professional), the abovementioned movies are bathed in frosty blues and greens, filmed and edited with a smooth professionalism–the latest wave to wash through the French cinema is all about a carefully calibrated cool.

Rush Hour 2 (2002) [infinifilm] – DVD

November 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras A-
starring Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, John Lone, Zhang Ziyi
screenplay by Jeff Nathanson
directed by Brett Ratner

by Walter Chaw For as long as Jackie Chan has been the logical heir to Buster Keaton’s crown, it becomes apparent during the course of Brett Ratner’s Rush Hour 2 that he may also be the heir to Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau/Pink Panther crown. Blithely mixing the broad racial humour with the broad slapstick theatrics that typify Sellers and Blake Edwards’s classic comedies of criminal bad taste, Rush Hour 2 even makes time for a couple of bombshell secret agents, a brief and largely inexplicable interlude involving breasts rendering a man amusingly mute, and a cheerfully inept sidekick who gets in the stray kick now and again. The tenor, then, is dedicatedly light, and the humour is predictably free of cleverness–mostly involving Asians eating dogs and killing chickens, and African-Americans preferring their chickens fried and their karaoke with a heaping helping of Jacko gesticulations. That Rush Hour 2 (and the Pink Panther saga, for that matter) is often so genial in its cheap humour and gratifying in its physical exertions speaks to an almost universal desire to see people get a pie in the face while inelegantly breaking societal taboos. Rush Hour 2 never once aspires to anything other than formula fluff and never once descends into the dangerous realm of superlative entertainment. It is the prototypical summer film: loud, cheap, exploitive, and forgotten almost as soon as it’s over.

Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001) – DVD

November 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras A-
starring Jason Connery, A.J. Cook, Tobias Mehler, John Novak
screenplay by Alex Wright
directed by Chris Angel

by Walter Chaw The most interesting thing about the train wreck Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell is that it’s actually bookended by two car wrecks. The first is a dream our heroine Diana (A. J. Cook) has of her parents being killed in a collision for which she feels responsible; the second involves the Archangel Michael (Tobias Mehler, who also plays Diana’s boyfriend, Greg–don’t ask), for some reason incapable of freeing his ethereal self from a shoulder restraint without the intervention of the redemption-seeking Diana. Knowing that Wishmaster is a series of films dealing with an evil wish-granting Djinn, I had hope from the first accident that Wishmaster 3 would be an updating of W.W. Jacobs’s marvellous short story “The Monkey’s Paw”, with poor, bereaved Diana foolhardily resurrecting her deceased parents. By the time the second (literally) rolled around, I had hope only that the extreme suckitude of the film didn’t somehow damage my DVD player. Wishmaster 3 is simply abominable–a horror film free of fear and the two things that made the series worthwhile in the first place: genre writer Peter Atkins, absent since the first instalment, and Andrew Divoff as the titular bogey.

Dark Victory: FFC Interviews Jan Sverák

November 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Interviews

DarkvictoryNovember 18, 2001|When the communists invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, it spelled the end for the Czech New Wave that had been led by such directors as Milos Forman, Ivan Passer, Věra Chytilová, and Jiří Menzel. The "great harvest" of Czech cinema peaked with The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze: Ján Kádár and Elmar Klos) (1965) and Closely Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky: Jiří Menzel) (1966), both of which received Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. Forman was nominated in this period for Loves of a Blonde (Lásky jedné plavovlásky) (1966) and Firemen's Ball (Hoří, má panenko) (1968), and would later be honoured by the Academy for his English language films One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. Ivan Passer's American-made Law and Disorder is one of the lost classics of the 1970s.

Jeepers Creepers (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 17, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Mystery

**½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck, Patricia Belcher
written and directed by Victor Salva

by Walter Chaw Set on the rural highways and dirt byways of Anywhere, America during a long, hot summer, Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers is a film of two distinct halves–the first astonishingly good, the second derivative–drawn together by a finale that is both fair and surprising. It could have been much better overall had it isolated its sympathetic heroes in the middle of a Texas Chain Saw Massacre nightmare, and indeed, the parts of it that work best are those that most recall Tobe Hooper’s rustic nightmare. (Particularly the suddenness of the initial attack and the subsequent discovery of the beast’s abattoir lair.) Once policemen and bumpkins are introduced in a series of repetitive “I don’t believe your story–hey, why did the lights go out” scenarios, however, Jeepers Creepers, while retaining Salva’s indisputably cinematic eye, becomes something a good deal more predictable and consequently safer. The creation of a comfort zone halfway through is a terrible shame, not because it’s horrible in and of itself, but because for almost an hour, Jeepers Creepers holds great promise.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000) – DVD

November 17, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Sports

**½/**** Image B Sound B- Extras A-
directed by Aviva Kempner

by Walter Chaw Thirteen years in the making, Aviva Kempner’s The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg is an exhaustive and affectionate, if tunnel-visioned, documentary about “the Jewish Jackie Robinson”: Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg, who broke cultural barriers during the anti-Semitic Father Coughlin/Henry Ford years, just prior to the onset of WWII. Towering over his teammates at 6’4″ and 210lbs, Greenberg became a stereotype-busting role model for an entire generation of Jewish youngsters and, unlike many of his modern athletic counterparts, Greenberg didn’t take his responsibility for granted.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

November 16, 2001Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
**/****
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, John Cleese
screenplay by Steven Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by Chris Columbus

Harrypottersorcererby Walter Chaw There is such a dedicated lack of controversy and tension in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that all of its benefit as a children’s fiction is lost to the machinery of Hollywood spectacle. Gone is the dread uncertainty, the persecution of a child because of parents or class, and any true appreciation of consequences in the various action scenarios that lockstep unfold to the strict dictates of the plot; it’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory without the candy. At a bloated 152 minutes, the film depends to a peculiar degree on our familiarity with J.K. Rowling’s outrageously popular series of books: it does little to establish the characters and has such a feeling of clockwork inevitability that it’s shocking when the finale comes and goes with almost nothing resembling purpose, much less resolution. Though it’s arguably faithful to the major movements of the book (thus satisfying a large population of its tyke fans until they begin to develop discretion), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone suffers from what I like to call the “Wizard of Oz” malady: no brain, no heart, no courage.

Kon Ichikawa – Books

November 15, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Books About Movies, Japan

FFC rating: 8/10
edited by James Quandt

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I've read that in America, they'll screen the finished film for ordinary fans in a movie theatre free of charge. Then they have the audience write what they think was good or bad about the film. Looking at the responses, the star or director will sometimes try to reshoot scenes the audience didn't like… That attitude toward filmmaking is really conscientious; I think it's a great way to make films."

Those, believe it or not, are the words of a world-class director, trusted by millions and still active at the age of 86. And such remarks go a long way towards explaining why, despite being one of the four best-known Japanese directors (along with Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu), he has never attracted the personality cult the other three have enjoyed. For unlike that trio's relentless vision, doggedly pursued in film after film, Kon Ichikawa refracted his through the distorted lens of studio insistence and assignments, which may explain why he has worked consistently throughout the Eighties and Nineties when younger directors like Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura have often had to struggle to get a film made.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) – DVD

November 14, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica

**½/**** Image A Sound B Extras A
starring Tom Green, Rip Torn, Marisa Coughlan, Eddie Kaye Thomas
screenplay by Tom Green & Derek Harvie
directed by Tom Green

by Walter Chaw Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered is the most startling debut since Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou, with which it has a few things in common: both are constructed with a wilful disdain towards narrative; both are aimed at the outer limits of shocking imagery; both display an open hostility for the cultural status quo; and both joke on their audience’s entrenched preconceptions of film form. Even more admirably seditious, Freddy Got Fingered, unlike Un chien andalou, was actually backed and released by a major studio. (It’s extremely instructive to read Roger Ebert’s review of Un chien andalou as the definitive piece on Freddy Got Fingered, though I suspect Ebert would object to that notion.) The crucial of many differences between the two films is that Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s experiment in inciting an audience was only seventeen minutes long while Freddy Got Fingered is an excruciating eighty-seven. That said, it is destined for instant cult status and eventual critical respect.

America’s Sweethearts (2001) + Legally Blonde (2001) [Special Edition] – DVDs

November 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS
*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C-
starring Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusack
screenplay by Billy Crystal & Peter Tolan
directed by Joe Roth

LEGALLY BLONDE
**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis
screenplay by Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith, based on the novel by Amanda Brown
directed by Robert Luketic

by Bill Chambers This week, two of last summer’s comedies, Legally Blonde and America’s Sweethearts, transfer their competition to the video store. Neither film has a high-concept that’s fruitful–they’re both pitches without a paddle buoyed only by star power. I’ll take the former over the latter, however, because America’s Sweethearts is a shrill, lumpy stinker that sends up the movie business so vapidly it’s like a parody of Hollywood satires. Legally Blonde is watchable, at least, and you don’t have to suffer through the de facto Miss America, Julia Roberts, pretending as though she’s blending in with the furniture.

Weimar Cinema and After – Books

November 10, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Books About Movies, Germany

Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary
FFC rating: 9/10
by Thomas Elsaesser

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover All together now: German cinema between the wars irrationally reflected the fears of the times. It mirrored the decadence of the period and was closely linked with the irrationalism of German romanticism. It directly prefigured the rise of Hitler and the flight of the country's important directors during the Nazi era, which both condemned Germany to hack propaganda and gave America the gift of film noir.

Planet of the Apes (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 10, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Tim Burton, DVD, Sci-Fi

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham-Carter, Estella Warren
screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal
directed by Tim Burton

by Walter Chaw A failure of sense, a failure of cohesion, and, most remarkably for director Tim Burton, a failure of atmosphere, Planet of the Apes is a messianic space opera fantasy in the Dune mold that never goes anywhere and takes its time getting there. Rick Baker’s special effects make-up is spectacular, no question, but the screenplay by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal is a trite, bloated thing further crippled, ironically, by the make-up (which tends to slur speech), and by the abominable last-minute slap-dash editing that condemns Planet of the Apes to a conspicuous lack of poetry. The script’s failings should come as no surprise: These three hack screenwriters have produced between them such cinematic dead weight as Apollo 13, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, The Jewel of the Nile, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. What does come as a considerable shock–as well as a considerable disappointment–is the almost total lack of anything resembling the quirky neo-expressionistic ethos that has made Tim Burton one of our most vital and interesting directors.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2001)

November 9, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Hong Kong, Horror, Japan, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Vampire

***½/****
screenplay by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, based on the novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi
directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Vampirehunterdbloodlustby Walter Chaw Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s name is probably not as familiar to anime’s United States fanbase as Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Ôtomo, Mamoru Oshii, Isao Takahata, or Shinichirô Watanabe, but amid those in the “know,” his Ninja Scroll is among the best pure action/fantasy films of the last fifty years in any medium. Tightly plotted and drawn in a style that crosses Bernie Wrightson with Kelley Jones’s work in Neal Gaiman’s Sandman comic series, Ninja Scroll is one of few eloquent stand-alone justifications for Japanese animation as a movement of true cinematic value and lasting merit. Perhaps accounting for his relatively anonymous standing, Kawajiri’s other films veer wildly from the sloppily drawn though viscerally intriguing Wicked City to the frankly awful Demon City Shinjuku. With Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Kawajiri’s first film since Ninja Scroll six years back, the director takes on Hideyuki Kikuchi’s popular manga D–yousatsukou (the sequel to Kyuuketsuki Hantaa ‘D’, made into 1985’s Vampire Hunter D by Toyoo Ashida), and produces something that falls in quality somewhere between the dizzying heights of Ninja Scroll and the occasionally weak Wicked City, while borrowing images and elements from both.

Monsters, Inc. (2001)

November 2, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Pixar

***/****
starring the voices of Billy Crystal, John Goodman, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly
screenplay by Dan Gerson & Andrew Stanton
directed by Peter Docter and David Silverman & Lee Unkrich

Monstersincby Walter Chaw Ten feet tall and covered in blue and purple fur, James “Sully” Sullivan (voiced by John Goodman) is the leading scarer at Monsters, Inc. and best friend to his “handler/assistant,” a green nebbish of a cyclops named Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). Despite their occupation, they’re sweet fellas; less so is Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi), a colour-changing, chameleonic thing who is jealous of Sully’s reputation. When a dreaded child escapes into the monster’s factory, Sully and Mike gradually unearth Randall’s nefarious plot to overtake Sully for “Most Bloodcurdling” while trying to hide the renegade kid from their tick-like boss Henry J. Waternoose (James Coburn) and Celia (Jennifer Tilly), Mike’s girlfriend.

DIFF ’01: The Long Goodbye (Wrap-Up)

November 2, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals

Difflogo2by Walter Chaw It's bittersweet: my first time covering the Denver International Film Festival (DIFF) in a press capacity and the world was falling down around my ears. Personal epiphanies and collective calamities. Miramax decided to pull Piñero from the Festival because they rescheduled its theatrical release for sometime next year; In The Bedroom, another Miramax property–and my favourite film of 2001, thus far–didn't make it, period. The "mini-major" bought In the Bedroom, I am told, to foster a closer relationship with Ang Lee's production company–there's a lot of behind the scenes politicking going on about which I knew nothing prior to getting the ear of insiders and access to the proverbial horses' mouths.

Jump Tomorrow (2001)

October 31, 2001Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

****/****
starring Tunde Adebimpe, Natalia Verbeke, Hippolyte Girardot, Patricia Mauceri
written and directed by Joel Hopkins

by Walter Chaw An unlikely romance, an unlikely road movie, and an unlikely buddy picture all in one that somehow works (and with a surplus of charm and sweetness), Joel Hopkins’s debut feature Jump Tomorrow could be described as either Harold Lloyd by way of Jacques Tati or Jim Jarmusch by way of Thirties screwball. Or just simply “fantastic.” It is hopelessly romantic and subversively funny, a Being There-esque collection of guileless characters left to interact in ways that are so nobly old-fashioned and innocent, it takes a good half-hour before we realize that Jump Tomorrow doesn’t have a baseball bat clutched in the hand behind its back. It doesn’t have a hand behind its back at all.