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.

Kingdom Come (2001) – DVD

October 28, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image B+ Sound C+ Extras B-
starring LL Cool J, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, Loretta Devine
screenplay by David Dean Bottrell & Jessie Jones, based on the play “Dearly Departed” by David Dean Bottrell
directed by Doug McHenry

by Walter Chaw A second-helping of Soul Food but seasoned this time around with a preponderance of syrupy good intentions and a hulking mess of stock burlesque caricatures, Kingdom Come vacillates between ridiculous and irritating: a far cry from the intended “heartwarming” and “funny.” Though it’s always nice to see a film with an all-African-American cast that doesn’t rely on gangsters and gunplay (ignoring a gun that is drawn and forgotten early on), I’m not certain that the opposite of that genre is necessarily forced dramedy camaraderie, complete with a sitcom narrative’s rise and fall, made popular by Waiting to Exhale. Still, for as simple-minded and shamelessly overacted as it is, the film is somewhat redeemed by an overall genial goodwill.

Recording ‘The Producers’: A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks (2001) – DVD

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Music

***/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
directed by Susan Froemke

by Walter Chaw Sort of a cross between a documentary and a musical concert DVD but without much in the way of either in-depth information or audience response, Recording ‘The Producers’: A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks is a look at the recording sessions leading to the creation of the cast album for the smash Broadway show The Producers, which was, of course, based on Mel Brooks’s classic film. Well composited by director Susan Froemke, the straight-to-DVD production veers from Brooks reacting to in-studio performances by Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and company to a few rough patches that are overcome through coaching and a surprising degree of professionalism. Although I’m somewhat handicapped by not having seen the actual play, I was dutifully impressed by the prodigious talents of the stars (who knew that Ferris Bueller could croon?) and mostly charmed by the still-engaging personality of Brooks as the proud papa of the most-lauded play in Tony Award history (winning twelve).

Along Came a Spider (2001) – DVD

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, Michael Wincott, Penelope Ann Miller
screenplay by Marc Moss, based on the novel by James Patterson
directed by Lee Tamahori

by Walter Chaw The sole line to strike with truth in Lee Tamahori’s Along Came a Spider comes when professional dim-bulb Penelope Ann Miller, as the mother of a kidnapped child, wrings her hands, furrows her brow, and whines, “I… I don’t understand.” Springing as it no doubt does from a lifetime of repetition, Ms. Miller’s quandary also serves as a handy critique of the labyrinthine contortions that the film’s plot makes on its way to being utterly senseless and unengaging; its blandness takes on a cast of bellicosity. You begin to feel like the butt of some absurd joke or embroiled in a wilfully obscure Buddhist koan: What is the sound of one movie sucking?

DIFF ’01: Amélie (2001)

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Romance

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain
Amélie Poulain
***/****
starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Yolande Moreau
screenplay by Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

by Walter Chaw Caught between an iceberg of a father (Rufus) and a nervous wreck of a mother (Lorella Cravotta), the very peculiar Amélie (Audrey Tautou) develops in her youth an active imagination to combat emotional starvation. When she’s 22, on the night of Lady Di’s death by paparazzi, Amélie accidentally discovers a tin of toys and photographs, a child’s treasure cache hidden away in her apartment some forty years previous. Resolving to return the artifacts to their rightful owner, Amélie discovers that acts of altruism serve as voyeuristic surrogates to her life’s social desolation. Taking its cue from the bare structure of Jane Austen’s Emma and–ironically, considering the ultra-stylistic character of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s direction–the stark work of the Nouvelle Vague (Truffaut in particular), the strength of Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain) is in its imagery. Its weaknesses, alas, are a running time that is at least a half-hour too long and a resolution so predictable that the film’s problems of pacing and length meet in something resembling frustration.

DIFF ’01: Novocaine

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Thriller

*/****
starring Steve Martin, Helena Bonham Carter, Laura Dern, Scott Caan
written and directed by David Atkins

Novocaineby Walter Chaw An ill-fated hybrid of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and the dentist portions of Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors, Novocaine lacks a cohesive tone. It vacillates from dark comedy to Forties-style melodrama, from light-hearted slapstick to medium-heavy gore and nudity, and in one particularly inexplicable sequence, Novocaine attempts to be a post-modernist Lacanian thing involving a character's heightened self-awareness as a fictional construct. It's neither funny nor the slightest bit suspenseful, too jumbled and arbitrary to ever sustain much in the way of tension or interest. Even its central conceit–a plot to steal pharmaceuticals and the resultant chaos when the victim catches on to the scheme–is so essentially flawed that the revelation of the guilty party, which occurs after we've spent two desperate hours suspending increasingly leaden disbelief, isn't so much a shocker as a "shrugger."

K-Pax (2001)

October 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

K-PAX
*/****
starring Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard
screenplay by Charles Leavitt, based on the novel by Gene Brewer
directed by Iain Softley

Kpaxby Walter Chaw Madman Prot (Kevin Spacey) has been incarcerated for months at various state-run mental institutions. Because psychotropic drugs do not affect Prot, he’s sent to Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges); presumably, Powell is the authority on madmen unaffected by psychotropic drugs. Prot, however, can also see ultra-violet light, map the orbits of undiscovered planets around undiscovered solar systems (begging a few questions), and talk to dogs by barking at them. Prot believes himself an alien from the distant planet K-Pax, and it’s up to Dr. Powell to uncover the trauma that has unhinged this man. Along the way, Prot’s unconventional (and wiseass) view of our foibles teaches us all a little about ourselves, leading to cuddly Patch Adams moments wherein this dangerous fruitbar repairs Dr. Powell’s crumbling familial relationships and reverses insanity by urging his fellow inmates to look for bluebirds and attempt to kill one another. K-Pax is derivative, populist, feel-good trash of the first order–it’s tailor-made for a populace gone daft from decades of insipid soup generally starring Robin Williams.

Startup.com (2001) + Down from the Mountain (2001) – DVDs

October 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coen Brothers, Concert Doc, Documentary, DVD

STARTUP.COM
***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
directed by Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN
***/**** Image A Sound A
directed by Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker

by Bill Chambers With the advent (moreover, the industry-wide acceptance) of digital video, married partners in documentary-making Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker are more prolific than ever before. Artisan just released their two latest projects, Down from the Mountain and Startup.com, on DVD, and though the former is a concert film and the latter takes an inside look at the Internet boom, they sit together comfortably in the directors’ joint oeuvre. Consider that, between filming such music legends as Jerry Lee Lewis and Jerry Garcia, the pair has all but specialized in youthfully arrogant subjects–star Clinton campaigner George Stephanopoulos in The War Room, for example. There’s even been some crossover: Without Hegedus, Pennebaker captured both Bob Dylan (Don’t Look Back) and David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) on the cusp of fame, the former abandoning artificiality, the latter embracing it to essentially the same end.

Bones (2001)

October 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Horror, Theatrical
*/****
starring Snoop Doggy Dogg, Pam Grier, Michael T. Weiss, Clifton Powell
screenplay by Adam Simon & Tim Metcalfe
directed by Ernest R. Dickerson

by Walter Chaw Bones, from Spike Lee’s former cinematographer Ernest Dickerson (director of the underestimated horror-comedy Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight), is torpedoed first and foremost by rapper/felon Snoop Doggy Dogg’s monstrous ego and lack of anything resembling a sense of humour about himself. The result is a film that merely rip-offs Hellraiser (down to the reconstituted corpse), A Nightmare on Elm Street (down to the floppy-hat-wearing vengeful ghoul), and, most peculiarly of all, Dario Argento’s Inferno and Suspiria (burning hellmouth, rain of maggots, man-eating dog). Bones also borrows liberally from the blaxploitation flicks of the Seventies in Snoop’s period pimp outfit and the presence of Pam Grier in her Foxy Brown attire, yet it lacks the camp appeal that excuses miniscule budgets and a lack of craft. The one thing that separates Bones from all the films it’s trying to emulate is its noteworthy inability to muster either fear or fun.

DIFF ’01: Haiku Tunnel

October 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals

**½/****
starring Josh Kornbluth, Amy Resnick, June Lomena, Helen Shumaker
screenplay by Jacob Kornbluth & John Belluci & Josh Kornbluth
directed by Jacob & Joshua Kornbluth

by Walter Chaw Featuring the kind of humour made popular by those irritating sports improvisation dinner-theatre troupes, Haiku Tunnel opens inauspiciously: Josh Kornbluth (who co-directed with his brother and plays himself) stands in front of a chalkboard introducing the film as a made-up work set in the fictional town of…erm…"San Franclisco." His over-emoting and burlesque eye-rolling soon betray the fact that Haiku Tunnel began life as a series of stand-up monologues Kornbluth performed to small but appreciative venues in San Francisco. (Urban legends abound of entire secretarial pools going to his shows en masse and adopting catchphrases for inspirational memos.) Clearly a creature of the stage, Kornbluth's mugging and brother Jacob and John Bellucci's aside-laden script translate uneasily to the screen, aspiring to a kind of Woody Allen-esque fourth-wall breaking but only succeeding in being mildly embarrassing. Still, Josh Kornbluth's engaging warmth and egoless sense of humour portends a destiny for Haiku Tunnel as a cult classic and good things for the future of the fraternal auteurs behind it.

Tunnel Vision: FFC Interviews Jacob & Josh Kornbluth

October 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

TunneltitleOctober 24, 2001|Stricken with free-floating worry beneath a glowering sky, I was about fifteen minutes early for my interview with brothers Jacob and Josh Kornbluth at the swank Hotel Monaco in suddenly hip downtown Denver. I had spent most of the morning pounding espresso and dodging screaming fire trucks and ambulances chasing one another in a climate that made every peal of every siren an unpleasant reminder and a cause for concern. Walking up 17th Avenue, I was skittish and disquieted–hardly the appropriate frame of mind for a conversation with the writing/directing team responsible for the feather-light Haiku Tunnel, their debut feature, which is based on the office inferno monologues of older brother Josh. As it turns out, Josh, such a charming nebbish as the star of his own film, appeared as nervous as I, experiencing the very human anxiety of putting his work up for public scrutiny on an exhausting festival press junket.

My First Mister (2001)

October 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Germany, Romance, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Albert Brooks, Leelee Sobieski, John Goodman, Michael McKean
screenplay by Jill Franklyn
directed by Christine Lahti

Myfirstmisterby Walter Chaw Something’s fatally off about My First Mister, veteran character actor Christine Lahti’s feature-length directorial debut. Awkward and atonal, it appears to be some strange cross between a reverse-gendered Harold and Maude and a mainstream Ghost World, and despite its desperation to appear so, it’s neither as intelligent nor edgy as either. Jill Franklyn’s screenplay (her first produced) just doesn’t work. It’s hollow to the ear and disagreeable to the taste, only ringing true occasionally through the Herculean intervention of Albert Brooks, here in his most restrained and affecting performance since Broadcast News. That noise you hear when Leelee Sobieski’s weary (and wearying) voiceover confides, “My clothes are not all black. Some of them are blue. Sometimes I wear them together so I look like a bruise,” is an audience’s worth of eyeballs rolling skyward. The problems Franklyn’s script presents to the rest of the cast, however, particularly the Helen Hunt-ishly smug (and similarly limited) Sobieski and Carol Kane as another gnomish manic eccentric, are insurmountable. They’re crushed beneath the weight of convenience, contrivance, Lahti’s unfortunate impulse towards the cutesy, and a score that is as insulting and invasive as any to be found in a Chris Columbus film or from the recently-flaccid baton of the once-great John Williams.

DIFF ’01: Fat Girl

October 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy

À ma soeur!
***/****
starring Anais Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo
written and directed by Catherine Breillat

by Walter Chaw

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
"Leda and the Swan" (1928)–William Butler Yeats

Yeats caused a minor stir in 1928 by suggesting that the rape of Leda was an empowerment for a sexually wise woman whose ultimate revenge against manhood was the spawning of Helen of Troy–who, of course, had a key role in the fall of an entire nation. The idea of ill-gotten knowledge as it's tied to a woman's evolving sexuality is not a new one–Biblical and older, in fact. Still, Catherine Breillat throws a new acerbic barb into the psychosexual brew by projecting Freud's classic developmental framework (anal, oral, genital) onto the progression of the uncomfortable seduction of the impossibly young Elena (Roxane Mesquida) by a smooth-talking Italian lothario (Libero de Rienzo). It is only one, though perhaps the most subtle, of Breillat's incendiary yawps against man's barbarism to woman. As Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), the titular fat girl, summarizes at one point: "All men are sick."

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) [Collector’s Edition (Widescreen) + DVD Interactive Playset] – DVDs

October 21, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B- Playset A-
starring Jim Carrey, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Molly Shannon
screenplay by Jeffrey Price & Peter S. Seaman, based on the book by Dr. Seuss
directed by Ron Howard

by Bill Chambers Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas? More like Dr. Strangelove’s. The Ron Howard film version of the children’s perennial has horror-movie limbs that spring up independently of Seussian intent, the most extended of them going by the name of Jim Carrey, who wants to be the only Grinch remembered and marks his territory with piss and vinegar. Then there are the subversive asides, reckless stabs at hipping up a classic story that hadn’t fallen out of fashion in the first place. So miscast as a director, Howard is guilty of trying too hard; so well-cast in the lead role, Carrey is also guilty of trying too hard–or maybe not hard enough. Improvising ten topical jokes to every five that succeed while smothered by a fuzzy-wuzzy bodysuit, Carrey suggests a green Robin Williams in maximum sellout mode.

DIFF ’01: LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton

October 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals

***½/****
directed by Albert Maysles

by Walter Chaw Following four generations of women from LaLee Wallace's destitute family in the heart of the Mississippi delta's cotton country, legendary documentarian Albert Maysles's LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton is full of the quiet tragedy of being human. Poetic and demanding, it very subtly changes you as you watch it, shaming us for our petty concerns in the face of what LaLee bears on a daily basis. Entire African-American generations are ruined in the cotton country of the fertile Mississippi delta crescent–a cycle of illiteracy and poverty unexpectedly precipitated by the transition of the cotton industry from hand to machine. The documentary follows one of LaLee's grandchildren ("Granny") and one of her great-grandchildren ("Main") as they struggle to conjure up the pennies needed to purchase the paper and pencils that will gain them entrance into school. It simultaneously details the trials of that school as it tries to raise its Iowa Aptitude Exam Scores to a minimum standard, thus preventing the government from perhaps imposing a system that is unsympathetic to the plight of the locals.

DIFF ’01: Mortal Transfer

October 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Thriller

Mortel Transfert
***/****
starring Jean-Hugues Anglade, Helene de Forgerolles, Denis Podalydes
screenplay by Jean-Jacques Beineix, from the novel by Jean-Pierre Gattengo
directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix

by Walter Chaw Returning to the "nouvelle noir" grotesquery that marked his 1981 debut Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix's Mortal Transfer is wickedly funny, visually stunning, and perverse in a malevolent way that, along with Bernard Rapp's Une affaire de gout, appears to be a Gallic specialty this festival season. Its highlight is a ghoulish, hilarious scene having to do with a corpse, an icy road to be crossed, and a rather unorthodox means of delivery; and though the film never quite seems at ease with its own black heart, its game cast is more than up to the task of the earnest deadpan that Stygian farces require.

DIFF ’01: Mutant Aliens

October 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Sci-Fi

**/****
starring the voices of Dan McComas, Francine Lobis, Matthew Brown
written and directed by Bill Plympton

by Walter Chaw Oscar-winning animator Bill Plympton's full-length animated feature The Tune is among my all-time favourite films. It's perverse, hilarious–a whiff of brilliance, proving Einstein's contention that imagination is more powerful than science and the truism that the pen is sharper by far than the rapier wit. Detailing a jingle writer's search for the perfect commercial hymn, The Tune is 80 minutes of kinetic bliss sketched out in Plympton's distinctively rough style that nonetheless demonstrates the kind of pure artistry betrayed by, say, Bill Watterson. It is with great anticipation, then, that I entered Mr. Plympton's latest foray into squiggles for the cinema, Mutant Aliens–and it is with some disappointment that I left the auditorium 80-odd minutes later. Eighty very odd minutes, as it turns out, and more's to the benefit of the film and of no surprise to the illustrator's fans. What offsets Plympton's trademark lunacy this time around, however, is not a joy of creation, but rather a somewhat disturbing puerility that relies once too often on humping to further the plot or provide comic relief. Mutant Aliens plays a little like Harlan Ellison's short story "How's the Nightlife on Cissalda?": all xeno-erotica and bestiality. Except for a few moments involving how a man imagines his member (chainsaw, locomotive, erupting volcano, wild horses), the rampant sexuality of Mutant Aliens mostly falls embarrassingly flat.

DIFF ’01: Tape

October 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, Film Festivals

***/****
starring Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman
screenplay by Stephen Belber from his play
directed by Richard Linklater

by Walter Chaw Vincent (Ethan Hawke) is a volunteer fireman and sometime drug pusher who meets his best friend John (Robert Sean Leonard) at a seedy Michigan motor inn for a little beer, drugs, and conversation. Very quickly, what was a genial bout of male bonding devolves into hidden agendas, past hurts, and psychological manipulations, all geared towards resolving an event that may or may not have happened. When Amy (Uma Thurman), an old girlfriend of them both, shows up at the room, she functions as a catalyst to exploding the resentments that have bound them invisibly over the years.

The Jaws Log: 25th Anniversary Edition – Books

October 18, 2001Posted in1970s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Books About Movies, Spielberg

written by Carl Gottlieb
FFC rating: 9/10

by Bill Chambers The Jaws Log is not, in fact, laid out in the manner of a sea captain’s journal, though it does offer a blow-by-blow account from a privileged vantage point of a voyage fraught with peril. Written by Carl Gottlieb, who was given a role in Jaws, piped up about its story problems, and soon found himself the latest in the film’s line of screenwriters, The Jaws Log first hit shelves in 1976 but was recently reissued by Newmarket Press in a “25th Anniversary Edition” appended with fifty-four annotations of the “Where are they now?” variety. Not much else has changed; Gottlieb has “left the original narrative intact, except for minor spelling changes and a few stylistic fixes.” (Oops: he overlooked “Johnny Weismueller [sic].”) One is so hard-pressed to find the equivalent of The Jaws Log–a nuts-and-bolts look behind-the-scenes told with plenty of humour and grace–these days that reprinting it is better than nothing.