When Dinosaurs Roamed America (2001) – DVD

August 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Television

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C-
narrated by John Goodman
written by Georgann Kane
directed by Pierre de Lespinois

by Walter Chaw A co-production of the Discovery Channel that originally aired there, When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a computer-generated simulation of dinosaurs in their habitat, interacting like lions and elephants on an African savannah. It is narrated with homey warmth by John Goodman and interrupted now and again by paleontologists, who present the most recent information available on the beasts portrayed. A hi-tech bit of necromancy, When Dinosaurs Roamed America is consistently fascinating; the fact that all of the information and images presented are highly theoretical and possibly already outdated only distracts a little from the overall impact of the piece.

The Deep End (2001)

August 21, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker, Peter Donat
screenplay by Scott McGehee & David Siegel, based on the short story “The Blank Wall” by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
directed by McGehee & Siegel

by Walter Chaw There is a moment at the very beginning of Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Deep End wherein our maternal heroine Margaret Hall (Tilda Swinton) fills in a crossword puzzle line with “glacier.” It is an early clue to Margaret’s glacial temperament, the cool blue colour suffusions that dominate the film’s lighting schemes, and, unfortunately, the feeling of icy detachment one experiences during the course of the film. The Deep End is neither a noir nor a Hitchcockian thriller, but rather a somewhat conventional, vaguely derivative Mildred Pierce-ian estrogen melodrama that plays a lot like a Lifetime bodice-ripper written by David Mamet. It is essentially a lifeless version of Blood Simple, complete with misunderstandings, extortion, and a hide-the-corpse intrigue inspired by the urge to protect a loved one. Not to say The Deep End is a bad film, exactly, rather it’s a forgettable one that is remarkable only for its almost complete lack of distinction.

Hannibal (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

August 21, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A-
starring Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Frankie R. Faison
screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Harris
directed by Ridley Scott

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It is perhaps unfair to compare a sequel to its predecessor, especially one with as tenuous a connection to its predecessor as Hannibal has. With most of the original The Silence of the Lambs personnel having refused to sign on due to various creative differences, the sequel's total stylistic disconnection from its beloved 1991 precursor was probably inevitable. Couple that with the fact that the novel on which it draws can be charitably described as a desperate grasp for royalties and you have a no-win situation that would confound the most dedicated adaptor. Eager though he or she might be to remain faithful to the original's spirit, our hypothetical filmmakers would be forced to define something perfectly contrary to the parent film, something that would be its own picture–a rare enough commodity in the best of times.

Dead Simple (2000) – DVD

August 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Music

Viva Las Nowhere
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Daniel Stern, Patricia Richardson, Lacey Kohl, Sherry Stringfield
screenplay by Richard Uhlig and Steven Seitz
directed by Jason Bloom

by Walter Chaw A bizarre cross between Psycho, Something Wild and Tender Mercies, Jason Bloom’s Dead Simple is one of those derivatively named direct-to-video productions that attempts the black comedy genre with a reasonable amount of aplomb and wide-eyed enthusiasm. It’s a Very Bad Things farce of escalating atrocities, and though Dead Simple never achieves the kind of sustained comic brilliance and continual nastiness of that movie, it does manage a few edged moments and keen performances from a cast that includes legendary bug-eyed hambones Daniel Stern and James Caan.

The Trumpet of the Swan (2001) – DVD

August 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, India, Musical, South Korea

½*/**** Image C Sound C Extras C
starring Jason Alexander, Mary Steenburgen, Reese Witherspoon, Seth Green
screenplay by Judy Rothman Rofe, based on the book by E.B. White
directed by Richard Rich, Terry L. Noss

by Walter Chaw Gracelessly-animated, unevenly voice-acted, and so carelessly told that it’s often unintentionally disturbing (our human hero fries eggs for breakfast when he meets our swan hero), Rich-Crest Animation’s The Trumpet of the Swan is an embarrassing cut-rate cartoon based on E.B. White’s melancholy 1970 novel. It strips White’s wonderful prose to its base essentials, inserts vulgar slapstick involving a skunk, a jive-turkey squirrel, and an aborted Graduate intrigue, and opens with an off-putting and borderline tasteless Lamaze egg-birthing prologue. Its catalogue of atrocity is so variegated and pungent that to list them all would be more effort than has in fact gone into the film’s production. Absolutely the only saving grace for this slack entertainment is its modest length–which, at a brisk 75 minutes, still plays like a film twice as long.

Bread and Tulips (2000)

August 16, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Italy, Romance, Switzerland, Theatrical

Pane e tulipani
**/****
starring Felice Andreasi, Vitalba Andrea, Tatiana Lepore, Ludovico Paladin
screenplay by Silvio Soldini & Doriana Leondeff
directed by Silvio Soldini

Breadandtulipsby Walter Chaw There are great chunks missing from Bread and Tulips, story transitions that appear inconsequential until one finds them neglected. An action is announced and several scenes later we are left to presume that the action has been performed; an event occurs and several scenes later we give up waiting for the reaction. Nowhere is that discrepancy more jarring than at the conclusion, when our heroine is spirited away from her family and loved ones and deposited in the middle of a different movie. There is a considerable problem with a film that insists on holding your hand through score or ham-handed direction; on the flipside, there is a considerable problem with one that discards basic narrative cohesion in favour of a calculated whimsy. A film like Bread and Tulips.

Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2001)

August 16, 2001Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Drama, Mystery, Palme d'Or Winner, Theatrical, War

Apocalypse Now
****/****
starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest
screenplay by John Milius and Francis Coppola, narration by Michael Herr
directed by Francis Coppola

by Walter Chaw Taking his cue from Orson Welles’s aborted screen translation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now sought to transplant Marlow’s journey down the Congo in pursuit of mad ivory trader Kurtz to Vietnam during the war. America’s involvement in Southeast Asia is, of course, a good fit with what Conrad calls “one of the dark places of the world,” and Apocalypse Now, easily one of the most literary big-budget blockbusters of the modern era, is utterly faithful to the intellectual and visceral impact of Conrad’s vision. Apocalypse Now is so overheated and pretentious, in fact, that the best way to explain its thematic core might be through an examination of the ways it uses three T.S. Eliot poems (The Wasteland, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Hollow Men) and nods obliquely towards a fourth (The Dry Salvages, which refers to the animalism of rivers as the “brown god”).

Second Skin (2000) – DVD

August 13, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, DVD, Mystery, South Africa, Thriller, UK

**½/**** Image B+ Sound C
starring Natasha Henstridge, Angus MacFadyen, Liam Waite, Peter Fonda
screenplay by John Lau
directed by Darrell James Roodt

by Bill Chambers Second Skin is centred in and around a used bookshop where owner Sam Kane (Angus MacFadyen) cares more about indulging in the dog-eared pulp than making a living. Crystal (Natasha Henstridge) wanders in looking for a job, though, and while Sam doesn’t get enough customers to warrant an employee, he could use a tall blonde woman in his life, and tentatively hires her. Satisfied, she walks backwards out the door, bidding adieu, and is thwacked by a car in a hit-and-run. When Crystal comes to, in a hospital bed, she’s amnesiac. In what must be a rare act of altruism for him, Sam volunteers to assist Crystal in a rummage for her forgotten past.

The Others (2001)

August 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Elaine Cassidy, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan
written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar

by Walter Chaw The Others is an intricate character drama that takes turns shifting its suspicions on any number of scenarios and suspects. It subtly considers each of its small troupe of players as alternately worthy of mistrust, and its fantastic cast is more than equal to director Alejandro Amenábar’s quiet attributions of innocence and diabolical attributions of wickedness. Throughout, Amenábar maintains the unnerving possibility that, despite the spectre of a hoax or a plot ever-looming in the sometimes-inexplicable actions of one or more of its characters, something paranormal might, in fact, be at work.

Mimic 2 (2001) – DVD

August 8, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Alix Koromzay, Bruno Campos, Jon Polito, Edward Albert
screenplay by Joel Soisson
directed by Jean De Segonzac

by Walter Chaw The direct-to-video Mimic 2 abandons the B-movie brilliance of its predecessor in favour of such lacklustre slasher movie conventions as an inexorable monster and a cast of disposable victims. It introduces an inexplicable sexual punishment/revenge theme, a resourceful scream queen, the “surprise” ability of the villain to withstand bullets/beheading/burning for one last scare, and a closed environment consisting all of ill-lit halls and basements. Consequently, as Mimic 2 reveals itself to be more of a slasher flick than a monster movie, it honours repetition-honed slasher sequel conventions: the body count escalates, the gore and blood increases, the time the creatures spend on-screen mounts, and the characteristics of the bad guy/s evolve. Sadly, the only things this film really has in common with the original are similar creature effects and the return of the least memorable supporting character, now in the lead role.

Greenfingers (2001)

August 7, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Romance, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, David Kelly, Natasha Little
written and directed by Joel Hershman

by Walter Chaw A disturbingly optimistic (and particularly unlikely) redemption fable from Britain that marries the bare blue-collar buttocks of The Full Monty with the spunky seniors of Waking Ned Devine and Saving Grace, Joel Hershman’s Greenfingers is less “inspired by a true story,” as its title cards suggest, than it is “slavishly devoted to formula.” Greenfingers is so entrenched in provincialism that it encourages American audiences to chuckle knowingly at the staid peculiarities of the English–and so dedicated to soft-pedalling dangerous criminals that it reveals itself as preachy and pernicious. It is the type of film that treats anyone with the audacity to question the wisdom of allowing murderers and rapists to serve out their sentences with no guards around and in the company of young women driving Rolls-Royces as the worst kind of close-minded fascist. By the twentieth time its simpleminded mantra (bringing a life into the world instead of taking one can change a hardened heart) is summoned literally and imagistically, culminating in a grotesque effigy of a fallen friend posed in the middle of an indistinct tableau, Greenfingers has lost all power to instruct and become something at once odious and unintentionally funny.

Sweet November (2001) – DVD

August 6, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

Sweetnovember

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras D
starring Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, Jason Isaacs, Greg Germann
screenplay by Kurt Voelker, based on the 1968 screenplay by Herman Raucher
directed by Pat O’Connor

by Walter Chaw After Sara Deever (Charlize Theron) and the horribly named Nelson Moss (Keanu Reeves) meet-cute during a test at the DMV, Nelson offers to pay all of Sara’s expenses for a month to compensate for his part in her failure to have her license renewed. Indignant, Sara wonders aloud if Nelson treats all women like hookers. Hippie chick Sara, by the way, has no visible means of support, lives in a giant apartment in San Francisco, and bangs a different rich man for a month every month in some kind of Bull Durham sexual scholarship lottery arrangement. I can only assume that Sara’s specious offense at Norman’s innocuous “implication” is that she’s amazed that it shows.

The Mexican (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

August 5, 2001Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Mexico, Romance

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, James Gandolfini, Bob Balaban
screenplay by J.H. Wyman
directed by Gore Verbinski

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I don’t have an idea to start this review. This is in large part because The Mexican has no idea to start itself, or give itself a middle, or pay off nicely with a tense climax. It just rambles on, with no reason to live, justifying a few paychecks and leaving this reviewer simultaneously puzzled and bored. Puzzled, as to how such a vast array of professionals could have wanted to cobble together such a passionless and irrelevant film as this; and bored, at events meaningless and contrived. The Mexican isn’t even ambitious enough to be offensive: its conceptual hook is so weak and its follow-through so perfunctory that the film can’t rally the strength to be more than a petty nuisance, like a dinner disrupted by the noisy party the next table over.

Time and Tide (2000) – DVD

August 4, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, China, Crime, Drama, DVD, Hong Kong, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Nicholas Tse, Wu Bai, Anthony Wong, Joventino Couto Remotigue
written by Koan Hui & Tsui Hark
directed by Tsui Hark

by Bill Chambers Director Tsui Hark stands apart from his Chinese contemporaries by committing to a tone and relative congruity. Having made a couple of English-language pictures starring a Belgian (the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicles Double Team and Knock-Off) and been schooled at a Southern Methodist university in Dallas, Hark is formally acquainted with the American mainstream, thankyouverymuch. His (post-Van Damme) Hong Kong import Time and Tide, while still a reminder of why it’s easy for us westerners to become a fan of HK cinema yet a bit of a chore to stay one, seems a learned genre concentrate. Although its plot is by and large in the Asia pulp tradition–that is, of an elusive logic–the film wins us over with phenomenal artistry and energy, and its breathers from the mayhem don’t feel like conceptual U-turns.

Say It Isn’t So (2001) – DVD

August 3, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound B Extras C+
starring Heather Graham, Chris Klein, Orlando Jones, Richard Jenkins
screenplay by Peter Gaulke & Gerry Swallow
directed by J.B. Rogers

by Walter Chaw A gross-out comedy in the vein of the Farrelly Brothers’ There’s Something About Mary, Say It Isn’t So (produced by the Farrellys) is a blander-than-bland bit of formula fluff that miscalculates badly, for starters, in handing over its lead romantic roles to warmed-over oatmeal actors Chris Klein and Heather Graham. Though it begins promisingly enough, with an agreeably shocking family dinner and Klein reprising his well-meaning oaf from Election, as soon as the main love story surrounding Klein and Graham kicks up in earnest, Say It Isn’t So slows to an awkward standstill with a curiously lacklustre series of punchless gags and forced madcap. The film reminds the most, in fact, of a straining stand-up comedian, a sheen of flop-sweat decorating his upper-lip as joke after rhythm-less joke falls on an increasingly hostile and distracted audience.

Josie and the Pussycats (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

July 31, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Musical

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, Alan Cumming
written and directed by Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont

by Bill Chambers I have this sinking feeling that the adolescent demographic–the studio’s target audience, not that of filmmakers Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont–resented Josie and the Pussycats because it portrays them as sheep, but the film gives young adults far more credit than I do in blaming the herd mentality on a subliminal technology. Josie and the Pussycats‘ formulaic narrative settles on a girl group’s internal rivalry that a scheming handler (Alan Cumming) puppeteers (for no good reason, when one stops to think about it), though keen, enthusiastic performances paint over lapses in ingenuity. For the record: Tara Reid, as dumb Pussycat drummer Melody, makes off with the best lines (wait ’til you hear what she’d do if she could travel through time); Cumming is note-perfect; and Parker Posey wins us over through sheer force of will as the deranged head of fictitious Mega Records.

Dracula 2000 (2000) – DVD

July 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Vampire, Wes Craven

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Jonny Lee Miller, Justine Waddell, Gerard Butler, Colleen Ann Fitzpatrick
screenplay by Joel Soisson
directed by Patrick Lussier

by Walter Chaw Dracula 2000 is so wilfully contrived and tirelessly stupid that by the end of the film, the fact of itself becomes a matter of onanistic speculation. In other words, what could anyone have possibly been thinking when they decided to not only resurrect the dusty Stoker “Dracula” mythos with a cast of WB-type irregulars, but also follow the lead of Candyman II in featuring a great evil stalking New Orleans circa Mardis Gras?

Pollock (2000) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras A
starring Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Tom Bower, Jennifer Connelly
screenplay by Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller, based on the book Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
directed by Ed Harris

by Bill Chambers

“How do you know when you’re finished making love?”
-Jackson Pollock’s famous retort to a LIFE MAGAZINE reporter who asked how Pollock knows when he’s completed a painting

Jackson Pollock’s “making love” quote is famous, but in practically the same breath he said a much more constructive thing: “It’s like looking at a bed of flowers–tear your hair out over what it means.” It took him sixteen words to do as whole dissertations have tried and failed, that is, to equate God and abstract art and offer a kind of backhanded comfort to those confused to the point of resentment by the avant-garde. The biopic Pollock, actor Ed Harris’s directorial debut, reflects the second soundbite in how it accepts Pollock’s creations as part of the order of things, and should similarly disarm haters of fine art.

The Caveman’s Valentine (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

July 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Music, Mystery, Superhero, Thriller

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Ann Magnuson, Aunjanue Ellis, Tamara Tunie
screenplay by George Dawes Green, based on his novel
directed by Kasi Lemmons

by Walter Chaw A strange mixture of Shine, Basquiat, Angel Heart, and Grant Morrison & Dave McKean’s graphic novel Arkham Asylum, The Caveman’s Valentine is a feverish tale of a homeless madman-cum-detective who, on the morning of February 14th, discovers a “valentine” just outside his New York cave: one of Ella Fitzgerald’s strange fruit, stuck in the crotch of a tree–a young male model murdered and frozen to a branch. Believing at first that his imagined nemesis Stuyvesant, who shoots evil rays into his mind from atop the Chrysler Building, is responsible for the murder, Romulus (Samuel L. Jackson) is put on the trail of an avant-garde photographer in the Mapplethorpe mold, David Leppenraub (Colm Feore). His minor sleuthing interrupted by the occasional delusional fit and bouts with an ecstasy of creation (Romulus was a brilliant Julliard-trained pianist prior to his psychosis), Romulus uncovers clues and harasses suspects on his way to convincing his police-woman daughter (Aunjanue Ellis) that even though he’s a nut, that doesn’t mean he can’t solve a high-profile society murder.

You Can Count on Me (2000) – DVD

July 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Jon Tenney
written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan

by Walter Chaw Five minutes into Kenneth Lonergan’s dialogue-driven You Can Count on Me, a pleasant-seeming middle-aged couple having a comfortably banal conversation on a night ride home gets smeared by a semi going the wrong way. The next moment, we meet up with the couple’s children as children, miserable at their parents’ funeral, and then flash forward several years to these same children as adults, miserable with the predictably decomposing orbits of their lives. In a film in which very little obvious happens, the most traumatic event of the piece, presented almost casually in its introduction, is easy to dismiss as a plot convenience, when the truth of it is that the death of the parents is the key to understanding the resonance of You Can Count on Me. For all its humour, You Can Count on Me is about dealing with grief and the excruciating difficulty of accepting the burden of maturity and its attendant responsibilities.