The Ring Two (2005)

March 14, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Perkins
screenplay by Ehren Kruger
directed by Hideo Nakata

by Walter Chaw The hope that Hideo Nakata’s The Ring Two will be as pleasant a surprise as Gore Verbinski’s The Ring lasts all of five minutes. Two high school kids (Ryan Merriman and Emily VanCamp), alone without the parents, cuddle up to watch a video but, lo, the boy is just in it to get the girl “in trouble” so that he’ll be off the hook while proving to a chortling pal on the telephone that he is, indeed, mas macho. All the reasons we had for doing the awful things we did in high school find a wonderful vehicle in a demonic videotape that, like a really bad venereal disease, kills anyone who indulges in it seven days after they “do” it. But the premise that carried the first film (and the original Japanese trilogy and mini-series)–the idea of a media-borne STD (or drug addiction), transformed here into something carried aloft by the virulence of peer pressure–is instantly discarded along with its deadline gimmick in favour of about two hours of garbage involving killer deer, a somnambulantly possessed kid (if demonic possession renders your nine-year-old docile as a fawn, that’s a trade-off some might be willing to make), and poor Naomi Watts huffing and puffing and delivering awful, repetitive monologues at her catatonic kid.

Rich Man, Boorman: FFC Interviews John Boorman

March 13, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews, UK

JboormaninterviewtitleMarch 13, 2005|Steeped in a sense of loss and the melancholy of high Romanticism, John Boorman is an artist working in metaphor and Jungian archetype. He uses the Arthur myth as a template for each of his projects, weaving into them themes of people displaced, forced to confront their primal selves in primal environments in order to affect a reunion. His films can seem projections of their characters' interior lives–Excalibur's Arthur tangled in vines at the moment of his greatest confusion, Deliverance's Lewis boiled down to a snarl and a snap of viscera at the moment of crisis. Water is Boorman's solvent of choice, winnowing away the chaff from his subjects, and his films, at their best, are as organic and mean as the curve of a canyon wall. As arbitrarily described, too.

In My Country (2005)

March 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Ireland, Romance, South Africa, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Juliette Binoche, Brendan Gleeson, Menzi Ngubane
screenplay by Ann Peacock, based on the novel Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog
directed by John Boorman

by Walter Chaw A wrongheaded film from a director responsible for a couple of masterpieces (Deliverance, Point Blank), a couple of cult classics (Excalibur, Zardoz), one of the best films of the '90s (The General), a couple of unqualified disasters (Exorcist II: The Heretic, Leo the Last), and a few flicks that are just sort of middling there in-between grotesque (Where the Heart Is), winsome (Hope and Glory), and generally freaky (The Emerald Forest), In My Country–originally more provocatively titled Country of My Skull–finds itself closer to a disaster than to a noodle. It makes the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in post-Apartheid South Africa something of a Western problem instead of an African one (better were it elevated into a human one) and, worse, makes an illicit romance between two fictional characters, public radio journalist Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche, atrociously cast) and WASHINGTON POST journalist Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson), a metaphor for South Africa endeavouring to make love, not war.

Hostage (2005)

March 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller
½*/****starring Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Jonathan Tucker, Ben Fosterscreenplay by Doug Richardson, based on the novel by Robert Craisdirected by Florent Emilio Siri by Walter Chaw A film about child endangerment that is not otherwise about child endangerment, videogame director Florent Siri's Hostage is a package advertised by its trailers as being about a terror cell when it is, in fact, about three juvenile delinquents looking for a car to jack who accidentally find themselves the heavies in a hostage situation. Maybe "terror cell" applies to the filmmakers, as "hostage situation" pretty accurately describes the experience of being trapped in…

The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan (2004) + Pauly Shore is Dead (2004) – DVDs

March 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, DVD, Pseudo-Documentary, ZERO STARS

THE BURIED SECRET OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A
written by Melissa Foster
directed by Nathaniel Kahn

PAULY SHORE IS DEAD
½*/**** Image C Sound B Extras D
starring Pauly Shore, Jaime Bergman, Todd Bridges, Rick Ducommon
screenplay by Pauly Shore and Kirk Fox
directed by Pauly Shore

by Walter Chaw The only thing separating M. Night Shyamalan from Pauly Shore is that Shyamalan actually has a couple of classic modern suspensers under his belt and Shore doesn't have anything on his resume that could be remotely considered indispensable. Both are weasels, both have spent some period of time being really popular, both have endured a critical and popular backlash, and both have produced mock-documentaries detailing how interesting they think they are. But at the end of the day, only Shore's Pauly Shore Is Dead has anything like an affecting, self-deprecating, clear-eyed sense of self: The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan is an embarrassing and cripplingly self-congratulatory PR gag. Shore knows that he's like nails across a chalkboard for most sentient beings on this planet (going so far as to portray his remaining fanbase as a hilljack in a trailer somewhere in Kentucky); Shyamalan thinks that a fake documentary shot in the style of Curse of the Blair Witch is a cute way to not only publicize his sham of a post-9/11 psychodrama The Village, but also debunk some of the venomous press (and leaked memorandums) that he's been amassing ever since deciding to start giving himself top-billing and face-time within the promotional materials for his films. (Check out the Signs DVD's packaging and cast your mind back to the last time you saw a picture of the director incorporated into the cover art of any release.) Shore knows he's become an object of ridicule; Shyamalan thinks he's become a national treasure–or at least the poet laureate.

The Yes Men (2004) – DVD

March 10, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Documentary, DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
directed by Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The key scene in The Yes Men comes when pranksters Michael Bonanno and Andy Bichelbaum suddenly stop to ask the question: is it more fun to engage in satire than in regular protest? They quickly agree that it is, but the issue has always been hanging around their flamboyant efforts to impersonate WTO spokespeople and tell the ridiculous truth about the organization's activities. And although it's obvious that satire is indeed more fun, its effectiveness is called into question over and over again when it becomes apparent that nobody really appreciates the joke. If one can crash a conference and throw outrageous but true accusations at globalization and not get thrown out, was anything truly subverted? The film mounts a good case for the entertainment factor of this shtick without backing up its larger claims as a lefty consciousness-raiser, a process far more arduous than these Yes Men let on.

Nobody Knows (2004)

March 9, 2005Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Drama, Japan, Theatrical

****/****
starring Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura, Momoko Shimizu
written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

by Walter Chaw Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows appears so effortless that the weight of it by its closing credits is just astonishing. It’s classical, formal filmmaking of the kind in which the Japanese seem to specialize, full of silences and long takes while featuring a quartet of performances from children that are so natural they feel stolen. Filmed between autumn 2002 and summer 2003, the picture was edited as it was shot, with the structure taking on the progression and characteristics of the four seasons and Kore-eda devising the shape of the next quarter as the previous one finished. No script was written for the children, who were advised before every shot of the substance of what they were to portray. Its evolution was organic, and evidence of that fluidity in its birth is, in the greatest stroke, never betrayed by telltale awkwardness. Nobody Knows feels like the truth unadorned and it feels like poetry–it’s not often that the two share a breath. Between this and Hungarian director Nimród Antal’s Kontroll, I’ve already seen two of the best films of 2005.

Gunner Palace (2005)

March 9, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Theatrical, War

*/****
directed by Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker

by Walter Chaw Some of the footage is interesting and some of the quotes are poignant, but Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's documentary Gunner Palace is hamstrung by embarrassingly trite narration and a lack of any sort of unifying theme in its editing. The film follows the United States 2/3 Field Artillery group–"Gunners"–as they take up residence in Uday Hussein's palace of earthly delights (redubbing the mansion "Gunner Palace" in the grunts' rough vernacular) in a bombed-out Baghdad during the months following U.S. occupation. More old ladies and shell-shocked children than hard-bitten insurgents are terrorized over the course of Gunner Palace, but what should have been an unbearable look at life under wartime and the constant threat of betrayal or ambush opens with a tone-setting Tucker voiceover that, with the callous defensiveness of a perspective-challenged, embittered vet, derides the audience for liking reality television like "Survivor". "Survive this," he says, spitting like a bona fide jarhead in the face of all us lefty wimps who've made the mistake of trying to learn something without getting shot at.

Raise Your Voice (2004) – DVD

March 8, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Coming of Age, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, Romance, Teen

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C-
starring Hilary Duff, Rita Wilson, David Keith, Jason Ritter
screenplay by Sam Schreiber
directed by Sean McNamara

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The best one can say for Raise Your Voice is that it was made with non-toxic materials–your impressionable 'tween will not be exposed to any really reprehensible behaviour. It's not a disguised infomercial for crass capitalism, it's not leeringly inappropriate in its sexual attitudes, and, save for a somewhat-patronized struggling black character, its politics are vague and inoffensive. Granted, this doesn't preclude Raise Your Voice from positing an alternate universe where music conservatories teach scratching and rock guitar, or wrapping up huge traumatic events with the ease of turning on a light, but the film does keep you from becoming disgusted with the corruption of kids' entertainment. You may feel bored and bewildered, but never disgusted.

The Jacket (2005)

March 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Esoterica, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh
screenplay by Massy Tadjedin
directed by John Maybury

Jacketby Walter Chaw Lyrical, dislocated, and grim in the fashion of a Derek Jarman film (and director John Maybury served as editor on Jarman's The Last of England), The Jacket, like Altered States, Miracle Mile, Jacob's Ladder, and 12 Monkeys before it, is the sort of doom-filled genre romance that's regularly underestimated in popular contemporary conversation. Peter Deming (the cinematographer on David Lynch's Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive and on the Hughes Brothers' From Hell) shoots the film in a straightforward, beautifully-(under)lit fashion that is equally adept at underscoring the claustrophobia in some sequences and the breathless expanse of others. A scene where Adrien Brody, as Gulf War I vet Jack Starks, wanders away from his loony bin down a long tunnel in a Robert Frost wood and Dr. Lorenson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) stumbles after him demonstrates both, with Deming painting a beautiful landscape from paint pots full of bleak, oppressive isolation. Scored lightly by a series of Brian Eno compositions, The Jacket is an apocalyptic poem of love and loss that's unusually wise about its visual vocabulary–about ways of looking, the line between dreaming and reality, and how eyes on film can be a powerful and elastic metaphor for the audience engaged in a kind of liquid dreaming.

Be Cool (2005)

March 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Music, Satire, Theatrical

**/****
starring John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn, Cedric the Entertainer
screenplay by Peter Steinfeld, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by F. Gary Gray

Becoolby Walter Chaw At some point you decide that you're either going to play pool with Be Cool or you're not. You're going to have to decide whether Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's mincing caricature of a gay man is actually a self-parody of his own pumped-up, homoerotic image (see also Vin Diesel's simultaneously-opening Mr. Mom ape, The Pacifier), and whether this studied unkindness towards black people is actually only a satire of the bling-bling gangster culture that has all but defined rap music and young urban culture for the wider mainstream white audience. If you're resolved that Be Cool is meta-fiction that's more sociologically self-aware than other masturbatory cameo hustlers like Ocean's Twelve (and it might be), then it is indeed sort of liberating to give up and laugh along with the horde. (What could be funnier, really, than The Rock limping his wrist and doing a dialogue, solo, from cheerleading classic Bring It On?) But there's this lingering, disturbing thought I can't quite shake that Be Cool is only being a smartass part of the time–and maybe being a smug, insufferable prig all of the time.

Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

March 1, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Stellan Skarsgård, Izabella Scorupco, James D'Arcy, Remy Sweeney
screenplay by Alexi Hawley
directed by Renny Harlin

Exorcistbeginningcap

by Walter Chaw Beginning with a kinky apocalypse that Ken Russell would surely have created had ever he the budget and equipment, Renny Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning is good, old-timey drive-in exploitation garbage. It hates children with a unique fury, boasting the highest dead-kid count since Schindler's List, and sure enough, somehow Harlin manages to work in an uncomfortable subplot about exorcising Holocaust demons as our happy Catholics exorcise a literal one. I don't know if Paul Schrader, the man who helmed the first run at this troubled production (the very first director attached was the late John Frankenheimer)–ostensibly scrapped because it wasn't scary enough (and frankly, the guy who did the Nastassja Kinski Cat People should probably not be going near horror movies in the first place)–included a Holocaust subplot in his version of the flick, but I'm hoping not. Mainly because when you introduce a Holocaust subplot into a movie that also features hyenas ripping apart a little boy in protracted, excruciating detail, a woman giving birth to a maggot-infested infant, and another Holocaust survivor bleeding gallons from her Nazi-ruined vagina, you're wandering into the territory of cinema as audience punishment.

Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1968) – DVD

February 28, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Martin Scorsese, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Zina Bethune, Harvey Keitel, Anne Collette, Lennard Kuras
written and directed by Martin Scorsese

by Bill Chambers All of the scenes that constitute the plot of Martin Scorsese's directorial debut Who's That Knocking at My Door look washed-out and indistinct in comparison to the rest of the feature. This is because the project began life as Bring on the Dancing Girls, a 35mm, hour-long thesis short so poorly received that Scorsese went back to the drawing board, but with only enough money to shoot fresh material in 16mm. And yet the disconnect seems oddly premeditated, especially since almost every 16mm passage is a veritable non sequitur. An extended riff on the mores of youth raised in Little Italy, Who's That Knocking at My Door charts a parallel course for Scorsese avatar J.R. (Harvey Keitel), a practising Catholic who, when not clowning around with punks from the neighbourhood, spends lazy afternoons in the company of a secular, middle-class blonde (soap star Zina Bethune, her character billed only as "the girl") he meets on the Staten Island ferry by striking up a conversation about a Scorsese touchstone, John Ford's The Searchers. As wishful thinking goes, it's cute.

Cursed (2005)

February 25, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Germany, Horror, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, Werewolf, Wes Craven

*/****
starring Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson, Jesse Eisenberg, Mya
screenplay by Kevin Williamson
directed by Wes Craven

Cursedby Walter Chaw Butchered beyond recognition by the almighty Weinsteins, director Wes Craven’s promised ‘hard R’-rated werewolf homage/satire Cursed is now a disjointed, disowned, completely sanitized PG-13 tweener shocker so chaste that it’s not entirely unlike watching Heidi with more jump scares. Great, giant bits of gore have been excised from the film and what’s left doesn’t match, has no rhythm, and is almost completely reliant on An American Werewolf in Paris-bad CGI. It’s been eviscerated like the werewolf’s first victim used to have been, resigning it to the sweet embrace of snarky irony that it hoped itself to use on the werewolf genre. Cursed is a terrible waste of makeup-effects master Rick Baker’s return to the game (he’s the guy behind the groundbreaking work in An American Werewolf in London); a waste of the menstruation metaphor suggested by its title; and a waste of the reunion of the creative team behind the gory, smart, post-modern slasher flick Scream (Craven and writer Kevin Williamson).

Born Into Brothels (2004)

February 23, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Theatrical

Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
**½/****
directed by Zana Briski & Ross Kauffman

by Walter Chaw In a troubling moment about halfway through Born Into Brothels, co-directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman take the children of prostitutes in Calcutta's Red Light district on a field trip to the zoo and then, in a series of jarring juxtapositions, compare their plight to that of caged animals (elephants, big cats, camels, and, yep, a monkey behind bars). Paternalistic, no question, the picture crosses the line that separates documentation from activism into do-gooder theatre, with the filmmakers' half-measures–no matter how well-meant–sometimes striking as meddling. And unlike Steve James's revelatory Stevie, there's no existential examination of whether or not interference is actually more harmful to the subjects than it is useful.

Son of the Mask (2005)

February 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, France, Germany, Romania, Superhero, Theatrical, Venezuala, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jamie Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Traylor Howard, Steven Wright
screenplay by Lance Khazei
directed by Lawrence Guterman

Sonofthemaskby Walter Chaw Towards the end of the uniquely awful Son of the Mask, star Jamie Kennedy gets two fistfuls of his screen-wife Traylor Howard’s bosom (this after pummelling her head against the ground in a scary depiction of domestic violence) and declares, in so many words, “Eureka–so it is you, honey.” It’s a charming vignette that follows about an hour of fart, snot, golden shower, and Exorcist jokes, each trumping the last in level of inappropriateness until finally the deadened synapses begin to register that with sets like “Edge City” and “Fringe City”, the brain trust behind this abortion might actually have had something subversive in mind. A shame, then, that they’ve confused “edge” and “fringe” elements with puerile scatology and institutional dehumanization, intercut with baby and animal reaction shots and a marginal and failed television comedian (playing a marginal and failed television animator) mugging in an astoundingly lifeless approximation of “manic.” For a film that might want to be taken as “edgy,” in other words, Son of the Mask caters to the absolute lowest and commonest of the lowest common denominators.

The Green Butchers (2003)

February 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Denmark, Theatrical, Thriller

De Grønne slagtere
**½/****
starring Line Kruse, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Bro
written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen

Greenbutchersby Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There’s nothing groundbreaking about Anders Thomas Jensen’s blessedly non-Dogme The Green Butchers, the latest movie to mine the consumption of human flesh for laughs (even the title suggests a cheeky allusion to Soylent Green)–but for a comedy, that most culturally specific of genres, the Danish production travels remarkably well. Credit a skillful subtitle translation that preserves the wit of Jensen’s repartee, not to mention the chemistry between stars Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who, as chronic perspirer Svend and pothead Bjarne, respectively, transcend language like some nouveau Ren and Stimpy. (That being said, they’re occasionally too redolent of Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro for this writer’s comfort.) Proprietors of the new butcher shop in town, Svend and Bjarne face early foreclosure until an electrician accidentally freezes to death in their meat locker, inspiring a desperate Svend to turn the corpse’s thigh into fillets he promptly dubs “chickie-wickies.” These cutlets catch on with the locals, natch, and the desire to stay popular transforms Svend into a serial killer, with Bjarne acting as his reluctant but too-stuporous-to-resist accomplice.

Sky Blue (2003)

February 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, South Korea

Wonderful Days
**/****
screenplay by Kim Moon-saeng & Park Sun-min & Park Yong-jun
directed by Kim Moon-saeng & Park Sun-min


by Walter Chaw Pretty much your standard anime post-apocalyptic master plot, what distinguishes Kim Moon-saeng and Park Sun-min's Korean contribution Sky Blue is the oppressive weight of its visual accomplishment. Blending the character animations of, say, a Satoshi Kon with the environmental concerns of an early Miyazaki, the movie is beautiful. But at the same time, it slathers on such a thick layer of obfuscating dialogue and glowering plot complications that it's hard to muster up much enthusiasm beyond the initial "wow" factor. Still, that "wow" factor: I don't know that I've ever seen a better blend of CGI and traditional cel animation–in terms of how it looks, Sky Blue even trumps last year's astonishing Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. A shame that a person can only really be dazzled for a few minutes before becoming something closer to "stunned."

Wicker Park (2004) – DVD

February 16, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Josh Hartnett, Rose Byrne, Matthew Lillard, Diane Kruger
screenplay by Brandon Boyce
directed by Paul McGuigan

by Walter Chaw Paul McGuigan's Wicker Park is all about reflective surfaces. The whole thing casts Chicago (or Montreal, subbing for Chicago in just another slippery deception) as the house of mirrors sequence in The Lady from Shanghai, tempting us to dismiss it as stale noir sauced-up with a fresh spackle of postmodern, commercial/music video glamour. But Wicker Park, based on Gilles Mimouni's L'Appartement, is almost an act of pop art, opening with hunky Josh Hartnett walking the mean streets of the Windy City and shopping for a diamond engagement ring that becomes the prism through which the rest of the film, especially in its more pregnant moments, is seen.

Friday Night Lights (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

February 15, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Sports

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, Lucas Black
screenplay by David Aaron Cohen and Peter Berg, based on the book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger
directed by Peter Berg

by Walter Chaw Turning the microscope on the reptile hearts and minds of small-town sports culture, Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights is so alive with seething energy and meanness that it emerges as one of the better sports films on the short list of good sports films. It's what the Omaha Beach sequence in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is to Oliver Stone's Platoon: an evolution by way of devolution that erases the veneer, such as there is, prettifying violent confrontation, becoming in the process the unadorned engine to which Stone's ultimately featherweight Any Given Sunday aspired. It finds Lucas Black (as star quarterback Mike Winchell) reunited with Sling Blade co-star Billy Bob Thornton (playing his coach, Gary Gaines), with the mental disability roles reversed ("There's something wrong with my head," Winchell complains) but the peek under the Rockwell covers at insular, provincial psychosis transplanted intact. Friday Night Lights is a work of sociology, a film that not only understands the all-American obsession with packaged violence and the cult of machismo, but is also a clearer barometer of the kind of sublimation of fear and loathing in these United States than any gross of pre-election political documentaries. Our country's in trouble because these brutal idiots can vote–and there are more of them than there are the rest of us.