2000s Archives - Page 59 of 110 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Cellular (2004)

September 10, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Eric Christian Olsen, Jessica Biel
screenplay by Chris Morgan
directed by David R. Ellis

by Walter Chaw At last, a film for all the yahoos with a cell phone soldered onto their ears–a giant eighty-minute billboard for Nokia with characters constantly extolling the virtues of what the Chinese call their hand-engines: "Amazing thing these new cell phones. They take digital video, remember the last fifty numbers that call it…" Stuntman-turned-director David Ellis follows up Final Destination 2 with Cellular, its top-heavy gimmick flick dreamed up by the king of high-concept, one-trick ponies, Larry Cohen, who cobbles together the story at the heart of the thing from the odds-and-ends of his last telecommunications thriller, Phone Booth. It's Strange Days married to Nick of Time, Falling Down, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where Asians are still Orientals (and boy, are they stupid) and black people are sassy back-talkers working at impound lots. Yet, understand that it's not so much racist as it is prehistoric–ossified and bone-weary.

TIFF ’04: White Skin

September 10, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF

La Peau blanche**/****starring Marc Paquet, Marianne Farley, Frédéric Pierre, Jessica Malkascreenplay by Joël Champetier, Daniel Roby, based on the novel by Joël Champetierdirected by Daniel Roby by Bill Chambers I had a pretty good idea of where White Skin (La Peau blanche) was headed, and although I was more tickled that it had the French-word-for-chutzpah to go to those ludicrous extremes than disappointed that the outcome was vaguely predictable (if movies never failed to surprise me, it would only mean that I watch as many as I do in vain (besides which, no film uses a clip from Rabid indiscriminately)),…

The Ladykillers (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

September 9, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons
written for the screen and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

by Walter Chaw There's a great line in the Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers: The General (Tzi Ma), asked for his Buddhist perspective on a caper gone awry, offers, "Be as leaf floating down river. Kill old lady." Still, it's a poor blueprint for a film, as the picture locates its narrative rhythm in a desultory, listless noodle that ends right when it threatens to begin. With Tom Hanks playing the Alec Guinness role of affected cad with larceny–eventually murder–on his mind, The Ladykillers feels like an inside joke. (A slapstick gag featured prominently in the previews, for instance, sees Hanks plucking bills from the air in what has become the defining image of his career, from Forrest Gump's feather inanity to Hanratty's dollar bill futility in Catch Me If You Can.) Returning in a way to more familiar ground after the screwball shrine of Intolerable Cruelty, it's nice to see the Coens, credited as co-directors for the first time in their twenty-year collaboration, tackling another caper noir, but it feels more than a little stale this time around, contrived in the way that genius starts to feel when inspiration flags.

TIFF ’04: Tarnation

September 8, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, TIFF

***/****written and directed by Jonathan Caouette by Bill Chambers Stylistically falling somewhere between avant-garde and dog's-breakfast, Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation invents an ethos to go along with the name of the editing software, "iMovie," used to assemble it, giving us what feels like the world's first "I" movie. The film doesn't so much defy description as resist it (Frank Zappa's "dancing about architecture" maxim applies here), but clearly a summary shouldn't be discouraged, as the more subjective the work, the greater the chance it stands of becoming the salvation of some disenfranchised individual. (Caouette himself says he was relieved to find…

TIFF ’04: Blood

September 7, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF

*½/****starring Emily Hampshire, Jacob Tierneyscreenplay by Jerry Ciccoritti, based on the play by Tom Walmsleydirected by Jerry Ciccoritti by Bill Chambers Just the other day I watched Dial M for Murder, a single-set movie faithfully adapted from a stage play that never quite becomes theatre-on-film because, let's face it, we're talking about Alfred Hitchcock here. Jerry Ciccoritti is no Alfred Hitchcock--not that Ciccoritti's Blood wants or tries to be Dial M for Murder, but its Mike Figgis, let's-see-what-this-button-does aesthetic so reeks of overcompensation as to end up not only preserving the material's stage roots in amber, but also lulling us…

TIFF ’04: 5×2 – Five Times Two

September 6, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Romance, TIFF

Cinq fois deux**/****starring Valérie Bruni-Tedeschi, Stéphane Freiss, Géraldine Pailhas, Françoise Fabianscreenplay by François Ozon & Emmanuèle Bernheimdirected by François Ozon by Bill Chambers Racking up an unorthodox number of short films before tackling his first feature, 1998's lead balloon Sitcom, the prolific François Ozon returns to his roots in a way with 5x2 - Five Times Two (5x2 - Cinq fois deux), a collection of five vignettes that charts an ill-fated marriage--backwards. As the picture opens, Marion (archetypal Ozon blonde Valérie Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) are being read the terms of their divorce agreement; as the picture closes, the…

Shalhoubian Chants: FFC Interviews Tony Shalhoub

September 4, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

September 5, 2004|Poised on the eve of The Last Shot and the intriguing The Great New Wonderful, Tony Shalhoub had me a long time ago at his three minutes or so in Barton Fink. The best part of Galaxy Quest, playing the guy playing the ethnic guy in a "Star Trek"-like cult television series, Shalhoub also stole the show as fast-talking lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider in his reunion with the Coen Brothers, The Man Who Wasn't There; demonstrated uncommon intelligence and sensitivity in the still-underseen Big Night; and made his feature-film debut behind the camera with wife Brooke Adams in the independent Made-Up, now trickling into video stores. Shalhoub is an Emmy-winner, too, taking home a trophy for cable-series "Monk", which is winding down its third critically-acclaimed season.

Ju-On: The Grudge (2003)

September 3, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Japan, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa
written and directed by Takashi Shimizu

by Walter Chaw There are a couple of startling moments in Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On: The Grudge buried in a mountain of mendacity. It looks cheap and it feels cheap–something like Takashi Miike's Visitor Q without the barrier-breaking, society-challenging audacity, or a television drama with low production values and a hilariously inept cast. It's kids playing at spooky: It'll work a time or two, but mostly it'll be clumsy and stilted. Mainly, it seems as though Ju-On: The Grudge hopes that you haven't seen the movies of Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, because suddenly we're not even talking the same ballpark anymore.

Twisted (2004) [Special Collector’s Edition – Widescreen Collection] – DVD

September 1, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Garcia, David Strathairn
screenplay by Sarah Thorp
directed by Philip Kaufman

by Walter Chaw Ashley Judd's stab at In the Cut, Twisted washes out to be closer to a distaff Tightrope. It's just another Judd film co-starring Morgan Freeman, here played by Samuel L. Jackson. Once again humiliated and physically abused for her sexuality, Judd has this perverse penchant for self-mortification legitimized by yet another contractually required African-American mentor. What really wounds is that it's a movie with a pedigree and a little promise (unlike Judd's constant dalliances with the best of the airport bookrack), what with Philip Kaufman, back on the west coast in his favourite American setting of San Francisco, at the reins. A love of the City by the Bay is on display in a gorgeously-composed opening sequence that finds the Golden Gate Bridge floating on a bed of fog and, later, when the first body is discovered in Twisted's requisite corpse gallery against the nighttime backdrop of Pac Bell Ballpark, and there's an underlying menace to San Francisco that no one aside from Hitchcock has been able to capture quite like Kaufman, especially in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So the possibility that this ostensibly dark psychological thriller might actually be good springs eternal for a full five minutes, exactly the amount of time that passes until someone utters the first of screenwriter Sarah Thorp's tragically over-written lines–and for us to rediscover Judd as an extremely limited actress whose best film remains the grossly underestimated Eye of the Beholder.

The Three Musketeers (2004) – DVD

August 30, 20042000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers
*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Mickey Evans
directed by Donovan Cook

by Bill Chambers I must confess to something like a fetish for the joint screen ventures of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy, animation's answer to The Ritz Brothers. Their 1937 short Lonesome Ghosts is one of the essential building blocks in my love of cinema: I used to own a silent 8mm cartridge of it that could be viewed by handcranking a to-the-eye projector, and I unwittingly taught myself persistence of vision through bored frame-by-frame dissections of Mickey tiptoeing across the floor and Donald losing his cool. And as far as Mickey Mouse is concerned, he has Donald and Goofy in tow in his best colour outings–with a handful of exceptions (such as 1941's guardedly wistful The Nifty Nineties, or the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence from Fantasia) that cast Mickey as an emblem of virtue rather than as a virtuous individual (thus seizing on the iconic resonance of the character's design), Mickey's solo shorts circa the war years are far too polite for their own good. Mercurial Donald and accident-prone Goofy add a much-needed pinch of salt.

The Expressionist: FFC Interviews E. Elias Merhige

August 28, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

August 29, 2004|I entered into Suspect Zero saddled with some of the most venomous buzz for a picture since Catwoman; apparently a critic's screening somewhere in the wild Pacific Northwest had devolved into a hooting match. But I was hopeful, mainly because director E. Elias Merhige's first film, 1991's Begotten, is one of the bravest, most uncompromising experiments to come out of the American independent scene since Jonas Mekas. Silent, hallucinatory, deeply unsettling, it had the power to enrage and intoxicate in equal measure and did so, making no apologies about its debts to sources as highbrow and "pretentious" as Luis Buñuel and Carl Dreyer. (Seriously, in a time when our president is trying to turn "nuance" into a dirty word, who can blame the cattle calls of the brainwashed naysayer?) Begotten is a masterpiece and a Rorschach test in the way that the best experimental cinema can be: it has the conviction and kineticism of early Stan Brakhage–that is, if Brakhage had a background in William Blake instead of William Burroughs.

Intimate Strangers (2004)

August 24, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

Confidences trop intimes
**/****
starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Fabrice Luchini, Michel Duchaussoy, Anne Brochet
screenplay by Jérôme Tonnerre
directed by Patrice Leconte

by Walter Chaw Loony Anna (Embeth Davidtz doppelgänger Sandrine Bonnaire) opens the wrong literal/metaphorical door and ends up spilling her guts to befuddled tax attorney William (Fabrice Luchini), who, as the mistaken identity crisis prolongs, seeks council of his own in the form of Dr. Bonnier (Michel Duchaussoy). William pretends to be something he's not, then, aping the words and insights of Dr. Bonnier–and Anna may not be who she seems, potentially fabricating for her "therapist" a control-freak husband and his various sexual demands. Leconte plays with the idea that talking about things is sexier than doing them, at once recalling Bibi Andersson's erotic monologue in Ingmar Bergman's Persona and playing with the thought that film is better at suggesting than showing.

Walking Tall (2004) – DVD

August 23, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD

½*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring The Rock, Neal McDonough, Johnny Knoxville, Kristen Wilson
screenplay by David Klass and Channing Gibson and David Levien & Brian Koppelman
directed by Kevin Bray

by Walter Chaw Kevin Bray's remake of Walking Tall is so empty of substance, so full of nihilistic bile, that it makes the shorthand of First Blood seem like an Ibsen play in its complexity and character development. A mysterious vet proves Thomas Wolfe correct, going home to a town completely changed by a corrupt local government and a posse of redneck law enforcers. Our red-blooded desire to take the law into our own hands drives the instinct to cheer once he resorts to the Neanderthal brutality of "eye for an eye" or, as the case may be, "a truck for a truck."

Gallo’s Humor: FFC Interviews Vincent Gallo

August 22, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

Vincent Gallo is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being Film Freak Central has ever known

got the call in the middle of a morning screening that a moderator was needed that evening at Denver's Starz Filmcenter for a Q&A after a sold-out screening of Vincent Gallo's notorious The Brown Bunny. After a second screening, a lot of juggling, and a little soul-searching, and with a little less than two hours to research and prepare, I agreed to do it. I'd never met Vincent Gallo before, but his reputation for combativeness bordering on cruelty preceded him; and though I took his side in private in his blow-up with Roger Ebert after last year's disastrous Cannes Film Festival screening of a workprint of his picture, I confess that I've never been more nervous to interview someone.

Living Hell (2000) [Special Edition] – DVD

August 18, 20042000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Japan, Short Films

Iki-jigoku
**½/**** Image C- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Hirohito Honda, Yoshiko Shiraishi, Rumi, Kazuo Yashiro
written and directed by Shugo Fujii

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Hype sometimes expects too much of a film, forcing it into boxes where it doesn't belong and dressing it up as something it's not. Thus the keepcase for Living Hell had me worried: it references not only luminaries like Hitchcock and DePalma, but also cult faves Evil Dead 2, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Dead Alive. To be sure, Living Hell lacks the visionary quality that makes the abovementioned figures and movies so memorable to so many people, and yet, taken on its own terms, this debut feature has plenty to offer the attentive viewer, starting with a supremely jaundiced take on the family and a stylistic intelligence that surprises for such a low-budget effort. Miraculous it's not, but given the budget ($100,000) and the length of the shoot (nine days!), it's astonishing how effective Living Hell really is. Despite the occasional borrowing from better movies, its deliciously cruel sense of humour gets to you in the end.

Without a Paddle (2004)

August 17, 20042000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Mystery, New Zealand, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, Dax Shepard, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by Jay Leggett & Mitch Rouse
directed by Steven Brill

by Walter Chaw Steven Brill's Without a Paddle is relentless and brutal–like Alanis Morrissette's version of Cole Porter's "Let's Do It," the torment of it just never ends. Weathered CIA spooks would spill their mother's social security numbers after five minutes of enduring this kind of torture. It's not fair, really–normal people aren't equipped to withstand a cross between The Goonies, Bushwhacked, Deliverance, Surviving the Game, The Great Outdoors, The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, American Pie, Southern Comfort, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Big Chill that borrows the cell phone gag from Jurassic Park III and even a little something from, I kid you not, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It is, in other words, a gross-out slapstick comedy set in the wilderness that is unkind to Appalachians while making a play for cuddly sentimentality despite more than a few moments that are needlessly graphic or just plain grotesque. Blame the brain trust of actors-turned-screenwriters Jay Leggett and Mitch Rouse–or, better yet, blame director Steven Brill, a Sandler crony who proves that sad nepotism does not a director make.

Laws of Attraction (2004) – DVD

August 16, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Ireland, Romance, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna and Robert Harling
directed by Peter Howitt

by Walter Chaw Utterly mediocre and hence better than most of the romantic comedies cranked out by the Hollywood schmaltz factory these days, Peter Howitt's Adam's Rib throwback Laws of Attraction has the over-polished sheen of an apple waxed and stroked so many times that it's more aesthetically impressive than palatable. The film bears a Sandra Bullock/Julia Roberts checklist for a screenplay, with blacked-out boxes next to: meet-cute (she sticks a pencil in his ear); two musical montages (one happy, one sad); a celebration of bad behaviour (binge-drinking); fetishizing of one metaphor-laden item (broken leprechaun figurine); baguette sticking out of a grocery bag; betrayal of half-hearted feminist tenets by making heroine bedazzled by jewellery and men; betrayal of female gender by having model-perfect heroine have the "earthy" habit of binge-eating and not vomiting; quirky elderly/gay/parental comic relief figure; a scene where heroine falls down; a scene where hero does/admits to bad thing; travel/architectural pornography; and temporary break-up leading to nauseating epilogue. Yep, Laws of Attraction is pounded earth complete with a tiresomely whimsical score by Ed Shearmur, opening titles lifted from "Dynasty", and a streak of potential subversion so neutered that it's completely childlike.

The Passion of the Christ (2004) – DVD

August 15, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A
starring James Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Claudia Gerini, Maia Morgenstern
screenplay by Benedict Fitzgerald and Mel Gibson
directed by Mel Gibson

by Walter Chaw The danger of a film like The Passion of the Christ is the fervour with which people will declare that it is unadorned "truth," will imagine that writer/director/hands-that-pound-the-nails-into-Christ Mel Gibson has somehow pointed a camera through a porthole into 33 A.D.–will forgive the piece any number of otherwise unforgivable cinematic sins, any abundance of opposing historical and canonical evidence, for fear that their discomfort with the picture might be read as blasphemy and that their ignorance of the minutia of scripture will be revealed. It is the sort of fearful, hysterical, insular, self-righteous groupthink in which the rabble Gibson blames for Christ's death engages, and the ironies embedded in the film and its reception don't end there. It seems ridiculous to remind that the film is no more and no less than Gibson's interpretation of the last twelve hours of Christ's life. The question worth asking is before this film, how many of its defenders looked to Gibson for guidance in cosmological (or any) issues? How it is that making a film in our cult-of-celebrity culture gifts any filmmaker the credentials of theologian pundit? Mel's on the cross, he blames the Jews (and now the critics) for putting him there, and his whole career begins to coalesce as a parade of martyrs.

The Princess Diaries (2001) [Special Edition – 2-Disc Collector’s Set] – DVD

August 13, 20042000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Sound B-
starring Anne Hathaway, Heather Matarazzo, Hector Elizondo, Mandy Moore
screenplay by Gina Wendkos, based on the novel by Meg Cabot
directed by Garry Marshall

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Mention the word "movies" and you're generally deluged with syrupy talk of "dreams" and "fantasy" and "adventure" and all that jazz, yet no matter how much you see this as the devalued coin of our entertainment-journalism realm, you have to admit that this image means an awful lot to an awful lot of people. The least a pop movie can do is live up to such reverence and be a holy object worthy of some worship, marshalling all the beauty and craft that has generally been Hollywood cinema's one redeeming virtue. But somehow, movies that dishonour this basic pact with the audience not only get made, but also ring the box-office bell to the tune of $108-million–that's how much The Princess Diaries managed to rake in during its 2001 theatrical run, despite the fact that it's as beautiful and dreamlike as a sheet of particle board. Once again, I am left with the dilemma: should I hate the filmmakers for generating this slop, or should I blame the audience for swilling it with pleasure?

She Hate Me (2004)

August 12, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Ellen Barkin, Monica Bellucci
screenplay by Michael Genet and Spike Lee
directed by Spike Lee

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The crescendo to the opening credits of Spike Lee's ridiculous, desultory She Hate Me is a fluttering three-dollar bill with George W. Bush's face on it, an image as impotent as the poster for Fahrenheit 9/11 where Bush is clutching Michael Moore's hand through the miracle of Photoshop. (It's chatroom-prank as dogma.) Lee has a serious case of Moore envy, and it's reduced the long-time firebrand to making ad hominem attacks and casting too broad a net to accommodate fashionable targets like the current administration. While there's no such thing as a graceful segue in the majority of Lee's work as a hyphenate (two of his strongest films in the aftermath of Do the Right Thing have been adaptations of novels scripted by the novelists themselves, i.e., Clockers and the irreproachable 25^th Hour), the polemics of She Hate Me–the cutesily ebonical title a tip-off that it's second-tier Lee, à la Mo' Better Blues and He Got Game–are traumatizingly digressive and/or unmoored to any overriding motif.