Mr. Intense: FFC Interviews James Foley

April 26, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

JfoleyinterviewtitleApril 27, 2003|Discovered at a student party by director Hal Ashby, one of the more tragic figures of the American New Wave of the ’70s, James Foley is at his best when detailing the brash social textures of the United States and the intricacies of male relationships (and, by extension, male relationships arrayed around dangerous women) in his canny shrines to the film noir genre. His new film Confidence returns Foley to the mean streets of his Glengarry Glen Ross in a caper film that defies the odds by not only being an entertaining and cohesive heist flick (after the high-profile flops that were David Mamet’s Heist and Frank Oz’s The Score), but also by finding a role for the aggressively unlikable Ed Burns that actually suits him. Foley’s best film, however, remains the brilliant After Dark, My Sweet–the only film, curiously, that he’s ever written, and the only screen adaptation of Jim Thompson that rings with the lewd authenticity of a Thompson novel.

Hot Docs ’03: Algeria: The Nameless War

April 26, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Sweden
***½/****directed by Agneiska Lukasiak by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Director Agneiska Lukasiak got more than she bargained for when she went to shoot in Algeria and fell in love with one of its countrymen, Habib. Not only was she in a country racked by civil conflict, she also had to face up to her culture shock at the country's radically different approaches to love. Despite her amour fou for Habib, his familial obligations make it impossible for her to marry without destroying his family's means of support. As she ponders her unhappy love, she wanders around Algiers illegally taping war zones,…

Hot Docs ’03: Juchitan, Queer Paradise

April 26, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Chile, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
Juchitán de las locas**½/****directed by Patricio Henriquez by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This documentary has a honey of a subject: a Mexican Zapotec town with a high tolerance for homosexuality. Unfortunately, it blows it when it takes a personal angle that obscures the town's inner workings. At first, the film gets your hopes up by showing Juchitan's relaxed nature--gays and the transgendered are treated with respect, women are given a high rank in society, and the Zapotec language is still spoken in a country where native languages are quickly disappearing. But Juchitan quickly shifts gears to follow several residents of the town,…

Hot Docs ’03: Strip Club DJs

April 26, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Television
***/****directed by Derrick Beckles by Travis Mackenzie Hoover One approaches a film on this topic with a sense of humour: surely it couldn't have anything other than good ribald laughs. But as Strip Club DJs inches ever closer to its conclusion, it becomes more and more disturbing, until you are choked-up with a combination of contempt and pity for those who would play the tunes at your local peeler bar. It turns out that the DJ is the nerve centre for the whole operation: not only must he spin the discs, he must also arrange who has the rights to…

Hot Docs ’03: My Flesh and Blood

April 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Disability, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
***½/****directed by Jonathan Karsh by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Susan Tom more or less adopts special-needs children; this is her story, and it's both gripping and moving. A woman described by her mother as trying to fill her own "loneliness," Tom has taken on the children who are too much for other people--there are kids missing limbs, who have been horribly burned, who have cancer and cystic fibrosis, and one hyperactive boy with a terrible mean streak. The film takes stock of a year with Tom and her family, and considers what it takes to care for children who demand so…

Hot Docs ’03: Bruno S. – Estrangement is Death

April 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Hot Docs
Bruno S. - Die Fremde ist der Tod***/****directed by Miron Zownir by Travis Mackenzie Hoover At the Cannes premiere of one of his films, Werner Herzog discovery Bruno S. decided to play his accordion outside the theatre; unfortunately, no one knew how to take this, and the police were called in to arrest him. That pretty much sums up the life of Bruno S., who, after two films with Herzog, faded into obscurity, never to catch the public eye again. But that wasn't the only rejection in his life: Not only was he the victim of neglectful parents, but his…

The Hot Chick (2002) – DVD

April 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Teen, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Rob Schneider, Rachel McAdams, Anna Faris, Andrew Keegan
screenplay by Tom Brady & Rob Schneider
directed by Tom Brady

by Walter Chaw What to think of a variation on Teen Wolf wherein the victim of the lycanthropic puberty metaphor is a young girl who turns into Rob Schneider? What to make of a film that wrests its central conceit of enchanted jewellery from the long-putrefied grasp of Mannequin 2? And what to make of a film released in the year 2002 that is this misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and cruel to the obese? Rather than postulate that our culture has regressed to the hale cultural morass of the mid-1980s, it’s doubtless more fruitful to examine the ways in which film is becoming as self-reflexive, meta-critical, and free of irony as television.

It Runs in the Family (2003)

April 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Michael Douglas, Kirk Douglas, Cameron Douglas, Diana Douglas
screenplay by Jesse Wigutow
directed by Fred Schepisi

Itrunsinthefamilyby Walter Chaw Appalling at its best, Fred Schepisi’s It Runs in the Family is a congenital disaster best described as an interminable episode of “Old People Say the Darndest Things”. Between this and Last Orders, Aussie director Schepisi seems to desire cornering the market on gravid meditations on decrepitude and death. He finds himself here a far cry from his Seventies output (The Devil’s Playground, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith), which, much like countryman Bruce Beresford’s early work, announced an important filmmaker who has, in the intervening years, become a hired hand and a coin of considerably devalued worth. It Runs in the Family is so relentlessly mawkish that it does give insight into the state of mind that allows condescension to become comfortable status quo by habitually marginalizing the elderly and demented as adorable dispensers of quaint homilies and spunky vulgarity.

Hot Docs ’03: Wheel of Time

April 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Austria, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Directors: Werner Herzog, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Hot Docs, Italy
*½/****directed by Werner Herzog by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I was initially bewildered by the substitution of this film for the cancelled Bus 174--how could a film by Werner Herzog, one of the big names of the German New Wave, have not been initially selected for a festival that could use the publicity? As it turns out, there is a reason: Despite some unusually good intentions (for Herzog, anyway), his documentary is disorganized and lacking in rigour. The film plays as sort of What I Did On My Spiritual Vacation, with Herzog visiting various Buddhist holy events as people pray, listen…

Hot Docs ’03: Chicken Ranch (1982)

April 24, 2003Posted in1980s, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, UK
***/****directed by Nick Broomfield and Sandi Sissel by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This is the story of a Nevada brothel--the transplanted inspiration for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas--and it's not a particularly happy one. On the surface, everything runs like a well-oiled machine: the girls troop out for selection by the customers, they negotiate the price with the customers, and the proprietor beams for journalists about what a public service he's providing. But, at least according to this film, the job of being a prostitute is an aggravating one, and as the women complain about inconsiderate tricks and fears of…

Hot Docs ’03: Echelon: The Secret Power

April 23, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Espionage, Film Festivals, France, Hot Docs
Échelon, le pouvoir secret***/****directed by David Korn-Brzoza by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This is a sometimes gripping, sometimes irritating film about international espionage and those who direct it. An information-gathering organization with tentacles in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, "Echelon" long ago abandoned the post-WWII directives that created it and started gathering intelligence on private citizens through highly questionable means. Now that the electronic and information ages are upon us, Echelon, the NSA, and various satellite organizations can listen in on your telephone calls and whatever other electronic transmissions you might be making; the Anglo-American coalition uses…

Hot Docs ’03 – A Taste of This Year’s Hot Docs Festival

April 23, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blog, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The documentary is a form fraught with danger. Doing double-duty as fact and cinema, it can often sell out the former to the latter; faced with the necessity of pleasing an audience as well as informing it, it can take shortcuts, highlight sensationalistic details, and succumb to an artificial pace in the attempt to boil down its information and create exciting drama. An innocent audience can be moved without truly getting a grasp on the film's subject, and can leave with the impression of having learned something while having merely scratched the surface. But when a documentary does its job (that is, when it teaches us about the world in which we live with eloquence and urgency), it justifies the form and makes you forget about all of its less noble brethren.

Darkwolf (2003) – DVD

April 20, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Werewolf, ZERO STARS

Dark Wolf
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C
starring Samaire Armstrong, Ryan Alosio, Andrea Bogart, Jaime Bergman
screenplay by Geoffrey Alan Holliday
directed by Richard Friedman

by Walter Chaw Something to do with hybrid werewolves and full-breed werewolves and how one hybrid biker werewolf is interested in mating with the last full-bred matriarch bitch in order to preserve the line of the pure-blood werewolves, the direct-to-video DarkWolf at least has the decency to open in a strip club and continue into a fairly decent gore set-piece before launching into its incomprehensible lore. Tied to the creatures of the id-horror subgenre (the best example of which is probably Neil Jordan’s psychosexual A Company of Wolves), a recent glut of lycanthropic fare (Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers) holds a curious candle to the idea that, despite Arab belief to the contrary, Western civilization seems to be regressing into a puritanical sexual hysteria that proves fertile ground for horror films about the cycle of sexual repression/aggression. It’s possible, also, that guys (and dolls) in fur suits are just cool again.

The Straight Shooter: FFC Interviews George Hickenlooper

April 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews

GhickenlooperinterviewtitleApril 20, 2003|There at the beginnings of Billy Bob Thornton and Naomi Watts, after the success of 2002’s The Man from Elysian Fields, it may finally be director George Hickenlooper’s turn in the spotlight. In the mountain resort for the twelfth annual Aspen Shortsfest, I scouted out a place in the deserted lobby/bar area; Hickenlooper, suffering from the onset of a head cold, was down in a flash.

A skilled documentarian and interviewer, Hickenlooper is a friendly presence, cutting an unassuming swath through the impossibly nice lobby of Aspen’s Hotel St. Regis. Starting his career after Yale with an internship under Roger Corman, the filmmaker has worked in several genres, earning his first major break with the exceptional documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. What impresses most about Mr. Hickenlooper, however, is his knowledge of film history and respect for the auteur theory–in his presentation as a part of the fest’s “Masterworks” programming, he not only clarified what Bogdanovich defined to him as the two philosophies of editing (mise-en-scène vs. montage), but also made mention of Cahiers du cinema, Dziga Vertov, and the politics of shot selection that can actually save a director’s vision from meddling studio interests.

The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002) – DVD

April 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

The Wild Thornberrys
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
screenplay by Kate Boutilier
directed by Jeff McGrath and Cathy Malkasian

by Walter Chaw Preaching its message of courage, family, and self-confidence with grace and a bare minimum of soapbox grandstanding and mawkish sentimentality, The Wild Thornberrys Movie is a picture of warmth and imagination. Its globe-trotting wildlife-show family, the titular Thornberrys, have as their most conspicuous member gawky Eliza (voiced by Lacey Chabert), a freckled, bespectacled, orthodontically challenged little girl who earns the power to communicate with animals through an act of kindness. The locating of a traditionally unattractive young female as the superhero at the centre of an adventure serial (the picture is based on a Nickelodeon series) is so rare an idea in American animation that its appearance here makes for one of the more bracing, genuinely exciting creations of the modern popular culture. Its mainstay status in Chinese martial arts and Japanese anime films remains a gulf that U.S. culture, in its occasional simple-mindedness, remains far from bridging.

Marion Bridge (2003)

April 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Molly Parker, Rebecca Jenkins, Stacy Smith, Marguerite McNeil
screenplay by Daniel MacIvor, based on his play
directed by Wiebke von Carolsfeld

Marionbridgeby Travis Mackenzie Hoover I’d like to go along with the chorus of approval that has greeted Marion Bridge, but the sad truth is that it nearly bored me into an early grave. Armed only with a series of family-drama clichés and a nuance-free visual style, the experience is roughly akin to staring into a fluorescent lamp for 90 minutes and is just as retina-dulling. If this is, as last year’s Toronto International Film Festival jury claimed, the best Canadian First Feature of 2002, it paints a chilly portrait of what the also-rans were like, as well as the state of film culture here in the Great White North.

Levity (2003)

April 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter, Kirsten Dunst
written and directed by Ed Solomon

Levityby Walter Chaw Sort of Frank Capra without the subtlety, Levity is a relentlessly moralizing film that finds Billy Bob Thornton in his second role (Monster’s Ball) in three years as a man responsible for another man’s death who proceeds to woo a close relation of said victim as a means of atonement. The greatest irony of a film about forgiveness is that it’s destined to inspire the opposite in most viewers, but with a professionally underachieving cast of good actors (Morgan Freeman is now into his eighth year of not trying very hard), a master cinematographer (Roger Deakins), and the sort of story that attracts said actors like atoning moths to the mainstream arthouse flame, the picture is not altogether useless.

Stanley: Hop to It (2003) + Stanley: Spring Fever (2003) – DVDs

April 16, 2003Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Television

Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-

by Jarrod Chambers My first encounter with “Stanley” was at Walt Disney World in Orlando, at the Disney-MGM Studios. There is a show combining live actors and puppets at Playhouse Disney, and Stanley and his goldfish Dennis were among the attractions. When they announced that they were going to look up gorillas in The Great Big Book of Everything, every kid in the place leaped to their feet and sang along with the Great Big Book of Everything song. I quickly realized that I was one of the few who had not heard of “Stanley”.

A Mighty Wind (2003)

April 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Music, Pseudo-Documentary, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Bob Balaban
screenplay by Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy
directed by Christopher Guest

Mightywindby Walter Chaw Though Waiting for Guffman remains the best of the three Christopher Guest-directed improv-sketch mockumentaries, A Mighty Wind finds Guest’s troupe returning somewhat to form after the disappointing and mean-spirited dog show spoof Best in Show. Following the efforts of grieving son Jonathan Steinbloom (Bob Balaban) to reunite the folk acts represented by his late father Irving for a tribute concert to be broadcast on public television, the picture is essentially an outline fleshed-out through a bunch of improvisations tied loosely together by largely disconnected vignettes. Free, for the most part, of the cheap shots of Best in Show, A Mighty Wind‘s failures are again a cartoonish turn by Eugene Levy and a healthy dose of sentiment that goes down suspiciously like arrogance. If there’s a unifying thread to Guest et al’s forays into parody (including Rob Reiner’s directorial debut This is Spinal Tap), it’s that faint, pervasive whiff of superiority… And the atmosphere appears to be getting thicker.

Biggie & Tupac (2002) – DVD

April 13, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Documentary, DVD, Music, UK

***/**** Image B- Sound B Extras B+
directed by Nick Broomfield

by Bill Chambers A few days ago in THE HOT BUTTON, Dave Poland distinguished Nick Broomfield from his peers in the documentary field better–or, at least, more succinctly–than I’ve ever seen it done: “[Broomfield] creates an atmosphere in which you connect emotionally not with the characters in the film, but with his plight in trying to get his film made.” That’s certainly true of Broomfield’s Biggie & Tupac, in which almost every sequence carries the subtext of peril: A bona fide Dante in headphones, Broomfield latches onto a Virgil (ex-police officer Russell Poole) who escorts him, more or less, through circles of Hell (the gang-marked territories of Compton, the rap-music industry, and finally prison). An alarming number of the director’s interviews in Biggie & Tupac begin with a summary of attempts on the subject’s life, and in a deleted scenes section on the DVD, we see that Broomfield tried and failed to chat with the owner of L.A.’s notorious “Last Resort,” a bar at which gangbangers receive an ace-of-spades merit badge for their first killshot. A red ace means a flesh wound; a black ace means fatality.