2008 Archives - Page 12 of 12 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Sundance ’08: The Order of Myths

January 23, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance

**/**** directed by Margaret Brown by Alex Jackson Margaret Brown's The Order of Myths is the flipside to blandly noble docs like The Recruiter. Faithful to the ideal of "objectivity," the typical documentary filmmaker doesn't love anything; Brown's problem is that she loves everything. The result is a film that works very well as cinema: it has a pulse, a mood, a feeling, and is never boring. Yet it also has a terminal case of the cutes, and after it was over I can't say I felt all that edified. The film is about the traditionally segregated Mardi Gras carnival…

Sundance ’08: The Recruiter

January 22, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance

An American Soldier **/**** directed by Edet Belzberg by Alex Jackson The Recruiter, which also goes by the moderately less forgettable title An American Soldier, is just another Sundance documentary, barely distinguishable from past efforts like The Ground Truth or Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. The film follows Army recruiter Sergeant First Class Clay Usie as he brings a new generation of soldiers to the front lines. Director Edet Belzberg's splintered narrative sees four recruits go off to boot camp, where they find themselves in way over their heads. Belzberg's thesis seems to be that these recruits are kids--unprepared for the…

Sundance ’08: Yasukuni

January 21, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, China, Documentary, Film Festivals, Japan, Sundance

***½/**** directed by Li Ying by Alex Jackson Yasukuni is a Shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to the spirits of soldiers who died serving the Emperor of Japan. Included within the 2,466,532 names are 27,863 Taiwanese, 21,181 Koreans, and, most significantly, 1,068 convicted war criminals. The shrine is a centre of controversy for many Asians, some of whom feel their ancestors were forced to serve the Emperor and thus wouldn't want to be listed. Others could never endorse a shrine that features, for example, the names of Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Takeshi, the two officers who participated in a beheading…

The Jazz Singer (1927) [Three-Disc Deluxe Edition] – DVD

January 15, 20081920s, 2008, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Music, Musical, Romance, Silent

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Cantor Joseff Rosenblatt
screenplay by Alfred A. Cohn, based on the play by Samson Raphaelson
directed by Alan Crosland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I’m going to dispense with standard practice for this review, because the enormity of The Jazz Singer‘s Three-Disc Deluxe Edition demands it. Not in terms of size (although one movie, one feature-length documentary, and about five hours of short films make for a pretty large package), but because the issues it raises are more than the main attraction itself can contain. What this DVD proposes is a glimpse into the shining moment when talkies were a novelty rather than a foregone conclusion and a whole range of culture teemed around them, unaware of their imminent demise. The Jazz Singer is no great shakes on its own; by all accounts, it’s an antique of limited cinematic range and blindingly crude melodrama. Yet in placing it against the vast array of shorts that both preceded and led directly from it, one gets a sense of how truly seismic the coming of sound was. Watching the parade of performers adapt their bits to some very functional filmmaking is devastating–not only because the traditions that nourished them were wiped out, but also because a relationship with culture, with the accessibility of the performer and the non-suppression of the audience, was snuffed out for a piece of technology that liberated our dreams but left us alone in the dark.

Man on Fire (2004) – Blu-ray Disc

January 11, 20082000s, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, Mexico, Switzerland, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Marc Anthony, Radha Mitchell
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by A.J. Quinnell
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. What used to be the province of the Times Square grindhouse and drive-in movie theatres is now star-vehicle blockbuster fodder, making the revenge sub-genre’s subversive qualities and carefully cultivated atmosphere of frustrated rage suddenly a reflection of the demons plaguing mainstream culture. Though certainly more substantive than the hit-and-run remake of Walking Tall, Tony Scott’s Man on Fire falls far below the redemptive qualities of Kill Bill, Vol. 2, offering the world the logical end result of a nation operating under the twin godheads of fear and Old Testament vengeance: a slickefied, iconographic, racist, sexist, huckster version of the grimy, low rent, pleasantly exploitative The Punisher.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One (1992-1993/1996-1999) – DVD

January 8, 20081990s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, DVD, Family, Mystery, Television

Image B Sound B Extras B
“My First Adventure,” “Passion for Life,” “The Perils of Cupid,” “Travels with Father,” “Journeys of Radiance,” “Spring Break Adventure,” “Love’s Sweet Song”

by Ian Pugh It’s important to understand that Indiana Jones didn’t make history cool, but even more important to understand that history didn’t make Indy cool, either. “The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones” (formerly known as “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” and henceforth “Young Indy”) purports to portray the daring archaeologist’s early years as he travels around the world with his father (Lloyd Owen), meeting famous figures and going to great pains to teach the young’ns in the audience a thing or two about the artists and revolutionaries of the early twentieth century. Because the attempt to educate binds itself to a down-to-earth approach, the series completely ignores the fact that Indy’s franchise appeal lies in a careful collision of the mundane and the fantastic, of reality and fantasy. It’s one thing to demythologize the romantic violence often attributed to the Old West, but quite another to try to demythologize something so immersed in theology and the supernatural that to abandon them is to lose something inextricably vital to the concept. Imagine if Raiders of the Lost Ark had ended with the Ark of the Covenant revealed to be an ornate box full of dust, sans the wrath of God, and you’ll understand the basic problems that plague “Young Indy”.

Swamp Thing: The Series (1990-1991) – DVD

January 8, 20081990s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Superhero, Television

Image B- Sound B Extras C
“The Emerald Heart,” “Falco,” “Treasure,” “From Beyond the Grave,” “Blood Wind,” “Grotesquery,” “New Acqaintance,” “Natural Enemy,” “Spirit of the Swamp,” “Legend of the Swamp Maiden,” “The Death of Dr. Arcane,” “The Living Image,” “The Shipment,” “Birthmarks,” “The Dark Side of the Mirror,” “Silent Screams,” “Walk a Mile in My Shoots,” “The Watchers,” “The Hunt,” “Touch of Death,” “Tremors of the Heart,” “The Prometheus Parabola”

by Ian Pugh In many ways the anti-Darkman, Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing also saw a comic-book scientist irrevocably transformed into a monster at the hands of hoodlum saboteurs. Alas, unlike Sam Raimi with his masterpiece, Craven is unable to strike a balance between seriousness and silliness, falling too far in the latter direction before the picture finally collapses under its own snarky weight. It is, however, the film that enlightened me as to why B-movie anti-appreciation is such a worthless endeavour, since Swamp Thing never bothers to pretend that it’s anything more than a couple of dudes in rubber suits wailing on each other. When you’re making a movie in the “MST3K” mindset, as Craven appears to be, you don’t really have a movie in mind, per se–you’re just positioning actors as they recite lines from a script.

Con Air (1997) [Unrated Extended Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

January 7, 20081990s, 2008, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Nicolas Cage, Thriller

***½/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A-
BD – Image C+ Sound A- Extras D+
starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by Scott Rosenberg
directed by Simon West

by Alex Jackson The plot is simplicity itself: Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) has just completed his training as an Army Ranger; he goes to a local bar to celebrate with his pregnant wife (Monica Potter), gets assaulted by some thugs, kills one in the ensuing fight, and is convicted of manslaughter. Eight years later, his sentence is up and he hitches a prison flight that happens to be transferring a number of the country’s most dangerous and renowned criminals, including Cyrus “the Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich), a brilliant psychopath who murders people just because he can; Nathan “Diamond Dog” Jones (Ving Rhames), a black militant who wrote a book in prison that is now being made into a feature film with Denzel in talks for the lead; William “Billy Bedlam” Bedford (Nick Chinlund), who slayed his wife’s parents, brothers, and dog when he discovered the missus in bed with another man; and Johnny 23 (Danny Trejo), a serial rapist with 23 heart tattoos on his arm. (“One for each of my bitches,” he explains.) Cyrus leads a revolt on the plane, killing or capturing all of the guards and hijacking the flight. But like Alan Rickman in Die Hard, Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege, or Powers Boothe in Sudden Death, he has no idea that one of the hostages he’s holding is a classically-trained ass-kicker!

My Best Friend (2006) – DVD

January 4, 20082000s, 2006, 2008, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, France

Mon meilleur ami
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet, Julie Durand
screenplay by Patrice Leconte & Jérôme Tonnerre
directed by Patrice Leconte

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover François (Daniel Auteuil) is an obnoxious antiques dealer without a friend in the world. This rather extreme fact lets you know he’s about to get his comeuppance, a life lesson in the form of an opposite number who will set him straight. Enter Bruno (Dany Boon), a far-too-nice cabbie who strangely volunteers to teach François sociability. That the plot hinges on a boring odd-couple helping each other is all you need to know about My Best Friend (Mon meilleur ami), the kind of thing Rob Reiner would make if he were French. Although it gamely suppresses the more bathetic elements of the story, they’re there just the same: we’re supposed to feel the warm good feeling of a jerk redeemed, and to that end, the film deploys every heart-tugging mechanism in the feel-good manual. That it doesn’t milk them visually is less a tribute to the restraint of director Patrice Leconte than to his skill at playing a shell game with the audience.

Underdog (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

January 3, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Family, Sci-Fi, Superhero, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Jim Belushi, Peter Dinklage, John Slattery, Patrick Warburton
screenplay by Adam Rifkin and Joe Piscatella & Craig A. Williams
directed by Frederik Du Chau

by Bill Chambers Whereas the gigantic Underdog balloon that hovers over New York City during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is at least conceptually interesting (American commerce’s idea of a Stalin statue), Underdog, Disney’s charmless live-action resurrection of the beloved super-mutt, has no subtext, just a bunch of mercenary actors and technicians who can barely disguise their contempt for the film’s screenplay, which lazily embellishes the extraordinary-pet genre with scatology while weaving a maddeningly derelict patchwork of recycled tropes like the grieving widower/orphan, the unattainable hottie, and the disgraced cop. It’s fair to say I hate Underdog, but I hate it because it doesn’t even have the will to finish what it starts. Only two things about it are kind of fascinating, and only then from a largely extratextual standpoint. The first is that in taking the title character out of the cartoon realm, the digitally-manipulated slapstick pratfalls and clumsy landings look grotesquely painful for the beagle(s) playing Underdog. They should’ve gone the Scooby-Doo route and fashioned a 3-D likeness of the 2-D prototype, since the sight of man’s best friend hurtling through panes of glass really has no intrinsic comic value.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Seasons 1 & 2 (2005-2006) – DVD

January 2, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Television

Image B Sound C+ Extras D+
“The Gang Gets Racist,” “Charlie Wants an Abortion,” “Underage Drinking: A National Concern,” “Charlie Has Cancer,” “Gun Fever,” “The Gang Finds a Dead Guy,” “Charlie Got Molested,” “Charlie Gets Crippled,” “The Gang Goes Jihad,” “The Gang Gives Back,” “Dennis and Dee Go On Welfare,” “Mac Bangs Dennis’ Mom,” “The Gang Runs for Office,” “Hundred Dollar Baby,” “Charlie Goes America All Over Everybody’s Ass,” “The Gang Exploits a Miracle,” “Dennis and Dee Get a New Dad”

by Ian Pugh When confronted with the inescapable, unfunny vacuum that is Carlos Mencia, I used to tell people I hated that which was self-consciously controversial. I soon realized, though, that any property that genuinely pushes the envelope has to be aware of its material on some level; it’s probably more accurate to say I hate that which features controversy as its only selling point. Hostel Part II‘s DVD cover may sport an obnoxious stamp guaranteeing that it is “shocking and explicit,” but the film puts those qualities to use in a capitalist redux of The Wicker Man. “The Sarah Silverman Program.” may touch on taboo subjects, but it does so to question the self-aggrandizing persona of its star. Then you’ve got “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (hereafter “Sunny”), which parades the horrible actions of its lead characters as if they meant something on their own, believing that its toe-in-the-water venture into forbidden territory exempts it from criticism. Take a long, hard look at the episode list above, and know that just about every teaser sequence in “Sunny”‘s first two seasons is followed by a smash cut to one of those titles–and in this brief moment, find everything you need to know about the episode and its comedic trajectory. The quality of the writing itself is ultimately summed up by the subsequent opening-credits montage showcasing the various sights and non-sights of Philly by night. While personal experience dictates that sunny days and dispositions are indeed hard to come by in that city, the fact that the series must directly invert the implications of its name reeks of desperation to have its weak antics seen as darkly ironic.

Film Freak Central’s Top 10 of 2007

January 1, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best-of Lists, Blog

Well the road is out before me
and the moon is shining bright
what I want you to remember
as I disappear tonight
today is grey skies
tomorrow is tears
you’ll have to wait ’til yesterday is here.

-Tom Waits, “Yesterday Is Here”

Break it down: 2007 resets the early days of the New American Cinema–the last years of the Apollo space program (and sure enough, we have a documentary about the remaining Apollo astronauts in David Sington’s In the Shadow of the Moon) and Watergate, the death twitches of the 1960s gradually revealing themselves in pictures. Whether this leads to another Golden Age or merely another stutter-step on the road of our grief remains to be seen, but past the halfway point of the first decade of the new millennium (and six years after 9/11 hit its own reset button), the 2000s have already established themselves with the usual single-minded purpose. At the least, celebrate the resurgence of American cinema–the mainstream re-establishing itself as not just a dream factory but a garden of auteur delights as well. 2007, above anything else, heralds a banner year for the auteur theory (Paul Thomas Anderson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Coens, Tarantino, Sean Penn, Cronenberg, Brad Bird, Kim Ki-duk, David Fincher, Ken Loach, Ang Lee, Brian DePalma–and flicks I didn’t catch by guys like Paul Schrader, Francis Ford Coppola, Tsai Ming-liang, John Sayles, and so on), with the films, like Sweeney’s razors, functioning as extensions of the directors’ biological selves.