Avatar (2009) – Blu-ray + DVD

May 17, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver
written and directed by James Cameron

by Walter Chaw A morally, historically, socially, and politically childish amalgam of Pocahontas and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Avatar finds James Cameron–still the Cameron of Titanic (or the uncomfortably simpering T2, if we're honest with ourselves) rather than the Cameron of Aliens and The Terminator–trying his hand at being Kevin Costner: powerful, dim, and only relevant for a tiny window of time he doesn't realize has already closed. The more simple-minded liberal proselytizing he perpetrates like Avatar, the farther away he gets from the B-movie muscularity that indicated his early career. It's a bad thing, believe me, that the first set of movies people think to compare your latest to is first George Lucas's ridiculous prequel trilogy–then Dances with Wolves.

Robin Hood (2010)

May 14, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, Theatrical, UK

**/****
starring Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt, Max Von Sydow
screenplay by Brian Helgeland
directed by Ridley Scott

Robinhood2010by Walter Chaw Predictably, achingly, perfectly okay, Ridley Scott into his dotage has produced a string of absolutely unsurprising, overlong, uninspiring-if-occasionally-visually-striking films, of which Robin Hood is only the latest. An attempt to “reboot” the Robin Hood legend with a “prequel” that shows how a middle-aged Robin (Russell Crowe) meets his Merry Mystery, Alaska Men, woos freshly-widowed “maid” Marion (Cate Blanchett), sort of composes the “Declaration of Independence,” directly influences–it’s implied–the signing of the Magna Carta (in the completion of which the film’s real hero, William Marshal (William Hurt), was instrumental) not long after the events of the movie, and enters into a life of sylvan banditry at the prodding injustice of ineffectual King John (Oscar Isaac, doing his best Russell Brand). It also suggests that Marion is a Maid of Orléans figure who rides into battle alongside the menfolk to repulse an inexplicable French invasion shot in such a way as to suggest a Gallic D-Day landing (or an attack on Northern England by the New Orleans Saints)*–marking the second time Blanchett’s done this exact scene after the admittedly-worse Elizabeth: The Golden Age. All of which is portrayed in so exacting and expository a way in that inimitably stately Ridley Scott style that the picture’s bumfuddling 140-minute runtime feels like a couple of torturous days spent at a Renaissance Fair. Maybe it’s the complete lack of stakes that hamstrings the production–the surety that no compelling issues will be broached, despite all the posturing about Robin Hood being Thoreau over six centuries before Thoreau (or Thomas Jefferson five centuries before Jefferson) in a deeply stupid town-centre meeting that more closely resembles the Endor council in Return of the Jedi than it does the requisite stirring centrepiece monologue in this prestige epic lost without an awards season.

Edge of Darkness (2010) + When in Rome (2010)|Edge of Darkness – Blu-ray Disc

May 9, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

EDGE OF DARKNESS
***½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic
screenplay by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell, based on the television series by Troy Kennedy Martin
directed by Martin Campbell

WHEN IN ROME
*/****
starring Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by David Diamond & David Weissman
directed by Mark Steven Johnson

by Ian Pugh Allegedly a radical departure from the BBC miniseries upon which it's based, Martin Campbell's Edge of Darkness works because there's nothing typical about it. Boston PD detective Tom Craven (Mel Gibson) naturally blames himself when his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down by a masked man with a shotgun, but his private inquiry into the matter reveals that Emma herself was the more likely target: it had something to do with her job at a nuclear R&D lab run by sadistic creepshow Jack Bennett (an almost-ridiculously slimy Danny Huston). The trick to Tom's subsequent trip down the rabbit hole is that he never stops blaming himself, even once his quest is validated by the trail of bodies left by both him and the mysterious conspirators pulling the strings. This is Gibson's first starring role in eight years following a lengthy trek through Crazytown, and he might be the only actor who could have pulled it off so flawlessly–simply because there's always been something slightly terrified about his specific brand of martyrdom, something that points to it all being painfully unnecessary.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

May 7, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Scarlett Johansson, Superhero, Theatrical

*/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson
screenplay by Justin Theroux
directed by Jon Favreau

Ironman2by Walter Chaw A multi-million-dollar machine carefully engineered to generate the ridiculous amount of money it's about to, Iron Man 2 is kept from total, instant obsolescence by its "too good for this shit" cast, which cleverly manages to distract from the fact that this flick is a tone-deaf, laborious mess. Front and centre is Mickey Rourke as wronged Russian physicist Ivan Vanko, an amalgam of two Iron Man villains and so enigmatic a presence that although the dumbass screenplay (by actor Justin Theroux) takes pains to make Vanko's angst father-based, it's hard not to be distracted by the more mysterious depths of Rourke's performance. Similarly good are Gwyneth Paltrow, whose Girl Friday Pepper Potts is given the keys to her boss's Stark Industries and burdened instantly by expectation and cable-news notoriety; Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, again playing himself as a tech billionaire; and Sam Rockwell as an unctuous, fake-baked rival defense contractor. Not so great are the bland set-pieces, the misguided attempt to parallel Vanko's avenge-daddy motivation with Tony's make-dead-daddy-proud motivation into one legacy-based leitmotif, and a series of convoluted plot mechanisms (Tony's dying! Tony loves Pepper! No, he loves dead-eyed, one-note-but-hot Natasha (Scarlett Johansson)! Tony's company is in trouble! Tony's in trouble with the government! Tony likes to get drunk!) that grind the whole enterprise to a standstill at short intervals. If you can maintain your interest during an extended sequence in which our Tony plays with a bunch of virtual computer screens while building a long tube, you either drank the Kool-Aid that makes you care whether Tony lives or dies, or you've slipped blissfully into a coma.

The Yakuza (1975) – DVD

May 4, 2010Posted in1970s, 2010, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Crime, Drama, DVD, Japan, Romance, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound C Extras C
starring Robert Mitchum, Takakura Ken, Okada Eiji, Brian Keith
screenplay by Paul Schrader and Robert Towne
directed by Sydney Pollack

Yakuzacap

by Jefferson Robbins We'll never know what might have been had Paul and Leonard Schrader's original screenplay for The Yakuza gone unmolested by '70s script king Robert Towne, or had Martin Scorsese or Brian De Palma made good on threats to direct. Instead, the obvious gets overlaid on top of the mysterious, and at least one partner in this marriage of the American and Japanese gangster genres winds up shorted. Producer-director Sydney Pollack makes the mistake his best peers in the decade's American cinema dodged: he mistrusts the audience, believing we can't absorb backstory through performance and suggestion.

The Karate Kid Collection – DVD|The Karate Kid I & II [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

May 3, 2010Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Family, Martial Arts, Romance, Sports

THE KARATE KID (1984)
***½/****
DVD – Image C+ Sound C+ Extras A
BD – Image A- Sound B+ Extras A
starring Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Elisabeth Shue, Martin Kove
screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen
directed by John G. Avildsen

THE KARATE KID PART II (1986)
**/****
DVD – Image B- Sound C+ Extras D
BD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras D
starring Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Yuji Okumoto, Tamlyn Tomita
screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen
directed by John G. Avildsen

THE KARATE KID PART III (1989)
*/**** Image C Sound C+
starring Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Robyn Lively, Thomas Ian Griffith
screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen
directed by John G. Avildsen

THE NEXT KARATE KID (1994)
½*/**** Image B+ Sound C+
starring Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Hilary Swank, Michael Ironside, Constance Towers
screenplay by Mark Lee
directed by Christopher Cain

by Walter Chaw Movies from the magic hour of my moviegoing experience cover that brief period of time between my being able to go to the cinema unattended (dropped at the theatre with a quarter to call the folks afterwards) and my being able to decide that there are actually films I'd rather not see for any price. You never love movies as much or in the same way as you do during this tiny porthole, and when my family first got a VCR (we were the last ones on the block), I pirated Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, and The Karate Kid onto one tape that I watched until you could see through the ribbon. Each seminal films of the fabulist '80s in their own way, all three spawned multiple sequels–though, at least until Indiana Jones struggles back to the screen with a walker and oxygen tank, The Karate Kid holds the record with four instalments in total. (And one that launched the career of a two-time Oscar winner, to boot.) Credit a lot of things for that: Bill Conti's classic score; John G. Avildsen's intuitive direction; and Pat Morita's and Ralph Macchio's superlative performances. But credit most of all the enduring power of a familiar tale told with conviction and skill. Take the intimidating volume of formulaic exercises that fall by the wayside (including The Karate Kid's own sequels) as testament to the difficulty of capturing a tiger by its tail.

The Losers (2010) + The Back-up Plan (2010)

April 22, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

THE LOSERS
*½/****
starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoë Saldana, Chris Evans, Jason Patric
screenplay by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt, based on the comic book series by Andy Diggle and Jock
directed by Sylvain White

THE BACK-UP PLAN
½*/****
starring Jennifer Lopez, Alex O’Loughlin, Eric Christian Olsen, Linda Lavin
screenplay by Kate Angelo
directed by Alan Poul

by Ian Pugh We’ve got a long summer ahead of us, full of remakes and spoofs straight out of the ’80s, and The Losers celebrates its imminent arrival by taking a dump on the action flicks of the era. Blinkered hostility is as much a mood-killer as uncritical nostalgia, and The Losers never misses an opportunity to remind you that its characters have one-note personalities defined by terse nicknames. The film begins, as it must, in the Bolivian jungle, where the titular team of U.S. soldiers (led by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is forced to go underground after an errant missile–intended for them–kills twenty-five Bolivian children they’d just saved from an evil drug lord. At first glance, that opening raid points to a toned-down Predator reference, but it’s really just a paint-by-numbers scenario meant to demonstrate how pretty much everything from that decade is stilted, corny, and hopelessly dated. So it goes for the rest of the film–how else to explain a brief chase sequence set to “Don’t Stop Believin'”? It’s not merely junk; it’s self-conscious, wilfully misinterpretive junk.

Minority Report (2002) – Blu-ray Disc

April 19, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Thriller, Tom Cruise

**/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max Von Sydow
screenplay by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Despite a remarkable first hour, Steven Spielberg's Minority Report washes out as an overlong retread of tired thriller/mystery elements capped by the director's trademark propensity for moralizing epilogues. It suffers from mainstream cinema's squeamishness in regards to true ambiguity of character and character motivation, and for all its claims to a faithful reproduction of Philip K. Dick's dark dystopian future, the picture is ultimately about Spielberg's itch for restoration of order rather than Dick's entropic dissolution of it. Distracting and unforgivable plot holes yaw beneath the narrative, making it clear that Minority Report is just another failed attempt by Spielberg to tell an adult tale. Here is an attractively packaged summer bonbon with an essentially hollow, nutritionally empty centre.

Kick-Ass (2010)

April 16, 2010Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Nicolas Cage, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

****/****
starring Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage
screenplay by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn, based on the comic book by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.
directed by Matthew Vaughn

Kickassby Walter Chaw A wonderfully unlikely amalgam of Hong Kong-era John Woo and Shaolin Soccer/Kung Fu Hustle–era Stephen Chow, Matthew Vaughn's ebullient, often-unconscionable Kick-Ass reimagines Woo's iconic Tequila as an 11-year-old girl with a purple bob, an incredible potty mouth (she uses the "C" word correctly in a sentence, cunts), and absolutely no remorse in crushing a defenseless douchebag in a car cuber. Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) is destined to be an icon, a more popular tattoo-parlour fave than Calvin in evoking the cheerful, insouciant lawlessness of misdirected youth. Far from truly groundbreaking, though, sober minds could only identify her as a continuation of that quintessentially American, Huck Finn tradition of children as collective, societal Id and trickster gods. She's even employed in the picture as a punitive, apolitical, unapologetic champion of order who limits her victims to drug-dealers and gangsters, those disturbers of civilization. As her father (Nicolas Cage) clarifies in response to her unconventional upbringing, it's not his blame to shoulder, but arch-baddie Frank D'Amico's.

The Lord of the Rings (1978) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

April 15, 2010Posted in1970s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Fantasy, Musical, Spain, UK

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
**½/****
DVD – Image C Sound C-
BD – Image C+ Sound B- Extras C+
screenplay by Chris Conkling and Peter S. Beagle, based on The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Ralph Bakshi

by Walter Chaw An adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Rings" books that began with The Fellowship of the Ring and ended when the money ran out in the middle of The Two Towers, Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated feature The Lord of the Rings is unintentionally disturbing, occasionally brilliant, and fatally uneven. The film is faithful to the main movements of Tolkien's novels but told in the kind of narrative shorthand that favours truncation over summary. Its rotoscoping of actors combines uneasily with traditional modes of animation: they mix into an abstract soup of contradictory images that destroys our suspension of disbelief.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

April 1, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen, Liam Neeson
screenplay by Travis Beacham and Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi, based on the screenplay by Beverley Cross
directed by Louis Leterrier

Clashofthetitans2010by Walter Chaw Absolutely awful in absolutely the most boring way possible, Louis Leterrier's update of Ray Harryhausen's swan song is made several degrees worse by the decision to blur and dim everything via the exhaustively-touted wonder of 3-D. Why anyone would pay 15 cents much less 15 bucks for the privilege of watching this turgid mess is beyond me, but if you go you'll find exhaustively-touted wonder Sam Worthington mashing together his last two roles as Terminator and blue cat to embody Greek demigod Perseus, who's on an incomprehensible quest to, um, get into the pants of immortal slut Io (Gemma Arterton), I think. Familiarity with the source mythology actually a terrible impediment, better to take this Clash of the Titans at face value as Perseus sees his adopted family murdered by Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and petulantly rejects his newly-discovered status as the Son of Zeus (Liam Neeson). Hades, meanwhile, hatches a half-assed plan to freak out the good people of Argos in order to steal followers away from Zeus, making one pine in the process for not only the better-than-you-remember original, but also a couple of hours in front of any "God of War". All of which results in Perseus traveling a long way to somewhere ill-defined so as to encounter giant, domesticated scorpions, people covered in bad wood makeup who remind a lot of the Cyclops from zero-budgeted craptavaganza Krull (which also featured Liam Neeson in a bit part), and a CGI Medusa that makes Uma Thurman's recent snake-haired turn in The Lightning Thief seem, erm, deep. For my part, I kept waiting for the moment Perseus shoves his black Pegasus's tail up his ass before he can ride it. Fear not, the Kraken is released and revealed to be an aquatic Cloverfield that spends a lot of time sort of flailing around waiting for Perseus to kill him. Spoiler alert: he does.

Sherlock Holmes (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

March 28, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Germany, Mystery, UK

***½/**** Image B+ Sound A+ Extras B
starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong
screenplay by Michael Robert Johnson and Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg
directed by Guy Ritchie

by Walter Chaw On page 31 of the first book of Frank Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns, there's a sequence in which Batman takes a few seconds to assess the seven options he has to either kill, disarm, or cripple his quarry whilst crouched in a darkened stairwell. That last option, Miller informs his reader, hurts, and I thought of this–the moment as a kid I gave myself over to the hard noir of The Dark Knight Returns–during the opening of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes as the exact analog for our Holmes (a mesmerizing Robert Downey Jr.) calculating the damage he's about to do to an antagonist. The film that follows is akin to Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, with the same weaknesses (pacing in a saggy middle) but the same considerable strengths as well as it rescues Holmes from the lovely yet stuffy Rathbone/Bruce serials and reintroduces the detective as the man capable of bending an iron poker with his bare hands ("The Adventure of the Speckled Band")–the man with a cocaine (the familiar "seven percent solution" is a solution of Bolivian marching powder, of course) and intravenous morphine habit ("The Sign of the Four"*) he indulges to fend off bouts of depression, having suffered one ("The Adventure of the Reigate Squire"), possibly two ("The Adventure of the Devil's Foot") nervous breakdowns. Holmes, in other words, is a fucking mess and a bit of a badass, and this doesn't scratch the surface of his faithful sidekick Dr. Watson (Jude Law), a veteran of a brutal Afghan campaign that's left him with shrapnel in his shoulder.

Armored (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

March 15, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Matt Dillon, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Columbus Short
screenplay by James V. Simpson
directed by Nimród Antal

Armoredcap

by Bryant Frazer Watch enough movies, you get some insights into criminal activity and human behaviour. For example, the more conspirators you involve in your can't-miss heist scheme, the more likely it is that things will go south. Some people are capable of great ruthlessness. Others have a surprising and troubling capacity for cruelty. That lone cop snooping around is about to get in trouble. And that guy who made you promise that nobody would get hurt? He's going to be very, very disappointed.

Green Zone (2010)

March 12, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, France, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War

**/****
starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Jason Isaacs
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the book by Rajit Chandrasekaran
directed by Paul Greengrass

by Ian Pugh Sucks for Green Zone that it’s being released the weekend after The Hurt Locker won the Oscar for Best Picture, which only makes the former look that much more antiquated. Paul Greengrass can still stick a couple of actors in front of a computer and perform those “shaky-cam” action sequences with the technical proficiency we’ve come to expect from him, but as proficiency is the only thing he has going for him this time around, it appears the director has finally run out of new tricks. Green Zone feels like a self-conscious relic of the previous decade and there’s nothing to convince us of otherwise, particularly because it applies tired aesthetics to an impotent tirade about the American invasion of Iraq. At its best, the picture suggests an extraneous coda to the Greengrass-completed Bourne trilogy, without the benefit of its mystery, its forward momentum, or its looming implications. It immediately, unwisely lays everything out on the table for you–The Bourne Ultimatum without any damned ultimatum. The film Green Zone reminds of most, however, is former Greengrass collaborator Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton: it’s so consumed with stating the obvious about corruption in the system that it fails to recognize this is hardly a newsflash. While Greengrass and Gilroy are smart guys, I’m starting to wonder if they can only work miracles together.

Silverado (1985) – Blu-ray Disc

March 11, 2010Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Romance, Western

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
starring Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese
screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan & Mark Kasdan
directed by Lawrence Kasdan

by Walter Chaw Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado is a quintessential film of the 1980s, boasting that odd combination of slick production values and musty Eisenhower-era morality. It’s also exactly the western you’d expect from that product of the Eighties, Kasdan, screenwriter of milestones like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back and writer-director of classics in adult contemporary ensemble mawkishness like The Big Chill and Grand Canyon. Kasdan should be considered historically as one of the film brats, a peer to guys like Spielberg who never quite developed enough muscle to allow movies to break their heart–fashioning from the medium an endless, deadening succession of handsome, movie-loving movies that consistently betray themselves with bullshit Hollywood endings brought home in triumphal swathes of swollen violins.

The Crazies (1973) – Blu-ray Disc

March 4, 2010Posted in1970s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: George A. Romero, Horror, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Lane Carroll, W.G. McMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, Lloyd Hollar
screenplay by Paul McCollough & George A. Romero
directed by George A. Romero

by Walter Chaw It's tough for a dyed-in-the-wool George Romero apologist to observe that a film of Romero's in good repute is an amateurish, exploitative piece of shit that banks heavily on the afterglow of his seminal Night of the Living Dead. The Crazies, his third movie in the wake of that masterpiece, finds itself ripping off the last half-hour of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers–in lurid colour with a cast of atrocious actors in high-'70s, porn-ugly wardrobe and appearance–in its tale of how you shouldn't trust anyone over 30, so keep on truckin', man, steal this book, and if it feels good, do it. Its tragedy is airless and ineffectual, played as it is as this instantly (and hopelessly) dated relic of the flower-power generation that already had its epitaph with Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider four years prior. While its philosophy is tired and childish (a product of reading HIGH TIMES rather than an actual newspaper), it's also dreadfully paced, with the lion's share of time given over to exhausted harangues about how the government doesn't really care about the little guy and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Never mind the greater good here, as The Crazies is so fervently incomprehensible in its hippie politic that the threat of real contamination for the rest of the country/world should one of our erstwhile heroes escape into the general population forces the audience to ally its sympathies with the jack-booted thugs. Besides, there's already a problem of identification in the film when its ostensible villains, dressed in contamination suits to save on the extras budget, are clearly just underpaid civil servants who most definitely do not deserve to be slaughtered by the yokel populace–crazy or not.

Commando (1985) [Director’s Cut] – DVD

March 2, 2010Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Schwarzenegger

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells
screenplay by Steven E. de Souza
directed by Mark L. Lester

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I first saw Mark L. Lester’s Commando as a young boy and even then I was rather surprised that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s eponymous hero, John Matrix, didn’t get together with his reluctant sidekick, Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong). She’s set up to be the love interest, but the filmmakers never pull the trigger. I was similarly baffled by the saccharine relationship between Matrix and his daughter, Jenny (Alyssa Milano). In my youthful naivety, I frankly thought this was too hokey for an R-rated movie, i.e., a movie intended for grown-ups. What audience of adults would buy into this? And I couldn’t believe that the film would be about her kidnapping and Matrix tracking down and rescuing her. It’s just the hero invading the castle and saving the damsel-in-distress? Hell, Star Wars wasn’t that basic. There had to be some socio-political nuance to the situation I simply wasn’t old enough to grasp.

Whiteout (2009) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

February 16, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Crime, France, Mystery, Thriller, Turkey

½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D
starring Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short, Tom Skerritt
screenplay by Jon Hoeber & Eric Hoeber and Chad Hayes & Carey W. Hayes
directed by Dominic Sena

by Walter Chaw The first thing you notice about Whiteout is that it looks like shit. Though it was shot on location in Manitoba (subbing for Antarctica), they could've saved everyone the trouble and shot it in a green warehouse for all that anything in the film resembles anywhere outside. Not unreal, merely artificial. Take the moment, for example, when unbelievably-hot U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) and cohort Dr. John Fury (Tom Skerritt, well into the Kris Kristofferson portion of his career) discover the body that will be the centre of their stupid investigation into the film's stupid mystery. The middle of an ice canyon, it looks more like something out of a Quatermass flick, sixty years old on a shoestring, and it only gets worse when we come to sepia-toned flashbacks trying to explain why Stetko is damaged goods and, therefore, hiding from herself at the bottom of the world. Everything seems to have been manufactured in a mainframe–even the performances. It's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and, brother, that ain't good for something trying hard at edgy realism.

TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Western Adventures – DVD + Jeremiah Johnson (1972) – Blu-ray Disc

February 7, 2010Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 2010, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Romance, Western

MustownTHE WILD BUNCH (1969)
****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A+
starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Warren Oates
screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah
directed by Sam Peckinpah

McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)
****/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B+
starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane
screenplay by Robert Altman and Brian McKay, based on the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton
directed by Robert Altman

THE TRAIN ROBBERS (1973)
1/2*/**** Image B- Sound C Extras F
starring John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Rod Taylor, Ricardo Montalban
written and directed by Burt Kennedy

JEREMIAH JOHNSON
*/****
DVD – Image D+ Sound C- Extras F
BD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C+
starring Robert Redford, Will Geer, Allyn Ann McLerie, Delle Bolton
screenplay by John Milius and Edward Anhalt
directed by Sydney Pollack

Jeremiahjohnsoncap1

by Walter Chaw From John Ford to Akira Kurosawa to Sergio Leone then back to the United States with Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, trace the odd, international lineage of the American western genre as the seeds of its own completion are sown by Ford, only to be harvested a few decades down the line with a singular bloodbath south of the proverbial border. You could say that the western was already nearing its completion in the postwar films noir set in the sunshine and bluffs of the Old West: homegrown oaters by Anthony Mann and Fritz Lang; William Wellman's Yellow Sky and Robert Wise's Blood on the Moon; Budd Boetticher's subversive Ranowns; Arthur Penn's glass darkly Billy the Kid pic The Left Handed Gun; Brando's filthy One-Eyed Jacks; and even Ford himself with terminal pieces like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers. But it's through Kurosawa's admiration and transfiguration of Ford's themes–then Sergio Leone's incandescent prism of dirt and blood that transfigured Kurosawa's (and Ford's) ideas about heroics and individualism into something poetically base–from which Peckinpah1 took his cues.

Surrogates (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

January 18, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Ving Rhames
screenplay by John Brancato & Michael Ferris, based on the graphic novel by Robert Vendetti and Brett Weldele
directed by Jonathan Mostow

by Ian Pugh Fittingly, Surrogates is a patchwork substitute for any number of recent films that informed it. (All things considered, the '05-'06 comic series from which the movie spawned may be the least of its sources.) Just look at its pedigree. Given that it's about the schism between mortal man and unstoppable machine, it's the second Terminator film for both director Jonathan Mostow (after Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and star Bruce Willis (after Live Free or Die Hard), the third for screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Brancato (after T3 and Terminator Salvation), and perhaps the six-thousandth for 2009 alone–the latest in a long line of pictures that put the human soul behind the wheel of an automaton. Willis's Tom Greer is prescribed the usual problems–dead son, distant wife (Rosamund Pike)–of a rough-and-tumble movie cop, and from there, Surrogates cribs WALL·E's missive about the dangers of excessive comfort and The Dark Knight's casual nihilism in exploring the weakness of flesh-and-blood. Almost exclusively cobbled together from recent trends in American cinema, there's no denying its overfamiliarity–every twist and turn the movie has to offer is obvious at least forty-five minutes in advance. But as potentially the last straight action flick of the decade, Surrogates' derivative nature manages the improbable: it compacts the zeitgeist into a neat little package.