Constantine (2005) – Blu-ray Disc

October 13, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Fantasy, Germany, Horror, Mystery

*/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B
starring Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton
screenplay by Kevin Brodbin and Frank Cappello, based on the DC comic
directed by Francis Lawrence

by Walter Chaw The problem with casting Keanu Reeves in the role of DC Comics anti-hero John Constantine, a chain-smoking, blue-collar bloke who happens to have a foot in a supernatural parallel world occupied by angels and demons, is that because of the actor's ethereal–some would say "stoned"–demeanour, he never for a moment convinces that his is the sympathetic point of view. Imagine Robert Redford as Snake Plisskin, or Pierce Brosnan playing Ash in the Evil Dead films: Constantine, if they were insisting on an American actor, should have been Denis Leary. By inserting Reeves as your avatar, suddenly the whole shooting match is about CGI effects and impossible things doing impossible things (witness the last two Matrix films). But even without Reeves as the central distraction, Constantine avoids much of what made the "Hellblazer" mythology so compelling (that Lucifer is beautiful, that Constantine is genuinely an asshole instead of a lovable loser), with its worst crime coming in making the film something of an anti-smoking tract. Displaying the Surgeon General's warning centre stage in one fiery moment and having the hero quit in the movie's worst, most toadying, most cowardly joke, Constantine amounts to a straw man.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) [2-Disc Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 6, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Spielberg

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf
screenplay by David Koepp
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw There's a moment in the first thirty minutes of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hereafter Indy 4) that is so iconic, so breathtaking in its construction and implication within and without the text, that I was frankly glad to be alive at this point in our cinematic history. Well into its second century, the movies have become the wellspring of our past–enough that more than a few people, I'd wager, will debate whether or not mammoths had something to do with the construction of the pyramids and, more insidiously, whether, as U-571 asserts, the Americans had anything to do with the recovery of a working German Enigma machine. As early as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and before, films began to comment on how they'd become the opaque overlay to actual history–and perhaps, you know, history was the better for it: prettier, fancier, taller, with a better screenwriter and Edith Head at the threads. The question with currency, then, becomes what happens to our concept of history when the digital age renders any phantasm a compelling one. The image of which I speak (it's a minor, minor spoiler, so avert thy gaze if you're easily offended), of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) silhouetted against a mushroom cloud, is something that people like Baudrillard would/should worry over for entire volumes of critical theory. As Indy is permanently, pregnantly implanted on the collective psyche of the blockbuster generation, I do wonder if I'll ever see a depiction of a nuclear blast again without looking at it through the prism of this avatar's eyes. It's like picturing Marty McFly jumping into the Holocaust, or Forrest Gump at Dealey Plaza–I won't be able to help myself.

Body of Lies (2008)

October 3, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War

**/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani
screenplay by William Monahan, based on the novel by David Ignatius
directed by Ridley Scott

Bodyofliesby Walter Chaw Perfectly workmanlike, unimpeachably prestige-y, achingly contemporary, and a near-complete failure as revelation, Ridley Scott's Body of Lies tells the tale of modern spook-dom complete with spy satellites, cell-phone eavesdropping, torture, and terrorists. A compelling stew, one would think, yet something that a decade ago would be seen as science-fiction and as recently as a few years ago as satire today offers no surprises–no discernible sharp edges, smooth as a river stone worn down by a few fast years of crippling cynicism. So the United States is a fingernail factory skating on the razored edge of impossible technologies and still, because of two-minutes-ago wisdom and dusty bureaucrats, unable to exterminate subjects and achieve minimal objectives in our ideological war. The film advises that we trust no one, that the issues are complex, that our enemies aren't stupid, and that there will always be a super-suave Sharif-ian Arab in pictures like this lest we forget how much we're capable of getting behind the Disneyfied Aladdin portrait of the Near East when push comes to shove. It reminds that Russell Crowe can get fat with the best of them even if, after The Insider, no one was wondering–and it reminds that Leonardo DiCaprio is pretty good at this intense young man shtick (although no one was wondering that, either). The problem with Body of Lies isn't its craft (indeed, it's one of the most handsomely-mounted, professionally-executed pictures of the year)–the problem is that it's got nothing to say in a media-rich environment awash with pundits, alive with YouTube, and actually awake for all the sleepiness in our mid-section. The irony of Body of Lies is that it's about intelligence but its own is at least a few months behind the curve.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

September 23, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Satire, Sci-Fi

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Casper Van Dien, Jolene Blalock, Amanda Donohoe, Boris Kodjoe
written and directed by Ed Neumeier

Starshiptroopers3cap

by Bryant Frazer Hollywood has lately been lousy with torpidly sincere, marquee-name-bedecked anti-war movies, but leave it to the auteurs working in the low-budget trenches to devise an impolite satire of current war efforts. Starship Troopers 3: Marauder isn't exactly deep, but it is an Iraq War allegory that takes on not only the political groupthink that comes with a war well-fought, but also the delusional, God-on-our-side religious angle. In this ramshackle action adventure written and directed by Ed Neumeier, co-writer with director Paul Verhoeven of the original Starship Troopers (which was more a rambunctiously contrary riff on Robert Heinlein's same-named novel than an actual adaptation), the Federal Network's space marines are fighting against a race of alien bugs in an interplanetary war that's become so unpopular that the penalty for anti-war protestors is televised hanging. "This is a very simple ruling," declares one federal judge before an execution, adding–in quotation of a notorious comment made by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in September 2001–"People need to watch what they say."

The Fall Guy: The Complete First Season (1981-1982) + CHiPs: The Complete First Season (1977-1978) – DVDs

September 17, 2008Posted in1970s, 1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Television

THE FALL GUY: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image B Sound B- Extras C-
“The Fall Guy Pilot,” “The Meek Shall Inherit Rhonda,” “The Rich Get Richer,” “That’s Right, We’re Bad,” “Colt’s Angels,” “The Human Torch,” “The Japanese Connection,” “No Way Out,” “License to Kill (Part 1),” “License to Kill (Part 2),” “Goin’ For It!,” “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harold,” “Soldiers of Misfortune,” “Ready, Aim… Die!,” “Ladies on the Ropes,” “The Snow Job,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Town,” “Child’s Play,” “Charlie,” “Three for the Road,” “The Silent Partner,” “Scavenger Hunt”

CHiPs: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image C Sound B Extras D
“Pilot,” “Undertow,” “Dog Gone,” “Moving Violation,” “Career Day,” “Baby Food,” “Taking Its Toll,” “Green Thumb Burglar,” “Hustle,” “Highway Robbery,” “Name Your Price,” “Aweigh We Go,” “One Two Many,” “Rustling,” “Surf’s Up,” “Vintage ’54,” “Hitch-Hiking Hitch,” “Cry Wolf,” “Crash Diet,” “Rainy Day,” “Crack-Up,” “Flashback!”

by Ian Pugh In giving a modern-day look-see to a television series that stars a late-’70s/early-’80s icon as a Hollywood stuntman who improbably moonlights as a charming, violent bounty hunter, it seems only natural to start the discussion by lobbing a few Death Proof jokes in its general direction. Take the time to really sit down and watch “The Fall Guy”, however, and you’ll find that the complete honesty of its quest to grab the viewer’s attention just melts away your desire to be snarky. Lee Majors is the show’s anchor as Colton Seavers, the eponymous stuntman who spends his free time on assignment for a bail bondsman (Jo Ann Pflug) searching for folks who’ve skipped town before their court date, bringing his overeducated cousin (Douglas Barr, dead weight) and a stuntwoman-in-training (Heather Thomas, attractive dead weight) along for the ride. Although that premise gets bogged down in guns, fistfights, and doing crazy shit with whatever vehicles are available, Majors’s earnest performance offers a sense of levity to the proceedings, particularly once the character finally overcomes the traits ascribed to him by “The Fall Guy”‘s whiny country+western theme song, which complains about the stuntman’s inability to hold onto fame, money, or women. Indeed, as the series progresses, it becomes more interested in presenting Seavers as a conceptual mirror for the man who plays him, making Colt more of an aggressive ladies’ man (Majors was, after all, married to the era’s goddess-avatar of teenage onanism) and perhaps even turning his tides of bad luck into a tidy metaphor for Majors’s unsuccessful foray into features on the heels of “The Six Million Dollar Man”.

Kill Bill, Volume 2 (2004) – Blu-ray Disc

September 7, 2008Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Quentin Tarantino, FFC Must-Own, Martial Arts, Revenge, Road Movie, Thriller, Western

Kill Bill, Vol. 2
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Mustownby Walter Chaw Genre poetry from B-movies' poet laureate, Quentin Tarantino's conclusion to Kill Bill is marked by the filmmaker's carefully-calibrated celluloid insanity, as well as a deceptive maturity that allows a few powerfully-struck grace notes for the cult of femininity and the sanctity of motherhood. Its first portion overwhelming for its craft before lodging in the craw with its ever-present but tantalizingly difficult-to-nail moral code, Tarantino's epic whole clarifies a dedication to a sort of low, Samuel Fuller/Nicholas Ray tabloid cosmology, grounding itself eventually in the bold, lovely, curiously old-fashioned declaration that the last best reward is to be true to the primal clay of an idea of innate gender roles. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is so named not merely for camp grandeur's sake, but also to highlight the power of cultural archetypes and their roots in biology.

Kill Bill, Volume 1 (2003) – Blu-ray Disc

September 1, 2008Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Drama, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, Revenge, Road Movie, Thriller

Kill Bill, Vol. 1
****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, David Carradine
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Mustownby Walter Chaw There is a palpable, undeniable perversity to Quentin Tarantino's fourth feature film, a taste for the extreme so gleeful and smart that its references are homage and its puerility virtue. I seem to find a reason between every Tarantino film to dislike him, to cast aspersions on my memories of his films, but I'm starting to think the source of my dislike is jealousy. Tarantino is the director Spielberg is too timid to be: a gifted visual craftsman unafraid of the contents of his psychic closet, and a film brat whose teachers happen to be blaxploitation, samurai epics, and Shaw Brothers chop-socky instead of John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. And it isn't that I have aspirations of becoming a filmmaker, it's just that I want to be as good at something as Tarantino is at making movies.

Death Race (2008)

August 21, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Ian McShane, Joan Allen
written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Deathraceby Walter Chaw Paul W.S. Anderson makes one kind of movie: the kind with lots of explosions and girls and loud music and hyperkinetic editing. The shitty kind. Whether or not these pictures work has nothing to do with the head. Death Race, a "remake" of Roger Corman's Death Race 2000, is a middling Anderson joint: it's not so bad that you want to put a cigarette out on your eye, but it's also not so bad that it's good–though it is almost so bad that it's great. Jason Statham is Frankenstein, a guy framed for the murder of his wife who happens to be a former racecar driver–a past that, in the near future, is a premium in the privatized penal system. After being laid off from his blue-collar job in an entirely superfluous prologue that only really establishes the picture as one made in the second W. administration, Frank gets "recruited" to drive in the titular pay-per-view reality program involving hardened criminals participating in televised bloodsport. His arch-rival in the Big House is Machine Gun Joe (marble-mouthed Tyrese), his pit chief is gravel-voiced Coach (Ian McShane), and his zombie-voiced co-pilot is hot-looking Latin mannequin Case (Natalie Martinez). If you're surprised to see McShane in a piece of shit like this (sadly, McShane seems to only be in pieces of shit post-"Deadwood"), you should get a load of Joan Allen as evil bitch warden Hennessey, a creature one part genre prison bull, one part television executive. If she's also a lawyer and a film critic, start looking around for four horsemen.

Felon (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

August 11, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Prison, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Stephen Dorff, Harold Perrineau, Marisol Nichols, Val Kilmer
written and directed by Ric Roman Waugh

by Bryant Frazer If Jeffrey Lebowski had made a few wrong turns in life–if, let's say, he had brutally murdered some very bad men, as well as their families–he may have turned out not entirely unlike John Smith, the hulkingly mellow convict played by a moustachioed, goateed Val Kilmer in Felon. Judging from the wide berth the rest of the inmates give him, Smith is known as the silent-but-deadly type. Kilmer plays him from behind a whole bunch of prison tattoos with a steely glare, but also with a kind of openness that doesn't immediately compute. Although he's tagged as a sociopath, he's really just the opposite. He believes in justice, and he longs for the death sentence he feels his crimes deserve.

Birds of Prey: The Complete Series (2002-2003) – DVD

August 6, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Television

Image C+ Sound B- Extras C+

BIRDS OF PREY: THE COMPLETE SERIES
"Pilot," "Slick," "Prey for the Hunter," "Three Birds and a Baby," "Sins of the Mother," "Primal Scream," "Split," "Lady Shiva," "Nature of the Beast," "Gladiatrix," "Reunion," "Feat of Clay," "Devil's Eyes"

GOTHAM GIRLS: THE COMPLETE SERIES
"The Vault," "Lap Bat," "Trick or Trick, Part 1," "Trick or Trick, Part 2," "A Little Night Magic," "More Than One Way," "Precious Birthstones," "Pave Paradise," "The Three Babies," "Gardener's Apprentice," "Lady-X," "Hold That Tiger," "Miss Un-Congeniality," "Strategery," "Baby Boom," "Cat-n-Mouse," "Bat'ing Cleanup," "Catsitter," "Gotham Noir," "Scout's Dishonor," "I'm Badgirl," "Ms.-ing in Action," "Gotham in Pink," "Hear Me Roar," "Gotham in Blue," "A Cat in the Hand," "Jailhouse Wreck," "Honor Among Thieves," "No, I'm Batgirl," "Signal Fires," "Cold Hands, Cold Heart"

by Ian Pugh The most that can be said for the execrable "Birds of Prey" is that, five years beforehand, it predicted the disaster of David Eick's unfortunate "Bionic Woman" remake: owing its creation to the popularity of a similarly-themed show ("Smallville" being the analog for "Battlestar Galactica" in this instance), it transforms an already-overblown superhero premise into an ill-conceived soapbox to peddle some artificial feminist claptrap. And, like "Bionic Woman", it attempts to capture the atmosphere of its forebears while betraying zero understanding of what made them successful in the first place. Unlike many of the show's detractors, I don't really care that "Birds of Prey" is a Batman series without Batman's literal presence; I do, however, care that it basically removes any hint of pathos from the setting and, in the classic tradition of the now-defunct WB television network, replaces it with the superficial whininess that teenagers frequently use to get attention. It's The Dark Knight Returns without the nostalgic melancholy. The Killing Joke without the sick, mind-bending tragedy. No Man's Land without the goddamned earthquake.

Once Upon a Zeitgeist: Blue City (1986); Top Gun (1986); The Lost Boys (1987); Bull Durham (1988)

August 5, 2008Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sports, Teen, Thriller, Tom Cruise, Vampire

80sdiscstitle

BLUE CITY – DVD
ZERO STARS/**** Image C- Sound C-
starring Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Paul Winfield, Scott Wilson
screenplay by Lukas Heller and Walter Hill, based on the novel by Ross MacDonald
directed by Michelle Manning

TOP GUN [Widescreen Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD + [Special Collector’s Edition] Blu-ray Disc
*/****
DVD – Image B Sound B+ Extras B
BD – Image B+ Sound A+ (DTS) A- (DD) Extras B
starring Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards
screenplay by Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr.
directed by Tony Scott

THE LOST BOYS [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
starring Corey Feldman, Jami Gertz, Corey Haim, Dianne Wiest
screenplay by Janice Fischer & James Jeremias and Jeffrey Boam
directed by Joel Schumacher

BULL DURHAM [Collector’s Edition] – DVD
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Trey Wilson
written and directed by Ron Shelton

by Walter Chaw Released in 1986 and tonally identical to contemporary suck classics The Wraith and Wisdom, the Brat Pack travesty Blue City represents the nadir of a year that produced Blue Velvet, Down By Law, The Mosquito Coast, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Sid and Nancy, Aliens, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Fly, Big Trouble in Little China, Something Wild, Mona Lisa, and Night of the Creeps, for starters. It’s the quintessence of why people remember the 1980s as a terrible decade for film, poor in every single objective measure of quality. Consider a central set-piece where our hero Billy (Judd Nelson) and his buck-toothed cohort Joey (David Caruso) stage a weird re-enactment of the heist from The Killing at a dog track that includes not only such bon mots as “I’m new at this! Give me a break!” but also the dumbest diversionary tactic in the history of these things as Joey tosses a prime cut on the track in front of a frankly startled/quickly delighted pack of muzzled greyhounds. Then again, it’s not a bad metaphor for the Me Generation and its blockbuster mentality. After cracking wise a few times in a way that makes one wonder if he’s suddenly become a Republican, Billy blows on the barrel of his gun in his best John Ireland-meets-Montgomery Clift and professional bad editor Ross Albert (the whiz kid behind Bushwhacked, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Pest) cracks a little wise himself by cutting to a rack of hot dogs. Unfortunately, suggesting that Judd Nelson is gay as a French holiday is only mildly wittier than suggesting the same of clearly gay Tom Cruise. More on that when we get to Top Gun.

The Sum of All Fears (2002) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

July 27, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Germany, Thriller, War

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B Extras A-
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber
screenplay by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, based on the novel by Tom Clancy
directed by Phil Alden Robinson

by Walter Chaw The Sum of All Fears is a well-made techno-horror film based on a reasonably well-written (by Tom Clancy standards) techno-horror novel. It's a studio marketing department's worst nightmare post-9/11 (the movie revolving around a pilfered nuclear weapon and a terrorist plot to destabilize the universe) and a critic's wet dream: finally, something meaty to write about in popular film. Or so it would seem, for alas, The Sum of All Fears is just a well-made techno-horror film–in theme and suggestion, it's as moldy and stately as a Le Carré master plot with little comment regarding the state of our world besides "Bad people do bad things despite the best efforts of good people." See, we know that already; while I'm the first to decry the pathological dedication of mainstream pictures to provide easy solutions for life's injustices, The Sum of All Fears is a remarkably ill-timed piece that plays essentially like the sharp twist of a buried knife.

Vantage Point (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

July 23, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, William Hurt
screenplay by Barry L. Levy
directed by Pete Travis

by Bryant Frazer If Vantage Point is an experiment, it can be pretty much considered a failure. The unconventional strategy here is to construct a narrative feature by taking multiple passes at the same 20 minutes or so in a very bad day for Secret Service agent Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid). Barnes took a bullet for the President of the United States a year ago and has been scheduled to return to duty by working the security detail for the PotUS's speech at an anti-terrorist summit in Salamanca, Spain. And before he can speak, President Ashton (William Hurt) is nailed by an assassin's bullet–or is he?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

July 11, 2008Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Germany, Hungary, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

****/****
starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, John Hurt
written and directed by Guillermo del Toro

Hellboyiiby Walter Chaw It’s at the forefront of one’s mind during Hellboy II: The Golden Army (hereafter Hellboy II), Guillermo del Toro’s brilliant dance along an ephemeral tightrope between pop and Puccini, that David Cronenberg and Howard Shore recently converted their remake of The Fly into a full-fledged opera: I can see the same thing happening with a lot of del Toro’s pictures. The director’s said that after his Pan’s Labyrinth “something popped” in regards to his restraint in allowing the menagerie of monsters in his brain free rein over his imagination–and that he endeavoured to bring all the madness of Mike Mignola’s “Hellboy” universe to the big screen with or without a commensurately giant budget. (Of Summer ’08’s blockbusters, Hellboy II, costing around 85 million dollars, might be the most frugal.) The result is a film so crammed to the gills with invention that a bit of background business in a scene set at a bazaar hidden beneath the Brooklyn Bridge (this is the second great genre film this year after Cloverfield to make a pit stop at that particular locale) wherein a creature plays a pipe made out of a tanned human corpse is left uncommented-upon and is somehow ultimately unremarkable. The wonders of Hellboy II as experienced through our avatars Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Liz (Selma Blair), and Abe (Doug Jones, this time vocalizing the character as well)–team members for a covert government agency that deals with supernatural intrusions–are the way the world is, and it’s fascinatingly left for the normals in the audience to crane for a better look.

Hancock (2008)

July 1, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, Superhero, Theatrical, Will Smith

***/****
starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, Jae Head
screenplay by Vy Vincent Ngo & Vince Gilligan
directed by Peter Berg

Hancockby Walter Chaw I’m an unabashed Peter Berg fan. I think that his Very Bad Things is naughty and transgressive in ways that Judd Apatow could only pretend; that his The Rundown is the first film since Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small to use little people correctly in a rollicking, rousing sentence; and that his Friday Night Lights did a very fine job of essaying the insular madness of Texas high-school football. Berg’s last picture, The Kingdom, is the finest pop explication of the brief history of (and our relationship with) the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and now his superhero epic Hancock has the temerity to try to address the colour barrier in comics as it relates, uneasily, to these United States. Talking about it tells everything, so beware the major spoiler, but Hancock has at its centre an indestructible, airborne, super-strong black man with a white wife who, should he spend too much time near her, renders him completely, utterly mortal and thus subject to the world that would see them apart. Consider that this is a mega-budget, 4th of July blockbuster starring Will Smith, the black guy all America can agree on, doing the old miscegenation tango with the whitest white girl on the planet, South African lovely Charlize Theron, which should have aged white Republicans twisted up in their Confederate-flag panties. We’re only really forty years removed from Selma, Alabama, and here’s forty-year-old Will Smith planting a big wet one on Theron’s lips in a tentpole flick the summer that Barack Obama became the first black man chosen as the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States. God bless America, free(r) at last.

Bridge to Terabithia (2007) [Widescreen]; The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007); The Spiderwick Chronicles [2-Disc Field Guide Edition] – DVDs

June 30, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Thriller

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Josh Hutcherson, Annasophia Robb, Robert Patrick, Zooey Deschanel
screenplay by Jeff Stockwell and David Paterson, based on the book by Katherine Paterson
directed by Gabor Csupo

THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING
½*/**** N/A
starring Alexander Ludwig, Christopher Eccleston, Ian McShane, Frances Conroy
screenplay by John Hodge, based on the book by Susan Cooper
directed by David L. Cunningham

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, David Strathairn
screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick and John Sayles, based on the books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
directed by Mark Waters

Bridgetoterabithiacap

by Walter Chaw In the genre of wide-eyed, hyperactive ‘tween bullshit, there seems a common thread of missing parents or siblings with all the attendant Oedipal complexities upon which to coat-hanger every genus of just-pubescent, Uncle Joe Campbell shenanigans. (Oh, I get it, it’s a metaphor for strange hair, jerking-off, and embarrassing hard-ons–no wonder I identify with these things again as I get older.) More underground than overt adolescent emo rock-star/rapist fantasies like vampirism, the flicks of this type that work–such as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, or the third and fifth Harry Potters, or The Passion of the Christ–incorporate the uncertainty and body horror of growing up with hero/martyr fantasies and, ultimately, the melancholy of childhood’s end. The result of a job well done is a piece of enduring, often befuddling, resonance, owing in part to the canny hijacking of some existing folklore or mythology (including comic books) and the gratifying recognition that at the end of all that hormonal devastation is the justification of manhood. Psychosexual psychodrama at least, the new crop of boy-into-man-boy flicks, in the wake of the astounding success of that certain boy wizard (and, shit, probably Shrek‘s, too), takes a new interest in fantasy as a means to specific ontological ends. For this unabashed fan of Matthew Robbins’s idyllic, laden Dragonslayer, it’s not entirely bad news.

Cloverfield (2008) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 25, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Pseudo-Documentary, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras A
BD – Image A Sound A+ Extras A
starring Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David
screenplay by Drew Goddard
directed by Matt Reeves 

Cloverfieldcap

by Walter Chaw I love this movie. I love its freedom and its exuberance, its sense of fun and its creativity. I love that it uses The Blair Witch Project as a launchpad for its low-tech, found-footage brilliance; I love its genius-level viral marketing campaign and its Ludditism and overt technophobia. Where The Blair Witch Project skewered trust-fund kids picking a particularly unfortunate senior project, Cloverfield takes on twentysomething urbanites on top of the world in Manhattan, celebrating the departure of one of their own on the night the chickens come home to roost. There's no explanation of the mayhem in Cloverfield beyond that a monster has attacked and that the recoil its rampage spawns inevitably resembles memories of our collective scarring by 9/11. All it does, really, is clarify that when people at Ground Zero referred to the falling of the WTC as "just like in a movie," it didn't point to a divorce from reality but to an inability, utterly, to conceive of anything so epoch-shaking as possible outside the prism of our precious, silver-graven images. The history depicted in our films is the only history we know.

Dirty Harry [Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

June 23, 2008Posted in****/****, 1970s, 1980s, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Crime, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Revenge, Thriller

DirtyharrybdstitleDIRTY HARRY (1971)
****/**** IMAGE A- SOUND A- EXTRAS A
starring Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, Andy Robinson
screenplay by Julian Fink & R.M. Fink and Dean Riesner
directed by Don Siegel

MAGNUM FORCE (1973)
***/**** IMAGE A SOUND A- EXTRAS B+
starring Clint Eastwood, Hal Holbrook, Mitchell Ryan, David Soul
screenplay by John Milius and Michael Cimino
directed by Ted Post

THE ENFORCER (1976)
**/**** IMAGE A- SOUND A EXTRAS B+
starring Clint Eastwood, Tyne Daly, Harry Guardino, Bradford Dillman
screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and Dean Riesner
directed by James Fargo

SUDDEN IMPACT (1983)
*½/**** IMAGE C+ SOUND A- EXTRAS B
starring Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, Bradford Dillman
screenplay by Joseph C. Stinson
directed by Clint Eastwood

THE DEAD POOL (1988)
***/**** IMAGE A+ SOUND A- EXTRAS B-
starring Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Evan C. Kim
screenplay by Steve Sharon
directed by Buddy Van Horn

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The barrel of a sniper rifle seeps through a memorial-wall dedication to San Francisco’s finest, and Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry establishes right off the bat that the war on crime is just that: a war; the real question is how to properly fight it when the only real motivators are fear and anger. The film already has its ready-made villain in a fictionalized version of the Bay Area’s own Zodiac Killer, “Scorpio” (Andy Robinson, almost certainly the greatest madman in cinematic history), and the viewer encounters a terrifying golem personifying his frustrations with killers consistently eluding a seemingly-helpless police force and criminals who are caught and released back into society on mere technicalities. Dirty Harry only takes the next logical step by pandering to our basest desires with an equally frightening and chaotic icon: “Dirty Harry” Callahan (Clint Eastwood, at the top of his game), an inspector in the SFPD’s Homicide department who lost his wife to a drunk driver a while back and now takes it out on the rest of criminal society with his .44 Magnum, blasting a hole through any motherfucker unfortunate enough to disturb the peace in his presence. The French Connection‘s Popeye Doyle impressed with his dogged determination, but Harry is the genuine realization of a dick-raising fantasy of the quintessential modern man (notice that the numbers of his radio call sign, “Inspector 71,” reflect the film’s year of release) in that he gives us everything we want without burdening us with the trauma of actually having to become him.

10,000 BC (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

June 22, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, South Africa, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Joel Virgel
screenplay by Roland Emmerich & Harald Kloser
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Walter Chaw Gather 'round, younglings, pull up a rock. Comfortable? Good. Roland Emmerich's 10,000 BC is about a young warrior named "D'Leh" (Steven Strait) who has the bad judgment to fall in love with doll-eyed Evolet (Camilla Belle)–who herself has the bad judgment to be kidnapped by slave traders. The movie starts in the Himalayas, I think, and ends there following an interminable foray in a rainforest as well as an Egyptian detour. I know it's Egypt because we see them building Pyramids in the desert, though I confess to being a little confused by the revelation that mammoths are beasts of burden in 10,000 BC, forced to participate in the construction of said pyramids. I had time to wonder aloud about how this is the second film after Jumper in 2008's deadly winter-doldrums sweepstakes to go to Egypt's Valley of Kings, and about how D'Leh and his mentor Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis) could not only make the hike from Nepal (or somewhere) to Egypt wearing sandals and standard-issue Tarzan gear, but also why they were dressed like that on an exposed, snow-covered mountain in the first place. 10,000 BC's first mistake is giving the audience time to think at all, seeing as how the same courtesy was not afforded to anyone on the production side of things–thus allowing for domesticated sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths to decorate this epic™ quest in pursuit of a damsel so under-developed that when it's revealed she has scars in the shape of the constellation Orion, I genuinely had no idea why it mattered. Still don't.