Night Watch (2004)

March 3, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Russia, Theatrical, Thriller, Vampire

Nochnoy dozor
*/****
starring Konstantin Khabensky, Vladimir Menshov, Valeri Zolotukhin, Mariya Poroshina
screenplay by Timur Bekmambetov and Laeta Kalogridis
directed by Timur Bekmambetov

Nochnoidozorby Walter Chaw When it's not frantically whipping up arbitrary rules in its supernatural universe like the world's most convoluted (and expensive game) of Calvin-ball, Russian sensation Timur Bekmambetov's epileptic fusion of Highlander and The Matrix, Night Watch, comes off as every bit the puerile lightshow that such a union would imply. Consider the premise: Light and dark "Others" live amongst humans, sometimes not knowing that they're not human, frozen in a centuries-old truce policed through night and day watches (and a dusk watch, too, judging by the proposed title of the third film in this planned trilogy) that ensure both sides refrain from killing one another. They're all vampires, I guess, though some are also shapeshifters (or instead are shapeshifters, who knows?) and some are those Indian fakir surgeons who used to pretend to reach into human body cavities and yank out chicken guts. It's telling that no positive review of this film is complete without a mention that there's a sequel and, with it, the rationalization that the many narrative crimes of Night Watch are explicable within the need for extended exposition in the first chapter. (See also: The Phantom Menace.) Telling, also, that the best proof presented for the quality of the film is that it's the top-grossing film in Russian history–that is, until its sequel recently eclipsed its $16M gross with a $33M haul of its own.

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) + Domino (2005) [New Line Platinum Series|Widescreen] – DVD

March 2, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, DVD, France, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
**½/****
starring David Strathairn, Patricia Clarkson, George Clooney, Jeff Daniels
screenplay by George Clooney & Grant Heslov
directed by George Clooney

DOMINO
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo
screenplay by Richard Kelly
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw Rigorous and principled, George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck. is a curiously slight film for more reasons than the fact that almost a third of it is comprised of archival footage integrated semi-successfully into the story. It's a recreation of a very specific battle in a very specific war that resonates with our Patriot Act/Guantanamo Bay situation, and indeed, that's the target Clooney seems most interested in striking. But without a larger context (the sort that would have weakened its allegorical usefulness), the picture sets itself up as something as obvious as it is minor and feather-light. It's a professional, high-minded, and staid biopic is what I'm saying, a film that says what it says with the stark B&W cinematography of a Dr. Strangelove, but in its icy, humourless way, it's the same stark B&W cinematography of a Fail-Safe, too. It's close and under-populated–and even with so insular and finely-focused a spotlight, it contains at least two completely superfluous characters.

Ryan’s Daughter (1970) [Two-Disc Special Edition] + Dune (1984) [Extended Edition] – DVDs

February 23, 2006Posted in1970s, 1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: David Lynch, Disability, Drama, DVD, Mexico, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

RYAN’S DAUGHTER
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, Christopher Jones, Sarah Miles
screenplay by Robert Bolt
directed by David Lean

DUNE
***½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino, Brad Dourif, José Ferrer
screenplay by David Lynch, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by David Lynch

DUNE (Extended Edition)
*½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino, Brad Dourif, José Ferrer
screenplay by Judas Booth, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by Alan Smithee

by Bill Chambers The common charge levelled at Ryan’s Daughter when it was released in 1970 was that it seemed anachronistic within contemporary film culture. Indeed, what so infuriated the New York critics, in particular, was not just that Lean had strayed from his roots (thematically, Ryan’s Daughter in fact represents a throwback for the Brief Encounter director), but that he had lost all trace of humility in the bargain. One might say the English were finally getting a taste of their own medicine, as Lean had essentially become a Hollywood imperialist, intruding on cinema’s evolution towards minimalism by treating a rather insular love triangle–catnip to the infidelity-obsessed British realists–like a theme-park attraction, subjecting it to both hyperbole and an incongruous perfectionism.1 (“In general the only way for artists to work in the medium is frugality,” wrote Pauline Kael, thereby consigning Lean to the realm of not-artists.) This violation of an unspoken Prime Directive resonates in the current trend of giving A-list makeovers to grindhouse fare.

Red Eye (2005) [Widescreen] + Four Brothers (2005) [Special Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] – DVDs

February 15, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Revenge, Thriller, Wes Craven

RED EYE
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jack Scalia
screenplay by Carl Ellsworth
directed by Wes Craven

FOUR BROTHERS
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese, André 3000, Garrett Hedlund
screenplay by David Elliot & Paul Lovett
directed by John Singleton

by Walter Chaw If it barely registers at under ninety minutes, Wes Craven's high-concept thriller Red-Eye is carried along by a couple of excellent lead performances (from Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams) and a revenge subtext that lends surprising gravity to the lingering sensitivity of a sexual assault victim's scars. Red-Eye plays its 9/11 hand–and what else would you expect from a film about an assassination attempt on the Director of Homeland Security that takes place mostly on an airplane–as a metaphor for rape, because rape, after all, is as good a metaphor as any for a terrorist attack on native soil. Look to the glut of home invasion films (of which this is also one) in 2005 as further clarification of that connection–aliens of an inscrutable nature and purpose (and morality, it goes without saying) have come into the places we thought most sacred and taken what they wanted of our innocence: our once inviolate sense of security. Heady stuff for a film that is essentially Nick of Time on a plane, and indeed it may ultimately be too slight a framework to support the amount of topical sociology I'm tempted to ask it to bear, but there are moments now and again weighted with so much proverbial baggage that Red-Eye, with its melancholy regret, sucks the air right out of the theatre.

La scorta (1993) – DVD

February 14, 2006Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Italy, Thriller

**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Claudio Amendola, Enrico Lo Verso, Carlo Cecchi, Ricky Memphis
screenplay by Graziano Diana and Simona Izzo
directed by Ricky Tognazzi

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no way to put a fine point on this: La scorta is Backdraft with bodyguards. That is to say, it's one of those unsung-hero movies that: a) takes its subject very seriously; b) tries to give voice to a voiceless few; and c) fails to avoid every pitfall of the genre. The film is perhaps less heinous in its cinematic crimes than that Ron Howard schlockfest, but it's relentlessly mediocre, full of scenes that telegraph their significance and constantly reduce the characters to shorthand or macho clichés. Though La scorta does a good job of running down the outrageous risks faced by police bodyguards of judges, it doesn't bring their plight alive, choosing to make a gift of "white-knuckle tension" instead of dealing with the very real fear our heroes face. It's a smiley-faced version of pure, screaming terror–which, unfortunately, most people would probably prefer to something more free-form.

Repo Man (1984) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

February 6, 2006Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Esoterica, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash
written and directed by Alex Cox

Repomanunicapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The question I ask after a screening of Repo Man is this: is it punk? And if it isn't punk, what is it? Those used to the anarcho-communitarian (i.e., "nice") ideals adopted by punk's intelligentsia would have no truck with the mentality of this film, whose hero, Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez), is in it for cheap thrills and hasn't got an ideal in his head. Indeed, once he gets sucked into the more "intense" world of car repossessor Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) and thus gainful employment, he distances himself from his punk friends–as represented by the three mohawk'd chumps whose idea of "doing crimes" is "let's order sushi and not pay!" But the repo gig leads to another dead end, as Bud turns out to be a blowhard full of idiot rules and his compatriots prove more unstable than Otto's old friends. There is no future to Otto's dreaming–just the cul-de-sac of punk's dark flipside: nihilism.

Thunder and Lightning (1977) – DVD

February 3, 2006Posted in1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring David Carradine, Kate Jackson, Eddie Barth, Roger C. Carmel
screenplay by William Hjortsberg
directed by Corey Allen

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A long time ago…I saw Thunder and Lightning with my family on a drive-in double-bill with Star Wars. I remember the experience of the former being not only uncomfortable for my 6-year-old self, but in fact the polar opposite of the elaborate fantasy I was there to see (again). Yet aside from a couple of scenes that stuck, I later drew a complete blank on what it was all about. In one of those grail quests exclusive to sedentary movie nerds, the idea that I had to find out never stopped bothering me, though I now know there was a reason for my initial discomfort: it turns out that Thunder and Lightning takes entirely serviceable moonshine B-movie tropes and does as little as possible with them.

Tristan + Isolde (2006)

January 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, UK, War

*/****
starring James Franco, Sophia Myles, Rufus Sewell, David O'Hara
screenplay by Dean Georgaris
directed by Kevin Reynolds

Tristanisoldeby Walter Chaw After bravely transforming the Robin Hood legend into a case of thirtysomething love jones with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner's well-known ex-best friend Kevin Reynolds turns the Tristan + Isolde legend into a WB/TIGER BEAT-friendly, mouth-breathing bodice-ripper indicated by lots of backlighting, orgasmic slow-mo, and dialogue purple enough to blind a Bronte sister. It's shot like a perfume commercial and written like a florid creative-writing exercise, one packed with such AM Gold, Luther Ingram treasures as: "Why does loving you feel so wrong?" Well, it might have something to do with said love being the basis for the Guinevere/Lancelot adultery story in which a woman comes between a king and his most trusted knight, leading to the ideological and literal collapse of a kingdom. Or it might have something to do with the fact that the actors playing the lovers in question never for a moment manage to spark the soggy tinder packed beneath the story. This allows a great deal of time for the sentient beings left in the audience after the ten-minute-mark exodus to suss out why this thing was delayed, then dumped in the middle of the January dead zone. It also, incidentally, caused me to fantasize about somehow harnessing the ability of films like this to make 125 minutes feel like six days for youth-giving effects and racing box scores.

Broken Lizard’s Puddle Cruiser (1996) + The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) [Unrated – Widescreen] – DVDs

January 9, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

Puddle Cruiser
½*/**** Image C- Sound C- Extras C
starring Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Stephen Lemme, Paul Soter
screenplay by Broken Lizard
directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

THE DUKES OF HAZZARD
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C
starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Jessica Simpson, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by John O'Brien
directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

by Walter Chaw The first film from what would become the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, Puddle Cruiser was completed and released in 1996 on a budget of a quarter of a million dollars and enjoys the dubious distinction of being irrefutable evidence that Jay Chandrasekhar and company are as funny now as they always were. Something about Chandrasekhar's Adam Corolla-on-quaaludes persona rubs me exactly the wrong way: it isn't the delivery, really, so much as the pervasive sense of smug superiority, not to mention the hostility and, while we're at it, the fact that he's just not funny. With Puddle Cruiser, he's created a film best described as a carbon copy of Noah Baumbach's debut pic Kicking and Screaming–the key difference between them that Chandrasekhar and co-writers Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske are woefully out of their element as scenarists, gag writers, actors, you name it. That Broken Lizard has attained a level of popularity now with garbage like Super Troopers, Club Dread, and The Dukes of Hazzard is astonishing, if not as astonishing as Chandrasekhar having helmed a handful of episodes from the brilliant "Arrested Development"'s first season. Goes to show that even a glib asshole can't ruin a gifted cast, pitch-perfect script, or ironclad premise.

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) – DVD

December 20, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, China, DVD, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

ゴジラ FINAL WARS
**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Masahiro Matsuoka, Rei Kikukawa, Don Frye, Akira Takarada
screenplay by Wataru Mimura and Isao Kiriyama
directed by Ryuhei Kitamura

Godzillafinalwarscapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Applying critical standards to Godzilla is a useless endeavour. You don’t have to be schooled in Kracauer and Mulvey to know there’s something cinematically delicious about grown men in rubber monster suits having at each other, nor do you have to have a seat at the Tisch School to figure out that everything surrounding that is gravy. So the most and least a critic can do is to note that the latest (and perhaps last) entry in the series is: a) a big dogpile on the Green One by most of his old adversaries; b) nearly upstaged by some hilariously derivative human/alien backstory; and c) that you probably know before renting or buying whether you’ll come away thinking Godzilla: Final Wars is the greatest movie ever. You could quibble that nobody bothered to shoot Godzilla with the iconic artistry he deserved, but the monster has never been merely represented by cinema. Like John Wayne or Marlene Dietrich, he’s cinema all on his own.

Serenity (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 12, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau
written and directed by Joss Whedon

Serenitycapby Walter Chaw A key speech arrives towards the end of Joss Whedon's freewheeling space opera Serenity. The captain of an incongruous hunk of interplanetary junk–dubbed "Serenity" for said captain's transformative moment during a civil war in a valley of the same, ironic name–stands in a shaft of light and asks his disciples if, in essence, they're willing to follow him into Hell for a belief that their martyrdom will be in the cause of a greater glory. He's asking his crew, but he's also asking a slavering fanboy audience that has followed the good ship Serenity here to the big screen after the braintrust at Fox ("We'd rather focus on 'Stacked'–I'm sure you understand") cancelled Whedon's "Firefly" just eleven episodes into its run. The show found new life as a bestseller on DVD, of course, and this feature-length treatment acts as both the series finale it never got and a hopeful audition for a movie franchise. If it's still laden with such Whedonisms as thick, sometimes-inscrutable (certainly unspeakable) dialogue and a political cant worn, bleeding, on its sleeve, Serenity is also home to the kind of passion and belief in a cause worth fighting for with which the good ship's crew is infused at the bitter end.

Sky High (2005) + Stealth (2005)|Sky High [Widescreen] – DVD

November 28, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Disney, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller

SKY HIGH
½*/****  Image A Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kurt Russell
screenplay by Paul Hernandez and Robert Schooley & Mark McCorkle
directed by Mike Mitchell

STEALTH
**/****
starring Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Sam Shepard
screenplay by W.D. Richter
directed by Rob Cohen

Skyhighby Walter Chaw A kids movie for the stupid ones and a guys movie for the stupid ones of those, Sky High and Stealth are lowest-common-denominator entertainments that throw sense out the window in favour of clumsy one-liners, bad special effects, and an eye focused keen on demographics and the bottom line, which those demographics promise to fork over on opening weekend. It doesn't matter if they're good, just that they rake in enough moolah before people get a whiff of the noisome rot and ennui wafting on air-conditioned currents out of the friendly neighbourhood cineplex and start staying home again in droves. The dreadfulness of Sky High and Stealth can be measured by the extent to which this nation's timid, gaffed, untrained, dispassionate film critics equivocate in their reviews that it's for kids, that it's an enjoyable film if you check your brain at the door, and/or that it's "finally" the family/action/blockbuster you've been waiting for all summer long.

DIFF ’05: Brick

November 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Thriller
**½/****starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Nora Zehetner, Laura Dannonwritten and directed by Rian Johnson by Walter Chaw Brick is a cult classic-in-the-making and one for which I harbour a goodly amount of affection. (I should say I admire its chutzpah, if not its ultimate success.) It's an experiment in screenwriting and matching shots, a gimmick stretched to feature-length by first-time hyphenate Rian Johnson that puts Raymond Chandler's hardboiled lexicon into the mouths of disconsolate teens seething at a high school somewhere in the twenty-first century. It would've been a fantastic noir except for that displacement, as its coolness decomposes every…

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

November 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen
written and directed by Shane Black

Kisskissbangbangby Walter Chaw The same kind of movie as Doug Liman's Mr. and Mrs. Smith but more so, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang marks the hyphenate debut of star screenwriter Shane Black, and it's the kind of movie his Last Action Hero would have been had they aimed it at adults (and cast actors). A meta-exercise taken to plucky, insouciant excess, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is nihilistic, misanthropic, and it just might hate its audience a little, but damn if it doesn't wash out as something as exhilaratingly lawless as Sin City and recklessly experimental as Rian Johnson's Brick (two other examples of noir's recent extreme makeover). Though it's not shy in its one agonizing scene of gore, the picture seems more concerned about the way we assimilate–and anticipate–sex and violence at the movies.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

November 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Espionage, Romance, Thriller

***/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras B-
starring Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Adam Brody, Kerry Washington
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
directed by Doug Liman

by Walter Chaw Having more to do with Alfred Hitchcock's screwball comedy of the same name than would initially appear, Doug Liman's Mr. and Mrs. Smith affects the sexy, light-hearted, insouciant derring-do of the BBC's "The Avengers" and, paced as it is by Liman's trip-hammer way with an action scene, makes as strong a case for a franchise as any. (At the least, between Go, The Bourne Identity, and now Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Liman should become the first choice of anyone looking for an action helmer.) If the early going is often awkward, blame the complexity of the premise and its requirement that it stay absolutely airtight while setting up its preposterous premise: two of the world's top assassins living in holy matrimony without knowing that the other is a killing machine.

Doom (2005) + Stay (2005)

October 21, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, UK

DOOM
½*/****
starring The Rock, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, DeObia Oparei
screenplay by David Callaham and Wesley Strick
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

STAY
*½/****
starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Janeane Garofalo
screenplay by David Benioff
directed by Marc Forster

by Walter Chaw For a split second, the clouds part and I think I’ve kenned a glimmer of an idea in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s video game adaptation Doom that doesn’t involve homoerotic gun worship or ripping off everything from Aliens save its humanity. Semper Fi, gung ho, muscle-bound jarhead Sarge (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) takes it upon himself to order his own mini-Mai Lai because he’s a stickler for details, and his stock marines balk to varying degrees of morality-inspired mutiny. Suddenly, and just for that split second, Doom of all things becomes Casualties of War (and, in fact, literalizes that film’s tagline of “In war, innocence is the first casualty”), and although what’s leading up to the moment isn’t that great, I was ready to roll with this totally unexpected, thought-provoking tickle. Alas–it flees like hope so often does, leaving fifteen minutes of semi-gory first-person perspective to simulate the first-person perspective of the video game (marking this as the first–and probably last–time someone thought that ripping off Uwe Boll was a good idea), ending with the sort of mano-a-mano showdown between its warring alpha males that everyone’s seen enough of by now.

The Legend of Zorro (2005)

October 8, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Mexico, Romance, Spielberg, Theatrical, Thriller, Western

½*/****
starring Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rufus Sewell, Nick Chinlund
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by Martin Campbell

Legendofzorroby Walter Chaw It's Amblin Entertainment's version of Once Upon a Time in the West, which only serves as a reminder that it's been too long since the last time you saw Once Upon a Time in the West. Martin Campbell's dedicatedly underwhelming The Legend of Zorro goes through the motions of knock-off action sequels like this with a tired fidelity and–until a semi-sadistic conclusion–a squeamishness about enemy casualties that smacks of that peculiar morality for which there's ever an acceptable way to portray mindless carnage to the kiddie set. I'm not saying your moppets should be shielded from the ugliness of the world, I'm saying that should they witness someone getting pushed off a thirty-foot tower into a cactus patch with the tip of a sword, they ought not be shielded from the consequences. By the umpteenth time Campbell uses the classic "A-Team" tactic of showing the bad guys crawling away from a scene of mayhem in a slow-motion, "Hey, no harm done" shot, you don't feel comforted by the innocuousness of the thing so much as coddled for being a ninny who doesn't understand that more harm's done in assuring your kids that frenetic swordplay never results in somebody getting hurt.

TIFF ’05: The Myth

September 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, China, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, TIFF
½*/****starring Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Kim Hee-seon, Mallika Sherawatscreenplay by Stanley Tong, Wang Hui-ling, Li Hai-shudirected by Stanley Tong by Bill Chambers The Myth, or: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Turdbath. Sabotaging a potential comeback by trying to catch a wave (not unlike the myriad has-beens in the music industry who jumped on the disco bandwagon), Jackie Chan dips a toe in the unfriendly, nay, hostile waters of the wu xia genre recently revitalized by the likes of Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou. Although The Myth is cruddy-looking (HD's fine for George Lucas excretions and Robert Rodriguez fantasias, but it has…

Into the Blue (2005)

September 16, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Scott Caan, Ashley Scott
screenplay by Matt Johnson
directed by John Stockwell

Intotheblueby Walter Chaw Although it's impossible to discern the purpose of a movie like this, you find yourself ironically spending all of Into the Blue trying to do just that. Shot in a leering, dirty-old-man disgusting way by John Stockwell (a filmmaker I've liked in the past, though this one causes me to reassess what's going on in my head), the film places your subjective-camera eye upwards between the ankles of one bathing beauty after another, tracking slowly up and down their swimsuit-model bods and fixing, occasionally and briefly, on a perfunctory thriller plot that arises from nothing, goes nowhere, and makes no impact whatsoever on the parade of cakes. (Both beef and cheese.) It's an exploitation flick in the basest sense of the term, because the poor idiots onscreen most likely believe they've been hired for some sort of talent imperceptible to the rest of us (and with no evidence showing itself for the balance of their careers up to this point) as opposed to for how great they look holding their breath and having a camera positioned three feet from their stern. It's not that I'm complaining about having to stare at Jessica Alba's almost-unclad ass for two extraordinarily long hours–I'm complaining about Alba protesting that she's always cast in films for her acting prowess and not for how she looks almost-naked. I don't know if it's false modesty or willful ignorance, but either way: you gotta be kidding me.

A Sound of Thunder (2005)

September 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Germany, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Edward Burns, Catherine McCormack, Ben Kingsley, Jemima Rooper
screenplay by Thomas Dean Donnelly & Joshua Oppenheimer and Gregory Poirier, based on the story by Ray Bradbury
directed by Peter Hyams

Soundofthunderby Walter Chaw Dr. Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) lives in 2055 Chicago, where he conducts hunting trips back to the same moment in the Cretaceous period to hunt the same dinosaur fated to die moments later in a tar pit. Cheap thrills for the future's bluebloods, the outfit is called "Time Safari," and it's owned by an evil capitalist, Hatton (Ben Kingsley), who, in trying to appease future-Chicago's strict time-travel regulatory agency, warns his clients to stay on the path and keep their hands to themselves lest the shockwaves of fucking with prehistory change the course of evolution. It's a term that A Sound of Thunder bandies about with some confidence, "evolution," but it does so without conveying the first idea of what evolution actually is or how it works. It's the kind of film that creationists and other retarded people will like because it mounts a pretty good case for the intelligent design-/flat earth-inspired "Heck, we don't know shit, anything could be true!" school of thought.