Kangaroo Jack (2003)

January 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Family, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jerry O’Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Christopher Walken
screenplay by Steve Bing & Scott Rosenberg
directed by David McNally

by Walter Chaw Irresponsible to the extreme, Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest production is sleazy, violent, and packed with the sort of feckless, hateful messages that indicate an almost total disregard for an audience’s intelligence. Kangaroo Jack is, therefore, business as usual for a Bruckheimer production, save for the fact that it’s aimed at a very young audience. The picture is a malignance: it’s bad (for a film about a CGI kangaroo wearing a red “Brooklyn” jacket stealing fifty grand of the mob’s money, that much goes without saying), but what really impresses about the picture is its magnificent inappropriateness.

The Bourne Identity (2002) – DVD

January 15, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, DVD, FFC Must-Own, France, Germany, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Clive Owen, Chris Cooper
screenplay by Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Doug Liman

Mustownby Walter Chaw The Bourne Identity is a composition of gestures stripped of romance and presented in their barest forms. It is the most cannily cinematic film of the year and one that, during its first half-hour, boasts blissfully of but one minute of dialogue. The picture recognizes that Matt Damon is best as an everyman with potential by presenting him as a character born at the age of thirty-three. And the Oedipal detective story that forms the centre of the tale (“Who am I?”) is so ripe for examination that it may flower in time to be as debated and revered a fantasy as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (which likewise features the murder of The Father prior to a kind of manhood and subsequent mate choice). Very loosely based on Robert Ludlum’s novel of the same name, indie punk Doug Liman (director of Swingers) has constructed a parable of self-discovery that can as easily be read as a subversion of the conventions of the thriller genre, a discussion of the ways in which the audience participates in the process of genre fiction, or as a science-fiction piece in which strangely robotic über menschen run amuck in a technocratic world metropolis.

Freddy Vs. Jason (2003) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

January 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Horror, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Robert Englund, Monica Keena, Ken Kirzinger, Kelly Rowland
screenplay by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw Though it doesn’t work at all as a scary movie (with even its jump scares curiously tepid), there is the possibility with Freddy Vs. Jason to engage in an anagogical discussion as rich and fascinating as any offered before by the already meaty respective franchises, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Pitting Freddy Krueger–razor-fingered child murderer, victim of vigilante justice, and avatar of the sins of the literal fathers–against Jason Voorhees, hockey-masked victim of the cruelty of adolescence and the fear of sensuality, is amazingly fertile ground and handled herein with a seriousness that understands the death that post-modern cleverness represents for horror’s slasher subgenre. This is not to say that the film doesn’t make nods to Signs and 2001: A Space Odyssey, just to suggest that its story proper is firmly grounded in its own hermetic mythology, the curiously heady equation of its titular bogeys to some sort of modern holy pantheon.

Gangs of New York (2002)

December 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Martin Scorsese, Drama, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Jay Cocks and Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan
directed by Martin Scorsese

Gangsofnewyorkby Walter Chaw Beginning as Martin Scorsese’s Apocalypse Now, Gangs of New York, at the end of the auteur’s thirty-year dream of it, more resembles his Titanic. Buoyed on a tsunami of dark rumours of behind-the-scenes clashes (the line “Please don’t make that sound again, Harvey” registering as either a jab or a plea to Miramax head Harvey Weinstein), eleventh-hour cuts, and release delays pushing the film nearly a year from its projected release date, the picture is a booming, period-exact mess: disinteresting, unbalanced, and burdened by the weight of too much ambition blinding an artist to his celluloid offspring’s congenital, mortal defects–hubris redefined for the postmodern age. Though sprawling, it reduces to a series of vaguely connected dramatic snippets that largely fail to anchor the film to any specific place (the exception being a visually, viscerally arresting stream of coffins unloaded from ships ferrying the dead from the frontlines of the Civil War). It’s a malady exacerbated by the fact that the same five or six characters–played, with one stunning exception, as tepid variations on banal–seem to be everywhere in New York at all times.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

December 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, New Zealand, Theatrical

***/****
starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Peter Jackson

Twotowersby Walter Chaw Suffering from the problems inherent in split narratives, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (hereafter The Two Towers), at least for its first half, is disjointed and overreliant on a familiarity with not only the first film (which is essential), but also the Tolkien source material. Furthermore, the first cracks in Jackson’s conversance with CGI begin to show in the entirely animated Gollum character (a creature that bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve Buscemi), and too much time is given over to characters standing around looking at digital phantoms. Unlike its predecessor (The Fellowship of the Ring), The Two Towers feels too long by half despite the elision of key scenes from the source tome; the picture only picks up during its last ninety minutes, and then only as an unusually well-crafted action spectacle largely lacking in the nuance, pathos, and sharply-drawn characterizations of the first film.

Equilibrium (2002)

December 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Taye Diggs, Angus MacFadyen
written and directed by Kurt Wimmer

Equilibriumby Walter Chaw After cutting his teeth as a director on the Brian Bosworth vehicle One Tough Bastard, Kurt Wimmer proves himself grotesquely unprepared for his hyphenate debut: the futuristic stink-fest Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, and Taye Diggs. Set in the post-apocalypse via a series of tired title cards and voice-overs, the film is immediately recognizable as an ironically illiterate rip-off of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Lucas’s Aldous Huxley photocopy THX-1138. Pulling scenes entire from Blade Runner, Citizen Kane, and The Matrix while pulling philosophies entire from–yes, I was surprised, too–Gymkata, Equilibrium is another Dimension genre film made for no money that stinks a lot like Gary Fleder’s excrescent Impostor from earlier this year, though it somehow manages to be considerably funnier.

Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) [infinifilm] – DVD

November 19, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, Sci-Fi, Tom Cruise

*½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Mike Myers, Beyoncé Knowles, Michael York, Michael Caine
screenplay by Mike Myers & Michael McCullers
directed by Jay Roach

by Walter Chaw In the grand tradition of Final Chapter – Walking Tall, the third film in the Austin Powers franchise, Austin Powers in Goldmember, begins and ends with our hero watching himself being portrayed by someone else in a movie of his life–a level of post-modern reflexivity that is taken to such grotesque heights by the film that what emerges is actually fascinating in a detached, unpleasant, deeply unfunny sort of way. Mike Myers’s obsession with body distortion and cannibalistic consumption and auto-consumption likewise reaches a macabre pinnacle in the picture’s best running gag–the preoccupation with Fred Savage’s mole with a mole–and with a new circus geek for the Myers pantheon (joining blue-eyed bald albino Dr. Evil and Shrekian Scot Fat Bastard), the Dutch villain Goldmember, who makes it a habit to eat giant flakes of his own skin. We meet Goldmember (so named for his prosthetic bullion bar and ingots) in another bit of multi-layered absurdity during a time-travel journey to New York circa 1975 and the fictional Studio 69, with Myers referencing his own most critically praised performance as Studio 54’s perverse Steve Rubell. A study of Myers’s Dick Tracy-like mania with latex appliances would no doubt fill volumes.

Highlander TV Series: Season One (1992-1993) – DVD

November 16, 2002Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Fantasy, France, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Television

Image C – D+ Sound C Extras B
“The Gathering,” “Innocent Man,” “Road Not Taken,” “Bad Day in Building A,” “Free Fall,” “Deadly Medicine,” “Mountain Men,” “Revenge is Sweet,” “The Sea Witch,” “Eyewitness,” “Family Tree,” “See No Evil,” “Band of Brothers,” “For Evil’s Sake,” “For Tomorrow We Die,” “The Beast Below,” “Saving Grace,” “The Lady and the Tiger,” “Avenging Angel,” “Eye of the Beholder,” “Nowhere to Run,” “The Hunters”

by Walter Chaw It always struck me as the height of synergy that Queen would score a homoerotic cock opera involving swords and decapitations (and a first episode flat-of-the-blade ass-slap that would make Boy George blush), so, despite all of the things that are extravagantly wrong about the “Highlander” franchise moving to weekly television, the one thing that’s right about the transplant is the use of Freddie Mercury’s creepy ballad to immortal Scottish duellists as its theme song. Essentially a variation on that favourite fantasy of morbid teenagers–the vampire rock star mythos (live forever, fight clandestine battles with leather-horse foes, bed beautiful women and have a non-queer justification for not wanting to commit, pretend to have a cool accent, feel sorry for the small worries of mere mortals, look great)–the main difference in the “Highlander” universe is that the Highlanders aren’t capable of making new Highlanders. It’s as gay as a French holiday, is what I’m saying–not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Reign of Fire (2002) – DVD

November 10, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, Izabella Scorupco, Gerard Butler
screenplay by Gregg Chabot & Kevin Peterka and Matt Greenberg
directed by Rob Bowman

by Walter Chaw Opening concurrent to Sam Mendes’s Road to Perdition, it occurs to me that both it and Reign of Fire are grim, shadowy elegies to lost ages that rely upon gloomy landscapes to convey deeper resonances their stories basic fail to provide. The surprising difference is that Rob Bowman’s post-apocalyptic dragon opera actually has a cannier allegorical foundation. Where Road to Perdition is ultimately an empty broadside attempt at equating the semi-Rockwellian loss of innocence of a little boy to the semi-Rockwellian loss of innocence of the United States in the Twenties and Thirties, Reign of Fire appears to be a story of the Blitz and the first days of American involvement in WWII. The French even make a cameo to try to claim a little piece of “Berlin” during the otherwise incomprehensible epilogue.

Bad Company (2002)

November 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Czech Republic, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Anthony Hopkins, Chris Rock, Gabriel Macht, Garcelle Beauvais
screenplay by Jason Richman and Michael Browning
directed by Joel Schumacher

by Walter Chaw Apparently named after a dinosaur rock band for no other reason than that it is a logy, prehistoric stillbirth imbued with the corpulent stench of excess (and probably a scattershot popularity attributable to a feeble-minded few), Bad Company would be the worst film I have seen this year had I not attended Cameron Diaz’s The Sweetest Thing. It’s professional hack extraordinaire Joel Schumacher’s latest sloppy bucket of pyrotechnic tripe, and not coincidentally the umpteenth summer skinny dip in Jerry Bruckheimer’s putrid pond of retread action twaddle. The collaboration of Schumacher and Bruckheimer, incidentally, should be warning enough to most sentient beings–the addition of Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins, only overkill.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) [Widescreen] + The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) – Extended Edition [Platinum Series] – DVDs

November 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, New Zealand, Sci-Fi, Star Wars

STAR WARS: EPISODE II – ATTACK OF THE CLONES
*½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid
screenplay by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales
directed by George Lucas

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING – EXTENDED EDITION
***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Peter Jackson

by Bill Chambers In that period during which FILM FREAK CENTRAL was receiving 20 or 30 angry e-mails a day about Walter Chaw’s pan of Episode II, I was asked once or twice if I agreed with him. The answer is “yes,” though my reaction leans closer to apathetic than vitriolic. One thing I found, having just viewed Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones again on DVD, is that the small screen amplifies the picture’s weaknesses in reducing one of its core strengths: magnitude. Watching the film on TV, you reach all too instinctively for the game controller, and I felt violated this time out by Anakin’s scenes with Padmé (whereas before, one could somewhat blot out the bad thoughts with the movie’s marginalia)–not only are they like dramatizations of the wrong answer in a multiple choice COSMO quiz, they also unfairly paint Padmé (Natalie Portman) as one of the most superficial female characters in movie history.

I Spy (2002)

November 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Eddie Murphy, Hungary, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, Famke Janssen, Malcolm McDowell
screenplay by Marianne Sellek Wibberley & Cormac Wibberley and David Ronn & Jay Scherick
directed by Betty Thomas

Ispyby Walter Chaw The best bit of dialogue in Betty Thomas’s abysmal I Spy, a film saddled with a hack director and a too-many-cooks scenario that translates adroitly into the screenwriting process (the script is credited to Marianne Wibberley, Cormac Wibberley, Jay Scherick, and David Ronn), is a bit where Eddie Murphy “Cyranos” Owen Wilson to the tune of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” That out of a mercifully brief 90-minute film the best moment comes courtesy a cheap gag involving an R&B classic and a flash of panty is, really, statement enough about the wisdom and ingenuity of the entire enterprise. Proof positive, if more proof is needed of the fecklessness of this shipwreck, is the fact that Wilson, easily the most gifted screenwriter on set, was not among the many asked to put pen to paper for I Spy.

Eight Legged Freaks (2002) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

October 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scarlett Johansson, Scott Terra
screenplay by Jesse Alexander & Ellory Elkayem
directed by Ellory Elkayem

by Walter Chaw Ellory Elkayem’s Eight Legged Freaks (sic) is less a throwback to the giant-bug howlers of Gordon Douglas and Jack Arnold than just another post-modern fright comedy long on ironic genre in-references and short on any real thrills. In tone, it reminds a great deal of Joe Dante’s Gremlins II–more jokey than scary, in other words, and, like Gremlins II, Eight Legged Freaks works better than it ought to because of some fairly nifty special effects (I’ve seen worse CGI) and better-than-average performances from its B-list cast.

Film Freak Central Does San Franciso’s 2002 Dark Wave Film Festival

October 27, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Spain, Thriller, UK, Werewolf

Darkwavelogoby Walter Chaw The question, and it's a question with currency, is why anyone in their right mind would subject themselves (and their long-suffering editors) to coverage of two concurrent film festivals. A pair of answers: the obvious is that I'm not in my right mind, but as obvious is the fact that San Francisco's Dark Wave, which ran from October 18-20, is one of the most exciting "small" film festivals in the United States. I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about it, in other words–ulcers be damned. Presented by the hale San Francisco Film Society evenings and midnights at the historic Roxie, last year's presentation included one of this year's best films (Larry Fessenden's superb Wendigo) as well as the finest example of retro euro-horror (Lionel Delplanque's Deep in the Woods) since Dario Argento lost his marbles.

Desert Saints (2002) – DVD

October 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Romance, Thriller

**/**** Image C Sound C
starring Kiefer Sutherland, Melora Walters, Jamey Sheridan, Leslie Stefanson
screenplay by Rich Greenberg and Wally Nicols
directed by Rich Greenberg

by Walter Chaw Closer to Flashback than to Freeway, the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Desert Saints is actually closer to Montana than either: a neo-Tarantino erstwhile buddy road trip that pairs Donald's son with a flighty dingbat channelling Rosanna Arquette. Kiefer is Banks, a hired killer who hatches a plan with woman-on-the-lam Bennie (Melora Walters) to play house, check into the same (!) hotel south of the border to do his wicked business, and evade the pair of feds, Scanlon and Marbury (Jamey Sheridan and Leslie Stefanson), hot on his trail. Soul-searching and gut-spilling lead to the kind of sudden reversals that shift power from Banks to Bennie and back before ending in what can only be described as a confusion of trick endings telegraphed from the start. It's less delightful than I make it seem.

DIFF ’02: War

October 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Russia, War
Vojna*½/****starring Aleksei Chadov, Ian Kelly, Sergei Bodrov Jr., Ingeborga Dapkunaitewritten and directed by Aleksei Balabanovby Walter Chaw War is a peculiar low-budget version of Proof of Life that opens like that episode of "The Twilight Zone" about dolls come to life in a Beckett-ian toy box before it falls into some all-too-familiar patterns of folks getting kidnapped for ransom in Chechnya as foreign governments remain powerless (or disinclined) to get them back. Pitched with feverish earnestness, The War is high melodrama told without much in the way of moderation nor ultimately interest, its story proper that of a British man…

Formula 51 (2001)

October 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

The 51st State
*/****
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Nigel Whitmey, Robert Jezek, Emily Mortimer
screenplay by Stel Pavlou
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw Called The 51st State abroad, Formula 51‘s more redneck-friendly-sounding retitling can be read as an astonishing commentary on the Ronny Yu film itself. Astonishing because it implies not only that the picture is self-aware, but also that it has actually somehow identified which formula it adheres to by number–something that strikes me as terribly useful in a shorthand way.

DIFF ’02: The Princess Blade

October 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Japan, Sci-Fi
Shurayukihime***/****starring Hideaki Ito, Yumiko Shaku, Shirô Sano, Yoichi Numatascreenplay by Kei Kunii, Shinsuke Sato, based on the comic by Kazuo Kamimura and Kazuo Koikedirected by Shinsuke Sato by Walter Chaw An indescribably cool post-apocalyptic martial-arts fairy tale, Shinsuke Sato's The Princess Blade follows the saga of a young woman named Yuki (Yumiko Shaku, bearing a startling resemblance to Pat Benatar) who discovers that her adoptive band of assassin ronin might have killed her mother and stolen her birthright as the heir to a kingdom. With swordplay choreographed by Hong Kong master Donny Yen (Iron Monkey), Shurayuki-Hime has moments that defy description…

DIFF ’02: Come Drink with Me

October 14, 2002Posted in1960s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Hong Kong, Martial Arts
Da zui xia***½/****starring Cheng Pei-pei, Yueh Huascreenplay by Yang Yedirected by Hu King by Walter Chaw Directed by Hu King for the legendary Shaw Brothers, 1966's Come Drink with Me, presented at the DIFF in a 35mm print newly minted for this year's Cannes Film Festival, is one of the obvious headwaters for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, featuring the legendary Cheng Pei-pei (villain Jade Fox in Lee's picture) as swashbuckling Golden Swallow, sister to a kidnapped imperial official. Between this film and its sequel, Golden Swallow, Pei-pei established herself as a watershed action hero, while Hu's style, alternately…

The Mummy: Quest for the Lost Scrolls (2002) – DVD

October 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Television, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound B- Extras C-

by Walter Chaw Universal and Kids’ WB present the abominable and derivative The Mummy: Quest for the Lost Scrolls, the first three episodes of a tragically bad action-adventure cartoon based on characters from Stephen Sommers’s live-action blockbuster The Mummy Returns. After Aryan-izing Fraser’s Rick O’Connell and his irritating moppet Alex (who is, predictably, the star of the show), the animators proceed to rip-off sources as disconcertingly varied as The Evil Dead, Star Wars, and Sommers’s Mummy saga, natch, all while perpetuating myths of the wilting femme and the foppish Brit that, shockingly, its adult counterparts never did.