Adventure Archives - Page 26 of 41

Casino Royale (2006) [2-Disc Widescreen] – DVD

March 12, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Bahamas, Czech Republic, DVD, Espionage, Germany, James Bond, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, based on the novel by Ian Fleming
directed by Martin Campbell

by Walter Chaw A genuinely good updating of the James Bond mythos from plastic, moldering relic to bloody, sweaty sociopath drunk on his own virility and general misanthropy, Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale–though the umpteenth chapter in a decades-old testosterone fever dream–is very much a part of this day and age. It’s a film that makes sense of the franchise using a modern vernacular of vengeance, terrorism, Texas Hold ‘Em, and paranoia. It’s unnecessarily padded by at least fifteen minutes, but when it switches into gear it announces itself a worthy peer to the Jason Bourne films with action that’s fantastically choreographed and alive with weight and violence. Most importantly, it finally has a protagonist who is, if not already, well on his way to becoming a serious psycho–post-modern man. What Daniel Craig brings to the role is a feral intelligence, this self-awareness that he’s a bad person. Any good that he does is tainted by the knowledge that this Bond’s only in it for the cheap thrills (drugs and murder, in particular) that lube his insect brain. Casino Royale summarizes the trend of detached, savage pictures from the last couple of years (Miami Vice, in particular, another bleak updating of a camp curio); when we talk about good action films now, we seem to be talking about the degree to which we have, as a culture, regressed to the Old Testament in matters of the heart and the hand. Call it “caveman vérité.”

Westerns with a Twist: Three Feature Films – DVD

March 6, 20071960s, 1970s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, East Germany, Romania, Soviet Union, Western, Yugoslavia

THE SONS OF GREAT BEAR (1965)
Die Söhne der großen Bärin
*½/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Gojko Mitic, Jirí Vrstála, Rolf Römer, Hans Hardt-Hardtloff
screenplay by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, based on her novel
directed by Josef Mach

CHINGACHGOOK: THE GREAT SNAKE (1967)
Chingachgook, die grosse Schlange
**/**** Image C+ Sound B Extras B
starring Gojko Mitic, Rolf Römer, Lilo Grahn, Helmut Schreiber
screenplay by Wolfgang Ebeling and Richard Groschopp, based on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper
directed by Richard Groschopp

APACHES (1973)
Apachen
*½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Gojko Mitic, Milan Beli, Colea Rautu, Leon Niemczyk
screenplay by Gojko Mitic, Gottfried Kolditz
directed by Gottfried Kolditz

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On paper, it seems like a good idea: a series of westerns that not only adopt the Indian point-of-view but also paint the advancing white hordes as monstrous despoilers of the landscape and its peoples. From 1965 to 1982, that's exactly what East Germany's DEFA studios proposed: fifteen Native-centric westerns featuring chiselled Gojko Mitic as an Indian hero ready and willing to kick settler ass. But though these films took the most American of genres and used it against its homeland (a propaganda coup if ever there was one), that's where the fascination ends. Once you've dispensed with the hilarious Cold War contortions, you're left with education-film-quality productions that preach loud and long while boring the audience early and often.

Sundance ’07: We Are the Strange

January 26, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Alex Jackson, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Sundance

½*/****
starring David Choe, Stuart Mahoney, Halleh Seddighzadeh, M dot Strange
written and directed by M dot Strange

by Alex Jackson

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
-Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in Jurassic Park

While it is perfectly normal for a student filmmaker to be preoccupied with the "could" questions over the "should," the "should" questions need be asked and answered to at least some extent before one attempts to make something for display to a general audience. I suppose I could say that We Are the Strange is an exercise in style over substance, or that it breaks away from traditional forms of narrative, but that would imply that writer/producer/director/animator/composer M dot Strange had actually made choices with regards to substance, narrative, and the lack thereof. The film is an artistic failure on the most rudimentary level; it seems that Strange never got past the idea that it would be cool to make an animated feature. We Are the Strange has something to do with a beautiful woman named Blue who is kicked out of a brothel by her pimp for being "ugly." She then meets the living Buddy doll Emmm, who asks her out for ice cream. Soon they discover that the ice cream shop has been taken over by "evil forces." All of this is set in a video game or an alternate universe composed of video game graphics or something.

Children of Men (2006) + Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

January 5, 2007****/****, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Clint Eastwood, Drama, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Theatrical, Thriller, War

CHILDREN OF MEN
****/****
starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam
screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby, based on the novel by P.D. James
directed by Alfonso Cuarón

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
***½/****
starring Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase
screenplay by Iris Yamashita, based on the book Picture Letters from Commander in Chief by Tadamichi Kuribayashi and Tsuyoko Yoshido
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Walter Chaw Stop on any single frame of Alfonso Cuarón's remarkable war idyll Children of Men–a film that's rarely in repose, sometimes seeming composed of one long, frantic shot–and I suspect the sharp-eyed, educated viewer would be able to cull a reference to modern art, most likely one about men reduced to their base animal nature. For me, the two visual landmarks come in the form of a cue to the cover design for Pink Floyd's 1977 "Animals" when hero Theo (Clive Owen) goes to see his industrialist cousin Nigel (Danny Huston) for help and a re-creation of Richard Misrach's remarkable series of 1987 photographs documenting, among other things, a dead-animal pit in Nevada purportedly used to dispose of victims of a plutonium "hot spot." Both share a space with surrealism in the positioning of animals (artificial or deceased) in industrial spaces (London's Battersea Power Station is the iconic backdrop of the "Animals" cover) as mute commentary, perhaps, on man's destructive relationship with his environment–a read that jibes comfortably with the thrust of Children of Men, in which we're told that one day in the not-too-distant future, humans suddenly stop reproducing. (Fertile ground for science-fiction, this obsession with progeny (see: everything from Frankenstein to I Am Legend).) The picture opens with a Fleet Street terrorist bombing, a little like Terry Gilliam's dystopic Brazil–though rather than take the easier route of satirizing our current state of instability and free-floating paranoia, Children of Men makes a serious attempt to allegorize it.

The Venture Bros.: Season One (2003-2004) – DVD

December 13, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Satire, Television

Image B Sound A- Extras C
"Dia de los Dangerous!," "Careers in Science," "Mid-Life Chrysalis," "Eeney, Meeney, Miney… Magic!," "The Incredible Mr. Brisby," "Tag Sale–You're It!," "Home Insecurity," "Ghosts of the Sargasso," "Ice Station–Impossible!," "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean.," "Past Tense," "The Trial of the Monarch," "Return to Spider-Skull Island"

by Ian Pugh Lengthy postmodern discussions about the drug use in "Scooby-Doo" and the sexual habits of the Smurfs dominated the public mind long before TimeWarner acquired the Hanna-Barbera catalogue. It was only a logical move, then, that TimeWarner's Cartoon Network would devote much of its late-night Adult Swim programming block ("Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law", "Sealab 2021", and, to a lesser degree, "Robot Chicken") to taking the old H-B anti-classics and filtering them through the fine mesh screen of a contemporary ironic eye. Look here, we've got an old superhero, he's an attorney now, that's pretty wacky! Check it out, we've turned the straightforward drama of "Sealab 2020" into angry surrealism! It works to varying degrees of success, primarily depending upon the individual show's (or individual episode's) willingness to move beyond the inherent ridiculousness of its premise. What can we say, then, when "The Venture Bros." represents the kids-on-adventures serial "Jonny Quest", a series centred on a family whose surname is a literal synonym for the characters being parodied? Are we meant to gasp when brilliant über-dad Dr. Benton Quest becomes Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture (voiced by Henry Fool's James Urbaniak), an ignorant pill-popper, negligent of his teenage sons Hank (co-creator Jackson Publick) and Dean (Michael Sinterniklaas)? Or when bodyguard/second father figure Race Bannon becomes Brock Samson (Patrick Warburton), an emotionally-detached psychopath?

Eragon (2006)

December 13, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Hungary, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Edward Speleers, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Guillory, John Malkovich
screenplay by Peter Buchman and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal, based on the novel by Christopher Paolini
directed by Stefen Fangmeier

by Walter Chaw Fears that veteran F/X man Stefen Fangmeier's directorial debut Eragon, a feature-length adaptation of a fifteen-year-old trying on Anne McCaffrey's jodhpurs, would be the sequel to Dragonheart nobody wanted prove unwarranted, as Eragon is actually the sequel to BloodRayne that nobody wanted. It's ugly as sin, with the much-vaunted dragon at its centre (voiced by Rachel Weisz), designed by skilled craftspeople from both Peter Jackson's WETA workshop and Industrial Light and Magic, looking fatally inorganic to its environment. Not helping matters, the titular rider (Edward Speleers) resembles a younger, equally rubbery David Lee Roth and sports the acting chops of the same. Eragon is the towheaded farmboy who heeds a call to glory to save Sienna Guillory's beautiful Princess Arya ("Help me Eragon, you're my only hope") while gaining a mysterious old hermit mentor (Jeremy Irons–the poor sod should've learned his lesson with Dungeons & Dragons) who dies during a daring raid on the Death Star–er, on the castle keep of Darth Vader, er, King Galbatorix (John Malkovich). Alas, this Luke Skywalker also has an Uncle Owen (Uncle Garrow (Alun Armstrong)), and his Darth Vader has a henchman (Robert Carlyle) who at one point kills an underling general and declares the second-in-command "promoted." Eragon is a rip-off and a bad one, a carbon copy made on one of those old mimeograph machines: washed out, juvenile (even weighed against the not-exactly-mature example of Star Wars), and nigh unbearable for anyone so much as cursorily familiar with genre fare.

Blood Diamond (2006) + Apocalypto (2006)

December 8, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Germany, Mexico, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

BLOOD DIAMOND
*/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Charles Leavitt
directed by Edward Zwick

APOCALYPTO
***/****
starring Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead
screenplay by Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia
directed by Mel Gibson

by Walter Chaw After sending Matthew Broderick to head a Negro battalion in the Civil War and Tom Cruise to witness–and survive–the end of Feudal Japan, director Edward Zwick dispatches Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly to Sierra Leone and its own diamond-fuelled Civil War to moralize endlessly from the superior ethical vantage afforded by time and privilege. (That they also lend a much-needed nougat centre to Blood Diamond's thin chocolate coating goes without saying.) The Denzel Washington/Ken Watanabe token this time around is the oft-similarly-abused Djimon Hounsou: as the DC Comics-sounding Solomon Vandy, Hounsou seeks to trade a rare pink diamond for the life of his son, who's been molded by the evil Sierra Leonians into a soulless murdering/raping machine.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] – DVD

December 5, 20061950s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams
screenplay by Eric Ambler, based on the novel by Hammond Innes
directed by Michael Anderson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Here's another Coop-travaganza whose pleasures lie naked on the surface. Like Springfield Rifle, Michael Anderson's The Wreck of the Mary Deare is largely uninterested in subtextual undertow or other fodder for term papers, announcing its true intentions by casting strong, silent Cooper opposite hard man-of-action Charlton Heston–the two movie stars least likely to quietly brood or have an Achilles heel to render them even a little unsympathetic. Though Coop has a shady past to overcome, it's largely in the aid of martyring him to a system that refuses to listen; Heston, meanwhile, is possessed of the old I-have-a-hunch-to-trust-the-underdog brotherhood instinct that keeps us trusting despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Students of gender politics (assuming there are any left) might want to put it through the symptomatic wringer, but mostly it's a couple of cool dudes laying down the law and fighting insurmountable odds.

The Ant Bully (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 4, 20062000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by John A. Davis, based on the book by John Nickle
directed by John A. Davis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover If you read reviews with any degree of seriousness, you're probably not seeing that many animated kidpix anyway, and so remarking that The Ant Bully is several cuts below the genre's low standards will fall on deaf ears. Still, I can't imagine an audience undemanding enough to not see through the film's cashing in on both the cachet of its source material (a storybook by John Nickle) and the CGI animation gold rush itself. The film is so unenthusiastic about doing its job that it's completely transparent, exposing its worship of the dollar at every turn of the screw. Even the creators of Shrek and their ilk seem to want to make the movie: there's no evidence of that with John A. Davis and his team of unmoved movers of pixels.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (1981/2006) – DVD

November 27, 20061980s, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Romance, Sci-Fi, Superhero, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper
screenplay by Mario Puzo, David Newman and Leslie Newman
directed by Richard Lester

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. A would-be victim of its own London After Midnight-esque mystique, the "Richard Donner Cut" of Superman II is marginally superior to Richard Lester's mutilation, but mitigating circumstances prevent it from being a totally viable alternative. Reconstructed from suppressed outtakes with due diligence (if a journeyman sensibility) according to pre-Lester drafts of the screenplay, the film follows the same basic storyline, though it's a little more efficiently plotted. (While a few Lester bits remain, there is almost certainly less Lester-generated footage here than there is Donner-generated footage in the theatrical version.) Gone is the Eiffel Tower set-piece, replaced by a charming sequence better allied–aesthetically speaking–with the previous Superman in which Lois tries to call Clark's bluff by jumping out a window of THE DAILY PLANET's headquarters; now the weapon of mass destruction responsible for freeing the three supervillains from the Phantom Zone is an errant missile from the climax of the original, which is clever but probably made more sense before they transposed the dopey turning-back-time conceit from the second film onto the first. (More on that later.)

DIFF ’06: Rescue Dawn

November 22, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, DIFF/SDFF, Directors: Werner Herzog, Drama, Film Festivals, Luxembourg, Thriller, War

**½/****starring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, Marshall Bellwritten and directed by Werner Herzog by Walter Chaw Though a perfectly serviceable actioner, one that avoids almost every pitfall and cliché of the POW genre while supporting a singularly eccentric performance, Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, sadly, could have been directed by any one of a dozen directors. Gripping but not especially memorable, it lacks the mad Bavarian's insanity: his belief that nature is obscene, as well as his ability to make a trance from the mendacity of routine. (Because Herzog is a rare talent, his films butt up against greater expectations.) The…

Over the Hedge (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 18, 20062000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
screenplay by Len Blum and Lorne Cameron & David Hoselton and Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the comic strip by Michael Fry and T Lewis
directed by Tim Johnson & Karey Kirkpatrick

by Walter Chaw It's just a largely inoffensive, vaguely environmentalist (inasmuch as being anti-sprawl is pro-environment) assembly-line animation featuring the usual passel of aging and/or second-run celebrities subbing for trained voice performers as anthropomorphic CGI animal bodies engaged in slapstick, stink jokes, and other interchangeable ephemera for the delight of our toddlers. If you feel as though you've seen Over the Hedge a hundred times already, that's because it's been cobbled together from a hundred other identical pictures; and if you have a little trouble afterwards remembering a thing about it, well, it's only natural that something with no nutritional value would pass right through you. That's not to say there's no fertile ground to be mined here in exploring the line between the natural-natural and the human natural (a line that the Japanese puzzler Pom Poko attempts to describe to similar effect)–safe to say, in fact, that a great satire lies in the suburban morass as viewed through the eyes of the "un-civilized." But Over the Hedge is a slave to the theoretical peanut gallery, resorting to manufacturing a villain and then staging a series of boom/crash operas. Though Pixar's Cars can pretty fairly be described as awful, it's Pixar's legacy of brilliant children's entertainments that DreamWorks has tried to ape with its puerile, art-destroying, post-pop Shrek series, and if Over the Hedge at least resists the scatology that marks Shrek as low entertainment for the lowest common denominator, it still can't quite make that jump from loud noises to real insight and value.

Shogun Assassin (1980) – DVD

October 16, 20061980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Japan

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, Masahiro Tomikawa, Kayo Matsuo, Minoru Ohki
screenplay by Kazuo Koike, Robert Houston & David Weisman
directed by Robert Houston and Kenji Misumi

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Timing is everything when it comes to certain movies. Had I been one of the many who paid to see Shogun Assassin in 1980 or thrilled to it on video for years afterward, I might, too, have a cult attachment to its slick camerawork and delightfully bloodthirsty nature. But as it turns out, I saw the films from which it was culled–the Lone Wolf and Cub epics Sword of Vengeance and Baby Cart at the River Styx–first: no matter how expertly distilled is Robert Houston's scratch remix version, it was never going to match the elegance of construction of those Kenji Misumi classics. If you find yourself in a hurry and can only squeeze in one film with a pudgy ronin and his small, indestructible son, then Shogun Assassin is the one you want; and it immediately gains half a star if you aren't familiar with the originals. But for those with time, patience, and a love of arterial spray, the main event is probably the better bet. Which is not to say that Shogun Assassin is without its virtues.

Alien Nation: The Complete Series (1989-1990) + Doctor Who: The Complete First Series (2005) – DVDs

October 3, 20061980s, 1990s, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Television, UK

ALIEN NATION: THE COMPLETE SERIES
Image C Sound C Extras C
"Alien Nation: The TV Movie (Pilot)," "Fountain of Youth," "Little Lost Lamb," "Fifteen with Wanda," "The Takeover," "The First Cigar," "Night of the Screams," "Contact," "Three to Tango," "The Game," "Chains of Love," "The Red Room," "The Spirit of '95," "Generation to Generation," "Eyewitness News," "Partners," "Real Men," "Crossing the Line," "Rebirth," "Gimme, Gimme," "The Touch," "Green Eyes"

DOCTOR WHO: THE COMPLETE FIRST SERIES
Image A Sound B Extras B
"Rose," "The End of the World," "The Unquiet Dead," "Aliens of London," "World War Three," "Dalek," "The Long Game," "Father's Day," "The Empty Child," "The Doctor Dances," "Boom Town," "Bad Wolf," "The Parting of the Ways"

by Walter Chaw I'm a fan of Graham Baker's dreadful Alien Nation from 1988. Run the words of the title together and you get a not-terribly-clever yet not-entirely-awful summary of what the film is getting at when it's not busy being a ludicrous high-concept buddy cop flick pairing your typical crusty old vet with an earnest rookie who happens to be an alien with a spotted pate instead of a hilarious racial minority. (Shades of Dead Heat, where Joe Piscopo played a bug-eyed zombie.) It's a schlocky B-concept, granted, but the parallax view suggests that lurking in Alien Nation is a neat parable about the Chinese-American experience in San Francisco around the turn of the century and on through to the modern day.

School for Scoundrels (2006) + The Guardian (2006)

September 29, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS
ZERO STARS/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Heder, Jacinda Barrett, Luis Guzman
screenplay by Todd Phillips & Scot Armstrong
directed by Todd Phillips

THE GUARDIAN
*½/****
starring Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Neal McDonough, Melissa Sagemiller
screenplay by Ron L. Brinkerhoff
directed by Andrew Davis

by Walter Chaw What the woefully, dreadfully, desperately unfunny School of Scoundrels has going for it is the casting of fetching Jacinda Barrett as the leading lady; what it squanders is the opportunity to present anything resembling intelligence or wit in favour of achingly uninsightful jabs at the gender rift and the presentation of idiot Jon Heder in exhibit, oh, about 'E' or 'F' by now, of how he has no known function. Billy Bob Thornton continues his blue W.C. Fields bit (next up, Mr. Woodcock), here as "Dr. P," the head of the titular finishing school that specializes in molding the losers and milquetoasts of the world into sunglasses-wearing assholes fond of comparing themselves to lions. His prize student is meter maid Roger (Heder), who, because the script demands it, transforms himself from a doofus into a doofus in a suit, finally mustering up the courage to ask out neighbour Amanda (Barrett). Inexplicably, she has all along been pining for this hermetic, feminized, saccharine troll–after all, what beautiful, smart, funny woman doesn't want to be dating someone with the looks of Napoleon Dynamite and the personality of a serial-killing child molester? Sarah Silverman is wasted (though given her track record, it could very well be that there's nothing left to waste) as Amanda's evil roommate, written with snarky commentary you'd think a perfect fit for her.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977) [Special Edition] – DVD

September 28, 20061970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie

*/**** Image B Sound B+ (DD)/A (DTS) Extras B
starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleason
screenplay by James Lee Barrett and Charles Shyer & Alan Mandel
directed by Hal Needham

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover One thing is inescapably true: Smokey and the Bandit was not aimed at people like me. Only the most casual, least demanding filmgoer need apply to this good-ol'-boy version of Vanishing Point–people with as much beer in them as possible, ready to laugh at cheap jokes and root for a speed demon. They are welcome to the movie, but the fact remains that anyone with even a scintilla of interest in film as art is pretty much left out in the cold. As I can hear a mountain of e-mail forming denouncing me for my perceived elitism, let me be perfectly clear: anyone in the market for Burt Reynolds driving fast and making Jackie Gleason apoplectic will find this the sort of thing that they like.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

September 25, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero

½*/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras C+
starring Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen
screenplay by Simon Kinberg & Zak Penn
directed by Brett Ratner

by Walter Chaw As an example of what can happen when a homophobic, misogynistic, misanthropic moron wildly overcompensates in a franchise that had as its primary claim to eternity that it was sensitive to the plight of homosexuals, Brett Ratner's painfully queer X-Men: The Last Stand (hereafter "X3") manages to present its series of melodramatic vignettes in such a way as to completely negate any sense of peril, individuality, or struggle for the characters. Without a sense of weight, the references in the piece to genocide and The Holocaust ("Ink shall never again touch my skin!" says Ian McKellen's Magneto) become pure, laggard exploitation in the service of a sub-par superhero action film that shows its true colours time and again in its hatred of women ("Hell hath no fury!") and loathing of female sexuality, as well as in its flat-eyed regard of children trying to hasp off their wings while their fathers attempt to break down the bathroom door. It's Michael Bay's Schindler's List: a reptilian populist, at ease with the slick and facile, has been asked to take the reins of a project that, for whatever its crimes of pacing and exposition, had in its Bryan Singer-helmed episodes the good sense not to kick over ant piles it wasn't prepared to contain.

Hoot (2006) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

August 30, 20062000s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Luke Wilson, Logan Lerman, Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson
screenplay by Wil Shriner, based on the novel by Carl Hiaasen
directed by Wil Shriner

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On the subject of keeping young people away from R-rated movies, Pauline Kael once remarked: "How are kids supposed to appreciate movies if they only see the crap that's aimed at them?" That "crap," of course, is usually stuff that's been interrogated for controversial subject matter and aesthetic interest alike, as if a sweeping camera or a finely-tuned mise-en-scène would disturb the kiddies. And on past performance, Walden Media is a leading exponent of this kind of subdued mediocrity: not only did they issue that ultra-bland C.S. Lewis adaptation from last winter, but they also cranked out the thoroughly innocuous Hoot to disastrous box office this spring. It's a movie that treats potentially charged material like No Big Deal–which is the supposed position to take with young minds in the room.

Harry and Tonto (1974) – DVD

August 14, 20061970s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Road Movie, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Commentary B+
starring Art Carney, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Larry Hagman
screenplay by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld
directed by Paul Mazursky

by Alex Jackson I complain a lot about film criticism being reduced to archaeology, but I don't think I've ever seen anything quite as impenetrable along these lines as Paul Mazursky's 1974 sleeper Harry and Tonto. It never coheres, it never makes its point, and it never justifies its existence. You know Mr. Bernstein's anecdote about the girl in the white dress in Citizen Kane, or Marge Gunderson's drink with her old high school chum in Fargo–those nice little throwaway moments that haven't much to do with the actual movie? In Harry and Tonto, Mazursky gets rid of the "actual movie" and gives us nothing but throwaway moments. Yeah, it's that kind of film.

Equinox [The Criterion Collection] – DVD

August 13, 20061960s, 1970s, Action, Adventure, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, The Criterion Collection

THE EQUINOX …A JOURNEY INTO THE SUPERNATURAL (1967)
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Skip Shimer, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers, Jr., Robin Snider
screenplay by Mark Thomas McGee
directed by Mark Thomas McGee & Dennis Muren

EQUINOX (1970)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Edward Connell, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers jr., Robin Christopher
written and directed by Jack Woods

by Walter Chaw Four teens on a double-date venture into the hills around California in search of an old, dotty professor only to learn that the crazy old bat's unleashed the spawn of Hell with a book written by the devil. When producer Jack Harris bought The Equinox …A Journey Into the Supernatural (hereafter The Equinox) and hired B-hack Jack Woods to partially rewrite and reshoot it three years after its completion, he would insert a new character in evil, unibrowed park ranger Asmodeus (Woods), thus imposing a weird element of pervy grope cinema while handily washing away in a wave of lowbrow mediocrity most of what makes The Equinox so exceptional. Comparing the two versions (the revamp's title streamlined to Equinox) is an example of the difference between gifted amateurs pursuing a passion and slick exploitation artists applying their own interpretations (this time the burgeoning drive-in market) of where they might grab the quickest buck. For The Equinox to endure as an underground classic despite its co-optation is something like The Magnificent Ambersons maintaining its masterpiece status despite the non-existence of Welles's original cut. It's quite a relief, in other words, that Dennis Muren's The Equinox has survived for comparison's sake.