Authors: Alex Jackson Archives - Page 5 of 8

Sundance ’08: Reversion

January 25, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance

***/****starring Leslie Silva, Jason Olive, Tom Maden, Jennifer Jalenewritten and directed by Mia Trachinger by Alex Jackson The key image of Mia Trachinger's Reversion, her follow-up to the eight-year-old, still-undistributed Bunny, is star Leslie Silva's outrageously unkempt Afro and supermodel physique. Trachinger betrays nostalgia for the early-'90s nostalgia for the 1970s. Her cool is a grungy slacker cool, all heroin-chic and deadpan nihilism. She's delightfully fifteen years behind the loop, making a hipster film for an audience that no longer exists. Almost everybody in Reversion looks and acts fashionably homeless. In an early scene, Silva's character Eva even goes into…

Sundance ’08: American Teen

January 25, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance, Teen

*/****directed by Nanette Burstein by Alex Jackson Real life is just like the movies, according to Nanette Burstein's American Teen. The film follows the adventures of The Brain, The Athlete, The Princess, and The Basket Case as they finish their last year of high school. By the end, we learn that each one of them is a brain, an athlete, a princess, and a basket case. In other words, they're all individuals while being pretty much the same. Burstein seems to have turned complete control of the film over to her subjects and resisted refining anything through her own perspective.…

Sundance ’08: Towelhead

January 24, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance

*½/****
starring Summer Bishil, Peter Macdissi, Maria Bello, Aaron Eckhart
screenplay by Alan Ball, based on the novel by Alicia Erian
directed by Alan Ball

by Alex Jackson Based on the available evidence, it's clear that American Beauty worked because Sam Mendes's aesthetic provided a spiritual component that elevated writer Alan Ball's reductive and rather misanthropic satire. If opinion of the film gets worse as time goes by, it may be because Ball's screenplay comes to the fore. Ball's feature directorial debut Towelhead is, to state the obvious, all Ball and no Mendes; it manages to be bad the very first time you see it. Jasira (Summer Bishil) is a half-Lebanese 13-year-old struggling to come to terms with her blossoming womanhood. Her mother (Maria Bello) kicks her out of the house after Jasira lets her would-be stepfather shave her pubic area. She relocates to Texas (the asshole of the United States in the Alan Ball universe), where she moves in with her Lebanese immigrant father Rifat (Peter Macdissi), who slaps her when she comes down for breakfast with her navel exposed and forbids her to use tampons when she has her period. Rifat gets her a job babysitting for next-door neighbour Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart), a military reservist restlessly awaiting deployment to Iraq on the eve of the first Gulf War. Courtesy of the Vuoso son, Jasira inherits a stack of dirty magazines and discovers how to masturbate to orgasm. Once Mr. Vuoso learns of this, he begins to see her as some potential sexual relief from a loveless marriage.

Sundance ’08: The Order of Myths

January 23, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance

**/****directed by Margaret Brown by Alex Jackson Margaret Brown's The Order of Myths is the flipside to blandly noble docs like The Recruiter. Faithful to the ideal of "objectivity," the typical documentary filmmaker doesn't love anything; Brown's problem is that she loves everything. The result is a film that works very well as cinema: it has a pulse, a mood, a feeling, and is never boring. Yet it also has a terminal case of the cutes, and after it was over I can't say I felt all that edified. The film is about the traditionally segregated Mardi Gras carnival in…

Sundance ’08: The Recruiter

January 22, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance

An American Soldier**/****directed by Edet Belzberg by Alex Jackson The Recruiter, which also goes by the moderately less forgettable title An American Soldier, is just another Sundance documentary, barely distinguishable from past efforts like The Ground Truth or Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. The film follows Army recruiter Sergeant First Class Clay Usie as he brings a new generation of soldiers to the front lines. Director Edet Belzberg's splintered narrative sees four recruits go off to boot camp, where they find themselves in way over their heads. Belzberg's thesis seems to be that these recruits are kids--unprepared for the real world,…

Sundance ’08: Yasukuni

January 21, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, China, Documentary, Film Festivals, Japan, Sundance

***½/****directed by Li Ying by Alex Jackson Yasukuni is a Shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to the spirits of soldiers who died serving the Emperor of Japan. Included within the 2,466,532 names are 27,863 Taiwanese, 21,181 Koreans, and, most significantly, 1,068 convicted war criminals. The shrine is a centre of controversy for many Asians, some of whom feel their ancestors were forced to serve the Emperor and thus wouldn't want to be listed. Others could never endorse a shrine that features, for example, the names of Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Takeshi, the two officers who participated in a beheading contest…

Con Air (1997) [Unrated Extended Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

January 7, 20081990s, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Nicolas Cage, Thriller

***½/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A-
BD – Image C+ Sound A- Extras D+
starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by Scott Rosenberg
directed by Simon West

by Alex Jackson The plot is simplicity itself: Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) has just completed his training as an Army Ranger; he goes to a local bar to celebrate with his pregnant wife (Monica Potter), gets assaulted by some thugs, kills one in the ensuing fight, and is convicted of manslaughter. Eight years later, his sentence is up and he hitches a prison flight that happens to be transferring a number of the country's most dangerous and renowned criminals, including Cyrus "the Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich), a brilliant psychopath who murders people just because he can; Nathan "Diamond Dog" Jones (Ving Rhames), a black militant who wrote a book in prison that is now being made into a feature film with Denzel in talks for the lead; William "Billy Bedlam" Bedford (Nick Chinlund), who slayed his wife's parents, brothers, and dog when he discovered the missus in bed with another man; and Johnny 23 (Danny Trejo), a serial rapist with 23 heart tattoos on his arm. ("One for each of my bitches," he explains.) Cyrus leads a revolt on the plane, killing or capturing all of the guards and hijacking the flight. But like Alan Rickman in Die Hard, Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege, or Powers Boothe in Sudden Death, he has no idea that one of the hostages he's holding is a classically-trained ass-kicker!

A Christmas Carol (1951) [Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – DVD

December 25, 20071930s, 1950s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, UK

Scrooge
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns
screenplay by Noel Langley, based on the book by Charles Dickens
directed by Brian Desmond Hurst

by Alex Jackson Would you believe that my enthusiasm towards Brian Desmond Hurst's A Christmas Carol is significantly tempered by my familiarity with Scrooged, the 1988 partial retelling of the classic novella? That Richard Donner film is a bit of a perennial favourite, having come out the perfect year (1988) for it to enter my consciousness. (For our third grade Christmas pageant, we even led the audience in a sing-along to Tina Turner's "Put a Little Love in Your Heart"!) While I never quite thought it good enough to add to my collection, I do feel genuinely disappointed that few cable stations appear to be re-running it. Scrooged does the obvious thing by putting Ebenezer Scrooge in charge of a television network, but the update actually works and the film feels particularly relevant to contemporary viewers.

Dr. Giggles (1992) [Twisted Terror Collection] – DVD

October 30, 20071990s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Horror

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Cliff De Young, Glenn Quinn
screenplay by Manny Coto and Graeme Whifler
directed by Manny Coto

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I have a sentimental attachment to Manny Coto’s Dr. Giggles. This was the movie I saw the night I lost my virginity–October 22, 2000. (I kept the receipt from the video store.) That was my third viewing of the film, the first being when I was 10. My mother rented it and we watched it with her boyfriend Johnny, who had already seen it on cable and called it “kind of a B-movie.” I loved Dr. Giggles so much I showed it to my dad later that summer. Afterwards, I remember him chanting the “Dr. Giggles” nursery rhyme in jest.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) [Global Warming Edition] – DVD

October 1, 20071960s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Fantasy

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B
starring Walter Pidgeon, Joan Fontaine, Barbara Eden, Peter Lorre
screenplay by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett
directed by Irwin Allen

by Alex Jackson Take a gander at the sleeve for Fox's "Global Warming Edition" of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The title is contained in a downward arrow in drippy, bright-red lettering. It's guiding us towards the main action, a gleaming submarine and lime-green scuba divers fighting off a one-eyed, giant red squid. Dig the curvy brushstrokes, the action lines around the charging submarine, and the flecks of paint signifying bubbles. The cast, meanwhile, is in the top-left corner: there's Walter Pidgeon with a Vincent Price moustache, Joan Fontaine with a face of granite, a gasping Barbara Eden, and behind them all, Peter Lorre pointing up at God knows what. Doesn't it just get your juices flowin'? If I were browsing the video store and happened upon this, I'd be tempted to purchase it sight-unseen, and I'd like to think it's rare that a DVD's mere packaging could encourage me to do that.

Going To Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006) [Unrated] – DVD

September 19, 20072000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, DVD, Horror

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
director uncredited

by Alex Jackson My cardinal rule about documentaries: they shouldn't just coast on the gravitas of their subject matter. They have to have some kind of perspective and work on their own terms. With that said, documentaries about movies are a bit of a blind spot for me, as I have a particularly strong difficulty separating my affection for the film and my affection for what it's about. I know that This Film Is Not Yet Rated isn't very good–it's childish and doesn't mount a terribly convincing case against the MPAA. But come on, I could talk for hours about the MPAA if I could find somebody who would want to listen. Cinemania? Yeah, the filmmakers didn't do much more than point and laugh at those guys. God help me, though, I had a little envy for them: I only wish I could theatre-hop in New York City, exclusively watching the films that interest me without worrying about money or having to review them. I could feel that my critical capacities were being tested in these cases, but I survived. However, when you have a documentary that isn't about merely the movies, but about slasher movies specifically–well, shit, any pretense of objectivity on my part has officially gone out the window.

Succubus (1968) – DVD

August 20, 20071960s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blue Underground, DVD, Germany, Horror

Necronomicon – Geträumte Sünden
**/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B-
starring Janine Reynaud, Jack Taylor, Howard Vernon, Adrian Hoven
screenplay by Pier A. Caminnecci
directed by Jess Franco

by Alex Jackson Jess Franco's Succubus begins with heroine Lorna (Janine Reynaud) torturing and molesting a man chained to a stake while his similarly bound, bloodied, and partially-nude lover watches. The lover protests, so Lorna tortures her some until she passes out. She then goes to the man and plays with him a bit before skewering him with her ceremonial knife. The lights fade up and an audience applauds. The snuff scene was simulated. It's part of an act Lorna performs at a chic nightclub. This opening is the most eloquent and lucid scene in the film, for it establishes that director Jess Franco no longer has a responsibility to be eloquent and lucid. Succubus is going to be told subjectively through the perspective or Lorna, who is going schizophrenic (or something) and is increasingly unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Thus, whatever we see might actually be happening–and then again it might not be. We never really know.

Looking for Kitty (2006) – DVD

August 12, 20072000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD

*/**** Image C Sound C Extras C-
starring Edward Burns, David Krumholtz, Max Baker, Connie Britton
written and directed by Edward Burns

by Alex Jackson This is Edward Burns's fifth feature. Wouldn't you think he'd have learned a little something about filmmaking by now? If Burns were a complete unknown outside the margins of the industry and this were his directorial debut, maybe we could pat him on the head, tell him good job, and stick Looking for Kitty on the refrigerator door, all the while assuming that now that he's proven he can make a movie and get it seen, he'll move on to something he actually cares about. But this is his fifth film. Looking for Kitty feels like the first attempt at narrative storytelling by a young, inexperienced screenwriter who's just glad to have finished something. It's the kind of thing you write before you've found your voice. This is where you start out, not where you end up.

Shirley Temple: America’s Sweetheart Collection, Volume 5 – DVD

July 29, 20071930s, 1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Musical

MAURICE MAETERLINCK’S THE BLUE BIRD (1940)
**½/**** Image C Sound B-
starring Shirley Temple, Spring Byington, Nigel Bruce, Gale Sondergaard
screenplay by Ernest Pascal
directed by Walter Lang

THE LITTLE PRINCESS (1939)
**½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Shirley Temple, Richard Greene, Anita Louise, Ian Hunter
screenplay by Ethel Hill and Walter Ferris, based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
directed by Walter Lang

STAND UP AND CHEER! (1934)
***½/**** Image D+ Sound C+
starring Shirley Temple, Warner Baxter, James Dunn, Nigel Bruce
story by Will Rogers and Philip Klein, dialogue by Ralph Spence
directed by Hamilton MacFadden

by Alex Jackson As you might know, Shirley Temple had been considered for the role of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz but was eventually passed over either because her singing voice was inadequate or because MGM and 20^th Century Fox couldn’t come up with a satisfactory trade. In an attempt to beat MGM at their own game, Fox bought the rights to playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s “L’Oiseau Bleu” (“The Blue Bird”) with an eye on Temple for the lead. Ironically, The Blue Bird became her very first box-office dud and signalled the end of her career as a child actress.

Ivanhoe (1952) – DVD

June 26, 20071950s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders
screenplay by Noel Langley, based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott
directed by Richard Thorpe

by Alex Jackson Think of Ivanhoe as the 1952 version of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy: a big-budget historical epic designed to garner prestigious Oscar buzz as well as blockbuster box-office results. Like Troy, the film's fatal flaw is in favouring superficial fidelities over a meaningful interpretation of the subject matter. This is a masochistic and defensively middlebrow idea of art, not to mention naïve. Consider, for example, that there are no gods in Troy. Yes, this is perfectly reasonable when you consider what today's filmgoers are likely to take seriously and what they are likely to laugh at; Laurence Olivier in Clash of the Titans is most definitely a camp object. Then, of course, there are the wiseasses who populate Sam Raimi's dedicatedly silly TV series "Hercules" and "Xena".

The Bride and the Beast (1958)/The White Gorilla (1945) [Positively No Refunds Double Feature] – DVD

June 4, 20071940s, 1950s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror

THE BRIDE AND THE BEAST
***/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Charlotte Austin, Lance Fuller, Johnny Roth, William Justine
screenplay by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
directed by Adrian Weiss

THE WHITE GORILLA
***/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring Ray Corrigan, Lorraine Miller, George J. Lewis, Francis Ford
screenplay by Jo Pagano
written and directed by Harry Fraser

by Alex Jackson It would be easy to dismiss The Bride and the Beast and The White Gorilla, sight unseen, as dated trash encapsulating the lamentable racist attitudes of the era in which they were produced. Both films belong to a sub-genre of pulp fiction in which great white hunters penetrate the jungles of darkest Africa and quickly conquer the continent's great beasts, much to the awe of the childlike natives. Told directly and on the level, it's possible for this material to have a raw, primal power–this is the stuff of myth, right? The hero slaying the dragon and bringing peace to the land. I don't find the "White Man's Burden" position nearly as offensive as I find films like Jungle Goddess, where the white saviour passively conquers an African civilization and then just as passively leaves it behind. Certainly, you should be able to have a romantic fiction without marginalizing an entire race of people.

Frankenstein Unbound (1990) – DVD

May 3, 20071990s, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound
**/**** Image A- Sound A
starring John Hurt, Raul Julia, Bridget Fonda, Catherine Rabett
screenplay by Roger Corman and F.X. Feeney, based on the novel by Brian Aldiss
directed by Roger Corman

by Alex Jackson Dr. John Buchanan (John Hurt) is a brilliant scientist in New Los Angeles, circa 2031. One of his experiments fractures the space-time continuum, sucking him into nineteenth-century Geneva, where he meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia), who's busy conducting a few experiments of his own. In the meantime, the Frankenstein maid is on trial for the murder of Victor's brother. Nobody knows how she did it, though they figure it's witchcraft. Because he read the book (Frankenstein, of course), Buchanan knows that Frankenstein's monster (Nick Brimble) is the true culprit. Frankenstein is refusing to admit to his failed experiment, however, and would rather allow this girl to die than confront his crimes against God. Exasperated, Buchanan goes to Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda) for help. As for the monster, he's terrorizing Frankenstein and insisting that the scientist create him a female companion.

On Native Soil (2006) – DVD

April 22, 20072000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
directed by Linda Ellman

by Alex Jackson I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I think the documentary too often gets a pass as cinema. All of the focus is on the subject matter and next to no interest is paid to technique. The core audience for documentaries might be the same one Pauline Kael described in her infamous essay "Fear of Movies", i.e., the people who refused to see Carrie, Taxi Driver, or even Jaws because they "don't like violence" (read: they don't like anything that is going to take them out of their comfort zone). The larger problem isn't simply that films, on a visceral level, ought to be pleasurable or, at minimum, interesting, but that the lack of filmmaking excitement in most documentaries is intended to approximate objectivity, which is poisonous to art. "Objectivity," almost by definition, eliminates values and any perceivable human element, and once art eliminates values and any perceivable human element, it ceases to have any utility.

Thunder in the Pines (1948)/Jungle Goddess (1948) [George Reeves Double Feature] – DVD

March 19, 20071940s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD

THUNDER IN THE PINES
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring George Reeves, Ralph Byrd, Greg McClure, Michael Whalen
screenplay by Maurice Tombragel
directed by Robert Edwards

JUNGLE GODDESS
*/**** Image C- Sound B Extras C
starring George Reeves, Ralph Byrd, Wanda McKay, Armida
screenplay by Jo Pagano
directed by Lewis D. Collins

by Alex Jackson Was George Reeves a talented or interesting enough actor to merit VCI digging up a couple of his 1948 demi-features and releasing them on DVD? Without the novelty of him later becoming television’s Superman and the rumours of conspiracy surrounding his suicide, there’s nothing particularly engaging about the actor. In Thunder in the Pines, it looks like Reeves might be the poor man’s Kirk Douglas (whose star was rising at around the same time). The Douglas persona is jovial and heroic, sensitive but manly–essentially, for me at least, he’s an idealized father figure. This seems to be what Reeves is going for, but he’s only operating at half the wattage. He isn’t a star and hasn’t the confidence of Douglas, that audacity to dominate the picture whenever he’s on-screen. He’s just a small fry.

The Devil’s Rain (1975) – DVD

February 13, 20071970s, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Zombie

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Tom Skerritt, William Shatner
screenplay by James Ashton, Gabe Essoe, Gerald Hopman
directed by Robert Fuest

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The Devil's Rain is like a bad song you can't get out of your head. It isn't a successful film, or even a particularly good one, but it's made with sincerity, verve, and an understanding of the horror genre's potential for kinetic filmmaking and potent allegory. Moreover, it isn't a cheat–this isn't just another cheap cash-in on the "Satan" craze of the 1970s. The last thing director Robert Fuest and screenwriters James Ashton, Gabe Essoe, and Gerald Hopman are looking to do is take your money and run. And though this is largely a trend of the mid-to-late-'80s onward, they aren't looking to vindicate their reputations by condescending to the material, either. I actually feel a little protective of The Devil's Rain; its failure is one more of incompetence than of cynicism, and that's really rather reinvigorating in an age where self-consciousness reigns supreme in horror films both good (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) and bad (See No Evil).