A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) [Two-Disc Special Edition – Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Sci-Fi, Spielberg

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson
screenplay by Steven Spielberg, based on the screen story by Ian Watson and the short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" by Brian Aldiss
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It begins dreadfully and stays that way for ages. It fumbles for what it thinks it wants to say, often missing the objective completely. Its ending is too long and too confused, and it casts a pall over the good things that came before. It marries the efforts of two filmmakers in uncomfortable ways and often short-circuits them both. But for better or worse, it is A.I. Artificial Intelligence–the best, most resonant, and most disturbing film Steven Spielberg has made in years, and a movie that deserves far more respect than it's been getting.

In the Mood for Love (2000) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Hong Kong, Romance

Fa yeung nin wah
花樣年華
**½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B-
starring Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung
written and directed by Wong Kar-wai

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love wavers between the surface pleasures of gorgeous imagery and narrative play and the crystallization of themes that have been latent in the director’s work for quite some time. The film is almost aggressively evanescent: informational repressions and structural manipulations relentlessly undercut the doomed, strangled love between two Hong Kong neighbours, turning their half-formed relationship into an exquisite torture for both the characters and the audience.

The Larry Sanders Show: The Entire First Season (1992) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Television

Image C+ Sound B Extras B-
“The Garden Weasel (a.k.a. What Have You Done For Me Lately?),” “Promise,” “Spiders,” “The Guest Host,” “The New Producer,” “The Flirt,” “Hank’s Contract,” “Out of the Loop,” “The Talk Show,” “The Party,” “Warmth,” “A Brush with the Elbow of Greatness,” “Hey Now”

by Bill Chambers TV was born puritanical and never really took the stick out of its ass. We don’t even think of cable as TV–one asks, “What’s on TV?” vs. “What’s on cable?” It’s a television medium, a bastard offspring, and what I love–one of the things I love–about “The Larry Sanders Show” is that it revolves around TV but could only be a cable show. You’ll wish, after a couple of episodes, that network sitcoms weren’t still so reined-in by standards and practices and beholden to children up past their bedtimes, as “The Larry Sanders Show” makes poetry of profanity and has a sadistic, altering worldview, particularly on business relationships and the entertainment industry. One whiff of it wipes the Stepford smile off TV’s face.

Joy Ride (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, Leelee Sobieski, Matthew Kimbrough
screenplay by Clay Tarver & JJ Abrams
directed by John Dahl

by Walter Chaw John Dahl’s latest foray into knock-off B-movie territory is Joy Ride, a film that indulges an awkward dedication to hiding the face of its villain (which results in the biggest cheat of the film at its conclusion), presents predictably misogynistic victimizations for both of its female characters (followed by weak-wristed salvations), and demands an ironclad suspension of disbelief that the bad guy is omniscient, omnipresent, and only ruthless when there isn’t a long speech to be made. The joyless Joy Ride is a leaden collection of cheap thriller clichés redolent with the flop-sweat stench of stale desperation and clumsy sleight-of-hand, a stultifying series of promising set-ups with threadbare pay-offs. The film drives home its cautionary message against childishness with an increasing immaturity–it’s the equivalent of burying a toddler up to the neck for throwing a tantrum, and though it will predictably (and fairly) be compared against The Hitcher and Duel, the most telling stolen moment in Joy Ride is a cornfield intrigue that substitutes the evil crop duster from North by Northwest for a rumbling semi tractor-trailer that somehow locates its prey in the dead of night amongst concealing stalks.

Bully (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Revenge, Teen, Thriller

(Oy, these early reviews. -Ed.)

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Michael Pitt
screenplay by Zachary Long & Roger Pullis, based on the book by Jim Schutze
directed by Larry Clark

by Bill Chambers An authority figure delivers the definitive line of dialogue of Bully, Larry Clark’s quasi-sequel to his own hotly-contested Kids: “I don’t know what you’re up to. I don’t think I want to know.” Well, Clark insists on letting us know. Often accused, even with only three motion pictures under his belt, of over-sensationalizing already sensational material, he’s hardly the next Oliver Stone. He may be something of an interfering observer, but he’s not a conspiracy proselytizer running with scissors down the hallway. Where Stone drew slave parallels to football in Any Given Sunday by intercutting clips from Ben-Hur, Clark makes more organic shock statements. He can be tactless, sure. Can’t we all?

Don’t Say a Word (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Michael Douglas, Brittany Murphy, Famke Janssen, Sean Bean
screenplay by Anthony Peckham and Patrick Smith Kelly, based on the novel by Andrew Klavan
directed by Gary Fleder

by Walter Chaw It’s probably not at all surprising that lock-step director Gary Fleder’s Don’t Say a Word, based on a by-the-numbers novel by fiction hack Andrew Klavan (True Crime), has less original material than Michael Jackson. It opens on a heist scene that reminds of Point Break and Heat (plus a thousand other heist films), segues into a home invasion/child-snatching that recalls Michael Douglas’s own Fatal Attraction, proceeds into a cell phone cat-and-mouse like Ransom, ends with a cascade of particulate debris that brings to mind Witness, and touches base to varying degrees with Sliver, Nick of Time, Instinct, Nuts, and Awakenings in particular in its sloppy patient/doctor dynamic (and the naming of a secondary character “Dr. Sachs”). There’s even a bit concerning a stolen child, a mother, and a song familiar to them both taken whole from Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much. Sadly, Don’t Say a Word forgets to first establish that the tune is meaningful. It is a poignant omission that illustrates as well as any the problems of a lazy knock-off film that plays a lot of familiar notes but doesn’t once strike a chord nor find a melody of its own.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
screenplay by Tab Murphy
directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise

by Walter Chaw Clearly trying to gain some anime credibility by aping the mystical mumbo jumbo of Akira in an unfathomable third act, jettisoning the musical romantic comedy format, and inserting a few subtitles, Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire (henceforth Atlantis) has moments of true grandeur, though it has a good many more of pure Disney. It gets hip genre credibility from the story contributions of “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola and “Buffy” scribe Joss Whedon, but the best of intentions often lead to the worst of eventualities, and Atlantis is ultimately less “wow” than “oh, boy” and, eventually, “huh?”

The Smokers (2001) – DVD

The Smokers (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Teen, Thriller

*½/**** Image B- Sound C
starring Dominique Swain, Busy Philipps, Keri Lynn Pratt, Nicholas M. Loeb
screenplay by Christina Peters and Kenny Golde
directed by Christina Peters

by Bill Chambers Thora Birch turns around in the closing shot of The Smokers and sticks her tongue out at the camera. Short of adding a raspberry sound, we couldn’t ask for a more pithy review of the film, even if Birch’s gesture wasn’t intended as such. (Whatever the case, it’s a bit of fourth-wall breaking that ultimately feels cathartic.) The Smokers is aimless, feckless, and finally bad, an indie made with an absence not only of cash but also vision, though the fact that it doesn’t have any major-studio obligations leaves the filmmakers free to present complex female characters. Too bad they are that way in large part because their actions are so damn inexplicable.

An American Rhapsody (2001) – DVD

An American Rhapsody (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Scarlett Johansson

**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Commentary B
starring Nastassja Kinski, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Goldwyn, Mae Whitman
written and directed by Éva Gardos

by Walter Chaw Editor Éva Gardos’s An American Rhapsody, her first film as writer-director, is riddled with inconsistencies, lacklustre performances, and convenient platitudes that are perhaps not terribly surprising for a debut screenwriter and director, but disheartening from a veteran cutter who gained experience with the likes of Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich. The problem with an autobiography, after its inherent onanistic self-absorption, is that it will too often hide behind the aegis of truth to excuse a multitude of narrative sins. An American Rhapsody is deeply felt, no question, but it jerks and lurches along without much regard for secondary characters, continuity, motivation, and coherence. It is ultimately little more than an episodic patchwork of overburdened vignettes that share only a desire to manufacture unearned pathos and manipulate events towards the most expedient solution.

My Bodyguard (1980) – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Family, Teen

**½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Chris Makepeace, Matt Dillon, John Houseman, Adam Baldwin
screenplay by Alan Ormsby
directed by Tony Bill

by Bill Chambers My Bodyguard, not to be confused with the sudsy Costner-Huston thriller The Bodyguard, has been described to me as “the ultimate bully movie.” I won’t even toy with the idea that this feature-length Afterschool Special is the best at anything, but the film does have some merit as a teen revenge fantasy. Making his low-key directorial debut, Academy Award-winning producer Tony Bill brings visual grace sans style to this tale of the new kid in school and how he masterminds one bully’s downfall through another’s redemption.

Rock Star (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Mark Wahlberg, Jennifer Aniston, Dominic West, Timothy Spall
screenplay by John Stockwell
directed by Stephen Herek

by Walter Chaw Stephen Herek’s return to the realm of dope-head fantasy (his second and perhaps most remembered film is Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) gets off to a smashing start. For a brief, exhilarating time, he captures all the dim-witted exuberance, all the pathological pride, all the explosive machismo of long-haired, tight-leathered cock-rock bands and the symbiotic relationship they have with fans, who revere them as greasy, gyrating lizard kings. Once it becomes another tired cautionary tale of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, however, Rock Star turns off the amps and coasts home like a rusted-out DeSoto running on fumes.

Zebra Lounge (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Kristy Swanson, Brandy Ledford, Cameron Daddo, Stephen Baldwin
screenplay by Claire Montgomery & Monte Montgomery
directed by Kari Skogland

by Bill Chambers

“He is the straightest and most law-abiding citizen…in the world!”
-Wendy Barnet (Brandy Ledford), assessing her husband’s degree of innocence to a police detective

Zebra Lounge zippers shut the body bag around Stephen Baldwin’s career and confirms that Canadian filmmakers are no longer capable of good trash (director Kari Skogland is a veteran of the Saltine-dry Canuck TV show “Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy”), but most of all, it’s suffocatingly dull. This film should have a “do not operate heavy machinery” warning-label superimposed on it at all times. The made-for-cable movie marks not only the first time I have fallen asleep during a sex scene but also the first time I have fallen asleep during two consecutive sex scenes, neither of which takes place in the rarely-mentioned titular night spot. Zebra Lounge could’ve been called anything, so phenomenally generic are its subject matter, dialogue, and execution. Even the score, by someone named John McCarthy, sounds like it came out of a can.

Tackle Happy (2000) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, DVD, Esoterica

Tackle Happy (The Origins of “Puppetry of the Penis”)
**½/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C-
directed by Mick Molloy

by Bill Chambers A name actor once dropped trou’ in front of me, under non-sexual circumstances I dare not elaborate. I buried my face in my hands and this only inspired him to taunt me further with his manhood. “What’s the matter? It’s just a dick,” he said. The more I think about it (not that I’ve been dwelling on it), the more sage his plea of innocence becomes. Penises are obnoxious, and sometimes none too innocuous, but all in all, they’re not the least bit sacred. Compare the Western cultural reputations of the vagina and the penis: on stage, the former gets a pretentious monologue performed by everyone from Glenn Close to Alanis Morissette; the latter gets a puppet show.

American Pie 2 (2001) [Unrated – Widescreen Collector’s Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Jason Biggs, Shannon Elizabeth, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein
screenplay by Adam Herz
directed by J.B. Rogers

by Bill Chambers If American Pie was the Nineties’ answer to the teen genre of Eighties cinema, then American Pie 2 revives the sitcom format of that same decade. It starts and it finishes, logging hours but not progress. That made the film awfully discomforting on the big screen: When I saw American Pie 2 in theatres, I felt similar to how I did the time I endured Close Encounters of the Third Kind on a 13″ television; movies, like people, have proportions, and some clothing just doesn’t fit. Part of me wishes I’d watched American Pie 2 on DVD first, because although I slightly preferred my home viewing to the one at the gigaplex, I knew where the jokes were, and they ain’t built for repetition, nor is the film’s malnourished narrative.

Kiss of the Dragon (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, France, Martial Arts, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Jet Li, Bridget Fonda, Tcheky Karyo, Ric Young
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Chris Nahon

by Walter Chaw There are not ten consecutive minutes of Kiss of the Dragon that make sense and there are at least three completely disconnected scenes, but the real litmus test occurs about thirty minutes into the festivities, whereupon Jet Li kicks a billiard ball into the forehead of a Jim Broadbent-esque bad guy. Coming at the end of much mayhem, that’s where you either start playing pool with Kiss of the Dragon or leave the parlour altogether. It’s also an event that happens before Bridget Fonda has had a chance to do the Cybill Shepherd enjoyment-vortex schtick she’s been perfecting for a decade or so. To her credit, she’s getting pretty damned good at it, though she’s still no Helen Hunt.

The Glass House (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C
starring Leelee Sobieski, Stellan Skarsgård, Diane Lane, Bruce Dern
screenplay by Wesley Strick
directed by Daniel Sackheim

BUY @ AMAZON

by Bill Chambers In The Glass House, the picture-perfect legal guardians of an orphaned teenage girl and her little brother turn out to be Gomez and Morticia. (Actually, that's overstating their appeal.) The trouble with this set-up is that it has the pretense of a moral but revolves around a character in Leelee Sobieski's Ruby who hasn't done anything to place herself in her precarious situation except obey the law and her elders. By the time she gains agency and the film puts her in the driver's seat (quite literally, as it happens), The Glass House seems to be apologizing to young adults on screen and off for suggesting they're not always in control. It could be said to, like Home Alone or The Rugrats Movie, spread a false sense of security to its target demographic.

Film Freak Central’s Top 10 of 2001

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best-of Lists, Blog

Top102001

THE YEAR THAT WAS…
by Walter Chaw

Even though 2001 began like 2000 ended (poorly) and had a summer that could only count as its highlights a film so bad it became a handy satire of summer movies (The Mummy Returns) and two silly anachronistic pieces that got points for using David Bowie songs well (A Knight's Tale, Moulin Rouge!), the cinematic year resolved itself by the end as one of the strongest in memory.

Evolution (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott
screenplay by David Diamond & David Weissman and Don Jakoby
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Walter Chaw Ira Kane (David Duchovny) is a science teacher at a community college in Arizona. Not biology, not chemistry, not physics, but “science.” Uh-huh. His friend at the college is Harry Block (Orlando Jones), an honorary member of the United States Geological Society (not to be confused with the United States Geological Survey). When a meteorite smashes into Earth, totalling the vintage ’73 Riviera of complete moron Wayne (complete moron specialist Seann William Scott, late of Dude, Where’s My Car?), of course Harry and Ira are called in to collect “scientific” samples in the name of…um…”science.”

Osmosis Jones (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Family

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Bill Murray, Molly Shannon, Elena Franklin, Chris Elliott
screenplay by Marc Hyman
directed by Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, Piet Kroon and Tom Sito

by Walter Chaw If the devil is in the details, so, in Osmosis Jones, is most of the humour. It is one part Farrelly Brothers biological comedy and one part Piet Kroon and Tom Sito (late of The Iron Giant) animated genius; that the balance of the film is heavily in favour of the latter speaks to rare good thinkin’ from the Hollywood brain trust. The live-action part stars Bill Murray as the slovenly Frank–Murray out-repulses co-star Chris Elliot, which means that he is very possibly the most disgusting human ever captured on film. The animation side features the voice of Chris Rock as the titular Osmosis Jones, a white blood cell cop who, after a controversial stomach evacuation, is busted down to mouth duty. If you’re not sure what “mouth duty” entails–it’s bad. When Frank is invaded by an evil virus named Thrax (Laurence Fishburne), Osmosis gets one last chance to make good, paired with a blustering blunderbuss of a timed flu capsule named Drix (David Hyde Pierce).

Moulin Rouge (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Musical, Romance

Moulin Rouge!
***/**** Image A Sound A- (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras A
starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce
directed by Baz Luhrmann

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a mainstream film that tried to place its heart in the audience’s hands. Nothing in recent memory is as direct and open in its pleasures as the classic Hollywood musicals were, having been replaced by the sideways glance of the ironist and all of the false snobbery that pretends nothing is as it appears. While this is supposed to be a bellwether of our superior sophistication, it really just means that we strike a different pose: we must be superior to the events on screen and stop up our emotions with an arched eyebrow and a swift kick to the object of our gaze. The fact is that any evidence of true feeling–or, more to the point, true yearning for release–is treated as ridiculous and something to be lamented, but one must admit the current climate makes an affirmation of what we want seem very vulnerable and the efforts of those who decide to work without the net of condescension seem daring, if not suicidal.