The Office: The Complete First Series (2001) – DVD

January 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Pseudo-Documentary, Television, UK

Image A- Sound A Extras B+
"Downsize", "Work Experience", "The Quiz", "Training", "New Girl", "Judgement"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I've had several e-mails complaining about a suggestion I made in this column that we should give cannabis to anorexics so they get the munchies. This was a satirical joke and was not meant to offend. I do not advocate the use of illegal drugs and I do not find any eating disorders amusing."
-David Brent, writing in the WERNHAM-HOGG NEWS

The Red Pony (1949) – DVD

January 7, 2004Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Family, Western

**½/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, Shepperd Strudwick, Peter Miles
screenplay by John Steinbeck, based on his short story collection Red Pony
directed by Lewis Milestone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In the simplest possible terms, The Red Pony is a Disney true-life adventure with a literary pedigree. As far as Disney true-life adventures go, it’s a superior one, thanks largely to competent direction by Lewis Milestone and a screenplay by John Steinbeck. But even the reasonably A-list personnel on hand can’t lift it above the lowliness of the genre–largely because what you see is what you get. There’s nothing to read between the lines of its tale of a boy and his pony, and despite some peripheral interest involving the boy’s parents and a stableman, the film fails completely to evoke the spaces between their words and the tension in their relationships, making it come and go with little rhyme or reason.

I Remember Mama (1948) + George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey (1984) – DVDs

January 3, 2004Posted in1940s, 1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Family

I REMEMBER MAMA
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka, Philip Dorn
screenplay by Dewitt Bodeen, based on the play by John Van Drutten
directed by George Stevens

GEORGE STEVENS: A FILMMAKER'S JOURNEY
**/**** Image A- Sound A-
directed by George Stevens, Jr.

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Andrew Sarris once remarked that George Stevens was "a minor director with major virtues" who became "a major director with minor virtues." He was referring to the point at which Stevens cast screwball frivolity aside in favour of the lugubrious, but there's more complexity to the A Place in the Sun helmer than that: he was simultaneously light and heavy, keeping details in focus as he blew small stuff way out of proportion. His dramatic talent is the kind that gets overestimated by Oscar-watchers but underestimated by intellectuals, falling in some distorted medium that is major and minor at the same time.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) – DVD

December 24, 2003Posted in1950s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Pat Boone, James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Diane Baker
screenplay by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett
directed by Henry Levin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover By any rational standards, the 1959 version of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is swill, an all-pro hackjob that marshalls a vast array of technicians and designers in the hopes that the money and effort expended will mask the total artistic void at its, um, centre. There's no sense of cinema to its mechanical vision of life beneath the surface–and yet somehow, despite Henry Levin's non-direction and the bizarre casting of James Mason alongside Pat Boone, the film works like gangbusters. Watching it is like being a kid at Christmas and getting a thoroughly useless but fun piece of plastic to play with. It won't do you any good in the long run, but as a mass-produced waste of 129 minutes, it has the steel-and-chrome charm of a bloated '50s gas-guzzler.

Destry Rides Again (1939) + The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) – DVDs

December 23, 2003Posted in1930s, 1960s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Western

DESTRY RIDES AGAIN
***/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Brian Donlevy, Charles Winninger
screenplay by Felix Jackson, Gertrude Purcell and Henry Mayers, based on the novel by Max Brand
directed by George Marshall

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
***/**** Image A- Sound A
starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kruger
screenplay by Lukas Heller, from the novel by Elleston Trevor
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The word "clever" can be used as a compliment or an insult–it's either a means of saying how ingenious you are, or a way of showing how far you are from being "intelligent." The same goes for the star rating, which can be used to mark a sleeper that shows some real talent or to warn you that something is "only entertainment"–when is three stars just right, and when is it not enough? This is the conundrum that faces me in reviewing Destry Rides Again and The Flight of the Phoenix, two films completely separate in time and subject matter, but which both rate about the same in terms of their achievement. But despite their equal entertainment value, I have a better feeling about Phoenix than I do about Destry: it's more creative and resourceful, even if it doesn't come off perfectly. That doesn't mean you shouldn't see Destry, though it is an indication that you shouldn't raise your hopes too high for it–and that you might be surprised by the lesser-known Phoenix.

Dream a Little Dream (1989) – DVD

December 10, 2003Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Teen

*½/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Jason Robards, Corey Feldman, Piper Laurie, Meredith Salenger
screenplay by Daniel Jay Franklin and Marc Rocco & D.E. Eisenberg
directed by Marc Rocco

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover How to describe the sublimely awful experience of Dream a Little Dream? Imagine a whacked-out homage combo to John Hughes and Nicolas Roeg–one made without the talent or intelligence of either–and you’ll have an idea of its astoundingly ill-advised combination of temporal step-dancing and teenage romance. You have to admire the guts of director Marc Rocco for going so far out on aesthetic limbs that he’ll inevitably crash to earth–if nothing else, he’s willing to try things, and his plotting and editing rhythms are so unlike anything in the rest of the ’80s teen genre that they border on the avant-garde. Dream a Little Dream isn’t actually good, but it’s certainly never dull, and it will keep bad-film enthusiasts forever wallowing in pig heaven.

Looney Tunes: Reality Check (2003) + Looney Tunes: Stranger Than Fiction (2003) – DVDs

December 5, 2003Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Looney Tunes, Satire

LOONEY TUNES: REALITY CHECK
½*/**** Image A Sound B Extras B-

LOONEY TUNES: STRANGER THAN FICTION
½*/**** Image A Sound B Extras B-

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover So it's come to this: after decades of revelling in the hair-trigger-timed, artfully-drawn, beautifully lush fruits of the old Warner Brothers animation stable, we are now reduced to badly animated web broadcasts slapped haphazardly onto DVD. This cynical cash-grab has nothing to do with the craft of classic-Hollywood Looney Tunes and everything with trying to muscle in on an animation market largely dominated by Disney. But the iron that forged the greatness of the old shorts has largely run cold, replaced by the pathetic brandishing of the only other big cartoon trademarks in town–making for something from which only the very young or the very easily amused could derive any pleasure.

Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony (2002) – DVD

December 2, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, DVD, Music, South Africa

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C+
directed by Lee Hirsch

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Personal desires have a nasty habit of stepping on good intentions. It’s easy to think that by taking an interest in one corner of an issue/cause/milieu, you’re talking about all of it, and it’s just as easy to treat that corner on film while centring on that one thing you really like about it. Such is the case with Lee Hirsch, the well-meaning director of Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony (hereafter Amandla!). Anyone can see that he really, really, really likes South African freedom music, and with the examples his film gives, it’s not difficult to see why. But he’s so taken with its beauty and power that he ascribes to it magical powers it can’t possibly possess. Nobody can deny the importance of music to the South African struggle, but Amandla! is so in love with it that it makes it the entire struggle, a position there’s no chance in hell of it proving.

City of Ghosts (2003) – DVD

November 28, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Matt Dillon, James Caan, Natascha McElhone, Gérard Depardieu
screenplay by Matt Dillon & Barry Gifford
directed by Matt Dillon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It pains me to have to pan something as accomplished as Matt Dillon's directorial debut City of Ghosts. On a technical level, the film is unimpeachable, moving at a comfortable click and remarkably seamless in its creation and assembly; it's not genius, perhaps, but it's certainly capable and, considering that it's a first feature, surprisingly at ease with the mechanics of image-making. Alas, image-making is not the only criteria by which we judge a movie, and so it must be regretfully said that the story that City of Ghosts has to tell is at best condescending and at worst casually racist, with a tourist's eye for the Phnom Penh setting viewing one more Marlow looking for his Kurtz.

Darling (1965) – DVD

November 21, 2003Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Julie Christie, Laurence Harvey, Dirk Bogarde
screenplay by Frederic Raphael
directed by John Schlesinger

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Marking the point where Britain's realist directors turned from the proletariat to Swinging London, Darling is determined to show you all the depravity the latter milieu entails–and then make you suffer for it. The film is stultifying in its old-bourgeois disapproval of what used to be condescendingly referred to as "the younger generation," and as it ticks off the sins of its titular protagonist, Darling only makes you hate the filmmakers for being so high and mighty. There's no real analysis of what motivates the picture's aimless and amoral heroine, and no appreciation of the complexity of her plight; there is only smug moral judgment and a curt dismissal. The film is so self-consciously "serious" that it counts out any and all pleasure as shallow and destructive, leaving a grimy austerity that is as taken with surfaces as the woman it's supposed to be indicting.

Eloise at the Plaza (2003) – DVD

November 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Julie Andrews, Jeffrey Tambor, Sofia Vassilieva, Christine Baranski
screenplay by Janet Brownell, based on the book written by Kay Thompson & illustrated by Hilary Knight
directed by Kevin Lima

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but Eloise at the Plaza is made with far greater skill and care than a Disney TV-movie would normally warrant. Derived from the much-loved children's books by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight, the film goes out of its way to reproduce their junior-NEW YORKER tone, only in a heavily formalist, hyper-real manner that thrives on perfect shape and well-timed movement. So accomplished is the look of the film that it makes one forget the mealy-mouthed sentiment of some of the dialogue–the clockwork archness of the production transforms its clichés into pure narrative form, so that they might give pleasure in their deployment and execution. In short, it's much better than it had to be and not half bad on its own terms, even by the standards of devoted cynics like me.

Metal and Melancholy (1994) + Crazy (1999)

November 14, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Netherlands, Theatrical

Metaal en melancholie
***½/****
directed by Heddy Honigmann

CRAZY
***½/****
directed by Heddy Honigmann

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Where has Heddy Honigmann been all my life? Hidden amongst the well-intentioned sheep and voyeuristic wolves that usually crowd my stays at the Hot Docs documentary festival is her ferocious intelligence and shattering compassion–which, when combined, results in wrenching, haunting films that stand alone and put most other documentarians to shame. Like no other filmmaker, she shows people caught in the crossfire of forces beyond their control, and like no other filmmaker, she captures the creative ways in which people adapt to the environment created by those forces. Furthermore, there isn't a shred of liberal self-congratulation anywhere to be found–there is no distance from the pain of her subjects, and there is no escaping the surge of confusion at the situations in which they find themselves. Her films are direct, unpretentious, and highly articulate in their evocation of the people and places they describe.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) [Widescreen] – DVD

November 11, 2003Posted in1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras D
starring Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Lorne Greene
screenplay by Glen A. Larson
directed by Richard A. Colla

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I find it supremely ironic that George Lucas had the nerve to sue the Battlestar Galactica team for the crime of plagiarism–this, after plundering Kurosawa and Ford and Leni Riefenstahl (and God knows who else) to create the po-mo patchwork quilt known as Star Wars. It doesn't really reflect well on your case when the thieves in question have actually ripped off fewer movies (and cultures, and archetypes) than the alleged textual victim; accordingly, Lucas lost the argument and the case. And yet, on some spiritual level, the bigger theft has more integrity than the smaller one. At the very least, Star Wars gives the impression that somebody wanted to make it: it's in awe of its sources, and that respect surges through every purloined frame. The Galactica crew only respected money and career opportunities, making the irritant of this would-be cash cow's maiden voyage seem like a mosquito the size of a Cessna.

My Brother Silk Road (2002); Swing (1993); Kairat (1992)

November 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Coming of Age, Drama, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Romance, Theatrical

Altyn Kyrghol
**½/****
starring Busurman Odurakaev, Tynar Abdrazaeva, Mukanbet Toktobaev, Kabatai Kyzy Elmira
written and directed by Marat Sarulu

Sel'kincek
**½/****
starring Mirlan Abdykalykov, Bakyt Toktokozhayev
written by Ernest Abdyjaparov, Talgat Asyrankulov, Aktan Arym Kubat
directed by Aktan Arym Kubat

KAIRAT
***/****
starring Talgat Assetov, Samat Beysenbin, Baljan Bisembekova, Indira Jeksembaeva
written and directed by Darezhan Omirbayev

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's impossible to understand an entire national cinema–or, for that matter, several national cinemas–through the prism of exactly three films. That's all I have by which to judge the Cinematheque Ontario's massive series Films From Along the Silk Road, which brings together films from five Central Asian countries–and so I offer my opinions with trepidation: I wouldn't want to turn you off of something magnificent that might be hiding within the schedule. Nevertheless, the selections offered to the press are/were of a fair-to-middling nature–pictorially accomplished despite extremely low budgets, but lacking a finished quality in themes and narratives. They're fascinating as cultural documents from a part of the world that never makes much of an impact in North America, but as cinema only one rates a proper recommendation.

The Cat in the Hat (1971) + The Lorax (1972) – DVDs

November 3, 2003Posted in1970s, 1980s, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family, Television

THE CAT IN THE HAT
**½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C
directed by Hawley Pratt

THE LORAX
***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
directed by Hawley Pratt

PONTOFFEL AND HIS MAGIC PIANO (1980)
Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras C
directed by Gerard Baldwin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Adapting for the screen a sensibility as singular as that of Dr. Seuss is a desperately tricky thing. It simply won't do to faithfully transpose the narrative, because narrative is hardly the point: Seuss is about nonsense wit both visual and verbal, and to fit it into a standard teleplay box is to destroy everything that makes his books special and unique. Nevertheless, the urge to bring the madness of Dr. Seuss to life is an understandable one, and so it should come as no surprise that in the Sixties and Seventies, CBS commissioned a series of animated specials designed to do just that.

Party Monster (2003)

October 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Crime, Drama, Netherlands, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, Chloë Sevigny, Natasha Lyonne
screenplay by Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato, based on the book Disco Bloodbath by James St. James
directed by Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato

Partymonsterby Travis Mackenzie Hoover By all rights, Party Monster shouldn't work as well as it does. Not only is it flip about matters of grave seriousness (in this case, the murder of a Hispanic drug dealer by Club Kid impresario Michael Alig), but it hasn't got much on its mind beyond the endless debauchery afforded by its subject matter, and consequently gives all other matters the rhinestone-studded shaft. But despite all of this shallowness, the film is surprisingly engrossing; as Alig falls into his downward spiral, it becomes a harrowing reminder that, per the film's much-abused Blake quote, the road of excess can often lead to the path of destruction.

The Whales of August (1987) – DVD

October 20, 2003Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Vincent Price, Anne Sothern
screenplay by David Berry, based on his play
directed by Lindsay Anderson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Auteurists take note: sometimes, economic circumstances play hell with your theories. There is the example of Lindsay Anderson, who began in the '60s as a star of the new British realism (This Sporting Life, et al) and went surrealist with the celebrated Mick Travis trilogy. By the end of the '80s, his particular quirks were no longer commercial, and he was reduced to sausages like The Whales of August, which bears absolutely no resemblance to the work that made his reputation. Try as one might, the film won't fit the brash, cynical template of Anderson's best work and is instead polite and obsequious in ways that a free director would never be. The resulting film is workmanlike but hardly compelling and serves mainly as a showcase for a group of aged actors who deserved better material almost as much as their director.

L’auberge espagnole (2002)

October 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, France, Romance, Spain, Theatrical

***/****
starring Romain Duris, Judith Godrèche, Audrey Tautou, Cécile De France
written and directed by Cédric Klapisch

Laubergeespagnoleby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Cédric Klapisch is the director of a mid-'90s gem called When the Cat's Away; although it wasn't of great shattering importance, it understood that, and turned out to be enjoyably funky nonetheless. Alas, the intervening years have taken their toll on Klapisch's sense of self-importance, because now he's made L'auberge espagnole–a film with the potential to be another enjoyably funky little movie that instead pushes banal life lessons and shallow cultural observations. L'auberge espagnole might have squeaked by had its tale of a French student in a Barcelona rooming house just been a sex farce with low ambitions, but as it stands, it's a sex farce that thinks that it's actual drama, making for some serious head-slapping when it drags out the ersatz "importance."

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) – DVD

October 9, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, UK

**½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson, Murray Hedd, Peggy Ashcroft
screenplay by Penelope Gilliatt
directed by John Schlesinger

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover "Are you bourgeois?" asks a child in Sunday Bloody Sunday, hoping to catch an adult in an awkward moment, and the question is crucial to your enjoyment of the film. If you are well-off enough to have good taste and fine things, and are somewhat guilty about the freedom and power that entails, then it will seem a sober and mature work about life and love in the post-hippie '70s. If, on the other hand, you are just scraping by and worrying about where your next meal is coming from, the film will seem a self-piteous soap opera in love with the idea of defeat. There's no denying the skill and professionalism at work here–it's what mid-period Woody Allen wishes it were, but it never quite licks the question of what to do with bourgie liberal guilt, and thus waffles towards an underwhelming conclusion.