Authors: Walter Chaw Archives - Page 102 of 146

The Osterman Weekend (1983) [Sam Peckinpah Commemorative 2-Disc Edition] – DVD

August 31, 2004****/****, 1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Thriller

****/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper
screenplay by Alan Sharp, adaptation by Ian Masters, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Sam Peckinpah

by Walter Chaw

"We rely too much on sight, don't you think? Appearances being what they are."

And so encapsulates the genius and the madness of Sam Peckinpah's final film, the contentious, still-relevant The Osterman Weekend. Serving as a bridge of sorts between the psychosexual circus of Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill (1980) and the technology/media fear of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), the film strikes a balance between the paranoia cinema of the 1970s and the technophilic sci-fi wonderland of the 1980s. It's brilliant–mark the ways that Peckinpah implies that every shot in the film is taken from a hidden camera for the pleasure of the audience. (A picture hasn't been this successful in indicting the criminal aspect of watching a movie since Hitchcock's heyday.) More than brilliant, like the best of Peckinpah's films, it gets under your skin with scalpel-grace. He made films of intimate violation–of rape, essentially; when you stare into the abyss of Peckinpah's pictures, Peckinpah stares into you.

The Marx Brothers Collection – DVD

August 30, 20041930s, 1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, Romance, Sports, Western

by Walter Chaw Hand in hand with their release of "The Tarzan Collection", Warner issues seven Marx Bros. films on five DVDs in a box set commemorating the comedy team's MGM output. Diving into the films in this collection, one finds the Marx Bros. in clear decline and willing--because the failure of their final picture at Paramount, Duck Soup, neutered a lot of their courage--to have Hollywood narratives foisted on their unrestrained chaos. A Night at the Opera is the last near-great Marx Bros. film, and it was their first at MGM; A Day at the Races followed before they…

The Expressionist: FFC Interviews E. Elias Merhige

August 28, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

August 29, 2004|I entered into Suspect Zero saddled with some of the most venomous buzz for a picture since Catwoman; apparently a critic's screening somewhere in the wild Pacific Northwest had devolved into a hooting match. But I was hopeful, mainly because director E. Elias Merhige's first film, 1991's Begotten, is one of the bravest, most uncompromising experiments to come out of the American independent scene since Jonas Mekas. Silent, hallucinatory, deeply unsettling, it had the power to enrage and intoxicate in equal measure and did so, making no apologies about its debts to sources as highbrow and "pretentious" as Luis Buñuel and Carl Dreyer. (Seriously, in a time when our president is trying to turn "nuance" into a dirty word, who can blame the cattle calls of the brainwashed naysayer?) Begotten is a masterpiece and a Rorschach test in the way that the best experimental cinema can be: it has the conviction and kineticism of early Stan Brakhage–that is, if Brakhage had a background in William Blake instead of William Burroughs.

Hero (2002)

August 27, 2004****/****, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, Theatrical

****/****
starring Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang
screenplay by Li Feng, Zhang Yimou, Wang Bin
directed by Zhang Yimou

by Walter Chaw Zhang Yimou's Hero is perhaps the most ravishing, most seductively alien fantasy since a pair of 1964 releases: Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert and Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman of the Dunes. It is a telling of the oft-told (in Chinese cinema) story of how the first emperor of China, Qin (an imperious Daoming Chen), was targeted by an assassin on the eve of uniting all the warring city-states of China into a kingdom, the centre of the world that calls itself to this day the "Middle Kingdom." To bridge the prescribed physical gap between commoner and emperor, X (Jet Li) tells the story of how he vanquished three of the realm's greatest killers in the function of a low-ranking magistrate–earning proximity as a result of his service to Qin with each tall tale. The body of Hero is the stories told by X, with Qin the rapt, but skeptical audience, taking his sense of manifest purpose as aegis against any attacker.

Intimate Strangers (2004)

August 24, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

Confidences trop intimes
**/****
starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Fabrice Luchini, Michel Duchaussoy, Anne Brochet
screenplay by Jérôme Tonnerre
directed by Patrice Leconte

by Walter Chaw Loony Anna (Embeth Davidtz doppelgänger Sandrine Bonnaire) opens the wrong literal/metaphorical door and ends up spilling her guts to befuddled tax attorney William (Fabrice Luchini), who, as the mistaken identity crisis prolongs, seeks council of his own in the form of Dr. Bonnier (Michel Duchaussoy). William pretends to be something he's not, then, aping the words and insights of Dr. Bonnier–and Anna may not be who she seems, potentially fabricating for her "therapist" a control-freak husband and his various sexual demands. Leconte plays with the idea that talking about things is sexier than doing them, at once recalling Bibi Andersson's erotic monologue in Ingmar Bergman's Persona and playing with the thought that film is better at suggesting than showing.

Walking Tall (2004) – DVD

August 23, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD

½*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring The Rock, Neal McDonough, Johnny Knoxville, Kristen Wilson
screenplay by David Klass and Channing Gibson and David Levien & Brian Koppelman
directed by Kevin Bray

by Walter Chaw Kevin Bray's remake of Walking Tall is so empty of substance, so full of nihilistic bile, that it makes the shorthand of First Blood seem like an Ibsen play in its complexity and character development. A mysterious vet proves Thomas Wolfe correct, going home to a town completely changed by a corrupt local government and a posse of redneck law enforcers. Our red-blooded desire to take the law into our own hands drives the instinct to cheer once he resorts to the Neanderthal brutality of "eye for an eye" or, as the case may be, "a truck for a truck."

Gallo’s Humor: FFC Interviews Vincent Gallo

August 22, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

Vincent Gallo is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being Film Freak Central has ever known

got the call in the middle of a morning screening that a moderator was needed that evening at Denver's Starz Filmcenter for a Q&A after a sold-out screening of Vincent Gallo's notorious The Brown Bunny. After a second screening, a lot of juggling, and a little soul-searching, and with a little less than two hours to research and prepare, I agreed to do it. I'd never met Vincent Gallo before, but his reputation for combativeness bordering on cruelty preceded him; and though I took his side in private in his blow-up with Roger Ebert after last year's disastrous Cannes Film Festival screening of a workprint of his picture, I confess that I've never been more nervous to interview someone.

Without a Paddle (2004)

August 17, 20042000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Mystery, New Zealand, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, Dax Shepard, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by Jay Leggett & Mitch Rouse
directed by Steven Brill

by Walter Chaw Steven Brill's Without a Paddle is relentless and brutal–like Alanis Morrissette's version of Cole Porter's "Let's Do It," the torment of it just never ends. Weathered CIA spooks would spill their mother's social security numbers after five minutes of enduring this kind of torture. It's not fair, really–normal people aren't equipped to withstand a cross between The Goonies, Bushwhacked, Deliverance, Surviving the Game, The Great Outdoors, The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, American Pie, Southern Comfort, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Big Chill that borrows the cell phone gag from Jurassic Park III and even a little something from, I kid you not, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It is, in other words, a gross-out slapstick comedy set in the wilderness that is unkind to Appalachians while making a play for cuddly sentimentality despite more than a few moments that are needlessly graphic or just plain grotesque. Blame the brain trust of actors-turned-screenwriters Jay Leggett and Mitch Rouse–or, better yet, blame director Steven Brill, a Sandler crony who proves that sad nepotism does not a director make.

Laws of Attraction (2004) – DVD

August 16, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Ireland, Romance, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna and Robert Harling
directed by Peter Howitt

by Walter Chaw Utterly mediocre and hence better than most of the romantic comedies cranked out by the Hollywood schmaltz factory these days, Peter Howitt's Adam's Rib throwback Laws of Attraction has the over-polished sheen of an apple waxed and stroked so many times that it's more aesthetically impressive than palatable. The film bears a Sandra Bullock/Julia Roberts checklist for a screenplay, with blacked-out boxes next to: meet-cute (she sticks a pencil in his ear); two musical montages (one happy, one sad); a celebration of bad behaviour (binge-drinking); fetishizing of one metaphor-laden item (broken leprechaun figurine); baguette sticking out of a grocery bag; betrayal of half-hearted feminist tenets by making heroine bedazzled by jewellery and men; betrayal of female gender by having model-perfect heroine have the "earthy" habit of binge-eating and not vomiting; quirky elderly/gay/parental comic relief figure; a scene where heroine falls down; a scene where hero does/admits to bad thing; travel/architectural pornography; and temporary break-up leading to nauseating epilogue. Yep, Laws of Attraction is pounded earth complete with a tiresomely whimsical score by Ed Shearmur, opening titles lifted from "Dynasty", and a streak of potential subversion so neutered that it's completely childlike.

The Passion of the Christ (2004) – DVD

August 15, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A
starring James Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Claudia Gerini, Maia Morgenstern
screenplay by Benedict Fitzgerald and Mel Gibson
directed by Mel Gibson

by Walter Chaw The danger of a film like The Passion of the Christ is the fervour with which people will declare that it is unadorned "truth," will imagine that writer/director/hands-that-pound-the-nails-into-Christ Mel Gibson has somehow pointed a camera through a porthole into 33 A.D.–will forgive the piece any number of otherwise unforgivable cinematic sins, any abundance of opposing historical and canonical evidence, for fear that their discomfort with the picture might be read as blasphemy and that their ignorance of the minutia of scripture will be revealed. It is the sort of fearful, hysterical, insular, self-righteous groupthink in which the rabble Gibson blames for Christ's death engages, and the ironies embedded in the film and its reception don't end there. It seems ridiculous to remind that the film is no more and no less than Gibson's interpretation of the last twelve hours of Christ's life. The question worth asking is before this film, how many of its defenders looked to Gibson for guidance in cosmological (or any) issues? How it is that making a film in our cult-of-celebrity culture gifts any filmmaker the credentials of theologian pundit? Mel's on the cross, he blames the Jews (and now the critics) for putting him there, and his whole career begins to coalesce as a parade of martyrs.

Alien vs. Predator (2004) + Tom Dowd & the Language of Music (2004)

August 12, 20042000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Music, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR
½*/****
starring Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen, Ewen Bremner
written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

TOM DOWD & THE LANGUAGE OF MUSIC
***/****
directed by Mark Moormann

by Walter Chaw Paul W.S. Anderson makes horrible movies from horrible ideas. He doesn't know how to shoot action scenes, he doesn't know how to shoot dialogue scenes, and he doesn't know how to craft a pleasurable B-movie. Early on in Alien Vs. Predator (a film trumped by not only every single other entry in the respective titular franchises, but also Freddy vs. Jason), someone's watching an old Universal horror film on television–I think it's House of Dracula–and it announces in a promisingly self-knowing way that the movie knows what its roots are and that it intends to honour them. As the story unfolds with the discovery of an ancient pyramid ("It's the first pyramid ever!") buried beneath two-thousand feet of Antarctic ice, visions of Howard Hawks's The Thing and Karl Freund's The Mummy dance happily in the head while the Queen Alien is awakened via Tesla Coil like James Whale's Bride. Unfortunately, all hopes for the picture are quickly dashed.

Garden State (2004)

August 12, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance

*½/****
starring Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Ian Holm
written and directed by Zach Braff

by Walter Chaw As disaffected turns of phrase go, New Jersey's nickname "The Garden State" is a pretty fair description of a vegetative state of mind. Zach Braff's hyphenate debut Garden State seizes on that wilful misreading, offering up a Girl, Interrupted for boys featuring a lead character fresh from The Bell Jar: an over-medicated, under-emoted man who just wants to feel something, damnit. It's what passes for groundbreaking independent cinema in the new millennium–drugs and depression as a stage for spastic trick shots (the great fallout from Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream). It demeans low-achieving minimum wagers with small-dreams and extols the virtues of true love without aspiration, but its scattershot glimpse of fad-fortunes vs. old money doesn't go very far in making the case for Garden State as either social exposé or romantic whimsy. If the picture's anything, it's just a worn rock skipping along a smooth, glassy surface.

The Girl Next Door (2004) [Unrated Version] – DVD

August 8, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Emile Hirsch, Elisha Cuthbert, Timothy Olyphant, James Remar
screenplay by Stuart Blumberg and David T. Wagner & Brent Goldberg
directed by Luke Greenfield

by Walter Chaw Though it reminds a great deal of Paul Brickman's Risky Business, The Girl Next Door reminds all the more that there's really only one Paul Brickman, and while this picture sustains the sleazy wish-fulfillment of Risky Business for a good long run, it can't replicate the same kind of insouciant rebellion. The exercise feels forced in a way that Risky Business doesn't, the earlier film's ease owing mostly to Brickman but also to another of Tangerine Dream's definitive Eighties scores and, perhaps, the bestial liquid chemistry between Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay–a chemistry that's never quite replicated by a very fine Emile Hirsch and the very fine Elisha Cuthbert. Without the reckless air of youth on the verge, The Girl Next Door starts to feel like calculated imitation, becoming affected and, eventually, what a teenage sex comedy can't be: restrained. Its bark is worse than its bite, and in the end, only its premise is subversive.

Burden of Dreams: FFC Interviews Tadanobu Asano

August 8, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews, Japan

Tadanobu Asano, the pride of Japanese cult cinema, on his latest performances

August 8, 2004|A lot of people are calling Tadanobu Asano Japan's Brad Pitt; I'm more comfortable comparing him to Johnny Depp. He's a beautiful guy, no question, but he's also fond of quirky film choices that work against his matinee-idol good looks. If he couldn't act, it'd be career suicide, but in the course of a little over ten years, Asano has fashioned a body of work that alternates between disturbed and disturbing. It says a lot about the Japanese audience that he has found fame and fortune playing sociopathic murderers and suicidal urban manqué.

Collateral (2004)

August 5, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Michael Mann, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo
screenplay by Stuart Beattie
directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw To hear Michael Mann tell it, you'd think he'd found a new way to film Los Angeles, the most-filmed city in the world. To watch Collateral is to discover that he has. I wish that there were some meat to Collateral, because even without it, it's hands-down this year's most gorgeously-directed film. If there was ever any question to Michael Mann's genius after Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, or Heat, it must be laid to rest now–he's pushing Spielberg in terms of visual gift, trumping him in terms of maturity (and courage, of course), and he's moving into an upper echelon of cinematic directors (Stanley Kubrick, for example) who, when they're on, produce tapestries so pure that you feel as though if you tapped them they'd ring like crystal.

New York Minute (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

August 2, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D+
starring Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Eugene Levy, Andy Richter
screenplay by Emily Fox and Adam Cooper & Bill Collage
directed by Dennie Gordon

by Walter Chaw At some point in New York Minute, a Chihuahua gives Andy Richter (playing an Asian man, natch) a golden shower in the backseat of a limousine, saving one of the Olsen twins from the intimidation and possibly torture of Richter's distaff Fu Manchu archetype mother, Mama Bang (Alannah Ong). (Mama Bang later threatens that Chihuahua with a pair of chopsticks. Because chinks eat dogs–get it?) At another point in the picture, director Dennie Gordon, a woman who should be ashamed of herself, films the seventeen-at-the-time-of-shooting twins in sexy-commercial slow-motion; they're wearing towels after having showers in a cute guy's hotel room, and when said guy (Jared Padalecki) walks in on them, he asks, "Hey, is today my birthday?"

Wave 2: FFC Interviews Stacy Peralta & Greg Noll

August 1, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews

August 1, 2004|The first time I met Stacy Peralta, it was little more than a month after September 11, 2001. He had come into town for the Denver International Film Festival (which I was covering for the first time for FFC), and I felt daunted by both the mood of the festival and by Peralta's status as a living legend amongst a small, rabid group of extreme-sports enthusiasts. Peralta was there to accompany his first documentary, the much-praised Dogtown & Z-Boys, the success of which led to a few still-kicking projects, including a feature film adaptation of Dogtown directed by Thirteen's Catherine Hardwicke. First appearances spoke volumes: Self-effacing and modest, he was genuinely concerned about what had happened in New York and at the Pentagon. He was able to put his work into perspective in regards to not only life and death calamity, of course, but also in regards to more experienced filmmakers–artists he admires in a medium to which he's still relatively new. The next time I meet Stacy Peralta, it's in the crowded lobby of Denver's Mayan Theater, where he and surf-legend Greg Noll are preparing to do a Q&A with an audience that's just seen Peralta's newest documentary, Riding Giants. The crowd is raucous, Noll is nervous, and Peralta? He's cool as the other side of the pillow in trademark ballcap, sporting a sincere look upon shaking my hand and remembering the conversation that we had almost three years ago now. I sat down with Mr. Peralta and Mr. Noll ("Greg, please, just 'Greg'") the following morning to chat about riding big waves and the siren's call of filmmaking for skate brats and surf hounds. Both men are the real deal, having stuck their irons in hotter coals than junkets and promotional screenings, emerging with the grace to deal with attention and inane questions. They're in the moment, as Buddhists would remark, riding the quiet part of the wave.

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

July 30, 20042000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Germany, Theatrical

***/****
starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Anthony Anderson
screenplay by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
directed by Danny Leiner

by Walter Chaw Danny Leiner's Dude, Where's My Car isn't as bad as you'd think and his Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is probably a good deal better than you have any right to expect. It begins as any number of gross-out frat-boy comedies do, with a white guy picking on a quiet Asian dude–and then it makes the interesting decision to stay with the quiet Asian dude (Korean actor John Cho (Harold)) and his roommate, East Indian Kumar (Kal Penn), as they embark on a quest to kill marijuana munchies at the revered White Castle hamburger chain. It's about, as Harold says at one point, the feeling of a man getting what he really wants. A simple enough statement (certainly a simple enough basis for a picture–some would say too simple), but it speaks volumes of our culture that it's so unusual that Harold and Kumar are not only not merely racial shorthand caricatures, but also just young men.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

July 30, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Jonathan Demme, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Kimberly Elise
screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, based on the novel by Richard Condon
directed by Jonathan Demme

by Walter Chaw Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate is arguably more of a retelling of William Cameron Menzies’s Invaders from Mars (1953) than it is of John Frankenheimer’s incomparable 1962 original. Like Menzies’s science-fiction B-movie classic, the premise of Demme’s updating is that some alien force (Earthling mad scientist in this instance instead of Martian) has implanted a small device in certain respected members of our society in order to manipulate them into harming our surprisingly fragile good old American value system. Also like Invaders from Mars, the whole film moves with the logic of a fever dream, all intense close-ups, hallucinatory visions, and suggestions of going underground.

Riding Giants (2004) + Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)

July 29, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, France, Music, Sports, Theatrical

RIDING GIANTS
**/****
directed by Stacy Peralta

METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER
**/****
directed by Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky

by Walter Chaw Skateboard legend Stacy Peralta's follow-up to his highly-regarded Dogtown & Z-Boys is the big wave surfing documentary Riding Giants. Equal parts ecstatic archival sports video and hagiography of the pioneers of the deep water (a new meaning for "swells"), its strengths are the same as those for Dogtown: a great soundtrack, and a sense of kinetic energy that manages to confer, at least in fits and starts, the breathlessness of the subject to an enraptured audience. But it lacks the background sociology of Peralta's prior work, failing for the most part to explain how the surf culture came to be even as it offers a survey history of the entire pastime. The film is strong on the usual suspects and the dazzling locations–and weak on the kind of lawlessness and maniacal urge to rebel that created something like an extreme beach Woodstock almost twenty years before our collective cultural dam broke. Just mentioning the Beat Poets is not enough.