Searching for Debra Winger (2002) – DVD

June 9, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD

*/**** Image B+ Sound B+
"experienced" by Rosanna Arquette

by Walter Chaw Group therapy for once and future A-list actresses, Rosanna Arquette's bizarre foray into auto-confessional documentary essays a fairly impressive selection of talent waxing blue on the struggles of balancing stardom with family. Artists as variegated as Daryl Hannah and Samantha Mathis, JoBeth Williams and Emmanuelle Béart, Frances McDormand and Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter and Robin Wright Penn, Diane Lane and Sharon Stone, Salma Hayek and Charlotte Rampling, and Whoopi Goldberg and Tracey Ullman kvetch about how shitty their gilded lives are while sitting in leather-lined, candlelit restaurants or against the palatial backdrops of their impossible homes and yards. The title, Searching for Debra Winger (referring to the inspiration that triggered the film: to discover why it is that Winger retired from show business), is made ironic by the fact that Winger has come out of retirement since to appear in her husband's shitty Big Bad Love.

Secret Window (2004) – DVD

June 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Mystery, Stephen King, Thriller

**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A
starring Johnny Depp, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton, John Turturro
screenplay by David Koepp, based on the novella "Secret Window, Secret Garden" by Stephen King
directed by David Koepp

by Walter Chaw Secret Window is a checklist for Stephen King fans in exactly the same way his bloated fiction from the last ten years is a rehash of past material (and like old King material is a rehash of classic EC Comics/"Outer Limits" plots). It's an intensely wearying public window into how a popular writer has taken to auto-consumption and automatic regurgitation when inspiration flags. Typewriter intrigue? "Redrum"-like mantra? Curious wife? Lovable black sidekick dispatched with a hatchet à la Kubrick's The Shining? Check, all. Weird religious iconography, wide-brimmed Amish hats, some sort of sinister cornfield à la Children of the Corn? Surely. Popular writer tortured by an obsessive fan who wants him to write something special, à la Misery? You got it. Mysterious alter-ego nom de plume that appears to have been made manifest à la The Dark Half? Uh huh. Murdered pet and secluded woodland retreat à la Pet Sematary? Even that. Country mouse à la The Green Mile? Believe it or not. In fact, the only thing about Secret Window that doesn't stink of the King perpetual mimeograph machine (The Tommyknockers, "Ballad of the Flexible Bullet") is Johnny Depp's sly comic timing and the smooth direction by Stir of Echoes hyphenate David Koepp.

Spartan (2004) – DVD

June 7, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Commentary C+
starring Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, William H. Macy, Ed O'Neill
written and directed by David Mamet

by Walter Chaw Because we hate Arabs (and women almost as much as we think that Arabs hate women, those hateful Arabs), there are films like David Mamet's patently ridiculous, relentlessly offensive, unintentionally hilarious Spartan. A brilliant theatre man, the very definition of a keen cultural philosopher (his book of essays Some Freaks is must-reading), Mamet as film auteur has grown increasingly esoteric to the point now that his exclusive playpens of linguistic masturbation are so alien and self-conscious that they begin instantly to function as satires of themselves. His action is action as imagined by an egghead, all awkward movement and frustrated invective. His is the school of anti-casual cool, the drama club suiting up for the Friday night football game, and his supporters are cut from the same cloth, believing that there's a point to be made in Beckett for the brute while ignoring that Beckett is best staged with Spartan minimalism and left in the theatre besides. The films Mamet has directed range from sophomoric (House of Games) to grating (State and Main) to just incompetent (Heist), though Spartan reminds the most of one he only wrote: the wilderness howler The Edge, with its machismo over-examined and placed in a context that isn't allegorical as it must be, but hardboiled realism as it can't be. It's P.G. Wodehouse adapted for the screen by John Milius, and predictably awful.

Legacy: FFC Interviews Mario & Melvin Van Peebles

June 5, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

VanpeeblesinterviewtitleJune 6, 2004|Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song (1971) is arguably the most influential African-American film of the modern age, a zero-budget independent picture hailing back to a time in the early-Seventies when the term still meant something outside the studio boutique and the Weinstein brothers' Miramax Xanadu. The man behind the picture, writer/director/star Melvin Van Peebles, still has the sort of aura around him at the age of 72 that suggests just how good it is to be the king. A giant figure in any study of black popular culture (earning entire chapters in Donald Bogle's survey history Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Film and Black American Cinema, edited by Manthia Diawara), Van Peebles has interviewed Malcolm X, borrowed money from Bill Cosby, been nominated for three Grammys, won an Emmy, written a few books, collected no fewer than eleven Tony nominations, and received the French Legion of Honor. A kind of socio-political renaissance man, then, Van Peebles is still best known in the United States as the director of a curious little exploitation film that became, for a time, not only the highest-grossing independent picture in history, but also a polarizing force in spawning a race dialogue in American cinema, with an entire genre, Blaxploitation, flowering briefly in the aftermath of its release. Not a solution by any means, Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song represents a great start–the hope now that filmmakers like Antoine Fuqua, the Hughes Brothers, and Spike Lee can begin to/continue to bear up against the slings and arrows, the siren's call allure, of outrageously offensive mainstream fluff. (For a victim of temptation, look no further than John Singleton.)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

June 4, 2004Posted in****/****, 2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Theatrical, Time Travel, UK

****/****
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Gary Oldman
screenplay by Steven Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Harrypotterprisonerazkabanby Walter Chaw There's real poetry in Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (hereafter Harry Potter 3), encapsulated in a moment where Harry mistakes a vision of himself for the phantom of his dead father. It's another of the Mexican director's magic-realism conversations about children coming of age emotionally and sexually, marking the picture as a lovely companion piece to his A Little Princess and identifying Cuarón as a gifted, eloquent voice for the rage and the rapture of adolescence. Opening with the 13-year-old Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) fiddling with his wand beneath a blanket, the theme of self-discovery unfolds along jagged, de-romanticized lines like the rough rhythms of an Irish lyric or, more to the heart of the matter, a Mexican folk tale, all of blood, dirt, and heroic fervour.

Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Sean Patrick Thomas, Eve
screenplay by Don D. Scott
directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan

by Walter Chaw If not for a cringe-worthy conclusion and the awkwardness of an entire Queen Latifah subplot too clearly an embedded trailer for the upcoming Beauty Shop, Barbershop 2: Back in Business would not only be better than the first film, but also almost worthy of consideration as a lighthearted version of Do the Right Thing. Firmly rooted in politics, the opening credit sequence–which charts black history through the evolution of the afro haircut, with each image group ending, incisively, with a shot that demonstrates how white culture invariably hijacks black trends–is alone worth the price of admission. It summarizes a sticky, Ouroborosian circle of self-consumption, owing to the fact that hip-hop culture itself takes elements of white culture and redefines them through its own prism. What's the explanation for Vanilla Ice's ski-slope pompadour in the bigger picture of race relations and cultural diffusion? A look at the progression of Michael Jackson would seem the cheap shot, and it would have been out of this context, but while no mention of Wacko Jacko fails to inspire reflexive groans anymore, Barbershop 2 actually, wordlessly, scores a poignant, precise, eloquent point about the state of our state. Taking a swipe at the King of Pop is easy–having it score in a way fresh with insight is invaluable.

Roswell: The Complete First Season (1999-2000) – DVD

June 1, 2004Posted in1990s, 2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Teen, Television, Thriller

Image A Sound A Extras B
"Pilot," "The Morning After," "Monsters," "Leaving Normal," "Missing," "285 South," "River Dog," "Blood Brother," "Heat Wave," "The Balance," "Toy House," "Into the Woods," "The Convention," "Blind Date," "Independence Day," "Sexual Healing," "Crazy," "Tess, Lies and Videotape," "Four Square," "Max to the Max," "The White Room," "Destiny"

by Walter Chaw What begins as something romantic and mysterious ends as something predominantly memorable for the impact it had on Dido's wan career. Charting the WB's "Roswell"'s downward trajectory from a piquant, lovely pilot to the worst of "The X Files" and "Dawson's Creek" is a fascinating, instructive thing to watch–not only for the schadenfreude of it all, but also for the way that corporate perception of what an audience purportedly wants invariably leads to production of the same kind of dull crapulence over and over again. (Though, in the WB's defense, a grassroots letter-writing campaign that saved the series from oblivion at least once indicates a fervid devotion to this kind of garbage.) In the fine tradition of making a self-pitying clone of "thirtysomething" for teen-somethings played by a cast of twenty-somethings, "Roswell" is "Sweet Valley High" mixed with the Troll Books variety of soft-core science fiction, making that "My So-Called Life" feeling of middle school alienation literal in its tale of three or four actual aliens getting teased by jocks in Roswell, NM. It's the love child of Robert A. Heinlein and Judy Blume, and it ain't pretty.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Fantasy, New Zealand

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Peter Jackson

Returnofthekingeecap2

by Walter Chaw For the uninitiated few, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are diminutive hobbits making their way, with the treacherous Gollum (Andy Serkis) as their guide, through perilous lands on a quest to destroy the One Ring of power, forged by evil Sauron in a volcano called Mount Doom. Their story is set against a series of epic military manoeuvres and intimate Machiavellian machinations engaged in by elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom), dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and the once and future human king, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen).

The Company (2003) – DVD

May 30, 2004Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Germany, Music, Romance, UK

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Neve Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Franco, Barbara Robertson
screenplay by Barbara Turner
directed by Robert Altman

Mustownby Walter Chaw There is a moment in Robert Altman's beautifully metered The Company where we're introduced to a cook played by James Franco through a low angle shot hovering over the green, smoke-haloed expanse of a gin-joint pool table. Wordless, the sequence plays out as Ry (Neve Campbell, never better) shoots a rack to the cool blues slinking out of a corner jukebox, glancing up now and again to meet Josh's (Franco) frank interest with gradually thawing humour and heat. Discretely, the film cuts to the next morning as Josh cooks an omelette with what's available in the kitchen of Ry's artist's loft.

Baadasssss! (2004)

May 27, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Theatrical

How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass
***/****
starring Mario Van Peebles, Joy Bryant, T.K. Carter, Terry Crews
screenplay by Mario Van Peebles & Dennis Haggerty, based on the book Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song by Melvin Van Peebles
directed by Mario Van Peebles

Baadasssssby Walter Chaw In 1971, Melvin Van Peebles, weary of the way that Hollywood portrayed people of colour, set out under the guise of a non-union skin flick to make Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song, the highest-grossing independent feature of its time, and easily the most influential African-American picture of the modern age. It featured a black man as its mustachioed hero, sexual and virile, unafraid to stand up to police corruption and the stultifying social oppression of "the man" ("Rated X by an All-White Jury," its poster proclaimed), and it allowed him to rebel without punishing him in the final reel–a radical idea then, a radical idea now. Mario Van Peebles, thirty-three years after the fact, has crafted a surprisingly edged ode to the making of his father's film, Baadasssss! (originally titled How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass), which manages the tricky feat of replicating the insouciant rebellion of Melvin's political, if not cinematic, masterpiece while somehow sidestepping the trap of hagiography. Melvin, played by Mario, comes off as a man of principle, but also an adulterer, callous towards the needs and fears of his children, as well as the kind of battlefield general who keeps the goals of victory to himself.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

May 27, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disaster Movie, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Dash Mihok
screenplay by Roland Emmerich & Jeffrey Nachmanoff
directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff

Dayaftertomorrowby Walter Chaw Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow completes a trilogy for the German director in which he trashes New York City, revealing either a deep hatred of the United States or a shocking disdain for civil planning. Aliens and a radioactive Japanese iguana the culprits in Independence Day and Godzilla, respectively, Emmerich's cycle of NYC flicks continues the evolution of blame from extra-terrestrial to the whimsical side-effects of military testing to, with The Day After Tomorrow, the Bush Jr. administration. The picture is overtly political, going so far as to offer a Mutt and Jeff duo as his fictional executive branch, while less stridently it presents what is possibly the first semi-literal 9/11 film in its vision of Gotham devastated from without and all warnings ignored, its denizens putting aside differences to survive and its emergency workers heroic and iconic. To compare a modern Ice Age (repeatedly referred to as a permanent shift in climate (was it ever)) to 9/11 is inelegant but, in the long run, perhaps ideologically accurate.

Carandiru (2003)

May 27, 2004Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Brazil, Crime, Drama, Italy, Theatrical

*/****
starring Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Milton Gonçalves, Ivan de Almeida, Ailton Graça
screenplay by Hector Babenco, Fernando Bonassi, Victor Navas, based on the book Estação Carandiru by Dráuzio Varella
directed by Hector Babenco

by Walter Chaw Argentine director Hector Babenco's ninth film, Carandiru is his fourth that, at least in an ancillary fashion, has something to do with prison (the others being Lució Flávio, Pixote, and Kiss of the Spider Woman), and it's easily the least of them, justifying the men-behind-bars tropes and queen stereotypes by hiding behind its ostensible basis in Dráuzio Varella's non-fiction fiction. The film was adapted from a book that is based on a true story, the degrees of separation from reality dramatic enough as to render its hero doctor a smirking, condescending Virgil in a stock Inferno peopled with an all-too familiar panoply: smart con; murderous con who finds God; artistic elderly con; brutal street con; possibly innocent naïf con; philosophical con; and so on into nausea. The picture makes mistakes early and often, deciding to condense hundreds of stories into a few basic sketches and then choosing to recreate each of the pastiche criminal's life story in vignette flashbacks that do more to celebrate the brassy hedonism of São Paulo than underscore its underbelly of desperation and criminality. That carnival atmosphere comes off as a fragrant bouquet of patronizing pap that revels in its sordidness yet feels curiously naïve–"Oz" by a creative team that doesn't appear to know that the bar on prison dramas has been raised since Brute Force.

Dracula: The Legacy Collection – DVD

May 27, 2004Posted in1930s, 1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Vampire, Werewolf

DRACULA (1931)
***/**** Image C Sound C|A (with Glass score) Extras A+
starring Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the novel by Bram Stoker and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston
directed by Tod Browning

DRÁCULA (1931)
***/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Carlos Villarias, Lupita Taylor, Pablo Alvarez Rubio, Barry Norton
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the novel by Bram Stoker and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston; adapted in Spanish by B. Fernandez Cue
directed by George Melford

DRACULA’S DAUGHTER (1936)
***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill, Edward Van Sloan
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the story “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker
directed by Lambert Hillyer

SON OF DRACULA (1943)
*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Lon Chaney Jr., Robert Paige, Louise Allbritton, Evelyn Ankers
screenplay by Eric Taylor
directed by Robert Siodmak

HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945)
½*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Martha O’Driscoll, Lionel Atwill
screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr.
directed by Erle C. Kenton

by Walter Chaw Tod Browning’s Dracula finds its way to the DVD format for the second time as part of a handsome “Legacy Collection” heralding the theatrical bow of the studio’s lead balloon Van Helsing, possibly denoting the first time that a cynically-timed archival video release was announced with pride and fanfare instead of slipped surreptitiously into the marketplace. Never mind that a purchase of the Legacy collection whole (essaying Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein) proves to be far better for the soul than shelling out a few bones to catch Stephen Sommers’s latest assault on sense and cinema, even if doing so feels a little like letting Universal have its cake and eat it, too: There are worse things in the world than a mainstream shipwreck inspiring a vital resurrection.

Chasing Liberty (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

May 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie, Romance, Teen, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, Jeremy Piven, Annabella Sciorra
screenplay by Derek Guiley & David Schneiderman
directed by Andy Cadiff

by Walter Chaw Giving a whole new meaning to the term "Grand Old Party," now that Jenna and Barbara Bush have made being the first daughter delinquent-delightful again after that stick-in-the-mud scholar/ambassador Chelsea (the "Family Values" party has a little 'splainin' to do), gird yourself for no fewer than three films featuring the exploits of the most powerful girl-child in the free world: David Mamet's Spartan, the Katie Holmes starrer First Daughter, and, first out of the block, Andy Cadiff's execrable Chasing Liberty.

Coffee and Cigarettes (2004) + The Saddest Music in the World (2004)

May 20, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Music, Musical

COFFEE AND CIGARETTES
***½/****
starring Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright, Joie Lee, Cinqué Lee
written and directed by Jim Jarmusch

THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
***/****
starring Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros, Ross McMillan
screenplay by Guy Maddin & George Toles, based on a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro
directed by Guy Maddin

Saddestcoffeeby Walter Chaw Philosopher-scientist Nikola Tesla (of coil fame) once suggested that the universe winding down vibrated to a sympathetic rhythm; art, at its best, puts a tuning fork to it. The words that we use to describe tapping that fricative synergy (archetype, the sublime, the ineffable) are also the words that we use, to borrow a phrase from Frank Zappa, to dance about architecture–to describe what's indescribable about the collective experience, the existential electricity that ranks music above painting above poetry above literature (and film the twentieth century stepchild that falls somehow north and south of each). It is the unique privilege of the cinema to be all things at its best and less than nothing at its worst: to be sculpture for Matthew Barney; photography for Stanley Kubrick; ad art for Roy Andersson; poetry for Jean-Luc Godard; hymn for Abbas Kiarostami; and music for Sergio Leone. For Jim Jarmusch, it's the Romanticist sensibility distilled deliriously through the Nouvelle Vague, while for Guy Maddin, it's perhaps the critical instinct at its most self-loathing, arch, and unpleasant.

Shrek 2 (2004)

May 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Eddie Murphy, Family, Fantasy, Japan, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
screenplay by Andrew Adamson and Joe Stillman and J. David Stem & David N. Weiss
directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon

Shrek2by Walter Chaw Neither better nor worse than its predecessor, think of Shrek 2 as a step sideways–it doesn’t so much earn an audience as inherit one. A DreamWorks/PDI production, Shrek 2 transplants the first picture’s bitterness towards Disney, though the characters it skewers are in the public domain (Sleeping Beauty, the three little pigs, Hansel & Gretel, Pinocchio, and so on) and happen to be among the icons that Disney, by and large, never dishonoured. Without a viable target, then, the film is the kind of satire-less satire that mistakes being a self-congratulatory trivia game designed for beginning players for being a post-modern commentary on fairytales and, more specifically, the traditional Disney animated feature. There’s no sharpness inherent in making reference to Spider-Man or Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings saga (just as there was no sharpness in referencing The Matrix in the original), and imitation has no point of view, just a brief rush of pride and bemusement for folks generally unused to catching the allusions. To say the picture functions best for the lowest common denominator (note a trio of flatulence gags) isn’t entirely fair–but it’s accurate.

Paycheck (2003) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

May 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Directors: John Woo, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

½*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman, Aaron Eckhart, Michael C. Hall
screenplay by Dean Georgaris, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick
directed by John Woo

by Walter Chaw At the end of John Woo's latest Hollywood misstep, Ben Affleck, as brilliant "reverse engineer" Michael Jennings, hefts two bags of manure on his back and stumbles around with them for a while, effectively defusing anything cogent I could say about Paycheck. It is worth wondering, however, why people like Affleck and Keanu Reeves are so attractive in science-fiction premises (Reeves even had a turn with the memory-loss high-tech agent thing in Johnny Mnemonic)–probably something to do with the idea of robots and minds wiped clean. The problem with Paycheck isn't really that it's not well thought-out or that it's possibly the first Woo action film to be genuinely boring from start to finish, but that Woo seems to have replaced his joy of genre (and genius within the medium) with a scrabbling desperation to manufacture what used to come naturally.

Everybody’s All-American (1988) + That Championship Season (1982) – DVDs

May 16, 2004Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports

EVERYBODY’S ALL-AMERICAN
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jessica Lange, Dennis Quaid, Timothy Hutton, John Goodman
screenplay by Tom Rickman, based on the book by Frank Deford
directed by Taylor Hackford

THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON
**/**** Image C+ Sound C+
starring Bruce Dern, Stacy Keach, Robert Mitchum, Martin Sheen
written and directed by Jason Miller

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Taylor Hackford’s Raging Bull, the episodic pigskin melodrama Everybody’s All-American boasts a trio of fantastic performances at the service of a picture that’s all sturm and no drang, a weightless thing packed to the rafters with heaving moments over the course of a twenty-five-year span that somehow fail to add up to an affecting whole. It comes at the tail end of the prolific Dennis Quaid’s most prolific era, rounding up unqualified successes like The Big Easy and Innerspace (and unqualified miscues like D.O.A.) and serving as a handy career summary for Hackford, who hit it big with the revered cheese classic An Officer and a Gentleman, which he’s been dutifully remaking in one form or another ever since. Success is an unforgiving mistress–so is lack of range and imagination.

Troy (2004)

May 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Malta, Romance, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger
screenplay by David Benioff
directed by Wolfgang Petersen

Troyby Walter Chaw There are two major problems with Wolfgang Petersen's bloated swords and sandals opera Troy. The first is that James Horner contributes another of his patented walls of non-directional trumpets and violins as the score, and the second is that first-billed Brad Pitt lacks the gravity to hold down the middle of a 165-minute epic. There's a reason that people are always surprised to learn that Pitt stands just north of six feet tall: a gifted second fiddle who consistently steals the show (12 Monkeys, Thelma and Louise, Fight Club, Se7en, Kalifornia, Legends of the Fall, Snatch) and a sometimes-leading man who consistently has the show stolen out from him (Seven Years in Tibet, Meet Joe Black, The Mexican), Pitt, as warrior Achilles in this adaptation of Homer's The Iliad, is curiously weightless, a phantom haunting the film, so that by the end it all it feels like nothing of great import has happened. Consider what the film would have been like with Russell Crowe as Achilles (or, conversely, consider what Master and Commander would have been like with Pitt)–there's a reason that Gladiator was a success, and it had very little to do with its scripting or plot.

Sword of the Valiant (1984) – DVD

May 10, 2004Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, UK, ZERO STARS

Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
ZERO STARS/**** Image D+ Sound C-
starring Miles O'Keefe, Cyrielle Claire, Leigh Lawson, Sean Connery
screenplay by Stephen Weeks and Philip M. Breen and Howard C. Pen
directed by Stephen Weeks

by Walter Chaw A film that is actually exactly bad enough to be uproariously funny, Stephen Weeks's Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (hereafter Sword of the Valiant)–peculiarly, Weeks's second adaptation (after 1973's Gawain and the Green Knight) of The Rose Poet's fourteenth century Arthurian epic "Gawain and the Green Knight"–is one of those Golan-Globus productions that helped redefine the bottom of the barrel in the early Eighties. It gives Miles O'Keefe of Tarzan the Ape Man fame a short-lived and wholly unjust stay of career execution (decking him out in a Prince Valiant wig that makes him look suspiciously like Mary Worth with abs), and it furthers my contention that Sean Connery is pretty much just the Scottish Burt Reynolds. I'm not sure what Weeks and company had in mind when embarking on this project, but the result is something so deeply stupid as to inspire hopefulness and hopelessness in equal draughts: anyone can do it, apparently–but is it worth doing if it turns out to be Sword of the Valiant?