Authors: Walter Chaw Archives - Page 106 of 149

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.

Wyatt Earp (1994) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

July 27, 20041990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Western

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras D
starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Jeff Fahey
screenplay by Dan Gordon and Lawrence Kasdan
directed by Lawrence Kasdan

by Walter Chaw It seemed like a good idea at the time: Kevin Costner–still a hot commodity just four years removed from Dances with Wolves, fresh from what might be the most important film of his career (A Perfect World), and not yet stigmatized by Waterworld–reteaming with his Silverado director Lawrence Kasdan, then one of the best genre writers in Hollywood, for a biopic of the famous lawman Wyatt Earp. Unfortunately, Wyatt Earp flopped like Kurt Rambis in the paint. It was too long, too prosaic, and in what appears in retrospect to be a pathological lack of pretense, too pretentious by half. It was the first real nail in Costner's career coffin–a product of his having way too much power and way too little savvy in a cynical America that had outgrown his kind of aw-shucks long about Gary Cooper. Costner's still shouting, but it's hard to hear him from all the way back there in 1940.

Garage Days (2002) – DVD

July 25, 20042000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Kick Gurry, Maya Stange, Pia Miranda, Russell Dykstra
screenplay by Dave Warner & Alex Proyas and Michael Udesky
directed by Alex Proyas

by Walter Chaw A film done better just last year with Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, the brilliant Alex Proyas’s third film is a relatively innocuous, mostly-failed rags-to-rags garage-band opera that finds its speed in its usage of stock crowd footage from an old INXS concert. Garage Days is, as you might assume, a period piece of sorts, but period only in the sense that a Baz Luhrman film is a period film (Baz is even referenced, in the picture’s best moment, in an LSD hallucination set to Rick James at his sleaziest)–ostensibly taking place on the Manchester-esque mean streets of Sydney sometime in the last twenty years, though unmistakably a product of the self-reverential school of the post-modern visual boom-factory. The style the substance, Garage Days is all cover and no book and the sort of picture that seems like a lot of fun without actually being all that much fun: Trainspotting with amplifiers.

Hail Maria: FFC Interviews Joshua Marston & Catalina Sandino Moreno

July 24, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

July 25, 2004|”Hi there, you’re Joshua Marston?”

“Yes. I am.”

Such was my introduction to indie flavour-of-the-second Joshua Marston, writer-director of Maria Full of Grace: a full head of curly hair, and an ego the size of a brick shithouse. He turned away from me in the balconied hallway of Denver’s historic Brown Palace Hotel after confirming his identity–ignoring my hand outstretched–to chat with someone else he’d alienated, then realized that he had to talk to me as part of his publicity duties for his first shot at feature filmmaking. It’s a tough business: you fly in, you spend the night, you fly out, and in between you talk to about two dozen faceless, mostly nameless ink-stained wretches who generally ask you the same questions. It’s one thing to do it in New York and L.A., it’s another altogether to muster the strength to do it in a backwater like Denver. Thing of it is that people don’t always stay where they are at the moment–and that Denver isn’t all that dusty a horse-town as it used to be.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

July 22, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles
screenplay by Tony Gilroy, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Paul Greengrass

by Walter Chaw The Bourne Identity was directed by Doug Liman, an unusually gifted indie punk blessed with a screenplay by Tony Gilroy that touched on a lot of the same existential hallmarks as Blade Runner. Stripped of embellishment, The Bourne Identity is almost a textbook on movement and gesture, as purely cinematic an action film as any to come down the pike since the heyday of the ’70s British gangster genre. The Bourne Supremacy, taking up the story of a broken assassin two years later, has lost Liman, retained Gilroy, and gained Brit helmer Paul Greengrass, the man behind the brilliant pseudo-documentary Bloody Sunday. The picture’s a different beast from its predecessor–more, like Bloody Sunday, like a chronicle of a forgotten catastrophe than a post-modern thriller. And it’s delirious and whip-smart.

De-Lovely (2004)

July 15, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Music, Musical, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd, Jonathan Pryce, Kevin McNally
screenplay by Jay Cocks
directed by Irwin Winkler

by Walter Chaw Tempting to fall back on clever insults ("de-readful" or "de-reary") when summarizing genuinely bad director Irwin Winker's De-Lovely, a musical biography about the life and times of Cole Porter that's de-adening in its execution. The picture's framework sees old Cole Porter (Kevin Kline)–looking a lot like Carl Reiner–sitting in an empty theatre with some sort of angel of death (Jonathan Pryce) as the events of Porter's life unfold like a Broadway musical before them. The film will be interrupted periodically by old Porter screaming at young Porter (still Kline) that he's an idiot or that No, no, no, it didn't happen that way, just to be reminded by Death that nobody can hear him. It's as stupid as it sounds.

Maria Full of Grace (2004)

July 15, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Colombia, Crime, Drama, Ecuador, Theatrical

Maria, llena eres de gracia
***/****
starring Catalina Sandino Moreno, Guilied Lopez, Patricia Rae, Orlando Tobon
written and directed by Joshua Marston

by Walter Chaw In Maria Full of Grace (Maria, llena eres de gracia), Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), to prepare for swallowing the horse-choker, heroin-filled prophylactics that Colombian drug mules ingest by the dozens, practices on a few large grapes (call it “Maria full of Grapes”), and in her resolute suffering, she heralds the arrival of an actor to be reckoned with. Overflowing with subplots and burdened by at least one major character who’s superfluous and distracting, Joshua Marston’s hyphenate debut is as overstuffed as Maria’s digestive tract, but Moreno’s performance is so sure-footed and clear that it smoothes over some of the rougher patches of the piece.

Disney’s Teacher’s Pet (2004) – DVD

July 14, 20042000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical

Teacher's Pet
***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C
screenplay by Bill Steinkellner & Cheri Steinkellner
directed by Timothy Björklund

by Walter Chaw If nothing else inventive, at the very least perverse, and at moments transcendently bizarre, the feature-length version of Disney Channel's "Teacher's Pet" is the brainchild of incorrigible animator/illustrator Gary Baseman. Think of his stuff as landing somewhere between R. Crumb and John Kricfalusi, all of bulging eyeballs and serpentine necks and skeletons a touch too eager to flee their skins. As the palette for a kid's entertainment, it's a bracing presumption that kids aren't stupid and, when given the choice, are capable of appreciating something outside the pale.

The Door in the Floor (2004)

July 13, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Jon Foster, Elle Fanning
screenplay by Tod Williams, based on the novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving
directed by Tod Williams

by Walter Chaw Jeff Bridges is so easy that it's criminal. He does things actors shouldn't be able to do, and he does them without breaking a sweat. He's one of our national treasures, because he never draws any attention to himself in the manner of, say, a Sean Penn or a Tom Hanks. It's not showy, what he does–it's acting. And lest you think that it isn't, compare his cocky swagger in Bad Company to his awkward shuffle in Starman to his stung braggadocio in The Fisher King to his archetypal slob in The Big Lebowski to his shell-shocked suburbanite in Fearless. Take each performance by itself and it's comfortable to think that Bridges is just being Bridges; consider them as a whole and it dawns that the man's a genius. Any movie with Bridges in it therefore has something in it to recommend–no less so than his latest, Tod Williams's The Door in the Floor, an adaptation of the first third of John Irving's novel A Widow for One Year.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

July 8, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steven Carell
screenplay by Will Ferrell & Adam McKay
directed by Adam McKay

by Walter Chaw The topic of 1970s television anchormen is so far out of mind that it can't possibly bear a feature-length spoofing, and sure enough, "SNL" director Adam McKay's feature-film debut Anchorman is at once overstuffed and completely lifeless. It boasts a surreal touch here and again, but it's built on a one-joke premise and only the latest in a long line of witless and dull slapstick comedies. With no anchor to the satire, what remains is a film that's really only funny to the three or four people who thought it was a good idea in the first place. The opportunity to skewer sexism in television news along with its general vacuity is squandered before the altar of quick turnaround and die-cast opening dates. If they wanted to at least salvage what they had, Anchorman needed a few more months in the oven.

Broken Wings (2002) – DVD

July 8, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Israel

Knafayim Shvurot
***½/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Orly Silbersatz-Banai, Maya Maron, Nitai Gaviratz, Vladimir Friedman
written and directed by Nir Bergman

by Walter Chaw Israeli filmmaker Nir Bergman's Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot) is a film about the intricacies of a family implosion told in the minimal, spare, largely unsentimental fashion of a Mike Leigh picture, managing to relay its tale uncorrupted by the Israeli-Palestinian issue and, in Bergman's discretion, making a stronger statement about the mad choreography of war by personalizing the victims on its periphery. It separates itself from Leigh (and another headwater, Ken Loach) with a few scenes of carefully-constructed mise-en-scène that locate Bergman as a fan of the magical possibilities of cinema–and establish Broken Wings as a picture that challenges the post-modern idea that emotional truth can't be achieved without the trappings of handheld vérité.

King Arthur (2004)

July 6, 20042000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Ireland, Theatrical, UK, War

*/****
starring Clive Owen, Kiera Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård, Stephen Dillane
screenplay by David Franzoni
directed by Antoine Fuqua

by Walter Chaw King Arthur wants to have it both ways. It wants to be smart and it wants to be stupid, too. It wants to appeal to eggheads, so it opens with a title card that promises what follows is based on "new" archaeological evidence; then, for the alleged delight of the peanut gallery, it trots out the same period epic dog-and-pony show to which we've been repeatedly subjected since Zulu Dawn. Strangely enough, this new archaeological evidence apparently dates feminism back to the fifth century (witness the dominatrix version of Guinevere, decked out at one point like Grace Jones), in addition to facilitating a clumsy political satire of twenty-first century America's religiosity, arrogance, and imperialism. Needless to say, when something tries to please everyone, everyone is seldom pleased; King Arthur is both stupid and boring, and the revelation that, stripped of tragedy, controversy, and resonance, Arthurian legend is as banal as and similar to Tears of the Sun (director Antoine Fuqua's previous film) displeases indeed.

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

June 29, 2004****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Sam Raimi, Spider-Man, Superhero, Theatrical

****/****
starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina
screenplay by Alvin Sargent
directed by Sam Raimi

by Walter Chaw Just as the best parts of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies evoked the lo-fi ingenuity of Jackson’s splatter flicks (Braindead, Bad Taste), a surgery scene in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 reminds a lot of Raimi’s Evil Dead days–probably something to do with the chainsaw. Still, it’s uncomfortable, inappropriate, violent, the Three Stooges gone really, really wrong, and it’s stuck right smack dab in the middle of what is arguably the most anticipated film of the summer. Raimi’s tutelage in the school of zero-budget exploitation has taught him the importance of narrative and subtext, of internal logic and thematic coherence. You can buy limitless razzle-dazzle; you can’t buy a strong foundation in fun and at least a rudiment of sense. And as Raimi’s budget has soared from the rumoured twenty grand for The Evil Dead to somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ireland’s GNP for Spider-Man 2, his foundation in economical thrills anchors his blockbusters in humanity.

The Dreamers (2004); Rhinoceros Eyes (2003); Stealing Beauty (1996) – DVD|The Dreamers (2004) [Original Uncut NC-17 Version] – DVD

June 26, 20041990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, UK

THE DREAMERS
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green, Robin Renucci
screenplay by Gilbert Adair
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

RHINOCEROS EYES
***½/****
starring Michael Pitt, Paige Turco, Gale Harold, Matt Servitto
written and directed by Aaron Woodley

by Walter Chaw The danger is getting lost in fantasy, of being consumed by the lunar flame of lamplight filtered through celluloid. And the irony is that directors, the good ones, are already lost and have been for years. There have been pictures about an all-devouring cinephilia before (Cinema Paradiso, say, or 8½), and now a pair of films by two directors at opposite ends of their careers–Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers and Aaron Woodley's 2003 TIFF Discovery Award-winner Rhinoceros Eyes–strive to blur the line between movies and reality in twin tales of sexual maturation, of coming of age in a movie house–of, to parse The Judybats, learning how to kiss watching James Dean movies. Fascinatingly, the two films share Michael Pitt, forging a path for himself as the archon for the modern dreamer raised on lethal doses of popular culture, and weaning himself from that luxuriant udder only with great difficulty.