House of 1000 Corpses (2003) + Waxwork/Waxwork II: Lost in Time [Double Feature] – DVD

October 16, 2003Posted in1980s, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, UK, West Germany, ZERO STARS

HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon, Karen Black
written and directed by Rob Zombie

WAXWORK (1988)
*/**** Image D Sound D
starring Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, Dana Ashbrook
written and directed by Anthony Hickox

WAXWORK II: LOST IN TIME (1991)
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C
starring Zach Galligan, Alexander Godunov, Monika Schnarre
written and directed by Anthony Hickox

by Walter Chaw Curiously, compulsively watchable in a grindhouse exploitation sort of way, neo-glam shock-rocker Rob Zombie follows in Twisted Sister Dee Snider’s capering footsteps with a derivative flick that mainly goes a long way towards demonstrating how hard it is to make a coherent movie. More Richard Donner’s The Goonies than Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, House of 1000 Corpses is a shoestring series of hyperactive camera movements and disjointed images culled from what seems too many films to count, from Bloodsucking Freaks to Near Dark to Maniac to The Serpent and the Rainbow to Halloween to Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 and so on, with no reason except to demonstrate how many horror movies Zombie has seen. The only thing missing from the picture–besides actual dread–is a helpful annotation so that youngsters intrigued can check out the real deal.

DIFF ’03: Off the Map

October 16, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
***/****screenplay by Joan Ackerman, based on her playdirected by Campbell Scott by Walter Chaw Campbell Scott's Off the Map reminds me of some dimly-remembered authors I used to read when I was younger: Harper Lee, maybe Tony Hillerman in a contemplative mood--alien cultures and modes of thought set to soothing rhythms against a saguaro sunset. More to the point, the film resembles the book its characters read to each other by lamplight: Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s wonderful Two Years Before the Mast, which I first read when a beloved professor recommended it as a corollary to Melville's Moby Dick and…

DIFF ’03: A Slipping-Down Life

October 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Music, Romance
**½/****screenplay by Toni Kalem, based on the novel by Anne Tylerdirected by Toni Kalem by Walter Chaw With an excellent first hour and a less impressive, almost sprawling second, Toni Kalem's hyphenate debut A Slipping-Down Life finds an excellent cast in the employ of a Southern Gothic about a young woman "awakened" by the "shout outs" of a small-time backwater singer/songwriter. With tunes by Peter Himmelman and nice performances from Guy Pearce and Lili Taylor (too pretty to play the overweight teen protagonist of the Anne Tyler novel on which the film is based), what starts out as unusual and…

DIFF ’03: Casa de los babys

October 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Mexico
*/****written and directed by John Sayles by Walter Chaw It feels increasingly as if John Sayles is a little sick of making John Sayles films. This dramatically inert ensemble piece about a group of American women in a South American limbo hoping to adopt babies feels curiously underwritten and stale despite the heaviness of the dialogue. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes the best impression as a woman of privilege who hopes a child will save her marriage, but like the rest of the cast (Daryl Hannah, Marcia Gay Harden, Lili Taylor, Susan Lynch, Rita Moreno, Mary Steenburgen), her character is composed of…

DIFF ’03: I’m Not Scared

October 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK
Io non ho paura***/****written by Niccolò Ammaniti, Niccolò Ammaniti, Francesca Marcianodirected by Gabriele Salvatores by Walter Chaw An Italian version of Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter in many respects, Gabriele Salvatores' I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura) is admirable in its ability to evoke the dreamy disconnection of childhood--the startling realization at some point along the way that your parents may not be merely flawed, but occasionally malicious. A young boy, Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano), finds a child imprisoned in a hole next to an abandoned house in the middle of an impossibly beautiful fall Tuscan landscape, all yellow…

DIFF ’03: Film as Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16

October 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals, UK
***/****directed by Paul Cronin by Walter Chaw Documenting the rise and fall of New York International Film Festival director Amos Vogel, who got his start in the programming business as the mastermind behind the legendary "Cinema 16" film society, Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 provides a traditional documentary treatment of an unconventional man. A refugee from Hitler's Germany, Vogel, a fierce antagonist of censorship, introduced the United States to folks as diverse and vital as Yasujiro Ozu and Stan Brakhage. The sort of thing dying in an America that embraces the mundane and the comfortable…

DIFF ’03: Dallas 362

October 12, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
***½/****written and directed by Scott Caan by Walter Chaw An extremely auspicious hyphenate debut from actor-director Scott Caan (son of James), Dallas 362 is a kinetic and visually literate film composed of Nan Goldin-inspired two-person tableaux that offer a startlingly clear-eyed balance to the force of transitional sequences. An opening montage reminds in the best way of the still-photo manipulation over the main titles of "The Rockford Files", an interesting photo-scoping technique seen in the recent documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture and revisited in the body of the film as a particularly interesting way to tell a flashback.…

DIFF ’03: What Alice Found

October 12, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
½*/****written and directed by A. Dean Bell by Walter Chaw Petty to fixate on such things, but what to make of a heavy Boston accent that appears and disappears so randomly (in a character from New Hampshire, for God's sake) that it causes one to wonder why they even bothered in the first place? The performances in the digital cheapie What Alice Found are uniformly awful, but Emily Grace as titular trailer-park refugee Alice is a special case, trembling between Tori Spelling and Melanie Hutsell's SNL impersonation of Tori Spelling--all zombie stares, eye-rolling, and lop-sided sneers. Out of the park and…

Bobby Darin’: FFC Interviews Bobby Cannavale

October 11, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

BcannavaleinterviewtitleOctober 12, 2003|Talking with actors, especially young actors, is always an iffy proposition: the craft of acting is a difficult one to articulate, its choices obscure or instinctual, ideally, and in the case of a fresh talent, anecdotes are fewer and of less interest. So you find yourself, often, repeating the junket line: How'd you get started? What was it like working with X? Who are your influences? What's your next project? Questions, all, that only really need to be asked once in this day of fast, permanent information.

DIFF ’03: Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

October 11, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Denmark, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Sweden, UK
Wilbur Begar Selvmord***½/****written by Lone Scherfig, Anders Thomas Jensendirected by Lone Scherfig by Walter Chaw Uncompromising yet surprisingly gentle for all that, Lone Scherfig's Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is an unmannered character drama about Wilbur (Jamie Sives), despondent and suicidal after the death of his father; Wilbur's older brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins), who's taking the family's loss much better; and Harbour's new wife, Alice (the self-swallowing, eternally imploding Shirley Henderson), who finds love for the first time only to find it again in her husband's mordant brother. A psychiatric support group is funny in predictably quirky ways (though its…

DIFF ’03: Dark Cities

October 9, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Mexico
Ciudades oscurasDark City½*/****written by Juan Madrid, Enrique Renteria, Fernando Sariñanadirected by Fernando Sariñana by Walter Chaw Fernando Sariñana's grimy Dark Cities (Ciudades oscuras) is essentially a series of hardboiled vignettes that criss-cross in perfunctory ways over the course of one miserable night. Infanticide, rape, castration, long chats with corpses, murder, graft, and a criminal amount of hysterical camera tricks combine in a stew so sour and unintentionally funny that it plays out like the love child of City of Hope and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer--with hookers. Not enough can be said about the invasiveness of Sariñana's camera: it's…

DIFF ’03: Breakfast with Hunter

October 9, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals
**/****directed by Wayne Ewing by Walter Chaw Culled from what seems like B-roll of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the months leading up to the filming and release of Terry Gilliam's film adaptation of the author's seminal Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Breakfast with Hunter is interesting now and again for the extent to which Thompson is revered in certain circles, but feels curiously prosaic for the wicked incisiveness of its subject. The highlights of the film are Thompson's interactions with Johnny Depp and Alex Cox, the former the actor tabbed to play him in Gilliam's film and…

DIFF ’03: Noi the Albino

October 9, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Denmark, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Germany, Iceland, UK
Nói albinói****/****written and directed by Dagur Kári by Walter Chaw Dagur Kári's Noi the Albino (Nói Albinói) is a film about emptiness, really--a terrific picture crouched in the centre of a blasted Icelandic winter, with its titular hero, Nói (Tómas Lemarquis), too smart for the isolation. When the beautiful Iris (Elin Hansdóttir, wow) comes to work in the town-of-maybe-100-people's convenience store, Nói finds himself for perhaps the first time motivated for long enough to aspire to something larger. A Steve Earle song directed by Jim Jarmusch, the picture is deadpan hilarious and haunted by the oppressive power of dark and…

DIFF ’03: Bought & Sold

October 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
**/****written and directed by Michael Tolajian by Walter Chaw Michael Tolajian's Bought & Sold is a low-aspiring inner-city fairy tale featuring an Oscar De La Hoya-looking hoodlum protagonist named Ray Ray (Rafael Sardina) who dreams of buying DJ turntables from the local pawn shop while working part-time at a shoe store. He falls in with the wrong crowd, ends up going undercover for a local godfather in the pawn under kindly Armenian storekeeper (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), and gets twitterpated for the pawnshop owner's niece, Ruby (beautiful Marjan Neshat)--all of which unfolds in a herky-jerky kind of way as Tolajian's dialogue…

DIFF ’03: Assisted Living

October 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
**/****written and directed by Elliot Greenbaum by Walter Chaw Playing at times like a documentary (indeed, the film used the residents of its retirement-home setting as extras), Assisted Living is a troubling picture, balanced as it is midway between fiction and essay, with some actors feigning dementia and others clearly in its sway. Todd (Michael Bonsignore) is a pot-smoking twentysomething working at a nursing home--a kind-hearted soul, it seems, burned out in more ways than one and fixated on one of his charges, Mrs. Pearlman (Maggie Riley). Their relationship really not much more than a sketch, Todd's "rescue" of Mrs.…

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras A-
starring Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Bob Newhart, Luke Wilson
screenplay by Kate Kondell
directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

by Walter Chaw Recognizing that there's nothing more patriotic than rampant materialism, cultural ignorance, fast fashion, a steadfast lack of imagination, and disturbing dog-love, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde is essentially a blow-by-blow remake of its predecessor with a different setting and more Chihuahua. It tackles animal rights and congressional corruption with the same seriousness as Versace vs. Gucci, hoping against hope that Reese Witherspoon's considerable charm will smooth over the clumsy grafts and inevitable tissue rejection of a film with speaking roles for Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Newhart, and Sally Field. Harvard Law is replaced by the Beltway Boys, factoids about perms are replaced by factoids about facials, and all of it boils down to the importance of sorority sisters–particularly ironic in a picture so horrified by the evils of intractable nepotism amongst insular societies.

The Brood Makes Good: FFC Interviews Aaron Woodley

October 4, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Interviews

AwoodleyinterviewtitleOctober 5, 2003|Madstone Theaters has a workshop that pays aspiring filmmakers a salary, complete with retirement plan, for two years with the hope that at the end of their tenure, they will have produced a script that can flower into a feature-length film. Something that's ambitious and noble in a climate dominated by boutique moviehouses preaching indie while stroking mainstream, Madstone's fledgling community of filmmakers seems suspiciously Zoetrope-ian in its mandate–and the first product, Aaron Woodley's Rhinoceros Eyes, is so assured and engaging that it feels like a revelation. For its humour, and its faithfulness to the darker aspects of the quixotic fairytale dreamscapes of The Brothers Quay and their winsome heroes, Rhinoceros Eyes is a stupendous debut, mirroring the freshman amazement of Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (if truthfully in no other substantive way) and establishing both Woodley as a talent to watch and Madstone as having vision and integrity.

School of Rock (2003) + Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

October 2, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Richard Linklater, Germany, Music, Romance

SCHOOL OF ROCK
**/****
starring Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, Sarah Silverman
screenplay by Mike White
directed by Richard Linklater

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY
**½/****
starring George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush, Cedric the Entertainer
screenplay by Robert Ramsey & Matthew Stone and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw Maverick filmmaker Richard Linklater takes a break from his experiments in narrative and philosophy to helm what is essentially a mélange of the most tried and true mainstream formulas: the underdog kids uplift (The Bad News Bears, et. al); the inspirational teacher uplift (Dead Poets Society, et. al); the slacker whose best friend is dating an uptight harridan uplift (Saving Silverman, et. al); the burnout loser makes good uplift (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, et. al); and the rebel who reforms a restrictive institution led by an icy task-mistress uplift (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, et. al). Not to say that School of Rock is without its merits, but the whiff of originality–which every film of Linklater (and Mike White, who wrote the script) has possessed to some degree or another up to now–is not among them.

DIFF ’03: The Station Agent (2003)

October 2, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Theatrical

****/****
starring Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale, Raven Goodwin
written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

by Walter Chaw If there's a flaw to Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent, it's that there are elements to the narrative that don't make a lot of literal sense–the question of why someone would set up a coffee cart in the middle of a remote train yard the most obvious one that springs to mind. But in a film shot through with the melancholy hue of Longfellow's "My Lost Youth," gaps in credibility should be seen as poetic device, perhaps, or metaphor. The picture is heartbreak, a diary of the million betrayals and disappointments that make up an over-examined life composed all of loneliness and solitude. At its best, The Station Agent captures the isolation of any soul too sensitive, too intelligent for the harsh inconsiderateness of a world more interested in brashness than subtlety.

Holes (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

September 30, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Mystery

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, Shia LaBeouf
screenplay by Louis Sachar, based on his novel
directed by Andrew Davis

by Walter Chaw A certain level of grotesquerie in a children's entertainment is essential, but at some point grotesquerie just becomes grotesque. Holes, adapted by Louis Sachar from his award-winning children's novel, is a cheerless little melodrama, dusty and marooned in the middle of nowhere with what is essentially a pint-sized version of the time-tripping buffoonery of The Hours. Its tale of destiny and stroking the sins of the fathers rattles along its rails like a rusted-out mine cart, going to where it's going with a lot of noise and broken-down drama but without anything like surprise.