Two Weeks Notice (2002)

December 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant, Mark Feuerstein, Dorian Missick
written and directed by Marc Lawrence

Twoweeksnoticeby Walter Chaw Nearly the same movie as last week’s Maid in Manhattan (only with more likeable stars and more believable chemistry between them), Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant’s Two Weeks Notice (sic) is essentially just another opportunity for Bullock to play her wound-up, frumpy pratfall princess (recently hijacked by Nia Vardalos and her hard-to-stomach My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and for Grant to do his insufferable prat routine, both against the backdrop of the impossibly romantic golden Manhattan that is not to be confused with Spike Lee’s impossibly dour boilerplate Manhattan. Bullock is Lucy Kelson, Harvard-educated lawyer who has taken on the Birkenstock cause in her crusade against big business. Grant is George Wade, uneducated baron of big business who is so zealous to knock down historic landmarks that even his wrecking balls are emblazoned with Wade-Co’s giant “W.”

Gangs of New York (2002)

December 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Martin Scorsese, Drama, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Jay Cocks and Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan
directed by Martin Scorsese

Gangsofnewyorkby Walter Chaw Beginning as Martin Scorsese’s Apocalypse Now, Gangs of New York, at the end of the auteur’s thirty-year dream of it, more resembles his Titanic. Buoyed on a tsunami of dark rumours of behind-the-scenes clashes (the line “Please don’t make that sound again, Harvey” registering as either a jab or a plea to Miramax head Harvey Weinstein), eleventh-hour cuts, and release delays pushing the film nearly a year from its projected release date, the picture is a booming, period-exact mess: disinteresting, unbalanced, and burdened by the weight of too much ambition blinding an artist to his celluloid offspring’s congenital, mortal defects–hubris redefined for the postmodern age. Though sprawling, it reduces to a series of vaguely connected dramatic snippets that largely fail to anchor the film to any specific place (the exception being a visually, viscerally arresting stream of coffins unloaded from ships ferrying the dead from the frontlines of the Civil War). It’s a malady exacerbated by the fact that the same five or six characters–played, with one stunning exception, as tepid variations on banal–seem to be everywhere in New York at all times.

Human Nature (2002) – DVD

December 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Charlie Kaufman, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica

½*/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Patricia Arquette, Rhys Ifans, Tim Robbins, Ken Magee
screenplay by Charlie Kaufman
directed by Michel Gondry

by Walter Chaw From the second screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, the ink-stained wretch behind Spike Jonze’s quirk classic Being John Malkovich, French music-video director Michel Gondry’s sadly misguided nature/nurture sex romp Human Nature scores once or twice but ultimately thuds like a brick zeppelin. It’s a film that thinks it a good idea for Rhys Ifans to appear either full monty or in a diaper for the majority of his performance, likewise that Patricia Arquette have a pelt of hair covering every curve of her Romanesque physique. (Though the latter is played for some surreal yuks as Ms. Arquette writhes on a miniature Empire State Building while a dwarf (Peter Dinklage) walks around in a biplane harness.) Human Nature, in short, isn’t nearly as funny as it thinks it is; neither is it as smart.

Focus Puller: FFC Interviews Paul Schrader

December 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Paul Schrader, Interviews

PschraderinterviewtitleDecember 17, 2002|A pivotal member of the small group of film-school 'brats' to single-handedly manufacture in 1970s America what is arguably the most important and vital decade in the history of the medium, Paul Schrader (screenwriter of such seminal texts as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and writer-director of Hardcore, Blue Collar, and Light Sleeper, to name a few) follows up his brilliant Affliction and his disappointing Forever Mine with the new film Auto Focus. Another in a line of Schrader-helmed biopics (Mishima, Patty Hearst), Auto Focus follows the rise and mysterious murder of "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane, locating the TV actor as a man discovering his masculinity in an ascetic, downbeat way reminiscent of the work of Schrader's hero, director Robert Bresson.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

December 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, New Zealand, Theatrical

***/****
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

Twotowersby Walter Chaw Suffering from the problems inherent in split narratives, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (hereafter The Two Towers), at least for its first half, is disjointed and overreliant on a familiarity with not only the first film (which is essential), but also the Tolkien source material. Furthermore, the first cracks in Jackson’s conversance with CGI begin to show in the entirely animated Gollum character (a creature that bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve Buscemi), and too much time is given over to characters standing around looking at digital phantoms. Unlike its predecessor (The Fellowship of the Ring), The Two Towers feels too long by half despite the elision of key scenes from the source tome; the picture only picks up during its last ninety minutes, and then only as an unusually well-crafted action spectacle largely lacking in the nuance, pathos, and sharply-drawn characterizations of the first film.

Johnson County War (2002) – DVD

December 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Television, Western

*/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring Tom Berenger, Luke Perry, Rachel Ward, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, based on Riders of Judgment by Frederick Manfred
directed by David S. Cass, Sr.

by Walter Chaw The Hallmark Channel's epic remake of Heaven's Gate–based, like that film and Frederick Manfred's Riders of Judgment, on the Johnson County Range War of 1892–does the impossible by making Michael Cimino's legendary boondoggle gain esteem in memory and by comparison. Actually a remake in subject only, legendary stuntman-turned-really bad TV director David S. Cass, Sr.'s Johnson County War (clocking in at an inexcusable 180 minutes) is a dog's breakfast of hoary western clichés, appalling film craft, and wooden performances from B-list talent.

KylieFever2002 (2002) – DVD

December 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Concert Doc, DVD, Music, UK

Kylie Minogue: Kylie Fever 2002 in Concert – Live in Manchester
*/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
directed by William Baker, Alan MacDonald

by Walter Chaw A quick glance at the back cover of the KylieFever2002 <In Concert – Live in Manchester> DVD divulges three questions I couldn't help but answer before actually indulging in the spectacle from start to finish. The answers are that "Fever" and "In Your Eyes" are not what you think they are, and that "Locomotion" and "The Crying Game" are indeed, exactly what you think they are. The exercise, in short, is a good news/bad news scenario.

Equilibrium (2002)

December 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Taye Diggs, Angus MacFadyen
written and directed by Kurt Wimmer

Equilibriumby Walter Chaw After cutting his teeth as a director on the Brian Bosworth vehicle One Tough Bastard, Kurt Wimmer proves himself grotesquely unprepared for his hyphenate debut: the futuristic stink-fest Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, and Taye Diggs. Set in the post-apocalypse via a series of tired title cards and voice-overs, the film is immediately recognizable as an ironically illiterate rip-off of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Lucas’s Aldous Huxley photocopy THX-1138. Pulling scenes entire from Blade Runner, Citizen Kane, and The Matrix while pulling philosophies entire from–yes, I was surprised, too–Gymkata, Equilibrium is another Dimension genre film made for no money that stinks a lot like Gary Fleder’s excrescent Impostor from earlier this year, though it somehow manages to be considerably funnier.

Analyze That (2002)

December 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Robert De Niro, Theatrical

*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Joe Viterelli
screenplay by Peter Steinfeld and Harold Ramis and Peter Tolan
directed by Harold Ramis

Analyzethatby Walter Chaw The first mistake that directors make with actors who need to get brought up sharply against the reins now and again is that they sometimes request of them to feign that which they already are. Case in point is asking Robin Williams to be a gibbering velvet clown, asking Melanie Griffith to be a side of beef with a Betsy-Wetsy voice, and now asking Robert De Niro to feign mental illness and sociopathic tendencies. De Niro jumping on a table and singing selections from West Side Story isn’t one of those cinematic moments for the ages, but rather one of the more tragic examples of self-delusion and career torpor.

A Picture of Sam Jones Goes Here: FFC Interviews Sam Jones

December 1, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews, Music, Theatrical

December 1, 2002|An accomplished photographer whose work has been featured in ESQUIRE, GQ, VANITY FAIR, and ROLLING STONE, Sam Jones makes his directorial debut with the raw, fantastic music documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which follows alt-country band Wilco as they complete their album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” Shot in Super16 and resembling such seminal rock-docs as Don’t Look Back, Jones’s debut is a superbly-crafted, expertly-paced piece that details the band as they’re dropped by their record label, lose a key member, and struggle through the agonies and ecstasies of creation and commerce. The picture impresses most with the universality of its themes, hitting narrative highs and lows that have nothing to do with a familiarity with the band in question. All the same, fans should be well pleased with Jones’s photographer’s eye as he captures the musicians at work in their small loft and from behind the mixing board.

Solaris (2002)

November 27, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, Esoterica, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

****/****
starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis
screenplay by Steven Soderbergh, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Walter Chaw Steven Soderbergh's best film since sex, lies, and videotape (and the film most like it in theme and execution), Solaris is a moving, hypnotic adaptation of the classic Stanislaw Lem novel, which was first made into a film in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky. Co-produced by James Cameron's company Lightstorm, Solaris fits loosely into Ridley Scott's Alien future with its monolithic "Company" and the need for a specialist to infiltrate a corrupted interstellar outpost–a future Cameron plumbed in 1986 with his modern genre classic Aliens. But Solaris is less a science-fiction film than it is an existentialist melodrama that, by winnowing itself down to the fierce romanticism at the heart of Lem's novel (and Tarkovsky's trance-like adaptation), locates the core issues of identity and love that plague the dark hours.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

November 27, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Road Movie, Theatrical

***/****
starring Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, David Gulpilil
screenplay by Christine Olsen, based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington
directed by Phillip Noyce

by Walter Chaw A very small story set on a very large stage, Phillip Noyce’s affecting Rabbit-Proof Fence is perhaps the most visually beautiful film of the director’s career, proving between this and his other movie from this year, the Graham Greene adaptation The Quiet American, that not only is it possible to go home again (as in Noyce to Australia) but also that it’s often wise. Shot on a minimal budget (in the six-million dollar range) with a cast of largely non-professional actors (Kenneth Branagh the main exception), the picture is a tremendous hit among the self-congratulatory film festival/arthouse crowd, who, after all, like to feel as though they’re applauding the right things.

Sunset Boulevard (1950) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

November 26, 2002Posted in****/****, 1950s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own

Sunset Blvd.
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich Von Stroheim, Nancy Olson
screenplay by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman, Jr.
directed by Billy Wilder

by Walter Chaw Billy Wilder’s protagonists are interlopers, outsiders itching for acceptance in insular societies recognized as decadent but possessed of an irresistible allure for Wilder’s central characters–a lure that most often takes the form of sex, status, and money. Always self-aware and basically noble, Wilder’s comedies have his heroes confessing their sins and renouncing said corrupt society in favour of an appropriate love pairing (Fran and Baxter of The Apartment); in his tragedies, his heroes confess their sins as a last decent act undertaken too late. (Think Walter Neff of Double Indemnity.) The connection between The Apartment (arguably Wilder’s best film) and Sunset Blvd. (the film with which The Apartment has its argument) begins, fascinatingly, with pivotal scenes set on New Year’s Eve. In The Apartment, of course, Fran makes her decision to be with Baxter on New Year’s, while Joe Gillis decides to be with Norma Desmond that same hallowed night in Sunset Blvd.–and both moments, as they occur at the crux of historical and cultural demarcations, encompass Wilder’s flair for emotions at crosscurrent, and the dark of a dying era with the light of possible futures.

Unfaithful (2002) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

November 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Romance, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Diane Lane, Richard Gere, Erik Per Sullivan, Olivier Martinez
screenplay by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr., based on the screenplay for La Femme Infidele by Claude Chabrol
directed by Adrian Lyne

by Walter Chaw The designer’s eye and yen for the seedy of Adrian Lyne–sort of the Ridley Scott of soft-porn–manifest themselves in Unfaithful, the latest permutation of Lyne’s ongoing upper-middle-class angst cycle: blood-pounding eroticism into passionate bloodletting. The kind of Jacques Tati wind that carries off Kansas farm-girls sends Diane Lane’s Big Apple gal Connie into the brawny arms of book-dealing Frenchman Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez). Connie dabbles in adultery, though she is not exactly unhappily married to armoured car company owner Edward (Richard Gere); call it the milk-fed blues. She’s just bored enough to take an eleventh-year slackening of attention and a forgotten overcoat as an excuse to tryst in an impossible Soho loft.

The Quiet American (2002)

November 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, France, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, Vietnam, War

***/****
starring Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen, Rade Sherbedgia
screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan, based on the novel by Graham Greene
directed by Phillip Noyce

Quietamericanby Walter Chaw Walking a fine line between nostalgia and regret, irony and earnestness, Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American, adapted from the novel by Graham Greene, is a lovely film that captures, like Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, the delicate balance between romance in the immediate foreground and the backdrop of war and politics. Evoking the colonial decay of Greene’s work while evincing one of the best performances of Michael Caine’s career, The Quiet American stars Caine as a British journalist in Vietnam who falls in a hopeless kind of love with a beautiful girl a third his age. His subsequent desperation and jealousy feel real; take note of an anguished scene in a bathroom stall–Caine suddenly seems to be getting better with every role.

Friday After Next (2002)

November 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Ice Cube, Mike Epps, John Witherspoon, Don ‘D.C.’ Curry
screenplay by Ice Cube
directed by Marcus Raboy

by Walter Chaw Because there is no plot save the scrambling for rent money that has been stolen from the Abbot and Costello-ian pairing of Ice Cube and Michael Epps, the closest one might come to a description of Friday After Next‘s narrative would involve the running gag of a Santa Claus bandit who breaks into homes to steal presents and beat people with Christmas trees (maybe inspired by Eddie Murphy’s Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood Christmas sketch). Rather than take the easy road and talk about how much Friday After Next hates women and homosexuals, it’s perhaps more fruitful to play along and regard the film, the long-awaited conclusion (?) to Ice Cube’s Friday trilogy, as an accurate reflection of the sensibilities of the African-American culture in regards to women and homosexuals.

Lovely and Amazing (2002) – DVD

November 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

Lovely & Amazing
***/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras C-
starring Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer, Brenda Blethyn, Raven Goodwin
written and directed by Nicole Holofcener

by Walter Chaw The best and highest praise I can offer Lovely and Amazing is that there aren’t any patently untrue moments in it. It’s a film that disdains the hysterical screeching of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood in favour of pleasant understatement and measured response–the rare movie about women that respects them while offering some genuinely funny moments based on character rather than absurd situations. Yet the picture is so lightweight that it’s difficult to muster a great deal of enthusiasm in recommending it. It does what it does with an admirable level of professionalism but the whole of Lovely and Amazing is something a good deal less than the sum of its parts.

Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) [infinifilm] – DVD

November 19, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, Sci-Fi, Tom Cruise

*½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Mike Myers, Beyoncé Knowles, Michael York, Michael Caine
screenplay by Mike Myers & Michael McCullers
directed by Jay Roach

by Walter Chaw In the grand tradition of Final Chapter – Walking Tall, the third film in the Austin Powers franchise, Austin Powers in Goldmember, begins and ends with our hero watching himself being portrayed by someone else in a movie of his life–a level of post-modern reflexivity that is taken to such grotesque heights by the film that what emerges is actually fascinating in a detached, unpleasant, deeply unfunny sort of way. Mike Myers’s obsession with body distortion and cannibalistic consumption and auto-consumption likewise reaches a macabre pinnacle in the picture’s best running gag–the preoccupation with Fred Savage’s mole with a mole–and with a new circus geek for the Myers pantheon (joining blue-eyed bald albino Dr. Evil and Shrekian Scot Fat Bastard), the Dutch villain Goldmember, who makes it a habit to eat giant flakes of his own skin. We meet Goldmember (so named for his prosthetic bullion bar and ingots) in another bit of multi-layered absurdity during a time-travel journey to New York circa 1975 and the fictional Studio 69, with Myers referencing his own most critically praised performance as Studio 54’s perverse Steve Rubell. A study of Myers’s Dick Tracy-like mania with latex appliances would no doubt fill volumes.

Vulgar (2002) – DVD

November 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Brian Christopher O’Halloran, Jerry Lewkowitz, Matthew Maher, Ethan Suplee
written and directed by Bryan Johnson

by Walter Chaw Beginning as Shakes the Clown and segueing into I Spit on Your Grave before finally settling on Death to Smoochy, the discordant, hideously unpleasant Vulgar is the kind of puerile vanity piece that gives exploitation and egotism bad names. Produced by Kevin Smith and seeking to be a creation mythology for Smith’s View Askew mascot (just another example of Smith overestimating the inherent interest in his cult of personality), the picture is the hyphenate debut for Smith crony Bryan Johnson, making Smith, along the way, just the next nepotistic “Happy Madison” pinhead king of diminished returns.

Highlander TV Series: Season One (1992-1993) – DVD

November 16, 2002Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Fantasy, France, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Television

Image C – D+ Sound C Extras B
“The Gathering,” “Innocent Man,” “Road Not Taken,” “Bad Day in Building A,” “Free Fall,” “Deadly Medicine,” “Mountain Men,” “Revenge is Sweet,” “The Sea Witch,” “Eyewitness,” “Family Tree,” “See No Evil,” “Band of Brothers,” “For Evil’s Sake,” “For Tomorrow We Die,” “The Beast Below,” “Saving Grace,” “The Lady and the Tiger,” “Avenging Angel,” “Eye of the Beholder,” “Nowhere to Run,” “The Hunters”

by Walter Chaw It always struck me as the height of synergy that Queen would score a homoerotic cock opera involving swords and decapitations (and a first episode flat-of-the-blade ass-slap that would make Boy George blush), so, despite all of the things that are extravagantly wrong about the “Highlander” franchise moving to weekly television, the one thing that’s right about the transplant is the use of Freddie Mercury’s creepy ballad to immortal Scottish duellists as its theme song. Essentially a variation on that favourite fantasy of morbid teenagers–the vampire rock star mythos (live forever, fight clandestine battles with leather-horse foes, bed beautiful women and have a non-queer justification for not wanting to commit, pretend to have a cool accent, feel sorry for the small worries of mere mortals, look great)–the main difference in the “Highlander” universe is that the Highlanders aren’t capable of making new Highlanders. It’s as gay as a French holiday, is what I’m saying–not that there’s anything wrong with that.