The Wash (2001) – DVD

June 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, George Wallace
written and directed by D.J. Pooh

by Walter Chaw A bit of free advice: if you undertake a drinking game in which the trigger word is “n***a” while watching D.J. Pooh’s The Wash, you’re probably going to die. Another word to the wise: if you don’t imbibe lethal doses of some variety of libation while watching The Wash, you’re probably going to die regardless. The only sensible way to approach The Wash is, apparently, with rubber gloves and one of those plastic bags dispensed at public walking trails.

Marlo’s America: FFC Interviews Marlo Poras

June 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews

MporasinterviewtitleJune 2, 2002|After working as an apprentice under Martin Scorsese's brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Marlo Poras decided that she needed a change of pace from the stress of mainstream film production and followed a friend to North Vietnam to make educational AIDS videos for national distribution there. Immersed in a foreign country, one that still holds their victory in "The American War" as a source of great pride, Ms. Poras became interested in a quartet of high-school exchange students preparing to spend their senior year in the United States, a place idealized and demonized in equal measure by the North Vietnamese. Armed with a Sony VX 1000 Mini-DV camera and nothing else in the way of crew or experience, Ms. Poras narrowed her focus to one subject, Mai, and to Mai's often-peculiar experiences in rural Meridian, Mississippi.

Undercover Brother (2002)

May 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Eddie Griffin, James Brown, Chris Kattan, Denise Richards
screenplay by John Ridley and Michael McCullers
directed by Malcolm D. Lee

Undercoverbrotherby Walter Chaw A comedy with ideas, courage, and intelligence, Malcolm D. Lee’s follow-up to his surprisingly good The Best Man is the blaxploitation riff Undercover Brother–and man, when it’s right, it’s really right. Unfortunately, it’s only right about half of the time. Its digs at racial stereotypes and dedication to honouring the images and conceits of black cinema from the Seventies are dead on-target for the most part, while its attempts to marry it all into some sort of spy plot are subject to the same extended dull spots suffered by any dinosaur Bond flick. All is forgiven, though, when Eddie Griffin, as the titular afro-super-agent, splashes through a window like Dolemite, does a “white man’s” dance while singing a karaoke version of “Ebony and Ivory” (with über-bimbo Denise Richards, not in on the joke), and navigates his caddy through a tailspin without spilling a drop of his orange soda.

Film Freak Central does the Fifth Aurora Asian Film Festival

May 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Japan, Music, UK, Vietnam

AurorafestpagelogoMay 31, 2002|by Walter Chaw Now in its fifth incarnation, Denver’s Aurora Asian Film Festival has grown year by year to become one of the region’s most interesting cinematic events. Under the guidance of Denver Film Society program director Brit Withey, the decidedly small festival (twelve films are being screened over the course of four days) will feature eleven Denver-area debuts–including the much-lauded The Turandot Project and Tony Bui’s Green Dragon–as well as a restored 35mm print of Conrad Rooks’s 1972 film Siddhartha. It is a rare opportunity to see a largely-unknown film projected (an adaptation of Hermann Hesse’s novel of the same name, the picture features the cinematography of the great Sven Nykvist), and an example of the kind of value a festival this intimate can provide.

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

May 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

**/****
starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Judi Dench
screenplay by Oliver Parker, based on the play by Oscar Wilde
directed by Oliver Parker

Importanceofbeingearnestby Walter Chaw In the always-risky practice of adaptating theatre for the silver screen, the first instinct usually has something to do with “expanding” a play by providing the characters backstory, followed fast by moving some of the dialogue into a different environment and/or pulling the source out of time to “modernize” it or to provide new resonance for a politicized piece. Richard Loncraine’s Richard III and Julie Taymor’s Titus are examples of affected adaptations that work; Michael Cacoyannis’s The Cherry Orchard and Oliver Parker’s The Importance of Being Earnest are examples that do not.

“Dragon” Tales: FFC Interviews Timothy Bui

May 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

TimbuiinterviewtitleMay 31, 2002|With brother Tony at the helm, Timothy Linh Bui debuted in 1999 as co-writer of the beautiful, if slightly meandering, Three Seasons, the first American film to be shot entirely in Vietnam and a rare film about Vietnam to portray the beauty of the country and the people rather than the ugliness of what is known there as the “American War.” Highly acclaimed, Three Seasons was also the first film to score the hat trick of Grand Jury, Audience, and Cinematography prizes at the Sundance Festival. The Bui brothers’ follow-up picture is Green Dragon, this time with Tim directing (from a screenplay that he and Tony wrote). Set in Camp Pendleton at the end of the war, Green Dragon details in anthology-fashion the travails of thousands of South Vietnamese refugees awaiting sponsorship to enter the United States. Unfortunately, the film succumbs to the kind of maudlin predictability and manufactured “big” moments that Three Seasons largely avoided. Green Dragon is, however, beautiful to look at, featuring a performance from veteran Vietnamese actor Don Duong extremely naturalistic and effective and another from Hiep Thi Le that bristles with feral sensuality.

Dark Blue World (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

May 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Denmark, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, UK, War

Tmavomodrý svet
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Ondrej Vetchý, Krystof Hádek, Tara Fitzgerald, Charles Dance
screenplay by Zdenek Sverák
directed by Jan Sverák

by Walter Chaw Taking its name from a song sung during the course of the film, Oscar-winner (for 1996’s Best Foreign Language Film Kolya) Jan Sverák’s Dark Blue World is a historical melodrama set mostly in WWII-era Britain that’s notable because its elaborate battle sequences appear to have been carried off without the aid of CGI. The film is lacklustre and puzzlingly-paced–apologists would call it leisurely, I call it lugubrious–and though the story at its core is indeed compelling and rich for exploration, Sverák’s instinct towards sentimentality leads to one too many shots of sad-eyed dogs, exhausted under the weight of their status as beleaguered metaphors for loyalty and friendship. The picture could only have been salvaged by Dark Blue World focusing on the macrocosm of the plight of Czech pilots for which its tale of a doomed love triangle is the microcosm. As it is, Dark Blue World plays a good deal like Gregory Nava’s brooding A Time of Destiny: they mutually explore the bonds of friendship forged under war and tested by the crucible of love.

Dunston Checks In (1996) – DVD

May 27, 2002Posted in1990s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image C Sound C
starring Jason Alexander, Faye Dunaway, Eric Lloyd, Rupert Everett
screenplay by John Hopkins and Bruce Graham
directed by Ken Kwapis

by Walter Chaw The old showbiz maxim of never working with children or animals is one violated with such regularity that I guess the otherwise sensible and talented Jason Alexander could be forgiven for Dunston Checks In. There is, in truth, very little else forgivable about the benighted exercise.

13 Conversations About One Thing (2002)

May 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Alan Arkin, Clea DuVall, John Turturro, Amy Irving
screenplay by Jill Sprecher & Karen Sprecher
directed by Jill Sprecher

by Walter Chaw Jill Sprecher’s 13 Conversations About One Thing, her follow-up to she and sister Karen’s Clockwatchers, is an Armistead Maupin roundelay of intersecting stories tied together by circumstance and a basic investigation into why we can’t be happy. It explores happiness and satisfaction in the workplace (in the film’s best sections, which star Alan Arkin), in marriage (John Turturro and Amy Irving), morally (Matthew McConaughey), and existentially (Clea DuVall), and though it does so with a great deal of professionalism and mordant humour, the film never quite transcends its proximate resolutions for universal truths. Its failures are remarkably similar to those of Clockwatchers in that no matter the polish of the cast nor the professionalism of the narrative, there’s a decided lack of spontaneity in its execution and a dearth of real poignancy in its epiphanies.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)

May 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, Western

**½/****
screenplay by John Fusco
directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook

Spiritby Walter Chaw Earning major points for its revisionist understanding of the impact the rail had on the spoiling of the West (briefly positing its equine hero as one part Burt Lancaster from The Train and one part William Blake), DreamWorks’ return to cel (albeit computer-assisted) animation is the surprisingly dark and unintentionally twisted Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The film is an endlessly disquieting Oedipal construct in which Spirit’s absent-from-pre-birth father is the former king of a herd of wild horses, the mantle of which the virile Spirit, with his mother doe-eyed at his side (!), assumes to the tune of a newly-penned anthem from dinosaur Canuck rocker Bryan Adams. I waited with baited breath to see how mama’s foal Spirit would break his new Oedipal split (hot filly Rain) to “Jocasta,” but the picture fumbles the potent moment with a coy mane flip and a sexy-quick gallop.

One Conversation with Jill Sprecher: FFC Interviews Jill Sprecher

May 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

JillsprecherinterviewtitleMay 22, 2002|Small, cheerful, and self-effacing, Jill Sprecher is a girl of the midwest through and through. She speaks with the hint of a ‘Fargo‘ twang, seems resigned to the fact that her films are of limited moneymaking potential, and tends to deflect questions about her role and philosophy as a director. Ms. Sprecher is a writer first, it seems, her tutelage under director Robert Wise (through a program offered by the School of Visual Arts in New York) debunked as “amazing, but just a really basic overview course, really.” Her approach to filmmaking is one of a careful distribution of labour amongst those best qualified to handle the task. To that end, Ms. Sprecher (and her writing partner, sister Karen Sprecher) obtained the services of crack editor Stephen Mirrione (Oscar-winner for Traffic) for both her debut feature Clockwatchers and her follow-up, 13 Conversations About One Thing (“Good thing he’s a friend of ours,” Jill adds), while 13 Conversations was shot by acclaimed cinematographer Dick Pope (The Reflecting Skin, Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy and Naked). FILM FREAK CENTRAL sat down with Ms. Sprecher on her recent stop in Denver to promote 13 Conversations About One Thing. I began our interview by asking if there were conscious overriding themes running through her pictures.

Century Hotel (2001) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Esoterica

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras A+
starring Joel Bissonnette, Lindy Booth, Colm Feore, David Hewlett
screenplay by David Weaver and Bridget Newson
directed by David Weaver

by Walter Chaw A little of Mystery Train, a little of Barton Fink and Hotel Room, a little of Million Dollar Hotel and Aria, and eventually too much of Four Rooms, Canadian David Weaver’s debut feature is the flawed Century Hotel. Rife with the Freudian implications of a hotel composed of one hall and one room (and all its attendant illicit sexual fixations), the picture carries seven storylines in seven different periods set in the same room of (presumably) the titular inn. Without a traditional framing story and united only by a common theme of individual freedoms as expressed through sexuality, Century Hotel is the very definition of representational ambition (though I could have done without a champagne bottle cork transition emerging out of a homosexual kiss). In a film aspiring to fable with its virgins and whores, the critical lack of mothers and crones speaks to a certain lack of balance to the piece.

It Came from Outer Space (1953) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in1950s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A+
starring Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake, Russell Johnson
screenplay by Harry Essex, based on the story by Ray Bradbury
directed by Jack Arnold

by Walter Chaw The first Universal International science-fiction release, the first motion picture to be shot in 3-D “Nature Vision,” and the first genre film to primarily use the theremin in its score (by an unbilled Henry Mancini, Irving Gertz, and Herman Stein), Jack Arnold’s It Came From Outer Space is influential in so many ways that it would take twice and again the space allotted for this review to list them all. (A short list includes Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and his statement to (again unbilled) screenwriter Ray Bradbury that it would not exist without this picture (Dreyfuss’s profession in that film pays homage to Russell Johnson’s profession in this one); The Abyss and its watery fish-eye point-of-view; and countless “desert” sci-fis, including such recent incarnations as Evolution and the opening sequence of Men In Black.) It Came from Outer Space is a prime example of how nuclear terror and the Red Scare informed the B-horror films of the Fifties, and that genre movies today would do well to take a few lessons from their predecessors.

Outta Time (2002) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD

*½/**** Image C Sound C Extras C
starring Mario Lopez, Tava Smiley, Carlos Mencia, Ali Landry
screenplay by Scott Duncan & Ned Kerwin
directed by Lorena David

by Walter Chaw A Latin blend of Charlie Sheen’s The Chase and Patrick Dempsey’s Run, Outta Time is a sometimes-frenetic, pleasantly ludicrous pursuit film that treats logic and continuity like roadkill on the highway of narrative. “Saved by the Bell”‘s Mario Lopez is David Morales, a Mexican-American going to school on a soccer scholarship who, after hurting his knee, loses his tuition. In desperate financial straits, David agrees to run untested drugs across the border into Tijuana for shady professor Darabont (John Saxon).

Five Aces (1999) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Charlie Sheen, Christopher McDonald, David Sherrill, Jeff Cesario
screenplay by David Sherrill & David Michael O’Neill
directed by David Michael O’Neill

by Walter Chaw Men’s coming-of-age pictures fall into the categories of finding a dead body by the side of the train tracks, making a bet during a personal summer of ’69 concerning getting laid, or going away with the buddies on the eve of marriage (or the aftermath of a suicide, though some might say, “Same difference”). They are films, in other words, about courage, about a journey, and about sex and rituals of mortality. Hyphenate David Michael O’Neill’s Five Aces is another in that long-standing tradition of pseudo-nostalgic man-sensitive buddy flicks, this one free of the stultifying voice-over narration but not of the contracted timeframe and forced epiphanies. On these masculine journeys of self-discovery, you see, the spotlight shines on each pilgrim in his turn like a twisted middle-class milk dud version of The Canterbury Tales.

Which Way Is Up? (1977) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD

*½/**** Image B- Sound B–
starring Richard Pryor, Lonette McKee, Margaret Avery, Dolph Sweet
screenplay by Carl Gottlieb and Cecil Brown
directed by Michael Schultz

by Walter Chaw An embarrassing Being There conceit married to blaxploitation and unionization, the Richard Pryor vehicle Which Way Is Up? strikes a lot of notes but without much rhyme or reason. It is offensive without being funny (save a bondage scene that pays off flat but has a hilarious use of sound) and excessive seemingly just for the sake of it. Pryor becomes a predecessor with this picture to Eddie Murphy’s penchant for playing a bunch of loud-mouthed characters in different beards in stupid gross-out bits of celluloid rubbish…without the production values Murphy warrants. Director Michael Schultz’s follow-up to such amusing counter-cultural flicks as Cooley High and Car Wash (recently re-imagined with Snoop Dogg’s The Wash), Which Way Is Up? tracks the exploits of Leroy (Pryor), a fruit-picker who accidentally falls in with a Unionization movement that earns him a job in the city and some fine women. Can a wearying morality thread questioning the corrupting nature of power be far behind?

Sidewalks of New York (2001) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound C+ Extras B+
starring Edward Burns, Rosario Dawson, Heather Graham, Dennis Farina
written and directed by Edward Burns

by Walter Chaw Sort of a Neil LaBute film without the misanthropic conviction or a Woody Allen film without the self-loathing wit (more precisely, Allen’s Husbands and Wives without its self-loathing wit), Sidewalks of New York is the latest instalment in Edward Burns’s ongoing mission to promote himself as a sensitive new age guy deserving of your trust. It’s probably most efficient to just call Sidewalks of New York the second time (after She’s the One) that writer-director-star Burns has tried to remake his 1995 micro-budgeted Sundance cause célèbre, The Brothers McMullen. (His third film, No Looking Back, was a detour into Cassavetes territory.)

Reckless + Wild (2000) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

Desperate But Not Serious
½*/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Christine Taylor, Paget Brewster, Claudia Schiffer, John Corbett
screenplay by Nicole Coady, Halle Eaton & Abbe Wool
directed by Bill Fishman

by Walter Chaw The indie version of The Sweetest Thing, Bill Fishman’s second strike after his interesting debut Tapeheads is the horrendous Reckless + Wild (originally titled Desperate But Not Serious), and while it wins some indulgence for Joey Lawrence’s small role as himself (failed teen idol, narcissist, and nitwit), that indulgence is promptly squandered by a performance from supermodel Claudia Schiffer (as a magnificently untalented punk rocker) that suggests Christopher Lambert in leather and falsetto.

Vanilla Sky (2001) – DVD

May 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Spain, Thriller, Tom Cruise

*/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell, Cameron Diaz
screenplay by Cameron Crowe, based on the screenplay for Abre Los Ojos by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil
directed by Cameron Crowe

by Walter Chaw Vanilla Sky is an unpleasant, incompetent, and laborious amalgam of Jacob’s Ladder and The Game, Joe Eszterhas doing Frank Herbert, if you will. It is profane to no good end, forcing Cameron Diaz to define her sexuality through roughly a dozen variations on “I swallowed your come,” and is otherwise so sloppily assembled that even the generally arresting Jason Lee is made irritating and superfluous. Cameron Crowe is rapidly becoming a self-indulgent, disingenuous disaster–his films grow more pretentious as his subjects shrink in consequence. After tackling a rose-coloured breed of aggrandizing nostalgia in the overlong Almost Famous, he’s decided to remake the mediocre Spanish film Open Your Eyes (“Abre Los Ojos”)by flavour of the month Alejandro Amenábar, paying alleged “homage” to about a dozen other directors, movies, and album covers while displaying exactly the same breed of star-deifying that he ostensibly deflated in Almost Famous. Crowe fans should prepare to be disheartened by the realization that the crown prince of weakling uplift has actually fallen down on the altar of the ultimate Kafkaesque Hollywood godhead: Tom Cruise.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 5

May 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Drama, New Zealand, Romance, Theatrical

by Walter Chaw

RAIN (2001)
***/****
starring Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki, Sarah Peirse, Marton Csokas, Alistair Browning
screenplay by Christine Jeffs, based on the novel by Kirsty Gunn
directed by Christine Jeffs

Based on a Kirsty Gunn novel, Christine Jeffs's hyphenate debut Rain is a dulcet, haunting evocation of that moment of crisis in a young woman's life as she's poised on the precipice of sexual maturity. The film is golden and beautiful, edged in its understanding that a desire for sex almost always precedes an emotional or intellectual ability to cope with the fallout of the act itself. In honouring that concept, Rain makes no distinction between adults playing as children and children playing the grown-ups in scenes juxtaposed in ways whimsical and poignant. As much as it is a coming of age for a young woman, Rain is very much about the broader issue of power in gender politics as it defines family and relational dynamics.