Panic Room (2002)

March 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: David Fincher, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto
screenplay by David Koepp
directed by David Fincher

Panicroomby Walter Chaw Panic Room has a fancy premise stretched to and past the breaking point. It was a production beset by problems including the loss of star Nicole Kidman to an injury sustained during Moulin Rouge!, the departure of director of photography (DP) Darius Khondji, and a storyboard plan so devilishly complex that the film will probably be best remembered as a breakthrough in how burgeoning technologies can inform the DP's craft. The behind-the-scenes strain manifests itself in the nervous distractedness of the narrative and glaring and irritating plausibility gaps; the undeniably cool images (and Howard Shore's amazing score) only serve to illuminate the emptiness at Panic Room's core.

Spy Game (2001) [Collector’s Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

March 28, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, DVD, Espionage, France, Germany, Japan, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane
screenplay by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw The defining moment of Spy Game, Tony Scott’s latest exercise in stylistic excess, occurs at about the midway point. Playing CIA spymaster Nathan Muir, Robert Redford debriefs his best agent Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) atop a building in Cold War Berlin. After a tense exchange, an enraged Bishop throws his chair off the barren, windswept rooftop. The problem with the scene is neither the preposterous screenplay by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata to which it belongs, nor Scott’s infatuation with the panoramic aerial shot, nor the way that Harry Gregson-Williams’s ubiquitous score threatens here and at every other moment to rupture your eardrums. It’s not even in the ridiculously out-of-place imagistic Xerox of Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders’s melancholy ode to love and Berlin.

Ali (2001) – DVD

March 28, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Directors: Michael Mann, Drama, DVD, Sports, Will Smith

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight, Mario Van Peebles
screenplay by Stephen J. Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson and Eric Roth & Michael Mann
directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw The craft of Ali is every bit as dazzling as we’ve come to expect from its director, Michael Mann; the film is a loving coronation of fighter Muhammad Ali’s myth. But at the same time, Ali is too dependent on our familiarity with its subject’s life, and spends altogether too much time in slow-motion reveries of choice bouts public and personal. Reminding at times of Martin Scorsese’s rapturous Kundun, the film falls far short of that razor-fine, impressionistic masterwork by aspiring to be all things to all people (docudrama, tribute, demystification)–an impulse never indulged by “The Greatest” himself.

Ultimate Fights from the Movies (2002) – DVD

March 27, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Martial Arts

*/**** Image A – D Sound A – D Extras A

by Walter Chaw For the purist, an idea like Ultimate Fights from the Movies (from the creators of the horror compilation Boogeymen) is simply abominable: a collection of short fight clips (none running longer than five minutes, regardless of the length of the scene quoted) culled from action films and introduced by cheesy bout cards that do nothing to establish the motives behind the conflict. This is particularly confusing for those who haven't seen the films in question, as–often–these climactic fight sequences involve key plot points that play into their resolutions. Essentially, the DVD is a thinly disguised promotional ploy that targets the demographic that doesn't care to wade through such niceties as plot and character. It targets, in other words, the lowest common denominator–a condemnation supported by its decision to present all of the fights in a cropped, full-screen aspect ratio, handily robbing some of the more beautiful and intricate sequences (cribbed from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Fist of Legend, The Legend of Drunken Master) of a good deal of their visual information.

Behind Enemy Lines (2001) – DVD

March 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Thriller, War

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Owen Wilson, Gene Hackman, Joaquim de Almeida, David Keith
screenplay by David Veloz and Zak Penn
directed by John Moore

by Walter Chaw John Moore makes his directorial debut with the high-volume, flag-waving Behind Enemy Lines, but the film so recalls the visual excesses of Top Gun and Enemy of the State (down to a satellite surveillance sequence) that I began to wonder halfway through if “John Moore” was a nom de plume for Tony Scott. Everything else about Behind Enemy Lines, after all, is basically a retread: the third Gene Hackman “not leaving a man behind” film after Bat 21 and Uncommon Valor, and the umpteenth time the veteran actor has been asked to play a snarling iconoclast, spitting in the face of an unfeeling establishment.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002) – DVD

March 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Jule Selbo and Flip Kobler & Cindy Marcus
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Walter Chaw Although the animation is sloppy and the music is, to say the least, uninspiring, Disney’s direct-to-video sequel to 1996’s underestimated and genuinely disturbing The Hunchback of Notre Dame is bolstered by an astonishing voice cast (excepting Jennifer Love Hewitt), an interesting racial tension, and a storyline I haven’t encountered since Pete’s Dragon. Taking place about six years after the events of the first film (judging by the age of Phoebus (Kevin Kline) and Esmeralda’s (Demi Moore) suspiciously Caucasian son, Zephyr (Haley Joel Osment)), The Hunchback of Notre Dame II details another seemingly-doomed love affair between the hideous Quasimodo (Tom Hulce) and a beautiful lady love, this one named Madellaine (Hewitt).

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: 20th Anniversary Edition (1982/2002)

March 22, 2002Posted in1980s, 2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton
screenplay by Melissa Mathison
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw Young Elliot (Henry Thomas) discovers an alien castaway in his garden shed and lures it into his closet with a trail of candy. He introduces it to his little sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore), and his older brother, Michael (Robert MacNaughton), pledging them to the “most excellent” promise of secrecy to prevent his siblings from sharing the creature’s existence with their frazzled mother (Dee Wallace), recently divorced. Soon, government scientists, led by the starry-eyed Keys (Peter Coyote), catch the scent of Elliot’s discovery, necessitating a desperate race to return it to its kind.

Sexual Predator (2001) – DVD

March 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C- Sound C+
starring Angie Everhart, Richard Grieco, Kevin Fry, Elizabeth Barondes
screenplay by Ed Silverstein
directed by Robert Angelo

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Lacking the camp quality of Zandalee and the sleazy titillation of Wild Orchid, Robert Angelo’s neo-Zalman King/soft-porn/direct-to-video abomination Sexual Predator (a.k.a. Last Cry) is full of Richard Grieco moments like the one where he fondles straight razors, huskily droning, “This, this is my favourite,” as well as Angie Everhart showcasing her newfound, Mamie Van Doren-esque compulsion to get naked. It is a purported psychosexual thriller that establishes Grieco as the new Mickey Rourke and Everhart as the new Shannon Tweed while simultaneously verifying that both actors have given up.

Hearts in Atlantis (2001) – DVD

March 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Stephen King

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, Mika Boorem
screenplay by William Goldman, based on the novel by Stephen King
directed by Scott Hicks

by Walter Chaw That there is a wistful framing device in Hearts in Atlantis announces from the beginning exactly the kind of Stephen King movie this is going to be. Directed by Scott Hicks, more of a visual stylist than a storyteller, Hearts in Atlantis is a hollow addition to the cottage sub-genre of non-horror adult contemporary King adaptations that includes The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and, most glaringly, Stand By Me. Scripted by two-time Oscar-winner William Goldman (who also adapted King’s Misery and the forthcoming screen version of his Dreamcatcher), Hearts in Atlantis is a clunky bit of period treacle. It covers the requisite bases of magic realism and bully intrigue without even satisfactorily following through on a major plotline concerning a really boss bicycle. Based on the novellas “Low Men in Yellow Coats” and “Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling” from 1999’s Hearts in Atlantis, the film of the same name is inferior to its sources in its aversion to addressing the darker elements of childhood.

Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002) – DVD

March 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
written by Jill E. Blotevogel, Tom Rogers, Jule Selbo
directed by John Kafka

by Walter Chaw Split into three parts, aptly like the anthology horror films The Monsters Club and Trilogy of Terror, Disney’s own direct-to-video horrorshow Cinderella II: Dreams Come True reeks of corners cut and the kind of flaccid inspiration fuelled by the urge towards filthy lucre. The animation is an embarrassment to the Disney imprint, a half-step above the cut-and-paste style of Cartoon Network’s “Space Ghost”, and the writing is so lifeless, so feckless, it does nothing to forgive the paucity of attractive, liquid images. The backgrounds are static at all times, the characters move in stiff fits and starts (jittering and freezing just prior to edits), and the colours are lustreless. I would forgive a ballroom dance sequence, recycled no fewer than ten times over the course of the film (and serving as the DVD release’s menu motif), not to mention the multiple rancid “remixes” of “Bibbidy, Bobbidy, Boo,” if there were one moment in the enterprise that didn’t make me want to lie down in a dark room with something cool to my brow.

Resident Evil (2002)

March 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, UK, Zombie

*/****
starring Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy
written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Residentevilby Walter Chaw A group of highly-skilled soldiers infiltrates an abandoned facility where all the civilian workers of a multi-national corporation have mysteriously died. Suffering a holocaust themselves immediately thereafter, the surviving members of the squad break down into a cowardly tech-specialist (Eric Mabius); a covert agent of the corporation in question (James Purefoy); a tough-talking Latina with a big gun and a chip on her shoulder (Michelle Rodriguez); and a woman suffering from bad dreams who seems particularly adept at fighting the bad guys (Milla Jovovich). Discovering that the folks in the “hive” died during military research gone awry (thus unleashing hordes of nearly-indestructible villains), the foursome attempts to get out before a desperate time limit expires while also containing the evil to the site of infection.

Showtime (2002)

March 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Eddie Murphy, Robert De Niro, Theatrical, Will Smith

*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, Rene Russo, Ken Hudson Campbell
screenplay by Keith Sharon and Alfred Gough & Miles Millar
directed by Tom Dey

by Walter Chaw Shaping up as a spoof but neither smart enough to earn that label nor exciting enough to sustain interest otherwise, Tom Dey’s slick Showtime is an incoherent mess of a film that relies on explosions and volume to distract from its tin ear and flat pacing. It wants desperately to be a self-aware genre exercise in the Scream vein, but after its characters mention that there are “rules” to the buddy-cop flick, it chooses to demonstrate them rather than subvert them. Screenwriters-by-committee Keith Sharon, Alfred Gough, and Miles Millar, patching together an abominable iteration of the same old Lethal Weapon tropes, have conspired to get De Niro to immediately make 15 Minutes again (but as an alleged intentional comedy) and to continue Eddie Murphy’s typecasting as an animated jackass. Piling on the offenses, Showtime suffers from a few distracting plotholes, an obviously tacked-on prologue meant to elicit a Kindergarten Cop-esque brand of “isn’t it funny to scare children with a terrifying actor,” and a score by Alan Silvestri that actually approximates the feel of hammers to the brainpan.

Ice Age (2002)

March 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
screenplay by Michael Berg and Peter Ackerman
directed by Chris Wedge

Iceageby Walter Chaw Borrowing heavily from Disney’s aimless and laggard Dinosaur, Fox and Blue Sky Animation’s Ice Age is burdened from the outset by the vaguely disturbing reality that the titular epoch spells doom for most of the heroes of this animated mistake. When our quartet of cuddly endangered animals saunters off into the sunset, it feels disturbingly melancholy–something director Chris Wedge tries to assuage with a tedious epilogue that beats a long-dead running gag into the loam of an increasingly belaboured film.

The Perez Family (1995) – DVD

March 14, 2002Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, Chazz Palminteri, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Robin Swicord
directed by Mira Nair

by Walter Chaw Sensuous and lush with a hint of Isabel Allende’s magical realism in the bleeding of a man’s broken heart and a string of rose petals trailing a line along the belly of a new lover, Mira Nair’s lovely The Perez Family is all ripe colours, song, sex, honour, and dance. A long-lost father asks his wife upon their decades-long separation if their grown daughter remembers him: “She says she remembers dancing with you.” In The Perez Family, that’s only as it should be.

Training Day (2001) – DVD

March 14, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Eva Mendes
screenplay by David Ayer
directed by Antoine Fuqua

by Walter Chaw In Antoine Fuqua and Dominic Sena’s race to become David Fincher, Fuqua, with his colour-bleached urban noir Training Day, pulls slightly ahead. Essentially a feature-length version of the Fuqua-helmed video for Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” Training Day is dankly lit, grim, and edited with a veteran music-video director’s need for speed (though there are considerably fewer cuts than those found in Fuqua’s previous efforts Bait and The Replacement Killers). So smooth and accomplished is the harsh vérité look of the piece that the sun-drenched streets of Los Angeles are as much a player in the film as its leads. But the striking cinematography, sharp screenplay by David Ayer, and undeniable chemistry between Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke aren’t enough to disguise that Training Day is one bravura performance away from being the umpteenth rote grizzled vet/greenhorn rookie policier. (With a healthy dash of Casualties of War tossed in for that Captain Bligh/Mr. Christian dynamic.)

Breaking Away (1979) – DVD

March 12, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports

***/**** Image C- Sound C-
starring Dennis Christopher, Dannis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley
screenplay by Steve Tesich
directed by Peter Yates

by Walter Chaw For me, Peter Yates’s Breaking Away is the logical precursor to the particular nostalgia of Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story. It details in its limpid, lissom way small-town life through the prism of quaint friendships and a family with a sympathetic mom (Barbara Barrie), a curmudgeonly pop (Paul Dooley), and David (Dennis Christopher), their stargazer son.

The Watcher in the Woods (1980) – DVD

March 10, 2002Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Bette Davis, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Kyle Richards, Carroll Baker
screenplay by Brian Clemens, Rosemary Anne Sisson, Harry Spalding, based on the novel by Florence Engel Randall
directed by John Hough

Watcherinthewoodscap

by Walter Chaw John Hough’s cult favourite The Watcher in the Woods is a movie about how a camera presents a point-of-view and how that point-of-view, if it’s not attached to a specific identity, can become menacingly voyeuristic; shame that The Watcher in the Woods isn’t also about a story with characters in whom you’re interested and performances that don’t set teeth on edge. One of the more unusual Disney productions of the late-Seventies, the film becomes yet another showcase for an aging Bette Davis’s hiccupping hag archetype and, sadly, an opportunity for figure-skater Lynn-Holly Johnson to demonstrate how good athletes seldom become good actors.

97 Brooks (2002)

March 10, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Colleen Wainwright, Robert Beckwith, Jason Sales, J. Keith Butler
written and directed by Mikon A. Haaksman

by Walter Chaw In order to get someone to vomit, one character asks another if they’d like to eat at Long John Silver’s. It’s a bright comic moment in the midst of the otherwise awkwardly scripted 97 Brooks, the zero-budget digital video debut of Mikon A. Haaksman, who raised money for his project by soliciting contributions from friends and family. While the cast (largely composed of Haaksman’s friends) is game, the screenplay, direction, and editing betray them at every turn. 97 Brooks lacks pace and rhythm–that visual or thematic hallmark that would have guided the movie over its essential lack of ear and many a narrative leap and difficulty. It isn’t so much that 97 Brooks is a terrible film, it’s that it has neither the wit nor the special something to overcome its amateurish screenplay and production values.

Thumbelina (1994) – DVD

March 10, 2002Posted in1990s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

*/**** Image D Sound B
screenplay by Don Bluth
directed by Don Bluth, Gary Goldman

by Walter Chaw A predictably disturbing take on Hans Christian Andersen’s cautionary tale of the importance of conformity and the dangers of female sexual awakening, the diminutive heroine of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman’s Thumbelina arrives in the slow blossoming of a rose. After brief stops in which a hyper-sexualized, Charo-voiced frog teaches Thumbelina to shake her tiny money-maker, a sleazy moustachioed junebug (Gilbert Gottfried) abducts her to be its wife, and Bluth presents phallic stems and pregnant bulbs to the point of indecency, the message of “there’s someone for everyone” (or, closer to the mark, an “Eye of the Beholder”-like “stick with your kind, freak”) comes ham-fisting home.

A Troll in Central Park (1994) – DVD

March 10, 2002Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical

½*/**** Image D+ Sound B
screenplay by Stu Krieger
directed by Don Bluth, Gary Goldman

by Walter Chaw So Gnorga (voiced by Cloris Leachman), the queen of the trolls, hates flowers, outlawing them in her forsaken trolldom. Kindhearted simple-troll Stanley (Dom DeLuise) finds himself and his green thumb in quite the pickle: What’s a horticulturally inclined troll to do when everything his olive digit touches turns to a badly-animated flower? Get banished to Central Park in New York, of course–the only place in the universe more unpleasant (according to Gnorga) than Trolldom. Not content to be a worm in the Big Apple, fish-out-of-water intrigue, Don Bluth’s excrescent A Troll in Central Park also manages to shoehorn in a Mary Poppins, “parents too busy to fly a kite” bit of nonsense. It seems too much to wrap up in just under seventy-six minutes, but not only does it manage to do just that in its trundling, underdeveloped way, A Troll in Central Park also wastes what feels like hours on aimless and appalling musical numbers.