Authors: Walter Chaw Archives - Page 61 of 146

The Hustler (1961) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

May 23, 2011****/****, 1960s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sports

****/****
DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B-
FFC Must-Own BD – Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason
screenplay by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen, based on the novel by Walter S. Tevis
directed by Robert Rossen

by Walter Chaw When one engages in hunting annis mirabilis, one would do well not to overlook 1961. The year after the cinema went insane (Ethan Mordden coins this wonderful phrase that before 1960, you listened to mother or you drove off a cliff–and after it, listen to mother and you’re Psycho) is marked by a beloved film based on a Truman Capote novella about two hookers falling in love in New York (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and by Brando’s first and only directorial effort, the marvellously murky anti-western One-Eyed Jacks. Billy Wilder guided Jimmy Cagney through his last rapid-fire explosion in a scabrous screed on the early days of globalism in One, Two, Three, while John Huston charted the last gasps of Old Hollywood and the West in The Misfits. In the sexual repression-drives-you-crazy sweepstakes, Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass makes time with William Wyler’s lesbo-drama The Children’s Hour (and there’s Splendor‘s Warren Beatty again in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone). You want race? How about the new lyrics added to West Side Story‘s immigrant lament? Or Lancaster cutting a square swath through the Manhattan barrio in John Frankenheimer’s The Young Savages? 1961 was a miraculous year for any number of reasons, but count among the big ones Paul Newman’s emergence as the quintessential avatar for the entire decade–the scurrilous anti-hero (some point to Steve McQueen, but McQueen was never an asshole on purpose and never an actor at all) who represented the truthy eruption of everything the Eisenhower kids were holding back during those rocket-bra’d, tail-finned years spent basking in the post-nuclear sun of capitalism-as-panacea.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

May 20, 20112011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush
screenplay by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, suggested by the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
directed by Rob Marshall

by Walter Chaw The mermaid effects in a nasty little sequence that falls around the midway point of Rob Marshall’s disastrous, deadening Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (hereafter Pirates 4) are the only thing to recommend about this death march, and even those are almost too dark to make out. It’s a situation aided by taking off the “real D” glasses, though not entirely ameliorated because Marshall’s an assclown and this fourth instalment in the exhausted franchise is composed almost entirely of groups of people trudging and swooping aerial shots of pirate ships. It’s the longest three days I’ve spent in a theatre this year. Of course, there’s also Johnny Depp, content, it seems, to move into his movie dotage doing shtick for which the film stops and chuckles appreciatively at machine-calibrated intervals. It’s comfortable stuff–boring stuff–so resigned to regurgitating its bird’s dinner into the mouths of a nation of idiot babies that it rips off Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade instead of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Embarrassing? You bet. Not the least for its inevitable fate as one of the top-grossing films of the summer.

The John Frankenheimer Collection – DVD|French Connection II (1975) + The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – Blu-ray Discs

May 17, 2011****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2011, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: John Frankenheimer, Drama, DVD, France, Italy, Thriller, UK, War

THE YOUNG SAVAGES (1961)
**/**** Image B Sound C
starring Burt Lancaster, Dina Merrill, Edward Andrews, Vivian Nathan
screenplay by Edward Anhalt and J.P. Miller, based on the novel A Matter of Conviction by Evan Hunter
directed by John Frankenheimer

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
****/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound C+ Extras B+
starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon
directed by John Frankenheimer

THE TRAIN (1964)
****/**** Image C- Sound C
starring Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Michel Simon, Jeanne Moreau
screenplay by Franklin Coen and Frank Davis, based on the novel Le front de l’art by Rose Valland
directed by John Frankenheimer

FRENCH CONNECTION II (1975)
**½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B+
starring Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Bernard Fresson, Philippe Léotard
screenplay by Alexander Jacobs and Robert Dillon & Laurie Dillon
directed by John Frankenheimer

RONIN (1998)
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgård
screenplay by J.D. Zeik and Richard Weisz
directed by John Frankenheimer

by Walter Chaw There weren’t many American directors who enjoyed a hotter streak in the Medium Cool ’60s than John Frankenheimer. He had the pulse of the mid-decade sea change from the relative conservatism of the ’50s, having clearly been cognizant of the long burn of the Civil Rights conversation and the constant, fraying wear-and-tear of HUAC and the Cold War. He rubbed elbows with the Kennedys, hosting Bobby at his house in Malibu the day before/of Bobby’s assassination at the Ambassador, whereupon it’s fairly inarguable that Frankenheimer began to lose his way. He’d continue to helm interesting films and damned impressive ones, too, like The Iceman Cometh and 52 Pick-Up, but none would have the urgent subtlety of his mid-’60s output. Instead, they’d become increasingly…remote? Detached, at least, if not occasionally outright embarrassing for everyone involved. (Prophecy, for instance–a film that tries to ride the contemporary-issue train but shows its fatigue and desperation in every ridiculous, strained minute.) In a way, Frankenheimer’s Seconds, with its alienation and bodily remove, presages his own artistic transformation. I wonder whether he lost the nerve to surf the edge of the zeitgeist, leaving the low arc of our collective tendency towards self-destruction to its own shrinking concentric hells. It’s possible that after The Manchurian Candidate‘s dead-eyed paranoia and Seconds‘ alarming prescience about the impotence of the American icon-as-hero, Frankenheimer was tired of being right. If it sounds like I’m ascribing something supernatural to his artistic acuity, maybe I am. Frankenheimer in this period is that rare filmmaker who works half in technical perfection and half in the unconscious, in the thrall of what Coleridge used to refer to as The Artist as Aeolian Harp. He was an instrument at the caprice of the winds of the age. He was, that is, until about 1968, when being the vessel of portent became, should we conjecture, painful enough that he tried drowning himself in booze and regret.

13 Assassins (2010)

May 13, 2011****/****, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

****/****
starring Koji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya, Ikki Sawamura
screenplay by Daisuke Tengan
directed by Takashi Miike

by Walter Chaw 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike’s costume-period retro-cross-cultural updating of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (and more horizontal homage to obvious antecedents by countrymen Kurosawa, Kobayashi, and Chushingura), initially seems a surprise choice for someone who’s made his name (80+ times in the last twenty years) with transgressive, flamboyantly outré Yakuza and horror pictures. But Miike hinted at this exact marriage of a specific Spaghetti Western tradition and the Samurai flicks that were its inspiration with his arch Sukiyaki Western Django–choosing this time around to present the material “straighter,” allowing his cast the language and trappings of late-Feudal Japan. The result is possibly the best Samurai movie since Yoji Yamada’s Twilight Samurai (and its unofficial sequel, Hidden Blade), a picture meticulous in its details that is nonetheless only possible to fully appreciate within a working conversation with the traditions (including those of Miike’s own work) that inform it. It’s like a Coen Brothers film in that respect: very much the post-modern artifact, very much the solipsistic auto-critical exercise in genre, but also so technically brilliant and thematically rich that it’s possible to enjoy it without much of that prior knowledge.

East of Eden (1955) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

May 11, 20111950s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
starring Julie Harris, James Dean, Raymond Massey, Burl Ives
screenplay by Paul Osborn, based on the novel by John Steinbeck
directed by Elia Kazan

by Walter Chaw There’s a moment–well, there are dozens of moments, but there’s a moment in particular–in Elia Kazan’s follow-up to On the Waterfront, East of Eden, where James Dean (in the only film of his released during his lifetime), as the troubled Cal, asks his estranged mother (Jo Van Fleet) for a loan, all anxious tics and frightened eyes, seemingly uncomfortable in his own skin. It at once defines Dean’s appeal to a generation of young folks, who saw reflected in him something of their own fear and trembling, and crystallizes the revolution in screen acting brought about by Dean and The Actors Studio brats Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Julie Harris, and Montgomery Clift. It’s comparable to the emergence of Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands–reactions, both, to Eisenhower eras defined by cultural repression and the indoctrinated magnification of the mythology of the American male. (Dean and Depp are similarly feminized–almost asexual–in these signature roles.) A later moment, Cal’s offer of a gift to stern father Adam (Raymond Massey, playing the literal dry run to Melvyn Douglas’s patriarch in Hud) of a cool grand won through a little harmless WWI-profiteering, is unavoidably linked to what we know of Kazan’s friendly testimony before HUAC. It’s knowledge that makes it impossible for a Union-busting dockworker’s martyrdom to be just what it is–and impossible to see Adam’s rejection of Cal as anything other than another cry for righteous forgiveness for an odious act done in good faith. East of Eden, of course, could also be a rejection of consumerism in the midst of the nascence of our consumerist wonderland–a reaction to our plutocracy’s values and a further case for Dean as the sainted figure of rebellion that would fuel the generational schism of the ’60s.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD

May 9, 20112000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Denmark, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Italy, Nicolas Cage, Philippines, UK

*/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras D
starring Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer
screenplay by Matt Lopez and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard
directed by Jon Turteltaub

by Walter Chaw Disney was headed this way before The Little Mermaid–then Pixar–gave them the illusion of a new direction. But all along, the dirty little secret in the House of Mouse has been that, Eisner or not, the company’s sensibilities lie in the exhumation and unnatural reanimation of their vault product, whether it be in repackaging the old grey mares or offering dtv sequels to the same, or mounting big-budget revamps of past “glories.” Then, accidentally, they made a good film with the first Pirates of the Caribbean, which reminds of a certain thing with blind squirrels and nuts. So it comes as no surprise that Disney, dealing with a congenital paucity of imagination, has reached the point where it’s actually making movies based on a portion of a movie. Next up? That Spaghetti Scene from Lady and the Tramp: The Movie. But first, there’s Jon Turteltaub and Jerry Bruckheimer’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, hoping to conjure up (ha) the nominal success of their National Treasure franchise on the back of a specious premise cobbled together so they can repurpose part of Fantasia in live-action. Bad idea? Really bad idea.

Excalibur (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

May 4, 20111980s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, UK

½*/**** Image B Sound D+ Extras C+
starring Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay, Nicol Williamson
screenplay by Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman, adapted from Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur by Pallenberg
directed by John Boorman

by Walter Chaw Anyone with an answer for what the good fuck is going on in John Boorman’s Excalibur is the forgiving sort who already has a working conversation with the Arthur mythos–who’s already read T.H. White or, at the minimum, watched The Sword in the Stone. Maybe said scholar was also a fan of Winston Churchill and likes to think that the great British PM was the very reincarnation of the 1^st-century figure; maybe in a fit of frustration at the film, WIKIPEDIA was consulted. But most likely, the person who finds not only coherence in but also affection for Excalibur was nine or ten when they first saw it, enjoyed the tits and swordplay, didn’t notice the acting and the screenplay and the green light “special effect,” and was probably just as happy with any other contemporary fantasy that provided the same (Ladyhawke, Clash of the Titans, Legend, Conan the Barbarian, Dragonslayer). Really, the picture Excalibur most resembles is legendary stinker Krull (which likewise features an embarrassed-looking Liam Neeson in a tiny secondary role), complete with deplorable special effects, identical central plot, incomprehensible execution, and from-outer-space choices everywhere else. It probably shouldn’t be as big a surprise as it seems, given that Boorman has been obsessed with, and essentially retelling, the Arthur myth for the bulk of his career and, at the point at which Excalibur was made, had been working on the project in some form for nearly two decades. The film meant the world to him–and that romance with it appears to have drowned out the warnings of his better nature.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

April 25, 20112000s, 2010, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, UK

***½/**** Image B- Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter
screenplay by Steve Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by David Yates

by Walter Chaw David Yates’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I (hereafter Harry Potter 7a) is a coda for the end of a dark decade in film–a war journal, a diary of the apocalypse–and good enough to be this constant, niggling reminder that had J.K. Rowling the courage to do what it appears she intends to do at first, her Harry Potter series could have been nigh canonical instead of just pretty good. Alas, that’s for the second part of this two-parter. For now, it’s easy to see Harry sacrificed on the cross of his Chosen One eminence. With Yates back for his third go-round and Steve Kloves again adapting, it’s a pair of newcomers to the franchise–DP Eduardo Serra and composer Alexandre Desplat (his work on Birth and Lust, Caution: tremendous)–who contribute most to the minimal, blasted feeling of Harry Potter 7a. It’s empty, bleak, and stately for long stretches as our core triumvirate of Ron (Rupert Grint), Hermione (Emma Watson), and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) search a Tennysonian wilderness for some essential part of themselves valuable enough to offer up for the sake of the world. When it opens with Hermione mournfully erasing the memory of her from her “muggle” parents, the film announces itself as a triumphant return to the broken wasteland promised by The Order of the Phoenix. This Harry Potter intends to do harm.

Maniac (1980) [30th Anniversary Edition] + Vigilante (1983) – Blu-ray Discs

April 13, 20111980s, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, Horror, Revenge, Thriller

MANIAC
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A+
starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro
screenplay by C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell
directed by William Lustig

VIGILANTE
*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Robert Forster, Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Woody Strode
screenplay by Richard Vetere
directed by William Lustig

by Walter Chaw William Lustig reduces exploitation cinema to the filthy stepchild of Sams Peckinpah and Fuller: one part animal logic, one part tabloid paranoia. He wallows in impulse, and his sensibility is 42^nd Street grindhouse through and through, from kitchen-sink production values to disjointed vignette presentations to a generally lawless indulgence towards atrocity. If Lustig’s pictures have achieved a kind of cult lustre, credit his ability to alternate action sequences with B-legends showcases. It would be a mistake to attribute more to Lustig’s pictures than workmanlike efficiency as applied to formula prurience, though there’s something to be said for knock-off garbage done with a lack of pretension–done, in fact, with a distinct, naïve childishness that doesn’t quite get down there with Jess Franco or Herschell Gordon Lewis (nor up there with Mario Bava or Dario Argento), but manages a little interest despite itself now and again, probably by (who cares?) accident.

Robots (2005) – Blu-ray Disc

April 11, 20112000s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Family, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire and Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel
directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha

by Walter Chaw Surprisingly, perhaps shockingly, Robots isn’t terrible, even though it’s a product of the same chowderheads behind Ice Age and even though it’s your basic ramshackle kid’s flick/self-esteem trope (complete with closing musical number) upon which the Shrek franchise has founded a scatological empire. What works in its favour is its attention to the little details of a world that, without explanation, is completely populated by robots that employ other robots in specialized, superfluous functions. What works against it is the lack of a firm grip on Robin Williams’s bridle (resulting in a bunch of gay jokes that weren’t funny when Milton Berle was doing them half a century ago), a weak reliance on pop cultural in-jokes that are already dated (Britney Spears? C’mon–why not Ricky Martin?), and the usual roster of fart and diarrhea jokes, which aren’t exactly a calling card for immortality. The appropriately-named Blue Sky animation studio promises a lot with its giant mainframes, but it can’t deliver anything beyond a brilliant opening sequence, a Tom Waits song (like Shrek 2), and then a lot of the same passionless, heartless idiotspeak that passes for children’s fare nowadays.

Fair Game (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

April 10, 20112010, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Thriller, United Arab Emirates

**½/**** Image B+ Sound C Commentary C
starring Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, David Andrews, Sam Shepard
screenplay by Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth, based on the books The Politics of Truth by Joe Wilson and Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson
directed by Doug Liman

by Walter Chaw I remember distinctly somewhere in year two of W.’s administration the feeling of extreme “outrage fatigue”–that burnout that occurs when you’ve spent so much time incredulous that you realize you’re the idiot for expecting something different. Subsequently, I recall being the only one in my circle of friends to predict W.’s re-election, as well as the only one not surprised when we didn’t find any WMDs. It’s not that I’m particularly smart, it’s that I’m dick enough to be right half the time. Why fight it? Bad movies tend to win the weekly box office, bad music dominates the charts, bad TV gets renewed; rather than declare it a new phenomenon, take cold comfort in knowing that it was always this way, and it’s not necessarily worse now. Sophocles wasn’t selling out the Coliseum, after all. So if Fair Game, Doug Liman’s adaptation of Valerie Plame’s memoir of her betrayal by the Bush Administration for the sins of her big-mouthed, self-righteous husband Joe Wilson, doesn’t have shock and outrage going for it, it at least has the smarts to portray Joe as a deeply ambiguous figure. He’s a jackass, but he’s right, and Sean Penn’s portrayal of him is uncompromised, unflattering, and completely in keeping with stuff like his Into the Wild and The Assassination of Richard Nixon: liberal shots that don’t offend the conversation.

Your Highness (2011)

April 8, 20112011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Satire, Theatrical

*/****
starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel
screenplay by Danny R. McBride & Ben Best
directed by David Gordon Green

by Walter Chaw David Gordon Green continues his burnout trilogy with the medieval stoner swords & sorcery flick Your Highness, a sharp, incisive satire that rips the lid off the long-held secret of smart people-in-the-know that Red Sonja is a piece of shit. It’s an extended, hostile slam of stuff like Clash of the Titans, and just because it’s better than, say, Excalibur, that doesn’t excuse it for being the kind of movie “Mystery Science Theater” would make if it made movies instead of taking shots at them from a privileged position. There’s no love in Your Highness–replacing Harryhausen’s clockwork Bubo with an animatronic crow that’s resurrected from a trash heap in an offhand rejection of the Clash of the Titans remake doesn’t go nearly far enough towards convincing me that Green and his writers, Danny McBride and Ben Best, actually give a damn about the genre or any of its key films. I’m not sure the genre merits much respect, frankly, but all I’m really certain of after this one is that the filmmakers thought Ladyhawke would be a lot better with a fat slob saying “fuck” and wearing a penis around his neck. Indeed, in case you were wondering, Your Highness is in the same family as the asshole who writes “faggot” on your forehead in Sharpie while you’re sleeping.

48Hrs. (1982) – Blu-ray Disc

April 6, 2011****/****, 1980s, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Eddie Murphy, Thriller

****/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, Annette O’Toole, Frank McRae
screenplay by Roger Spottiswoode and Walter Hill & Larry Gross and Steven E. de Souza
directed by Walter Hill

by Walter Chaw A genuinely tetchy, risky race comedy, Walter Hill’s finest box-office hour reveals itself to be his finest hour, period. There’s a moment in 48Hrs. where dishevelled grizzly bear of a cop Jack (Nick Nolte, typecast) apologizes to the convict in his charge, Reggie (Eddie Murphy), for calling him a “nigger” and a “watermelon,” to which a smiling Reggie responds that, you know, there’s not always an explanation or an excuse for things sometimes. And it’s that moment that defines the film–defines it as a prototype for the modern buddy comedy but, moreover, defines this picture and this man, Murphy (then finishing up his second year on SNL), as the most important African-American actor since Sidney Poitier, in a meatier, more meaningful role than Poitier ever had. He is unapologetically a criminal–not the Desperate Hours/Stanley Kramer-ized Christ-like criminal or the super-duper Green Mile magic Negro con, but a horny, profane, violent, venal criminal measuring the angles and deciding to help the fuzz because there’s something attractive to him about becoming rich off the spoils of the heist that landed him in the pen in the first place. Reggie, in other words, is smart as hell, as well as the product of a certain reality that would drive Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn absolutely insane. Better still, Jack is smart as hell, too, and fifteen years after In the Heat of the Night here, finally, is a dynamic between a black guy and a white guy solving a case that rings with all the pain, injustice, and social weight necessary to tell the unsolvable calamity of race in our country.

The Incredibles (2004) – [2-Disc Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] DVD + 2-Disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

April 5, 2011****/****, 2000s, 2011, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, Family, FFC Must-Own, Pixar, Superhero

FFC Must-Own ****/****
DVD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras A+
written and directed by Brad Bird

by Walter Chaw The first hint that there’s something at work in The Incredibles far beyond the pale is the casting of Sarah Vowell as the voice of wilting Violet, the wallflower older sister in the Incredibles’ nuclear family. Vowell herself is a brilliant satirist, a gifted writer, and in her heart o’ hearts, a bona fide autobiographical anthropologist. She mines the tragedies of her life for insight into the thinness of the onionskin separating our ability to function with the iron undertow of self-doubt and disappointment that comprises all of our paralyzed yesterdays. The Incredibles does a lot of things well–a lot of the same things, as it happens, that Sarah Vowell does well. Through two Toy Story films and last year’s fantastically topical Finding Nemo, Pixar has provided the new gold standard in children’s entertainment, and it has consistently done so by injecting an amazing amount of insight and depth into the foundation of its bells and whistles.

Insidious (2011)

April 3, 20112011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey
screenplay by Leigh Whannell
directed by James Wan

by Walter Chaw A fairly well-done, old-fashioned child-imperilment/haunted-house movie until it falls completely off the rails and starts playing like Phantasm II (but not in a good way), James Wan’s jump-scare-athon Insidious is chiefly influenced, for what it’s worth, by Poltergeist, though it also references that “Twilight Zone” episode where a girl falls into a parallel universe. It sports a spirit medium and a crack team of ghost-hunters, naturally, as well as a little kid lost and a bombastic third act about braving the Other Side that deeply dishonours whatever minor pleasures there were to be had in the previous two. All of which would be more the pity if that dreary, extended set-up amounted to much more than the real dread of a child fallen mysteriously ill surrounded by the usual crap about doors creaking open, phantoms visiting the half-asleep (in the film and in the audience), and a baby crying for an hour before she disappears when the film no longer feels it can continue to exploit it without actually killing it. It’s that unwillingness to present bigger stakes that hamstrings Insidious; a lot like the creeping morality underpinning Wan’s Saw (and the DIY sequels it spawned), the picture reveals itself to be pretty safe in its worldview, therefore freeing it of dread in favour of non-stop startle that fades, quickly, into fatigue. If it’s not going to go there, it’s only ever going to be what it is.

Source Code (2011) + Certified Copy (2010)

April 1, 2011****/****, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Canada, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

SOURCE CODE
****/****
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
screenplay by Ben Ripley
directed by Duncan Jones

Copie conforme
****/****
starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell
written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami

by Walter Chaw The one part of Source Code that isn’t duck-ass tight poses so many questions about the nature of our hero’s heroism and the aftermath of the film that it opens up what initially seems a hermetically-sealed conceit into something of real depth and fascination. Far from the solipsism of failures interesting (Timecrimes) and not (Primer), different from marginal successes like 12 Monkeys and Déjà Vu, Duncan Jones’s sophomore feature (after the similarly thorny Moon) plays most like a child of Last Year at Marienbad and a companion piece to Abbas Kiarostami’s contemporaneous Certified Copy. It speaks in terms of quantum physics and string theory, but without pretension, achieving the almost impossible by introducing difficult concepts at the same pace with which its characters–not a dummy among them–are able to understand them without gassing (or worse, falling well behind) the audience. That it presents itself as a mainstream, popular entertainment is more to its credit, giving lie to the notion that Hollywood is bankrupt of ideas. Rather, it’s the destination for gifted filmmakers–some of them smart enough, and resourceful enough, to hold fast to their idealism and intelligence for, if not an entire career, then at least long enough to set a bar.

Sucker Punch (2011)

March 24, 20112011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Fantasy, Musical, Theatrical

*/****
starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino
screenplay by Zack Snyder & Steve Shibuya
directed by Zack Snyder

by Walter Chaw Another exercise in incoherent pomo douchebaggery from Zack “I’m Going to Mess Up Superman, Too” Snyder, Sucker Punch is maybe about female empowerment but works more like Tank Girl with a budget: the flexing girl-muscles and punk/fetish/sneering sexuality aren’t fooling anyone. It sports a great soundtrack full of cover songs (everybody from The Pixies to The Eurhythmics gets a trip through the revamp machine) and Björk to comment (cleverly, I guess) on how every idea in the film is ripped off from other flicks as varied as Ghost in the Shell, Hellboy, the Lord of the Rings flicks, Kill Bill, Sin City, and–why not?–Fame. Its chief inspiration seems to be Brazil, sharing with that film Gilliam’s giant Samurai thing as well as the fantasy parallel-world and framing conceit. It also borrows Gilliam’s penchant for overdoing it and making something that’s initially arresting into something that’s irritating, cluttered, and ultimately hard to watch. By its third or fourth music-video-length set-piece, I was willing to declare Sucker Punch the winner and curl up in the fetal position. This is cinema as endurance test.

In Treatment: Season Two (2009) – DVD

March 22, 20112000s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Television

Image B Sound B

by Walter Chaw Where the first season ended with at least lip-service to ambiguity and frustration, the second runs a disturbingly cheery course of happy horseshit and the worst kinds of Dr. Phil-isms while canonizing our Sainted Paul (Gabriel Byrne) on the cross of other peoples’ problems. Taking up where the series left off, we find Paul divorced, relocated to New York, and in the process of being sued by the cartoonishly belligerent father (Glynn Turman) of a patient from Season 1 who killed himself. This 35-episode batch follows sessions with Mia (Hope Davis), a lawyer and former patient who owns the insult of the term “hysterical”; April (Alison Pill), a college student with a saviour complex and a nasty cancer; Oliver (Aaron Grady Shaw), a chubby adolescent enduring his parents’ divorce; and Walter (John Mahoney), a powerful CEO on the brink of a fall. Then there’s Paul, of course, who’s dealing with single parenthood, the possibility of losing his practice, and another woman patient who wants to jump his analytical Irish bones.

Paul (2011)

March 18, 20112011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Bateman, Sigourney Weaver
screenplay by Simon Pegg & Nick Frost
directed by Greg Mottola

by Walter Chaw As talky and obsessed with Star Wars as a Kevin Smith joint and every bit as awkward and unfunny for extended stretches, Greg Mottola’s Paul squanders a wonderful cast and a vaguely interesting concept in pursuit of the same pomo alchemy wrought in the kinds of movies Edgar Wright makes. Not all the blame can be ladled on Mottola, however, as he appears to be the patsy holding the camera for co-screenwriters/stars/buddies Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, engaged in what’s probably some weak, last-ditch go at saving Frost’s career. Pegg and Frost are British geeks Clive and Graeme, touring UFO landing sites in the American hinterland after a jaunt at the San Diego Comic-Con. One night outside Area 51, naturally, they pick up hitchhiker Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), a foul-talking “gray” who smokes doobies, drinks beer, and generally acts a lot like Howard the Duck. The premise paves the way for the usual stuff about a virgin (Buggs (Kristin Wiig)) wanting to fornicate and indulging in wacky-tobaccy; about fag-hating rednecks in a honkytonk with a band that plays a bluegrass version of the Cantina Theme from Star Wars; and about referencing everything from Capturing the Friedmans to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (with an assist from Steven Spielberg on the phone, no less). As the government suit responsible for Paul’s capture, Sigourney Weaver gets her iconic “get away from her, you bitch” recited to her at Devil’s Tower, while Jeffrey Tambor gets to do a devastating impersonation of Whitley Strieber–meaning that if there are chuckles to be had along the way, they’re the asthmatic, superior kind that Comic Book Guy on “The Simpsons” enjoys.

Black Death (2011)

March 16, 20112011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, John Lynch, Carice Van Houten
screenplay by Dario Poloni
directed by Christopher Smith

by Walter Chaw Christopher Smith follows up his listless slasher-farce Severance with the handsome-looking Black Plague/witch-hunting flick Black Death–a well-played, well-conceived piece that’s ultimately distinguished by a few sticky after-images, even as it doesn’t quite get to where you hope it’s going. Set in a pleasingly grimy, disgusting Dark Ages, the picture finds our hero, monk Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), besotted with comely Averill (Kimberly Nixon) and beset on all sides by the inexorable tide of the bubonic plague. Enlisted by Bishop-appointed Holy Roller Ulric (Sean Bean) for his familiarity with the countryside to locate a strange, untouched-by-plague village, Osmond becomes, er, plagued by crises of faith. The problem, besides his wanting to nail Averill in a most unholy way, is that the village in question appears to be untouched by disease because it doesn’t believe in God.