Authors: Walter Chaw Archives - Page 77 of 146

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) [Unrated] – DVD

August 15, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Wes Craven, ZERO STARS

The Hills Have Eyes II
ZERO STARS/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras D
starring Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso, Jacob Vargas
screenplay by Wes Craven & Jonathan Craven
directed by Martin Weisz

by Walter Chaw I don't have any real objection to anything depicted in The Hills Have Eyes II: not to the live-birth prologue that ends with the grisly murder of the mother; not to the greenstick demise of one National Guardsman or the death-by-feces of another; not even to the brutal rape of still another enlistee whose very existence opens the door for an ugly sequel. No: testament to the howling ineptitude of the enterprise is that its every desperate attempt to offend fails miserably. It's so poorly directed and edited, in fact, that not only is nothing frightening (which is to be expected, frankly)–nothing's surprising, either. Every jump scare is completely telegraphed, the nigh-invulnerability of the bad guys is totally predictable, and every fatality of every alleged hero is delivered sans pathos or, really, consequence. It doesn't matter who dies because who lives has already been decided within the first few minutes. What's more, it's already been divined by the dullest member of the audience–said dull member the only one who gives enough of a shit to try to figure it out in the first place and stick it out through to the end. The sole reason why anyone would watch the whole thing would be if they were paid to do so, and even then, it's only money. Let me stress, though, that you're not leaving because the movie is horrific, appalling, and a moral vacuum–you're leaving because it sucks balls.

Stardust (2007) + Interview (2007)

August 14, 20072000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Netherlands, Robert De Niro, Romance, Theatrical, UK

STARDUST
***½/****
starring Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Robert De Niro
screenplay by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman
directed by Matthew Vaughn

INTERVIEW
*/****
starring Sienna Miller, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by David Schecter and Steve Buscemi, based on the film by Theo Van Gogh
directed by Steve Buscemi

by Walter Chaw I do wonder about films that don't seem to be about anything, but I'll say this at the outset: Matthew Vaughn's Stardust, based on a book by Neil Gaiman, isn't about anything at all–and it's wonderful. Far from empty-headed, though, Stardust is a deeply meaningful series of sweet-nothings, wholly apolitical even in a macho supporting character revealed as a cross-dresser and hair stylist; and by its end, it wins not in spite of being so exuberant in its indulgence of flamboyant clichés, but because it is. It's so much better than the trailers and Gaiman's track record as a novelist (his métier is decidedly rooted in the comics) would lead you to believe, while the inevitable comparisons to The Princess Bride are misleading because The Princess Bride is a piece of shit. A beloved piece of shit, but a piece of shit just the same. On the contrary, Stardust is extremely well-made despite an opening half-hour that boasts of a few too many long establishing shots, directed with real snap by Guy Ritchie's former producer Matthew Vaughn (who did the same with Layer Cake) and executed by a stellar cast that includes a literally incandescent Claire Danes as a fallen star named Yvaine and Michelle Pfeiffer as a hideous bitch goddess, which, given that Stardust follows on the heels of Hairspray, appears to be the vehicle of her late-career comeback. More difficult to embrace is Robert De Niro as the film's Dread Pirate Roberts, a fencing mentor who happens, in this incarnation, to be a ballroom-dancing guru as well. The instinct is to recoil, but damned if it isn't the first De Niro performance in his self-parodic period that's both spot-on in its auto-satire and funny to boot.

Reign Over Me (2007) + TMNT (2007)|TMNT – DVD

August 5, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Hong Kong, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

REIGN OVER ME
**/****
starring Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler
written and directed by Mike Binder

TMNT
*/****
written and directed by Kevin Munroe

by Walter Chaw In response to the charge that critics are "downers" because they're too judgmental, a colleague and friend said on a panel that I participated in that some films only deserve judgment. It's a wonderfully bleak declaration, and dead on–think of it as an expansion of Pauline Kael's belief that no one ever takes the time to bash terrible pictures. But there's more to it than simply that brittle shattering of cinema's impregnable mythic mystique. I think certain movies deflect even judgment–movies that are the exact equivalent of, say, Michael Bolton and Kenny G collaborating on a cover of a Richard Marx song. Rail against them if you must, but there's no sport in it, and definitely no swaying of the assembled masses. There are films that are what they are, deserving neither praise nor condemnation in providing precisely the comfort of a tattered terry cloth robe worn ritualistically until disintegration. It's possible to meticulously, ruthlessly, intellectually deconstruct the aesthetic and functional properties of a favourite pair of sneakers, you know, but it's masturbatory and redundant and like swatting a fly with a Buick. I suspect that deep down everyone knows films like Reign Over Me and TMNT are as worthless as a plug nickel, that their appeal lies entirely in the fact that they'll present no surprises along with their usual meek payload of cheap emotional prattle and pocket uplift. And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that, either–I'm just saying I feel like I don't have much more to say after reviewing the same fucking movie about a dozen times a year.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

August 2, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Espionage, France, Germany, Mystery, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Joan Allen
screenplay by Tony Gilroy and George Nolfi, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Paul Greengrass

by Walter Chaw I look at the first film in this very fine trilogy as Jason Bourne embodying Harrison Ford’s Deckard character from Blade Runner: someone with hidden potential and a certain confusion about his place in the world–and the kind of figure Matt Damon is best at portraying, as it happens. I see the second film as Bourne-as-Roy Batty: robotic, violent, inexorable, and at the end of his string, valuing life and looking to make what amends he can. This third film, The Bourne Ultimatum, directed again by Paul Greengrass and welcoming several key players (Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Damon, screenwriter Tony Gilroy, DP Oliver Wood) back into the fold, ties both strings together: Bourne inhabiting his potential as something of an unparalleled killing machine while, simultaneously, becoming more human in his machine-like purposefulness. If there’s a feeling we’ve been here before, mark that down as the inevitable side-effect of staying just a little too long with a series that, to this point, had yet to make any missteps, minor or otherwise. Consequently this film, more than the other two, feels like a straight line: less improvisation, more inevitability, all of it leading to the moment where our hero, the merciless assassin, decides whether his training to be an instrument overrules his instinct to be a human. It can’t be a surprise anymore, so all that’s left is that it be true.

Mr. Skeffington (1944) + The Star (1952) – DVDs

July 25, 20071940s, 1950s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

MR. SKEFFINGTON
½*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, Richard Waring
screenplay by Julius J. Epstein & Philip G. Epstein
directed by Vincent Sherman

THE STAR
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood, Warner Anderson
screenplay by Katherine Albert and Dale Eunson
directed by Stuart Heisler

by Walter Chaw Biographers and geeks would be right to point out that Bette Davis spent her late career–on screen and, abortively, on stage–getting in her own way, while cynics and realists would be right to point out that the one most probably led to the other, if we're to take "the other" as autobiographical. Even people resistant to the auteur theory tend to recognize that matinee idols shoulder at least a fair share of the blame for picking vanity pieces and assorted flaming trainwrecks from the piles of projects offered them. If there's a fair modern, distaff analogue to Bette Davis's embarrassing epilogue in self-abnegating camp artifacts, it's Burt Reynolds's own squandering of his status as the biggest thing on planet Hollywood for a series of vainglorious redneck "gorsh!" spectacles that tied him eternally with Dom DeLuise and, oh my, Hal Needham. Consider that both have earned a small, rabid band of indefatigable defenders of their late, self-inflicted careers (gay men for Bette, assholes for Burt) for nothing more than confirming their respective lifestyles of bitchy flamboyance on the one side and dimwitted macho rebellion on the other. They're cults of personality by the very definition of "cultism," founded on the shale of limited appeal and the arrested desire to emulate someone you admire. (See also: the army of SAHMs shuffling after Oprah.) I guess you could say that although I get it, I'm not down with the cult of Bette.

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) – DVD

July 24, 20072000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Drama, DVD, Hong Kong, Romance

**½/**** Image B Sound A Extras D
starring Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Liu Ye
screenplay by Zhang Yimou, Wu Nan, Bian Zhihong
directed by Zhang Yimou

by Walter Chaw I recently had the opportunity to see for the first time the cut of Zhang Yimou's virtuoso Hero prepared for Yankee viewers, complete with the subtitles and framing cards slapped on by American distributors. Before now, the only contact I'd had with the film was through a region-free DVD from Hong Kong that preceded the U.S. theatrical release by a couple of years. (After buying the rights to it, Miramax, you'll recall, decided to sit on it until such time as its unleashing wouldn't somehow interfere with timeless masterpieces of misguided schlock like Cold Mountain.) Anyway, I was appalled. The extent to which Hero has been dumbed-down–the insertion of "our country" for a term that means, in Mandarin, "beneath the sky" drums up this weird nationalistic gumbo at the end where, before, it was sober and idealistic–manages to paint Zhang as the worst kind of toad. There's an animated map at the beginning now, I guess to show the great unwashed American moron that there is land outside the range of purple mountains majesty, while much mystical bullshit about "over two thousand years ago" mainly obscures the fact that Hero takes place well over two thousand years ago. I feel a lot of anger towards what's been done to one of the best films ever to come out of the Mainland to make it more suited for white consumption, both because of the sacrilege and because whoever's responsible has a lot of answering to do for how far they've undersold the intelligence of Western audiences. I finally understand why a lot of people in the United States didn't think much of Hero: the version I saw was a Zhang Yimou picture, whereas the version most in this country saw was a Miramax picture.

Regarding Henry: FFC Interviews Henry Rollins/Henry Rollins: Uncut from NYC + The Henry Rollins Show: Season One – DVDs

July 22, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Esoterica, Interviews, Music, Television

HENRY ROLLINS: UNCUT FROM NYC (2006)
*1/2 (out of four)

THE HENRY ROLLINS SHOW: SEASON ONE (2006)
*** (out of four)

INTERVIEWING HENRY ROLLINS (2007)
Priceless

July 22, 2007|Black Flag was the first hardcore punk band in the United States, spearheading a mad Southern California scene that belched forth this idea that James Taylor was not the voice of a generation in much the same way that the cinema of the '60s rejected that of the '50s. Marked by violence and speed, the band–the brainchild of guitarist Greg Ginn–went through multiple rosters before Henry Rollins, a 20-year-old fan living his dream as a roadie for the band, replaced Dez Cadena (who lost his voice and ambition to front the group at the end of the summer of 1981) as its lead singer. Instantly the spokesman for the group, the heavily-tattooed Rollins, muscular to the point of looking like a bullet with eyes and known for performing shirtless in black shorts (as well as getting into fistfights with audience members), also demonstrated a great deal of verbal agility and improvisational ability. A tireless, stubborn autodidact, he was quick on his feet, and final shows saw the band jumping into jazz-like improvisational bursts with Rollins shouting things as they came to his mind. Think about it for a minute and it has the potential to be retarded; but Rollins, for everything he is and isn't, has an amazingly nimble mind and a pit of outrage that seems bottomless.

Hairspray (2007)

July 19, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Musical, Romance, Teen, Theatrical, UK

***/****
starring Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah
screenplay by Leslie Dixon
directed by Adam Shankman

by Walter Chaw It's pretty easy to take the neo-hipster stance of having been there when Divine ate dog shit and, because of status conferred by said endurance of John Waters at his most insouciantly "fuck you," to denounce the Broadway-ification of his already-mainstream-courting Hairspray–now turned into a movie based on a musical based on the original movie–as "Waters-lite." Except that Waters's satire at its best has always been a gloss on cults of pop (this is a guy who made an iconic cameo on "The Simpsons", for God's sake)–and after Polyester, all of his movies run like book for the plastic-fantastic of the Great White Way anyway. Artificiality is actually the point, affectedness another; like Italian, the only way to speak the language is to exaggerate past the point of embarrassment. Still, the key to Waters is the requirement that by assembling a collection of misfits to play his assembly of misfits, not a one of them takes to their duty ironically. Waters is the same kind of archivist as Quentin Tarantino in that way: the casting can be interpreted as a post-modern joke, but the performances need to be true to the essential nostalgia driving the casting. John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, in other words, needed very much to play it as straight as John Travolta is capable of playing it.

Live Free or Die Hard (2007) + Transformers (2007)

July 3, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Michael Bay, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Theatrical, Thriller

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
***½/****
starring Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Cliff Curtis
screenplay by Mark Bomback
directed by Len Wiseman

TRANSFORMERS
*/****
starring Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Jon Voight
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by Michael Bay

by Walter Chaw I remember the way I felt as a lad of fifteen when I saw John McTiernan's Die Hard, that tingly excitement of not being able to figure out how we were going to get out of this fine mess. The bad guys were smarter than the good guys, their plan was perfect, the henchmen were ruthless eurotrash, and the hero didn't have shoes. Understand it wasn't fear that the baddies would win, but trust that the filmmakers knew what they were doing even though their methods were mysterious: I could let myself relax because the heavy-lifting was already done for me. I felt the same way as Live Free or Die Hard (hereafter Die Hard 4) unspooled its tale of computer hackers running the world from the basements of their mothers' homes: if the bad guys could hijack anything controlled by a computer (that is, pretty much everything), then what hope would a bald, 52-year-old, Luddite cop with an estranged family and a worn-out smirk have? The film plays on that despair and, unlike in the second (awful) and third (excellent) instalments of this series, John McClane (Bruce Willis) seems fresh again, a walking revelation that even action heroes get old and obsolete to the point where they're cautionary tales for young studs and metaphors for their own careers. Remember Harrison Ford in Firewall? Instead of acknowledging that the world eventually passes you by, leaving you embittered and bellicose (as Die Hard 4 shows), Ford's character in Firewall is not only good with a knuckle sandwich, but also a "with it" computer stud. As miscalculations go, that's more pathetic than most.

Sicko (2007)

July 3, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Theatrical

**/****
directed by Michael Moore

by Walter Chaw There's a moment that stands out in my mind about Fahrenheit 9/11, which tied with The Passion of the Christ as my pick for the worst film of 2004 (one for the left, one for the right): it's the moment when Michael Moore, in the middle of a riff about the "coalition of the willing" backing the United States into Iraq, descends through archival footage and rinky music to mock the countries that were actually our allies. The point being that America pretty much took matters into their own hands while breaking international law and flaunting its power over a largely impotent United Nations–and the effect being that Moore is a complete fucking asshole so concentrated on making a narrow, obvious point that he handily proves the widespread perception of Americans as xenophobic, arrogant, ignorant, and loudmouthed. Going after the Bush administration is enough like shooting fish in a barrel that most of Bush's own party has turned against him (not helping, probably, is that a majority of soldiers losing their lives in Iraq come from economically-disadvantaged families). Likewise, going after lax gun-control laws and a society of fear following the Columbine High School shootings; likewise corporate superciliousness in the rise and fall of industry in industrial America. I think, in other words, that Moore has made a living shooting fish in barrels, and that his latest target in Sicko, the United States' inhuman health care industry (and its lobbyists–four per congressman!, Moore informs), is just another one of those arguments no one is taking the other side on.

Ratatouille (2007)

June 29, 2007****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Pixar, Theatrical

****/****
written and directed by Brad Bird

by Walter Chaw Brad Bird’s latest film Ratatouille is the auteur’s affirmation that it’s possible, no matter the station, to find genius among the rabble. It’s charmingly egalitarian, this idea that any class or creed can produce the next Einstein or Baryshnikov, and it seems a direct response to the critics of his The Incredibles who would say that that superhero film’s mantra of “if everyone is super, no one is” is an embodiment of intolerance and classism. Ratatouille‘s answer is a lot like the one offered by Bird’s feature debut, The Iron Giant: that not only is it possible to overcome one’s basic programming, but also that choice supersedes predestination and, moreover, that a basic morality governs the actions of all things. A lot to put on the doorstep of a film about a rat, Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), who wishes he could be a chef in the kitchen of idol Gasteau (Brad Garrett)–but Bird, in the course of just three films (and stints with “The Simpsons” and “The Critic”), has forged a pretty formidable ideology based on, of all alien things, the sociology of common sense. Some people are more gifted than others, some people are assholes, and most people are idiots; just as an understanding of race and gender comes with the acceptance of basic differences, so, too, does understanding within a culture only come through a similar acceptance that some people are super and others are simply background.

A Mighty Heart (2007)

June 27, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
starring Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irrfan Khan, Archie Panjabi
screenplay by John Orloff, based on the book by Mariane Pearl
directed by Michael Winterbottom

by Walter Chaw An avowed Michael Winterbottom fan, I think he's amazing even when he fails. I marvel at his Thomas Hardy adaptations–the devastating Jude and the redemptive The Claim (his take on The Mayor of Casterbridge)–and I hadn't thought, before I actually saw him do it, that anyone but Charlie Kaufman would have a shot at turning Tristram Shandy into a viable film. When the extremely prolific Winterbottom decided to explore how music and sex evolve sympathetically in culture, he turned out a little unofficial trilogy (24 Hour Party People, Code 46, 9 Songs) in the span of two years. And now that he's become politicized–something he would say he always was, with 1997's vérité Welcome to Sarajevo as evidence–he's turned out, in the same span, In This World, The Road to Guantanamo, and now A Mighty Heart. This is the story of Mariane Pearl, widow of WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter Daniel Pearl, who was infamously beheaded while covering Al-Qaeda in Pakistan in the early days leading up to our current boondoggle. As that fan of Winterbottom's, I'm inclined to give the picture a benefit of a doubt I nevertheless wonder if it deserves. First run through my head, A Mighty Heart strikes me as pointless and unsurprising; Winterbottom is of course a better anthropologist than he is a political philosopher: if he's trying to apply Donald Symons's models of cultural evolution to ethics instead of more immediately compatible pursuits (music, or literature), then what's emerged from the experiment is the revelation that ethics and morality appear to have nothing to do with the base nature of man–and, moreover, that Angelina Jolie will never be Nicole Kidman in her ability to be both herself and someone else.

Rescue Me: The Complete Third Season (2006) – DVD

June 25, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C
"Devil," "Discovery," "Torture," "Sparks," "Chlamydia," "Zombies," "Satisfaction," "Karate," "Pieces," "Retards," "Twilight," "Hell," "Beached"

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As much a product of our post-apocalypse as "Deadwood", "Rescue Me", like that David Milch masterpiece, is about the flattening of society and the reconstruction of it according to masculine, animal logic. Indeed, it's a good argument that society has never been constructed any other way. As such, the series, Denis Leary and writing partner Peter Tolan's brainchild and baby, demonstrates a wonderful insight into the male psyche: how it deals with grief, as well as its caveman attitude towards women. The two things are compatible, after all, and authors no less than Faulkner and Freud eventually gave up trying to write women. The only sensible thing is to let the nightmare of "Rescue Me"'s exuberant misogyny wash over like a warm tide; why fight it? I've had a hard time watching Leary without wishing that they'd cast him as Garth Ennis's John Constantine, but it occurred to me some time in the middle of "Rescue Me"'s third season that Leary's firefighter Tommy Gavin is as close to a consort of the devil as Constantine ever was. Perhaps closer. Tommy's infernal, even demonic (I see that now), and the show he haunts is a very specific vision of a very personal hell. Women are bitch goddesses here: temptresses of mysterious purpose who reward misdeeds, punish valour, and steal children. They're succubae that distribute venereal diseases and, worse, get pregnant. I wonder if the premise of the whole shebang is that nobody survived 9/11–that no matter the misdeed, Tommy is rewarded with gardens of earthly delight, the price being that he lives with ghosts in an empty city that periodically bursts into flame.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) + Evan Almighty (2007)

June 22, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Germany, Sci-Fi, Superhero, UK

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
½*/****
starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis
screenplay by Don Payne
directed by Tim Story

EVAN ALMIGHTY
½*/****
starring Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman
screenplay by Steve Oedekerk
directed by Tom Shadyac

by Walter Chaw The question arises as to whether the choice for comic book adaptations has to be between "existentially tortured" and "dumb as a bag of hammers." It's a given on which extreme Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (hereafter FF2), already lauded for being blissfully free of gravitas and subtext, resides; what's troubling is the underlying inference of this philosophy: that people deserve and want entertainment that's beneath them. It's easier by far to condemn the audience as morons, forking over their cash like roughneck flyovers voting for Big Business, but I prefer to look at the situation as a tragedy–a by-product of a generation of fervent anti-intellectualism that's made smart people afraid to question their own judgment. Far from a malady unique to Hollywood, it's more a reflection of the culture that would elect someone most perceive to be, if not outright stupider, then certainly more thoughtless, than themselves to the highest office in the land. Discouraged to exercise the foundational, instinctively American inclination to criticize our leadership, we're left without enough of a nutsack to properly place a work of art in its social context. I'd offer that FF2 is a symptom of a potentially mortal illness, another being the ghettoizing of the idea of "nuance."

1408 (2007)

June 22, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Stephen King, Theatrical

*½/****
starring John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack, Tony Shalhoub
screenplay by Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski, based on the story by Stephen King
directed by Mikael Håfström

by Walter Chaw Boy, do I like John Cusack. He has scary, earnest intensity. No one does the nervous pit-pat like he does; no one else could have been Lloyd Dobler, or Martin Blank. Then there’s The Sure Thing, Better Off Dead, Being John Malkovich, and hey, I liked The Ice Harvest (most of it, anyway). And boy, I guess Samuel L. Jackson is sometimes not terrible. The one scene he and Cusack have together in the prestige horror flick 1408 plays like seriomythic garbage-pop poetry: everything’s good–the cadence, the words; what I’m saying is that I was well and truly on board with this dumbathon all the way up to the point where Jackson’s hotel manager Olin (and as an aside, King has a special place in my heart for opening The Shining with “Officious little prick,” referring to a different hotel manager) offers that the titular room in question isn’t haunted, it’s just an “evil fucking room.” Cusack is haunted landmark guide writer Mike (the landmark guides aren’t haunted, and neither is he, he documents haunted locations…never mind), not only a bit of a lush who looks like he’s gained a few pounds on his liquid diet but a surfer, too, making this one of a sudden slew of films to deal with surfing (Surf’s Up, Evan Almighty, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer) while providing 1408 (it adds up to “13,” get it?) its Jacob’s Ladder/”Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” escape clause. Yes, it’s that kind of film–what kind of film did you think it was going to be?

Shooter (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 19, 20072000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Ned Beatty
screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin, based on the novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter
directed by Antoine Fuqua

by Walter Chaw Think of it as the latest in the proud tradition of Walking Tall hicksploitation: a redneck Bourne Identity with a bleeding heart tacked to its sleeve by barbed chicken wire. Or, better, think of Shooter as a noble attempt to win back the Kansan-Tennesseean-Montanan wingnut demographic from the arch-conservatives who've made men buggering one another of greater concern than their farms going under and their children fighting indefensible wars declared by an impossibly wealthy aristocracy-by-coup. Sound extreme? Shooter is all this and more: a nihilistic exercise in Old Testament revenge that has more in common with such cult classics as Next of Kin than with cult classics like the suddenly-reserved-seeming Sniper. It makes no bones about its politics, assembling talking heads in the form of a venerable Red State senator (Ned Beatty) and a too-old-for-this-shit Colonel (Danny Glover, too old for this shit almost twenty years ago) to spout on endlessly about the lack of WMDs, the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, and, for shits and giggles, the conspiracy behind the JFK assassination. No The Parallax View, the film mines the complex machinations of good guys being good and bad guys being bad: bad guys being politicians and military guys drunk on power and good guys being hillbilly guardsmen with access to the Internet and too many guns.

Surf’s Up (2007)

June 12, 20072000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Family, Sports, Theatrical

**½/****
screenplay by Don Rhymer and Ash Brannon & Chris Buck & Chris Jenkins
directed by Ash Brannon & Chris Buck

by Walter Chaw I guess it's fair to say that Ash Brannon (Toy Story 2) and Chris Buck's mockumentary Surf's Up is a successful send-up of the Endless Summer-style documentary recently revived by Stacy Peralta's Riding Giants–but its triumph as such is relegated to so microscopic a genre that its usefulness as satire is negligible. It might delight a few guys who revere Bruce Brown's waterlogged hagiographies or, closer to the vein, the handful of folks who'll actually recognize that surf legends Kelly Slater and Rob Machado make cameos–but we're a long way here from a roomful of toys coming to life when their owner is gone, and while it's tempting to laud Surf's Up for being ambitious, it's frustrating that the picture has to dedicate a tedious amount of time to the usual slapstick gags just to apologize for its obscure premise. Far from condemning it as the next Shrek, though, I'd say the worst thing about Surf's Up is that it's clever enough to leave you expecting more–and inoffensive enough (unless scenes of a primitive tribe of cannibal penguins can somehow be traced back to Native-fear flicks or intolerance towards Polynesians) to leave you wishing some of the "nuggets" its anachronistic Chicken Joe (Jon Heder, in the first performance of his career that didn't leave me wanting to punch his mother) mentions were in more obvious display in the filmmakers.

Knocked Up (2007)

June 6, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

***/****
starring Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann
written and directed by Judd Apatow

by Walter Chaw As a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Judd Apatow’s work with Paul Feig on “Freaks and Geeks”, I mark in his solo efforts (The 40 Year Old Virgin and now Knocked Up) a preoccupation with going to Hell. (“Freaks and Geeks”, on the other hand, is mainly about not drowning whilst wallowing in hell.) I mean that not only theologically but also biologically and emotionally–Apatow’s are comedies about worrying that you’re not where you’re meant to be at certain milestones in your life and, moreover, that you might never get there. Being 40 the critical point in his last picture, here it’s articulated in an exchange between slacker king Ben (Seth Rogen) and his sad-eyed father (Harold Ramis), where the expectations of embracing responsibility are passed as fear and regret from a man to his son.

Norbit (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 4, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Eddie Murphy, Esoterica, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B-
starring Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Cuba Gooding, Jr.
screenplay by Eddie Murphy & Charles Murphy and Jay Scherick & David Ronn
directed by Brian Robbins

by Walter Chaw I looked up George Carlin’s seven dirty words that you can’t say on television and, sure enough, there was the outline for the gags, narrative, reason for being, you name it, of Eddie Murphy’s Norbit: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. Marvin the Martian-talking geek pastiche Norbit (Murphy) is an orphan abandoned on the doorstep of Golden Wonton Restaurant and Orphanage by unkind kindly Asian caricature Mr. Wong (Murphy again), who, in a moment that doesn’t feel like a joke but definitely feels full of rage, confesses that he traded his two-year-old daughter for a yak (in another, he reveals his dream to be a whaler, making him more Japanese than Chinese, but hey, a slant’s a slant). Not connected to anything like atonement or social/racial satire, Mr. Wong hovers there in the background as occasional wise commentary while Norbit loses his childhood sweetheart Kate (Thandie Newton) and marries the monstrous Rasputia (yes, Murphy). Norbit loathes fat people, Asians, women (note the two girls who really, really want to get turned out by Eddie Griffin’s pimp archetype), and black people most of all. I guess this is meant to soften the misanthropy, except it doesn’t really matter that the perpetrators of the screenplay are Murphy and his out-of-work brother Charlie–catching this coattail now after Dave Chappelle rolled up his–if the director is a white guy.

The Twilight Samurai (2002) – DVD

May 28, 2007****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Japan, Martial Arts, Romance

****/**** Image D Sound D Extras B
starring Hiroyuki Sanada, Rie Miyazawa, Nenji Kobayashi, Ren Osugi
screenplay by Yôji Yamada, Yoshitaka Asama, based on the story of Shuuhei Fujisawa
directed by Yôji Yamada

by Walter Chaw Unforgiven for veteran director Yôji Yamada and the jidai-geki genre of samurai pictures, The Twilight Samurai is quiet, assured, a masterpiece of contemplative understatement. Its connection to Eastwood's film is more than just cosmetic, though, more than just another "Old West" film about an aging, widowed warrior called into action for something so quaint as the honour of a woman. No, The Twilight Samurai seems an apologia for the romanticization of violence and, moreover, for the elevation of the cult of masculinity out of the mud of bestial muck–where it at least in some measure belongs–and into realms of ritualistic divinity. There's a scene in The Twilight Samurai more powerful than its commensurate moment in Unforgiven that emphasizes this point as unassuming hero Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada), without comment, steps over the flyblown corpse of a rival assassin in silent pursuit of his own quarry. The romance of end-of-era pictures like this (and literature as well; The Twilight Samurai and Unforgiven heavily remind of Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing) is that they can be pulled into a discussion of the passing away of youth as a man goes from early manhood's heady intoxication with the concept of chivalry to the more sober appreciation that true grit comes with providing constancy for your children in a world forever tilting towards alien territory. Though Seibei's nickname, "Tasogare" ("Twilight"), is a jab at his rushing home after clerk-work to tend to his demented mother and two young daughters, there's poetry in it as a description of a liminal magic hour where change looks not only more possible, but weighted with a lovely, gilded melancholy besides.