Work De Soleil: FFC Interviews Soleil Moon Frye

November 7, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals, Interviews

SmfryeinterviewtitleNovember 7, 2004|Petite, pretty, and irrepressible, Soleil Moon Frye (pronounced "So-Lay," like the Cirque) is probably still best known to folks of a certain age as Punky Brewster, though a memorable cameo on "Friends" as the girl who punches Joey a lot (ah, wish fulfillment) may have provided her a new pop-cultural brand for that generation. Soleil, though, is looking to make her mark as a filmmaker, and judging from a pair of documentaries she helmed, she might have the chops to do it. In person, Soleil Moon Frye is a bundle of energy whose emotions are ever close to the surface. And so when we sat down to talk about her documentary, Sonny Boy, which screened at the 27th Starz Denver International Film Festival last month, her demeanor was serious–intense, even; as we spoke in detail about the tragedy of our health-care state and the reticence of our leadership to affect change long-in-coming, she would lift off the sofa to perch in the space between us. Sonny Boy captures a two-week trip that Ms. Frye took with her father, Virgil Frye–he, stricken with Alzheimer's Disease, looking to reconcile with a daughter from whom he'd spent much of her life estranged, as well as to revisit the places of his life before his memories of them are swallowed by the long night of his affliction.

Alfie (2004)

November 5, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Jude Law, Marisa Tomei, Omar Epps, Nia Long
screenplay by Elaine Pope & Charles Shyer, based on the play and screenplay by Bill Naughton
directed by Charles Shyer

Alfie2004by Walter Chaw I haven’t liked any of the six films that Charles Shyer directed before his remake of Lewis Gilbert’s Alfie, so I guess there’s something to the auteur theory after all. Minus one fab performance from the suddenly omnipresent Jude Law, Shyer’s Alfie is a toothless affair–not surprising given modern cinema’s propensity for turning out lifeless twaddle, but somewhat dismaying given that the film’s source material is one of the most scabrous flicks in the annals of misogyny captured on celluloid. Contrasting the 1966 and 2004 versions of Alfie would be like an essay on how the movies have lost their edge over the course of the past four decades: we’ve moved from the medium cool of Sixties films, with their yearning to break free from the oppression of the Fifties, to the stagnant pond of the now, with its films too scared to offend the priggish States, filthy as they are with the descendants of pilgrims and Puritans. Come to think of it, a comparison between the two pictures also functions as an examination of the general difference between Europe and America–or an overview of religiosity in all its florid and degenerative influences on art.

The Hunting of the President (2004) – DVD

November 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
directed by Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry

by Walter Chaw Galling to the abused outrage assimilator is Nickolas Perry's and Harry Thomason's The Hunting of the President, based on a book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons (subtitled The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton) in which the "massive right-wing conspiracy" is given a face (Kenneth Starr) and an agenda. Eighty million of our taxpayer dollars were funnelled into discovering whether or not our then-Commander-and-Chief got a blowjob in the Oval Office. I wonder how many of us would trade that worry for the ones we have now? Probably not enough. The horror of it all is the general horror of it all: the idea that justice in the United States has become a plaything for the rich and powerful. Worse is that I begin to wonder if it hasn't always been this way (presidents getting hummers under the Lincoln Archway; presidents hiring their undergrad boosters to decide how to distribute reconstruction money in a country we've summarily invaded)–whether corruption and constitutional manipulation knows no party lines.

Saw (2004)

October 29, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Leigh Whannell, Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Monica Potter
screenplay by Leigh Whannell
directed by James Wan

Sawby Walter Chaw Pushed along by an inexplicable tide of buzz, James Wan's Saw is flat-out terrible. It features a career-worst performance from Cary Elwes–remarkable given that Elwes had already reached unwatchability in everything from Liar, Liar to Twister to Kiss the Girls to Ella Enchanted. (You can only ride the Princess Bride wave for so long before it falls out from under you in a crash of "it wasn't that great in the first place.") Between its hyperactive direction and hysterical script and performances, Saw locates itself as somewhere south of Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and, yep, even the much-maligned FearDotCom. The film isn't scary in the slightest, thinking that epileptic camerawork is a canny replacement for actual anxiety, and though there's some John Dickson Carr pleasure in the locked-room conundrum that opens the piece, by the end the film has become something like a wilting hothouse melodrama about the importance of family. Saw is outrageously stupid and, in its heart of hearts, more than a little desperate. Your slip is showing, boys.

DIFF ’04: Tomorrow’s Weather

October 28, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Poland
Pogoda na jutro**/****starring Jerzy Stuhr, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska, Roma Gasiorowska, Barbara Kaluznascreenplay by Mieczyslaw Herba & Jerzy Stuhrdirected by Jerzy Stuhr by Walter Chaw Polish institution Jerzy Stuhr fashions a peculiarly self-serving morality opera starring himself as a man who drops out for seventeen years to serve in a monastery, only to be "outed" one day by his jilted wife, two daughters, and son. Each child represents some newly-contracted ill that his beloved homeland has acquired since his auto-sequester: youngest Kilga (Roma Gasiorowska) is a dreadlocked hophead pushing dope to thirteen-year-olds; middle Ola (Barbara Kaluzna) is the star of a smutty…

DIFF ’04: Python

October 28, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Latvia
PitonsThe Python***/****starring Juris Grave, Januss Johansons, Mara Kimelewritten and directed by Laila Pakalnina by Walter Chaw Latvian filmmaker Laila Pakalnina delivers Python (Pitons) somewhere in the netherland between Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Roman Polanski. Her first film in colour, it's a locked-room drama about a boarding school presided over by insane Nurse Ratched acolyte Mara Kimele, doggedly trying to match feces found in her school's attic to samples collected from the students in empty matchstick boxes. Favouring long, isolating tracking shots of children being children as madness and inanity erupt around them in a quiet fog, Python reduces to a series…

The Dust Factory (2004)

October 27, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, Hayden Panettiere, Ryan Kelley, Michael Angarano
written and directed by Eric Small

by Walter Chaw Stunning in its incompetence, Eric Small's The Dust Factory highlights by its existence the unpopular truisms that there are as many awesomely bad independent films as there are mainstream ones; that the terms non-genre and non-traditional usually indicate a directionless mess; and that working with kid actors is not now, nor has it ever been, anything other than a plugger's bet. It raises the question of why there aren't more mimes acting as Greek Choruses in movies before it answers it, and most damnably, it seems to ascribe some sort of moral failing to seniors afflicted with Alzheimer's. See, in Small's fantasy world of The Dust Factory, souls in limbo can choose to "take the leap" off a trapeze tower into the arms of some faceless metaphor: miss and they're returned to the "dust" of their lives; catch and they're thrown to "the next level," which is Heaven or a video game, though stupid either way. The sticky part about it (aside from the stupid part, which is all of it, really) is that it requires courage to take that leap. The suggestion then becomes that if you have Alzheimer's disease, in some part of your brain you're a coward for not dying or "returning"–that you have in fact chosen to remain in a state of declining capacity. It's one thing to pose an Afterschool Special about how kids in comas need a will to power, another thing altogether to suggest that grandpa's a coward for contracting a degenerative brain condition.

Around the Bend (2004)

October 27, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Michael Caine, Jonah Bobo, Josh Lucas, Glenne Headly
written and directed by Jordan Roberts

Aroundthebendby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There’s nothing alive in Around the Bend, a story of three generations of men healing one another during a road trip. It’s just as bad as it sounds: one contrivance piled upon another while Kentucky Fried Chicken looms large in nearly every scene and, by narrative necessity, figures in every critical plot point. The central metaphor for the film is a series of KFC bags, crumpled up and stuffed inside each other like Russian dolls–each entrusted with a couple of post-it notes containing cryptic messages that send our cardboard boys on a scavenger hunt across the Four Corners area of the western United States. It’s the manner in which grand patriarch Henry (Michael Caine) decides he’ll reveal to his grandson Jason (Josh Lucas) why and how his leg doesn’t work right anymore. Jason has been raised by Henry ever since Jason’s father, Turner (Christopher Walken), ran out on them when Jason was just a crippled tot; now Jason has a moppet of his own, saucer-eyed Zach (Jonah Bobo). Zach, regrettably, is saddled with the task of being the precious/precocious font of the film’s alleged humour and the lion’s share of its bittersweetness as well. Bad enough that Caine and Walken agreed to be in this mess; they consented to playing second fiddle to Tiny Tim, too.

DIFF ’04: Tu

October 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
Here***/****starring Jasmin Telalovic, Marija Tadic, Zlatko Crnkovic, Ivo Gregurevicscreenplay by Josip Mlakic & Zrinko Ogrestadirected by Zrinko Ogresta by Walter Chaw Six loosely-connected vignettes form the body of Zrinko Ogresta's Croatian film Tu, a study in six parts of the difficulty of communication in a modern age (Hopper's eternal verities of nature and technology askew) and the scars left by the Balkan War on the lives of the collateral chaff. It opens with a simpleton at the mortar-torn front finding hope in the life of a bird that he saves, and ends with an old veteran unable to sleep because…

DIFF ’04: King of the Corner

October 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
**½/****starring Peter Riegert, Isabella Rossellini, Jennifer Albano, Eric Bogosianscreenplay by Peter Riegert & Gerald Shapirodirected by Peter Riegert by Walter Chaw Peter Riegert, Animal House's Boon, makes his directorial debut with King of the Corner, a Jewish mid-life crisis of a film that casts Isabella Rossellini in the long-suffering wife role she played so well in Fearless and Riegert himself as a travelling salesman on the verge. Eli Wallach is the father, Rita Moreno is the mother ("He started calling me a 'wetback'"), and Eric Bogosian has a splendid cameo as Rabbi Fink, a man without much patience for mincing…

The Go-To Guy: FFC Interviews Bill Pullman

October 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

BpullmaninterviewtitleOctober 24, 2004|Wearing a baseball cap and red jacket, Bill Pullman seems like any other sturdy middle-aged guy. He does, that is, until he talks. Like his screen persona, Mr. Pullman chews over his words with careful, delighted concentration–his speech is laced with just a hint of savoury, not the least because of his affection for "hmmm" as a lead-in to his laconic delivery. There's something about this vital sense of Mr. Pullman always being in the process of discovery (of evolving, if you will) that I suspect draws directors as creepily revolutionary as David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Wes Craven, and Thomas Vinterberg into his orbit. Mr. Pullman fights battles with himself in his performances, a sense of tension that's made palpable when he's matched with artists similarly engaged in refereeing the wrestling match between the intimate and the profane. In town for an experimental theatre project with which he's involved at the National Theater Conservatory, Mr. Pullman was joined for a few days at the 27th Starz Denver International Film Festival by Curtiss Clayton, who directed him in the filmed re-telling of Verdi's Rigoletto, Rick.

Head in the Clouds (2004); Bright Young Things (2003); Vera Drake (2004)

October 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Drama, France, Romance, UK, War

HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
*/****
starring Charlize Theron, Penélope Cruz, Stuart Townsend, Thomas Kretschmann
written and directed by John Duigan

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
**½/****
starring Emily Mortimer, Stephen Campbell Moore, James McAvoy, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Stephen Fry, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh
directed by Stephen Fry

VERA DRAKE
***½/****
starring Imelda Staunton, Richard Graham, Eddie Marsan, Anna Keaveney
written and directed by Mike Leigh

Headyoungveraby Walter Chaw There's a certain fascination embedded in our images of wartime England. When a film comes birthing across the pond this time of year, dripping with prestige and a whiff of stuffiness, what can it be but awards fodder laden with lovely sets, sepia-stained cinematography, handsome wool and silk costumes, and largely European casts that remind of how venal American mainstream casts tend to be by comparison? Something about the Blitz still intoxicates–perhaps England's steadfast refusal to surrender their island sanctuary to the barbarians at the gate tickles at our national self-delusion, trading on the belief, once ironclad, that our borders were as sacrosanct, or that our intentions in establishing a New World Order were ever that noble. Now, without the comfort of our own inviolate island sanctuary (what was Manhattan pre-9/11 than that–and what was it after but the biggest metaphor for the irony of capitalist arrogance since The Titanic?), there's just that much more reason for moth-balled middlebrow arthouse audiences to snuffle up great pinches of mid-twentieth century British pluck and remember from the cloistered perspective of a cloth chair a when that never existed–at least never for them.

The Alamo (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, War, Western, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound A Extras C+
starring Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson
screenplay by Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gaghan and John Lee Hancock
directed by John Lee Hancock

by Walter Chaw There's an old joke from "Hee Haw" about crossing a potato with a sponge: "It didn't taste too good, but boy did it soak up the gravy!" In John Lee Hancock's appalling and sidesplitting The Alamo, Billy Bob Thornton as Davy Crockett tells a gruesome variation on that punchline, only as an actor's moment (and with the "grease" off of slaughtered and incinerating Indians substituted for gravy). "Now, when someone passes me the potatoes, I just pass them right on." An interesting lesson taught about genocide and cannibalism: it's not the commission of atrocity to be mourned, it's the loss for a taste for French fries that's really the tragedy. The Alamo is essentially how "Hee Haw" saved the world–every time Davy pops his head above the titular fort's ramparts, visions of Roy Clark and Buck Owens popping out of a cornfield dance in your head. There are moments when, I kid you not, I looked to see if there was a price tag dangling, Minnie Pearl-style, from Jim Bowie's (Jason Patric) hat.

DIFF ’04: Green Hat

October 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals
*/****starring Liao Fan, Li Haibin, Dong Lifan, Li Congxiwritten and directed by Liu Fendou by Walter Chaw Liu Fendou's Green Hat opens with a jab: a man on a beach muses about the difference between an art film and a popular film, and he does so by pondering the place of masturbation in polite conversation. In a nutshell, Fendou provides the madness and the method for his directorial debut, an onanistic roundelay concerning the nature of love that begins with another bank robber (sigh) who finds out he's been doing it all for a love he's been cuckolded to, proceeds…

The Final Cut (2004)

October 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Germany, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Robin Williams, Mira Sorvino, James Caviezel, Mimi Kuzyk
written and directed by Omar Naim

Finalcutby Walter Chaw It's interesting to me in an esoteric way that Robin Williams consistently seeks out projects that position him as some sort of levitating guru detached from the travails of the common man, floating above the madding crowd with a beatific smile on his god's-eye mug. Think of, among the many shrinks, ex-shrinks, serial killers, and genies Williams has played, his "Wizard of Oz"-ian Dr. Know from A.I., his demented developer Sy from One Hour Photo, or his sainted Dr. Chris from What Dreams May Come. By all accounts, Williams is a nice fellow–a little manic and arrested, perhaps, but pleasant and even philanthropic. So what is it about the camera that turns him into an auto-consumptive egoist with a bizarre saviour complex, into this sad clown, velvet or otherwise, who finds humour in tragedy (so the theory goes) but lately has worked pretty hard at just being gloweringly melancholic in "psychological thrillers" long on sterile atmosphere and short on any sort of resonance? Williams has this air of feeling sorry for humanity that doesn't seem pious as much as it seems self-satisfied and superior. I'm not sure what the holy land for his crusade is, but I hope that he and Kevin Spacey conquer it soon so they can get back to not being irritating pricks with delusions of Christ.

DIFF ’04: Kontroll

October 21, 2004Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Hungary, Romance, Thriller
Control****/****starring Sándor Csányi, Zoltán Mucsi, Csaba Pindroch, Sándor Badárscreenplay by Jim Adler & Nimród Antaldirected by Nimród Antal by Walter Chaw A cross between Chris Noth and Clancy Brown's The Kurgan from Highlander, Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi) is the Oedipal anti-hero at the heart of Hungarian director Nimród Antal's drop-dead brilliant Kontroll. A ticket-taker and a rent-a-cop, he's assigned to a misfit crew at odds with every other misfit crew in their Orwellian transit agency. The film, a surprisingly violent and kinetic slapstick comedy reminiscent of Clive Barker's "Midnight Meat Train," begins with one character aping Harpo Marx's blowtorch lighter bit…

DIFF ’04: Sonny Boy

October 20, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals
***/****directed by Soleil Moon Frye by Walter Chaw At times deeply affecting, erstwhile "Punky Brewster" Soleil Moon Frye's second film is a personal memoir of a two-week trip taken by Soleil and her father, actor Virgil Frye, across the physical landmarks of the latter's life, with Virgil's Alzheimer's-afflicted mind disintegrating in chunks of recollection as the film progresses. At its best, Sonny Boy captures the troubled emptiness of the rural United States' back roads, expanding its personal story into an almost metaphysical statement about being lost in America; as it happens, Virgil even worked on the production of friend and…

A Home at the End of the World (2004) – DVD

October 19, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D
starring Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, Robin Wright Penn, Sissy Spacek
screenplay by Michael Cunningham, based on his novel
directed by Michael Mayer

by Walter Chaw Glib, facile, essentially misguided, and exhibiting a kind of misunderstanding about film craft that sends exactly the opposite of the intended message in every scene, Michael Mayer's directorial debut A Home at the End of the World is a trial from start to finish. It makes appalling soundtrack choices first in establishing period, then in demolishing mood, and finally in screwing up the chronology enough so that the viewer is left completely unmoored. If you're using a jovial Seventies soundtrack to place your film in the Seventies, it's a really bad idea to start using a classic Motown soundtrack when your picture actually moves forward in time. (Not even mentioning what a perverse boner it is to accompany the discovery of a dead father with "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard.") Add to that a screenplay by The Hours scribe Michael Cunningham that displays the same kind of top-heavy, more or less off-base pretension and disdain for such outmoded values as loyalty and generosity, and what you have is a recipe for a very particular kind of disaster.

Team America: World Police (2004)

October 19, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Esoterica, Germany, Satire, Theatrical

*½/****
screenplay by Trey Parker & Matt Stone & Pam Brady
directed by Trey Parker

Teamamericaworldpoliceby Walter Chaw The comedy bits that work in Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America: World Police are the most vile, the most puerile. The now-notorious puppet sex scene is uproarious–the consumption of Hans Blix by a catfish and the attempts at having marionettes fight one another in hand-to-hand combat are pretty funny, too, and though it's a little oblique, I appreciated our intrepid band's endeavour to disguise one of their own as a gentle-puppet of Middle Eastern decent. But we reach a point during this experiment in neo-"Thunderbirds" cinema where it becomes clear that the satirical sharpness that defines the duo's at-times incandescently brilliant "South Park" has been shunted aside in favour of vomit gags and screaming homophobia. It's faint praise to say that Team America is sometimes as funny as Steve Oedekerk's "thumb" movies, but more often it's just protracted and uninspired.

Van Helsing (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 19, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, DVD, Romania, Vampire, Werewolf

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham
written and directed by Stephen Sommers

Vanhelsingcapby Walter Chaw There are times now and again over the course of Stephen Sommers's unspeakable Van Helsing when the film is so brazenly bad that it threatens to be satirical–so bad that one is left to scramble to pull some sort of gestalt sense from the carnage. But it's just a mess, a cesspool of half-formed ideas and images ripped off whole from The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Hugh Jackman reprising Wolverine from X-Men and Kate Beckinsale essentially reprising her role from Underworld. All of it's wrapped up in a cacophonous jumble of dour mattes, really (really) bad CGI, and an Alan Silvestri score that is itself a rip-off of everything that made John Williams famous (that is, Holst's "The Planets"). Way too long at just over two hours with no story to speak of justifying its length, the piece is stolen by David Wenham as a deadpan 19th century Q, Friar Carl, and grinds to a dead standstill whenever Jackman delivers one of his twenty lines, Beckinsale chimes in with a jarring non sequitur ("There's a bright side to death in Transylvania"), Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein's monster threatens to cry out "Puttin' on the Riiiitz," or Richard Roxburgh as Count Dracula vamps around like a diva in a John Waters film. If only Van Helsing were campy.