Dahmer (2002)

August 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Drama, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Jeremy Renner, Bruce Davison, Artel Kayaru, Matt Newton
written and directed by David Jacobson

by Walter Chaw Well-acted but without a point-of-view, hyphenate David Jacobson’s sophomore feature Dahmer is less biopic than Arthouse Exploitation Lite, a curiously uninvolving glimpse into the banal life and times of a serial murderer. Rather than portray the stalking and vivisection of man as grotesquely vapid (like its more successful brothers Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or The Untold Story), Dahmer chooses that same all-too-familiar docudrama frankness to illustrate a sick man’s loneliness and inability to make a true connection with another human being. It’s not attempting to humanize Dahmer so much as it’s attempting to elevate Dahmer to the level of great post-modern anti-hero: unromantic, unexceptional, and unmoored, utterly, from moral responsibility–Beavis playing frog baseball with a holy trinity of representative pretty-boy victims. Even its end title card, reporting (we infer “mournfully”) that the titular bogey was murdered just two years into his 1,070-year sentence by a fellow inmate, seems intended as an epitaph for a misunderstood prophet rather than a declaration of karma asserting itself, penitentiary-style.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 9

July 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Documentary, Drama, France, Theatrical

by Walter Chaw

MURDEROUS MAIDS (2000)
Les Blessures assassines
***/****
starring Sylvie Testud, Julie-Marie Parmentier, Isabelle Renauld, Dominique Labourier
screenplay by Jean-Pierre Denis & Michèle Pétin, based on the novel L'affaire Papin by Paulette Houdyer
directed by Jean-Pierre Denis

Heavenly Creatures by way of Henry James, Jean-Pierre Denis's Murderous Maids–based on the true story of two sisters who, in 1933, murdered and mutilated the bodies of their employers in a small French town–is haunting and uncompromising. Denis proposes that taciturn Christine (Sylvie Testud) and open, elfin Léa (Julie-Marie Parmentier) were engaged in an incestuous relationship; that this relationship was founded on the basis of a deep resentment of a mother (Isabelle Renauld) who hired them out as housemaids and collected their salaries to fund her "love of life"; and that this relationship–arrested sexuality, repressed beneath a veneer of unbearable religiosity (a third sister, supposedly raped by a long-absent father, joins a convent) and the humiliations of the master/servant dynamic–eventually imploded into an orgy of bloodlust and madness. Denis's unwillingness to sensationalize (let alone explain) first incest and then murder results in a certain harshness that magnifies every bourgeoisie slight against the long-suffering proletariat into a potentially triggering event, yet also prevents very much in the way of suture with either the sisters or their eventual victims. The bloodletting made as sterile as the eroticism in an affectively airless chamber piece, Murderous Maids falls short of Claude Chabrol's brilliant La Cérémonie and Nancy Meckler's underseen Sister, My Sister, in that the same reserve that allows its actresses to shine (Testud, in particular) inhibits very much in the way of actual involvement or tension beyond a kind of clinical interest. Still, the weight of the piece, the unerring professionalism of the chilly production, and the fascination embedded in the lurid topic prove recommendation enough.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 7

July 5, 2002Posted in1980s, 2000s, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Czechoslovakia, Drama, France, Italy, Music, Theatrical

by Walter Chaw

PETER SHAFFER'S AMADEUS: DIRECTOR'S CUT (1984/2002)
***/****
starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow
screenplay by Peter Shaffer, based on his play
directed by Milos Forman

Bringing the highbrow to the status-hungry middle and lowbrow in the same way as those "Bach's Greatest Hits" collections and the awful faux-llies of Andrew Lloyd Weber, Milos Forman's bawdy, jittery adaptation of Peter Shaffer's fanciful play "Amadeus" is not so much about Mozart as it is about genius and its burden on the mediocre. Mozart (Tom Hulce) is an adolescent boor touched by the hand of God. Emperor Joseph's (Jeffrey Jones) court composer Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) becomes obsessed and desperately jealous of Mozart's gift, leading him to the madhouse and confessions of murder. Amadeus works because of Forman's gift for the seedy (and portraying asylums–he directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Abraham's deeply-felt performance.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) [The Two-Disc Awards Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

June 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Disability, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany
screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar
directed by Ron Howard

by Walter Chaw Mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. gained his reputation in theoretical economics and/by discerning patterns in impossibly complicated numerical models. A Beautiful Mind, a film based very loosely upon his life, likewise deals with theoretical economics (in regards to Christmas box office), but offers bland predictable patterns in place of complexity. For example, because this is DreamWorks’/Universal’s Oscar tentpole, the running time falls safely in the “adult contemporary holiday respectable” range of 130-145 minutes, and it features a big name actor in a role that requires him to be some combination of mentally disabled (I Am Sam, Forrest Gump, Rain Man), insane (As Good As It Gets), or that delicate combination of the two: a genius (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester).

Fidel (2002) – DVD

June 4, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Television

*½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Victor Huggo Martin, Gael Garcia Bernal, Patricia Velasquez, Cecilia Suarez
screenplay by Stephen Tolkin, based on the books Guerrilla Prince by Georgie Anne Geyer and Fidel Castro by Robert E. Quirk
directed by David Attwood

by Walter Chaw Fidel is a very long, frustrating, exculpatory biopic of Cuba’s dictator that, in its near-fanatical dedication to even-handedness, provides a piece devoid of a moral compass. In certain instances, pacifism implies an endorsement of one side and director David Attwood is certainly guilty of not taking a stand on one of the most controversial, inflammatory, murderous, megalomaniacal, and charismatic figures in modern history. Beginning, intriguingly, in 1949 with a young Castro (Victor Huggo Martin) as a clean-shaven lawyer incensed by certain acts of vandalism perpetrated by the American Navy in Havana, the film promises to draw an interesting connection to Gandhi’s legal background and, most fascinatingly, the starkly different ways these two revolutionary leaders conduct their rebellions (and to what eventual purposes).

Hard Lessons (1986) – DVD

May 2, 2002Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Television

The George McKenna Story
*/**** Image C- Sound C
starring Denzel, Lynn Whitfield, Akosua Busia, Richard Masur
screenplay by Charles Eric Johnson
directed by Eric Laneuville

by Walter Chaw Hot on the heels of Denzel Washington’s second Oscar–which was sort of a relieved, honorary accolade for avoiding the umpteenth resurrection of his Glory performance, another collaboration with Spike Lee, and a third slain civil rights leader–comes Artisan’s hasty repackaging of 1986’s TV movie The George McKenna Story, ironically dubbed Hard Lessons and refurbished with new promotional art.

Ali (2001) – DVD

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

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

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

Piňero (2002)

February 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Theatrical

**/****
starring Benjamin Bratt, Giancarlo Esposito, Talisa Soto, Nelson Vasquez
written and directed by Leon Ichaso

Pineroby Walter Chaw The problem with disconnected narratives and the (empty) conceit of alternating film stocks of equally shoddy quality is that what is intended as evocation of the character’s grimy chaotic shiftlessness can come off as cinematic smoke and mirrors. Was Miguel Piňero a poet of the devil’s part or was he just a scrapper in rat’s alley? The answer is a difficult one. Like most third-world or disadvantaged artists, Piňero acquisitioned the art of the ruling class: Of the three poems recited in their entirety over the course of Leon Ichaso’s scattershot biopic Piňero, the first of them hijacks Percy Shelley’s 1819 “Ode to the West Wind” (in its shift from Shelley’s “withered leaves to quicken a new birth” to Piňero’s “candy wrappers in the wind”) and the last of them Longfellow’s “My Lost Youth.” The purpose of that reinvention is, of course, to take on, like Yeats’s Leda, the power of the representational tradition of that with which one would prefer to be equated. Failing that, it makes a Basquiat pop-art impression to subtly pervert familiar images–an instant credibility from an almost parasitic revisionism of which Ichaso’s film seems to suggest Piňero was self-aware. Regardless of Ichaso’s insistence, I still harbour doubts as to the Nuyerican poet’s artistic self-knowledge and his long-term viability as a compelling literary voice.

Iris (2001)

February 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Romance, UK

**/****
starring Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Richard Eyre, Charles Wood, based on the book by John Bayley
directed by Richard Eyre

Iris

by Walter Chaw Iris wants nothing more than to be an objective look at the life and decline of British novelist Iris Murdoch (played by Kate Winslet and Dame Judi Dench) from insouciant free-love literati to decrepit Alzheimer’s victim in the care of her stuttering husband, novelist and critic John Bayley (Hugh Bonneville and Jim Broadbent). But the film confuses objectivity with sentimentality, and in the process obscures its titular protagonist with maddening fragments meant to elucidate her brilliance. Iris makes the mistake of assuming that its audience is well versed in the work of Murdoch and Bayley–enough so that the loss of her mind is one that is tragic beyond the spectator’s basic human decency. Iris also makes the mistake of not allowing Dench the opportunity to play Murdoch as anything but a woman in mental decline, leaving the “pre-disease” spunk and vitality to a game Winslet. The “before” and “after” shots are two different people and the film just isn’t agile enough to carry an illusion contrary.

DIFF ’01: Hybrid

October 13, 2001Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Esoterica, Film Festivals

****/****
directed by Monteith McCollum

by Walter Chaw Hybrid is an elegy for the passing of a man who fell in love early in his life and remained faithful until the day he died, two years past turning one-hundred. Presented in gritty blacks and whites, Monteith McCollum's six-year labour of love memorializing his grandfather Milford Beeghly is a stunning documentary that itself plays as a hybrid of something dreamed-up by Errol Morris and the Brothers Quay. Ostensibly about Beeghly's obsession with finding the perfect hybrid breed of corn as an industrial crop, the film somehow becomes a grand metaphor–for the rough grace of the American way of life, for the lingering death of the agrarian lifestyle, for the difficulties of balancing family with a calling, and even for the true meaning of happiness.

Pollock (2000) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras A
starring Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Tom Bower, Jennifer Connelly
screenplay by Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller, based on the book Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
directed by Ed Harris

by Bill Chambers

“How do you know when you’re finished making love?”
-Jackson Pollock’s famous retort to a LIFE MAGAZINE reporter who asked how Pollock knows when he’s completed a painting

Jackson Pollock’s “making love” quote is famous, but in practically the same breath he said a much more constructive thing: “It’s like looking at a bed of flowers–tear your hair out over what it means.” It took him sixteen words to do as whole dissertations have tried and failed, that is, to equate God and abstract art and offer a kind of backhanded comfort to those confused to the point of resentment by the avant-garde. The biopic Pollock, actor Ed Harris’s directorial debut, reflects the second soundbite in how it accepts Pollock’s creations as part of the order of things, and should similarly disarm haters of fine art.

Music of the Heart (1999)

October 29, 1999Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Disability, Drama, Music, Theatrical, Wes Craven

**/****
starring Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Aidan Quinn, Jane Leeves
screenplay by Pamela Gray
directed by Wes Craven

by Bill Chambers I should start this review by telling you how much I hate the generic title Music of the Heart. Wes Craven's bid for prestige was more evocatively (and appropriately) called 50 Violins in development, and the switch only proves how far distributor Miramax has strayed from its edgier roots. Almost as infuriating is the positioning of an 'N Sync/Gloria Estafan duet as Music of the Heart's theme song: a nigh unlistenable ballad opens and closes a film about music appreciation.

Gods and Monsters (1998) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

June 14, 1999Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, DVD, UK

***/**** Image A Sound B Extras A-
starring Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich
screenplay by Bill Condon, based on the novel Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
directed by Bill Condon

by Bill Chambers Retired filmmaker James Whale (an uncanny Ian McKellen) invites his gardener, a young ex-Marine named Clay Boone (Brendan Fraser), into the drawing-room for drinks and cigars. The scene purposely recalls the one from Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein in which Karloff’s Creature accepts a lonely blind man’s hospitality, only to sour things by erupting at the sight of an open flame because he’s terrified of fire. Likewise, hulky Clay cuts short his time with Whale when the director’s conspicuous, some might say flaming, homosexuality begins to disgust him. “Same difference,” James tells Clay. “Fear and disgust. All part of the same great gulf that stands between us.”

Without Limits (1998)

September 11, 1998Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, Sports, Theatrical, Tom Cruise

**/****
starring Billy Crudup, Donald Sutherland, Monica Potter, Jeremy Sisto
screenplay by Robert Towne and Kenny Moore
directed by Robert Towne

by Bill Chambers Does Robert Towne deserve his reputation as a Hollywood Great? (I'm not playing Devil's Advocate here.) After all, Roman Polanski is responsible for Chinatown's brilliant ending (Towne, its screenwriter, bowed out when Polanski opted to alter his comparatively bittersweet finale); Warren Beatty extensively reshaped his screenplay for Shampoo; Towne caved to studio pressure and destroyed the climax of his sophomore feature as writer-director, Tequila Sunrise; and it took him several years to pen the misfire Love Affair.