House of the Dead (2003) – DVD

March 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Germany, Horror, ZERO STARS, Zombie

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B+
starring Jonathan Cherry, Tyron Leitso, Clint Howard, Ona Grauer
screenplay by Dave Parker & Mark Altman
directed by Uwe Boll

by Walter Chaw With Jürgen Prochnow (the production too cheap and/or ignorant to provide him even his umlaut in the closing credits) dressed like his Das Boot U-boat commander and Clint Howard dressed like the Morton’s fisherman, Uwe Boll’s wearying House of the Dead positions itself as one of those snarky post-modern slasher flicks that isn’t nearly so smart as it thinks it is. An early gag about Prochnow’s sea captain being named “Kirk” is one of those lifeless jokes that speaks to the desperation and incompetence driving the piece in equal measure; sad to say that after its unpromising opening minutes, the film defies the odds by getting progressively worse. I don’t really know how House of the Dead found distribution–pictures piggybacking on the success of both a video game franchise and another film that piggybacked on a video game franchise (Resident Evil) usually go straight to video. But as one of the death rattles of Artisan Entertainment, ’nuff said, I guess.

The Republic of Love (2004)

February 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

***/****
starring Bruce Greenwood, Emilia Fox, Edward Fox, Connor Price
screenplay by Deepa Mehta and Esta Spalding, based on the novel by Carol Shields
directed by Deepa Mehta

Republicofloveby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Not long ago in these pages, I gave Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed a thumbs-up for leading us out of Canadian master-shot hell with a bold use of montage. Little did I know that the master shots would deliver a riposte so soon afterwards, but lo and behold, here is The Republic of Love, a movie that finds a way to use Canada's compositional rhythm of choice to fairly spectacular effect. True, it has some narrative deficiencies, and it builds to a climax that never really arrives, but Deepa Mehta's slick and stately use of cinematography and colour redeems what could have been another leaden exercise in choice-free Canadian aesthetics.

Wonderland (2003) [Limited 2-Disc Edition] – DVD

February 9, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

WONDERLAND
*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Val Kilmer, Lisa Kudrow, Kate Bosworth, Dylan McDermott
screenplay by James Cox & Captain Mauzner and Todd Samovitz & D. Loriston Scott
directed by James Cox

by Walter Chaw A collision of vérité with the sort of Requiem for a Dream grind-cut quick-edits that have produced some of the worst films of the last couple of years (case in point: Spun), Wonderland sets out to tell the true story of 1981's Wonderland Murders, which left four scumbags dead and porn king John Holmes–King Scumbag, as it were–implicated in the lead pipe nastiness. It's a regurgitation in so many ways of so many things: neo-Boogie Nights, neo-noir, neo-Val Kilmer's own strung-out performance in the superior The Salton Sea–and therein lies the problem, as Kilmer is altogether too likeable an anti-hero, typecast as the strung-out simpleton too good-looking to be at the bottom, too drunk on himself to be anywhere else. A section where the passage of time is represented by a montage of TV GUIDE listings provides the only spark in the midst of this spastic spectacle, demonstrating a knowledge of its cathode tube parentage as cannily as the use of Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" tune that defined the MTV-made hit, dancing on the edge of art and porn. It happens early, it raises hopes, and then Wonderland runs itself well past the point of caring.

Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Horror, Thriller

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
***/****
starring Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Tatiana Maslany, Janet Kidder
screenplay by Megan Martin
directed by Brett Sullivan

Gingersnapsiiby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Many times I have watched Canadian films, and many times I have wondered: do my countrymen not know about a thing called montage? Too many Canuck efforts park the camera outside of the action and refuse to cut in come hell or high water, creating a national cinema of cold, static films that move like molasses. So it was with shock that I witnessed Brett Sullivan's deft use of cutting in Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed–whatever shortcomings the film might have, it never ceases to remind you that you're watching a movie as opposed to a record of people talking. The result of Sullivan's grasp of editing is a film that jams its themes in your face, daring you to try and ignore them, making for an experience more bracing than that of the usual Canadian product.

Emile (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Ian McKellen, Deborah Kara Unger, Tygh Runyan, Theo Crane
written and directed by Carl Bessai

Emileby Travis Mackenzie Hoover In Survival, Margaret Atwood's seminal 1972 study of Canadian literature, she identifies Canadian writers' use of the family as "the trap you're caught in" and identifies a number of inescapable families that shut tight like a prison. Faced with this preponderance of smothering clans, she notes: "What one misses [from these books] is joy. After a few of these books, you start wanting someone, sometime, to find something worth celebrating." Flash forward 32 years and you will have the same complaint about Emile, a film in which the family is a tangled web from which there is no escape–and those who try to escape are doomed to guilt and destructiveness. Teamed with a somnambulistic pace and a painful, childlike politeness, the film so reeks of disappointment that it can't even find the courage to allow its most wronged character any kind of catharsis.

The Fighting Fitzgerald: FFC Interviews Thom Fitzgerald

January 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Interviews

TfitzgeraldinterviewtitleJanuary 25, 2004|An unwritten policy says that before interviewing a new subject for the first time, you should see the film and log the review so that the review isn't flavoured by bias, by whether you love or hate the filmmaker. It's almost impossible, particularly for an inexperienced critic, to separate affection for a person with a more diplomatic look at the person's picture–and difficult as well to separate the persona that an artist presents to media with who the person actually is. Everybody's your friend on the junket and we need each other: I need to fill my column (and hopefully with a compelling face), they need to publicize their films, and we get famous together in our respective disciplines. The whole thing is a little parasitic.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

January 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, Time Travel

***/****
starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Kevin Schmidt, Melora Walters
written and directed by J. Mackye Gruber & Eric Bress

Butterflyeffectby Walter Chaw The Butterfly Effect is tidy, nifty even, a great little genre picture that wallows in ugliness, child abuse, animal abuse, classism, and misogyny but with a dirty polish that tends to distract a little from the nastiness. Evan (Ashton Kutcher) suffers from blackouts, has ever since he was a kid, and no wonder, as there seems to be some nasty bouts of molestation, baby murder, and dog immolation buried in there, desperately in need of some good old-fashioned repression. Now a psych student at State U (his research having something to do with memory, naturally), he discovers that he can "possess" himself at various stages of his youth after being triggered by the comp book journals he's been keeping ever since he started having his spells. His efforts at "fixing" the tragedies of his life all tend towards failure, however, as every little wrinkle he puts in the fabric of time results in catastrophic changes in the present. The Butterfly Effect owes a great debt, then, to Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," Brian Aldiss's "Poor Little Warrior," William Goldman's Control, and Clive Barker's "The Inhuman Condition"; that it manages to honour to some degree each one of its sources (if only with the precision lavished on the telling of its dank tale) identifies the picture as a most difficult beast to embrace–and just as difficult to dislike. The craft above reproach, it's the content that worries.

The Santa Clause 2 (2002) [Widescreen] – DVD

November 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D+
starring Tim Allen, Elizabeth Mitchell, Eric Lloyd, David Krumholtz
screenplay by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul and Steve Rudnick and Ed Decter & John J. Strauss
directed by Michael Lembeck

by Walter Chaw There is a scene about midway through Tim Allen's latest genuinely bad movie in which Allen and his screen family gather for dinner wielding McDonald's food in perfect bags, held in such a way so as not to obscure the golden arches for the duration of the shot. A 90-second commercial embedded in what passes for entertainment too often nowadays, it's driven home by the disconcerting realization that this picture's animatronic reindeer talk like The Hamburglar. (Warble blarble warble.) In addition to being misogynistic, racist, and apparently trying to plumb the humour of fascist regimes, The Santa Clause 2, then, is also home to one of the most sinister marketing ploys since Pokémon.

Film Freak Central Does the 2003 New York City Horror Film Festival

November 5, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Horror, Short Films, Thriller, UK, Zombie

Nychorrorlogo November 5, 2003|Held at the Tribeca Theater for the second year in a row, the New York City Horror Film Festival (NYCHFF) is a collection of low-budget feature and short genre films that, like the San Francisco Film Society's lamented Dark Wave festival (after two amazing years, there is no third instalment pending), gives weight to a much-deserved critical re-evaluation of horror film as an important artistic, sociological, academic endeavour. With special awards this year honouring Troma's Lloyd Kaufman, underestimated horror director Stuart Gordon, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, my favourite independent horror director Larry Fessenden, and special effects legend Tom Savini, the 2nd NYCHFF is an emerging niche festival run by folks who care about the genre and, better, have an idea about how to present the material in a way as enthusiastic as it is savvy.

Watchers/Watchers II [Double Feature] – DVD

October 31, 2003Posted in1980s, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, ZERO STARS

WATCHERS (1988)
*/**** Image C- Sound C
starring Corey Haim, Barbara Williams, Michael Ironside
screenplay by Bill Freed and Damian Lee, based on Watchers by Dean R. Koontz
directed by Jon Hess

WATCHERS II (2002)
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C
starring Marc Singer, Tracy Scoggins, Jonathan Farwell, Irene Miracle
screenplay by Henry Dominic
directed by Thierry Notz

by Walter Chaw Lassie vs. Link in what amounts to one of the stupidest films ever made: an adaptation of a Dean Koontz (one of the stupidest novelists ever made) novel, Watchers looks cheap, plays cheap, and stars Corey Haim as a Lita Ford-looking, ambiguously gay teen who’s upstaged by a dog yet again (see: The Lost Boys and, in a way, Silver Bullet). At least he’s not upstaged by Corey Feldman this time around, which, frankly, can’t be good for anyone’s career or self-respect. A tale of a genetically engineered orangutan warring with a genetically engineered golden retriever in the upscale suburbs of Anywhere, America that looks like Vancouver and boasts of the entire Mayberry police force, Watchers is aided now and again by a trademark ridiculous performance from Michael Ironside, the poor man’s Jack Nicholson, but is generally an unredeemable tale of military paranoia and dog love. As the mutt gazes intently off-screen at the commands of his invisible handler (and Haim the same), the film has as its only vaguely interesting moment one where a fat kid named “Piggy” and Jason Priestly try to out-bike the killer monkey, restaging The Lord of the Flies as a BMX downhill derby. Oh, the humanity.

Scary Movie 3 (2003)

October 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Anna Faris, Charlie Sheen, Regina Hall, Denise Richards
screenplay by Craig Mazin and Kevin Smith and David Zucker
directed by David Zucker

Scarymovie3by Walter Chaw Even without the Wayans Brothers, the latest Scary Movie sequel is unspeakably bad. A disjointed series of set-piece recreations from popular films (Signs, The Matrix Reloaded, The Ring, 8 Mile) populated by idiots and scripted with a flat collection of obvious fall-down gags and scatology, the picture doesn't even respect the movies it mocks enough to understand what it is about them that fails. More, with the absence of the Wayans (who are replaced by David Zucker, one-third of the braintrust behind successful spoofs like Airplane! and The Naked Gun), the repeated shout-outs to heroes of hip-hop (an entire record label shows up in cameo bits) and attendant disrespect of the culture land with disturbing racial undertones. The film is aimed specifically at an African-American demographic: That's one thing when the filmmakers are African-American, another thing altogether when they're not.

Willard (2003) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

October 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Horror, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Crispin Glover, Laura Elena Harring, Jackie Burroughs, R. Lee Ermey
screenplay by Glen Morgan, based on the screenplay by Gilbert Ralston and Ralston's novel Ratman's Notebook
directed by Glen Morgan

by Walter Chaw If you're going to remake an Ernest Borgnine movie from the Seventies, I'd rather see a redux of The Devil's Rain. But Willard it is; for the blissfully uninitiated, Willard concerns the travails of a lonesome weirdo who makes friends with a bunch of rats, Phenomena-style (Argento not Travolta, which brings us back to The Devil's Rain, curiously), and sends them on a crusade against an evil boss who wants to buy Willard's house. Bruce Davison as the original Willard has a nice moment in that film where he implores his rat-kinder to "tear it up" good, but the film is probably best remembered for the theme song of its sequel, Ben, penned by Michael Jackson v.0.2. The theme song, and Davison, have stupid cameos in the new Willard.

DIFF ’03: Shattered Glass

October 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Canada, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
***/****written and directed by Billy Ray by Walter Chaw The saga of disgraced NEW REPUBLIC journalist Stephen Glass is retraced in Billy Ray's hyphenate debut Shattered Glass, an unassuming walk across the crossed threads of deceptive webs fuelled by an interesting pair of performances from Hayden Christensen as Glass and Peter Sarsgaard as embattled editor Chuck Lane. Fascinatingly repetitive, the picture itself is something of a scam, portraying Glass's tall tales in straight flashback fashion before systematically debunking them, replicating, in a sense, the feeling of betrayal that Glass's readership, his audience, must have felt upon learning that they'd been…

DIFF ’03: The Wild Dogs

October 20, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DIFF/SDFF, Drama
**/****written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald by Walter Chaw Thom Fitzgerald makes movies that celebrate the cult of himself. Carefully nourished by his sense of smug self-satisfaction like a private pleasure garden, his pictures, numbering five, are auteur in the sense that they're predictable now: one cannot fail to be scolded when sitting down to a Fitzgerald piece, and even his best work (The Hanging Garden) shows flashes of the pedantic sermonizer he's about to become. The topics into infinity are the holy trinity of the father, oppressed subcultures (especially homosexuals); the son, AIDS; and the holy ghost, Fitzgerald himself,…

DIFF ’03: The Event

October 20, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
*½/****screenplay by Tim Marback, Steven Hillyer and Thom Fitzgeralddirected by Thom Fitzgerald by Walter Chaw Thom Fitzgerald's rip-off of--of all things--It's My Party miscasts Parker Posey as a hard-nosed prosecutor intent on exposing the assisted suicide of a terminally AIDS-ridden man by his well-meaning coterie of family and quirky friends. While Olympia Dukakis doesn't entirely embarrass herself as the dead guy's mother, the same is impossible to say for Fitzgerald, who, by trying to ultimately equate the AIDS holocaust with the 9/11 atrocity, manages to be both distasteful and ideologically suspect. Tragedy aside, the equation, however tenuous, of a virus…

The Brood Makes Good: FFC Interviews Aaron Woodley

October 4, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Interviews

AwoodleyinterviewtitleOctober 5, 2003|Madstone Theaters has a workshop that pays aspiring filmmakers a salary, complete with retirement plan, for two years with the hope that at the end of their tenure, they will have produced a script that can flower into a feature-length film. Something that's ambitious and noble in a climate dominated by boutique moviehouses preaching indie while stroking mainstream, Madstone's fledgling community of filmmakers seems suspiciously Zoetrope-ian in its mandate–and the first product, Aaron Woodley's Rhinoceros Eyes, is so assured and engaging that it feels like a revelation. For its humour, and its faithfulness to the darker aspects of the quixotic fairytale dreamscapes of The Brothers Quay and their winsome heroes, Rhinoceros Eyes is a stupendous debut, mirroring the freshman amazement of Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (if truthfully in no other substantive way) and establishing both Woodley as a talent to watch and Madstone as having vision and integrity.

Dreamcatcher (2003) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

September 16, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Stephen King, Thriller

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis
screenplay by William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan, based on the novel by Stephen King
directed by Lawrence Kasdan

by Walter Chaw As stupid as stupid can be, Lawrence Kasdan’s splashy comeback on the backs of two writers who haven’t really been any good for about 40 years between them (Stephen King and William Goldman) is riddled with knee-slapping plot inconsistencies and the sort of dunderheaded conveniences that reek equally of desperation and a lack of respect for the audience. Based on the first King novel written after the author was smeared across a Maine highway by a man who would later kill himself in a trailer, the book is a fine short story trapped in the body of a 600-page book. Hopelessly protracted, after the first 200 pages, the novel becomes a pathetic exercise in chronic self-reference: the malady of a successful author who’s begun to lose the line between reality and his cult of personality. King has become a writer interested in writing love letters to his fanbase and smug gruel for everyone else.

TIFF ’03: Falling Angels

September 9, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
*½/****starring Miranda Richardson, Callum Keith Rennie, Katharine Isabelle, Kristin Adamsscreenplay by Esta Spalding, based on the novel by Barbara Gowdydirected by Scott Smith by Bill Chambers Falling Angels has accumulated a lot of buzz over the past couple of days at the TIFF, but I don't mind telling you to ignore it. Basically a Sunday-funnies version of The Virgin Suicides, the film stars an already-typecast Katharine Isabelle as the most embittered of three daughters who live under the gun of a live-wire buffoon (Callum Keith Rennie) while tending to their catatonic mother (Miranda Richardson, doing a mean Joan Allen impersonation).…

TIFF ’03: The Barbarian Invasions

September 4, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Romance, TIFF
Les Invasions barbares**½/****starring Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Marie-Josée Croze, Marina Handswritten and directed by Denys Arcand by Bill Chambers Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire belongs to the homecoming genre of films like Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill and John Sayles's Return of the Secaucus Seven, but its quasi-sequel, twice honoured at this year's Cannes Film Festival (for Marie-Josée Croze's performance and Arcand's screenplay), is a Muppet movie with socialists. When embittered poli-sci professor Rémy (Rémy Girard) is diagnosed with untreatable cancer, his estranged, millionaire son Sébastien (David Duchovny look-alike Stéphane Rousseau) seeks out Rémy's Marxist friends of…

Final Destination 2 (2003) [infinifilm] – DVD

July 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Horror, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Ali Larter, A.J. Cook, Michael Landes, Terrence ‘T.C.’ Carson
screenplay by J. Mackye Gruber & Eric Bress
directed by David Richard Ellis 

by Walter Chaw Earning some marks for a gratuitous tit shot and a few graphic kills, the mystical gorefest Final Destination 2 is an unusually mordant excuse to knock off a few good-looking caricatures. Philosophically speaking, it develops its mythology with a series of rules so Byzantine that rather than spend a surplus of time trying to unravel what’s going on, it’s best just to settle comfortably into the realization that the ones we’ve marked for death are, in fact, marked by Death in the film. The most interesting thing about the picture, in fact, is that it is self-reflexive for genre fans, who’ve made it something of a matter of course to pick out the heroine and the meat bags from the rest of the cattle. In our way, we become the avatars of the Grim Reaper, laying our bony fingers on each inevitable victim in turn. The audience, in a very direct way, becomes that invisible cold wind that announces the arrival of doom–Final Destination 2 is almost interactive.