TIFF ’03: The Barbarian Invasions

Posted 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

Posted 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.

The Wild Dogs (2003)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Theatrical

***/****
starring Thom Fitzgerald, David Hayman, Alberta Watson, Rachel Blanchard
written and directed by Tom Fitzgerald

Wilddogsby Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s a lot to be said against Thom Fitzgerald’s The Wild Dogs, a film that, when faced with abject poverty and suffering, doesn’t really know how to resolve its feelings and compensates by resorting to bad doom-laden metaphors. But as it flails wildly in the hopes of hitting a target, there’s no denying that the film occasionally does, and that when it does it often scores a direct hit. Even if Fitzgerald can’t solve the problems of a crumbling Bucharest, he evokes the state of wanting to extremely well, thus saving his film from the sanctimony that another director might have brought to the subject.

Whale Rider (2003) + Rivers and Tides (2002)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Documentary, Drama, Family, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Theatrical, UK

WHALE RIDER
***½/****
starring Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton, Cliff Curtis
screenplay by Niki Caro, based on the novel by Witi Ihimaera
directed by Niki Caro

RIVERS AND TIDES
****/****
directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer

by Walter Chaw The images in Niki Caro’s second film, Whale Rider, are so heartbreakingly beautiful that at times the narrative diminishes its mythic gravity. It resembles John Sayles’s brilliant The Secret of Roan Inish not only in subject, but also in the understanding that film has the potential to be the most cogent extrapolation of the oral storytelling tradition. When the picture’s young protagonist sings an ancient Maori song to a dark ocean, there is an indescribable power to the film that springs from firelight–what we’ve lost in modernity as orphans to our collective past.

The In-Laws (2003)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Michael Douglas, Albert Brooks, Ryan Reynolds, Lindsay Sloane
screenplay by Nat Mauldin and Ed Solomon, based on the screenplay by Andrew Bergman
directed by Andrew Fleming

Inlawsby Walter Chaw Casting Albert Brooks as the prototypical nebbish and Michael Douglas as a testosterone-geeked maniac is almost too easy, but given a vehicle like The In-Laws, with this much heat invested in its direction, the casting doesn’t seem so much lazy as inspired. Based on a 1979 film starring Alan Arkin and Peter Falk in the roles of put-upon father-of-the-bride and crazed father-of-the-groom, respectively, the remake doesn’t have a single scene as classic as the “serpentine” gag of the first but compensates with the sort of instant familiarity afforded by veteran personalities in comfortable roles. Douglas has been here before in another tale of familial dysfunction, The War of the Roses, and Brooks has never really been anywhere else; the picture, paced like a trip-hammer by director Andrew Fleming, only really fails in its drab newlywed couple and a passel of homosexual gags that are badly dated and bordering on unkind.

Black Swan (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, DVD, Mystery

½*/**** Image D Sound C Extras B
starring Melanie Doane, Janet Monid, Michael Riley, Ted Dykstra
screenplay by Wendy Ord and Matt John Evans
directed by Wendy Ord

by Walter Chaw Wendy Ord’s Black Swan had me at “I’m tellin’ you, there were traces of blood on that feather.” The film is a dedicatedly stupid murder-mystery/small-town hick opera featuring your standard collection of comely waitresses bound for better things, saucy diner matrons, scumbags with sidekicks, stolid policemen, preternaturally bright children, and literal idiot savants. Set in a tiny hamlet in the Great White North (“Hopeville,” natch), the picture opens with an indecipherable prologue that cuts between three separate storylines: a bunch of teens in a car; the titular black swan doing whatever it is that large waterfowl do at night; and a pair of scumbags going through their nocturnal rituals. The rest of the film follows suit by stuttering between two children playing hooky, a cute waitress (Melanie Doane) flirting with a drifter while dreaming, Steve Earle-like, of getting out of Dodge, and of an investigation of a possible serial killer who leaves black swan feathers at the scenes of his crimes.

Hot Docs ’03: The Last Round

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
The Last Round: Chuvalo vs Ali***/****directed by Joseph Blasioli by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A look at the crazy, labyrinthine ways of boxing as seen through the eyes of Canadian heavyweight George Chuvalo. Ostensibly about the day in 1966 when he went head-to-head with Muhammad Ali and managed to last the full 15 rounds, it follows the contours of his career as he strives for the world championship belt. A precocious, driven athlete, he becomes Canadian champion at an early age and sets his sights on the world--but the world has other ideas for him, and his yearning for a title…

Owning Mahowny (2003)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

****/****
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver, Maury Chaykin, John Hurt
screenplay by Maurice Chauvet, based on the Gary Stephen Ross book Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony
directed by Richard Kwietniowski

by Walter Chaw Richard Kwietniowski’s Owning Mahowny charts the mendacity of addiction with something like a poet’s lyrical melancholy. The director’s follow-up to his surprisingly gentle take on Thomas Mann, Love and Death on Long Island, finds another story of obsessive love that is itself obsessed with the importance of place in defining the accumulated essence of identity and desire. Kwietniowski’s films seem to be about secret outsiders finding themselves at some point swept out to proverbial sea, the land fading fast. While in Love and Death on Long Island that divorce illustrates the reach traversed by reclusive novelist Giles De’Ath (John Hurt) to claim his inamorata, in Owning Mahowny, the widening gyre is considerably (and deliciously) more complicated; the film marks Kwietniowski’s emergence as the most promising cartographer of self-confessional mortification since countryman Terence Davies. And Kwietniowski does it all with gentle, uncompromising humour.

Hot Docs ’03: Stupidity

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
½*/**** directed by Albert Nerenberg by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Words fail me in describing this travesty, a hypocritical assault on the senses which traffics in the very imagery it pretends to deplore and leaves you drained, battered, and completely demoralized. Ostensibly, it's about the media events and herd behaviours that conspire to keep the stupid oppressed and the even dumber in power, but despite the presence of Noam Chomsky and scattered other intellectuals, Stupidity is an exercise in smug superiority that does nothing to fight the powers that be. It's more interested in looking smarter than the crowd instead of…

Hot Docs ’03: Kim’s Story (1997)

Posted in1990s, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
**½/****directed by Shelley Saywell by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This is the story of Kim Phuc, who was napalmed during the Vietnam War and became the subject of an infamous photo that shocked the world. Her life is full enough of incident: Having become a symbol of America's brutality during the war, she was turned into a propaganda instrument by the Vietnamese government and subsequently defected to the west. She remains, however, a committed pacifist and continues to build bridges between herself and veterans--including, in the film's biggest surprise, the pilot who dropped the napalm on her. Alas, the crew that…

Hot Docs ’03: Generation of Hate

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
**/****directed by Shelley Saywell by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In Generation of Hate, Shelley Saywell goes to Iraq and doesn't come back with much you didn't already know. Apparently, the Iraqi people hate America for constantly attacking them and aren't allowed to speak about Saddam's oppression--shocker! Sure, it can't hurt to hear that one more time, but Saywell's primitive technique doesn't give the subject much urgency beyond the common liberal "tsk." Lacking in structure and confused in focus, the video ricochets from subject to subject, taking sound bites here and there and imposing frightfully obvious voice-overs that often repeat themselves. The…

Hot Docs ’03: Juchitan, Queer Paradise

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Chile, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs
Juchitán de las locas**½/****directed by Patricio Henriquez by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This documentary has a honey of a subject: a Mexican Zapotec town with a high tolerance for homosexuality. Unfortunately, it blows it when it takes a personal angle that obscures the town's inner workings. At first, the film gets your hopes up by showing Juchitan's relaxed nature--gays and the transgendered are treated with respect, women are given a high rank in society, and the Zapotec language is still spoken in a country where native languages are quickly disappearing. But Juchitan quickly shifts gears to follow several residents of the town,…

Hot Docs ’03: Strip Club DJs

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Television
***/****directed by Derrick Beckles by Travis Mackenzie Hoover One approaches a film on this topic with a sense of humour: surely it couldn't have anything other than good ribald laughs. But as Strip Club DJs inches ever closer to its conclusion, it becomes more and more disturbing, until you are choked-up with a combination of contempt and pity for those who would play the tunes at your local peeler bar. It turns out that the DJ is the nerve centre for the whole operation: not only must he spin the discs, he must also arrange who has the rights to…

Marion Bridge (2003)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Molly Parker, Rebecca Jenkins, Stacy Smith, Marguerite McNeil
screenplay by Daniel MacIvor, based on his play
directed by Wiebke von Carolsfeld

Marionbridgeby Travis Mackenzie Hoover I’d like to go along with the chorus of approval that has greeted Marion Bridge, but the sad truth is that it nearly bored me into an early grave. Armed only with a series of family-drama clichés and a nuance-free visual style, the experience is roughly akin to staring into a fluorescent lamp for 90 minutes and is just as retina-dulling. If this is, as last year’s Toronto International Film Festival jury claimed, the best Canadian First Feature of 2002, it paints a chilly portrait of what the also-rans were like, as well as the state of film culture here in the Great White North.

The Core (2003)

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Disaster Movie, France, Germany, Italy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**½/****
starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci
screenplay by Cooper Layne and John Rogers
directed by Jon Amiel

by Walter Chaw Jon Amiel’s poorly-timed disaster throwback The Core is a by-the-numbers affair that features the sort of special effects mayhem that folks will reference when terrorists blow-up the Acropolis–perhaps explaining in part why this bombastic summer film is being rushed into release in the late-winter doldrums: better to get it in movieplexes before it has to be delayed for a few months. But with unfortunate mentions of the Al Jazeera news agency and a botched shuttle landing that is exceedingly uncomfortable given its proximity to NASA’s recent tragedy, it could just be that The Core is a bad idea for any time, and releasing it when no one is likely to see it is just a cut-your-losses sort of thing. The Core is probably betting that people are more fatigued by the Riefenstahl-ian “embedded” live coverage of our troops in action than by their over-familiarity with this kind of Armageddon/Deep Impact/Poseidon Adventure falderal, when the truth is that it’s possible to be tired of both.

Agent Cody Banks (2003)

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Espionage, Family, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Frankie Muniz, Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon, Keith David
screenplay by Zack Stentz & Ashley Miller and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
directed by Harald Zwart

Agentcodybanksby Walter Chaw A pint-sized version of a James Bond film, Harald Zwart’s Agent Cody Banks locates that series’ fascination with modes of conveyance and breasts and places it cannily in the realm of early adolescence. It belongs there, after all, but burying Frankie Muniz’s face in Angie Harmon’s breasts (a second attempt is recognized and discouraged) is filmed statutory rape, even if he’s not complaining. Its screenplay by committee (four writers, with a fifth credited with story) is flat and uninvolving (and feckless), with the sole highlight coming in a background PA announcement asking the owner of a silver Aston Martin to move it from the handicapped parking zone. Otherwise, the picture is just a collection of teensploitation formulas (“the bet” chief among them) married to a few weak gadgets and the same sort of world-saving wish-fulfillment fantasy that Bond has long since made stultifying and passé.

David Cronenberg Re-examines David Cronenberg: A Retrospective Interview

Posted in1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Directors: David Cronenberg, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Interviews, Sci-Fi

Cronenberg Re-Examines Cronenberg

March 9, 2003 | Offered the opportunity to visit with David Cronenberg a second time recently, I sat down with the legendary director the morning after moderating a post-screening Q&A with him at Denver’s Landmark Mayan Theater (where a sell-out crowd of over 450 was enthusiastically in attendance for a sneak of Spider) to discuss his work from student films Stereo and Crimes of the Future all the way through to what is arguably his best–certainly his most mature–film, the oft-delayed Spider. Dressed in casual cool as is the director’s habit, Mr. Cronenberg exudes supreme confidence; gracious in the extreme and unfailingly polite, not given to displays of false modesty or overly interested in compliments, his speech is pleasant and carefully modulated–a sort of intellectual detachment that has marked even his earliest, “tax shelter” work. It seemed clear to me that Mr. Cronenberg was not generally accustomed to talking of his earlier work on the junket circuit. Speaking only for myself, it was a wonderful break from the usual stump.–Walter Chaw

Russian Ark (2003)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Finland, Germany, Japan, Mystery, Russia, Theatrical

****/****
starring Sergei Dontsov, Mariya Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy, David Giorgobiani
screenplay by Boris Khaimsky & Anatoli Nikiforov & Svetlana Proskurina & Alexander Sokurov
directed by Alexander Sokurov

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Russian Ark is a film that hoists its middle finger high against the cultural practices of nearly a hundred years. Implicitly appalled by the twin forgettings of communist and free-market logic, director Alexander Sokurov retaliates by erecting a monument to the proceeding three centuries of image-making–one that marks the entrance to a crypt perhaps, as Sokurov knows that time is running out on its preservation. Surely there’s a heaping dose of snobbery in his approach, and a whole lot of wilful obscurity as well, but his expression of his thesis is so passionate, and his technical execution is so seamless and beautiful, that I could have forgiven him almost anything.

Punch (2003)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Sports, Theatrical

***/****
starring Michael Riley, Sonja Bennett, Marcia Laskowski, Meredith McGeachie
written and directed by Guy Bennett

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It may be a mess of an uncommon magnitude, but I walked out of Guy Bennett’s Punch swelling with national pride. Here is a Canadian film that tosses both Hollywood dramaturgy and home-grown obsequiousness out the window and ricochets madly off the walls; its astoundingly painful psychodrama flings caution to the wind and makes bizarre crossed-wire connections that only someone outside of the Californian system could possibly be allowed to make. Though far from perfect, it’s never boring, and if nothing else will change the way you view topless female boxing for all time.

The Burial Society (2003)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Rob LaBelle, Jan Rubes, Allan Rich, Bill Meilen
written and directed by Nicholas Racz

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The failure of The Burial Society is a subtle one. Initially, one is relieved to encounter a Canadian film made with technical proficiency: not only is it crisply and cleanly shot, but its director uses his lead actor’s iconic schlemiel-ness to good effect. You sit back and wait for it to develop into something from there, but alas, it never really does; its initial effects are the only ones it has, and its total lack of visual and performative variety ultimately drowns the film in a tidal wave of monotony. In the end, I was surprised at how much I disliked The Burial Society.