A Slight Case of Murder (1938) – DVD

November 22, 2006Posted in1930s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Gangster

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Edward G. Robinson, Jane Bryan, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly
screenplay by Earl Baldwin and Joseph Schrank, based on the play by Damon Runyon and Howard Lindsay
directed by Lloyd Bacon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's nothing much that can be said about the creamy goodness of A Slight Case of Murder. Debuting at the tail end of the gangster cycle, the film spoofs Edward G. Robinson's Little Caesar persona as Remy Marko, a limitlessly vulgar bootlegger who's gone legit with the end of Prohibition, though his beer still tastes of the bathtub and isn't selling well. Marko thus finds himself in several binds: how to fend off creditors while being $500k in the hole; how to reconcile the fact that his daughter (Jane Bryan) is engaged to a state trooper (Willard Parker); and how to deal with his country house having just played host to five armoured-car robbers–four of whom were plugged by the most sociopathic of the bunch. All good fun, to be sure, but it's not a film for the sussing out of complexities: everything here is blunt, on the surface, and immediately gratifying without the necessity of comment.

Bobby (2006) + Fast Food Nation (2006)

November 17, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, Mexico, Theatrical, UK

BOBBY
½*/****
starring Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez
written and directed by Emilio Estevez

FAST FOOD NATION
*/****
starring Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzman, Ethan Hawke, Ashley Johnson
screenplay by Eric Schlosser & Richard Linklater
directed by Richard Linklater

Bobbyfastfoodby Walter Chaw A completely pointless exercise in winsome, pathetic hand-wringing, the navel-gazing Bobby is just one of this year's inevitable examples of the power of nepotism in dictating who gets to continue churning out the worst films anyone's ever seen. Triple-threat Emilio Estevez (doing duties here as bad actor, bad director, and bad writer) continues his reign of terror unabated on the back of poor Bobby Kennedy, and those clips from RFK's speeches littering the picture are the only things remotely of interest. Bobby itself is a Crash-like roundelay of desperately manufactured bathos, covering the entire spectrum of miserable plotting and characterization from the old battleaxe (Sharon Stone) to the youngsters tripping on acid (to the tune of Jefferson Airplane and images of Vietnam carpet-bombing, natch) to the buttermilk-scrubbed ingénue (Lindsay Lohan) marrying her gay schoolmate (Elijah Wood–that casting admittedly the only hint that the schoolmate is gay) to save him from the draft to the non-drama of an Ambassador Hotel manager (William H. Macy) and his firing of a mildly-racist kitchen manager (Christian Slater). Is there any doubt that each and every one of these folks (and more: best to forget Martin Sheen and the still-execrable Helen Hunt pillow-talking until well-past the point of audience tolerance) will find themselves in the kitchen where/when Bobby meets his end? I imagine them as the cardboard cut-out "friends" Steve Martin's Lonely Guy uses to simulate a kickin' cocktail party, here repurposed to simulate "characters" in a movie that's supposed to mean something.

Strangers with Candy (2006) + Accepted (2006) [Widescreen] – DVDs

November 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Teen

STRANGERS WITH CANDY
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Ian Holm
screenplay by Stephen Colbert & Paul Dinello & Amy Sedaris
directed by Paul Dinello

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It may be churlish to hold a film to the standards of a TV show I recently panned, but comparing “Strangers with Candy” the series to Strangers with Candy the movie reveals a massive gulf between the two in both wit and style. The show at least had a sensibility and an idea of what it was satirizing, and it always delivered the goods; if those goods were not to my liking, it wasn’t for lack of trying. But the stillborn film version has neither a sense of craft nor a reason for being: apparently thrown together over a kegger weekend, it’s horribly paced, ugly to look at, and mostly rehashes the broader points of a sitcom that had moved on from its basic premise by the time it reached its final season. Strangers with Candy is neither the movie fans were waiting for nor an attractive intro for neophytes, and will most likely be cable filler before it shuffles off into well-deserved obscurity.

A Good Year (2006) + Harsh Times (2006)

November 10, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

A GOOD YEAR
½*/****
starring Russell Crowe, Albert Finney, Marion Cotillard, Freddie Highmore
screenplay by Marc Klein, based on the book by Peter Mayle
directed by Ridley Scott

HARSH TIMES
**/****
starring Christian Bale, Freddy Rodriguez, Eva Longoria, Terry Crews
written and directed by David Ayer

Goodyearharshby Walter Chaw The Fighting Temptations, The Family Man–the list of sappy redemption flicks about terrible assholes is as long and lamentable as Ridley Scott's interminable A Good Year. Masquerading as a man-opause version of Under the Tuscan Sun, it is instead an incredibly cynical play for exactly the kind of audience Scott and Russell Crowe don't reach and, apparently, shouldn't bother trying to seduce. Imagine a light, frothy romantic comedy written by Dostoevsky and directed by David Lean: every pratfall registers like a cattle stampede, every delightful romantic misunderstanding like a nuclear disarmament talk. Meanwhile, all around it, golden-drenched landscape shots of Provence play the part of the grinning idiot, dancing like crazy to distract the potentially-duped. (Scott at his best works in palettes drained of warmth and heat. Even the sunny Thelma & Louise plays like twenty miles of rough road compared to A Good Year's pretty postcards and stultifying stereotypes.) With the whole mess paying off in the most unlikely and irritating sequence of happy endings in a film not directed by Garry Marshall (or his Limey equivalent, Richard Curtis), the choices are either that you believe Scott and Crowe to have lost their minds or that A Good Year is smug and strident for the very reason that its creators are supercilious jackasses long since detached from any notion of the possible. Moreover, the picture demonstrates a marked disdain for those poor sods who aren't millionaire stockbrokers or possessed of dead uncles with a sprawling villa to will to their heirs.

Little Man (2006) [Loaded with Extra Crap Edition] – DVD

November 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD

Littleman
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kerry Washington, John Witherspoon
screenplay by Keenen Ivory Wayans & Shawn Wayans & Marlon Wayans
directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans

Littlemancapby Walter Chaw An adult male the size of a baby masquerades as a toddler in order to retrieve a diamond he's stolen and secreted in the purse of a young suburban wife (Kerry Washington) who happens to be contemplating starting a family. This sets the stage for man-baby mistaken for baby-baby jokes, man-baby resenting being mistaken for baby-baby jokes, man-baby trying to suck tits, man-baby raping his adopted mother, and getting-pissed-on gags. Meanwhile, a crotchety old man character (John Witherspoon) suspects foul play but, as he represents the other demographic no one listens to (besides black people), no one listens to him. That's it. Gut the Wayans machine's latest, Little Man, and all that slops out is a Möbius strip of high-concept sketch-comedy garbage that isn't really objectionable (save for the happy rape and the infantilization of a grown man and all that) in any way while actually managing to know itself as owing a debt to Baby Buggy Bunny en route to offering a few nightmarish, surreal images. Marlon and, I think, Shawn are the key instigators of this one, with Keenen (I bet) the man behind the flat, uninvolved camera set-ups and pacing. On the scale of such things, it's not as bad as Son of the Mask, Are We There Yet?, or Problem Child, though it's vastly inferior to Marci X.

Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) + This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)

November 3, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, Pseudo-Documentary, Theatrical, UK

BORAT! CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN
***/****
directed by Larry Charles

THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
*½/****
directed by Kirby Dick

Boratby Walter Chaw British Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, as his Kazakhstani journalist alter ego Borat, tells former Georgia senator Bob Barr that the cheese Barr's just eaten was made from his wife's breast milk, and he does it in such a way as to suggest the naïf savage stereotype's unaffected innocence as it preys on the secret bigot in us all. Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan plays on America's belief that the rest of the world is run and populated by ridiculous children alternately in need of careful guidance and firm scolding. The Borat character, then, is very much a creation of the shortsightedness of a condescending American intolerance, while his ability to infiltrate America's living rooms speaks to a complex national desire to fold the aliens it abhors to its breast in some sort of misplaced act of missionary grace. If we reduce the aim of evangelical Christianity down to the twin compulsions of damnation and salvation, what Borat really does is reveal the hypocrisy at the root of our professed acceptance and, more troublingly, highlight how divorced we are from the guiding principles of this sea to shining sea. In a film that does this much to expose the ugly undercurrent of homophobia, racism, and xenophobia in this country, it's no great surprise when New York subway riders threaten to kill Borat for kissing them on the lips in exuberantly misguided greeting–and the reactions of these Big Apple commuters strike me as refreshingly honest.

Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes (2003) – DVD

October 26, 2006Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Television

Image A Sound A Extras A-
"Naked Beach Frenzy," "Stimpy's Pregnant," "Altruists," "Ren Seeks Help," "Fire Dogs, Part 2," "Onward and Upward"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There are, believe it or not, those who miss the days of the Production Code as a tool for making writers try harder to suggest things instead of spelling them out. I never really bought into the argument, but it seems almost sensible to me now that I've seen Ren and Stimpy unleashed and uncensored. To be sure, no loyalist can be without the six adventures contained on Paramount's new-to-DVD "Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes" (only half of which ever reached the airwaves, under the banner "Ren & Stimpy 'Adult Party Cartoon'"), whose scripts were suppressed by Nickelodeon for being too raunchy for kids; and when they're on, they take the formula out of the cage of decency so that it might run around free and unfettered. Alas, the introduction of naked women and actual foul language somehow dampens the charm of the Nickelodeon run. The thrill of "Ren & Stimpy" lies in its childish, anal-stage irresponsibility, with its suppression of the sexual in favour of the scatological–to say nothing of the florid insults ("You bloated sack of protoplasm!") with which mere expletives can't possibly compete.

Sealab 2021: Season IV (2004-2005) + Arrested Development: Season Three (2005-2006) – DVDs

October 24, 2006Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Television

SEALAB 2021: SEASON IV
Image C Sound B Extras D
"Isla de Chupacabra," "Joy of Grief," "Green Fever," "Sharko's Machine," "Return of Marko," "Casinko," "Butchslap," "Monkey Banana Raffle," "Shrabster," "Cavemen," "Moby Sick," "No Waterworld," "Legacy of Laughter"

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: SEASON THREE
Image A Sound B Extras B
"The Cabin Show," "For British Eyes Only," "Forget Me Now," "Notapussy," "Mr. F," "The Ocean Walker," "Prison Break-In," "Making a Stand," "S.O.B.s," "Fakin' It," "Family Ties," "Exit Strategy," "Development Arrested"

by Walter Chaw Oh, I get it. It's hostile.

Stella: Season One (2005) – DVD

October 23, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Television

Image B- Sound A- Extras B
"Pilot," "Campaign," "Office Party," "Coffee Shop," "Paper Route," "Camping," "Meeting Girls," "Novel," "Vegetables," "Amusement Park"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a difference between being smart and being "smart." Smart involves the recombination of concepts into some kind of thesis or analysis; "smart" is the mere name-checking of said concepts and the class trappings they afford. The problems begin when people act "smart" and feel they're actually smart–when the pose of intelligence becomes the real thing. And despite many contortions in a vaguely surrealist direction, the masterminds behind "Stella" clearly belong in the poser category. Although their juxtaposition of overgrown children against a world somewhat less mad than they are is fastidiously groomed and played to the hilt, it's not really smart about anything: by putting these naïf characters next to the supposed intelligence of the people who write their lines, they only reveal their "smarts" in comparison to a very limited test group.

Slither (2006) – DVD

October 23, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry
written and directed by James Gunn

Slithercapby Walter Chaw Paying tribute to his Lloyd Kaufman roots with a shot in which The Toxic Avenger is on TV in the background, James Gunn's Slither is more in line with the hipster revisionism of his screenplay for Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. Postmodernism its point, then, drying up the musty cellars somewhat of the films it riffs on, Slither misses when it does only because it has little resonance beyond the basic Cronenbergian sexual-parasites thing and the shopworn idea that Americans are voracious, disgusting, ignorant swine. (In truth, the one moment that really bugs me is a fairly demented rape sequence (involving more infant-menace than anything in the new The Hills Have Eyes) and its played-for-giggles fallout.) In place of useful sociology, it does for redneck archetypes what Shaun of the Dead did for workaday slobs, poking fun at the thin line between slack-jawed yokels (initiating deer season with a barn-busting hoedown) and beef-craving, slug-brained zombies (recalling that NASCAR now boasts its own brand of meat). The biggest surprise is that Gunn appears to have seen and liked Night of the Creeps, and that, like that film, Slither does what it does without sacrificing too much of its good-natured, self-deprecating sense of humour along the way.

Over the Hedge (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 18, 2006Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
screenplay by Len Blum and Lorne Cameron & David Hoselton and Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the comic strip by Michael Fry and T Lewis
directed by Tim Johnson & Karey Kirkpatrick

Overthehedgecapby Walter Chaw It's just a largely inoffensive, vaguely environmentalist (inasmuch as being anti-sprawl is pro-environment) assembly-line animation featuring the usual passel of aging and/or second-run celebrities subbing for trained voice performers as anthropomorphic CGI animal bodies engaged in slapstick, stink jokes, and other interchangeable ephemera for the delight of our toddlers. If you feel as though you've seen Over the Hedge a hundred times already, that's because it's been cobbled together from a hundred other identical pictures; and if you have a little trouble afterwards remembering a thing about it, well, it's only natural that something with no nutritional value would pass right through you. That's not to say there's no fertile ground to be mined here in exploring the line between the natural-natural and the human natural (a line that the Japanese puzzler Pom Poko attempts to describe to similar effect)–safe to say, in fact, that a great satire lies in the suburban morass as viewed through the eyes of the "un-civilized." But Over the Hedge is a slave to the theoretical peanut gallery, resorting to manufacturing a villain and then staging a series of boom/crash operas. Though Pixar's Cars can pretty fairly be described as awful, it's Pixar's legacy of brilliant children's entertainments that DreamWorks has tried to ape with its puerile, art-destroying, post-pop Shrek series, and if Over the Hedge at least resists the scatology that marks Shrek as low entertainment for the lowest common denominator, it still can't quite make that jump from loud noises to real insight and value.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) + Shock Treatment (1981) [Bodice-Ripping Fabulous 3-Disc Set] – DVD

October 11, 2006Posted in1970s, 1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Musical

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW 
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O’Brien
screenplay by Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien
directed by Jim Sharman

SHOCK TREATMENT
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Jessica Harper, Cliff De Young, Patricia Quinn, Richard O’Brien
screenplay by Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman
directed by Jim Sharman

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I have never attended an actual theatrical showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and for the longest time, I doubted that I was completely receptive to every significant nuance and intricacy of the film, what with its name-dropping of Michael Rennie and the presence of a performer called “Little Nell” who wears Mickey Mouse ears during the “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me” number. The picture’s esoteric quotient has always eluded my radar, preventing me from fully identifying with it, much less condescending to it. This idea of familiarity with extra-textual elements or training in a specific method of watching as essential in the evaluation process is a perennial issue in film criticism for me. My default position is that the two things don’t have that much to do with each other: Learning more about a film can deepen an appreciation that was already there, but the initial call of yea or nay is one that every king, scholar, and prole is equally qualified to make. Beautiful idea, I think–it helps me sleep at night and keeps me from being too scared to see and write about films outside my realm of experience. So why is it that I am so intimidated by this movie?

Feast (2006) [Unrated] + The Woods (2006) – DVDs

October 9, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

FEAST
**/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Balthazar Getty, Henry Rollins, Navi Rawat, Clu Gulager
screenplay by Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan
directed by John Gulager

THE WOODS
***½/**** Image A Sound A+
starring Agnes Bruckner, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel Nichols, Bruce Campbell
screenplay by David Ross
directed by Lucky McKee

by Walter Chaw I’m surprised that more great films aren’t shuttled to the direct-to-video twilight zone, seeing as how mainstream taste-makers, particularly in regards to genre pictures, seem primarily invested in churning out the same pre-masticated gruel. At the very least, prefab garbage like School for Scoundrels might as well have been dumped on the home market without a ripple in the fabric of daily life. (Something like Liliana Cavani’s Ripley’s Game, on the other hand, deserved a theatrical release: Disguised as a dtv unload, it’s the best thriller in years.) Between their low budgets, how they perform without bankable leads, and how they pretty much guarantee a healthy return on their investments, it’s almost inexplicable that horror movies get exiled to Blockbuster as often as they do. You can learn a lot about a people from the mythologies they construct to frighten and warn, although because horror films are bankable product (and always were), they fall prey to the same venal, filthy lucre-inspired pitfalls of formula drudgery. Still, I like to refer to them as the “indicator species” of our cultural swamp in that they’re not only ugly, dirty, bottom-feeding, what have you, but also the first species of entertainment to reflect the elements polluting the spirit of this exact moment in our social history. If you can find the pulse of it, a horror movie will tell you a lot about that quickening in your own chest when you watch the evening news.

Weeds: Season One (2005) – DVD

October 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Television

Image A Sound B Extras C
"You Can't Miss the Bear," "Free Goat," "Good Shit Lollipop," "Fashion of the Christ," "Lude Awakening," "Dead in the Nethers," "Higher Education," "The Punishment Light," "The Punishment Lighter," "The Godmother"

by Walter Chaw Showtime Entertainment chief Roger Greenblatt told the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER in August of this year that he was surprised "Weeds", the pay channel's latest attempt to catch the HBO original series tiger by the tail, had generated no controversy whatsoever. The ongoing saga of a soccer mom, recently widowed, selling pot to her friends and neighbours, "Weeds" has apparently aroused no ire from the traditionally prickly right-wing groups that make it their stock and trade to get their panties in a bunch over this sort of thing. Credit "Weeds"' decidedly non-controversial make-up and storylines for its complete inconsequence; its weak writing and suffocating air of self-congratulation very quickly metastasizes into a lump of middlebrow prestige. Seen by many as the blue-state response to the red-state Stepford conformity of the allegedly subversive "Desperate Housewives", "Weeds" is more accurately a comedy that uses the very same neo-conservative fear-mongering and race-baiting its satirical targets use but re-deploys them to ostensibly satirical effect. Yet there's so little weight to its happy serial horseshit that what's probably meant as smarty-pants sociology comes off as limp and pandering. I see "Weeds" as an Ayn Rand piece, its straw men stuffed with dolled-up ganja and its slack grasp on the legitimately subversive hidden under a pile of insubstantial, terrified condescension.

Inside Man (2006) [Widescreen] + Thank You for Smoking (2006) [Widescreen] – DVDs

October 1, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Satire, Thriller

INSIDE MAN
***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer
screenplay by Russell Gewirtz
directed by Spike Lee

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING
***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott
screenplay by Jason Reitman, based on the novel by Christopher Buckley
directed by Jason Reitman

by Walter Chaw You make mistakes as a film critic sometimes and, unlike a lot of professions, when you flub, you do it for the record. I underestimated Spike Lee's 25th Hour badly upon its release a few years ago, misunderstanding it, fearing it, seeing it as a mediocre film when, in fact, subsequent viewings have revealed it as possibly Lee's tonal masterpiece. My inclination, then, is to overcompensate with Inside Man by offering it every benefit of the doubt beforehand, during, and now–by trying hard to overlook the first bad Jodie Foster performance I can remember as well as a mishandled denouement that stretches the picture past the point of recoil. But even with a jaundiced eye, Inside Man cements Lee as one of the few filmmakers with the brass ones to comment on the race schism, and to shoot (with assistance from ace cinematographer Matthew Libatique) a post-9/11 New York with the gravity of a heart attack. In his individualism, though, that almost-shrill dedication to pumping fists up familiar channels, Lee raises a few eyebrows (and elicits a couple of grins) for posing his Nazi villain in various desktop-photo tableaux with other twentieth century, profiteering, conservative ogres like George and Barbara Bush and Margaret Thatcher. It's an interesting companion piece to V for Vendetta in that way, at once a melodramatic throwback and a progressive scalpel. It's blaxploitation, Seventies paranoia, and the latest Spike Lee Joint from Ground Zero.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977) [Special Edition] – DVD

September 28, 2006Posted in1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie

*/**** Image B Sound B+ (DD)/A (DTS) Extras B
starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleason
screenplay by James Lee Barrett and Charles Shyer & Alan Mandel
directed by Hal Needham

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover One thing is inescapably true: Smokey and the Bandit was not aimed at people like me. Only the most casual, least demanding filmgoer need apply to this good-ol'-boy version of Vanishing Point–people with as much beer in them as possible, ready to laugh at cheap jokes and root for a speed demon. They are welcome to the movie, but the fact remains that anyone with even a scintilla of interest in film as art is pretty much left out in the cold. As I can hear a mountain of e-mail forming denouncing me for my perceived elitism, let me be perfectly clear: anyone in the market for Burt Reynolds driving fast and making Jackie Gleason apoplectic will find this the sort of thing that they like.

The Science of Sleep (2006) + Jet Li’s Fearless (2006)

September 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, China, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Martial Arts, Romance, Theatrical

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
*½/****
starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou
written and directed by Michel Gondry

Fearless
**/****
starring Jet Li, Nakamura Shidou, Sun Li, Dong Yong
screenplay by Chris Chow, Christine To
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw A cacophony of cascading whimsy, Michel Gondry's exercise in Freudian bric-a-brac The Science of Sleep plays like a movie based on a thrift store specializing in Harlequin novels–French Harlequin novels. It adheres to the music-video director's maxim of maximum images per second, and it casts Gael García Bernal as Stéphane, a useless lug endlessly working on a calendar of calamitous events and pining after his across-hall neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), with whom he is too smitten to confess that his mother is her landlord. His dreams take the form of a one-man variety show, while Gondry revels in scenes where he inflates his hero's hands and has him ride an animated patchwork horse. But The Science of Sleep is more exhausting than illuminating–more a loud masturbation than any kind of intercourse with the audience. The difference between the Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Gondry of The Science of Sleep, it seems obvious to say, is the difference between a film scripted by Charlie Kaufman and one not, though it's more complicated than that in that the Kaufman of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an artist who finally struck a balance between affectation and a much finer connective tissue. Gondry is still just engaged in the twist.

TIFF ’06: Everything’s Gone Green

September 22, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Film Festivals, TIFF
*/****starring Paulo Costanzo, Steph Song, JR Bourne, Gordon Michael Woovettscreenplay by Douglas Couplanddirected by Paul Fox by Bill Chambers After popularizing the term "Generation X" with the title of his debut novel, Douglas Coupland staked a claim in the chick-lit-for-guys genre, his publishers no doubt hoping that zeitgeist lightning would strike twice. If anything, Everything's Gone Green, Coupland's first foray into screenwriting, makes him seem like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused, still courting the teenage and twentysomething idealists because even though he gets older, they stay the same receptive age. Here we learn that Vancouver has sold out to…

TIFF ’06: Fay Grim

September 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Espionage, Film Festivals, France, Germany, TIFF
**/****starring Parker Posey, Jeff Goldblum, James Urbaniak, Saffron Burrowswritten and directed by Hal Hartley by Bill Chambers Those hoping this unexpected sequel to the terrific Henry Fool will be a Before Sunset should brace themselves for a Texasville. I think the problem is not that Parker Posey can't carry a picture (Posey's more of a movie star than she is a character actor, after all, so inflexible is her neurotic persona), but that her Fay Grim can't carry a picture. In that sense, Fay Grim is a little bit like a highbrow Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, with virtually…

Hollywoodland (2006); The Black Dahlia (2006); Factotum (2006)

September 15, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Norway, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, Thriller

HOLLYWOODLAND
*/****
starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins
screenplay by Paul Bernbaum
directed by Allen Coulter

THE BLACK DAHLIA
**½/****
starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank
screenplay by Josh Friedman, based on the novel by James Ellroy
directed by Brian De Palma

FACTOTUM
**½/****
starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand
screenplay by Bent Hamer and Jim Stark, based on the novel by Charles Bukowski
directed by Bent Hamer

Hollywooddahliafactby Walter Chaw Deadening, dull, sepia-drenched faux-noir period hokum of a suddenly popular stripe, Allen Coulter's Hollywoodland casts lantern-jawed, wooden-countenanced Ben Affleck as his way-back literal and metaphorical doppelgänger George Reeves. An apparent suicide that has fostered a small measure of conspiracy theories, Reeves, television's original Superman, is shot in the head, naked in bed, on a summer night in 1959, briefly throwing a generation of kids into minor existential turmoil. But casting Reeves's death into suspicion is a far stickier wicket: Even with the introduction of a woefully-underwritten fictional gumshoe (Adrien Brody) with his own crew-cut, wayward boy, and ice queen ex (Molly Parker) to match, the suggestion that someone in the portly statue's coterie (including his wife-of-a-studio-bigwig-mistress, played by the ageless Diane Lane) might have had a motive for slaying him is given a quick spin and then stabled without a whimper. What's left is the typical and unsurprising Hollywood fable of the high price of fame and the dreadful cost of its pursuit. The central irony that drives Hollywoodland is that, in its desperate attempt to make a mystery of Reeves's death, the only thing it succeeds in doing is cataloguing the myriad reasons Reeves had to justifiably cap himself.