The Pacifier (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

July 3, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Thriller

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras D+
starring Vin Diesel, Lauren Graham, Faith Ford, Brittany Snow
screenplay by Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant
directed by Adam Shankman

Pacifiercap

by Bill Chambers Three months after failing to return kidnapped professor Howard Plummer (Tate Donovan) to safety, Special Ops lieutenant Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel) is assigned to stay with the late scientist's family while their mother (Faith Ford) visits Switzerland with Shane's superior (Chris Potter) to claim the contents of Howard's safety deposit box. Professor Plummer was killed over a piece of software named G.H.O.S.T. (though not in the pantry with a candlestick) now believed to have been stashed somewhere in his home; when the snot-nosed kids–vain Zoe (Brittany Snow), surly Seth (Max Thieriot), precocious Lulu (Morgan York, also one of the Cheaper by the Dozen brats), and reaction-shot fodder Peter (Keegan & Logan Hoover) and Baby Tyler (Bo & Luke Vink (and with "The Dukes of Hazzard"'s impending renaissance, boy are those two in for a rude awakening at the start of school))–grease the stairwell to take out Shane, they end up driving away their German nanny (a typically misused Carol Kane) instead, forcing Shane into a more maternal role and leaving him little time to search for the computer program.

Best of “The Muppet Show”: Bob Hope, Dom DeLuise, George Burns (1977) – DVD

June 29, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Muppets, Music, Television

Image C+ Sound C Extras D

by Walter Chaw In a summer whose renewed interest in variety shows has brought us embarrassing spectacles ranging from a peculiar celebrity dance competition where ex-heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield does a Karloff in tuxedo pants to the hard-to-witness disinterring of moldy oldsters and one-hit-wonders croaking out their old hits and covering new ones, look back to the heyday of "The Muppet Show" and wonder how something like it ever made it to the air. The themes that Jim Henson's electric Kool-Aid acid trip tackles through its tacky sketches, instantly-dated guest stars, and cobwebbed musical interludes run the gamut from loneliness (a disturbing rendition of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" in which a Muppet mutilates and pickles himself) to war (a version of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" sung by forest animals being terrorized by mad redneck hunters) to exotic burlesques that predict the melancholia lacing The Dark Crystal and the eternally underestimated The Muppet Movie. Running concurrently with Jimmy Carter's presidency (1976-1981), it's the product, as it can only be, of the Carter administration in the United States: all goofy good intentions, bad fashion, rampant hickism, and confusion.

Bedtime for Bonzo (1951) + I’ll Take Sweden (1965) – DVDs

June 27, 2005Posted in1950s, 1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

BEDTIME FOR BONZO
**½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Ronald Reagan, Diana Lynn, Walter Slezak, Jesse White
screenplay by Val Burton and Lou Breslow
directed by Frederick de Cordova

I'LL TAKE SWEDEN
*/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Bob Hope, Tuesday Weld, Frankie Avalon, Dina Merrill
screenplay by Nat Perrin, Bob Fisher and Arthur Marx
directed by Frederick de Cordova

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover FILM FREAK CENTRAL now heads into uncharted waters with the first auteurist assessment of one Frederick de Cordova. Yes, the man who inadvertently wedged his foot in pop history by bringing Ronald Reagan and a monkey together in Bedtime for Bonzo indeed has themes that remain consistent–at least in the fifteen years that intervened between that film and his Bob Hope vehicle, I'll Take Sweden. Both find a rigid father figure finally lightening up after aggravating bad situations with some abstract and inflexible rules. But while Bedtime for Bonzo bristles with surprise implications and rear-view Reagan desecrations, I'll Take Sweden lies dead on the screen thanks to terrible lines and unpleasant "racy" humour. Which means that whatever de Cordova's thematic uniformity, I suspect the Cinémathèque française monograph is not forthcoming.

Bewitched (2005)

June 23, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine
screenplay by Nora Ephron & Delia Ephron and Adam McKay
directed by Nora Ephron

Bewitchedby Walter Chaw Five minutes into Bewitched I was sick to death of its cutesy, smarmy self-satisfaction. This is Nicole Kidman talking something like Marilyn Monroe crossed with a feather duster, doing her best to work her mouth around Delia and Nora Ephron's vapid dialogue while wishing all the while that someone would solve the mystery of how she could be so accomplished at picking independent projects (Birth, Dogville) and so incompetent in picking mainstream ones (The Stepford Wives, Cold Mountain). It's a movie completely dependent on the belief that everyone has seen the Sol Saks sitcom upon which the flick is based (a belief supported at least in part by the warmth with which a multitude of clips from said sitcom were received), meaning it's the picture for which the term "meta" was created. Not the endlessly replicating screenplay, but the fabled film that is about nothing, is based on nothing, and features big stars struggling to overcome the freakish inconsequence of a project that should never have gotten beyond the what-if stage. (Who outside of coma would even consider starring in a film written by the Ephron sisters, directed by Nora, and produced by Penny freaking Marshall?) This is the film that cotton candy would imagine because it cheerfully has no mind to speak of, making Kidman's freaky, alien, doll-like performance (her Isabel eats buckets of Miracle Whip in one of the film's concessions to its powder-puff inconsequence) a minor stroke of genius, if only in hindsight.

The Women (1939) – DVD

June 23, 2005Posted in1930s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland
screenplay by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, based on the play by Clare Boothe
directed by George Cukor

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Few films fall on their swords so cheerfully and brilliantly as The Women. It's a masterpiece of rationalization that details the injustices men inflict on women until it suddenly shifts gears to explain why it's a woman's fault for giving up–an astounding about-face considering that it was written by women (Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, from Clare Boothe's play) and aims to completely banish men from the frame. But what sounds like a chance for actresses to shine turns into a world-famous bitch-a-thon in which men are a menacing, structuring absence rather than a lion tamed and women can be trusted to tear each other apart before doing any real damage to their master-tormentors. The film is compulsively watchable even as it does terrible things and holds its head high whilst simultaneously cutting it off.

Heights (2005); Mysterious Skin (2005); It’s All Gone Pete Tong (2005)

June 22, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Canada, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Music, Netherlands, Romance, Theatrical, UK

HEIGHTS
**½/****
starring Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, Jesse Bradford, James Marsden
screenplay by Amy Fox, based on her play
directed by Chris Terrio

MYSTERIOUS SKIN
*½/****
starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Elisabeth Shue, Michelle Trachtenberg
screenplay by Gregg Araki, based on the novel by Scott Heim
directed by Gregg Araki

IT’S ALL GONE, PETE TONG
**½/****
starring Paul Kaye, Beatriz Batarda, Kate Magowan, Mike Wilmot
written and directed by Michael Dowse

by Walter Chaw Obsessed with doors and passages, façades and captured images, Chris Terrio’s Heights takes on the dour, dark, and twisted interpersonal machinations of The Scottish Play its diva Diana (Glenn Close) rehearses for some of the 24-hour period covered therein. Heights is a sexual film steeped in betrayals and unmaskings at its root, clothed in symbols for discovery and disguise that are almost literary in their uniform complexity. It’s therefore through a cloud of signs that its insular roundelay emerges. Wedding photographer Isabel (Elizabeth Banks), daughter of Diana and fiancée of Jonathan (James Marsden), is fired from her job on the day–on the hour, almost–that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cover a foreign war is offered her by an ex-boyfriend. Jonathan, meanwhile, has an ex-boyfriend of his own to suppress as pretty young actor Alec (Jesse Bradford) catches Diana’s eye in the hours before she discovers her husband is honouring their open marriage with her understudy. Questions of female sexual jealousy abound, hand in hand with the ruthless barbs of ambition (the price of success weighed against the cost of failure), tied into a messy bow by big ugly truths and the inescapability of our pasts.

The Reivers (1969) + Tom Horn (1980) – DVDs

June 14, 2005Posted in1960s, 1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Western

THE REIVERS
*½/**** Image A Sound B
starring Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Will Geer, Michael Constantine
screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., based on the novel by William Faulkner
directed by Mark Rydell

TOM HORN
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Steve McQueen, Linda Evans, Richard Farnsworth, Billy Green Bush
screenplay by Thomas McGuane and Bud Shrake
directed by William Wiard

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The oldest, most tired story to beguile the male artist is the Moment at Which Innocence is Irretrievably Lost. Most writers try their hand at it at some point, and I really wish they wouldn't: it suggests they'd rather be stupidly oblivious to not just the pains but also the rewards of adulthood. It's a boring default trauma, but at least when William Faulkner did it (in The Reivers), it was a boring default trauma with genius digressions that occasionally distracted from the emptiness of the narrative line. Not so Mark Rydell's big-screen adaptation of The Reivers, from which all of Faulkner's background about the landscape and the history and his characters' desperate lives has been excised, leaving the innocence-losing adventures to hog the spotlight and make you wish you were watching something that aspired to dissipation for a change.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) + A Dirty Shame (2004)|A Dirty Shame – DVD

June 12, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, UK, Zombie

SHAUN OF THE DEAD
***½/****
starring Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis
screenplay by Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright
directed by Edgar Wright

A DIRTY SHAME
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A+
starring Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, Chris Isaak, Selma Blair
written and directed by John Waters

Dirtyshamecapby Walter Chaw Shaun of the Dead isn't a spoof, it's a traditional zombie film introduced as a romantic-comedy and infected with a sly British-cum-"The Simpsons" intelligence and sensibility. Director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the film with star Simon Pegg, made his mark with a smart, hilarious Channel 4 comedy series called "Spaced", a show that bears comparison to "The Family Guy" in its pop-culture genius and frequent fantasy non sequiturs. The genesis of Shaun of the Dead appears to be an episode of "Spaced" in which Pegg, having an unfortunate trip, hallucinates himself shooting hordes of zombies. That the picture is born from a joke on a television show offers endless possibilities for interpretation, best among them the tidy read that television is still the best means towards auto-zombification.

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D (2005)

June 9, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Sci-Fi, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Taylor Lautner, Taylor Dooley, Cayden Boyd, David Arquette
screenplay by Robert Rodriguez and Racer Rodriguez
directed by Robert Rodriguez 

Adventuresofsharkboyby Walter Chaw So it was written by an eight-year-old and shot in the same horrific 3-D process as Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, meaning that if you go see The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D, you're an assclown and there's really no helping you. When he's not being an idiot, director Robert Rodriguez is capable of something as subversive–as arrestingly, magnificently inappropriate–as Sin City, but so much of his time is spent indulging his kids that history may come to see him as the last word on why children shouldn't be the arbiters of culture. Around the age of five, I once sat watching an anthill for eight hours straight, fully entertained; I have no doubt that it wouldn't make for a good movie. And so the legion of folks, critics included, prone to qualifying their takes on children's films by saying that kids will enjoy it are, in fact, not saying a damn thing. Of course your children will enjoy it–given enough flashing lights and farting noises, they'll like a George Lucas movie. For five dollars and a screaming headache less, you could entertain your precious tots with a box of matches and a can of beans.

Rescue Me: The Complete First Season (2004) – DVD

June 6, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Television

Image B Sound B- Extras B
"Guts," "Gay," "Kansas," "DNA," "Orphans," "Revenge," "Butterfly," "Inches," "Alarm," "Immortal," "Mom," "Leaving," "Sanctuary"

by Walter Chaw I liked Denis Leary and Peter Tolan's FX network TV series "Rescue Me" unconditionally once I'd seen the first three episodes, the last of which includes a scene of a father and son communicating in a coded language that left me vulnerable in a way I find extraordinarily uncomfortable. But if the show worked for me, after giving some thought as to the whys and wherefores, I like it with a few grave reservations about the types of things that I like and, more relevantly, about the kinds of programs that have found a voice right there along the edge of the mainstream over the past couple of years. I say this having never watched an episode of "Lost" or "Desperate Housewives", but the best new television ("Deadwood", in particular, is without hyperbole like bearing witness to Shakespeare) seems involved in razing civilization in the wake of 9/11 and redefining it in terms of the basest kind of animal logic. "Post-apocalyptic" is one description–science-fiction where men and the politics of living need to reorganize along stringent biological lines. (I'm thinking that "Lost" probably applies.) A scene in the seventh episode of "Rescue Me" ("Butterfly") where firefighter Tommy Gavin (Leary) goes to a union doc and gets three prescriptions–for insomnia, depression, and impotence–speaks concisely to the state of medicated post-modern man: asleep, happy, and erect.

Mac and Me (1988) – DVD

May 30, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Family, Satire, Sci-Fi, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound D
starring Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward, Katrina Caspary, Lauren Stanley
screenplay by Stewart Raffill and Steve Feke
directed by Stewart Raffill

by Walter Chaw One of the most woeful and dispiriting films ever made, Stewart Raffill's Mac and Me qualifies as a hate crime. It's a feature-length commercial for McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Skittles, and Sears masquerading as a rip-off of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ("MAC" = "Mysterious Alien Creature") that, what with Alan Silvestri's awful score, indicates that it's also ripping off Back to the Future during a key scene in which our wheelchair-bound hero, Eric (Jade Calegory), grabs the fender of a passing car and hitches his way to relative safety. Chips it might earn for casting an actual disabled kid in the role are cashed in when it's revealed that Eric's wrinkled-flesh puppet alien pal can only be sustained on this island earth by a combination of Coke and Skittles. It's enough to put you off not only junk food, but movies altogether. There's a place in Hell reserved for the clowns who peddle stuff like this (Ronald McDonald makes a cameo in the picture, and an even longer one in the trailer)–the movie is so venal and grasping in its conception, so astonishingly inept in its execution, that upon death, Raffill and writing partner Steve Feke should have this piece of crap projected onto their caskets to counter the pain of their passing. I'm serious. Mac and Me lowers the conversation for everyone, to the extent that it's almost a satire of greed and corporate malfeasance. Show it in a double-bill with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room for an example of what corporations think they can get away with–and what they do.

The Longest Yard (1974) [Lockdown Edition] – DVD

May 27, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Prison, Sports

**½/**** Image B Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Ed Lauter, Mike Conrad
screenplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The more genteel segments of the viewing public will instantly have their tolerance level challenged by The Longest Yard. In the prologue, disgraced ex-quarterback Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) receives the third degree from the woman to whom he has become a disgruntled man-whore, only to respond by grabbing her by the face, lifting her off the floor, and tossing her on her ass. On the commentary track of Paramount's new DVD, the filmmakers express surprise at the cheers this scene got during test screenings, but as there's no other in-point but matinee idol Reynolds, there's really no other way to respond to it. And as the scuffle naturally leads to a car chase where he dumps her Maserati into the drink (serves you right, young missy thing), complete with attendant insouciance to the police, there's only one conclusion to draw: Burt Reynolds is one bad mofo.

The Longest Yard (2005) + Madagascar (2005)

May 27, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Family, Sports, Theatrical

THE LONGEST YARD
*½/****
starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, James Cromwell, Nelly
screenplay by Sheldon Turner, based on the screenplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn
directed by Peter Segal

MADAGASCAR
**/****
screenplay by Mark Burton & Billy Frolick and Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath
directed by Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath

Longestyardby Walter Chaw Chris Rock seems like a smart dude. His stand-up is sharp and perceptive and his now-defunct pay-cable talk show broke some ice in the traditionally chilly national race conversation. So know that I say this respecting Rock’s abilities in certain areas: Chris Rock is not now, nor will he ever be, a viable presence in film. He has no charisma that translates to the silver screen, none of that “it” factor that draws the eye to him, and when he’s forced to follow a script, whether he’s written it or not, he sounds desperate and pinched, as though he were being pulled through a garden hose. He joins giants like Richard Pryor in that no matter what you thought of Stir Crazy, it’s a far cry from his seminal work on stage. That Chris Rock is now in two major motion pictures seeing release on the same day both bolsters the suspicion that Rock is a smart dude and provides two new examples of Rock not only not possessing that movie star quality, but also lacking the potential to be movie star material. With the inevitable success of these films, however (none of which will have anything to do with Rock), put your money on the man making a few more sad attempts at headlining a picture before Hollywood discovers what most of us already know.

Saving Face (2005) + High Tension (2003)

May 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Romania, Theatrical, Thriller, Will Smith

SAVING FACE
**/****
starring Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Jin Wang, Guang Lan Koh
written and directed by Alice Wu

Haute tension
***/****
starring Cécile De France, Maïwenn Le Besco, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun
screenplay by Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
directed by Alexandre Aja

Savingtensionby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Lesbians are pretty much invisible in American culture–banished, actually, to the ghetto that gay men tend to complain about even though, in truth, gay men were never more visible than they are now that they've been gifted with the lofty honour of being the only minority everyone can agree to hate with hilarious impunity. A couple of programs on Showtime notwithstanding, lesbians in the popular conversation are still either flannel-wearing she-males, the other daughter, or male fantasies of the voracious woman desperate for a good therapeutic dick to set her back on the straight and narrow. When a lesbian appears in a Western film (like in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason), the audience, myself included, regards her appearance as a kind of alien visitation. For a while, it's possible to forget that she's a sexual creature at all, so foreign are her Sapphic ways in our cultural conversation. Thus a pair of films featuring lesbian heroes front and centre happening upon these strange shores almost simultaneously is cause for some sort of modest celebration despite that one of them, Alice Wu's Saving Face, is a lot like an ethnic sitcom and the other, Alexandre Aja's High Tension, appears to hate lesbians with an unusual ugliness.

In Good Company (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

May 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Scarlett Johansson

***/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B
starring Dennis Quaid, Scarlett Johansson, Topher Grace, Marg Helgenberger
written and directed by Paul Weitz

Ingoodcompanycapby Walter Chaw A film about what happens when Benjamin Braddock decides to pursue a career in plastics, Paul Weitz's flawed In Good Company (its title, formerly Synergy, may be the worst thing about it) boasts a distinct human quality that lends depth where there might not otherwise be any. It's bolstered by the central trio of performers: Topher Grace, continuing his winning streak; Dennis Quaid, affecting in the kind of role that Harrison Ford should be doing now instead of Indiana Jones; and Scarlett Johansson, rapidly growing into something like a national treasure. And though Weitz is too in love with the extreme close-up, his tactic of displacing his characters in various visual terrariums does a good job of suggesting just how isolating it can be to balance breaking your back for a job you don't particularly like with enjoying the people for whom you do it in the first place. At its heart, In Good Company is a love song to hoary old axioms concerning love, loyalty, and honour–its charms are old-fashioned and its bromides, if not entirely unexpected, are at least earned.

Pooh’s Heffalump Movie (2005) – DVD

May 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Mystery

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C-
screenplay by Brian Hohlfeld and Evan Spiliotopoulos
directed by Frank Nissen

by Bill Chambers Pretty much everything I wrote about Piglet's Big Movie applies to Pooh's Heffalump Movie: it's inoffensive but laborious, and the soundalike replacements for the original vocal talent know the notes but not the music. (Think that friend of yours whose Homer Simpson impersonation is perfect in every way except for its inability to make you laugh.) Carly Simon contributes another pallid batch of stopgap ditties to another frail narrative in which Pooh Bear is again hustled off to the sidelines. But melancholy has returned to the fold (because, I suspect, a certain Britishness informs the tone this time around), and since that was key to the resonance of Pooh's early screen and literary outings alike, we should be grateful that Pooh's Heffalump Movie deals with more urgent themes than is customary.

Lullaby of Broadway (1951) + Calamity Jane (1953) – DVDs

May 16, 2005Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Musical, Romance, Western

LULLABY OF BROADWAY
*½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Doris Day, Gene Nelson, S.Z. Sakall, Billy DeWolfe
screenplay by Earl Baldwin
directed by David Butler

CALAMITY JANE
**½/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Doris Day, Howard Keel, Allyn McLerie, Philip Carey
screenplay by James O'Hanlon
directed by David Butler

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a pseudo-indie movie whose title escapes me that thought it would get an easy laugh by having a pretentious film theory major call her paper "Doris Day as Feminist Warrior." The joke was bad not because it was too exaggerated–as it happens, it wasn't much of an exaggeration at all. Doris Day was such a cottage industry for '90s pop-cult studies that she was (distantly) second only to Madonna as an item for rescue and reclamation, making such a title not only plausible but also inevitable. It's easy to see why: while the "legendary" screen goddesses stood around waiting to be claimed by the hero, Day was going ahead with a career or obliviously transgressing some other gender rule–not enough to topple Hollywood patriarchy, but enough to give clear-eyed individuals fugitive moments of pleasure.

The Grass Harp (1996) – DVD

May 16, 2005Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD

*½/**** Image B Sound A
starring Joe Don Baker, Nell Carter, Charles Durning, Sean Patrick Flannery
screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and Kirk Ellis, based on the novel by Truman Capote
directed by Charles Matthau

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A movie for people who think eccentrics are just a rumour, The Grass Harp's rendering of the same-named Truman Capote novel is so crammed full of unhinged folk that you expect a little lyrical madness in the filmmaking itself. Sadly, Charles Matthau's direction treats its outsiders and weirdoes in an objectifying manner, as if he's building models for a museum exhibit–and since there's nothing interior about the film's bland, stodgy technique, one can't really understand the bonds between its characters, who seem totally unrelated to each other beyond the demands of the script. All Matthau can do is look benignly upon people he doesn't really understand and hope that we'll follow his lead. I didn't, and I doubt that you will, either.

Layer Cake (2004); 3-Iron (2004); Palindromes (2005)

May 12, 2005Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Japan, Romance, South Korea, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

LAYER CAKE
***/****
starring Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham, Michael Gambon
screenplay by J.J. Connolly, based on his novel
directed by Matthew Vaughn

3-IRON
****/****
starring Lee Seung-yeon, Jae Hee
written and directed by Kim Ki-duk

PALINDROMES
***½/****
starring Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Masur
written and directed by Todd Solondz

Layercakeby Walter Chaw Producer Matthew Vaughn makes his directorial debut with the Brit underground gangster flick Layer Cake, and he does it with a sexy, cool savoir-faire that runs slick and smooth. It's softer than Jonathan Glazer's fabulously decadent Sexy Beast (most of that due, no doubt, to there being no baddie the equivalent of Ben Kingsley's Don Logan in Vaughn's film) and more coherent than Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1, but it slips snug into the same conversation. Now that Guy Ritchie's been gobbled whole by his very own vagina dentate, it stands to reason that Vaughn, Ritchie's producer on Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, would seek to fill the void left in the only U.K. pop genre with any sort of international currency all by his own self. Yet the product of Vaughn's hand isn't so much an imitation as it is a refinement: not better necessarily, but calmer–closer to the lounge lizard James Bond of the 1960s than to the feisty punk Michael Caine heisters from roughly the same period, though Layer Cake is infused, of course, with a healthy dose of nastiness and post-modern irony.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) [The Criterion Collection – Special Edition Two-Disc Set] – DVD

May 9, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Wes Anderson, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, The Criterion Collection

***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston
 screenplay by Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach
directed by Wes Anderson

by Walter Chaw His idiosyncrasies are by now familiar, but it still takes more than one viewing to assimilate Wes Anderson’s quirk with the undercurrent of wisdom and emotionality that makes it sing. The excavation of the relationships between brothers that ultimately explains the longevity of his light debut Bottle Rocket, the exploration of loneliness and the connection between mentors and boys that buoys Rushmore, and, most affectingly, the rough bond between fathers and sons in The Royal Tenenbaums edify Anderson’s work like the unexpected pockets of tenderness in the Coen Brothers’ early stuff, or those flashes of intricacy that transform John Cassavetes’s vérité chuff into masterworks. With The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Anderson goes back to what’s familiar in his studiedly unfamiliar way: to mentors and boys, to fathers and sons, and to brothers incidentally if not in fact–casting them all adrift in a hermetic universe that is as influenced by Sixties lounge kitsch as it is by post-modern dissociative cool. And in retracing his steps, he manages to recreate a lot of the same surprising humanity of his first three films, but I do wonder about The Life Aquatic‘s lasting resonance.