Firewalker (1986) – DVD

March 24, 2005Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Chuck Norris, Lou Gossett, Melody Anderson, Will Sampson
screenplay by Robert Gosnell
directed by J. Lee Thompson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Of the many right-wing cinematic fantasies of the 1980s, by far the most flagrant and shameless were those of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. The Cannon Pictures magnates specialized in white folk dropped in the middle of jungles urban and outback: they gave us freedom fighters in Vietnam (Missing in Action), vigilante crime-fighters (the later entries in the Death Wish saga), and Indiana Jones cross-referenced with his colonial ancestors (King Solomon's Mines, et al). But though they were naked and blatant in their retrograde daydreams, they were also impossible to take seriously: Golan-Globus weren't just jerks, they were inept jerks–slovenly to the point of awe and stupefaction. Firewalker doesn't find them in top ludicrous form, but its childlike belief in both outdated stereotypes and papier-mâché sets facilitates a drinking game quite nicely.

The Cat Returns (2002) – DVD

March 24, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Japan, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Reiko Yoshida
directed by Hiroyuki Morita

by Walter Chaw With the frantic, infernal energy (and cats) and even a little of the barbed social satire of Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, Hayao Miyazaki protégé Hiroyuki Morita's directorial debut The Cat Returns is undone a little by its hysteria but salvaged by its artistry and smarts. A familiar tale for fans of Studio Ghibli, the film follows plucky schoolgirl Haru (Chizuru Ikewaki in the Japanese track, Anne Hathaway in the English dub) as she saves a mysterious grey cat from certain flattening, thus earning her the dubious boon of eternal gratitude from the Cat King (Tetsuro Tamba & Tim Curry). After being cursed with a yard-full of cattails, a pocketful of catnip, and a locker-full of gift-wrapped mice, Haru receives the ultimate prize of betrothal to the Cat Prince (Takayuki Yamada & Andrew Bevis)–a fate she seeks to avoid with the help of portly kitty Muta (Tetsu Watanabe & Peter Boyle) and the stately Baron (Yoshihiko Hakamada & Cary Elwes). Haru's journey is essentially one of perspective as she evolves from a silly sort of girl into a person who's learned to trust that her instincts are good and that her courage is, indeed, up to snuff.

Fat Albert (2004) – DVD

March 23, 2005Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Kenan Thompson, Kyla Pratt, Dania Ramirez, Bill Cosby
screenplay by William H. Cosby, Jr. & Charles Kipps
directed by Joel Zwick

by Bill Chambers The memory I have of watching Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" as a wee lad is that it always left me a little bit depressed, like listening to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" or dining at the Ponderosa restaurant. (Doesn't "ponderosa" mean "weighty" in English?) Subtext is a kind of phantom presence when you're five or six years old: you're too young to be able to read it but also young enough that you've not yet been blinded by anti-intellectualism to everything below the surface. I realize now that it was probably through the Saturday-morning buzzkill of "Fat Albert…" that I became cognizant of poverty, and just the fact that the show was populated with an all-black cast of ragamuffins (almost all of whom suffered from learning disabilities) took the patronizing sting out of its NBC Life Lessons–it was less pious than it was possessed of an old soul. I'm happy to report that Fat Albert, an anachronism of a live-action feature film based on the long-running (and long-cancelled) cartoon, captures a lot of its source's melancholy appeal. Moreover, its ideas are provocative verging on profound, although they're shackled to a sketchy screenplay (by Cosby and Charles Kipps) and an aesthetic that is as paint-by-numbers as the animation that inspired it. No surprise that director Joel Zwick hails from television–multi-camera sitcoms, to be precise.

The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan (2004) + Pauly Shore is Dead (2004) – DVDs

March 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, DVD, Pseudo-Documentary, ZERO STARS

THE BURIED SECRET OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A
written by Melissa Foster
directed by Nathaniel Kahn

PAULY SHORE IS DEAD
½*/**** Image C Sound B Extras D
starring Pauly Shore, Jaime Bergman, Todd Bridges, Rick Ducommon
screenplay by Pauly Shore and Kirk Fox
directed by Pauly Shore

by Walter Chaw The only thing separating M. Night Shyamalan from Pauly Shore is that Shyamalan actually has a couple of classic modern suspensers under his belt and Shore doesn't have anything on his resume that could be remotely considered indispensable. Both are weasels, both have spent some period of time being really popular, both have endured a critical and popular backlash, and both have produced mock-documentaries detailing how interesting they think they are. But at the end of the day, only Shore's Pauly Shore Is Dead has anything like an affecting, self-deprecating, clear-eyed sense of self: The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan is an embarrassing and cripplingly self-congratulatory PR gag. Shore knows that he's like nails across a chalkboard for most sentient beings on this planet (going so far as to portray his remaining fanbase as a hilljack in a trailer somewhere in Kentucky); Shyamalan thinks that a fake documentary shot in the style of Curse of the Blair Witch is a cute way to not only publicize his sham of a post-9/11 psychodrama The Village, but also debunk some of the venomous press (and leaked memorandums) that he's been amassing ever since deciding to start giving himself top-billing and face-time within the promotional materials for his films. (Check out the Signs DVD's packaging and cast your mind back to the last time you saw a picture of the director incorporated into the cover art of any release.) Shore knows he's become an object of ridicule; Shyamalan thinks he's become a national treasure–or at least the poet laureate.

The Yes Men (2004) – DVD

March 10, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Documentary, DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
directed by Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The key scene in The Yes Men comes when pranksters Michael Bonanno and Andy Bichelbaum suddenly stop to ask the question: is it more fun to engage in satire than in regular protest? They quickly agree that it is, but the issue has always been hanging around their flamboyant efforts to impersonate WTO spokespeople and tell the ridiculous truth about the organization's activities. And although it's obvious that satire is indeed more fun, its effectiveness is called into question over and over again when it becomes apparent that nobody really appreciates the joke. If one can crash a conference and throw outrageous but true accusations at globalization and not get thrown out, was anything truly subverted? The film mounts a good case for the entertainment factor of this shtick without backing up its larger claims as a lefty consciousness-raiser, a process far more arduous than these Yes Men let on.

The Iron Giant (1999) [Special Edition] – DVD

March 7, 2005Posted in****/****, 1990s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Family, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi

****/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
screenplay by Tim McCanlies, based on The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
directed by Brad Bird

Mustownby Walter Chaw Brad Bird's The Iron Giant, based on a children's book, The Iron Man, that British poet laureate (and Mr. Sylvia Plath) Ted Hughes wrote after his wife's suicide, is improbably transformed from the dark and Anglocentric source into a throughline pure and sweet to the rapturous Americana of Richard Donner's Superman. It captures an impossible period existing between the idealism of Rockwell and the lonely realist decompositions of Edward Hopper in a flurry of animated cels, telling the tale of a boy and his robot in the month or so when Sputnik was scaring the bejesus out of a suddenly-humbled, suddenly-Luddite United States. Accordingly, the Colour from Outer Space that was the monstrous bad guy in the book is transformed in the film into the paranoia of a country taught to fear an invisible (or barely visible) foe–marking The Iron Giant as something of a timeless picture particularly topical for a country embroiled in a war on foreign soil, a war with an invisible enemy, and the makings of a cold war with a country that has decided the only way to combat American aggression is with nuclear weapons. Tellingly, it's the appearance of nukes at the end of The Iron Giant that coaxes out the heart of the titular tin man–the last word that he has in the picture–"Superman"–whispered with something like awe that has never failed to bring a tear to my secretly-patriotic eye.

Be Cool (2005)

March 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Music, Satire, Theatrical

**/****
starring John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn, Cedric the Entertainer
screenplay by Peter Steinfeld, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by F. Gary Gray

Becoolby Walter Chaw At some point you decide that you're either going to play pool with Be Cool or you're not. You're going to have to decide whether Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's mincing caricature of a gay man is actually a self-parody of his own pumped-up, homoerotic image (see also Vin Diesel's simultaneously-opening Mr. Mom ape, The Pacifier), and whether this studied unkindness towards black people is actually only a satire of the bling-bling gangster culture that has all but defined rap music and young urban culture for the wider mainstream white audience. If you're resolved that Be Cool is meta-fiction that's more sociologically self-aware than other masturbatory cameo hustlers like Ocean's Twelve (and it might be), then it is indeed sort of liberating to give up and laugh along with the horde. (What could be funnier, really, than The Rock limping his wrist and doing a dialogue, solo, from cheerleading classic Bring It On?) But there's this lingering, disturbing thought I can't quite shake that Be Cool is only being a smartass part of the time–and maybe being a smug, insufferable prig all of the time.

Cursed (2005)

February 25, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Germany, Horror, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, Werewolf, Wes Craven

*/****
starring Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson, Jesse Eisenberg, Mya
screenplay by Kevin Williamson
directed by Wes Craven

Cursedby Walter Chaw Butchered beyond recognition by the almighty Weinsteins, director Wes Craven’s promised ‘hard R’-rated werewolf homage/satire Cursed is now a disjointed, disowned, completely sanitized PG-13 tweener shocker so chaste that it’s not entirely unlike watching Heidi with more jump scares. Great, giant bits of gore have been excised from the film and what’s left doesn’t match, has no rhythm, and is almost completely reliant on An American Werewolf in Paris-bad CGI. It’s been eviscerated like the werewolf’s first victim used to have been, resigning it to the sweet embrace of snarky irony that it hoped itself to use on the werewolf genre. Cursed is a terrible waste of makeup-effects master Rick Baker’s return to the game (he’s the guy behind the groundbreaking work in An American Werewolf in London); a waste of the menstruation metaphor suggested by its title; and a waste of the reunion of the creative team behind the gory, smart, post-modern slasher flick Scream (Craven and writer Kevin Williamson).

Son of the Mask (2005)

February 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, France, Germany, Romania, Superhero, Theatrical, Venezuala, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jamie Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Traylor Howard, Steven Wright
screenplay by Lance Khazei
directed by Lawrence Guterman

Sonofthemaskby Walter Chaw Towards the end of the uniquely awful Son of the Mask, star Jamie Kennedy gets two fistfuls of his screen-wife Traylor Howard’s bosom (this after pummelling her head against the ground in a scary depiction of domestic violence) and declares, in so many words, “Eureka–so it is you, honey.” It’s a charming vignette that follows about an hour of fart, snot, golden shower, and Exorcist jokes, each trumping the last in level of inappropriateness until finally the deadened synapses begin to register that with sets like “Edge City” and “Fringe City”, the brain trust behind this abortion might actually have had something subversive in mind. A shame, then, that they’ve confused “edge” and “fringe” elements with puerile scatology and institutional dehumanization, intercut with baby and animal reaction shots and a marginal and failed television comedian (playing a marginal and failed television animator) mugging in an astoundingly lifeless approximation of “manic.” For a film that might want to be taken as “edgy,” in other words, Son of the Mask caters to the absolute lowest and commonest of the lowest common denominators.

The Green Butchers (2003)

February 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Denmark, Theatrical, Thriller

De Grønne slagtere
**½/****
starring Line Kruse, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Bro
written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen

Greenbutchersby Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There’s nothing groundbreaking about Anders Thomas Jensen’s blessedly non-Dogme The Green Butchers, the latest movie to mine the consumption of human flesh for laughs (even the title suggests a cheeky allusion to Soylent Green)–but for a comedy, that most culturally specific of genres, the Danish production travels remarkably well. Credit a skillful subtitle translation that preserves the wit of Jensen’s repartee, not to mention the chemistry between stars Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who, as chronic perspirer Svend and pothead Bjarne, respectively, transcend language like some nouveau Ren and Stimpy. (That being said, they’re occasionally too redolent of Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro for this writer’s comfort.) Proprietors of the new butcher shop in town, Svend and Bjarne face early foreclosure until an electrician accidentally freezes to death in their meat locker, inspiring a desperate Svend to turn the corpse’s thigh into fillets he promptly dubs “chickie-wickies.” These cutlets catch on with the locals, natch, and the desire to stay popular transforms Svend into a serial killer, with Bjarne acting as his reluctant but too-stuporous-to-resist accomplice.

Hitch (2005)

February 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, Will Smith

***½/****
starring Will Smith, Eva Mendes, Kevin James, Amber Valletta
screenplay by Kevin Bisch
directed by Andy Tennant

Hitchby Walter Chaw Defying all odds by not being awful, what Andy Tennant's Hitch lacks in originality it makes up for in chemistry between Will Smith (true heir to Cary Grant's romantic comedy crown) and the lovely Eva Mendes, both of whom find their stride in what amounts to a 'Black Eye for the White Guy' take on screwball farce. Only occasionally, in other words, is it apparent that the dialogue is excrescent and that this is another one of those movies that ends with a long wedding sequence where people shimmy in front of the camera. Strike against it that it resists pairing Smith with a Caucasian actress because African sexuality is almost as threatening to white sexuality as homosexuality, but it does allow the erstwhile helper fairy to have a love life of his own parallel to the hopeless fat cracker fast becoming the most popular of the new reviled minorities. It's a good thing that, for the most part, they don't seem to mind–call it the CBS/Homer Simpson/Matthew Perry syndrome.

Gunga Din (1939) – DVD

February 10, 2005Posted in1930s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, War

*/**** Image B- Sound C Extras A
starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Fontaine
screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, based on the poem by Rudyard Kipling
directed by George Stevens

by Walter Chaw To say that George Stevens's Gunga Din hasn't aged well overlooks the cold reality that the best one could ever say for it is that its hinges were once merely creaky instead of frozen. (It also presupposes that being a decent, moral person meant something different in 1939 than it does in 2005.) The picture is almost impossible to watch for a modern audience: the characterizations are broad and insulting; the dialogue strongly suggests that Rudyard Kipling's poems should be left untransmogrified (even by William Faulkner–deep in the sauce when it came his turn) into filmic narrative; and the attitude towards empiricism and oppressed native populations on display was always condescending and appalling for anyone not currently being shot at.

Aladdin II & III Collection – DVD

February 8, 2005Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

THE RETURN OF JAFAR (1994)
Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
written by Kevin Campbell and Mirith J.S. Colao & Bill Motz & Steve Roberts & Dev Ross & Bob Roth & Jan Strnad & Brian Swenlin
directed by Toby Shelton, Tad Stones, Alan Zaslove

ALADDIN AND THE KING OF THIEVES (1996)
*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by Mark McCorkle & Bob Schooley
directed by Tad Stones

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover About the only reason for Disney to send out their direct-to-video product to be reviewed is to accumulate free advertising. They know that no sensible critic will tolerate anything so obviously thrown together as a cash grab, just as they know that no reader of critics will willingly sign up to watch them; instead, the assumption is that said readers will have kids, and that the review will act as one more reminder (in concert with the saturation ad campaigns in print and on television) that those kids are undiscerning and will probably want the discs bad. So here's my link in the chain of avarice: two age-old attempts to cash in on Disney's Random Ethnic Stereotype Generator are back on the market, and if your children are lacking in aesthetic sense (they are), these might be right up their alley. Just make sure you bite down on a leather strap as you watch them with your goggle-eyed rugrat, and take heart in the knowledge that someone on the World Wide Web knows your pain.

The American Astronaut (2001) – DVD

February 8, 2005Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Musical, Sci-Fi

****/**** Image B Sound A Extras A-
starring Cory McAbee, Rocco Sisto, Gregory Russell Cook, Annie Golden
written and directed by Cory McAbee

by Walter Chaw Opening with a mordant prologue that reminds of the expressionless absurdist sensibility of the late Douglas Adams and proceeding through something somewhere between Six-String Samurai and Dead Man (but a science-fiction musical), Cory McAbee’s The American Astronaut is dead brilliant. Demonstrating a truly dazzling level of technical proficiency (despite or due to what must have been a non-budget) and a breathless creativity fecund and macabre, the picture reminds of Harlan Ellison, Dr. Strangelove, and Dark Star in equal measure. Ultimately, The American Astronaut is something all its own, a film that sets itself up as an old-fashioned serial and goes on to explore cinematic and literary theory with a keen eye for composition and an ear for mad scenario and perverse dialogue. The reasoning is Beckett, the execution is Brecht and Weill, and the results are best described as an educational reel directed by David Lynch circa Eraserhead: self-aware and hallucinatory.

Mulan II (2004) – DVD

February 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Japan, Musical

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
directed by Darrell Rooney, Lynne Southerland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Let it be known that Mulan II is out on DVD, and that it's surprisingly good. The House That Walt Built appears to have learned from its early, awful forays into the direct-to-video realm and decided to put a little elbow grease (not to mention money) into these glorified policy redemptions; once you get past its pitifully limited research of actual Chinese culture (no mean feat, believe me), you can't help but notice that the movie looks stellar. Content-wise, it's a decent, if not great, do-what-makes-you-happy message picture slightly curtailed by its minuscule running time and bolstered by a couple of songs that sound like somebody cared how they turned out. Nothing in Mulan II is brilliant, but it's a couple of notches above eyewash–and just smart enough not to drive unwilling parents completely insane. I can think of worse things to show your attention-deficient knee-biter.

Rory O’Shea Was Here (2004)

February 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disability, Drama, France, Ireland, Theatrical, UK

Inside I’m Dancing
*/****
starring James McAvoy, Steven Robertson, Romola Garai, Brenda Fricker
screenplay by Jeffrey Caine
directed by Damien O’Donnell

Roryosheawashereby Walter Chaw Looking for shock value, the more unkind would call Rory O’Shea Was Here “One Rolled Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”: the film is a straight-up rip-off that substitutes Randle McMurphy and Chief Bromden for plucky punk afflicted with Muscular Dystrophy Rory (James McAvoy) and his cerebral palsy-afflicted chum Michael (not Donnie Wahlberg). Because neither actor is actually afflicted, it can be said that their performances are at best affected; at their worst, and at the service of a condescending screenplay, the two come off as patronizing caricatures engaged in an insipid waltz around the real issues that arise when you’re thrust by disability into the full-time care of strangers. It’s a great idea to cast the disabled in lead roles, even romantic (gasp!) roles, in motion pictures, but it’s a terrible idea to do so for the express purpose of making them into noble savages from which we can suckle our portion of moral outrage and smug, shit-eating superiority. Best, the rebel that brings a sparkle into the lives of everyone he touches has the decency to croak as his last act of charity, allowing the much-maligned social order to go on ticking with one fewer annoying gadfly.

The Chorus (2004)

February 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Germany, Music, Switzerland, Theatrical

Les choristes
½*/****
starring Gérard Jugnot, François Berléand, Kad Merad, Jean-Paul Bonnaire
screenplay by Philippe Lopes-Curval, Christophe Barratier
directed by Christophe Barratier

Chorusby Walter Chaw The one good thing about Christophe Barratier's unbelievably inane, saccharine, and derivative The Chorus (Les Choristes) is that it offers the much put-upon American public a little comfort in the knowledge that the French mainstream (which made this film its top-grossing title of last year) has just as unquenchable a sweet tooth for pap. Useless to discuss at length, The Chorus is essentially another in a line of literally dozens of films in which an inspirational teacher changes the lives of a group of troubled/lower-class/underestimated children through will, kindness, and a rogue spark of crinkly-eyed genius that irks to no end the evil dean/headmaster/school board/community. It's not as bad as Filipino contribution Little Voices, nor is it as good as, say, Goodbye Mr. Chips–locating it somewhere in the neighbourhood of a disaster like Mr. Holland's Opus or the endlessly weird Wes Craven (!) picture Music of the Heart. Taken on its own merits, pretending that you've never seen Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, The Blackboard Jungle, Conrack, Mona Lisa Smile, Dangerous Minds, Renaissance Man, Coach Carter, and so on and so on, The Chorus is still unspeakably maudlin and presented in so straightforward a fashion that if you did the right thing and asked for your money back after five minutes, you could reasonably fake having seen it to a circle of friends, who will admire your stamina in having sat through the whole benighted thing.

The Wedding Date (2005)

February 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Amy Adams, Holland Taylor
screenplay by Dana Fox, based on the novel Asking for Trouble by Elizabeth Young
directed by Clare Kilner

Weddingdateby Walter Chaw With Dermot Mulroney playing some kind of android gigolo and Debra Messing bronzed in her syndicated brand of humiliated never-a-bride shtick honed through years on "Must-See TV," The Wedding Date doesn't, at least, always accidentally resemble a horror flick, unlike director Clare Kilner's previous film, the creepy How to Deal. What it does is remind a lot of Pretty Woman if the whore in question were a charisma vacuum instead of Julia Roberts, and it finds work as a WASP bitch's-bitch of a mother for the hopelessly typecast Holland Taylor. It's the kind of film focus-grouped to such a precise dot that everyone in any audience that willingly attends the thing will not only be able to name each brand of luggage the characters use, but will do so with joy and pride.

Greg the Bunny (2002) + Crank Yankers – Uncensored: Season One (2002) – DVDs

February 3, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Television

GREG THE BUNNY
Image A Sound B Extras B
"Welcome to Sweetknuckle Junction," "Sock Like Me," "Dottie Heat," "SK-2.0," "Piddler on the Roof," "Rabbit Redux," "Father & Son Reunion," "Jimmy Drives Gil Crazy," "Greg Gets Puppish," "Surprise!," "The Jewel Heist," "The Singing Mailman," "Blah Bawls"

CRANK YANKERS – UNCENSORED: SEASON ONE
Image A Sound B Extras C-
episodes 1-10

by Walter Chaw What is it about puppets, exactly, that makes them the preferred avatars for children as they navigate the murky straits between childhood and adulthood? I'd hazard that there's a simplifying element to them, some sort of leavening of the peculiarities of human expression so that emotions aren't so subtle, so fraught with the landmines of nuance and subtlety. They're great teaching tools, the perfect bearer of allegory–hence the Japanese, with their tradition of sophisticated puppet theatre, have distilled it (as they have animation) into an adult medium. But in the western world, puppets are so embedded in our puerile, formative experiences (from "Sesame Street" to "Bear in the Big Blue House") that when they're subverted (as in Team America, for instance), there's something particularly naughty about it–above and beyond, perhaps, the specific offense. Alas, it can only hold its illicit thrill until the novelty and surprise of it wears off.

No Vacancy (1999) – DVD

January 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

½*/**** Image B Sound B-
starring Lolita Davidovich, Timothy Olyphant, Christina Ricci, Tom Todoroff
written and directed by Marius Balchunas

by Walter Chaw You watch No Vacancy the same way you watch a triathlon, in that it's not an enjoyable viewing experience by any conventional standards, but you find the participants' dedication in completing what experiential evidence suggests is an odious, exceedingly unpleasant task stimulating just the same. As a normal person would quit five minutes in, it's the pluck that fascinates, that willingness to say and do fabulously stupid things during the audition process or the production itself to honour the craft of acting, even if the project that houses it dishonours the craft of filmmaking.