DIFF ’03: Bitter Jester

October 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals, Road Movie, Romance
***/****directed by Maija DiGiorgio by Walter Chaw Bitter Jester is a hard-to-watch record of an irritating, dangerously self-destructive stand-up comedienne named Maija (director Maija DiGiorgio) who, with a video camera and goombah ex-boxer boyfriend Kenny in tow, imposed herself on the frighteningly neurotic underworld of stand-up performers. With the endorsement of Kenny's legend-in-the-stand-up-world pal Richard Belzer and Maija's dead therapist, the pair set out to make a documentary on the effectiveness of throwing oneself at the mercy of antagonistic comedy-club audiences as therapy for working out childhood trauma and pathological personality defects. What results is a surreal, Hunter S. Thompson-esque…

L’auberge espagnole (2002)

October 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, France, Romance, Spain, Theatrical

***/****
starring Romain Duris, Judith Godrèche, Audrey Tautou, Cécile De France
written and directed by Cédric Klapisch

Laubergeespagnoleby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Cédric Klapisch is the director of a mid-'90s gem called When the Cat's Away; although it wasn't of great shattering importance, it understood that, and turned out to be enjoyably funky nonetheless. Alas, the intervening years have taken their toll on Klapisch's sense of self-importance, because now he's made L'auberge espagnole–a film with the potential to be another enjoyably funky little movie that instead pushes banal life lessons and shallow cultural observations. L'auberge espagnole might have squeaked by had its tale of a French student in a Barcelona rooming house just been a sex farce with low ambitions, but as it stands, it's a sex farce that thinks that it's actual drama, making for some serious head-slapping when it drags out the ersatz "importance."

Pieces of April (2003)

October 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

**/****
starring Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Derek Luke
written and directed by Peter Hedges

Piecesofaprilby Walter Chaw Modest in its intentions and achievements, Peter Hedges's Pieces of April has an undercurrent of paternalistic racism that verges on the disturbing. April (Katie Holmes, great but wasted) and her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) invite April's difficult family to Thanksgiving dinner. Because it's potentially, ominously, the "last" Thanksgiving, the estranged nuclear unit composed of mom Joy (Patricia Clarkson), dad Jim (Oliver Platt), grandma Dottie (professional grandma Alice Drummond), and their other two children Beth (Alison Pill) and Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.) pack themselves into the station wagon and head up the interstate. The picture cuts between April struggling to find someone in her tenement who'll lend her the use of an oven and the family doing their best to suffer the acerbic, often nasty Joy.

House of 1000 Corpses (2003) + Waxwork/Waxwork II: Lost in Time [Double Feature] – DVD

October 16, 2003Posted in1980s, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, UK, West Germany, ZERO STARS

HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon, Karen Black
written and directed by Rob Zombie

WAXWORK (1988)
*/**** Image D Sound D
starring Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, Dana Ashbrook
written and directed by Anthony Hickox

WAXWORK II: LOST IN TIME (1991)
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C
starring Zach Galligan, Alexander Godunov, Monika Schnarre
written and directed by Anthony Hickox

by Walter Chaw Curiously, compulsively watchable in a grindhouse exploitation sort of way, neo-glam shock-rocker Rob Zombie follows in Twisted Sister Dee Snider’s capering footsteps with a derivative flick that mainly goes a long way towards demonstrating how hard it is to make a coherent movie. More Richard Donner’s The Goonies than Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, House of 1000 Corpses is a shoestring series of hyperactive camera movements and disjointed images culled from what seems too many films to count, from Bloodsucking Freaks to Near Dark to Maniac to The Serpent and the Rainbow to Halloween to Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 and so on, with no reason except to demonstrate how many horror movies Zombie has seen. The only thing missing from the picture–besides actual dread–is a helpful annotation so that youngsters intrigued can check out the real deal.

DIFF ’03: Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

October 11, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Denmark, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Sweden, UK
Wilbur Begar Selvmord***½/****written by Lone Scherfig, Anders Thomas Jensendirected by Lone Scherfig by Walter Chaw Uncompromising yet surprisingly gentle for all that, Lone Scherfig's Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is an unmannered character drama about Wilbur (Jamie Sives), despondent and suicidal after the death of his father; Wilbur's older brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins), who's taking the family's loss much better; and Harbour's new wife, Alice (the self-swallowing, eternally imploding Shirley Henderson), who finds love for the first time only to find it again in her husband's mordant brother. A psychiatric support group is funny in predictably quirky ways (though its…

DIFF ’03: Bought & Sold

October 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
**/****written and directed by Michael Tolajian by Walter Chaw Michael Tolajian's Bought & Sold is a low-aspiring inner-city fairy tale featuring an Oscar De La Hoya-looking hoodlum protagonist named Ray Ray (Rafael Sardina) who dreams of buying DJ turntables from the local pawn shop while working part-time at a shoe store. He falls in with the wrong crowd, ends up going undercover for a local godfather in the pawn under kindly Armenian storekeeper (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), and gets twitterpated for the pawnshop owner's niece, Ruby (beautiful Marjan Neshat)--all of which unfolds in a herky-jerky kind of way as Tolajian's dialogue…

DIFF ’03: Assisted Living

October 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
**/****written and directed by Elliot Greenbaum by Walter Chaw Playing at times like a documentary (indeed, the film used the residents of its retirement-home setting as extras), Assisted Living is a troubling picture, balanced as it is midway between fiction and essay, with some actors feigning dementia and others clearly in its sway. Todd (Michael Bonsignore) is a pot-smoking twentysomething working at a nursing home--a kind-hearted soul, it seems, burned out in more ways than one and fixated on one of his charges, Mrs. Pearlman (Maggie Riley). Their relationship really not much more than a sketch, Todd's "rescue" of Mrs.…

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras A-
starring Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Bob Newhart, Luke Wilson
screenplay by Kate Kondell
directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

by Walter Chaw Recognizing that there's nothing more patriotic than rampant materialism, cultural ignorance, fast fashion, a steadfast lack of imagination, and disturbing dog-love, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde is essentially a blow-by-blow remake of its predecessor with a different setting and more Chihuahua. It tackles animal rights and congressional corruption with the same seriousness as Versace vs. Gucci, hoping against hope that Reese Witherspoon's considerable charm will smooth over the clumsy grafts and inevitable tissue rejection of a film with speaking roles for Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Newhart, and Sally Field. Harvard Law is replaced by the Beltway Boys, factoids about perms are replaced by factoids about facials, and all of it boils down to the importance of sorority sisters–particularly ironic in a picture so horrified by the evils of intractable nepotism amongst insular societies.

School of Rock (2003) + Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

October 2, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Richard Linklater, Germany, Music, Romance

SCHOOL OF ROCK
**/****
starring Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, Sarah Silverman
screenplay by Mike White
directed by Richard Linklater

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY
**½/****
starring George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush, Cedric the Entertainer
screenplay by Robert Ramsey & Matthew Stone and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw Maverick filmmaker Richard Linklater takes a break from his experiments in narrative and philosophy to helm what is essentially a mélange of the most tried and true mainstream formulas: the underdog kids uplift (The Bad News Bears, et. al); the inspirational teacher uplift (Dead Poets Society, et. al); the slacker whose best friend is dating an uptight harridan uplift (Saving Silverman, et. al); the burnout loser makes good uplift (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, et. al); and the rebel who reforms a restrictive institution led by an icy task-mistress uplift (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, et. al). Not to say that School of Rock is without its merits, but the whiff of originality–which every film of Linklater (and Mike White, who wrote the script) has possessed to some degree or another up to now–is not among them.

DIFF ’03: The Station Agent (2003)

October 2, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Theatrical

****/****
starring Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale, Raven Goodwin
written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

by Walter Chaw If there's a flaw to Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent, it's that there are elements to the narrative that don't make a lot of literal sense–the question of why someone would set up a coffee cart in the middle of a remote train yard the most obvious one that springs to mind. But in a film shot through with the melancholy hue of Longfellow's "My Lost Youth," gaps in credibility should be seen as poetic device, perhaps, or metaphor. The picture is heartbreak, a diary of the million betrayals and disappointments that make up an over-examined life composed all of loneliness and solitude. At its best, The Station Agent captures the isolation of any soul too sensitive, too intelligent for the harsh inconsiderateness of a world more interested in brashness than subtlety.

Holes (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

September 30, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Mystery

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, Shia LaBeouf
screenplay by Louis Sachar, based on his novel
directed by Andrew Davis

by Walter Chaw A certain level of grotesquerie in a children's entertainment is essential, but at some point grotesquerie just becomes grotesque. Holes, adapted by Louis Sachar from his award-winning children's novel, is a cheerless little melodrama, dusty and marooned in the middle of nowhere with what is essentially a pint-sized version of the time-tripping buffoonery of The Hours. Its tale of destiny and stroking the sins of the fathers rattles along its rails like a rusted-out mine cart, going to where it's going with a lot of noise and broken-down drama but without anything like surprise.

Daisy Miller (1974) – DVD

September 28, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Cybill Shepherd, Barry Brown, Mildred Natwick, Eileen Brennan
screenplay by Frederic Raphael, based on the novella by Henry James
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Daisy Miller is that rare literary adaptation that improves when considered next to its source. Not content to deliver the consumption porn that would later define Merchant-Ivory and their fellow travellers, director Peter Bogdanovich instead serves up a bittersweet evocation of an oblivious life lost and an all-too-conscious one wasted in check, employing the tools of cinema–not just art direction–to make his aesthetic/emotional case. Here, one feels the pressures of late-19th century mores as they close in on the title character and the civilized restraint that keeps its protagonist from acting on impulse; the costumes and furnishings, though lavish enough, are not the main event. And while the self-contained nature of the piece (endemic to the Henry James source) keeps the film from touching greatness, it's still very sensitive work in a genre that is normally beneath contempt.

Duplex (2003)

September 26, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Theatrical

*/****
starring Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, Eileen Essel, Justin Theroux
screenplay by Larry Doyle and John Hamburg
directed by Danny DeVito

Duplexby Walter Chaw Danny DeVito's Duplex begins promisingly enough as a dark comedy, its resemblances to The War of the Roses (and Throw Momma from the Train) only natural as DeVito directed both of those as well. But by its sunny conclusion, Duplex is a spineless bit of populist garbage that tries to mine broad cheer from the murder of an irritating old lady. The movie of value in this premise is one that examines the ways that young people hate the frailties of senior citizens, and for long stretches of the picture, the neo-yuppies played by Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore are cast as self-centered assholes more interested in procreation and real-estate values than in the golden years of their upstairs tenant. Sadly, DeVito is the worst kind of coward, condescending to an audience he doesn't believe able to handle ambiguity, crafting in the process a film that so completely betrays its moments of audacity at its conclusion that the failure of Duplex lingers in memory as something to be more pitied than derided.

Ghoulies (1985)/Ghoulies II (1988) [Double Feature] + Troll (1988)/Troll 2 (1990) [Double Feature] – DVDs

September 25, 2003Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Horror, Italy, ZERO STARS

GHOULIES
*/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance
screenplay by Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy
directed by Luca Bercovici

GHOULIES II
*½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Damon Martin, Royal Dano, Phil Fondacaro, J. Downing
screenplay by Charlie Dolan and Dennis Paoli
directed by Albert Band

TROLL
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Noah Hathaway, Michael Moriarty, Shelley Hack, Jenny Beck
screenplay by Albert Band
directed by John Buechler

TROLL 2
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound C
starring Michael Stephenson, Connie McFarland, George Hardy, Margo Prey
written and directed by Drago Lloyd

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover What's the only thing worse than a DVD of a bad '80s monster movie? A DVD with two of them. That's the conclusion I've reached after subjecting myself to some warmed-over chillers recently unleashed on disc–detritus from or inspired by the defunct B-mill Empire Pictures that only Forrest J. Ackerman could love. I'd like to say that they're enjoyably tacky nostalgia items for those old enough to barely remember them, but the truth is that they skimp on the crass goods that make a good bad movie: attempting to find a broader audience through a PG-13 rating, they lack the sex and violence that a true exploitation film would deliver, and the films are so cheap that the remaining attraction of monster effects are by necessity curtailed. What's left are scripts and direction at best enervating and at worst maddening.

The Fighting Temptations (2003)

September 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Beyoncé Knowles, Chloe Bailey, Demetress Long
screenplay by Elizabeth Hunter and Saladin K. Patterson
directed by Jonathan Lynn

Fightingtemptationsby Walter Chaw It's fair to wonder at some point what it is, exactly, about Cuba Gooding Jr. that appeals the most. Is it the broad mugging? The amazingly insulting material? Or is it the kind of manic energy that proves so enervating to most people too old to be entertained by insulting, mugging clowns? And while The Fighting Temptations isn't quite as bad as Snow Dogs, Boat Trip, or Men of Honor, it's somehow less of a movie than either–a collection of flimsy narrative excuses for musical numbers that manages to suggest that poor southern African-Americans are slavishly devoted to the word of New York advertising executives while confirming that there are some characters so revolting as to indeed be above redemption. In its zeal to graft a few uplift dramas to its gospel-highlights showcase, The Fighting Temptations finds in its protagonist an appalling yaw of moral cess and, worse, a lack entire of much of anything resembling a recognizable humanity. Gooding Jr. is typecast in the part, in other words, and things don't appear to be looking up with the dreaded upcoming disability opera Radio.

TIFF ’03: Undead

September 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Film Festivals, Horror, Sci-Fi, TIFF, Zombie
½*/****starring Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay, Rob Jenkins, Lisa Cunninghamwritten and directed by Peter Spierig & Michael Spierig by Bill Chambers For novice directors, even genre can become an irresistible new toy. So it is with the Spierig Brothers' Undead, an Australian film that liberally applies CG but more detrimentally cribs from every and any horror flick that fanboys ever extolled; those mouth-breathing types who post talkback at AICN have never been this condescended to, yet I fear that Undead's pandering will sail over their heads and lead to a misguided appreciation of the film as a one-stop shop for all…

TIFF ’03: Danny Deckchair

September 13, 2003Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Film Festivals, Romance, TIFF
**/****starring Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto, Justine Clarke, Rhys Muldoonwritten and directed by Jeff Balsmeyer by Bill Chambers Danny Deckchair is so aware of being a formula fish-out-of-water comedy that it leaves some of the more crucial gestures of plot off its checklist, resulting in a film equally unsatisfying for its clichés and for its lack thereof. Rhys Ifans, that starved Allman brother, plays Danny Morgan, a Walter Mitty-ish construction worker stuck in a dead-end relationship with Trudy (Glenda Lake), a fame-hungry travel agent seeing a TV newsman on the side. Aware that Trudy is sick of his weird inventions, Danny…

TIFF ’03: Vodka Lemon

September 12, 2003Posted in2000s, Armenia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Switzerland, TIFF
***/****starring Lala Sarkissian, Romen Avinian, Ivan Franek, Armen Marouthianscreenplay by Hiner Saleem, Lei Dinety, Pauline Gouzennedirected by Hiner Saleem by Bill Chambers Discombobulating and deadly dull for its initial half-hour, Hiner Saleem's Vodka Lemon coalesces before it's too late into something by no means ineffectual. The first in an accumulation of vignettes finds an old man being schlepped in his bed through the Armenian tundra to a funeral site, where he promptly removes his dentures to pipe a dirge for the other mourners. The picture continues to lightly tread such surreal ground until the whimsical closing shot, in which music…

TIFF ’03: Falling Angels

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

TIFF ’03: Bon Voyage

September 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, TIFF, War
*½/****starring Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Virginie Ledoyen, Yvan Attalwritten and directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau by Bill Chambers "And I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll boorrre the hell out of you." Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage labours harder than any film in recent memory to entertain, but the result is so draining I don't remember grooving with it once. In the opening scene, the latest vehicle for champagne starlet Viviane Denverts (Isabelle Adjani, who at 48 should be too old to play an ingénue, but looks at least half her age--it's quite miraculous, really) leaves rapt the attendees of a French…