Life or Something Like It (2002) – DVD

October 7, 2002Posted inAuthors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Commentary B-
starring Angelina Jolie, Edward Burns, Tony Shalhoub, Christian Kane
screenplay by John Scott Shepherd and Dana Stevens
directed by Stephen Herek

by Walter Chaw A little like Forces of Nature in its dreamy, forced artificiality, Life or Something Like It washes out as an unwise amalgam of Broadcast News and Vibes. A love story without warmth starring Angelina Jolie as an ice princess and Ed Burns as his ol' smugly insufferable self, the film is a laborious trudge through faux-mysticism, heatless romance, and shallow philosophy–100 minutes of "carpe diem" that, because they're missing grace and life, lack resonance and purpose as well. Preternaturally sunny and too gutless to honour its stupid premise, Life or Something Like It inspires only one disquieting existential thought and that is the realization that whatever that self-aggrandizing idiot Burns made on this film is no doubt going to fund another one of his indies somewhere down the road.

DIFF ’02: Roger Dodger

October 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Germany
***½/****starring Campbell Scott, Jesse Eisenberg, Isabella Rossellini, Elizabeth Berkleywritten and directed by Dylan Kidd by Walter Chaw Roger (Campbell Scott) is a fast-talking lothario with the usual laundry list of the insecurities, sexual or otherwise, that plague the modern man. But this far meaner and smarter version of The Tao of Steve--and what slight praise that is--takes a turn to the intriguing when Roger's 16-year-old nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) appears for a few lessons on the art of pitching woo. In three brilliantly-scripted and wondrously paced sequences, Kidd points his Casanova Virgil and virginal Dante into the concentric circles of…

Scooby-Doo (2002) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

October 5, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Mystery

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini
screenplay by James Gunn
directed by Raja Gosnell

Scoobydoovelmacapby Walter Chaw At one point in Raja Gosnell’s Scooby-Doo, Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) tells the titular pooch, “We’re like two trippin’ peas in a freaky pod, man”–and the counter-cultural freak flag just keeps on flyin’ in a live-action film more for the late-twentysomethings who grew up with the subversive Hanna-Barbera-Iwao Takamato cartoon than the kids of today being weaned on the much tamer, direct-to-video “Scooby” fare. I love that the reviled Scrappy-Doo is given a much-deserved vilification (“Puppy power! He’s not even a puppy–he’s got some kind of glandular thing”), that there’s a scene in which Shag and Scoob are unseen in the Mystery Machine–while smoke billows out of its sunroof to a reggae refrain Shaggy can be heard rapturously intoning, “So toasted, soooo toasted,” and that when Shaggy gets a girlfriend (the smokin’ Isla Fisher), her name is Mary Jane (“That’s, like, my favourite name!”). I love that Velma gets slyly “outed” (“I’m going on a journey of self-discovery”), and I love that one of the main villains is a Telemundo wrestler.

Hellchild: The World of Nick Lyon – DVD

October 4, 2002Posted in1990s, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Germany, Horror, Short Films

by Walter Chaw A DVD collection of short films written, directed, and edited by Idaho-born, German-based filmmaker Nick Lyon, Hellchild: The World of Nick Lyon is an often brilliant exercise in high John Waters trash augmented with actual filmmaking ability and an imagination as feverishly fecund and difficult to shake as a yeast infection. Lyon's work is equal parts deadpan and disgusting, a comic-book exercise in grotesquery that reminds a little of Sergio Aragones's "Mad Marginals" in its sprung logic (and sense of humour) and a little more of David Lynch (or Tim Burton) in its dark reflection of suburban America.

Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997) + Casper Meets Wendy (1998) – DVDs

September 30, 2002Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Horror, ZERO STARS

CASPER: A SPIRITED BEGINNING
ZERO STARS/****
starring Steve Guttenberg, Lori Loughlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Michael McKean
screenplay by Jymn Magon, Thomas Hart
directed by Sean McNamara

CASPER MEETS WENDY
½*/****
starring Cathy Moriarty, Shelley Duvall, Teri Garr, George Hamilton
screenplay by Jymn Magon
directed by Sean McNamara

by Walter Chaw Taking place in a scary netherworld where up is down, black is white, and Steve Guttenberg, Rodney Dangerfield, Lori Loughlin, Pauly Shore, and Richard Moll still have careers, Casper: A Spirited Beginning is one long spiritless harangue designed for the kid with the helmet and the drool cup. Shockingly awful computer animation coupled with simply appalling acting wrapped around a plot that rips off Beetlejuice at every turn (newly-deceased goes through the process of denial before finding a handbook and a sympathetic morbid kid to help him/them adapt to the afterlife), Casper: A Spirited Beginning at the least honours the quality of those Harvey comics you used to read in the barbershop while trying to sneak a peak at the PLAYBOYs under the mirror.

Igby Goes Down (2002)

September 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Germany, Theatrical

**/****
starring Kieran Culkin, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Claire Danes
written and directed by Burr Steers

Igbygoesdownby Walter Chaw A battle between bug-eye theatre and dead-eye matinee, Igby Goes Down represents another post-Rushmore neo-Salinger debut (from hyphenate Burr Steers, nephew of Gore Vidal) that places an anti-establishment fish in a prep-school pond and surrounds him with a florid panoply of castrating mothers, Oedipal complexities, and evil schoolmates. In attempting to find new material in a genre that seems mostly played out (and played better by Wes Anderson and Alexander Payne), Igby Goes Down is another desperately overwritten Stygian coming-of-age melodrama à la another recent Kieran Culkin angst flick, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.

The Tuxedo (2002)

September 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jason Isaacs, Debi Mazar
screenplay by Michael J. Wilson and Michael Leeson
directed by Kevin Donovan

Tuxedoby Walter Chaw Between watching Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts consistently upstage her (and be constantly commented upon besides) and Jackie Chan try hard to erase his legacy as the best physical comedian of the talkies, it’s tempting to declare that The Tuxedo is a bankrupt entertainment and a remorseless time pit. Tempting and not entirely inaccurate, but in truth The Tuxedo is more than just cheerfully misogynistic (and most of Chan’s films are, in one way or another, woman-hating), cartoonish, and even racist in a Green Hornet/Kato sort of way–The Tuxedo is a symptom of a far deeper concern involving the inability of the West to ever make proper use of hijacked foreign commodities or construct an action film anymore that doesn’t resort to slapstick childishness and/or grotesque violence.

Mickey’s House of Villains (2001) – DVD

September 23, 2002Posted in****/****, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1990s, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Horror, Short Films

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
directed by VARIOUS

by Walter Chaw Just in time for Halloween, Mickey’s House of Villains collects eight animated shorts spanning sixty-some years while illustrating the creative flatline that Disney has experienced from its heyday to well into its current decline. The Mouse demonstrates, too, a tiresome reliance of late on loosely framed anthologies for their direct-to-video releases and this one is no exception, as a gallery of Disney rogues collect in a nightclub to plot the demise of proprietors Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, et al.

The Château (2002)

September 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

**/****
starring Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Didier Flamand, Sylvie Testud
written and directed by Jesse Peretz

by Walter Chaw A comedy of manners and the almighty malapropism, Jesse Peretz’s grainy DV picture The Château could almost be a dogme95 flick. The picture relies on acres of improvisation and that slapdash feeling of the seat-of-the-pants production hanging from a Jonathan Edwards-ian string over the abyss of self-indulgence and clattering dreariness–and succeeds, when it succeeds, based entirely on the timing and brilliance of its cast and the extent to which we remain disarmed by the incongruity of the setting with the subject. When that feeling of surprise and delight fades (and it fades midway), The Château‘s rough edges begin to show.

Mostly Martha (2002)

September 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Germany, Italy, Romance, Switzerland, Theatrical

Bella Martha
**½/****
starring Martina Gedeck, Maxime Foerste, Sergio Castellitto, August Zirner
written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck

by Walter Chaw A Bavarian Big Night, Sandra Nettelbeck’s Mostly Martha joins a romantic-comedy premise with a lost-child scenario, setting it all to a leisurely pace and framing it with an eye for the handsome. Its sightlines as crisp and clean as the dishes chef Martha creates in her immaculate kitchen, the picture is as relaxed a viewing experience as any this year–a dish without many exotic ingredients (like a good Salmon dish, the film tells us), but just enough substance to forgive the froth.

Kissing Jessica Stein (2002) – DVD

September 19, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Heather Juergensen, Tovah Feldshuh, Esther Wurmfeld
screenplay by Jennifer Westfeldt & Heather Juergensen
directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

by Walter Chaw New Yorker Jessica Stein, referred to at one point in Kissing Jessica Stein as the Jewish Sandra Dee, is looking for love in the brack of the late-twentysomething dating pool. This means that we’ll get a dating montage during which we sample the poor object choices available to the intrepid, sensitive, modern urban woman about town. A devout reader of Rilke (pegging her as both dreamy and pretentious, which also describes the film at hand), Jessica perks up when she hears a favourite passage quoted in a singles ad–only slightly tortured by the fact that the ad has been placed by another woman, Helen (Heather Juergensen). Helen runs a small art gallery, Jessica is an artist; Helen knows Rilke, Jennifer knows Rilke; and though Jennifer is almost pathologically incapable of falling headlong into lesbian sexuality, through the tender, Color Purple ministrations of Helen, she does come around in time.

Stealing Harvard (2002)

September 13, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Jason Lee, Tom Green, Leslie Mann, Dennis Farina
screenplay by Peter Tolan
directed by Bruce McCulloch

Stealingharvardby Walter Chaw A virtual clone of Jake Kasdan’s Orange County, Bruce McCulloch’s Stealing Harvard takes the same premise (low-aspiring kids get a chance at a prestigious school), the same quirky sensibility, and the same characters (Jason Lee fills in for Colin Hanks, Tom Green for Jack Black, and Leslie Mann (who is also in Orange County) for Schuyler Fisk), and does considerably less with them. Taken as bookends to 2002 up to the awards season or as a peculiarly precise comparison of how minor differences in screenplay, director, and cast can subtly push a somewhat dreary premise into a vaguely good film or a vaguely bad one, Stealing Harvard at its heart remains a picture that never finds a way to balance the laconic style of Lee with the erratic jitter of Green. Its inability to find any sort of cohesiveness (the same malady afflicting Albert Brooks’s and Brendan Fraser’s The Scout) dooms Stealing Harvard to long stretches of irritating torpor punctuated by the occasional line delivery that reminds, mainly, that Megan Mullally (as a character straight out of Drop Dead Gorgeous) has impeccable comic timing.

TIFF ’02: Punch-Drunk Love

September 13, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Romance, TIFF
***½/****starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzmánwritten and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson by Bill Chambers Punch-Drunk Love or, Un Redemption de Adam Sandler. Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film finds him at both his most experimental (dig those Scopitone interludes) and least windy--the tip-off is a running time of well under two hours. But first: Adam Sandler. When you hear Oscar buzz around a popular comedian, it generally means they've repressed everything that made them popular. (Jim Carrey in The Majestic, for example: Carrey may do a mean James Stewart impersonation, but he's no Jimmy himself.) Sandler…

TIFF ’02: Ken Park

September 12, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Netherlands, Teen, TIFF
***½/****starring Tiffany Limos, James Ransone, Stephen Jasso, James Bullardscreenplay by Harmony Korinedirected by Larry Clark & Ed Lachman by Bill Chambers Making Happiness look like Dumbo, Ken Park does not push the envelope--Ken Park runs the envelope through a paper shredder, douses it in lighter fluid, and sets it aflame. And then urinates on the ashes. The latest from Larry Clark, the film was co-directed by veteran cinematographer and frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator Ed Lachman, and if you're worried that this Zaphod Beeblebrox would result in the muting of Clark's voice, think again. If anything, we sense the pair playing…

TIFF ’02: Love Liza

September 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, TIFF
***½/****starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Jack Kehler, Sarah Koskoffscreenplay by Gordy Hoffmandirected by Todd Louiso by Bill Chambers Love Liza is a potent movie about compulsive behaviour I'm growing fonder of by the hour; the film rises above some hoary tropes to become almost peerlessly unsettling. As a new widower who can't bring himself to read his wife's suicide note, Philip Seymour Hoffman once again dissolves before our eyes into a sweaty, ticcy mess stuck between sleep and awake. But here, without the reprieves you get from his strange behaviour in the ensemble pieces the actor seems to favour (Boogie…

TIFF ’02: 8 Femmes

August 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Musical, Romance, TIFF
8 Women***/****starring Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béartscreenplay by François Ozon, Marina de Van, based on the play by Robert Thomasdirected by François Ozon by Bill Chambers Almost every French actress I can rhyme off without help from the audience is in the cast of François Ozon's 8 Femmes, a delightfully odd murder mystery with song-and-dance interludes. (Imagine if John Waters had directed Clue.) The film takes place during Christmastime in 1950s France at a country manor where various women have gathered to celebrate the holidays with Marcel, the only significant man in any of their lives. But…

Little Secrets (2002)

August 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Family, Music, Theatrical

*/****
starring Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Angarano, David Gallagher, Vivica A. Fox
screenplay by Jessica Barondes
directed by Blair Treu

by Walter Chaw I fear that Blair Treu’s Little Secrets is the latest picture to fall victim to my predisposition against insipid and trite films. The problem with my bias in this instance is that there is a considerable segment of the middle-class population at large that seems particularly enamoured with such fare, particularly as it manifests under the aegis of “family entertainment” or Meg Ryan movies. It’s only a problem, I hasten to add, because I hate arguing with the upper-reaching bourgeoisie–there is no good way, after all, to explain to the fuzzily intractable why a self-pitying adopted girl who makes money like Lucy from the “Peanuts” strip while staying home to practice violin in anticipation of an orchestra tryout is more suited for the dinosaur prose of big-print Beverly Clearys than for the voluntary consumption of any self-respecting human being.

Serving Sara (2002)

August 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley, Vincent Pastore, Bruce Campbell
screenplay by Jay Scherick & David Ronn
directed by Reginald Hudlin

Servingsaraby Walter Chaw Reginald Hudlin’s Serving Sara is a miserable, listless, pathetic excuse for a movie. It’s already dreadful by the time Matthew Perry finds himself shoulder-deep in a bull’s rectum, after which it defies a few natural laws by somehow getting worse. There are no laughs to be found in the whole of this lugubrious shipwreck–even the sight of Perry getting the tar beaten out of him by a pair of Italian caricatures is a sour, joyless affair. Seeing as being physically humiliated is Perry’s sole silver-screen reason for being (see also: The Whole Nine Yards), that his getting kicked and punched is not ever at all amusing says a great deal about the relentless excrescence of this exercise. I would add that at least it’s better than the amazingly awful Perry vehicle Almost Heroes, except that it’s not.

24 Hour Party People (2002)

August 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Drama, Music, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Steve Coogan, Keith Allen, Rob Brydon, Enzo Cilenti
screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce
directed by Michael Winterbottom

by Walter Chaw Inviting direct comparisons to Todd Haynes’s ebullient Velvet Goldmine with a flying saucer, Michael Winterbottom’s brilliant 24 Hour Party People apes, too, a great deal of the style and tone from that film: insouciant, arch, and invested in giving over the stage to the zeitgeist of an era through its youth culture and its music. 24 Hour Party People distinguishes itself, however, with a flip, post-modern absurdism that includes asides to the camera (“I’m being post-modern before it became popular”) and a certain self-awareness that somehow encapsulates the discursive, free-associative madness of Factory Records founder Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan). Beginning with The Sex Pistols‘ first performance in 1976 before a rapt crowd of 42 people, the picture takes on a dizzying kind of animal logic, stalking the fortunes of the “New Wave” Manchester ethos of Joy Division (into the band they became, New Order), Happy Mondays, the Hacienda dance club, and, most importantly, Wilson himself–part huckster, part savant. All along, Wilson cues us that the world is about to change and that this band of brothers, this group of bouncing, sullen, devotees to a new punk energy, are the men who will change it.

Happy Times (2000)

August 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

幸福时光
Happy Time
*½/****
starring Benshan Zhao, Jie Dong, Biao Fu, Xuejian Li
directed by Zhang Yimou

by Walter Chaw Titled in the same serio-ironic vein as Giuseppe Tornatore’s Everybody’s Fine, Zhang Yimou’s Happy Times aspires for the piquant but only really achieves a sort of ridiculous sourness. It’s a misunderstanding of irony taken to an Alanis Morrisetteian extreme; far from the eventuality being the opposite of the expected, the outcome of Happy Times is the worst kind of cliché, and its execution is so blunt compared to the sharp satirical barb of Yimou’s own Ju Dou that I wonder if Gong Li wasn’t the brains in that long lamented relationship. Still, what works in Happy Times is what has worked in this director’s best work (Shanghai Triad, Raise the Red Lantern, Red Sorghum): mordant social critique so far removed from realism that its status as political allegory is as subtle as a neon sign and a crack to the noggin.