Gummo (1997) – DVD

April 2, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Linda Manz, Max Perlich, Jacob Reynolds, Chloe Sevigny
written and directed by Harmony Korine

by Walter Chaw Xenia, Ohio, America's middle-of-nowhere, is imagined by Harmony Korine (Kids) as the quintessence of Grant Wood's slightly canted take on the gothic at the heart of the mundane. It's a town out of step, recovering from a tornado which, an opening narration tells us, left people dead, cats and dogs dead, and houses ripped apart. In Gummo, his directorial debut, one of the tasks Korine sets for himself is detailing the psychological damage wrought on Xenia by two different forces of nature: the lingering emotional fallout from the almost-forgotten tornado; and the tragedy of being born with no advantageous DNA in an ever-diminishing gene pool.

The Perez Family (1995) – DVD

March 14, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, Chazz Palminteri, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Robin Swicord
directed by Mira Nair

by Walter Chaw Sensuous and lush with a hint of Isabel Allende’s magical realism in the bleeding of a man’s broken heart and a string of rose petals trailing a line along the belly of a new lover, Mira Nair’s lovely The Perez Family is all ripe colours, song, sex, honour, and dance. A long-lost father asks his wife upon their decades-long separation if their grown daughter remembers him: “She says she remembers dancing with you.” In The Perez Family, that’s only as it should be.

Twin Dragons (1992) – DVD

January 22, 2001Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts

**½/**** Image C Sound B+ Extras D
starring Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Nina Li, Teddy Robin
screenplay by Barry Wong and Tsui Hark and Cheung Tung Jo and Wong Yik
directed by Tsui Hark

by Bill Chambers The day Steven Seagal inflicts two performances on us within the same film I’ll hang up my film critic’s apron and call it a life. Soap opera actors and fighting stars, you see, are not so much nonimmune as prone to landing the dual role of identical twins, and one muumuu-wearin’ aikido “master” is already too much to bear. But a couple of Jackie Chans, that I can and did handle: Chan’s 1992 action-comedy (emphasis on comedy) Twin Dragons isn’t as seedy as the similarly plotted Van Damme vehicle Double Impact. With action auteurs Tsui Hark and, purportedly, Ringo Lam at its helm, though, and choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) behind the stuntwork, one has every reason to expect more combat and spectacle than Twin Dragons actually delivers.

When Harry Met Sally… (1989) [Special Edition] + Prelude to a Kiss (1992) – DVDs

January 8, 2001Posted in1980s, 1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY…
***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby
screenplay by Nora Ephron
directed by Rob Reiner

PRELUDE TO A KISS
***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Alec Baldwin, Meg Ryan, Kathy Bates, Ned Beatty
screenplay by Craig Lucas, based on his play
directed by Norman Rene

by Bill Chambers Meg Ryan, the Princess of Perk, gets a makeshift career retrospective this month with the DVD releases of three high-profile gigs: When Harry Met Sally…, Prelude to a Kiss, and The Doors. I’m forsaking any further mention of The Doors to focus on the first two–delightful, whimsical films, unlike The Doors–and Ryan’s romantic-comedy stranglehold. Call it the curse of the button nose: the actress, who is more talented than anyone, myself included, is willing to admit, seems out of her element by a country mile in pictures that don’t require her to meet cute and kvetch over the subsequent courtship. And now that she’s pushing 40, Ryan is becoming to chick flicks what Stallone and Schwarzenegger were to actioners after Clinton got elected: we’re sick to death of seeing her in these Nora Ephron-type movies–yet, as Proof of Life, um, proved, we also don’t want to see her in anything but.

Chuck & Buck (2000) – DVD

January 2, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras B
starring Mike White, Chris Weitz, Lupe Ontiveros, Beth Colt
screenplay by Mike White
directed by Miguel Arteta

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Can a film be unpleasant and valuable at the same time? On the one hand, I was made truly uncomfortable by Chuck & Buck, which centres on a character so obnoxious and so deluded that he would hardly be tolerated in polite society. His single-minded obsession with a man with whom he had a childhood friendship is so invasive and toxic that he repeatedly strains audience sympathy; further, it traps us in his myopic point of view and makes us watch in horror as he plans another assault on his former friend’s life, for the sake of some deeply confused homoerotic desires that he can barely articulate. And yet, I found myself profoundly moved at the end of this singular film, which never wavers in its unconditional love for its screwed-up protagonist and seeks for him a place in the world that he sadly cannot make for himself. I don’t exactly know what I can do with the information it gives me about this man, but I can certainly say that Chuck & Buck gave me more of an experience than the majority of fireballing studio products from 2000.

Loser (2000) – DVD

December 17, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Teen

*/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Greg Kinnear
written and directed by Amy Heckerling

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As with most of her films, director Amy Heckerling’s latest, Loser, seesaws between unpleasant and artificial, and is sometimes both at once. When she tackles big issues, such as abortion in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, it’s impossible to tell whether she’s being matter-of-fact or glib about them (they carry an almost documentary starkness), but whatever the case, she continually refuses political comment. Such is the sitcom tendency of her work: to jeopardize the innocence of her characters and then hit the reset button. This fear of drama soured me on Fast Times…, Look Who’s Talking, Clueless, and now Loser, in which Ms. Heckerling also demonstrates, for the first time, zero affinity for the milieu.

Chicken Run (2000) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 28, 2000Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, France, UK

***/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B+
screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick
directed by Nick Park & Peter Lord

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Chicken Run is slight but savoury. While it doesn't have the conceptual punch that, say, a Disney spectacular might have, it has a great deal less malice than most other films aimed at the same segment of the market. Instead of a highly manipulative, emotionally overwrought run through the wringer, we have a sweet and good-natured exercise in whimsy and friendliness. While this means that the film loses something in terms of dramatic impact, it also means that it relies more on wit than it does on action. What could have been garish and brazen is here sweet and mild-tempered, and it sweeps you up in its goodwill until the final frames.

Me Myself I (1999) + Passion of Mind (2000) – DVDs

September 19, 2000Posted in1990s, 2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller

ME MYSELF I
**/**** Image B Sound A Extras C
starring Rachel Griffiths, David Roberts, Sandy Winton, Yael Stone
written and directed by Pip Karmel

PASSION OF MIND
**/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård, William Fichtner, Peter Riegert
screenplay by Ron Bass and David Field
directed by Alain Berliner

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With a bumper crop of "what if?" movies hitting screens over the past couple of years–enough of them, perhaps, to signify a genre–the time is nigh to examine, in the hope of capping, this Cinema of Regret, a marriage propagandist's dream. Both Me Myself I and Passion of Mind arrive (coincidentally?) on DVD this week, and each in its roundabout way encourages its existentially lost central character to attach sentimentalism to family values. Dan Quayle must be happy as a clam.

TIFF ’00: Low Self Esteem Girl

September 3, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF

Low Self-Esteem Girl
***/****
starring Corrina Hammond, Ted Dave, James Dawes, Rob McBeth
written and directed by Blaine Thurier

Guys want her body.
Zealots want her soul.
–Low Self Esteem Girl‘s honest tagline

by Bill Chambers A few minutes into Low Self Esteem Girl, I got the distinct feeling I was watching an episode of “Candid Camera” in which the recording device itself, and not the camera’s subjects, was the one being had. First-time director Blaine Thurier, a former cartoonist for Vancouver’s TERMINAL CITY, zigzags his digital video camera about the house of Lois (Corrina Hammond) like a spy who has unwittingly stumbled upon a stage exercise: Lois and Gregg (Ted Dave), her one-night stand, conduct a pillow-fight with overtones of rape, and then she offers him a beer–at which point I half-expected a drama teacher to call time-out, step into the frame, and critique their performances.

The Replacements (2000)

August 11, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Sports, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Jack Warden
screenplay by Vincent McKewin
directed by Howard Deutch

by Bill Chambers Did the makers of The Replacements realize that Major League had already been reinvented as a football movie, under the title Necessary Roughness? (So indiscreetly, in fact, that the former's sunglasses-wearing baseball logo was transmogrified into a sunglasses-wearing football one.) Given how many other motion pictures The Replacements–which, for what it's worth, appears to have been edited with a blender–openly (and badly) plagiarizes, I'm sure the answer is "yes." "But," they'd very possibly tell you, "our movie has Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman. Theirs had Sinbad and Kathy Ireland."

The Kid (2000)

July 7, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical

Disney's The Kid
**/****
starring Bruce Willis, Spencer Breslin, Emily Mortimer, Lily Tomlin
screenplay by Audrey Wells
directed by Jon Turteltaub

by Bill Chambers Hurling overwrought insults at just about everyone he meets, Russell Duritz (a dour Bruce Willis) is an image consultant with G-rated impatience for the world at large. Enter Russell, age eight (Spencer Breslin, only slightly less annoying than I had braced for)–Duritz's chubby younger self has somehow materialized to teach him a few Valuable Life Lessons. The trouble with a hyped-to-the-gills high-concept movie is, of course, that by the time we're lining up to see it, we've digested and come to terms with the central conceit–the fantasy premise is why we're there. Thus, the wait for a protagonist to accept what we already have can be excruciating, as it is here. The rest of Disney's The Kid's (so you don't mistake it for Chaplin's, I guess) concerns the two Russells trying to determine the cosmic moral behind their unlikely meeting, with both of them equally appalled by how the other lives his life. (This being Disney, the film only agrees with the younger, workaholic one.)

Hanging Up (2000) – DVD

June 26, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Germany

*/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C+
starring Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter Matthau
screenplay by Delia Ephron & Nora Ephron, based on the book by Delia
directed by Diane Keaton

by Bill Chambers In Hanging Up, only Eve, the middle child between two sisters, accepts responsibility for their ailing dad, and we wish that he–and his eldest and youngest daughters, for that matter–would die already so that Eve could go off and lead a life actually worth making/watching a movie about. As Eve, Meg Ryan is in typical perky-panic mode. What’s got her whipped into a tizzy this time? Well, a Nixon exhibit that she, a party planner, is hosting (a nod to co-writer Nora Ephron’s first husband, Watergate whistle-blower Carl Bernstein?), the impending death of her dementia-addled father (Walter Matthau, Dick Clark’s opposite in that he has always looked 80 years old), the fallout from a car accident, and the realization that her sisters (Diane Keaton and Lisa Kudrow) are complete and utter parasites are all converging at once. Eve juggles her responsibilities over the telephone, through convoluted multi-line conversations that give the film its title as well as its raison d’être.

Sweet and Lowdown (1999) – DVD

June 19, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

***½/**** Image A Sound C+
starring Woody Allen, Blythe Danner, Judy Davis, Mia Farrow
written and directed by Woody Allen

by Bill Chambers Woody Allen movies of late are eager to indict the creepy misanthrope who's been a staple of the writer-director-actor's oeuvre at least since Allen stepped into the shoes of Annie Hall's Alvy Singer. But in the final analysis, Allen has continued to pardon his alter egos, deflecting blame for their shortcomings by casting a negative light on everybody they know, too. If Sweet and Lowdown, the movie Deconstructing Harry wasn't ready to be, is any indication, the Woodman's work is, at last, becoming more nakedly confessional.

Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) – DVD

June 7, 2000Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, Timothy Carey
written and directed by John Cassavetes

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The experience of seeing Minnie and Moskowitz is like asking for a glass of milk and receiving a tequila shooter. Both might do good things for you in separate circumstances, but they are far from interchangeable. Similarly, the simple pleasures of a boy-meets-girl movie and the method bombast of John Cassavetes have their times and places, but they run on entirely different schedules. When the two actually collide, as they do in Minnie and Moskowitz, the cataclysm is so great it cancels out anything good that might have come from either one staying on their own turf: the wispy romance plot is mangled beyond all recognition and the soulful Cassavetes style is left pounding on the walls, resulting in a singularly unpleasant parade of standard cliché and acting overkill that leaves neither side standing by the end.

American Movie (1999) [Special Edition] – DVD

May 22, 2000Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Short Films

****/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A
directed by Chris Smith

Mustownby Bill Chambers You can imagine, as a virgin does sex, what it’s like to make a movie, but until you do it, you’ll never really know. In film school, I directed a couple of shorts–nothing you’ve seen, but that’s beside the point: American Movie reminded me of why I hate making movies and why I miss it all the same. For me, watching this picture was a religious experience: Our (debatable) class differences notwithstanding, I don’t know that I’ve ever identified with a screen character more than I did real-life struggling hyphenate Mark Borchardt. For non-directors, American Movie offers plenty of Fargo-style behavioral laughs, and it may kick-start the realization of your own elusive goals. This precious ode to fringe filmmaking pulls off the amazing feat of being accessible and specialized at once.

Tom and Jerry’s Greatest Chases – DVD

April 24, 2000Posted in1940s, 1950s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Family, Short Films

Image B- Sound B-
“The Yankee Doodle Mouse,” “Solid Serenade,” “Tee for Two,” “Mouse in Manhattan,” “The Zoot Cat,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse,” “The Cat Concerto,” “The Little Orphan,” “Salt Water Tabby,” “Kitty Foiled,” “Johann Mouse,” “Jerry’s Diary,” “Jerry and the Lion,” “Mice Follies”

by Bill Chambers As I waded through Tom and Jerry’s Greatest Chases, a perfectly enjoyable DVD compilation of postwar “Tom and Jerry” cartoons, I began to wonder why the eternally backbiting cat and mouse have not endeared and endured over decades to the extent that almost any combination of bickering Looney Toons has.

Back to School (1986) – DVD

April 17, 2000Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Sports

**½/**** Image D+ Sound B-
starring Rodney Dangerfield, Sally Kellerman, Burt Young, Keith Gordon
screenplay by Steven Kampmann & Will Porter and Peter Torokvei & Harold Ramis
directed by Alan Metter

by Bill Chambers Rodney Dangerfield, alas, still gets no respect. Recently the comic was denied membership to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, allegedly on the basis of his profane turn as an abusive father in Natural Born Killers. (Gee, I thought demonstrating range and talent would be two guarantees of an actor’s admittance into the Oscar-voting body.) The poor showings for his last two screen outings, Ladybugs and Meet Wally Sparks, have perhaps permanently sealed Dangerfield’s fate as a Vegas stand-up.

The Bachelor (1999) – DVD

April 17, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A+ Sound A-
starring Chris O'Donnell, Renee Zellweger, Hal Holbrook, James Cromwell
screenplay by Steve Cohen
directed by Gary Sinyor

by Bill Chambers It begins with a misleading visual straight out of City Slickers: a herd of mustangs, all racing towards "a patch"–signifying single men trying to get laid. But no stud, we learn through voiceover, can evade marriage forever, and following the introduction of young entrepreneur Jimmie (Chris O'Donnell) and his happy, similarly-unwed circle of (male) friends, a quick montage intercuts scenes of holy matrimony seizing every last one of them–save Jimmie–with the wrangling of stallions.

Three to Tango (1999) – DVD

April 10, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Matthew Perry, Neve Campbell, Dylan McDermott, Oliver Platt
screenplay by Rodney Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna
directed by Damon Santostefano

by Bill Chambers Unsurprisingly, Three to Tango was written some eight years before it finally went into production–the film has a dated preoccupation with homosexuality as Golden Farcical Opportunity. (I suspect that Rodney Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna’s script, purportedly based on events that led to Vaccaro’s marrying his boss’s girlfriend, was fast-tracked only after The Birdcage became a box-office smash.) Imagine the insipid proposition of a politically corrected “Three’s Company”; why does hetero Oscar not speak up when his sexual orientation is first challenged? Because, silly: being gay is hilarious!

Drive Me Crazy (1999) – DVD

March 12, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Teen

**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras D
starring Melissa Joan Hart, Adrien Grenier, Stephen Collins, Ali Larter
screenplay by Rob Thomas, based on the novel How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser
directed by John Schultz

by Bill Chambers I've seen so many bloody teen movies over the past two years that Drive Me Crazy felt like the beginning of a new semester. All my old friends were there–the jock, the rebel, the slut–and I once again looked forward to attending a prom, here called a "Centennial." Now and again, however, the film manages to tread, if not break, new ground as it recycles that old saw about an adversarial boy and girl who fall for their own love charade as they attempt to make former sweethearts jealous. Would you believe that every single one of its characters is (gasp!) insecure?