The War Within (2005) + Paradise Now (2005)

November 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Palestine, Theatrical, Thriller, War

THE WAR WITHIN
**/****
starring Ayad Akhtar, Firdous Bamji, Nandana Sen, Sarita Choudhury
screenplay by Ayad Akhtar, Joseph Castelo, Tom Glynn
directed by Joseph Castelo

PARADISE NOW
***/****
starring Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel
screenplay by Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, Pierre Hodgson
directed by Hany Abu-Assad

by Walter Chaw Two films, one by New Jersey filmmaker Joseph Castelo, the other by Palestinian lenser Hany Abu-Assad, begin to make inroads into what is perhaps the most inscrutable phenomenon of the so-called War on Terror: suicide bombing. They’re important films, I think, mostly because suicide bombers, like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots of WWII, make it easier to generalize and dehumanize/demonize the enemy as faceless zealots. Every manned car-bomb, every explosives-strapped martyr, creates ideological schisms on either side–more so and deeper, I’d offer, than conventional missiles or rifle shells do, because here we’re striking at the very heart of the way we perceive life and the afterlife: holiness and sin, valour and cowardice. If there’s ever to be some sort of olive branch in this millennia-old conflict, it has to start with an agreement not only to recognize the humanity beneath the atrocities committed by both sides in the name of defending home and hearth, but also to admit that centuries-old texts about the supernatural are piss-poor signposts pointing the light of right reason.

The Candy Snatchers (1973) – DVD

November 2, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Tiffany Bolling, Susan Sennet, Ben Piazza, Vince Martorano
screenplay by Bryan Gindoff
directed by Guerdon Trueblood

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Hypocrisy and bet-hedging are exploitation hallmarks. Cecil B. DeMille is the patron saint of this cinematic subset, where the money shots are often placed between moralistic quotation marks in order to give outs to the voyeuristic viewer. When The Candy Snatchers tries to convince itself it's about more than the rape and grunting for which it's clearly been designed to showcase, it's entertainment enough. This is a film where dollarbook Marx rubs shoulders with the sub-Sirkian moral inversion of bad people good/good people bad–a film whose attempts at social commentary and "drama" are so strained as to run the gamut from puzzling to hilarious. And though it eventually has to follow up on the leering and brutality that is its stock-and-trade, its delusional contortions are elaborate enough to dazzle and amaze when its mission statement falls to pieces.

Millions (2005) – DVD

November 1, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Family, UK

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan, Alex Etel, Lewis McGibbon
screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce, based on his novel
directed by Danny Boyle

Millionscapby Walter Chaw Unbelievably sentimental and, finally, corrupt with a hideous paternalism (how a flick like this ends first at a child’s Nativity pageant à la Love Actually, then in Africa, where a well is being dug for dying Africans, is one of those all-timers), Millions finds director Danny Boyle, after last year’s brief return to some semblance of Shallow Grave/Trainspotting form with 28 Days Later…, returning to his A Life Less Ordinary/The Beach form in all its excrescent glory. It’s the tale of two adorable, buck-toothed British urchins (the rage after Finding Neverland) who stumble upon pilfered millions in the form of the soon-to-be-Euros British Pounds Sterling and, Shallow Grave-like, ultimately hide the money in an attic with cunningly-placed slats in the floorboards for panicked eyeballs. It’s Pay It Forward, with younger Damien (Alex Etel) obsessed with the lives and messy deaths of saints and dedicated to giving the wealth to the poor (even Mormons, whom the film portrays as evil little twats), and it’s Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana in the poor’s reaction to getting rich, sporting its own version of the beggar’s banquet Last Supper from Buñuel’s picture in a scene set in a pizza parlour. And it’s Pay It Forward again in its subversion of that film’s “teach the world to sing” finale: a genuinely disturbing mob scene starring the superstars of organizations asking for your money to save the world from itself. But finally, it’s just another Danny Boyle film–a little meat and a lot of showing off with CGI pyrotechnics and confused editing.

Capote (2005)

October 21, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Canada, Crime, Drama, Theatrical

**/****
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper
screenplay by Dan Futterman, based on the novel by Gerald Clarke
directed by Bennett Miller

Capoteby Walter Chaw You hear him before you see him: Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), raconteur, socialite, showman, standing at the centre of the kind of swinging party immortalized in the glossy, offensive film version of his Breakfast at Tiffany's. He's telling a story in a claustrophobic storm of admirers, his reedy, almost-falsetto voice broken now and again by his wheezing, self-conscious laugh. He's flirting with his own persona, I think (Hoffman, not Capote), and the tiny moments I'm able to see through the barrage of misdirection thrown up by screenwriter Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller (all three old friends–the film plays smug like an exclusive reunion) to strike at the heart of Hoffman's own situation as a sensitive soul trapped in the body of a second fiddle (Kevin Smith syndrome–or, more flatteringly, Charles Laughton), are the moments Capote means something to me beyond another exhumation of the Clutter Family murders already chronicled (and exploited twice already by Capote's In Cold Blood and Richard Brooks's magnificent film treatment of the same) and mythologized. It's as Americana as Grant Wood, marking this tiny Kansas landscape with the same brush as Ed Gein's Wisconsin–and making Capote sexy in a ghoulish way when it fails to be sexy in a revelatory way.

Crash (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 10, 2005Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito
screenplay by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
directed by Paul Haggis

Crash2005cap

by Walter Chaw In peeking under the satin-slick bedclothes of the latest crop of high-falutin' liberal diatribes tarted-up with matinee idols and compromised ideals, one finds that whatever the trappings of sophistication, we're still making Stanley Kramer movies, all of grand speeches and peachy endings. Seems to me the common denominator among the Interpreters and Constant Gardeners and Lord of Wars is a good unhealthy dollop of white man's guilt, that could-be beneficial malady that afflicts the affluent and socially well-established once in a while so they'll pay lip service to Africa, and race, and class. (Just as long as it has nothing to do with actual activism.) They're issues considered phantom offices at which to give and then leave with a sense of closure at best or, at the least, a feeling that all the tempests in the world are fit for a teacup you can put away somewhere in a mental cupboard. Race as a fable, Africa as a fantasy–and the last reel interested in beautiful, rich white people falling in love; I think about Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels and a couple of challenges presented therein to white, privileged, "morbid rich" filmmaker Sully, played by Joel McCrea: "What do you know about trouble?" and, later, "I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir." To which Sully responds: "Who's caricaturing?"

Oliver Twist (2005) + Kings & Queen (2004)

October 5, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Czech Republic, Drama, Esoterica, France, Romance, Theatrical, UK

OLIVER TWIST
**/****
starring Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Leanne Rowe, Mark Strong
screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Roman Polanski

Rois et reine
***½/****
starring Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Maurice Garrel
screenplay by Roger Bohbot, Arnaud Desplechin
directed by Arnaud Desplechin

by Walter Chaw Roman Polanski is an architectural director. By that I mean he moves his camera in careful, constructed motions, and the characters he places within these movements are best when they seem restrained by them, oppressed by the presence of the director in a way similar to Hitchcock’s protagonists. Indeed, Polanski at his best (Repulsion, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown) makes films that Hitchcock might have made: alight with social revulsion, weighted by claustrophobic set-pieces, and thick with subtext. But Polanski at his worst (Bitter Moon, The Ninth Gate, Frantic, Pirates, Tess) betrays a tendency towards the frenetic–an unbecoming manic energy that leans towards the childish instead of what I think is the intended demoniacal. Polanski close to the vest is Polanski at his best, and when midway through something tending towards mediocre like The Pianist, he erected a literal wall within which to restrain his antihero (tellingly, the best Polanski protagonists are acted-upon)–that architectural boundary allowing the director to regain his footing, if only for the last part of the film.

TIFF ’05: Dear Wendy

September 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Romance, TIFF, UK
*½/****starring Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordonscreenplay by Lars von Trierdirected by Thomas Vinterberg by Bill Chambers It's a classic catch-22: Dear Wendy reveals that Jamie Bell was born to play Billy the Kid, but it probably also squanders his chances of doing so. As Dick, the orphaned son of a miner, Bell dons Michael J. Fox's effeminate cowboy duds from Back to the Future Part III and transforms the town's social lepers into a gang of gun fetishists known collectively as the Dandies; director Thomas Vinterberg and screenwriter Lars von Trier give us the gay burlesque version…

The Sting (1973) [Legacy Series] – DVD

September 22, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image B Sound B (DD)/B+ (DTS) Extras B
starring Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning
screenplay by David S. Ward
directed by George Roy Hill

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Sting has hung on tenaciously despite widespread critical neglect. Though it was rapturously received in 1973 (copping seven Oscars in the process), subsequent generations of critics haven't really had the inclination to go over it like a murder scene for clues to its brilliance. It's the Neil Simon version of vintage crime: well-written in a pejorative sense, it thinks every thought through for you instead of allowing you to participate in the experience. There's a place for this kind of movie, but a slight disappointment is almost unavoidable–all these talented people could surely have done something more with the milieu than refurbish Scott Joplin with Marvin Hamlisch arrangements.

Into the Blue (2005)

September 16, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Scott Caan, Ashley Scott
screenplay by Matt Johnson
directed by John Stockwell

Intotheblueby Walter Chaw Although it's impossible to discern the purpose of a movie like this, you find yourself ironically spending all of Into the Blue trying to do just that. Shot in a leering, dirty-old-man disgusting way by John Stockwell (a filmmaker I've liked in the past, though this one causes me to reassess what's going on in my head), the film places your subjective-camera eye upwards between the ankles of one bathing beauty after another, tracking slowly up and down their swimsuit-model bods and fixing, occasionally and briefly, on a perfunctory thriller plot that arises from nothing, goes nowhere, and makes no impact whatsoever on the parade of cakes. (Both beef and cheese.) It's an exploitation flick in the basest sense of the term, because the poor idiots onscreen most likely believe they've been hired for some sort of talent imperceptible to the rest of us (and with no evidence showing itself for the balance of their careers up to this point) as opposed to for how great they look holding their breath and having a camera positioned three feet from their stern. It's not that I'm complaining about having to stare at Jessica Alba's almost-unclad ass for two extraordinarily long hours–I'm complaining about Alba protesting that she's always cast in films for her acting prowess and not for how she looks almost-naked. I don't know if it's false modesty or willful ignorance, but either way: you gotta be kidding me.

TIFF ’05: Where the Truth Lies

September 13, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Directors: Atom Egoyan, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF, UK
*½/****starring Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, Rachel Blanchardscreenplay by Atom Egoyan, based on the novel by Rupert Holmesdirected by Atom Egoyan by Bill Chambers Canadian filmmakers tend to expose their limitations when they mimic American pop (see: the oeuvres of Jerry Ciccoritti and Mary Harron), and Atom Egoyan, who adapts his signature post-modernism to the Boogie Nights/Goodfellas paradigm in Where the Truth Lies, is no exception. Part of the problem is that it's almost impossible to empathize with journo Karen O'Connor's (Alison Lohman) attraction to the world of Lanny (Kevin Bacon, in what I'm tempted to call a career-best…

TIFF ’05: Capote

September 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Canada, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
**/****starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooperscreenplay by Dan Futterman, based on the novel by Gerald Clarkedirected by Bennett Miller Editor's note: I was so wrong about this film it's almost funny. It probably should've won Best Picture that year. by Bill Chambers Richard Brooks's masterful screen translation of Truman Capote's true-crime (Tru-crime?) novel In Cold Blood is full of indelible imagery that at first seems to seep into the fabric of Capote beyond director Bennett Miller's control. But as the homages--most notably, both pictures postpone the pivotal slaying of the ominously-named Clutter family until showing…

The Narrow Margin (1952) – DVD

September 5, 2005Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White, Don Beddoe
screenplay by Earl Felton
directed by Richard Fleischer

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Narrow Margin is the kind of minor classic that makes a few of the major ones look puny. Possessing a careful, Artful Dodger deviousness, the film pulls the rug out from under you before you even notice it was there–it refuses to waste time on speeches or showboating and simply gets down to the business of blowing your expectations right out of the water. It's also a strangely affirmative noir in its insistence on overturning surfaces to see the individual beneath the bluster, a testament to the cleverness and thoughtfulness of screenwriter Earl Felton. If Felton's efforts lean more towards chamber piece than grandiose masterwork, he's still clever enough to suck you in and unpretentious enough not to pat himself on the back for this triumph of art over budget.

Dillinger (1945) – DVD

September 5, 2005Posted in1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Biopic, Crime, DVD, Gangster

**/**** Image B Sound B- Commentary C+
starring Lawrence Tierney, Edmund Lowe, Anne Jeffreys, Eduardo Ciannelli
screenplay by Philip Yordan
directed by Max Nosseck

by Alex Jackson You have got to be shitting me. This is Lawrence Tierney? The guy who played Joe in Reservoir Dogs and Elaine’s dad on “Seinfeld”–that Lawrence Tierney? The Lawrence Tierney with whom modern audiences had come to be acquainted was a goat-munching ogre; in Reservoir Dogs Mr. Orange characterized him as the real-life Thing, and indeed the only way to describe late-period Tierney is as a superhuman being. Lawrence Tierney is to heavies as Marilyn Monroe is to bombshells and Casablanca is to the movies themselves–that is to say, a conglomerate of all that have ever existed. Like Marilyn Monroe and Casablanca, Tierney is essentially an impersonal and even rather cornball artificial construction, but along those same lines, he’s also a deeply iconic one. Caricature is, after all, a kissing cousin to archetype–and archetype is one of the essential ingredients of pure cinema.

Transporter 2 (2005)

September 2, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, France, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Kate Nauta
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Louis Leterrier

by Walter Chaw After the unqualified triumph of Unleashed, the other Luc Besson/Louis Leterrier flick from 2005, my expectations were sky high for Transporter 2, the sequel to Cory Yuen's fitfully-entertaining, unapologetically puerile throwback to the delirious Hong Kong cinema of John Woo and Ringo Lam. (Yuen returns as choreographer.) What a disappointment, then, that this picture's even weaker than its predecessor in terms of character development and plotting, content as it is to be a Jackie Chan ripper with Man on Fire's plot. What so intoxicated about Jackie Chan was this gathering cult of personality born of the man's reckless disregard for his own well-being in the pursuit of fashioning a body of work (individual scenes, not films–the films mostly suck) that for a while resurrected Buster Keaton in every movie theatre outside American soil. Without that sense of Chan's legacy (no one is "collecting" Jason Statham's groovy but inorganic fight scenes), all that's left is a vacuous, utterly-disposable chop-socky flick that pervs on girls with the same kind of childishness with which it pervs on cars. Telling that the MacGuffin of the piece is a hyper-phallic syringe and that the chief henchman is Lola (Katie Nauta), an Aryan Grace Jones with a fondness for lingerie and submachine guns.

The Blues Brothers (1980) [25th Anniversary Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

August 29, 2005Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Music, Musical, Road Movie

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway
screenplay by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis
directed by John Landis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Long before Quentin Tarantino would run a tear across the super soul sounds of the '70s, there was the strange case of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in the deadly "Blues Brothers" affair. Sitting somewhere at the low end of White Negro trickle-down, the Blues Brothers were two conspicuously white soul singers who made up for in enthusiasm what they lacked in talent–though their "Saturday Night Live" clowning conveniently omitted this bit of information, half-expecting us to take them seriously as they tumbled and caterwauled their way through various musical numbers. Where a true hipster would have meticulously re-created their favoured forms, Joliet Jake Blues (Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Aykroyd) had nothing but "heart" and "sincerity"–a nice way of saying they were rank amateurs doing primitive karaoke. They were compellingly frantic performers, but they weren't the blues and never would be.

Illegally Yours (1988) – DVD

August 23, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Rob Lowe, Colleen Camp, Kenneth Mars, Kim Myers
screenplay by M.A. Stewart & Max Dickens
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The '80s drove a lot of talented filmmakers to desperate lengths, but few sank to the levels of depravity that Peter Bogdanovich did with Illegally Yours. Like so many before him, the once-unstoppable cineaste was forced to rethink his auteurism along cheesy romantic-comedy lines; unlike so many before him, he chose to ignore the ugly implications of a disturbingly infantile screenplay, instead committing to a literal interpretation as tedious as it is unpleasant. Watching Rob Lowe pester a suffering woman on the flimsiest of pretexts isn't at all funny (it's like watching a stalker get rewarded for his predations), and as he's surrounded by some of the most irritating "hilarious" types ever to grace the screen, the only variation is in the switch from creepiness to frustrated annoyance.

The Transporter (2002) [Special Edition] – DVD|[Special Delivery Edition] – DVD

August 22, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, France, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras C
SDE DVD – Image B- Sound A+ Extras C
starring Jason Statham, Shu Qi, Francois Berleand, Matt Schulze
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Cory Yuen

by Walter Chaw That Cory Yuen's The Transporter is unapologetically misogynistic, badly plotted, and poorly acted isn't so much a criticism as a recognition that one of Jet Li's favourite Chinese directors has made a French film in many ways identical to the chop-socky/gun-fu flicks China was churning out throughout the eighties and into the nineties. Where the film fails is in its resemblance, ironically, to Yuen's own work on The Bodyguard from Beijing (and even the awful Women on the Run), and in its uncomfortable similarity to John Woo's Hong Kong output–a cribbing owed as much to Yuen as producer Luc Besson, who has made it something of a closet industry in his action films to borrow liberally from The Killer and Hard-Boiled (and, in this particular instance, A Better Tomorrow II). The Transporter is too slick and winking, then–a post-modern take on the "heroic bloodshed" genre that already had one foot in self-satire, with the other dancing in operatic melodrama. The foot shouldn't be keeping time with a techno beat; it should be tapping to a lonesome harmonica.

Weekend at Bernie’s (1989) – DVD

August 16, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kiser
screenplay by Robert Klane
directed by Ted Kotcheff

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Film comedy ceased to be the realm of the inventive and the stylish some time ago–about 30 years ago, to be precise, after wit and flair gave way to the Brightly-Lit Comedy (BLC). In order to domesticate the laffer, the architects of the BLC invented a lighting style that a) ensured that every stick of poorly-chosen furniture was impossible to miss, and b) destroyed the possibility of shadow play or other flourishes that might call attention to themselves. The BLC flooded the set with white light, banishing nuance and paving the way for stuff like Weekend at Bernie's–a black hole from which not even humour itself can escape.

Possessed (1947) – DVD

August 14, 2005Posted in1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks
screenplay by Silvia Richards and Ranald MacDougall, based on a story by Rita Weiman
directed by Curtis Bernhardt

by Alex Jackson Although it’s both talky and obvious (problems, I think, that have always threatened the noir genre), Possessed is propelled by a brilliant prologue and achieves momentum through an abundance of positively electric individual moments. Possessed is not strong enough to initiate any new addictions or produce any new highs, but it’s enough to qualify as a fix for the existing addict of cinema. After watching it, I felt that I could go on and face another day.

Target (1985) – DVD

August 3, 2005Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image D+ Sound D+
starring Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon, Gayle Hunnicutt, Josef Sommer
screenplay by Howard Berk and Don Petersen
directed by Arthur Penn

by Walter Chaw Of the myriad disappointments of Arthur Penn's atrocious Target, one of the smaller ones is the appalling score by Michael Small, who, in the Seventies, was doing very fine work on Penn films like Night Moves and Alan Pakula flicks like The Parallax View and Klute. His music for Target reminds of the incidental cues on "Scarecrow and Mrs. King". The rest runs the gamut from flat direction from one of the prime architects of the amazing cinema of the American '70s, an unspeakable screenplay by non-native speaker José Luis Navarro and some idiot named Don Petersen, a pair of squandered (if only mediocre) performances from the great Gene Hackman and the badly-miscast Matt Dillon, and a plot that's an unapologetic ripper of John Schlesinger's Marathon Man. It's such a bad film, in fact, that the only enjoyment to be had from the thing is through the cruel deconstruction of its gaping implausibility. If Target finally provides a few chuckles, it does so at the expense of one of the United States' genuinely important actors (Hackman, natch) and directors.