Crime Archives - Page 22 of 35 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Little Caesar (1931) – DVD

August 2, 20051930s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Romance

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Glenda Farrell, William Collier, Jr.
screenplay by Francis Edwards Faragoh, based on the novel by W.R. Burnett
directed by Mervyn LeRoy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover At first glance, Little Caesar doesn’t appear to have too much going for it. Its dramatics are primitive, its style is unremarkable and hobbled by early sound limitations, and its supporting cast plays things so broadly as to strain credulity. But none of this matters. The incomparable Edward G. Robinson renders glorious the immorality of gangster Caesar Enrico Bandello, and his cruel, conceited portrayal is cinema enough for this critic. The shortish, nasal actor would seem the unlikeliest subject for demimonde glamour if that weren’t exactly the point: he’s every brutal schemer with nothing going for him but drive and a lack of scruples–and his terrible triumph is twisted inspiration for everyone else on the outside looking in. Robinson flaunts his lack of matinee grace, opening your eyes to the joy of beating the system.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005); Hustle & Flow (2005); Last Days (2005)

July 21, 2005****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Gus Van Sant, Drama, France, Music, Theatrical, Thriller

De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté
***/****
starring Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccaï, Gilles Cohen
screenplay by Jacques Audiard, Tonino Benacquista, based on the screenplay for Fingers by James Toback
directed by Jacques Audiard

HUSTLE & FLOW
*/****
starring Terrence Howard, Anthony Anderson, Taryn Manning, Taraji P. Henson
written and directed by Craig Brewer

LAST DAYS
****/****
starring Michael Pitt, Lukas Haas, Asia Argento, Scott Green
written and directed by Gus Van Sant

by Walter Chaw On my better days, I still think of film as the quintessential artform of the last century–a medium for expression uniquely suited to our Modernist Yeatsian decomposition, what with its malleability beneath the knife, as it were, cut and spliced back together again as the un-spooling literalization of some patchwork Prometheus. Likewise, in its 24 flickers a second, it's an illusion of life, teased from the amber of still photography, drawing, painting; mixed with symphonies; blended with dance and movement; enslaved to the syncopation of words and imaginary drum beats. It's a miracle, a golem, capable of illuminating the rawest humanity in one stroke and of exhuming the most abject failure of human impulse in the very next. Its tractability is astonishing–protean, not too much to say magical; in describing his first film experience as a visit to "the kingdom of shadows," Maxim Gorky brushes up against the ineffable sublimity of a medium that mimics the eye, stimulates the ear, and has as one of the key elements of its academic study a concept that suggests the moment a viewer finds himself "sutured" into the text. Like all fine art, then, when it's right, its "rightness" is indescribable–Frank Zappa's "dancing about architecture." And like the stratification of art imposed by some in varying orders to describe the proximity of each to the inexpressibility of their souls (prose to dance to painting to poesy to music, for me), when film aspires to combine the more abstract elements of human expression in its mélange, the results, always mixed, at least have the potential to be grand.

Hustle (1975) – DVD

July 20, 20051970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Burt Reynolds, Catherine Deneuve, Ben Johnson, Paul Winfield
screenplay by Steve Shagan
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In 1955, Robert Aldrich directed Kiss Me Deadly. Ending in a fiery conflagration that suggested the end of civilization, its chief selling point was the chance to watch a bunch of degenerates lose their last shred of decency. And because it transgressed norms that would not be fully shattered until a decade-plus later, it had a nasty kick that was hard to shake. Flash forward twenty years to 1975, and the director is in a bit of a bind: with norms everywhere falling like a stripper's pasties, it's clear that civilization has, indeed, come to an end–not with the bang of Kiss Me Deadly, but with the whimper of Hustle, a film that flaunts its creep credentials with such pathetic stridency that you can't even raise the enthusiasm to take offense. You're merely bored with a director whose raison d'être had been rendered obsolete.

Paparazzi (2004) – DVD

June 30, 20052000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Cole Hauser, Robin Tunney, Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore
screenplay by Forrest Smith
directed by Paul Abascal

by Walter Chaw Loathsome doesn't begin to describe it. How about "toxic"? View Paparazzi and producer Mel Gibson's own The Passion of the Christ together for a better perspective on where Gibson's coming from these days. Better, view the two together for some insight into the way that martyr complexes sometimes metastasize into a belief that feelings of rage and vengeance are justifiable responses to the indignities of a world whose sole focus is to torture the privileged with wealth, adoration, and extraordinarily high levels of creature comfort. Paparazzi are no angels, what with the recent spate of highly-publicized incidents culminating in the accusation that one of the adorable little shutterbugs slammed his car into Lindsay Lohan's in order for his compatriots to snap a few shots of the starlet vehicle-free. But rather than deal in a serious fashion with the toll the paparazzi take on any individual's right to a certain measure of personal space and safety, Paparazzi chooses to offer an unironic manifesto that forgives the vigilante-style abuse of Gibson's very own personal Sanhedrin. The film is suspect from the trailers, and its horrific morality grows more noxious with prolonged exposure.

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

June 15, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Music

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Terrence Howard, Joy Bryant, Bill Duke
screenplay by Terence Winter
directed by Jim Sheridan

by Walter Chaw Another in the recent cycle of slick biopics overseen in whole or part by either the subjects themselves or relatives of the same, Jim Sheridan's Get Rich or Die Tryin', the peculiarly flaccid hagiography of two-bit rapper 50 Cent, is an overlong, overly-familiar, wholly sentimental look at a nobody who became a somebody primarily known for getting shot a few times. It's a companion piece of sorts to the also-white-guy-directed Hustle & Flow, a means through which the majority culture tries to reconfigure the minority culture into comfortable terms (minstrel/criminal) that are so entrenched they've been assimilated by the offended. Assimilated to the point, in fact, that it's hard to know if these images, words, and messages are even offensive anymore. Bill Cosby has taken a lot of heat over the past couple of years for his comments about African-American culture losing its mind, but, shocker, he's right. For that matter, arguably no one in popular culture has earned the right to speak out about blacks in the American mainstream more than Cosby.

Batman Begins (2005)

June 15, 2005****/****, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Christopher Nolan, Drama, Superhero, Theatrical, UK

****/****
starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes
screenplay by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer
directed by Christopher Nolan

by Walter Chaw It's perhaps only right that in a year that has seen Robert Rodriguez present a scary-faithful adaptation of Frank Miller's Sin City, Christopher Nolan should re-envision (and revitalize) the Batman film franchise with a picture, Batman Begins, that at last captures the pitch blackness of Miller's seminal graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (itself a re-envisioning and revitalization of Batman for its time). Batman Begins is to Tim Burton's Batman films as Burton's films are to Adam West's camp-classic television series, so drastically have Nolan and co-scriptor David S. Goyer de-fabulized the mythology. Compare, for starters, a sequence in the 1989 film where Batman shines a little penlight in the eyes of an over-curious lady-fair while chauffeuring her in the Batmobile to the modern iteration in which Batman trashes the Gotham police force en route to getting a young lady an antidote to a concentrated militarized hallucinogen that, unchecked, could inspire her to rip her own face off.

The Reivers (1969) + Tom Horn (1980) – DVDs

June 14, 20051960s, 1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Western

THE REIVERS
*½/**** Image A Sound B
starring Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Will Geer, Michael Constantine
screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., based on the novel by William Faulkner
directed by Mark Rydell

TOM HORN
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Steve McQueen, Linda Evans, Richard Farnsworth, Billy Green Bush
screenplay by Thomas McGuane and Bud Shrake
directed by William Wiard

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The oldest, most tired story to beguile the male artist is the Moment at Which Innocence is Irretrievably Lost. Most writers try their hand at it at some point, and I really wish they wouldn't: it suggests they'd rather be stupidly oblivious to not just the pains but also the rewards of adulthood. It's a boring default trauma, but at least when William Faulkner did it (in The Reivers), it was a boring default trauma with genius digressions that occasionally distracted from the emptiness of the narrative line. Not so Mark Rydell's big-screen adaptation of The Reivers, from which all of Faulkner's background about the landscape and the history and his characters' desperate lives has been excised, leaving the innocence-losing adventures to hog the spotlight and make you wish you were watching something that aspired to dissipation for a change.

Electra Glide in Blue (1973) – DVD

June 13, 20051970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A-
starring Robert Blake, Billy "Green" Bush, Jeannine Riley, Elisha Cook
screenplay by Robert Boris
directed by James William Guercio

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a priceless scene in Albert Brooks's Lost in America where our white-collar hero David Howard (played by Brooks himself) has to deal with a motorcycle cop. About to be ticketed for a minor infraction, David informs his tormentor that he's living out the dream of Easy Rider in his Winnebago–whereupon the cop, incredibly, professes the same with regards to being a bike cop, and tears up the ticket. The joke is that a lumpy bourgeois in a camper and a policeman in anything can bend the rebellious ways of that film to their own establishment end, cancelling out both sides in a puff of semiotics. But what was a throwaway in Lost in America is the whole movie in Electra Glide in Blue, a film centred around motorcycle cops that owes a serious debt to Easy Rider while blowing its us-vs.-them dichotomy out of the water from the other side of the line.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965); The Thomas Crown Affair (1968); Junior Bonner (1972) [Western Legends] – DVDs

June 7, 20051960s, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller, Western

THE CINCINNATI KID
***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden
screenplay by Ring Lardner, Jr. and Terry Southern
directed by Norman Jewison

THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston
written by Alan R. Trustman
directed by Norman Jewison

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I imagine our American readers are astonished to learn that Norman Jewison is lionized in English Canada. Rest assured, it's not because we think his films are better than flimsy liberal mush (even if we pretend otherwise)–it's because for the longest time, he was the biggest fish in our cinematic pond. Until the rise of Cronenberg and his many disciples, Jewison was, expat or not, the highest-profile Canuck director in the game, and our nation's disbelief at his success has allowed him to seem more important than he actually is. Though he's good at nice-guy friendliness rendered with a modicum of craft, anything more ambitious comes off a little strained. Thus, his downplaying of the grim parts of The Cincinnati Kid makes the film a tolerable entertainment, while his self-consciously "creative" The Thomas Crown Affair wears out its welcome pretty fast.

The Longest Yard (1974) [Lockdown Edition] – DVD

May 27, 20051970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Prison, Sports

**½/**** Image B Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Ed Lauter, Mike Conrad
screenplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The more genteel segments of the viewing public will instantly have their tolerance level challenged by The Longest Yard. In the prologue, disgraced ex-quarterback Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) receives the third degree from the woman to whom he has become a disgruntled man-whore, only to respond by grabbing her by the face, lifting her off the floor, and tossing her on her ass. On the commentary track of Paramount's new DVD, the filmmakers express surprise at the cheers this scene got during test screenings, but as there's no other in-point but matinee idol Reynolds, there's really no other way to respond to it. And as the scuffle naturally leads to a car chase where he dumps her Maserati into the drink (serves you right, young missy thing), complete with attendant insouciance to the police, there's only one conclusion to draw: Burt Reynolds is one bad mofo.

The Longest Yard (2005) + Madagascar (2005)

May 27, 20052000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Family, Sports, Theatrical

THE LONGEST YARD
*½/****
starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, James Cromwell, Nelly
screenplay by Sheldon Turner, based on the screenplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn
directed by Peter Segal

MADAGASCAR
**/****
screenplay by Mark Burton & Billy Frolick and Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath
directed by Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath

by Walter Chaw Chris Rock seems like a smart dude. His stand-up is sharp and perceptive and his now-defunct pay-cable talk show broke some ice in the traditionally chilly national race conversation. So know that I say this respecting Rock’s abilities in certain areas: Chris Rock is not now, nor will he ever be, a viable presence in film. He has no charisma that translates to the silver screen, none of that “it” factor that draws the eye to him, and when he’s forced to follow a script, whether he’s written it or not, he sounds desperate and pinched, as though he were being pulled through a garden hose. He joins giants like Richard Pryor in that no matter what you thought of Stir Crazy, it’s a far cry from his seminal work on stage. That Chris Rock is now in two major motion pictures seeing release on the same day both bolsters the suspicion that Rock is a smart dude and provides two new examples of Rock not only not possessing that movie star quality, but also lacking the potential to be movie star material. With the inevitable success of these films, however (none of which will have anything to do with Rock), put your money on the man making a few more sad attempts at headlining a picture before Hollywood discovers what most of us already know.

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (2004) + The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) – DVDs

May 25, 20052000s, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Drama, DVD, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Romance, Shakespeare, Thriller, UK

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins
screenplay by Michael Radford, based on the play by William Shakespeare
directed by Michael Radford

THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson
screenplay by Niels Mueller & Kevin Kennedy
directed by Niels Mueller

by Walter Chaw As we comb through the continuing fallout of the Bush Jr. administration's first term, themes begin to assert themselves on our movie screens as clear as the words of prophets written on tenement halls. Colorized misogyny and race-baiting spectacles share time with protest pictures that are oftentimes more strident and dogmatic than the party line–it's the Eighties neo-Cleavers at war with postmodern B-pulpers, which many moons ago manifested themselves as one of the most fertile periods in the history of science-fiction and now resurface as part of a new wave of existential science-fiction. We're all about Blade Runner these days, deep into Philip K. Dick territory where memories and dreams are manipulated and franchised for you dirt-cheap. Images have become the jealous currency traded in the underground of a land where one sad breast was flashed in the middle of our annual orgy of violence, sex (sometimes incestual, lesbian sex as sold by primogenetic neocon Pete Coors–"And twins!"), and unrestrained plea for/rewarding of mass consumption. It was enough to send my beloved nation's vocal demographic of selectively pious idiots into paroxysms of…what? Outrage? Righteousness? I don't know. What I do know is that in the United States, it ain't the suggestion of sex, it's the actual, pale, flaccid appendage that feeds the sometimes-joyous result of sex that offends. Women need to be protected from showing the outsides of their bodies in the same way they need to be protected from having a say in what happens to the insides of their bodies in the same way they need to be prevented from reading, voting, or holding a job. When a society gets really frightened, see, we must protect people from themselves. Let's start at the girls and the darkies and work our way up.

Suspect Zero (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

May 23, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Carrie-Anne Moss, Harry J. Lennix
screenplay by Zak Penn and Billy Ray
directed by E. Elias Merhige

by Walter Chaw A metaphysical serial killer film, E. Elias Merhige's Suspect Zero is implications and shadows married to exploitation and shock: a queasy stew dredging the well of archetype that disturbs with the blasted nihilism of its vision. With its wastelands and its bloated, appallingly fertile cadavers reaching into their own wounds, it reminds of Merhige's own avant-garde silent film Begotten; and it reminds of Dario Argento's Deep Red, literally in the reveal of a wallpaper-palimpsest and figuratively in the intrusion of the supernatural into the mendacity of a crime story. This is the only kind of police procedural film possible after Se7en, one that doesn't go over the same theological ground but rather forges paths through more philological terrain–the serial killer genre as Thomas Harris tried to redefine it for the literary elite. Suspect Zero is smart and anxious.

Mindhunters (2005)

May 17, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Finland, Horror, Mystery, Netherlands, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring LL Cool J, Jonny Lee Miller, Kathryn Morris, Val Kilmer
screenplay by Wayne Kramer and Kevin Brodbin
directed by Renny Harlin

by Walter Chaw Based ever so loosely on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Renny Harlin’s latest disasterpiece finds the Finnish fool at the helm of a slasher-cum-“CSI” episode, oiled-up and ready to apply a dangerous level of nihilism in the pursuit of cheap thrills and bad splatter effects. In Mindhunters, a few of the FBI’s finest criminal profilers-in-training congregate for one last test under the Al-Pacino-in-The Recruit tutelage of crackpot Harris (Val Kilmer) at a remote military facility that’s home to a phantom cinema where The Third Man plays on an eternal loop.

Unleashed (2005)

May 13, 20052000s, Action, Crime, Drama, France, Martial Arts, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

a.k.a. Danny the Dog
***½/****
starring Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon
screenplay by Luc Besson, Jet Li & Steven Chasman
directed by Louis Leterrier

by Walter Chaw Though it was written by Luc Besson and directed by Besson protégé Louis Leterrier, Unleashed could slide into Walter Hill's portfolio with almost no tweaking. (A double-feature with Hill's Undisputed would make for indispensable viewing from the front lines of the culture wars.) Unleashed is interested in Hill's tent poles of social class and race, sprinkling in healthy doses of ugly machismo en route to what's best described as a virile noir fairy tale painted in shades of brown and green. Tight as a drum, the picture also reminds of an adult-themed anime–a science-fiction manga about a dog that learns to be a man under the tender ministrations of a kindly old piano tuner and his plucky schoolgirl daughter. Complicating Unleashed is its vision of a world in which white men are rich and corrupt, women (especially artists) are doomed to a life of prostitution, and a Chinese guy fitted with a dog collar shuffling meekly behind a white person is a sight that causes no head to turn. This world, of course, is the Hollywood mainstream.

Layer Cake (2004); 3-Iron (2004); Palindromes (2005)

May 12, 2005****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Japan, Romance, South Korea, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

LAYER CAKE
***/****
starring Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham, Michael Gambon
screenplay by J.J. Connolly, based on his novel
directed by Matthew Vaughn

3-IRON
****/****
starring Lee Seung-yeon, Jae Hee
written and directed by Kim Ki-duk

PALINDROMES
***½/****
starring Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Masur
written and directed by Todd Solondz

by Walter Chaw Producer Matthew Vaughn makes his directorial debut with the Brit underground gangster flick Layer Cake, and he does it with a sexy, cool savoir-faire that runs slick and smooth. It's softer than Jonathan Glazer's fabulously decadent Sexy Beast (most of that due, no doubt, to there being no baddie the equivalent of Ben Kingsley's Don Logan in Vaughn's film) and more coherent than Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1, but it slips snug into the same conversation. Now that Guy Ritchie's been gobbled whole by his very own vagina dentate, it stands to reason that Vaughn, Ritchie's producer on Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, would seek to fill the void left in the only U.K. pop genre with any sort of international currency all by his own self. Yet the product of Vaughn's hand isn't so much an imitation as it is a refinement: not better necessarily, but calmer–closer to the lounge lizard James Bond of the 1960s than to the feisty punk Michael Caine heisters from roughly the same period, though Layer Cake is infused, of course, with a healthy dose of nastiness and post-modern irony.

Criminal (2004) – DVD

May 4, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring John C. Reilly, Diego Luna, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Mullan
screenplay by Gregory Jacobs & Sam Lowry, based on the screenplay for Nueve reinas by Fabián Bielinsky
directed by Gregory Jacobs

by Walter Chaw As an assistant director, Gregory Jacobs has been involved in so many good projects (his resume includes Miller's Crossing, Hal Hartley's Amateur, and Steven Soderbergh's Solaris) that his directorial debut raises expectations. Too many, perhaps, as Criminal, an adaptation of Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky's Nine Queens, from just a couple of years ago, barely qualifies as something as cut-rate and devalued as one of those cookie-cutter, self-conscious, tedious David Mamet capers. It's badly miscast, with John C. Reilly in the lead as a well-travelled huckster on the prowl for that one Big Score that looms like El Dorado for the larcenous breed. (Reilly is fine as a cuckolded husband, nonplussed by a woman he doesn't deserve–not so fine as someone who lives by trip-hammer reflex and quicksilver wit.) And in place of the oil-derrick rhythms of a caper flick, there's something suspiciously like manners and formalism in Criminal–it's a jazz improvisation performed by robots and metered by a drum machine. All the elements are there, but there's no soul to it.

xXx: State of the Union (2005)

April 29, 20052000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Ice Cube, Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Peter Strauss
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
directed by Lee Tamahori

by Walter Chaw Just a total waste of life no matter how you slice it, xXx: State of the Union is cinema as penance. Forget the rosary–watch this colossal turdbath a couple of times and short of actually being responsible for it, you're instantly absolved of most any sin. The screenplay, by the suddenly-ubiquitous Simon Kinberg (also the scribe behind the upcoming X-Men 3, Fantastic Four, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith–let me go on record first saying that this film does not bode well), is a foul compost of flaccid catchphrases and boggle-eyed declarations, squeezed like old cheese between action sequences so poorly conceptualized and executed that not only is it impossible to ever tell for a moment what the hell's going on, but the film also actually reminded me in its over-processed way of outtakes from Tron. Ice Cube is awful, Samuel L. Jackson (who used to claim he would never work with a rapper) is awful, Scott Speedman is awful, Sunny Mabrey is awful–everyone is awful. Everything about xXx: State of the Union is awful, from its stupid prologue on some dairy farm to its stupid epilogue, in which another sequel is set up in as many words. It's possible to see the entire exercise as a postmodern smirk, but being aware that you're stupid doesn't always make you meta–sometimes it just means you're tragically self-aware and no less stupid.

The Manson Family: Unrated Version (2004) [2-Disc Special Edition] + 99 Women (1969) – DVDs

April 25, 20051960s, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Horror, Italy, Liechtenstein, Prison, Thriller, UK, West Germany

THE MANSON FAMILY
***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Marcello Games, Marc Pitman, Leslie Orr, Maureen Alisse
written and directed by Jim VanBebber

Der heiße Tod
**½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Maria Schell, Mercedes McCambridge, Maria Rohm, Rosalda Neri
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

by Walter Chaw Attempting exactly the same thing as Mel Gibson's bloodier and no less exploitive telling of a hippie religious leader whose teachings produced immediately sanguine results (with Gibson's martyr going on to establish what is possibly the bloodiest nation in the history of the planet), Jim VanBebber's laudably disquieting The Manson Family is distinguished by its self-awareness as a document of hate rather than one of hosanna on high. Fifteen years in the making, it demonstrates a commensurate level of passion in its creation, the same obsession with recreating the period in the mode of its predominant artform (static representation for the one, drive-in cinema for the other), culminating in an orgy of violence that's gotten a bad rap precisely because there's no prurient thrill to be gained from it. Close examination reveals, in fact, that the deeds of Manson's merry men and women aren't shown in as much detail as they could have been–the chief excision being the fate of Sharon Tate and her in utero baby. The madness of King VanBebber, then, seems to have a method: not to, like Gibson's blood-soaked reverie, revel in every minute detail of flayed viscera and spilled humours, but to recreate the uncomfortable viciousness of loose ideology set free in the schizophrenic fin de siècle sandwiched between free love and its Vietnam War bloodletting counterweight. The Manson Family is about how tragic is the loss of mind and life; The Passion of the Christ is about how tragic it is, for their sake, that the Jews and the Romans didn't know what a bad motherfucker they were messing with. Context is everything.

Normal Life (1996) – DVD

April 17, 20051990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Ashley Judd, Luke Perry, Bruce Young, Jim True
screenplay by Peg Haller & Bob Schneider
directed by John McNaughton

by Bill Chambers I might be apocryphally attributing this to Pauline Kael, but I’m fairly confident that it was she who said there’s no such thing as bad acting, only bad casting. When people hear that John McNaughton’s Normal Life stars Luke Perry and Ashley Judd, they tend to lose interest, but to quote another of my favourite critics, Alex Jackson, “a great performance incorporates and molds a persona. It deals with it. Their body, voice, and persona are inescapable facts [and] the greatness of a performance lies in nothing more [than] the acknowledgment of these facts.” It’s interesting that the contemporary actors most likely to be credited with soul-searching to find the emotional truths of a character–Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, even Mark Ruffalo–are heirs apparent to Lon Chaney, gradually transforming themselves from without. In the same piece quoted above, a review of Midnight Express published just prior to last year’s Academy Awards, Jackson says he values Christina Ricci’s work in Monster over that of her co-star Charlize Theron: Where Ricci plumbs the depths of her established screen persona, Theron’s aesthetically-assisted turn is so anomalous in terms of her career as to register as standoffish. “I suspect that it takes more courage to be an icon than an actor,” Jackson brilliantly surmises.