Kangaroo Jack (2003)

January 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Family, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jerry O’Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Christopher Walken
screenplay by Steve Bing & Scott Rosenberg
directed by David McNally

by Walter Chaw Irresponsible to the extreme, Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest production is sleazy, violent, and packed with the sort of feckless, hateful messages that indicate an almost total disregard for an audience’s intelligence. Kangaroo Jack is, therefore, business as usual for a Bruckheimer production, save for the fact that it’s aimed at a very young audience. The picture is a malignance: it’s bad (for a film about a CGI kangaroo wearing a red “Brooklyn” jacket stealing fifty grand of the mob’s money, that much goes without saying), but what really impresses about the picture is its magnificent inappropriateness.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

December 25, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Spielberg, Theatrical

****/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Jennifer Garner
screenplay by Jeff Nathanson, based on the book by Frank W. Abagnale and Stan Redding
directed by Steven Spielberg

Catchmeifyoucanby Walter Chaw There’s an old Ray Bradbury story from 1948 called “Touch and Go” (since reprinted as “The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl”) that tells the tale of a burglar who surprises the homeowner in his house and accidentally kills him. Erasing his fingerprints from a few surfaces, the burglar panics and starts wiping objects in rooms he hadn’t visited and items, such as the fruit at the bottom of a bowl, he could not have handled. When the police find him hours later, he’s in the attic polishing old silverware. Like Bradbury’s thief, Spielberg is getting away with murder in most of his films post-Close Encounters of the Third Kind (particularly A.I., Minority Report, Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun, and Saving Private Ryan) until self-doubt and paranoia consume him, seducing him to a fatal eleventh-hour appeal. Spielberg is the bad test-taker, changing his answers to damn his instincts.

Narc (2002)

December 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Ray Liotta, Jason Patric, Chi McBride, Busta Rhymes
written and directed by Joe Carnahan

Narcby Walter Chaw Anchored by a powerhouse performance from Ray Liotta, Joe Carnahan’s Narc is a police procedural buddy psychodrama that reminds a great deal of Sidney Lumet’s underappreciated Q&A. The first film mounted in part by Liotta’s new production company, the film is fond of the kind of fluid tracking shots popularized by Martin Scorsese (and Goodfellas, as it happens) and has a crackling ear for dialogue that sadly doesn’t translate into a gift for monologue. Still, there’s a rough intelligence and visceral edge to the film–hewn from its tough-talking vernacular and graphic violence–that feels great in an era where both sides of the ratings divide: PG and R, are hell-bent on edging into the grey PG-13 arena where mental adolescents and the easily-diverted play. Narc works largely because it’s a mature film for adults, smoothing over some of the rough spots where the film begins to lose itself in a labyrinth of flashbacks and surprise revelations.

Gangs of New York (2002)

December 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Martin Scorsese, Drama, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Jay Cocks and Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan
directed by Martin Scorsese

Gangsofnewyorkby Walter Chaw Beginning as Martin Scorsese’s Apocalypse Now, Gangs of New York, at the end of the auteur’s thirty-year dream of it, more resembles his Titanic. Buoyed on a tsunami of dark rumours of behind-the-scenes clashes (the line “Please don’t make that sound again, Harvey” registering as either a jab or a plea to Miramax head Harvey Weinstein), eleventh-hour cuts, and release delays pushing the film nearly a year from its projected release date, the picture is a booming, period-exact mess: disinteresting, unbalanced, and burdened by the weight of too much ambition blinding an artist to his celluloid offspring’s congenital, mortal defects–hubris redefined for the postmodern age. Though sprawling, it reduces to a series of vaguely connected dramatic snippets that largely fail to anchor the film to any specific place (the exception being a visually, viscerally arresting stream of coffins unloaded from ships ferrying the dead from the frontlines of the Civil War). It’s a malady exacerbated by the fact that the same five or six characters–played, with one stunning exception, as tepid variations on banal–seem to be everywhere in New York at all times.

‘R Xmas (2001) + Serpico (1973) – DVDs

December 7, 2002Posted in1970s, 2000s, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Sidney Lumet, Drama, DVD, France, Italy, Thriller

‘R XMAS
***/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Drea De Matteo, Lillo Brancato, Jr., Ice-T, Victor Argo
screenplay by Scott Pardo, Abel Ferrara
directed by Abel Ferrara

SERPICO
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Al Pacino, Jack Kehoe, John Randolph, Biff McGuire
screenplay by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler, based on the book by Peter Maas
directed by Sidney Lumet

by Bill Chambers Arriving on DVD within a week of each other, Abel Ferrara’s ‘R Xmas and Sidney Lumet’s Serpico share a preoccupation with the fate of dirty money. Minimum-wagers are seen as honourable by Lumet, with Detective Frank Serpico proudly leading the starving-artist’s life from behind a cop’s badge, while in Ferrara’s view, there are few such romantic distinctions to be made between the haves and have-nots. But the corrupting influence of money defines the people we’re dealing with in both films, which, although they illustrate rather contained moral dilemmas, share a somewhat epic ambition despite rarely stepping outside their respective milieux. Watched back-to-back, they’re like Traffic pulled in two.

Analyze That (2002)

December 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Robert De Niro, Theatrical

*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Joe Viterelli
screenplay by Peter Steinfeld and Harold Ramis and Peter Tolan
directed by Harold Ramis

Analyzethatby Walter Chaw The first mistake that directors make with actors who need to get brought up sharply against the reins now and again is that they sometimes request of them to feign that which they already are. Case in point is asking Robin Williams to be a gibbering velvet clown, asking Melanie Griffith to be a side of beef with a Betsy-Wetsy voice, and now asking Robert De Niro to feign mental illness and sociopathic tendencies. De Niro jumping on a table and singing selections from West Side Story isn’t one of those cinematic moments for the ages, but rather one of the more tragic examples of self-delusion and career torpor.

Vulgar (2002) – DVD

November 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Brian Christopher O’Halloran, Jerry Lewkowitz, Matthew Maher, Ethan Suplee
written and directed by Bryan Johnson

by Walter Chaw Beginning as Shakes the Clown and segueing into I Spit on Your Grave before finally settling on Death to Smoochy, the discordant, hideously unpleasant Vulgar is the kind of puerile vanity piece that gives exploitation and egotism bad names. Produced by Kevin Smith and seeking to be a creation mythology for Smith’s View Askew mascot (just another example of Smith overestimating the inherent interest in his cult of personality), the picture is the hyphenate debut for Smith crony Bryan Johnson, making Smith, along the way, just the next nepotistic “Happy Madison” pinhead king of diminished returns.

One Last Score (2002) + The Shipment (2002) – DVDs

November 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

If… Dog… Rabbit
*/**** Image C+ Sound C
starring Matthew Modine, John Hurt, Kevin O’Connor, David Keith
written and directed by Matthew Avery Modine

THE SHIPMENT
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C-
starring Matthew Modine, Elizabeth Berkley, Nick Turturro, Paul Rodriguez
screenplay by Rich Steen
directed by Alex Wright

by Walter Chaw Matthew Modine has made a career of acting the idiosyncratic man of action–that scattershot chortle masking some unusual skill and the kind of laconic intelligence that Eric Stoltz has utilized to far different effect. Peaking early as Pvt. Joker in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (and scoring a couple times before that in the deceptively interesting Vision Quest and Alan Parker’s moody war idyll Birdy), Modine has treaded water ever since in stuff like Cutthroat Island and Bye Bye Love while actually appearing as himself in a couple of films (Notting Hill, Bamboozled)–an indulgence that’s never a good sign, with very few exceptions, for an actor still serious about his career.

Film Freak Central Does San Franciso’s 2002 Dark Wave Film Festival

October 27, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Spain, Thriller, UK, Werewolf

Darkwavelogoby Walter Chaw The question, and it's a question with currency, is why anyone in their right mind would subject themselves (and their long-suffering editors) to coverage of two concurrent film festivals. A pair of answers: the obvious is that I'm not in my right mind, but as obvious is the fact that San Francisco's Dark Wave, which ran from October 18-20, is one of the most exciting "small" film festivals in the United States. I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about it, in other words–ulcers be damned. Presented by the hale San Francisco Film Society evenings and midnights at the historic Roxie, last year's presentation included one of this year's best films (Larry Fessenden's superb Wendigo) as well as the finest example of retro euro-horror (Lionel Delplanque's Deep in the Woods) since Dario Argento lost his marbles.

Desert Saints (2002) – DVD

October 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Romance, Thriller

**/**** Image C Sound C
starring Kiefer Sutherland, Melora Walters, Jamey Sheridan, Leslie Stefanson
screenplay by Rich Greenberg and Wally Nicols
directed by Rich Greenberg

by Walter Chaw Closer to Flashback than to Freeway, the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Desert Saints is actually closer to Montana than either: a neo-Tarantino erstwhile buddy road trip that pairs Donald's son with a flighty dingbat channelling Rosanna Arquette. Kiefer is Banks, a hired killer who hatches a plan with woman-on-the-lam Bennie (Melora Walters) to play house, check into the same (!) hotel south of the border to do his wicked business, and evade the pair of feds, Scanlon and Marbury (Jamey Sheridan and Leslie Stefanson), hot on his trail. Soul-searching and gut-spilling lead to the kind of sudden reversals that shift power from Banks to Bennie and back before ending in what can only be described as a confusion of trick endings telegraphed from the start. It's less delightful than I make it seem.

Heaven (2002)

October 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***½/****
starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Remo Girone, Stefania Rocca
screenplay by Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz
directed by Tom Tykwer

Heavenby Walter Chaw There is something of the alchemical when two disparate talents discover that their collaboration is inspired. It is an inkling of the excitement at the promise of A.I. with Kubrick’s misanthropy and Spielberg’s cult of childhood–or the pop-cultural satisfaction embedded in the narrative genius of Stephen King mixing easily with the stiff overwriting of Peter Straub. Heaven is the product of a screenplay by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski (and writing partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz) and surprisingly sedate direction by previously hyperactive wunderkind director Tom Tykwer. The result is another of Tykwer’s unpredictable romances blending with another of Kieslowski’s carefully metered, studiously non-didactic discussions of morality and consequence. The result of their union is often amazing.

Formula 51 (2001)

October 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

The 51st State
*/****
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Nigel Whitmey, Robert Jezek, Emily Mortimer
screenplay by Stel Pavlou
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw Called The 51st State abroad, Formula 51‘s more redneck-friendly-sounding retitling can be read as an astonishing commentary on the Ronny Yu film itself. Astonishing because it implies not only that the picture is self-aware, but also that it has actually somehow identified which formula it adheres to by number–something that strikes me as terribly useful in a shorthand way.

DIFF ’02: Come Drink with Me

October 14, 2002Posted in1960s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Hong Kong, Martial Arts
Da zui xia***½/****starring Cheng Pei-pei, Yueh Huascreenplay by Yang Yedirected by Hu King by Walter Chaw Directed by Hu King for the legendary Shaw Brothers, 1966's Come Drink with Me, presented at the DIFF in a 35mm print newly minted for this year's Cannes Film Festival, is one of the obvious headwaters for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, featuring the legendary Cheng Pei-pei (villain Jade Fox in Lee's picture) as swashbuckling Golden Swallow, sister to a kidnapped imperial official. Between this film and its sequel, Golden Swallow, Pei-pei established herself as a watershed action hero, while Hu's style, alternately…

Enough (2002) – DVD

October 12, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Revenge, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A
starring Jennifer Lopez, Bill Campbell, Tessa Allen, Juliette Lewis
screenplay by Nicholas Kazan
directed by Michael Apted

by Walter Chaw So try this one on for size: a woman wronged by a world of evil men recuperates, studiously fails to call the police (too many men on the police force–men=bad; we’ll be returning to this equation often), and finally tracks down her tormentors with the express purpose of murdering them. This not only describes Michael Apted’s Enough, but also Meir Zarchi’s infamous exploitation flick I Spit on Your Grave, the main difference between the two being that Enough tries very hard to hide the fact that it’s an ugly bit of repugnant vigilantism masquerading as a feminist uplift drama.

Knockaround Guys (2002)

October 11, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Andrew Davoli
written and directed by Brian Koppelman & David Levien

Knockaroundguysby Walter Chaw Counting on one’s desire to see a legendarily hammy actor–a pair of them in fact–unleashed without fetters onto the unsuspecting world with nary a warning, Knockaround Guys is a surprisingly likeable kitsch artifact that astounds for its casual pretension and dangerous level of cheese. The film has John Malkovich trying unsuccessfully to channel his Valmont through a Brooklyn-made Guido and Dennis Hopper still out of control in a role intended, I think, to be bookish. Gathering dust on the shelf for a year or so now, the picture is finding a release in the early-fall doldrums one presumes for the meteoric rise of Vin Diesel, but stealing the show, as he so often does, is veteran character actor Tom Noonan as a laconic, nowhere Montana sheriff.

DIFF ’02: The Weight of Water

October 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Thriller
*½/****starring Catherine McCormack, Sarah Polley, Sean Penn, Josh Lucasscreenplay by Alice Arlen and Christopher Kyle, based on the novel by Anita Shrevedirected by Kathryn Bigelow by Walter Chaw Sort of a "Crucible" of period repression and sexual hysteria tied uncomfortably to Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, Kathryn Bigelow's unreleased and maybe unreleasable The Weight of Water looks to parallel two distinct genres by mining the sexual tension in both. The problem with such a conceit is not its ambition--the picture's sort of admirable in a soggy, pretentious way--but rather the essential misunderstanding of the disparateness of the sources of that tension:…

DIFF ’02: Sweet Sixteen

October 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Germany, Spain, UK
***½/****starring Martin Compston, William Ruane, Annmarie Fulton, Michelle Abercrombyscreenplay by Paul Lavertydirected by Ken Loach by Walter Chaw Ken Loach returns to his blue-collar roots with the incendiary Sweet Sixteen, a fabulous evocation of place and the plight of the lower class in the mean streets of Glasgow. Supremely well-acted and marked by Loach's gift for an effortless transparency in setting and the performances he coaxes from inexperienced actors, the picture follows young Liam (Martin Compston) on the eve of his sixteenth birthday as he shuck-and-jives his way towards a better life for him and his soon-to-be-ex convict mother, Jean…

DIFF ’02: Home Room

October 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Teen
*/****starring Busy Philipps, Erika Christensen, Victor Garber, Raphael Sbargewritten and directed by Paul F. Ryan by Walter Chaw A standard good girl-meets-bad girl formula wrapped around a gloss on high-school shooting (our own perverse millennial take on the fin-de-siècle phenomenon), Home Room presents its vision of post-traumatic stress disorder with such hamhandedness that it threatens to spawn the same in the viewer. Essentially an Afterschool Special complete with pre-packaged messages about the evil of cigarettes, the secret pain of goth chicks, the importance of not taking the Lord's name in vain, and the crass stupidity of well-meaning cops and school administrators,…

Skins (2002)

September 27, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Eric Schweig, Graham Greene, Gary Farmer, Noah Watts
screenplay by Jennifer D. Lyne, based on the novel by Adrian C. Louis
directed by Chris Eyre

by Walter Chaw There is palpable desperation in Skins, director Chris Eyre’s broad follow-up to his well-received Smoke Signals, but that desperation is not so much a reflection of the plight of the film’s Native American characters as a result of Eyre’s yen to expose the tragedy of the Native American experience. Skins is far from an effective exposé of the calamity of the Ogallala Sioux–it founders badly as a pulpit-pounding vanity piece, playing its cards loose and proselytizing. A picture this badly written, transparently directed, and–save a pair of decent performances in its two main roles–dreadfully acted is a tune best received and appreciated by a very specific choir and likely no other. While a nearly all-Native American cast and crew is certainly a refreshing accomplishment, one is left to wonder if the picture needed to be so much specifically for an all-Native American audience–and a limited one at that. Skins, in other words, is a pretty good rant, but a pretty bad movie.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)

September 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Germany, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Roger R. Cross, Ray Park
screenplay by Peter M. Lenkov and Alan B. McElroy
directed by Kaos

Ballisticby Walter Chaw Walking away with the title of Most Incomprehensible Film of 2002 (walking away is also, incidentally, what you should do when presented with the prospect of seeing this film), Wych Kaosayananda’s ponderously branded Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever is a collection of puzzling explosions married to a series of alternately stunning and hilarious line deliveries of, to be fair, unspeakable exposition. It hopes to obscure its awfulness with its volume or, failing that, to dress up its stupidity with backlit shots of a woman communing with a captive manatee.