City by the Sea (2002)

September 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Robert De Niro, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Frances McDormand, James Franco, Eliza Dushku
screenplay by Ken Hixon, based on an article by Michael McAlary
directed by Michael Caton-Jones

by Walter Chaw Leaden with mock gravitas and embarrassing aspirations to the Shakespearean, Michael Caton-Jones’s aggressively uninteresting City by the Sea is a purported true story (based on an article by Michael McAlary) that proves to be just another by-the-numbers police procedural crunched with an abortive middle-age romance and a stultifying Oedipal complication. Opening with archive newsreel footage of Long Beach as a place of fun and hope before juxtaposing the burnt-out crack-house dead wonderland of the Long Beach of just a couple of years ago (a conceit carried out with far more grace in Stacy Peralta’s Dogtown and Z-Boys), the picture quickly reveals itself to be infatuated with a certain kind of dramatic irony in which the stock characters are unaware that they are clumsy allegorical pawns in a metaphorical landscape.

TIFF ’02: The Good Thief

September 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Ireland, Romance, Thriller, TIFF, UK
***/****starring Nick Nolte, Tcheky Karyo, Said Taghmaoui, Nutsa Kukhianidzewritten and directed by Neil Jordan by Bill Chambers A loose remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur (director Neil Jordan seems to have cast Tcheky Karyo for the way "Bob le flambeur" rolls off his tongue), The Good Thief is a minor-ish work from Jordan that benefits mightily, as most movies would, from Chris Menges's cinematography. Nolte inherits Roger Duchesne's role as Bob Montagne, an expert gambler and larcenist who in this film is hooked on heroin out of what appears to be sheer boredom. (A hilarious scene finds him stumbling…

TIFF ’02: Ararat

September 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Directors: Atom Egoyan, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF, War
**/****starring David Alpay, Charles Aznavour, Eric Bogosian, Brent Carverwritten and directed by Atom Egoyan by Bill Chambers Shuffling the picture's sequences like a deck of cards, Atom Egoyan's signature postmodernism smacks of a diversionary tactic this time in Ararat. A film about the Armenian Genocide was Egoyan's dream project, yet he maintains an intellectual distance throughout, transparently terrified of the ostensible subject matter. Drawing from his well-stocked stable of actors while tossing a few fresh faces into the mix, Egoyan casts wife Arsinée Khanjian as an art history critic named Ani, newcomer David Alpay as her son, Raffi, bombshell Marie-Josée…

The Cat’s Meow (2002) – DVD

September 4, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Kirsten Dunst, Edward Herrmann, Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes
screenplay by Steven Peros, based on his play
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

by Walter Chaw The Cat’s Meow is an impossibly distant snapshot of The Roaring Twenties and the mysterious death of movie mogul Thomas Ince, possibly the victim of sinister shenanigans aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht “Oneida” in November of 1924. Orson Welles groupie/scholar Peter Bogdanovich took a long time to do it, but he’s finally provided his own broadside at publishing giant William Randolph Hearst by restoring a subplot naturally elided from Citizen Kane.

TIFF ’02 Raising Victor Vargas

September 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coming of Age, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Romance, Teen, TIFF
***½/****starring Victor Rasuk, Judy Marte, Melonie Diaz, Altagracia Guzmanwritten and directed by Peter Sollett by Bill Chambers The remarkable Raising Victor Vargas (formerly Long Way Home) stars soon-to-be somebody Victor Rasuk as the titular Victor, a 17-year-old raising the ire of his strict abuela (Altagracia Guzman) during the long, hot New York summer by virtue of having outgrown her idle threats. As the film opens, Victor asks out the beautiful Judy (Judy Marte) at a public pool in a pre-emptive bid to salvage his reputation for getting it on with a neighbourhood lass nicknamed "Fat Donna." When Judy shoots him…

TIFF ’02: L’Idole

August 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Japan, Romance, TIFF
The Idol**½/****starring Leelee Sobieski, James Hong, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Jalil Lespertscreenplay by Gérard Brach, Samantha Lang, based on the novel À l'heure dite by Michelle Tourneurdirected by Samantha Lang by Bill Chambers I'm largely indifferent to L' Idole, a Gallic production directed by an Australian and co-starring two Americans of different ethnicities who admirably perform their parts in French. Leelee Sobieski's task is made more difficult by the role's requirement of her to deliver foreign-language dialogue in a tertiary accent, as the native New Yorker plays an Australian touring France with a theatre company. (I'm not enough of a linguist to…

Frailty (2002) – DVD

August 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

***½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe, Matthew O’Leary
screenplay by Brent Hanley
directed by Bill Paxton

by Walter Chaw Dad (Bill Paxton) gets lists of demons from God. He has also provided Dad with three weapons with which to dispatch said demons: a pair of work gloves, a length of pipe, and an axe named “Otis.” Oldest boy Fenton (Matthew O’Leary) and his little brother Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) are left to decide whether Dad is indeed touched by divine hand or just another redneck serial killer in a white van.

Near Dark (1987) – DVD (THX)

August 26, 2002Posted in****/****, 1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Romance, Thriller, Vampire

****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton
screenplay by Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red
directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Mustownby Walter Chaw There is an element of the delirious in Kathryn Bigelow’s superb, genre-bending nomadic vampire fable Near Dark–an element of the hopelessly erotic, the melancholic, the breathless. Like the best vampire myths, it recognizes that the root of the monster lies in sexual consumption and addiction, in the interplay between nostalgia for the freedom of youth and the pricklier remembrance of the confused fever dreams of adolescence. (Hence the recurrence in modern myth of a Methuselah beast trapped in the soft body of a child.)

High Crimes (2002) – DVD

August 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, James Caviezel, Adam Scott
screenplay by Yuri Zeltser & Cary Bickley, based on the novel by Joseph Finder
directed by Carl Franklin

by Walter Chaw Its title too easy a condemnation of the film itself, the otherwise-talented Carl Franklin’s High Crimes is a sickly, by-the-numbers member of a proud lineage of films that includes such abortive boondoggles as The Presidio, A Few Good Men, The General’s Daughter, True Crime, and eventually What Lies Beneath. It begs the question of whether Morgan Freeman, unquestionably the American actor with the most commanding presence and charisma, will ever get a film that’s truly worthy of him–and whether professional punching-bag Ashley Judd will meekly get the stuffing knocked out of her in the upcoming Catwoman as well. It confirms that Jim Caviezel should consider either a cup of coffee or a different career, that Amanda Peet was probably born sucking on a lollipop and wearing Daisy Dukes, and that after having seen some variation on High Crimes for the umpteenth uncountable time, I have grown, unquestionably, very weary of it.

Little Secrets (2002)

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

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

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

24 Hour Party People (2002)

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

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

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

Strictly Sinatra (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

August 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, UK

Cocozza’s Way
**½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Ian Hart, Kelly Macdonald, Brian Cox, Alun Armstrong
written and directed by Peter Capaldi

by Walter Chaw A smalltime flick in which a smalltime crooner accidentally becomes a smalltime hood, hyphenate Peter Capaldi’s sophomore feature Strictly Sinatra (a.k.a. Cocozza’s Way) is an enjoyable crime romance about a longtime loser with a bottom-shelf whiskey voice who falls for cigarette-girl Irene (Kelly Macdonald). A rendering of “In the Ghetto” leads to a bought drink to a favour paid to crime boss Chisolm (Brian Cox), followed fast by the slow sneaking realization that our little Toni Cocozza (Ian Hart) has been drawn into a spider’s den of organized crime.

Wild in the Country (1961) + The Razor’s Edge (1984) – DVDs

August 18, 2002Posted in1960s, 1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Romance, UK, War

WILD IN THE COUNTRY
***/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Elvis Presley, Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, Millie Perkins
screenplay by Clifford Odets, based on the novel by J.R. Salamanca
directed by Philip Dunne

THE RAZOR’S EDGE
***/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Bill Murray, Theresa Russell, Catherine Hicks, Denholm Elliot
screenplay by John Byrum & Bill Murray, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham
directed by John Byrum

by Bill Chambers It occurs to me that many of the most ungainly movies about love–and in the end, most movies are (about love, that is)–have gotten it right for their very awkwardness as cinematic constructs. This week, in the August funk that used to correspond with the encroaching schoolyear but is now some vague collegiate-nostalgia trip, I shook the salt of Wild in the Country, The Razor’s Edge, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful (the latter two to be covered in a separate piece) on my reopened wounds and came away impressed not by the art of these films, but by their emotional complexity. What you see in all four of these pictures that you perhaps don’t often enough is that money tends to govern attraction.

We Were Soldiers (2002) – DVD

August 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Germany, War

***/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras B
starring Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Sam Elliott, Greg Kinnear
screenplay by Randall Wallace, based on the memoir We Were Soldiers Once…and Young : Ia Drang–The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam by Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway
directed by Randall Wallace

by Walter Chaw We Were Soldiers is a rousing war epic presented as the world’s most gruesome underdog sports intrigue, its carnage–fuelled by a brilliant attention to the decisions made in the heat of battle by a genius-level military mind–at once exploitive and orgasmic in its cathartic effectiveness. Concerning the bloodiest confrontation between the United States and North Vietnam, which took place in the infancy (November 14, 1965) of the doomed police action at LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, the memoir of the battle We Were Soldiers Once…and Young (by battlefield commander Lt. Col. Hal Moore with war journalist Joseph Galloway) finds its way to the screen with Mel Gibson as Moore and his Braveheart scribe Randall Wallace at the typewriter and behind the camera.

Possession (2002)

August 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle
screenplay by David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones and Neil LaBute, based on the novel by A.S. Byatt
directed by Neil LaBute

by Walter Chaw There’s the seed of an interesting idea in Neil LaBute’s Possession–something traceable to A.S. Byatt’s melodramatic novel of the same name: the film’s one clumsily extended trope that it is about keepsakes and the desire for memento mori and memento amor as it manifests amongst intellectuals. That this seed never germinates, limping along before being crushed beyond recognition by an unforgivable grave-robbing sequence is due to LaBute’s icy disconnection (badly misplaced here) and the horrific realization that Possession is two stultifying formulas vying for screentime.

Happy Times (2000)

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

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

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

Jacked Up (2001) – DVD

August 14, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

Jacked
**½/**** Image C Sound B Extras C
starring Ron Beaco Lee, Bizzy Bone, Alexis Fields, Anna Maria Horsford
written and directed by Timothy Wayne Folsome

by Walter Chaw Courageous and extremely well performed, Timothy Wayne Folsome’s zero-budget Jacked Up demonstrates a rare and surprising willingness to explore the moral consequences of a moment’s rash misadventure on victim and family alike. It is, in that sense, as unusual and compelling as Roger Michell’s brilliant Changing Lanes, even if the route that it takes to get to its revelations are circuitous at best and overly familiar at worst. Jacked Up is a showcase for a young filmmaker’s potential (otherwise missing from Folsome’s debut of a couple of years ago, An Uninvited Guest), but it also exposes Folsome as a bad visual stylist and a limited scenarist who depends too much upon the path most travelled. Good thing there are lots of flowers of interesting bouquet to sniff along the way.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) [Ten Years – Special Edition] – DVD

August 14, 2002Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A+
starring Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

by Bill Chambers

"They were perfect strangers, assembled to pull off the perfect crime. Then their simple robbery explodes into a bloody ambush, and the ruthless killers realize one of them is a police informer. But which one?"
–DVD liner summary for Reservoir Dogs

I came around to being a fan of Reservoir Dogs after Quentin Tarantino's standing had crested and the backlash was kicking in. It's impossible for me to see now why I didn't take to it initially–solid flick, as they say. Stylish, knowing, but not necessarily pretentious. Well-performed. And moving, in its macho way: Let us not forget that Reservoir Dogs ends in tears and an embrace.

The Business of Strangers (2001) – DVD

August 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, DVD, Film Festivals, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Stockard Channing, Julia Stiles, Frederick Weller
written and directed by Patrick Stettner

by Walter Chaw Julie (Stockard Channing) is a hardened businesswoman on a lecture trip who becomes certain that her last day on the job draws nigh. When young Paula (Julia Stiles) arrives to a presentation late, Julie unleashes all her fears and frustrations on the hapless girl. Written with an ear for dialogue and a wicked edge, Julie’s enthusiastic upbraiding of Paula sets the stage for three elements that drive The Business of Strangers to its conclusion. The first is the discomfort arising from Julie and Paula being stuck in the same hotel overnight due to grounded flights, the second is a possible explanation of the antagonism between the pair that culminates in a disturbingly open-ended finale, and the final is the idea that in Stettner’s interpersonal corporate nightmare, fear is the mechanism that catalyzes the characters towards generosity, friendship, and cruelty.

Dahmer (2002)

August 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Drama, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Jeremy Renner, Bruce Davison, Artel Kayaru, Matt Newton
written and directed by David Jacobson

by Walter Chaw Well-acted but without a point-of-view, hyphenate David Jacobson’s sophomore feature Dahmer is less biopic than Arthouse Exploitation Lite, a curiously uninvolving glimpse into the banal life and times of a serial murderer. Rather than portray the stalking and vivisection of man as grotesquely vapid (like its more successful brothers Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or The Untold Story), Dahmer chooses that same all-too-familiar docudrama frankness to illustrate a sick man’s loneliness and inability to make a true connection with another human being. It’s not attempting to humanize Dahmer so much as it’s attempting to elevate Dahmer to the level of great post-modern anti-hero: unromantic, unexceptional, and unmoored, utterly, from moral responsibility–Beavis playing frog baseball with a holy trinity of representative pretty-boy victims. Even its end title card, reporting (we infer “mournfully”) that the titular bogey was murdered just two years into his 1,070-year sentence by a fellow inmate, seems intended as an epitaph for a misunderstood prophet rather than a declaration of karma asserting itself, penitentiary-style.