Kissing Jessica Stein (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Heather Juergensen, Tovah Feldshuh, Esther Wurmfeld
screenplay by Jennifer Westfeldt & Heather Juergensen
directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

by Walter Chaw New Yorker Jessica Stein, referred to at one point in Kissing Jessica Stein as the Jewish Sandra Dee, is looking for love in the brack of the late-twentysomething dating pool. This means that we’ll get a dating montage during which we sample the poor object choices available to the intrepid, sensitive, modern urban woman about town. A devout reader of Rilke (pegging her as both dreamy and pretentious, which also describes the film at hand), Jessica perks up when she hears a favourite passage quoted in a singles ad–only slightly tortured by the fact that the ad has been placed by another woman, Helen (Heather Juergensen). Helen runs a small art gallery, Jessica is an artist; Helen knows Rilke, Jennifer knows Rilke; and though Jennifer is almost pathologically incapable of falling headlong into lesbian sexuality, through the tender, Color Purple ministrations of Helen, she does come around in time.

TIFF ’02: Dolls

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, Japan, Romance, TIFF
***/****starring Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi, Chieko Matsubarawritten and directed by Takeshi Kitano by Bill Chambers The Yakuza doesn't rear its head until well into Dolls, a gripping, fractured ensemble piece written and directed by that down-and-dirty poet of Japanese cinema, Takeshi Kitano. I must confess to feeling ill-equipped to discuss the mechanics of the film--it's storytelling that gives you the impression of being steeped in oral tradition, and all I can say is that Dolls is accessible to monkey-brained North American viewers like myself all the same. Beginning with an elaborate puppet show shot with verve and affection,…

TIFF ’02: Femme Fatale

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF
**/****starring Antonio Banderas, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Peter Coyote, Gregg Henrywritten and directed by Brian De Palma by Bill Chambers Given the genre affiliation of its title and that it opens with a clip from Double Indemnity, Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale is unapologetically a film noir--which is not to say the picture has nothing to apologize for. Oh, for a pair of Armond White's De Palma goggles to beautify Femme Fatale, a flat, trés familiar, idly tongue-in-cheek caper starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in a role she's not dangerous enough to play, that of a bisexual American thief who switches places with her…

TIFF ’02: Assassination Tango

Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, Thriller, TIFF
**½/****starring Robert Duvall, Rubén Blades, Frank Gio, Katherine Micheaux Millerwritten and directed by Robert Duvall by Bill Chambers As dawdling and peculiar as Robert Duvall's previous directorial outing, The Apostle, Assassination Tango has many checks in its 'pro' column, not the least of which a lead performance from writer-director Duvall that finds common ground between his character's two modes: volatile sociopath and lovestruck romantic. Duvall plays John J., a ponytailed hitman sent to Buenos Aires on a high-stakes job for his potential to camouflage with the locals. Once settled in, he discovers he can't carry out his execution for another…

TIFF ’02: Punch-Drunk Love

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Romance, TIFF
***½/****starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzmánwritten and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson by Bill Chambers Punch-Drunk Love or, Un Redemption de Adam Sandler. Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film finds him at both his most experimental (dig those Scopitone interludes) and least windy--the tip-off is a running time of well under two hours. But first: Adam Sandler. When you hear Oscar buzz around a popular comedian, it generally means they've repressed everything that made them popular. (Jim Carrey in The Majestic, for example: Carrey may do a mean James Stewart impersonation, but he's no Jimmy himself.) Sandler…

TIFF ’02: Ken Park

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Netherlands, Teen, TIFF
***½/****starring Tiffany Limos, James Ransone, Stephen Jasso, James Bullardscreenplay by Harmony Korinedirected by Larry Clark & Ed Lachman by Bill Chambers Making Happiness look like Dumbo, Ken Park does not push the envelope--Ken Park runs the envelope through a paper shredder, douses it in lighter fluid, and sets it aflame. And then urinates on the ashes. The latest from Larry Clark, the film was co-directed by veteran cinematographer and frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator Ed Lachman, and if you're worried that this Zaphod Beeblebrox would result in the muting of Clark's voice, think again. If anything, we sense the pair playing…

TIFF ’02: Max

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, Hungary, TIFF, UK, War
***/****starring John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Leelee Sobieski, Molly Parkerwritten and directed by Menno Meyjes by Bill Chambers This portrait of an Angry Young Man posits Hitler as a starving artist. Living in squalor at an army outpost, feeling burned by the Treaty of Versailles, he befriends the fictional composite Max Rothman (John Cusack), the dashing, one-armed Jewish gentleman who runs the local art gallery--an abandoned warehouse with a leaky roof. (Working conditions are tough in postwar Munich, even for the upper class.) The result is an exercise in dramatic ironies, as well as the kind of thing you watch with…

TIFF ’02: Rabbit-Proof Fence

Posted in2000s, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
***/****starring Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, David Gulpililscreenplay by Christine Olsen, based on the book by Doris Pilkingtondirected by Phillip Noyce by Bill Chambers As much as I don't mind Phillip Noyce's Jack Ryan films, they failed to live up to the artistic promise held by Dead Calm, the claustrophobic Aussie thriller that brought both Noyce and star Nicole Kidman to the attention of U.S. audiences. After a decade or so of marginal filmmaking in Hollywood (and in the Hollywood style), Noyce has returned to his homeland--and reminds us that he can be a pretty effective filmmaker--with Rabbit-Proof Fence,…

TIFF ’02: Auto Focus

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Paul Schrader, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
**/****starring Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Belloscreenplay by Michael Gerbosi, based on The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmithdirected by Paul Schrader by Bill Chambers I find it curious that, in my experience, TIFF-goers keep mishearing or misspeaking Auto Focus as "Out of Focus," what with either title applying to some degree. The former speaks to the self-centredness of the movie's subject, "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane, the latter the shambles his life became, and aye, there's the rub: it's too easy to tie a bow on Auto Focus. Greg Kinnear is affable as Crane, who used…

TIFF ’02: Love Liza

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, TIFF
***½/****starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Jack Kehler, Sarah Koskoffscreenplay by Gordy Hoffmandirected by Todd Louiso by Bill Chambers Love Liza is a potent movie about compulsive behaviour I'm growing fonder of by the hour; the film rises above some hoary tropes to become almost peerlessly unsettling. As a new widower who can't bring himself to read his wife's suicide note, Philip Seymour Hoffman once again dissolves before our eyes into a sweaty, ticcy mess stuck between sleep and awake. But here, without the reprieves you get from his strange behaviour in the ensemble pieces the actor seems to favour (Boogie…

City by the Sea (2002)

Posted 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

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Ireland, Romance, Thriller, TIFF, UK
***/**** starring Nick Nolte, Tcheky Karyo, Said Taghmaoui, Nutsa Kukhianidze written 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…

TIFF ’02: Ararat

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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)

Posted 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

Posted 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)

Posted 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.