Bully (2001) – DVD

February 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Revenge, Teen, Thriller

(Oy, these early reviews. -Ed.)

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Michael Pitt
screenplay by Zachary Long & Roger Pullis, based on the book by Jim Schutze
directed by Larry Clark

by Bill Chambers An authority figure delivers the definitive line of dialogue of Bully, Larry Clark’s quasi-sequel to his own hotly-contested Kids: “I don’t know what you’re up to. I don’t think I want to know.” Well, Clark insists on letting us know. Often accused, even with only three motion pictures under his belt, of over-sensationalizing already sensational material, he’s hardly the next Oliver Stone. He may be something of an interfering observer, but he’s not a conspiracy proselytizer running with scissors down the hallway. Where Stone drew slave parallels to football in Any Given Sunday by intercutting clips from Ben-Hur, Clark makes more organic shock statements. He can be tactless, sure. Can’t we all?

John Q. (2002)

February 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, Kimberly Elise, Eddie Griffin
screenplay by James Kearns
directed by Nick Cassavetes

by Walter Chaw John Q’s (Denzel Washington) chosen nom de guerre is a tripartite signifier meant to evoke Kafka, Black Muslims, and the everyman (“John Q. Public”). It’s the kind of import-laden affectation that almost always indicates a screenwriter in over his head. It is, in other words, only the first hint that John Q. is going to be the kind of populist bullshit to which Oprah Winfrey will inevitably devote an hour of her terrifying television show. According to the film, though, anyone even approaching the big O’s income bracket is part of The Problem.

Crossroads (2002)

February 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Britney Spears, Zoe Saldana, Anson Mount, Taryn Manning
screenplay by Shonda Rhimes
directed by Tamra Davis

Crossroadsby Walter Chaw Crossroads is appalling and noxious. Consider how it maturely teaches that a young girl’s choice to lose her virginity should be one based on careful consideration, and then has its heroine bed a tattooed ex-con she met five days previous; this is Smooth Talk without recognition of consequences. It stars Lolita mega-tart Britney Spears in her first movie, and the first scene we share with her is in her bedroom as she jumps up and down on the mattress in teeny underwear, quickly followed by a shot of Ms. Spears in tiny pink Victoria’s Secret attire hopping into bed with her dorky lab partner before reconsidering the big leap. We also get shots of Spears in a sleazy Louisiana nightclub, where she finally erases any line left between her act and a strip show, and after that a few weird angles of her posing on the hoods of cars and in motel rooms while clad in towels and bikinis. The only thing separating Crossroads from a Showtime soft porn (it has all the excrescent acting, bad soundtrack, and vaguely suggestive dialogue) is the lack of any actual nudity. Like its star, the film is just a highly inappropriate tease.

Iris (2001)

February 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Romance, UK

**/****
starring Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Richard Eyre, Charles Wood, based on the book by John Bayley
directed by Richard Eyre

Iris

by Walter Chaw Iris wants nothing more than to be an objective look at the life and decline of British novelist Iris Murdoch (played by Kate Winslet and Dame Judi Dench) from insouciant free-love literati to decrepit Alzheimer’s victim in the care of her stuttering husband, novelist and critic John Bayley (Hugh Bonneville and Jim Broadbent). But the film confuses objectivity with sentimentality, and in the process obscures its titular protagonist with maddening fragments meant to elucidate her brilliance. Iris makes the mistake of assuming that its audience is well versed in the work of Murdoch and Bayley–enough so that the loss of her mind is one that is tragic beyond the spectator’s basic human decency. Iris also makes the mistake of not allowing Dench the opportunity to play Murdoch as anything but a woman in mental decline, leaving the “pre-disease” spunk and vitality to a game Winslet. The “before” and “after” shots are two different people and the film just isn’t agile enough to carry an illusion contrary.

The Object of My Affection (1998) – DVD

February 12, 2002Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound B
starring Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, Alan Alda, Nigel Hawthorne
screenplay by Wendy Wasserstein, based on the novel by Stephen McCauley
directed by Nicholas Hytner

by Walter Chaw A fascinatingly unpleasant precursor to NBC’s “Will & Grace”, The Object of My Affection details the predominantly platonic friendship between a romantically tortured straight woman, Nina (Jennifer Aniston), and a prototypically sensitive gay man, George (Paul Rudd). The unbearably treacly score by long-time offender George Fenton immediately announces by its very presence (and Fenton’s very participation) that The Object of My Affection is going to be atrocious, and true to form, it’s really atrocious. Yet to say that it’s as predictable as it is sickening in its laziness (there’s a VH1 music video montage in which our odd couple attends a dance class) would be to downplay the actual visceral “wrongness” of the piece, something that has nothing to do with the subject matter.

Don’t Say a Word (2001) – DVD

February 10, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Michael Douglas, Brittany Murphy, Famke Janssen, Sean Bean
screenplay by Anthony Peckham and Patrick Smith Kelly, based on the novel by Andrew Klavan
directed by Gary Fleder

by Walter Chaw It’s probably not at all surprising that lock-step director Gary Fleder’s Don’t Say a Word, based on a by-the-numbers novel by fiction hack Andrew Klavan (True Crime), has less original material than Michael Jackson. It opens on a heist scene that reminds of Point Break and Heat (plus a thousand other heist films), segues into a home invasion/child-snatching that recalls Michael Douglas’s own Fatal Attraction, proceeds into a cell phone cat-and-mouse like Ransom, ends with a cascade of particulate debris that brings to mind Witness, and touches base to varying degrees with Sliver, Nick of Time, Instinct, Nuts, and Awakenings in particular in its sloppy patient/doctor dynamic (and the naming of a secondary character “Dr. Sachs”). There’s even a bit concerning a stolen child, a mother, and a song familiar to them both taken whole from Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much. Sadly, Don’t Say a Word forgets to first establish that the tune is meaningful. It is a poignant omission that illustrates as well as any the problems of a lazy knock-off film that plays a lot of familiar notes but doesn’t once strike a chord nor find a melody of its own.

Collateral Damage (2002)

February 8, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mexico, Schwarzenegger, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri, Cliff Curtis
screenplay by David Griffiths & Peter Griffiths
directed by Andrew Davis

by Walter Chaw There is an inexplicable instinct in Hollywood to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as an everyman when the Austrian Oak has only ever played a pre-Christian barbarian and post-apocalyptic robot convincingly. Perhaps sensing something awry in Arnold playing a mild-mannered Irish fireman named Gordon Brewer, the creators of Collateral Damage have made an effort to portray Schwarzenegger’s character as a comic book superhero–maybe one named “Fire Man.” Brewer irrationally favours the tools of his life-saving trade (a pair of axes and a serendipitously placed sliding pole) over the far more plentiful (and practical) guns, while a cleverly donned white Panama Hat (making Arnie look a little like Leon Redbone crossed with a bratwurst) somehow successfully disguises the 6’2″ goliath from seeking eyes. A pulp caped-crusader comic would at least have the decency to be lurid and exciting, though–all Collateral Damage manages to be is shatteringly dull.

The Tunnel (2001)

February 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

Der Tunnel
**½/****
starring Heino Ferch, Nicolette Krebitz, Sebastian Koch, Alexandra Maria Lara
screenplay by Johannes W. Betz
directed by Roland Suso Richter

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Tunnel is a handsomely-mounted TV movie with a sideline in uplift. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it on a professional level, but its subject matter–a group of people who tunnelled under the Berlin Wall to save friends and family–has been drained of its ideological thrust: It’s so sure that we know the horrors of life in East Berlin that it never really goes into details, and in the process, it blunts its effectiveness as a piece of drama. The film may be nicely shot and well-acted, but it makes so many assumptions about what we think and how we should feel that it neither teaches us anything we didn’t already know nor makes us feel the urgency of that which we already do.

A Rumor of Angels (2002)

February 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Vanessa Redgrave, Ray Liotta, Catherine McCormack, Trevor Morgan
screenplay by James Eric & Jamie Horton & Peter O’Fallon, based on the book Thy Son Liveth: Messages From A Soldier To His Mother by Grace Duffie
directed by Peter O’Fallon

Rumorofangelsby Walter Chaw A Rumor of Angels is a maudlin tearjerker in the rarely interesting “gimp on the hill” tradition (The Man Without a Face, Finding Forrester, Heidi): a child befriends the town outcast to teach us all a little about acceptance through a series of rote vignettes. Peter O’Fallon’s belated follow-up to his claustrophobic neo-Tarantino gangster flick Suicide Kings is long on twinkly-eyed close-ups and short on shame. A young boy (Trevor Morgan) trespasses on a wizened hag’s property (Vanessa Redgrave), gets shot at, suffers a post-traumatic stress fit at a bridge (the source of which is not ever a mystery, considering the boy’s mother has recently died), and gets picked up by his weird uncle (Ron Livingston, overacting). There is never a question that the boy and the old lady will become dear pals, never a doubt that they will fill a void in one another’s life, and never an uncertainty that the kid’s skeptical parents (Ray Liotta as his dad and Catherine McCormack as his stepmother) will eventually come around.

The Testimony of Taliesin Jones (2002)

February 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, UK

Small Miracles
Taliesin Jones
*½/****
starring Jonathan Pryce, Ian Bannen, Griff Rhys Jones, Geraldine James
screenplay by Maureen Tilyou, based on the book The Testimony of Taliesin Jones by Rhidian Brook
directed by Martin Duffy

“Excessive sorrow gains nothing,
Nor will doubting God‘s miracles.
Although I am small, I am skilful”
—6th century, Taliesin

by Walter Chaw Chief Bard of Britain and a Celtic shaman, the historical Taliesin lived in Wales in the sixth century, his poems the direct precursor to the Arthur legend as well as his own as a druidic shape-shifter and spiritual healer. (He’s thought to be the inspiration for the Merlin character.) Rhidian Brook’s well-regarded children’s tome The Testimony of Taliesin Jones concerns a quiet child who, stricken by the divorce of his parents, turns to faith-healing to deal with the arbitrary turmoil of his life. With its heart so clearly in the right place, it’s hard to come down too hard on Martin Duffy’s same-named cinematic adaptation of Brook’s text, but the film is so intent on capturing the spiritual aspects of its title character and its namesake that it gives short shrift to the tragedy of its familial disintegration, discarding subtlety, too, in its proselytizing wake.

An American Rhapsody (2001) – DVD

January 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Scarlett Johansson

**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Commentary B
starring Nastassja Kinski, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Goldwyn, Mae Whitman
written and directed by Éva Gardos

Americanrhapsodycapby Walter Chaw Editor Éva Gardos’s An American Rhapsody, her first film as writer-director, is riddled with inconsistencies, lacklustre performances, and convenient platitudes that are perhaps not terribly surprising for a debut screenwriter and director, but disheartening from a veteran cutter who gained experience with the likes of Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich. The problem with an autobiography, after its inherent onanistic self-absorption, is that it will too often hide behind the aegis of truth to excuse a multitude of narrative sins. An American Rhapsody is deeply felt, no question, but it jerks and lurches along without much regard for secondary characters, continuity, motivation, and coherence. It is ultimately little more than an episodic patchwork of over-burdened vignettes that among them share only a desire to manufacture unearned pathos and manipulate events towards the most expedient solution.

My Bodyguard (1980) – DVD

January 30, 2002Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Family, Teen

**½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Chris Makepeace, Matt Dillon, John Houseman, Adam Baldwin
screenplay by Alan Ormsby
directed by Tony Bill

by Bill Chambers My Bodyguard, not to be confused with the sudsy Costner-Huston thriller The Bodyguard, has been described to me as “the ultimate bully movie.” I won’t even toy with the idea that this feature-length Afterschool Special is the best at anything, but the film does have some merit as a teen revenge fantasy. Making his low-key directorial debut, Academy Award-winning producer Tony Bill brings visual grace sans style to this tale of the new kid in school and how he masterminds one bully’s downfall through another’s redemption.

A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) + Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) – DVDs

January 27, 2002Posted inAuthors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Musical, Romance, Western

A LADY TAKES A CHANCE
**/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Jean Arthur, John Wayne, Charles Winninger, Phil Silvers
screenplay by Robert Ardrey
directed by William A. Seiter

FLAME OF BARBARY COAST
**½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring John Wayne, Ann Dvorak, Joseph Schildkraut, William Frawley
screenplay by Borden Chase
directed by Joseph Kane

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Such is the enduring celebrity of John Wayne that there exists a market for even his most humdrum and lacklustre vehicles–a rule which the current DVD releases of A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) and Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) proves to perfection. Here is a pair of the Duke's least iconic roles, both of which hinge on their incongruity with their star's western legend: using the actor as a found object to be installed in some alien landscape, they force him to struggle with a fish-out-of-water intrigue before coming to the conclusion that his place remains at home on the range. As such, they're of importance only to superfans and tangentially interested buffs–they're interesting as trials-by-fire for Wayne iconography but only marginally tolerable when taken on their own terms.

A Walk to Remember (2002)

January 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Romance, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Mandy Moore, Shane West, Peter Coyote, Al Thompson
screenplay by Karen Janszen, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
directed by Adam Shankman

Walktorememberby Walter Chaw An interminable trudge through afterschool-special hell, Adam Shankman’s A Walk to Remember stars teen pop starlet Mandy Moore and is based on a novel by best-selling schmaltz-meister Nicholas Sparks–a combination sure to warn away most reasonably intelligent folks. After a kinetic opening sequence that recalls a nearly identical scene from The Lost Boys while giving false hope that A Walk to Remember will be an agreeably nostalgic diversion, the film becomes a vaguely surreal morality play scripted along the straitjacket genre conventions that indicate each of Sparks’s novels. A Walk to Remember is hopelessly unrealistic and often uncomfortable to watch, far more interested in presenting Moore with showcase opportunities to peddle her cavity-causing music; it threatens to do for her what Glitter did for Mariah Carey. Worse, if you don’t know every single plot point and twist after the first twenty minutes, you’ve done the sensible thing and left after the first ten.

The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

January 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Ireland, Romance, Switzerland, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
starring Guy Pearce, Jim Caviezel, JB Blanc, Henry Cavill
screenplay by Jay Wolpert, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas
directed by Kevin Reynolds

Countofmontecristoby Walter Chaw Preserving the main events of the bombastic blunderbuss novel on which it is based, Kevin Reynolds’s adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père’s The Count of Monte Cristo also jettisons what meagre subtlety there was in the source material. The film, an attractive swashbuckling spectacle, is pleasantly campy for its first hour and a plodding endurance test for its final eighty minutes, an initially agreeable, if ridiculous, escapist (literally) flick that bloats to the dimensions of standard Hollywood offal.

Rock Star (2001) – DVD

January 24, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Mark Wahlberg, Jennifer Aniston, Dominic West, Timothy Spall
screenplay by John Stockwell
directed by Stephen Herek

by Walter Chaw Stephen Herek’s return to the realm of dope-head fantasy (his second and perhaps most remembered film is Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) gets off to a smashing start. For a brief, exhilarating time, he captures all the dim-witted exuberance, all the pathological pride, all the explosive machismo of long-haired, tight-leathered cock-rock bands and the symbiotic relationship they have with fans, who revere them as greasy, gyrating lizard kings. Once it becomes another tired cautionary tale of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, however, Rock Star turns off the amps and coasts home like a rusted-out DeSoto running on fumes.

The War of the Roses (1989) [Special Edition] – DVD

January 24, 2002Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***½/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras A
starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Marianne Sägebrecht
screenplay by Michael Leeson, based on the novel by Warren Adler
directed by Danny DeVito

by Walter Chaw Oliver and Barbara Rose (Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner) have it all: a beautiful house, two children, a dog, a cat, and a burning hatred for one another nursed through years of disintegrating familiarity. The first irony of The War of the Roses is that a film structured around a divorce is named after a historical conflict that ended in marriage–an indication that in addition to being brutally funny, the film is whip-smart and dangerous. Framed by sleazy divorce lawyer Gavin D’Amato (Danny DeVito) as a cautionary tale to a prospective client (Dan Castellaneta), The War of the Roses charts the disintegration of the Roses’ marriage from sylvan bliss to Stygian night. In no uncertain terms, the film details why dog people should not marry cat people; just how irritating eating a steak can be to your spouse; and the reason that angry sex is the only sex for some couples. A brilliant screenplay (Michael Leeson adapted Warren Adler’s novel) and a trio of performances that honour the sharpness and difficulty of said script justifies watching this alternately just-bearable and agonizing comedy.

Kandahar (2001)

January 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Iran, Theatrical, War
Safar e Ghandehar
**/****
starring Niloufar Pazira, Hassan Tantai, Sadou Teymouri
written and directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

by Walter Chaw Kandahar is a science-fiction film about a terrifying and unknowable alien culture and the human anthropologist who must disguise herself to gain entry into its Byzantine infrastructure (thus often reminding me of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow), and it is the recipient of perhaps the most serendipitous release in film history. Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar is either a stunningly incompetent film or an amazingly evocative one. Perhaps best described as both, the piece alternates between sledgehammer images and awful didactic exposition. An argument can be made, and a good one, that the plight of Afghani women under the medieval rule of The Taliban deserves to be treated as a medieval passion play, with all the implied attendant allegorical characters (the pilgrim, the fallen child, the doctor, the thief) and mannered execution.

Zebra Lounge (2001) – DVD

January 14, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Kristy Swanson, Brandy Ledford, Cameron Daddo, Stephen Baldwin
screenplay by Claire Montgomery & Monte Montgomery
directed by Kari Skogland

by Bill Chambers

"He is the straightest and most law-abiding citizen…in the world!"
-Wendy Barnet (Brandy Ledford), assessing her husband's degree of innocence to a police detective

Zebra Lounge zippers shut the body bag around Stephen Baldwin's career and confirms that Canadian filmmakers are no longer capable of good trash (director Kari Skogland is a veteran of the Saltine-dry Canuck TV show "Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy"), but most of all, it's suffocatingly dull. This film should have a "do not operate heavy machinery" warning-label superimposed on it at all times. The made-for-cable movie marks not only the first time I have fallen asleep during a sex scene but also the first time I have fallen asleep during two consecutive sex scenes, neither of which takes place in the rarely-mentioned titular night spot. Zebra Lounge could've been called anything, so phenomenally generic are its subject matter, dialogue, and execution. Even the score, by someone named John McCarthy, sounds like it came out of a can.

Orange County (2002)

January 11, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Teen, Theatrical
**½/****
starring Colin Hanks, Schuyler Fisk, Catherine O’Hara, Jack Black
screenplay by Michael White
directed by Jake Kasdan

Orangecountyby Walter Chaw The director of five episodes of the late, lamented television series “Freaks and Geeks”, Jake Kasdan, with screenwriter Mike White (a scribbler on that same show), produces a surprisingly (or, perhaps, not so surprisingly) tender and observant commencement comedy with Orange County. It’s After Hours as filtered through the sensibility of a young, pre-suckage Cameron Crowe, and though it’s extremely uneven and clearly hacked to bits (the film feels clipped at 86 minutes), the end result is a cameo-laden piece that for the most part resists the cheap, exploitive garbage that indicates most of the teen comedy genre. While I expected more from the young man who debuted as writer-director of the brilliant Zero Effect (and from White, half of the creative team behind the overrated but intriguing Chuck and Buck), Orange County is a good film–particularly, I suspect, for those anticipating just another teen movie.