Hostage High (1997) [Director’s Uncut Version] – DVD

November 1, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Television, Thriller

Detention: The Siege at Johnson High
**/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras C
starring Rick Schroder, Henry Winkler, Freddie Prinze Jr., Ren Woods
screenplay by Larry Golin
directed by Michael W. Watkins

by Walter Chaw Kids who go to Columbine High School and don't compete in organized athletics are referred to as "no sports." It's not a kind term. On the weekends in Littleton, crowds of teenagers driving new model Dodge Rams, BMWs, and SUVs collect in area parking lots to make a lot of noise and hoot at people driving by until the police arrive to disperse them–if they bother to come at all. If you're African-American like a good friend of mine, they'll sometimes make monkey noises; if you're Asian like myself, they do the Mr. Miyagi crane pose and laugh like loons. From my personal experience in this community, having 15 of their fellow students die in a hail of bullets did not teach a significant population of Columbiners compassion, tolerance, and respect. Maybe just the opposite.

On the Waterfront (1954) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 29, 2001Posted in****/****, 1950s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD, Thriller

****/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B
starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger
screenplay by Budd Schulberg
directed by Elia Kazan

by Walter Chaw There is a moment in the middle of Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront that stands out for me as one of the defining in my love of movies. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) confesses to his girlfriend Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) that he was involved in the Union execution of her brother, but rather than listen to Terry rehash events with which we’re already familiar, a steam whistle drowns him out. The precise way that Terry moves his hands and the expression on Edie’s face, growing from a gentle concern to horror, is among the most cinematic moments in the history of the medium. It’s breathtaking in its simplicity and subtlety, revolutionary in its presentation and its eye, and exactly the right choice for the film at the right moment.

Kingdom Come (2001) – DVD

October 28, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image B+ Sound C+ Extras B-
starring LL Cool J, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, Loretta Devine
screenplay by David Dean Bottrell & Jessie Jones, based on the play “Dearly Departed” by David Dean Bottrell
directed by Doug McHenry

by Walter Chaw A second-helping of Soul Food but seasoned this time around with a preponderance of syrupy good intentions and a hulking mess of stock burlesque caricatures, Kingdom Come vacillates between ridiculous and irritating: a far cry from the intended “heartwarming” and “funny.” Though it’s always nice to see a film with an all-African-American cast that doesn’t rely on gangsters and gunplay (ignoring a gun that is drawn and forgotten early on), I’m not certain that the opposite of that genre is necessarily forced dramedy camaraderie, complete with a sitcom narrative’s rise and fall, made popular by Waiting to Exhale. Still, for as simple-minded and shamelessly overacted as it is, the film is somewhat redeemed by an overall genial goodwill.

Along Came a Spider (2001) – DVD

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, Michael Wincott, Penelope Ann Miller
screenplay by Marc Moss, based on the novel by James Patterson
directed by Lee Tamahori

by Walter Chaw The sole line to strike with truth in Lee Tamahori’s Along Came a Spider comes when professional dim-bulb Penelope Ann Miller, as the mother of a kidnapped child, wrings her hands, furrows her brow, and whines, “I… I don’t understand.” Springing as it no doubt does from a lifetime of repetition, Ms. Miller’s quandary also serves as a handy critique of the labyrinthine contortions that the film’s plot makes on its way to being utterly senseless and unengaging; its blandness takes on a cast of bellicosity. You begin to feel like the butt of some absurd joke or embroiled in a wilfully obscure Buddhist koan: What is the sound of one movie sucking?

DIFF ’01: Novocaine

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Thriller

*/****
starring Steve Martin, Helena Bonham Carter, Laura Dern, Scott Caan
written and directed by David Atkins

Novocaineby Walter Chaw An ill-fated hybrid of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and the dentist portions of Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors, Novocaine lacks a cohesive tone. It vacillates from dark comedy to Forties-style melodrama, from light-hearted slapstick to medium-heavy gore and nudity, and in one particularly inexplicable sequence, Novocaine attempts to be a post-modernist Lacanian thing involving a character's heightened self-awareness as a fictional construct. It's neither funny nor the slightest bit suspenseful, too jumbled and arbitrary to ever sustain much in the way of tension or interest. Even its central conceit–a plot to steal pharmaceuticals and the resultant chaos when the victim catches on to the scheme–is so essentially flawed that the revelation of the guilty party, which occurs after we've spent two desperate hours suspending increasingly leaden disbelief, isn't so much a shocker as a "shrugger."

K-Pax (2001)

October 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

K-PAX
*/****
starring Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard
screenplay by Charles Leavitt, based on the novel by Gene Brewer
directed by Iain Softley

Kpaxby Walter Chaw Madman Prot (Kevin Spacey) has been incarcerated for months at various state-run mental institutions. Because psychotropic drugs do not affect Prot, he’s sent to Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges); presumably, Powell is the authority on madmen unaffected by psychotropic drugs. Prot, however, can also see ultra-violet light, map the orbits of undiscovered planets around undiscovered solar systems (begging a few questions), and talk to dogs by barking at them. Prot believes himself an alien from the distant planet K-Pax, and it’s up to Dr. Powell to uncover the trauma that has unhinged this man. Along the way, Prot’s unconventional (and wiseass) view of our foibles teaches us all a little about ourselves, leading to cuddly Patch Adams moments wherein this dangerous fruitbar repairs Dr. Powell’s crumbling familial relationships and reverses insanity by urging his fellow inmates to look for bluebirds and attempt to kill one another. K-Pax is derivative, populist, feel-good trash of the first order–it’s tailor-made for a populace gone daft from decades of insipid soup generally starring Robin Williams.

My First Mister (2001)

October 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Germany, Romance, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Albert Brooks, Leelee Sobieski, John Goodman, Michael McKean
screenplay by Jill Franklyn
directed by Christine Lahti

Myfirstmisterby Walter Chaw Something’s fatally off about My First Mister, veteran character actor Christine Lahti’s feature-length directorial debut. Awkward and atonal, it appears to be some strange cross between a reverse-gendered Harold and Maude and a mainstream Ghost World, and despite its desperation to appear so, it’s neither as intelligent nor edgy as either. Jill Franklyn’s screenplay (her first produced) just doesn’t work. It’s hollow to the ear and disagreeable to the taste, only ringing true occasionally through the Herculean intervention of Albert Brooks, here in his most restrained and affecting performance since Broadcast News. That noise you hear when Leelee Sobieski’s weary (and wearying) voiceover confides, “My clothes are not all black. Some of them are blue. Sometimes I wear them together so I look like a bruise,” is an audience’s worth of eyeballs rolling skyward. The problems Franklyn’s script presents to the rest of the cast, however, particularly the Helen Hunt-ishly smug (and similarly limited) Sobieski and Carol Kane as another gnomish manic eccentric, are insurmountable. They’re crushed beneath the weight of convenience, contrivance, Lahti’s unfortunate impulse towards the cutesy, and a score that is as insulting and invasive as any to be found in a Chris Columbus film or from the recently-flaccid baton of the once-great John Williams.

DIFF ’01: Fat Girl

October 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy

À ma soeur!
***/****
starring Anais Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo
written and directed by Catherine Breillat

by Walter Chaw

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
"Leda and the Swan" (1928)–William Butler Yeats

Yeats caused a minor stir in 1928 by suggesting that the rape of Leda was an empowerment for a sexually wise woman whose ultimate revenge against manhood was the spawning of Helen of Troy–who, of course, had a key role in the fall of an entire nation. The idea of ill-gotten knowledge as it's tied to a woman's evolving sexuality is not a new one–Biblical and older, in fact. Still, Catherine Breillat throws a new acerbic barb into the psychosexual brew by projecting Freud's classic developmental framework (anal, oral, genital) onto the progression of the uncomfortable seduction of the impossibly young Elena (Roxane Mesquida) by a smooth-talking Italian lothario (Libero de Rienzo). It is only one, though perhaps the most subtle, of Breillat's incendiary yawps against man's barbarism to woman. As Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), the titular fat girl, summarizes at one point: "All men are sick."

DIFF ’01: Tape

October 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, Film Festivals

***/****
starring Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman
screenplay by Stephen Belber from his play
directed by Richard Linklater

by Walter Chaw Vincent (Ethan Hawke) is a volunteer fireman and sometime drug pusher who meets his best friend John (Robert Sean Leonard) at a seedy Michigan motor inn for a little beer, drugs, and conversation. Very quickly, what was a genial bout of male bonding devolves into hidden agendas, past hurts, and psychological manipulations, all geared towards resolving an event that may or may not have happened. When Amy (Uma Thurman), an old girlfriend of them both, shows up at the room, she functions as a catalyst to exploding the resentments that have bound them invisibly over the years.

DIFF ’01: Big Bad Love

October 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance

½*/****
starring Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, Paul Le Mat, Rosanna Arquette
screenplay by James Howard & Arliss Howard, from stories by Larry Brown
directed by Arliss Howard

by Walter Chaw Arliss Howard's Big Bad Love (or, "Fear and Loathing in Appalachia") is both self-conscious and self-indulgent. It doesn't pass the sniff test in terms of truth and lack of pretense, malodorous with that peculiarly rank stink of hubris. Marking his auteur debut, veteran character actor Howard adapts a collection of Larry Brown short stories wearing three hats (star, director, and writer–co-writer, actually, with brother James), each of which fits uneasily if at all. As a director, Howard tosses so many gimmick shots and narrative tricks (dream sequences, fantasy sequences, magic realism, etc.) at the celluloid wall that it's almost a statistical impossibility for not a one of them to stick–but it happens. Gimmicks like fake voiceover news broadcasts are distracting and irritating at the best of times; when overused, as in Big Bad Love, they're screaming bores rather than endearing quirks. As an actor, Big Bad Love is evidently a vanity vehicle for Howard, and it's again something of a marvel that Howard is so consistently ineffective and emotionally flat. Onscreen for about 98% of the time, Howard's exercise in self-love backfires to the extent that every other performer he shares a scene with blows him off the screen. Finally, as screenwriters, the Brothers Howard prove themselves to lack a sense of grace in their symbolism and a sense of coherence in their narrative.

DIFF ’01: Margarita Happy Hour

October 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals

**½/****
starring Eleanor Hutchins, Larry Fessenden, Holly Ramos
written and directed by Ilya Chaiken

by Walter Chaw If a song by Maggie Estep, the original riot grrl, were ever made into a film, it would probably turn out like Ilya Chaiken's Margarita Happy Hour. Profane and invested in the underground scene of late-Eighties Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, the film carries on a certain gritty slice-of-street life storytelling tradition with an appropriately grim ethic, though its resolution is curiously upbeat. Margarita Happy Hour's tagline says a lot: "Hipsters, Single Moms, and the Cycles of Life." Essentially about being trapped in a miserable existence with few prospects for improvement, the film spends altogether too much time on extended metaphors concerning the ephemeral knot of existence and broken symbolism involving being isolated and adrift in a sea of sharks.

DIFF ’01: Faat Kiné

October 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Senegal

***½/****
starring Venus Seye, Mame Ndumbe Diop, Ndiagne Dia
written and directed by Ousmane Sembene

by Walter Chaw Though John Dunne clarified that "no man is an island, entire of itself," for all cinematic intents and purposes, Ousmane Sembene is the whole of the Dark Continent. Now 73 years old, the African auteur presents Faat Kiné ("Aunt Kiné"), a wonderful film resplendent with Sembene's unaffected anti-style and even-handed approach to thorny issues of the ails–new (AIDS) and old (neo-colonialism, violent misogyny)–festering at the core of the modern African sensibility, stunting its growth as surely as the murderous European invasions of a century ago. Faat Kiné is Sembene's sunniest piece, defining a trend for 2001 when one considers the return of another legendary, septuagenarian filmmaker: Jacques Rivette's effervescent Va savoir. But although Va savoir and Faat Kiné share strong and opinionated female protagonists and sweet love story endings, Rivette (eternally) grapples with the absurdism of identity; Sembene's demons are rooted in the absurd notion of a people divided by damning traditions and crippling prejudice.

The Last Castle (2001)

October 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Prison, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Steve Burton
screenplay by David Scarpa and Graham Yost
directed by Rod Lurie

by Walter Chaw As I walked out of the theatre after a screening of part infinity-plus-one of Robert Redford’s “I am an American Icon” film series (adding three-star general to his playboy, cowboy, investigative journalist, and baseball pitcher), a grey old lady exclaimed for our consideration: “Fantastic film. Just perfect for the time.” I assumed that by “the time” she meant “our post-September 11th, anthrax-paranoia time.” That much was clear. What bothers me is that while I was watching a film about a prison uprising resulting in multiple guard fatalities led by a megalomaniacal and disgraced army man (who proudly confesses his bad judgment in leading eight of his men to their demise), this woman was seeing a battle hymn “perfect for the time.” How does one address this difference in perception, and how do these two readings intersect in the idea of what is distinctly American?

DIFF ’01: The Devil’s Backbone

October 17, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Mexico, Spain

***/****
starring Federico Luppi, Marisa Paredes, Fernando Tielve
screenplay by Guillermo del Toro and Antonio Trashorros & David Munoz
directed by Guillermo del Toro

Devilsbackboneby Walter Chaw More of a sepia-stained Spanish fairy tale about the dehumanizing effects of war than a horror film, Guillermo del Toro's melancholy labour of love The Devil's Backbone (it's dedicated to his parents) is redolent with atmosphere and lacking in conventional fright payoffs, which aren't the point of the exercise, anyway. The Devil's Backbone centres around a colony of lost boys led by a stately Pan, Dr. Cásares (Argentine legend Federico Luppi). The head of a refuge for war orphans (we never know who's winning, and neither do the characters), Dr. Cásares and the one-legged matron Carmen (Marisa Paredes) share chaperone duties with the swarthy Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) and the comely Alma (Berta Ojea). Look to each of the adult character's infirmities, strengths, and vanities for clues as to what they represent in the Guernican tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, specifically of how the doomed republican rallying cry of "No pasaran!" ("You will not pass!") becomes the hollow promise of ghosts defending an abandoned orphanage.

Iron Monkey (1993)

October 12, 2001Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Yu Rong Guang, Donnie Yen, Jean Wang, Tsang Sze Man
screenplay by Tsui Hark, Elsa Tang, Lau Tai Mok
directed by Yuen Wo Ping

by Walter Chaw I first saw Yuen Woo-ping’s Iron Monkey on what must have been a third-generation bootleg: it was in unsubtitled Cantonese and fullscreen pan-and-scan, brought home unlabeled on a cheap Maxell videotape from a Vietnamese grocery down on South Federal. As a native Mandarin speaker, I didn’t understand a word of it, and the quality of the tape was such that it was impossible to decipher any shadow detail, but it was clear to me even then that Iron Monkey was something extremely special. Long a cult favourite in the United States (although it didn’t do particularly well when released theatrically in Asia), Iron Monkey received an extremely nice DVD transfer in 1998 from Media Asia; it is a disc that holds a place of honour in my personal collection. With the massive popularity of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (both choreographed by Woo-ping), as well as the surprising success of Americanized re-issues of Jackie Chan’s old Hong Kong films, Iron Monkey has been cleaned up, freshly subtitled, and booked in American moviehouses in an attempt to capitalize on the sudden popularity of wire-fu in particular and the dizzying HK cinema in general.

DIFF ’01: Lantana

October 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Germany, Mystery, Romance

***/****
starring Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong
screenplay by Andrew Bovell, based on his play
directed by Ray Lawrence

by Walter Chaw Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia) is a police officer suffering from low self-esteem and a dwindled passion in his marriage to Sonja (the incredible Kerry Armstrong). When we first meet Leon, in fact, we know him only as an adulterer, witness to the first of his two indiscretions with the newly-separated Jane (Rachael Blake). Suspecting that Leon may be straying, Sonja visits a therapist, Valerie (Barbara Hershey), confiding that, "It isn't that he's slept with another woman, it's that he's lied to me about it that's the betrayal." Lantana is obsessed with repression, of how one small secret kept for too long mutates and festers into insurmountable guilt and fear. Leon feels guilty about his adultery and is fearful of being discovered; later, Leon feels guilty for having been discovered, and is fearful that his wife no longer loves him. Sonja similarly worries that she doesn't love him anymore.

Va savoir (2001)

October 12, 2001Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical

Who Knows?
****/****
starring Claude Berri, Catherine Rouvel, Hélène de Fougerolles, Jeanne Balibar
screenplay by Luigi Pirandello, Jacques Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent
directed by Jacques Rivette

by Walter Chaw

"I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory – a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth."
-Luigi Pirandello from Playwrights on Playwriting, ed. by Toby Cole, 1961

DIFF ’01: The Son’s Room (2001)

October 11, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Palme d'Or Winner

La stanza del figlio
**/****
starring Nanni Moretti, Laura Morante, Jasmine Trinca, Giuseppe Sanfelice
screenplay by Linda Ferri, Nanni Moretti, Heidrun Schleef
directed by Nanni Moretti

by Walter Chaw Teetering along the narrow line that separates “poignant” from “maudlin,” the curiously detached The Son’s Room (La Stanza del figlio) ultimately errs on the side of the latter through increasingly unsubtle and rote revelations about the process of grief. Written (with Linda Ferri and Heidrun Schleef), directed, and starring the “Italian Woody Allen,” Nanni Moretti, the film is too clearly the product of a veteran comedian’s mind: all seriocomic vignettes barely tied together by the loosest of narrative structures. It may be more appropriate to describe Moretti as the Italian version of America’s own teary velvet clown: Robin Williams. (Unflattering, yes.) The winner of the prestigious Palme d’or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (beating out Mulholland Drive, In The Bedroom, and The Man Who Wasn’t There, each this film’s superior), La Stanza del figlio is well performed but unconvincing, aspiring to a sober emotional depth that is consistently undermined by high-decibel wailing, a tinkling, sappy soundtrack and score, and melodramatic trials and their telegraphed resolutions.

DIFF ’01: The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

October 11, 2001Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Scarlett Johansson, Thriller, UK

****/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

Manwhowasntthereby Walter Chaw The noir genre was born of discomfort with women in the workplace, the rise of cynicism, and a world polarized by international conflict (WWII). Its symbol, the hardboiled detective, became the projection of the collective paranoia about the ascent of globalism and the death of Pollyannaism. Women and foreigners are not to be trusted in the noir universe; information is slippery and expensive; and the solution of the puzzle more often than not points back to a rot at the heart of the detective. It is the Oedipus/identity trajectory, complete with a blasted plague land, a murder, its thinly veiled culprit (noir is typically invested in process, not mystery), the appearance of a femme fatale, and a solution involving mortal self-knowledge. The noir hero may save the day, but at the price of being betrayed by those he loves. He is impotent to avenge his fallen friends and lovers, and at the mercy of a larger corruption that is unalterable and serves only to further degrade individual confidence. Tellingly, a great many noir works in literature and film begin with the death of a best friend or a partner and end with the realization that any victory is a hollow one in light of society’s inexorable fall into chaos.

The Mists of Avalon (2001) – DVD

October 10, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Germany, Television

**/**** Image A Sound B-
starring Anjelica Huston, Julianna Margulies, Joan Allen, Samantha Mathis
teleplay by Gavin Scott, based on the novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley
directed by Uli Edel

by Walter Chaw A lavish television adaptation of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s minor feminist classic, The Mists of Avalon is three hours of ripping bodices, slashing swords, ludicrous, DeMille-tinged fertility rites, and snarling, imperious heroines. It is a retelling of the Arthur myth through the eyes of Morgan le Fey (recast as “Morgaine” and played by the terrifying Julianna Margulies), diminishing Merlin’s (Michael Byrne) role to that of doddering secondary foil and Arthur’s (Edward Atterton) to a brooding cuckold cipher.