Solaris (1972) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

June 8, 2011Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2011, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Soviet Union

****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Anatoli Solonitsyn
 screenplay by Fridrikh Gorenshtein & Andrei Tarkovsky, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem
directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

by Bryant Frazer Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation of Solaris, a novel by the Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, betrays the director’s general disinterest in conventional SF tropes. His film does honour the mind-blowing outlines of Lem’s concept, which deals with a manned mission to investigate a planet-sized extra-terrestrial consciousness. But where Lem speculated about the practical boundaries of human intellect in the shadow of the universe, Tarkovsky opts to explore human feelings of loss and insecurity in the face of mortality. For Lem, the failed Solaris mission is emblematic of the difficulties we humans would have comprehending and communicating with a radically different form of life. For Tarkovsky, the mission re-opens old psychic wounds, flooding us with regret that we weren’t better to the people we loved. “Shame [is] the feeling that will save mankind,” murmurs protagonist Kris Kelvin near the end of the film. In Tarkovsky’s Solaris, we have made contact with the aliens, and they want you to call your mom.

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Blu-ray Disc

May 30, 2011Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance, War

****/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger
screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray
directed by Stanley Kubrick

Mustownby Alex Jackson If The Shining has dated the most of Kubrick's films, Barry Lyndon, which immediately preceded it, has dated the least. In 1976, Barry Lyndon was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award alongside Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, and Nashville. I have some reservations about a couple of those, but there's no arguing that these are a few of the most revered American movies of the last four decades. And yet, they're all inextricably linked to the year 1975. Certainly, they still work on their own terms, but today there's an unspoken contract that we will acknowledge and accept them as something produced thirty-five years ago. We don't have to make any such concessions with Barry Lyndon; there isn't anything vintage about it.

The Tree of Life (2011)

May 27, 2011Posted in****/****, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Terrence Malick, Drama, Esoterica, Palme d'Or Winner, Theatrical

****/****
starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken
written and directed by Terrence Malick 

Treeoflifeby Walter Chaw Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is his attempt in a secular way (a very Romanticist way), much like Milton attempted in a religious way, to explain the ways of God to men and, more, to further define God as something created in the heart of Man. It's immensely mysterious, and immensely grand. In scope, its only parallel might be the mysterium tremens at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but even that doesn't try to get at the heart of what made the Monolith so much as why. The Tree of Life is about how fathers disappoint their sons and how sons perceive that they disappoint their fathers, and it may along the way be about why a religion revolving around a Father who never has to explain why He disappoints His children has taken the hold that it has (the film opens with a passage from The Book of Job). But that's ancillary to the topic at hand for Malick, because really what he's interested in is the way that sons will always fail to be at peace with their relationships with their fathers and how maybe, maybe that sense of loneliness, confusion, abandonment, and shame is the true and secret mark at the centre of what it means to be a creative being in a world forever in the act of being created. The struggle against the Father, the simultaneous struggle for His approval, is the fuel that fires Man's desire to make–and excel. It's Freud, isn't it, and Nietzsche, and every German/Austrian smarter than me (Kirkegaard and Wittgenstein and Heidegger, whom Malick translated and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in pursuit of his doctorate), as filtered through Malick's naturalism, which, far from the chaos of Antonioni's relationship with nature, reflects a more harmonious, metaphorical kinship–like D.W. Griffith's. Very much, too, like the dream sequences in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, which see the past as impossibly resplendent because they are a creation in the mind of the virgin Eden of childhood.

The Silent House (2011) + Rubber (2010)

May 24, 2011Posted in2010, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, Uruguay

La casa muda
***½/****
starring Florencia Colucci, Abel Tripaldi, Gustavo Alonso, María Salazar
screenplay by Oscar Estévez
directed by Gustavo Hernández

RUBBER
½*/****
starring Stephen Spinella, Roxanne Mesquida, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser
written and directed by Quentin Dupieux

by Walter Chaw Billed as being filmed in a single shot (though the skeptical–and those taken in by the "unedited" long takes of Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men–should wonder why an editor is credited), Gustavo Hernández's zero-budget conceptual experiment The Silent House (La casa mudi) has found a way not only to suggest a gimmick successfully carried through, but also to weave that gimmick into a richer thematic tapestry. Here, the digital camera isn't carried by a protagonist, Blair Witch-like, but instead floats around the victim of the movie's horrors, one Laura (Florencia Colucci), who's endeavouring with father Wilson (Gustavo Alonso) to clean up an old abandoned house in preparation of its sale. The camera does take on the point-of-view of someone at some point, then jumps back to an objective place, then plays that trick Evil Dead II plays with perspective in the scene where Ash wakes up in a clearing and looks around in a panning 360-degree take, only for the audience to discover that the camera eye is both character and commentator, more physical in its way than a first-person point-of-view could ever be. In a genre dependent on cutting for its scares, in fact, The Silent House's accomplishments are all the more impressive. It's suffocating (I'd never considered how liberating edits were from a complete immersion into a film) and at times unbearably tense–and though some will point to the airlessness of Hitch's Rope or the fluid choreography of Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, The Silent House is a different beast altogether.

The Hustler (1961) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

May 23, 2011Posted in****/****, 1960s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sports

****/****
DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B-
BD – Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason
screenplay by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen, based on the novel by Walter S. Tevis
directed by Robert Rossen

Hustlercap

by Walter Chaw When one engages in hunting annis mirabilis, one would do well not to overlook 1961. The year after the cinema went insane (Ethan Mordden coins this wonderful phrase that before 1960, you listened to mother or you drove off a cliff–and after it, listen to mother and you're Psycho) is marked by a beloved film based on a Truman Capote novella about two hookers falling in love in New York (Breakfast at Tiffany's) and by Brando's first and only directorial effort, the marvellously murky anti-western One-Eyed Jacks. Billy Wilder guided Jimmy Cagney through his last rapid-fire explosion in a scabrous screed on the early days of globalism in One, Two, Three, while John Huston charted the last gasps of Old Hollywood and the West in The Misfits. In the sexual repression-drives-you-crazy sweepstakes, Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass makes time with William Wyler's lesbo-drama The Children's Hour (and there's Splendor's Warren Beatty again in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone). You want race? How about the new lyrics added to West Side Story's immigrant lament? Or Lancaster cutting a square swath through the Manhattan barrio in John Frankenheimer's The Young Savages? 1961 was a miraculous year for any number of reasons, but count among the big ones Paul Newman's emergence as the quintessential avatar for the entire decade–the scurrilous anti-hero (some point to Steve McQueen, but McQueen was never an asshole on purpose and never an actor at all) who represented the truthy eruption of everything the Eisenhower kids were holding back during those rocket-bra'd, tail-finned years spent basking in the post-nuclear sun of capitalism-as-panacea.

The John Frankenheimer Collection – DVD|French Connection II (1975) + The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – Blu-ray Discs

May 17, 2011Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2011, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: John Frankenheimer, Drama, DVD, France, Italy, Thriller, UK, War

THE YOUNG SAVAGES (1961)
**/**** Image B Sound C
starring Burt Lancaster, Dina Merrill, Edward Andrews, Vivian Nathan
screenplay by Edward Anhalt and J.P. Miller, based on the novel A Matter of Conviction by Evan Hunter
directed by John Frankenheimer

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
****/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound C+ Extras B+
starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon
directed by John Frankenheimer

THE TRAIN (1964)
****/**** Image C- Sound C
starring Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Michel Simon, Jeanne Moreau
screenplay by Franklin Coen and Frank Davis, based on the novel Le front de l'art by Rose Valland
directed by John Frankenheimer

FRENCH CONNECTION II (1975)
**½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B+
starring Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Bernard Fresson, Philippe Léotard
screenplay by Alexander Jacobs and Robert Dillon & Laurie Dillon
directed by John Frankenheimer

RONIN (1998)
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgård
screenplay by J.D. Zeik and Richard Weisz
directed by John Frankenheimer

by Walter Chaw There weren't many American directors who enjoyed a hotter streak in the Medium Cool '60s than John Frankenheimer. He had the pulse of the mid-decade sea change from the relative conservatism of the '50s, having clearly been cognizant of the long burn of the Civil Rights conversation and the constant, fraying wear-and-tear of HUAC and the Cold War. He rubbed elbows with the Kennedys, hosting Bobby at his house in Malibu the day before/of Bobby's assassination at the Ambassador, whereupon it's fairly inarguable that Frankenheimer began to lose his way. He'd continue to helm interesting films and damned impressive ones, too, like The Iceman Cometh and 52 Pick-Up, but none would have the urgent subtlety of his mid-'60s output. Instead, they'd become increasingly…remote? Detached, at least, if not occasionally outright embarrassing for everyone involved. (Prophecy, for instance–a film that tries to ride the contemporary-issue train but shows its fatigue and desperation in every ridiculous, strained minute.) In a way, Frankenheimer's Seconds, with its alienation and bodily remove, presages his own artistic transformation. I wonder whether he lost the nerve to surf the edge of the zeitgeist, leaving the low arc of our collective tendency towards self-destruction to its own shrinking concentric hells. It's possible that after The Manchurian Candidate's dead-eyed paranoia and Seconds' alarming prescience about the impotence of the American icon-as-hero, Frankenheimer was tired of being right. If it sounds like I'm ascribing something supernatural to his artistic acuity, maybe I am. Frankenheimer in this period is that rare filmmaker who works half in technical perfection and half in the unconscious, in the thrall of what Coleridge used to refer to as The Artist as Aeolian Harp. He was an instrument at the caprice of the winds of the age. He was, that is, until about 1968, when being the vessel of portent became, should we conjecture, painful enough that he tried drowning himself in booze and regret.

Hesher (2011) + Everything Must Go (2011)

May 13, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

HESHER
***½/****
starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Devin Brochu, Rainn Wilson, Natalie Portman
screenplay by Spencer Susser & David Michôd
directed by Spencer Susser

EVERYTHING MUST GO
*½/****
starring Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Michael Peña, Laura Dern
screenplay by Dan Rush, based on the story "Why Don't You Dance?" by Raymond Carver
directed by Dan Rush

by Ian Pugh You could say that Spencer Susser's Hesher is about the desperate search for philosophical guidance during times of grief and how it can come from the unlikeliest of places…but that's the easy-to-digest version. The eponymous longhaired, frequently-shirtless metalhead makes for an intentionally obvious allegory; less obvious is Hesher's message that Christ was probably nothing like the Fonz. Troubled young lad T.J. (Devin Brochu) is still reeling from his mother's death, and during one of his frequent temper tantrums, he runs afoul of Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who responds by moving into T.J.'s house uninvited. Hesher's a profane slob prone to bouts of unprovoked violence, but Dad (Rainn Wilson) is too depressed to care and wacky old Grandma (Piper Laurie) takes Hesher in senile stride. So, T.J. is forced to live with this new houseguest under threat of a "skullfucking." Admittedly, the picture boils down to a series of wacky vignettes (in which Hesher hounds T.J. and fucks up his life accordingly), though anyone looking for a genuine moral centre is bound to be disappointed. While Hesher inevitably teaches the characters about the virtues of moving on, the very fact of Hesher himself throws doubt on the intentionality of his lessons. Offering advice in the form of vulgar, half-assed metaphors, he is perhaps best described as an out-of-control golem conjured by an adolescent's directionless rage.

13 Assassins (2010)

May 13, 2011Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

****/****
starring Koji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya, Ikki Sawamura
screenplay by Daisuke Tengan
directed by Takashi Miike

13assassinsby Walter Chaw 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike's costume-period retro-cross-cultural updating of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (and more horizontal homage to obvious antecedents by countrymen Kurosawa, Kobayashi, and Chushingura), initially seems a surprise choice for someone who's made his name (80+ times in the last twenty years) with transgressive, flamboyantly outré Yakuza and horror pictures. But Miike hinted at this exact marriage of a specific Spaghetti Western tradition and the Samurai flicks that were its inspiration with his arch Sukiyaki Western Django–choosing this time around to present the material "straighter," allowing his cast the language and trappings of late-Feudal Japan. The result is possibly the best Samurai movie since Yoji Yamada's Twilight Samurai (and its unofficial sequel, Hidden Blade), a picture meticulous in its details that is nonetheless only possible to fully appreciate within a working conversation with the traditions (including those of Miike's own work) that inform it. It's like a Coen Brothers film in that respect: very much the post-modern artifact, very much the solipsistic auto-critical exercise in genre, but also so technically brilliant and thematically rich that it's possible to enjoy it without much of that prior knowledge.

East of Eden (1955) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

May 11, 2011Posted in1950s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
starring Julie Harris, James Dean, Raymond Massey, Burl Ives
screenplay by Paul Osborn, based on the novel by John Steinbeck
directed by Elia Kazan

Eastofedencapby Walter Chaw There's a moment–well, there are dozens of moments, but there's a moment in particular–in Elia Kazan's follow-up to On the Waterfront, East of Eden, where James Dean (in the only film of his released during his lifetime), as the troubled Cal, asks his estranged mother (Jo Van Fleet) for a loan, all anxious tics and frightened eyes, seemingly uncomfortable in his own skin. It at once defines Dean's appeal to a generation of young folks, who saw reflected in him something of their own fear and trembling, and crystallizes the revolution in screen acting brought about by Dean and The Actors Studio brats Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Julie Harris, and Montgomery Clift. It's comparable to the emergence of Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands–reactions, both, to Eisenhower eras defined by cultural repression and the indoctrinated magnification of the mythology of the American male. (Dean and Depp are similarly feminized–almost asexual–in these signature roles.) A later moment, Cal's offer of a gift to stern father Adam (Raymond Massey, playing the literal dry run to Melvyn Douglas's patriarch in Hud) of a cool grand won through a little harmless WWI-profiteering, is unavoidably linked to what we know of Kazan's friendly testimony before HUAC. It's knowledge that makes it impossible for a Union-busting dockworker's martyrdom to be just what it is–and impossible to see Adam's rejection of Cal as anything other than another cry for righteous forgiveness for an odious act done in good faith. East of Eden, of course, could also be a rejection of consumerism in the midst of the nascence of our consumerist wonderland–a reaction to our plutocracy's values and a further case for Dean as the sainted figure of rebellion that would fuel the generational schism of the '60s.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD

May 9, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Nicolas Cage

*/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras D
starring Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer
screenplay by Matt Lopez and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard
directed by Jon Turteltaub

by Walter Chaw Disney was headed this way before The Little Mermaid–then Pixar–gave them the illusion of a new direction. But all along, the dirty little secret in the House of Mouse has been that, Eisner or not, the company's sensibilities lie in the exhumation and unnatural reanimation of their vault product, whether it be in repackaging the old grey mares or offering dtv sequels to the same, or mounting big-budget revamps of past "glories." Then, accidentally, they made a good film with the first Pirates of the Caribbean, which reminds of a certain thing with blind squirrels and nuts. So it comes as no surprise that Disney, dealing with a congenital paucity of imagination, has reached the point where it's actually making movies based on a portion of a movie. Next up? That Spaghetti Scene from Lady and the Tramp: The Movie. But first, there's Jon Turteltaub and Jerry Bruckheimer's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, hoping to conjure up (ha) the nominal success of their National Treasure franchise on the back of a specious premise cobbled together so they can repurpose part of Fantasia in live-action. Bad idea? Really bad idea.

King of Kings (1961) – Blu-ray Disc

May 9, 2011Posted in1960s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Drama

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Jeffrey Hunter, Siobhan McKenna, Hurd Hatfield, Robert Ryan
screenplay by Philip Yordan
directed by Nicholas Ray

by Jefferson Robbins Painterly and static, for the most part, Nicholas Ray's King of Kings boasts one truly remarkable, energetic camera feat: a view from the top of the crucifix, gazing down the length of Jesus's body as he's hoisted into position for martyrdom. It stuck in Martin Scorsese's mind, too, and a variation of the shot appeared in his The Last Temptation of Christ. It's not an unfair comparison, as the two films both seek new paths into the Christ story by collapsing the degrees of separation between characters, plumbing the politics of Roman-controlled Judea, and introducing moments of doubt and pain for Jesus (Jeffrey Hunter) that are not merely spiritual, but personal as well. When the Messiah visits the house of his mother Mary (Siobhan McKenna), he offers to apply his carpentry skills to a broken chair upon returning from his next fateful act of ministry, in Jerusalem. "The chair will never be mended," Mary says, and they mutually, silently acknowledge the destiny laid out for him. It's not Willem Dafoe boinking Barbara Hershey, but it is a human moment–the Son of Man craving a simple man's life.

Excalibur (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

May 4, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, UK

½*/**** Image B Sound D+ Extras C+
starring Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay, Nicol Williamson
screenplay by Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman, adapted from Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur by Pallenberg
directed by John Boorman

by Walter Chaw Anyone with an answer for what the good fuck is going on in John Boorman’s Excalibur is the forgiving sort who already has a working conversation with the Arthur mythos–who’s already read T.H. White or, at the minimum, watched The Sword in the Stone. Maybe said scholar was also a fan of Winston Churchill and likes to think that the great British PM was the very reincarnation of the 1st-century figure; maybe in a fit of frustration at the film, WIKIPEDIA was consulted. But most likely, the person who finds not only coherence in but also affection for Excalibur was nine or ten when they first saw it, enjoyed the tits and swordplay, didn’t notice the acting and the screenplay and the green light “special effect,” and was probably just as happy with any other contemporary fantasy that provided the same (Ladyhawke, Clash of the Titans, Legend, Conan the Barbarian, Dragonslayer). Really, the picture Excalibur most resembles is legendary stinker Krull (which likewise features an embarrassed-looking Liam Neeson in a tiny secondary role), complete with deplorable special effects, identical central plot, incomprehensible execution, and from-outer-space choices everywhere else. It probably shouldn’t be as big a surprise as it seems, given that Boorman has been obsessed with, and essentially retelling, the Arthur myth for the bulk of his career and, at the point at which Excalibur was made, had been working on the project in some form for nearly two decades. The film meant the world to him–and that romance with it appears to have drowned out the warnings of his better nature.

The Verdict (1982) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

April 28, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Directors: Sidney Lumet, Drama, DVD, Mystery

***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B+
starring Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason
screenplay by David Mamet, based on the novel by Barry Reed
directed by Sidney Lumet

by Jefferson Robbins It's never clear if disgraced lawyer Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) is a practicing Catholic, as are so many of the souls around him in a grey, hopeless Boston–but there's a crucifix on his office wall, and he sure has the posture down. Note how many times in Sidney Lumet's legal drama Newman is caught posed in the final stage of genuflection, Roman brow in profile, knuckle touched to lips. He's skipped making the sign of the cross and gone straight to kissing a nonexistent rosary. His is a corroded soul, though in David Mamet's screenplay construction, at least he knows it's corroded. Chasing any lawsuit that will end in a payday, Galvin lies right to the faces of dozens of people. In this, he's no better than his opponents in court, save that they lie through the proxy instruments of forgery and coached testimony, keeping their hands clean. They sail through the system frictionlessly, while Galvin feels himself dying a little each time–unless it's in the service of something greater. In his wanderings, windowpanes and desk fans cast the impression of a cross over him.

Water for Elephants (2011)

April 22, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, Hal Holbrook
screenplay by Richard LaGravenese, based on the book by Sara Gruen
directed by Francis Lawrence

Waterforelephantsby Ian Pugh Genre hack Francis Lawrence moves into Twilight territory with the trashy forbidden-romance flick Water for Elephants, in which the opposing forces contriving to keep our lovers apart prove to be minor obstacles at best. Despite its circus setting, this is a thoroughly familiar and perfunctorily-told tale. Feel free to blame Lawrence's typically meat-and-potatoes direction. Go ahead and blame screenwriter Richard LaGravenese for an adaptation that, on the surface, leaves no room for complexity or ambiguity. And, sure, blame Robert Pattinson for his infallibly bland delivery. Maybe hold off on blaming Witherspoon, whose charms seem diluted by the woodenness of onscreen beau Pattinson. Just, whatever you do, don't blame poor Christoph Waltz, who brings his "A" game to this sorry affair and is rewarded with one of the most patently ridiculous send-offs ever bestowed upon a character actor. You thought Inglourious Basterds was brutal? Man, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Maniac (1980) [30th Anniversary Edition] + Vigilante (1983) – Blu-ray Discs

April 13, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, Horror, Revenge, Thriller

MANIAC
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A+
starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro
screenplay by C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell
directed by William Lustig

VIGILANTE
*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Robert Forster, Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Woody Strode
screenplay by Richard Vetere
directed by William Lustig

by Walter Chaw William Lustig reduces exploitation cinema to the filthy stepchild of Sams Peckinpah and Fuller: one part animal logic, one part tabloid paranoia. He wallows in impulse, and his sensibility is 42nd Street grindhouse through and through, from kitchen-sink production values to disjointed vignette presentations to a generally lawless indulgence towards atrocity. If Lustig's pictures have achieved a kind of cult lustre, credit his ability to alternate action sequences with B-legends showcases. It would be a mistake to attribute more to Lustig's pictures than workmanlike efficiency as applied to formula prurience, though there's something to be said for knock-off garbage done with a lack of pretension–done, in fact, with a distinct, naïve childishness that doesn't quite get down there with Jess Franco or Herschell Gordon Lewis (nor up there with Mario Bava or Dario Argento), but manages a little interest despite itself now and again, probably by (who cares?) accident.

Fair Game (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

April 10, 2011Posted in2010, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Thriller, United Arab Emirates

**½/**** Image B+ Sound C Commentary C
starring Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, David Andrews, Sam Shepard
screenplay by Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth, based on the books The Politics of Truth by Joe Wilson and Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson
directed by Doug Liman

by Walter Chaw I remember distinctly somewhere in year two of W.'s administration the feeling of extreme "outrage fatigue"–that burnout that occurs when you've spent so much time incredulous that you realize you're the idiot for expecting something different. Subsequently, I recall being the only one in my circle of friends to predict W.'s re-election, as well as the only one not surprised when we didn't find any WMDs. It's not that I'm particularly smart, it's that I'm dick enough to be right half the time. Why fight it? Bad movies tend to win the weekly box office, bad music dominates the charts, bad TV gets renewed; rather than declare it a new phenomenon, take cold comfort in knowing that it was always this way and it's not necessarily worse now. Sophocles wasn't selling out the Coliseum, after all. So if Fair Game, Doug Liman's adaptation of Valerie Plame's memoir of her betrayal by the Bush Administration for the sins of her big-mouthed, self-righteous husband Joe Wilson, doesn't have shock and outrage going for it, it at least has the smarts to portray Joe as a deeply ambiguous figure. He's a jackass, but he's right, and Sean Penn's portrayal of him is uncompromised, unflattering, and completely in keeping with stuff like his Into the Wild and The Assassination of Richard Nixon: liberal shots that don't offend the conversation.

Source Code (2011) + Certified Copy (2010)

April 1, 2011Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Canada, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

SOURCE CODE
****/****
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
screenplay by Ben Ripley
directed by Duncan Jones

Copie conforme
****/****
starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell
written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami

by Walter Chaw The one part of Source Code that isn't duck-ass tight poses so many questions about the nature of our hero's heroism and the aftermath of the film that it opens up what initially seems a hermetically-sealed conceit into something of real depth and fascination. Far from the solipsism of failures interesting (Timecrimes) and not (Primer), different from marginal successes like 12 Monkeys and Déjà Vu, Duncan Jones's sophomore feature (after the similarly thorny Moon) plays most like a child of Last Year at Marienbad and a companion piece to Abbas Kiarostami's contemporaneous Certified Copy. It speaks in terms of quantum physics and string theory, but without pretension, achieving the almost impossible by introducing difficult concepts at the same pace with which its characters–not a dummy among them–are able to understand them without gassing (or worse, falling well behind) the audience. That it presents itself as a mainstream, popular entertainment is more to its credit, giving lie to the notion that Hollywood is bankrupt of ideas. Rather, it's the destination for gifted filmmakers–some of them smart enough, and resourceful enough, to hold fast to their idealism and intelligence for, if not an entire career, then at least long enough to set a bar.

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) + Kramer Vs. Kramer (1979) – Blu-ray Discs

March 30, 2011Posted in****/****, 1930s, 1970s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Drama

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY
****/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Herbert Mundin
screenplay by Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson, based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
directed by Frank Lloyd

KRAMER VS. KRAMER
****/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Jane Alexander, Justin Henry
screenplay by Robert Benton, based on the novel by Avery Corman
directed by Robert Benton

by Alex Jackson Frank Lloyd's 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty and Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer don't have much in common other than that they both won the Oscar for Best Picture and that they are both totally fucking awesome. I know it sounds weird for me to apply fanboyish hyperbole to such conventionally middlebrow fare, but I love these films in much the same way I love Star Wars or the Indiana Jones movies. One is a lavish, two-million-dollar literary adaptation starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton; the other is a minimalist Issue Movie about divorce (apparently aiming to do for the dissolution of marriage what Gentleman's Agreement did for anti-Semitism) starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Evidently, they represent what the Academy believed was quality cinema at the time.

Sucker Punch (2011)

March 24, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Fantasy, Musical, Theatrical

*/****
starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino
screenplay by Zack Snyder & Steve Shibuya
directed by Zack Snyder

Suckerpunchby Walter Chaw Another exercise in incoherent pomo douchebaggery from Zack "I'm Going to Mess Up Superman, Too" Snyder, Sucker Punch is maybe about female empowerment but works more like Tank Girl with a budget: the flexing girl-muscles and punk/fetish/sneering sexuality aren't fooling anyone. It sports a great soundtrack full of cover songs (everybody from The Pixies to The Eurhythmics gets a trip through the revamp machine) and Björk to comment (cleverly, I guess) on how every idea in the film is ripped off from other flicks as varied as Ghost in the Shell, Hellboy, the Lord of the Rings flicks, Kill Bill, Sin City, and–why not?–Fame. Its chief inspiration seems to be Brazil, sharing with that film Gilliam's giant Samurai thing as well as the fantasy parallel-world and framing conceit. It also borrows Gilliam's penchant for overdoing it and making something that's initially arresting into something that's irritating, cluttered, and ultimately hard to watch. By its third or fourth music-video-length set-piece, I was willing to declare Sucker Punch the winner and curl up in the fetal position. This is cinema as endurance test.

Rob Roy (1995) – Blu-ray Disc

March 24, 2011Posted in1990s, 2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Revenge, UK

***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange, John Hurt, Tim Roth
screenplay by Alan Sharp
directed by Michael Caton-Jones

by Jefferson Robbins Did they name a cocktail after William Wallace? I didn't think so. In this, the later Scots hero Robert Roy MacGregor has the advantage, as he does in the film drawn from his story. Rob Roy beat Mel Gibson's Braveheart into theatres by more than a month, and it's the superior product. But what challenge could Michael Caton-Jones's courtly, well-crafted tale of swash and buckle–his only film set in his home country–mount against the bludgeoning, ass-baring, gay-defenestrating fever dream of a megastar who yearned to be stretched on the rack in imitation of his Lord?