TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Western Adventures – DVD + Jeremiah Johnson (1972) – Blu-ray Disc

February 7, 2010Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 2010, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Romance, Western

MustownTHE WILD BUNCH (1969)
****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A+
starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Warren Oates
screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah
directed by Sam Peckinpah

McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)
****/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B+
starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane
screenplay by Robert Altman and Brian McKay, based on the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton
directed by Robert Altman

THE TRAIN ROBBERS (1973)
1/2*/**** Image B- Sound C Extras F
starring John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Rod Taylor, Ricardo Montalban
written and directed by Burt Kennedy

JEREMIAH JOHNSON
*/****
DVD – Image D+ Sound C- Extras F
BD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C+
starring Robert Redford, Will Geer, Allyn Ann McLerie, Delle Bolton
screenplay by John Milius and Edward Anhalt
directed by Sydney Pollack

Jeremiahjohnsoncap1

by Walter Chaw From John Ford to Akira Kurosawa to Sergio Leone then back to the United States with Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, trace the odd, international lineage of the American western genre as the seeds of its own completion are sown by Ford, only to be harvested a few decades down the line with a singular bloodbath south of the proverbial border. You could say that the western was already nearing its completion in the postwar films noir set in the sunshine and bluffs of the Old West: homegrown oaters by Anthony Mann and Fritz Lang; William Wellman's Yellow Sky and Robert Wise's Blood on the Moon; Budd Boetticher's subversive Ranowns; Arthur Penn's glass darkly Billy the Kid pic The Left Handed Gun; Brando's filthy One-Eyed Jacks; and even Ford himself with terminal pieces like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers. But it's through Kurosawa's admiration and transfiguration of Ford's themes–then Sergio Leone's incandescent prism of dirt and blood that transfigured Kurosawa's (and Ford's) ideas about heroics and individualism into something poetically base–from which Peckinpah1 took his cues.

Sundance ’10: Me Too

February 6, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Spain, Sundance
Yo, también***/****starring Lola Dueñas, Pablo Pineda, Antonio Naharro, Isabel García Lorcawritten and directed by Álvaro Pastor & Antonio Naharro by Alex Jackson Daniel (Pablo Pineda) is a 34-year-old man with Down Syndrome who has recently graduated from college and gotten a job as a social worker connecting persons with disabilities with home- and community-based services. (I served my internship at a state-run agency like this.) There he meets and grows infatuated with the blonde, slightly older, sexually provocative Laura (Lola Dueñas), who does not have Down Syndrome. They find themselves developing a strong friendship, with Daniel trying to push it…

Sundance ’10: I Am Love

February 6, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Italy, Romance, Sundance
***½/****starring Tilda Swinton, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Pippo Delbono, Alba Rohrwacherwritten and directed by Luca Guadagnino by Alex Jackson What to make of the ending to Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love? It's not that it's inexplicable, exactly. I believe I understood what "happened" perfectly well. The issue, really, is with John Adams's score. It builds and builds and grows louder and louder until we half believe that wealthy Milan housewife Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton) will be dragged down to Hell by a gypsy curse. The audience I saw it with struggled to stifle giggles. They were emotionally manipulated to have a strong…

Dear John (2010)

February 5, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, War, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Henry Thomas, Richard Jenkins
screenplay by Jamie Linden, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
directed by Lasse Hallström

by Ian Pugh Movies based on Nicholas Sparks novels–sentimental drivel, functionally identical–usually just bounce off my chest, but we all have our limits. Once more into the breach as Princess Prettygirl (Seyfried) falls head over heels for Johnny Bluecollar (Tatum) in a spectacularly awful Harlequin romance that juggles metaphors about coins and the size of the moon while boasting only the vaguest understanding of the English language. Dear John is little more than a rehash of The Notebook, a movie I found tedious but, again, ultimately innocuous. Yet there’s a mysterious “x” factor at work in this one that attacked some vital nerve and reduced my brain to petroleum jelly. Could be that Lasse Hallström finally found the perfect vessels for the source author: Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum–actors, both, whose deadwood talents fail to stretch past sheer bewilderment. (I kind of hate Ryan Gosling as an actor, but he undoubtedly elevated The Notebook.) There’s a point very early on where Seyfried remarks, “Wow, you made a fire,” as her future beau demonstrates his ability to jumpstart a little kindling–and the complete lack of sarcasm (or really any emotion) in her voice led me to wonder if Tatum was going to club her over the head and drag her back to his cave. It’s not an unreasonable conclusion: most of these movies forge conflict out of the idea that women are property, and Dear John is no different.

Sundance ’10: Winter’s Bone

February 3, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Sundance
**/****starring Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey, Garret Dillahuntscreenplay by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellinidirected by Debra Granik by Alex Jackson Those who loved Courtney Hunt's Frozen River are welcome to a second helping with Winter's Bone. I fear it might signal the start of a new genre: grass-and-granola cinema nobly detailing the plight of the working poor crossed with pulpy film noir. (Granola noir, perhaps?) The problem with these movies is that grass-and-granola and film noir just do not mix. The "plight of the working poor" is grossly oversimplified when narratively expressed in noir terms. The gangsters in Winter's…

Sundance ’10: One Too Many Mornings

February 1, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance
**½/****starring Stephen Hale, Anthony Deptula, Tina Kapousis, Jonathan Shockleyscreenplay by Anthony Deptula, Michael Mohan, Stephen Haledirected by Michael Mohan by Alex Jackson One Too Many Mornings is yet another semi-autobiographical romantic dramedy about two twentysomething males refusing to enter the adult world. It sounds a lot like the below-reviewed Bass Ackwards and Obselidia, but this one was made completely out-of-pocket and shot on the weekends over the course of two years. Considering the ultra-low budget, I'll admit there's a temptation to lower my standards. The filmmaking itself is stylish and inventive while essentially staying organic to the material--there's a fine…

Sundance ’10: Memories of Overdevelopment

January 30, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Cuba, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance
Memorias del desarrollo**½/****starring Ron Blair, Eileen Alana, Susana Pérez, Lester Martínezscreenplay by Miguel Coyula, based on the novel by Edmundo Desnoesdirected by Miguel Coyula by Alex Jackson Asked by a student why he left Cuba despite supporting and believing in his country's socialist principles, Latin-American studies professor Sergio responds that not being able to write what he wanted to write was simply unbearable. Now that he's in the United States, he's free to say whatever he wants--and nobody cares. It's a relatively minor moment in an aggressively polemic film, but it's an extremely important one just the same. Throughout Memories…

Sundance ’10: Obselidia

January 27, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance
**/****starring Michael Piccirilli, Gaynor Howe, Frank Hoyt Taylor, Chris Byrnewritten and directed by Diane Bell by Alex Jackson Mark (Michael Blackman Beck) is working on an encyclopedia of obsolete things. He writes on a typewriter, wears a fedora, and films interviews for his book with an outdated camcorder. One of the things he considers obsolete is love. This belief is tested when he meets Sophie (Gaynor Howe), a projectionist of silent movies who nonetheless loves life too much to be stuck in the past. Diane Bell's Obselidia is gorgeous to look at and very well-acted. If the description I just…

Sundance ’10: 7 Days

January 26, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Canada, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Sundance, Thriller
Les 7 jours du talion**/****starring Rémy Girard, Claude Legault, Fanny Mallette, Martin Dubreuilscreenplay by Patrick Senecaldirected by Daniel Grou by Alex Jackson Perhaps one of the more overtly sadomasochistic entries in the torture-porn genre, French-Canadian Daniel Grou's 7 Days seems to be seething at the bit to get to the good stuff. When Jasmine (Rose-Marie Coallier), the eight-year-old daughter of surgeon Bruno Hamell (Claude Legault), is raped and murdered, he decides to kidnap, torture, and kill the man responsible and then turn himself in. Hamell catches the killer, a day labourer named Anthony Lemaire (Martin Dubreuil) who has been implicated…

The Book of Eli (2010)

January 15, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Michael Gambon
screenplay by Gary Whitta
directed by The Hughes Brothers

Bookofeliby Ian Pugh Let's start things off by lifting the veil of mystery surrounding the titular book and thus reveal the transparent secret upon which the film hangs its interminable first act. It's the freakin' Bible, all right? You're going to realize it from the very moment the all-important book is introduced, but you're expected to play along because The Book of Eli is deep, and everything about this film–including its simpering attempt to transcend genre–labours to play up that depth. It isn't exciting, it isn't transcendent, and it sure as hell ain't deep. This little sucker is meant as a western, its post-apocalyptic setting serving as mere window dressing for dialogue about The Time Before and The Flash and The War and how humanity's lust for excess got them into that mess. (George Miller was able to squeeze more eloquence from the idea by throwing a bunch of big rigs into a squabble over gasoline; he reserved all that pithy dialogue for his feral children.) Worse than that, however, is that the plot has been cobbled together from practically every western made prior to Unforgiven (it's closest to Eastwood's own cliché-ridden, quasi-spiritual Pale Rider, if you're starved for a direct analogy), with knowledge and religion standing in for the encroaching railroad. If that doesn't sound like the most bountiful wellspring of ideas, well, the script would appear to agree with you. "It's not just a book, it's a weapon," the diabolical Carnegie (Gary Oldman) growls upon recognizing his long-sought-after prize. Alas, The Book of Eli spends the rest of its two hours trying to find new ways to reiterate this–and the more it repeats itself, the farther it strays from that point.

Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

January 14, 2010Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Music, Romance, Teen

**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Miley Cyrus, Emily Osment, Jason Earles, Billy Ray Cyrus
screenplay by Dan Berendsen
directed by Peter Chelsom

by Bill Chambers Peter Chelsom may have sold his soul when he joined the ranks of Lasse Hallstrom and John Madden to become a house director for Miramax, but going to work at Disney–on a feature-film vehicle for one of the company’s biggest brands, no less–is a mercenary move, pure and simple. So it’s surprising, considering he probably could’ve treated the job as a paid vacation without incurring the wrath of “Hannah Montana” fans (who’ve been weaned on a particularly low-rent sitcom), to say nothing of the suits in charge (Disney favours foremen to filmmakers, after all), that Chelsom seems legitimately inspired by the material more often than not. The ‘Hannah Montana’ concept itself needs only gentle pushes to yield something resembling a story, but Chelsom doesn’t exactly coast on it; anyone who’s involuntarily endured the collected works of Kenny Ortega or Andy Fickman will notice a more idiosyncratic hand at the helm almost immediately. While I can’t say I’ve ever thought much of Chelsom’s films (they’re a bit twinkly for my tastes), he appears to have found his niche. As a work of Hollywood imperialism goes, it’s certainly preferable to his remake of Shall We Dance?.

Blue Valentine (2010); All Good Things (2010); Rabbit Hole (2010)

January 7, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

BLUE VALENTINE
***/****
starring Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, John Doman, Faith Wladyka
screenplay by Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne
directed by Derek Cianfrance

ALL GOOD THINGS
*/****
starring Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Philip Baker Hall
screenplay by Marcus Hinchey and Marc Smerling
directed by Andrew Jarecki

RABBIT HOLE
*/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, Sandra Oh
screenplay by David Lindsay Abaire, based on his play
directed by John Cameron Mitchell

by Walter Chaw In the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf end-of-year awards-bait sweepstakes, the ingredients for prestige seem pretty clear: one part Ryan Gosling (or Ryan Gosling substitute), one part beautiful starlet going the Full Monty (it's good to be Gosling), and one part sad arguing. Mix well and reap a bounty of critics raving about career performances of intensity and courage (translation: lots of crying, lots of naked if girl), introduce bored-but-not-admitting-it audiences to indie-rock darlings like Grizzly Bear, and present the awards-season cinephiles with rosters of once and future Sundance savants. Films like Blue Valentine, All Good Things, and Rabbit Hole generally impress festival audiences and people who can't afford to go to festivals but wish they could–there's a certain hunger for movies screened in rarefied air that proffer misery and Sandra Oh for the arthouse schadenfreude freakshow. A long time in the company of people we're glad we don't know, call it reality television for assholes who don't admit they watch reality television. For my money, the gold standards for such remain Eye of God and Lars Von Trier's Antichrist.

The Lovely Bones (2009) + The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009)

December 25, 2009Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Drama, Fantasy, France, Mystery, New Zealand, Spielberg, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

THE LOVELY BONES
½*/****
starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by Alice Sebold
directed by Peter Jackson

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS
½*/****
starring Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Verne Troyer, Tom Waits
screenplay by Terry Gilliam & Charles McKeown
directed by Terry Gilliam

by Walter Chaw It's all a little too Puff, the Magic Dragon, isn't it. The Lovely Bones finds Peter Jackson regressing into his worst instincts and a newfound squeamishness in a film about, ick, a fourteen-year-old girl's rape and murder, leaving the most unsavoury details of Alice Sebold's revered source novel to the golden-lit imagination. (Give this to Precious: it's exploitation with the decency to titillate.) This isn't to say the book is worth much of a shit, but to say that it at least has the courage to talk about a rape and a murder where the film only has the mustard to romanticize loss and suggest that 1973 was so long ago the freak next door didn't raise any flags. It's also to say that what began its existence as a study of the bonds that hold a family together through the caprice of living has been reduced in its film adaptation to a murder mystery without a mystery, and a supernatural thriller that at every turn reminds of how much better Jackson's The Frighteners is in dealing with almost the exact same set of themes.

The Sopranos: The Complete First Season (1999) – Blu-ray Disc

December 23, 2009Posted in1990s, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Gangster, Television

Image B- Sound A- Extras B-
“Pilot,” “46 Long,” “Denial, Anger, Acceptance,” “Meadowlands,” “College,” “Pax Soprana,” “Down Neck,” “The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti,” “Boca,” “A Hit Is a Hit,” “Nobody Knows Anything,” “Isabella,” “I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano”

Sopranosbigcapby Bryant Frazer By the end of its run in 2007, HBO’s mob drama “The Sopranos” had become a cultural institution. Critics essayed strenuously on the series’ thematic concerns, genuflecting and kissing the ring of Don David Chase, the creator and showrunner whose fingerprints are all over every scene of every episode. The show’s run started in the days before DVRs splintered the television audience temporally, so viewers cleared their Sunday night schedules to take in “The Sopranos” even as they broke off into factions.

The Gary Cooper Collection: Along Came Jones; Man of the West; The Pride of the Yankees; The Westerner – DVD

December 16, 2009Posted in****/****, 1940s, 1950s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Biopic, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports, Western

ALONG CAME JONES (1945)
**½/**** Image B+ Sound C+
starring Gary Cooper, Loretta Young, William Demarest, Dan Duryea
screenplay by Nunnally Johnson
directed by Stuart Heisler

MAN OF THE WEST (1958)
****/**** Image A- Sound B-
starring Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell
screenplay by Reginald Rose
directed by Anthony Mann

THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942)
**/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras C
starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea
screenplay by Jo Swerling and Herman J. Mankiewicz
directed by Sam Wood

THE WESTERNER (1940)
**½/**** Image B Sound C+
starring Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Doris Davenport, Fred Stone
screenplay by Jo Swerling and Niven Busch
directed by William Wyler

by Jefferson Robbins I thought Gary Cooper was broader. The way he carried Hollywood on his shoulders from the silents through the talkies to the threshold of the New Wave, you'd expect him to be broader. Instead, he was the definition of lanky. Where his centre of gravity lay was in his Rushmore of a face: in close-up, he's an impossible granite monument, like that ever-unfinished Crazy Horse memorial in South Dakota; in full shot, in his prime years, he's a broomstick supporting a boulder.

Brothers (2009) + Everybody’s Fine (2009)

December 9, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Road Movie, Robert De Niro, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, War

BROTHERS
***/****
starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Mare Winningham
screenplay by David Benioff, based on the motion picture Brødre by Susanne Bier
directed by Jim Sheridan

EVERYBODY'S FINE
*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell
screenplay by Kirk Jones, based on an earlier screenplay by Massimo De Rita & Tonio Guerra & Giuseppe Tornatore
directed by Kirk Jones

by Ian Pugh If you're feeling charitable towards Susanne Bier's Brødre, you'll probably consider Jim Sheridan's Brothers an extraordinarily faithful remake–one that follows the original recipe so closely it could be considered a step-by-step recreation. But a quick survey of what screenwriter David Benioff excised and expanded reveals that he wasn't merely a glorified script doctor, having squeezed some real pathos from a tactless source. It's still the story of a loving father, Sam (Tobey Maguire), who is forced to perform unspeakable acts as a POW in Afghanistan. Because Sam's presumed dead, his ex-con brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal, finding the perfect balance between guilt and innocence) straightens out his life and grows ever closer to Sam's wife (Natalie Portman) and children. Sam's sudden reappearance in their lives is further complicated by the onset of the soldier's post-traumatic stress, but gone are the heavy-handed lines about the nature of good, evil, and death from Bier's film. In their place, moments of shaky acceptance as new members are integrated into a family–followed by stares of betrayal as loved ones become interlopers in their own home.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) – DVD

December 8, 2009Posted in1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family

***/**** Image F (colorized)/B+ (b&w) Sound B Extras C
starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Gene Lockhart
screenplay by George Seaton, based on the story by Valentine Davies
directed by George Seaton

by Alex Jackson George Seaton's Miracle on 34th Street isn't my Christmas movie of choice. My most potent movie memory of Christmas is actually watching the Star Wars trilogy when it was broadcast on the USA network however many years ago. Accordingly, I make it a point of marking the holiday by watching some kind of Star Wars-like "deep reality" science-fiction or fantasy film, such as The Lord of the Rings, or Blade Runner. A couple years back, I watched The Passion of the Christ. But I digress. Of all the major Christmas movie cults–including those surrounding A Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Elf, and 1951's A Christmas Carol–the Miracle on 34th Street cult is the one with which I'd most want to spend the holidays. The film manages to be irreverent without becoming sacrilegious and sentimental without becoming saccharine. It's a pretty silly film, but I guess you could say that it's serious about being silly. It values silliness for its restorative, therapeutic quality.

Falling Down (1993) – Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

December 8, 2009Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, France, Thriller, UK

*/**** Image C+ Sound C+ Extras C-
starring Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Tuesday Weld
screenplay by Ebbe Roe Smith
directed by Joel Schumacher

by Walter Chaw Atrociously written by actor Ebbe Roe Smith and atrociously directed (it goes without saying) by Joel Schumacher, it's also got a really terrible old-person performance by Robert Duvall, who would court Oscar with this exact hand-patting, repeating himself, huffy-giggly shtick at the end of the '90s with The Apostle. The whole thing is dreadful, rife with an unbearable self-satisfied rattle of social outrage that it's entirely unwilling to decipher to any useful end. Falling Down is a barely-literate rant, delivered at the top of the proverbial lungs, that suggests not-shockingly that L.A. is the epicentre of immigrant tension, gang violence, racial warfare, and class resentments. It postulates at the centre of this ever-swirling maelstrom crew-cut cipher Bill, known mainly by his vanity plate "D-FENS," who cracks one day in the middle of a Fellini homage and decides to abandon his car to the fates and walk to the house of his ex-wife (Barbara Hershey) and daughter. They've got a restraining order against him, of course, because he's a nutball. And because we're talking social satire here, Bill's been laid off for a month without telling anyone and, man, this recession sure is taking its toll, isn't it? Over the course of his Swiftian travels, Bill encounters a Korean grocer charging too much at his mini-mart; Hispanic gang-bangers who try to kill him in a drive-by; a white supremacist NRA nut (Frederic Forrest, who, like Duvall, used to be better than this) running an army surplus store; and a little black kid who knows how to use a bazooka.

The Young Victoria (2009) + Antichrist (2009)

December 4, 2009Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Denmark, Directors: Lars von Trier, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Horror, Italy, Poland, Romance, Sweden, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

THE YOUNG VICTORIA
**/****
starring Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson
screenplay by Julian Fellowes
directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

ANTICHRIST
****/****
starring Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
written and directed by Lars von Trier

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As the beginning of an emotional history for Queen Victoria, Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria makes for an interesting bookend to John Madden's Mrs. Brown. A lavish, romantic depiction of the monarch's courtship with future husband Prince Albert (Rupert Friend), it's the very definition of a quotidian costume drama, skirting over the major issues of the early years of Victoria's reign to speak in broader terms about her idealism, the problems presented to her by her youth, and the manipulation of her affections by courtly politics. It's something like the older sister to Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette: less hip, but still in love with its naivety, its evergreen youth. It says something to me that in 2009, there's a film about Queen Victoria that's less interested in the stuffiness for which the Monarch is probably most popularly known than in her liberalism, her progressive attitude towards the humanism inspired by first the Colonies, then the French Revolution, then Britain's own Reform Act, enacted just five years before her coronation. An early film churned up in the wake of the optimism engendered by an Obama presidency? It's tempting to read it as such, not simply because you do hope this administration is better than the last, but also because, as the decade of the aughts draws a curtain on nine years of increasing outer and inner dark, there's at least the faint hope for some cloudbusting in the cinema, too.

The Blind Side (2009)

December 2, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Sports, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Kathy Bates
screenplay by John Lee Hancock, based on the book by Michael Lewis
directed by John Lee Hancock

Blindsideby Walter Chaw Just in time for Christmas, professional schmaltz peddler John Lee Hancock updates Richard Pryor's The Toy by giving another privileged white brat a black man he can fuck with, call his victories his own, and keep in the guest room. This Michael Oher–as played sub-vocally by gentle, Lenny-ian giant Quinton Aaron–is not only the Super Duper Magic Negro who heals a household of rich shitkickers ("Shoot! We done gots a Black Man living with us 'fore we ever even MET a Democrat! Hoot!"–forgetting that wealthy southern landowners have a long tradition of keeping black people on their grounds without commensurately progressive attitudes), but is the passive, mute object around which every single person who likes The Blind Side convinces themselves they aren't racist for the liking of it. If this movie doesn't piss you off, if it doesn't make you nauseated with its dangerous smugness, you're part of the problem.