The Sum of All Fears (2002) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

The Sum of All Fears (2002) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Germany, Thriller, War

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B Extras A-
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber
screenplay by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, based on the novel by Tom Clancy
directed by Phil Alden Robinson

by Walter Chaw The Sum of All Fears is a well-made techno-horror film based on a reasonably well-written (by Tom Clancy standards) techno-horror novel. It’s a studio marketing department’s worst nightmare post-9/11 (the movie revolving around a pilfered nuclear weapon and a terrorist plot to destabilize the universe) and a critic’s wet dream: finally, something meaty to write about in popular film. Or so it would seem, for alas, The Sum of All Fears is just a well-made techno-horror film–in theme and suggestion, it’s as moldy and stately as a Le Carré master plot with little comment regarding the state of our world besides “Bad people do bad things despite the best efforts of good people.” See, we know that already; while I’m the first to decry the pathological dedication of mainstream pictures to provide easy solutions for life’s injustices, The Sum of All Fears is a remarkably ill-timed piece that plays essentially like the sharp twist of a buried knife.

Stop-Loss (2008) + 21 (2008)|21 – Blu-ray Disc

Stop-Loss (2008) + 21 (2008)|21 – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, War

STOP-LOSS
*½/****
starring Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
screenplay by Mark Richard & Kimberly Peirce
directed by Kimberly Peirce

21
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Spacey
screenplay by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb
directed by Robert Luketic

by Walter Chaw The only thing really wrong with MTV–besides the fact that they don’t show music videos anymore–is that its branding on some of the most vacuous, appalling celebrations of vanity, stupidity, and acting-out in the not-exactly-sterling history of the medium has spawned a rash of imitative programming. It’s cheap to turn a few cameras on pretty idiots fucking each other figuratively and literally in resort locales, and so now there are Tiffany versions of this (“Survivor”) on broadcast networks and sewer versions of this (those Flava Flav things, Anna Nicole’s old show) on struggling basic-cable outlets. (Cartoon Network even has an animated send-up of “The Real World”.) And if the genre momentarily appeared to be on the verge of extinction, it suddenly found new life with the recent writers’ strike. Because a good many films nowadays are populated by pre-fabricated tween (and post-tween) stars, I have no idea who they are until they’re shoved into my consciousness as “stars”; indeed, MTV’s dread influence on popular culture has extended itself (hand-in-hand with Titanic‘s mammoth babysitter’s-club popularity) into the multiplex. Too ephemeral for any nickname (no “brat pack” here, just a revolving door of fresh meat), the real legacy of MTV might be that it functions as a microcosm for the lost youth phenomenon in the United States: In every Britney Spears, I see a Virginia Tech. Promise the terminally untalented the moon and repay them with a goat’s portion of disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration bound to simmer to a foul boil.

Lars and the Real Girl (2007); The Passion of Greg the Bunny: The Best of the Film Parodies Volume 2 (2006-2007); The Cottage (2008) [Unrated] – DVDs

Lars and the Real Girl (2007); The Passion of Greg the Bunny: The Best of the Film Parodies Volume 2 (2006-2007); The Cottage (2008) [Unrated] – DVDs

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Horror, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, UK

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL
*½/**** Image A Sound B Extras D
starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner
screenplay by Nancy Oliver
directed by Craig Gillespie

THE PASSION OF GREG THE BUNNY: THE BEST OF THE FILM PARODIES VOLUME 2
Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
“Fur on the Asphalt,” “Wumpus the Monster,” “Sockville,” “Blue Velveteen,” “Plush: Behind the Seams,” “Wacky Wednesday,” “The Passion of the Easter Bunny: A Fabricated American Movie”

THE COTTAGE
½*/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras D
starring Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith, Stephen O’Donnell, Jennifer Ellison
written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams

by Ian Pugh Beyond its pale stab at indie street cred and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay (which are almost one and the same these days), Lars and the Real Girl shares with Juno an invitation to partake in a never-ending stream of laughs over its premise until it basically flips a switch and instructs you to get emotional over it–the supposed target of discussion here being nothing less than that ever-popular subject of paternalistic revulsion, mental illness. Ryan Gosling turns his “twitchy zombie” knob up to eleven as Lars, a quiet loner living in his brother Gus’s (Paul Schneider) backyard shed. After Gus’s pregnant wife Karin (Emily Mortimer) expresses concern that her brother-in-law is spending too much time by himself, Lars orders a realistic sex doll named “Bianca” over the Internet and parades it around the neighbourhood as the girlfriend he never had, much to the consternation of Gus, Karin, and Lars’s would-be love interest Margo (Kelli Garner), who can only respond with uncertain stares and a lot of hemming and hawing.

P.S. I Love You (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

P.S. I Love You (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance, UK

**/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Lisa Kudrow, Kathy Bates
screenplay by Richard LaGravanese and Steven Rogers, based on the novel by Cecelia Ahern
directed by Richard LaGravanese

Bryant Frazer In P.S. I Love You, Hilary Swank gets to play a part that’s typically the province of male actors: the lovesick bachelor. The gender-specific word for what she is here is widow: Her husband has succumbed to brain cancer, leaving her alone in a Chinatown apartment. But the stereotype is so familiar as a guy thing–Swank’s place is littered with pizza crusts, Chinese take-out containers, and take-out coffee cups, and she herself parades around in boxers–that its presence is a touch of wit in a movie that has lots of grace notes. That’s a testimony to the skills of writer-director Richard LaGravenese, a sort of go-to guy for contemporary melodrama. He’s made a career out of investing commercial romantic comedy with soul, humour, and a little bit of weirdness. Alas, that LaGravenese touch is not enough to balance out the manipulative tone of the whole wish-fulfillment enterprise he’s working at here. P.S. I Love You is easy to watch and occasionally rewarding, but it’s so transparently inspirational that its feel-good contortions might end up making you feel worse for the wear.

Hancock (2008)

Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Superhero, Theatrical, Will Smith

***/****
starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, Jae Head
screenplay by Vy Vincent Ngo & Vince Gilligan
directed by Peter Berg

by Walter Chaw I’m an unabashed Peter Berg fan. I think that his Very Bad Things is naughty and transgressive in ways that Judd Apatow could only pretend; that his The Rundown is the first film since Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small to use little people correctly in a rollicking, rousing sentence; and that his Friday Night Lights did a very fine job of essaying the insular madness of Texas high-school football. Berg’s last picture, The Kingdom, is the finest pop explication of the brief history of (and our relationship with) the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and now his superhero epic Hancock has the temerity to try to address the colour barrier in comics as it relates, uneasily, to these United States. Talking about it tells everything, so beware the major spoiler, but Hancock has at its centre an indestructible, airborne, super-strong black man with a white wife who, should he spend too much time near her, renders him completely, utterly mortal and thus subject to the world that would see them apart. Consider that this is a mega-budget, 4th of July blockbuster starring Will Smith, the black guy all America can agree on, doing the old miscegenation tango with the whitest white girl on the planet, South African lovely Charlize Theron, which should have aged white Republicans twisted up in their Confederate-flag panties. We’re only really forty years removed from Selma, Alabama, and here’s forty-year-old Will Smith planting a big wet one on Theron’s lips in a tentpole flick the summer that Barack Obama became the first black man chosen as the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States. God bless America, free(r) at last.

Bridge to Terabithia (2007) [Widescreen]; The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007); The Spiderwick Chronicles [2-Disc Field Guide Edition] – DVDs

Bridge to Terabithia (2007) [Widescreen]; The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007); The Spiderwick Chronicles [2-Disc Field Guide Edition] – DVDs

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Thriller

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Josh Hutcherson, Annasophia Robb, Robert Patrick, Zooey Deschanel
screenplay by Jeff Stockwell and David Paterson, based on the book by Katherine Paterson
directed by Gabor Csupo

THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING
½*/**** N/A
starring Alexander Ludwig, Christopher Eccleston, Ian McShane, Frances Conroy
screenplay by John Hodge, based on the book by Susan Cooper
directed by David L. Cunningham

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, David Strathairn
screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick and John Sayles, based on the books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
directed by Mark Waters

by Walter Chaw In the genre of wide-eyed, hyperactive ‘tween bullshit, there seems a common thread of missing parents or siblings with all the attendant Oedipal complexities upon which to coat-hanger every genus of just-pubescent, Uncle Joe Campbell shenanigans. (Oh, I get it, it’s a metaphor for strange hair, jerking off, and embarrassing hard-ons–no wonder I identify with these things again as I get older.) More underground than overt adolescent emo rock-star/rapist fantasies like vampirism, the flicks of this type that work–such as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, or the third and fifth Harry Potters, or The Passion of the Christ–incorporate the uncertainty and body horror of growing up with hero/martyr fantasies and, ultimately, the melancholy of childhood’s end. The result of a job well done is a piece of enduring, often befuddling, resonance, owing in part to the canny hijacking of some existing folklore or mythology (including comic books) and the gratifying recognition that at the end of all that hormonal devastation is the justification of manhood. Psychosexual psychodrama at least, the new crop of boy-into-man-boy flicks, in the wake of the astounding success of that certain boy wizard (and, shit, probably Shrek‘s, too), takes a new interest in fantasy as a means to specific ontological ends. For this unabashed fan of Matthew Robbins’s idyllic, laden Dragonslayer, it’s not entirely bad news.

10,000 BC (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

10,000 BC (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Fantasy, Germany, New Zealand, Sci-Fi, South Africa, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Joel Virgel
screenplay by Roland Emmerich & Harald Kloser
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Walter Chaw Gather ’round, younglings, pull up a rock. Comfortable? Good. Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC is about a young warrior named “D’Leh” (Steven Strait) who has the bad judgment to fall in love with doll-eyed Evolet (Camilla Belle)–who herself has the bad judgment to be kidnapped by slave traders. The movie starts in the Himalayas, I think, and ends there following an interminable foray in a rainforest as well as an Egyptian detour. I know it’s Egypt because we see them building Pyramids in the desert, though I confess to being a little confused by the revelation that mammoths are beasts of burden in 10,000 BC, forced to participate in the construction of said pyramids. I had time to wonder aloud about how this is the second film after Jumper in 2008’s deadly winter-doldrums sweepstakes to go to Egypt’s Valley of Kings, and about how D’Leh and his mentor Tic’Tic (Cliff Curtis) could not only make the hike from Nepal (or somewhere) to Egypt wearing sandals and standard-issue Tarzan gear, but also why they were dressed like that on an exposed, snow-covered mountain in the first place. 10,000 BC‘s first mistake is giving the audience time to think at all, seeing as how the same courtesy was not afforded to anyone on the production side of things–thus allowing for domesticated sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths to decorate this epic™ quest in pursuit of a damsel so under-developed that when it’s revealed she has scars in the shape of the constellation Orion, I genuinely had no idea why it mattered. Still don’t.

Mandingo (1975) – DVD

Mandingo (1975) – DVD

Posted in1970s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring James Mason, Susan George, Perry King, Ken Norton
screenplay by Norman Wexler, based on the novel by Kyle Onstott
directed by Richard Fleischer

by Alex Jackson I was just about to say that I wish Mandingo were better than it is, but then I realized it wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is if it weren’t also “flawed.” Some snarky hipster (Mitch Lovell of the LiveJournal blog (?!) THE VIDEO VACUUM, if you must know) rather brilliantly and concisely summarized the problem of the film in saying, “If you ever wanted to see Mr. Bentley from ‘The Jeffersons’ check a muscle-bound slave for hemorrhoids, this is the flick for you.” Indeed, we get this image in the first ten minutes of the film. The checking of the muscle-bound slave for hemorrhoids, well, that I guess I can…appreciate, for lack of a better word. We all understand that slavery was “evil” on a purely intellectual level, but I don’t think we have a terribly substantial visual database of the horrors and humiliations of it–and so I feel there’s a real need for a disgusting and sensationalistic exploitation film about the subject. On those terms, let it be said that Mandingo does not disappoint. This has to be the most emotionally ugly film I’ve seen since Brian Robbins’s Norbit.

There Will Be Blood (2007) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

There Will Be Blood (2007) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own

****/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor, Ciarán Hinds
screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel OIL! by Upton Sinclair
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

by Walter Chaw The jarring, discordant first notes of Jonny Greenwood’s score announce that Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood will realize the promise shown by the auteur’s closest analogue, Punch-Drunk Love. Almost experimental in its marriage of noise and vision, it’s reminiscent in that regard of a Sergio Leone epic about the foundation of a specific aspect of the American character. Pithy that such a thing plays like watching an insect under glass: There Will Be Blood is accurately described as a piece of existential entomology–Kafka somehow married to Upton Sinclair (on whose OIL! the film is formally based). It’s a modern, and modernist, take on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring an actor who may be the best of his generation turning in a performance destined for legend, though I’d offer that when Daniel Day-Lewis actually does go off the rails in making a mad catchphrase out of “I drink your milkshake!”, it’s proof that the rest of his work here is really rather restrained. The best movie of the year if not for No Country For Old Men, it shares with that masterpiece this idea that money corrupts absolutely, its venom catalyzing on contact. Choosing to open with a silent 16-minute introduction that sees Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis)–digging for riches by himself in what could be an outtake from Sierra Madre–discovering his share of silver and parlaying it into an oil empire that will eventually leave him alone, misanthropic, and finally insane, Anderson is clearly implying that material pursuits mine the humanity from mortal loam. While he has disdained political reads of the picture, the philosophical ramifications of Anderson’s barren exteriors held up against Plainview’s barren interiors–the both of them with endless potential, it would appear, for bottomless wells of bubbling black–are subtext enough, if not, of course, inextricable from politics.

The Happening (2008)

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, Horror, India, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

by Walter Chaw The number one, indisputable, biggest surprise of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is that it doesn’t entirely suck–followed fast by the stunner that the director-writer-producer-demiurge doesn’t appear anywhere in the film as Christ on a chariot. After his self-aggrandizing cameos in Signs (as catalyst to the story’s existence and outcome), The Village (as star of the “twist” in the film’s most complicated lighting/camera set-up), and Lady in the Water (as author of the Bible), it seemed that was the next logical step. Instead, The Happening is a Larry Cohen-esque thriller along the lines of God Told Me To, delivered with a heavy hand, to be sure, but full of some of the most delicious misanthropy to hit screens since Julia Roberts was making romantic comedies. Shyamalan, if we follow the auteur theory as closely as he claims to, hates his fellow man enough so that a coda revealing a blessed pregnancy is framed in such a way as to suggest that mankind is spelling its own doom with this urge to procreate. By extension, it’s tempting to see it as a criticism of pictures that end in Spielberg town, with marriages and babies and a cabin in the woods for the precogs. If Shyamalan is to the point where he’s actively flipping the bird to audiences and expectations, eschewing his life-support systems for twists and protracted takes in favour of ugly, flat, uninspired action sequences and blighted implications, then I might actually at this point be looking forward to his next one. Meaning, at the end of the day, that’s the biggest surprise of The Happening.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK

**/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Kristin Scott Thomas
screenplay by Peter Morgan, based on the novel by Philippa Gregory
directed by Justin Chadwick

by Bryant Frazer Pop culture works in mysterious ways. I suppose the Tudor dynasty never really goes out of style, but it’s interesting to see two completely different takes on the tale of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, reach audiences more or less simultaneously. The second season of Showtime’s lavish series “The Tudors” just concluded with the (spoiler?!) beheading of Boleyn, followed by a close-up of a beautiful little girl who would become Queen Elizabeth I. The Other Boleyn Girl, produced in part by BBC Films, ends much the same way, with that same act of reprisal followed by a beaming young face representing that same incipient monarch.

Youth Without Youth (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

Youth Without Youth (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Romania, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André M. Hennicke
screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella by Mircea Eliade
directed by Francis Ford Coppola

by Walter Chaw Set in just-antebellum Europe, Francis Ford Coppola’s Golden Age superhero fantasy Youth Without Youth finds mild-mannered ancients professor Dominic (Tim Roth) transmogrified by a bolt of lightning into a being who appears to not only have regained his youthful appearance, but also developed the ability to alter physical objects with his mind. Dominic is in 1938 Romania when 1.21 gigawatts of electricity send him back to the future, able to absorb entire volumes with a single touch, learn dead languages in his sleep, and have contentious conversations with himself reflected in mirrors literal and figurative. It’s a superhero movie in the same sense as Kasi Lemmons’s sorely underestimated The Caveman’s Valentine: based on a literary source, it’s itself intensely literate, sprinkling Mandarin and Sanskrit in with, late in the game, a language of our hero’s own devising to which he devotes reels of obsessive notes. All that’s missing is a purpose for our hero–something remedied as the picture moves forward past WWII and Dominic encounters Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara) en route to her own collision with cosmic destiny.

The Recruit (2003) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

The Recruit (2003) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Switzerland, Thriller

*½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B-
BD – Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan, Gabriel Macht
screenplay by Roger Towne and Kurt Wimmer and Mitch Glazer
directed by Roger Donaldson

by Walter Chaw Aussie director Roger Donaldson’s No Way Out is one of the better Cold War paranoia films: sexy, tricky, and packed with the sort of performances (from Kevin Costner, Sean Young, Gene Hackman, and Will Patton) that spin gold from proverbial straw. Donaldson’s The Recruit is another derivative post-Cold War knockoff: boring, predictable, and laden with the sort of hackneyed turns that are not only eminently forgettable, but also doomed to eventually be left off the resumé during those Academy clip retrospectives. What a difference sixteen years makes.

V for Vendetta (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

V for Vendetta (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2006, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Germany, Revenge, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B-
starring Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, John Hurt
screenplay by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
directed by James McTeigue

by Walter Chaw As documents for the opposition go, V for Vendetta may be the ballsiest, angriest picture of the current administration, flashing without apology images of naked prisoners of the state, shackled in black hoods and held in clear acrylic boxes while a febrile talking head and his cloistered intimates (called “fingers”) form a closed fist around them. It surmises a future where the government plants stories in centrally-owned media conglomerates, controlling groupthink by providing just one point of view. Woe be unto those with a critical mind because what, after all, is more dangerous to a dictatorial theocracy than a question? But more, the picture is an impassioned plea for alternative lifestyles, exposing the melodrama of Brokeback Mountain to be embarrassed, even polite, when the struggle for equal regard is something that should be undertaken with passion and brio–it’s life and death, and V for Vendetta presents it as such. There are no half measures in a film that takes as its hero an eloquent monologist in a Guy Fawkes mask (Hugo Weaving), his erstwhile, reluctant sidekick a young woman, Evey (Natalie Portman), transformed through the government-sanctioned abduction of her parents and a period of torture and imprisonment into not an avenging angel, but a voice of reason. How fascinating that the reasonable solution in the picture is the destruction of Britain’s Parliament on the Thames.

Signs (2002) [VISTA Series] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Signs (2002) [VISTA Series] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

by Walter Chaw M. Night Shyamalan makes very specific films about very specific concerns in a very specific manner: long master shots; an unusual trust in silence; remarkably few edits for a modern picture; joy in the choice of garish topics; and a thing for failed fathers and their lost little boys. He reminds of Hitchcock in his elevation of pulp art into high art, but differs in that his concerns aren’t so much about abnormal psychology, the nervy manipulation of the audience, and the voyeuristic implication of movie-watching as they are about personal demons and Shyamalan’s increasingly obvious desire to be considered in the same breath as his idol.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007) [Four-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007) [Four-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2008, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw The prototype for the modern science-fiction film, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, through its seemingly endless iterations, through its growing cult of personality and a production history that’s become as familiar as a Herzog shooting mythology, retains its ability to astonish as–along with John Carpenter’s contemporaneous The Thing–the last hurrah for the non-CGI, in-camera effects piece. Tron, The Last Starfighter, and Firefox were destined to be the rule of the day at the expense of matte painters and model-makers, here working out puzzles like how to make a futuristic, mechanized advertising blimp appear to be shooting strobes through the glassed ceiling of the Bradbury. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to watch Blade Runner now without taking its technical brilliance for granted. It looks like it was made in 2007 (particularly in its newest, digitized incarnation); with its lack of the bluescreen artifacts that plague many of its contemporaries, it’s easy to think of a mainframe as the movie’s author.

Speed Racer (2008)

Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Family, Germany, Japan, Sci-Fi, Sports, Theatrical

*/****
starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Matthew Fox
written and directed by The Wachowski Brothers

by Walter Chaw This generation’s Tron lands with unsurprisingly little fanfare early in the 2008 blockbuster sweepstakes, the victim of niche nostalgia and bottomless kitsch as well as the theory that total indulgence from all involved will prevent The Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer from turning out to be their Spruce Goose. I’ve seen just enough “Speed Racer” cartoons to recognize when people like John Goodman are impersonating badly-drawn ’60s television anime (as opposed to Goodman impersonating badly-drawn ’60s Hanna-Barbera)–and just enough, too, to futilely hope against hope that there wouldn’t be a chimp and a chubby tyke who stow away in a racecar’s trunk now and again. But I haven’t seen nearly enough of the TV series to want to see more of it, and after enduring the Cool World live-action version of “Speed Racer”, I confess I’ve sort of lost the will to live. In other words, I was never a fan of the cartoon and was mainly interested in this trainwreck on the strength of Bound and The Matrix. Still, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t take a moment to laud the brothers on their audacity–the very quality I appreciated in the two Matrix sequels, which were, by most analysis, disasters. It seems like sour grapes to knock the picture besides–or at least it seems futile, because the Wachowskis don’t appear to care what people think of them along their road to wearing Kleenex boxes on their feet and saving their pee in mason jars. Speed Racer is exhibit one in the case that the Wachowskis aren’t in it for praise (they’re not going to get any credible praise here) or money (they’re already loaded), but rather to luxuriate in the contents of their den’s shelves: first Alan Moore comics with V for Vendetta, now this excruciatingly faithful reproduction of an inexplicable camp artifact. Perhaps we should count our blessings that they weren’t huge fans of “Voltron.”

Then She Found Me (2008)

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth, Helen Hunt, Bette Midler
screenplay by Alice Arlen and Victor Levin & Helen Hunt and Helen Hunt (<–not a typo)
directed by Helen Hunt

by Walter Chaw Mamet-lite–which is to say “garbage-lite”–for the most part, the dialogue in Helen Hunt’s hyphenate debut is repetitive and deeply irritating, especially as delivered by Hunt in that perpetually whinging, laconic fashion of hers. Marry it to a directing style that could gently be called “self-aggrandizing” and generally be called “static” and Then She Found Me thuds into place as one of the most atrocious things to collapse on the silver screen in months. Here, Hunt is Barbra Streisand without the singing, optimistically cast as a woman “about to turn forty” while asking poor, mortgage-needing Colin Firth to twice opine that her increasingly cadaverous-looking self is “beautiful” and “gorgeous.” To each his own, of course, but Hunt the director/prime mover (she co-wrote and produced the benighted thing) sticking herself in front of a conservative gross of close-ups and pushing others to compliment her appearance is so far beyond distasteful that it’s boring. Adoption, artificial insemination, infertility, miscarriage, infidelity, lumpen milquetoast Matthew Broderick as the really, really obscure object of desire, and stereotypes about East Coast Jews pollute this godawful mess like Union Carbide in some unfortunate, populous third-world nation. Call said ghetto the “arthouse” (its citizens, what the hell, “festivalgoers”) and point to it whenever the random, ossified, effete intellectuals offer that they prefer to watch “indies” in the “arthouse,” eschewing “mainstream” cinema with a sniff, a wave of a hanky, and a puff of talcum.

Jack Ketchum’s The Lost (2008) – DVD

Jack Ketchum’s The Lost (2008) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD, Horror, Teen

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Marc Senter, Shay Astar, Alex Frost, Ed Lauter
screenplay by Chris Sivertson, based on the novel by Jack Ketchum
directed by Chris Sivertson

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The Lost is simultaneously polished and crude. For all intents and purposes, it’s a direct-to-video release*, and it has a “direct-to-video” vibe to it. There’s a broadness to the acting, to put it delicately. It’s not that these are bad actors, exactly, it’s just that their performances are superficial. I want to say that they lack the nuance of what you’d get in a theatrical feature, but I’m beginning to wonder if there is something about the very nature of the “theatrical film” that is more accommodating of excess. That perhaps the very size of a theatrically-released film can dwarf an over-actor and make the severity of his or her offense somewhat less significant, whereas if a film goes straight-to-DVD, it becomes more performance-oriented. It seems that it’s really hard to find camp in a theatrical release and really hard to avoid it in dtv product. I don’t know whether this is me the viewer projecting something from outside the film–I guess it must be, as I wouldn’t imagine that most filmmakers actually intend their movies to bypass the big screen altogether. But wherever it comes from, it’s there.

The Devil’s Own (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

The Devil’s Own (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Margaret Colin, Ruben Blades
screenplay by David Aaron Cohen & Vincent Patrick and Kevin Jarre
directed by Alan J. Pakula

by Bill Chambers One of the intriguing consequences of a new home-video medium is that, whether due to a paucity of selection or, in my case, professional obligation, you wind up revisiting some marginal titles you never thought you’d have cause to watch again. Case in point: the final film from the mercurial Alan J. Pakula, 1997’s The Devil’s Own, which docks on Blu-ray as part of Sony’s suddenly aggressive catalogue rollout. The kind of topical widescreen melodrama Hollywood trotted out pretty regularly in the CinemaScope era, as well as the kind of glib commentary on another nation’s failures you’d expect from Edward Zwick or Sydney Pollack before Pakula, the picture began life as a typically-contentious Kevin Jarre script about a vicious, coke-snorting IRA terrorist who crosses paths with a “hair-bag”–i.e., a cop still walking the beat long past his prime–while on the lam in New York.