Each Dawn I Die (1939) – DVD

Each Dawn I Die (1939) – DVD

Posted in1930s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Prison, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring James Cagney, George Raft, Jane Bryan, George Bancroft
screenplay by Norman Reilly Raine and Warren Duff, based on the novel by Jerome Odlum
directed by William Keighley

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Ever the superficially civic-minded studio, Warners saw fit to release this lovely prison-reform drama in the banner year of 1939. It holds up remarkably well: Lacking much of the florid speechifying that makes watching ‘classic’ Hollywood inadvertently risible, it’s taut, tight, and unpretentious for most of the way. James Cagney once again delivers as journalist Frank Ross, whose framing for manslaughter (long story) sends him up the river to Hell. The actor is constantly on the edge of tearing someone’s throat out with his teeth, a fitting restraint for a film about the pent-up horror of living in stir. Though they inevitably break out the thesis statements for a rather unconvincing finale, Each Dawn I Die is solid entertainment until that point and in spite of its higher instincts.

TIFF ’06: Black Book

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Drama, Espionage, Film Festivals, Germany, Netherlands, Thriller, TIFF, UK, War
Zwartboek
**/****
starring Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn
screenplay by Gerard Soeteman & Paul Verhoeven
directed by Paul Verhoeven

by Bill Chambers The word on Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book (Zwartboek) around the TIFF was that it’s “Showgirls meets Schindler’s List,” which is a cute bit of shorthand but decidedly misleading, not that I can begin to imagine what that movie would be like. All it really means is that we’re never going to let Verhoeven live Showgirls down, so who can blame him for going back to Holland, where he’s still an object of veneration? Alas, you can take Verhoeven out of Hollywood but you can’t take Hollywood out of Verhoeven; Black Book is not so much a return to form–by which I mean a throwback to his subversive early work–as it is a supplement to his American output, the kind of Oscar-baiting wartime saga you just know he’d been aching to make with studio resources but only had the guts to execute in his native tongue. (In the press notes for the film, Verhoeven confesses that he stuck with genre in the U.S. because it better disguised his loose grasp of the English language.) The admittedly well-paced picture follows one Dutch Jewish woman’s transformation from Anne Frank into Mata Hari as Rachel-cum-Ellis (Carice van Houten, for whom big things lie ahead) takes a Gestapo general (Jeroen Krabbé doppelgänger Sebastian Koch) for a lover as well as a job at his office, hoping it will all lead to the release of some fellow resistance fighters.

All the King’s Men (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren
directed by Steven Zaillian

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Ask most wags and they’ll tell you that Sean Penn is the best actor of his generation; for a performance or two (consider that in Dead Man Walking, he goes the distance without the use of his hands), I’d be inclined to agree, but look at the way writer-director Steven Zaillian and, especially, composer James Horner, treat Penn in the long-delayed All the King’s Men–and marvel at how little they think of their leading man. The second adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a populist-leaning stump-thumper modeled after Huey Long, the film garnered attention first for its sterling cast and Tiffany pedigree, then for its sudden disappearance from last year’s Oscar slate, only to appear now, without fanfare (save a gala screening at last week’s TIFF), in the middle of what’s traditionally a dumping ground for dead weight. And every time Penn delivers an allegedly rousing speech to a gaggle of hicks, proposing to nail the entrenched fat cats in the Big Easy’s beleaguered senate to a rail, Horner’s tiresome score endeavours to drown him out in a flood of sugared plastic emotion. Still, at least this sloppy brass orgy has a pulse, as opposed to Horner’s “mournful theme,” i.e., the one that accompanies the retarded voiceover narration of journalist Jack Burden (Jude Law), which sounds a lot like the piano exit music from the old “Incredible Hulk” TV show. If you believe your actors are capable of conveying emotion and nuance, you don’t shoot them in sexy angles and luxury-car commercial colour schemes while trying to drown them out in spasmodic torrents of empty, manipulative noise.

Hollywoodland (2006); The Black Dahlia (2006); Factotum (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Norway, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, Thriller

HOLLYWOODLAND
*/****
starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins
screenplay by Paul Bernbaum
directed by Allen Coulter

THE BLACK DAHLIA
**½/****
starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank
screenplay by Josh Friedman, based on the novel by James Ellroy
directed by Brian De Palma

FACTOTUM
**½/****
starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand
screenplay by Bent Hamer and Jim Stark, based on the novel by Charles Bukowski
directed by Bent Hamer

by Walter Chaw Deadening, dull, sepia-drenched faux-noir period hokum of a suddenly popular stripe, Allen Coulter’s Hollywoodland casts lantern-jawed, wooden-countenanced Ben Affleck as his way-back literal and metaphorical doppelgänger George Reeves. An apparent suicide that has fostered a small measure of conspiracy theories, Reeves, television’s original Superman, is shot in the head, naked in bed, on a summer night in 1959, briefly throwing a generation of kids into minor existential turmoil. But casting Reeves’s death into suspicion is a far stickier wicket: Even with the introduction of a woefully-underwritten fictional gumshoe (Adrien Brody) with his own crew-cut, wayward boy, and ice queen ex (Molly Parker) to match, the suggestion that someone in the portly statue’s coterie (including his wife-of-a-studio-bigwig-mistress, played by the ageless Diane Lane) might have had a motive for slaying him is given a quick spin and then stabled without a whimper. What’s left is the typical and unsurprising Hollywood fable of the high price of fame and the dreadful cost of its pursuit. The central irony that drives Hollywoodland is that, in its desperate attempt to make a mystery of Reeves’s death, the only thing it succeeds in doing is cataloguing the myriad reasons Reeves had to justifiably cap himself.

The TIFFing Point

Posted in2006, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Blog, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Horror, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Thriller, TIFF, UK, War

Two more days until I turn back into a pumpkin (or something like that), probably for the good of not only my health, but also that of FILM FREAK CENTRAL. Anyway, some more stopgap coverage for you…

FAY GRIM (d. Hal Hartley)
As far as this unlikely sequel to the brilliant Henry Fool is concerned, those hoping for a Before Sunset should brace themselves for a Texasville. The movie feels like it came out of Hartley sideways (or, conversely, all too painlessly), and it never really catches fire until Thomas Jay Ryan makes his long-delayed cameo as Henry Fool. By then, it’s too little too late. **/****

The Protector (2005) + The Covenant (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, France, Hong Kong, Horror, Thailand, Thriller

Tom yum goong
***/****
starring Tony Jaa, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Bongkoj Khongmalai, Xing Jing
screenplay by Kongdej Jaturanrasamee & Napalee & Piyaros Thongdee and Joe Wannapin
directed by Prachya Pinkaew

THE COVENANT
½*/****
starring Steven Strait, Sebastian Stan, Laura Ramsey, Taylor Kitsch
screenplay by J.S. Cardone
directed by Renny Harlin

by Walter Chaw Tony Jaa is a bad motherfucker. There’s a moment in his latest export The Protector where it appears as though he’s killed someone with his penis (lo, how I would love to avoid that epitaph), and in the meantime, he dispatches foes with the heedless joy of obvious predecessor Jackie Chan (who has a cameo in the film shot so ineptly that it suggests a Jackie Chan impersonator smeared with Vaseline). Alas, there’s a plot (something about the kidnapping of two elephants, one of which is turned into a gaudy tchotcke in an evil dragon lady’s den of inequity), too, told through a lot of howlingly incompetent narrative chunks you could seemingly rearrange in any order with no tangible disruption of sense. (The Butchers Weinstein may of course be partly to blame.) The film is easily the funniest, most exhilaratingly ridiculous picture in a year in which Snakes on a Plane aspired to the same camp/cult heights, and it does it the only way that you can: by being deadly serious.

TIFF ’06: Citizen Duane

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Film Festivals, Teen, TIFF
*/**** starring Douglas Smith, Donal Logue, Vivica A. Fox, Alberta Watson screenplay by Jonathan Sobol and Robert DeLeskie directed by Michael Mabbott by Bill Chambers This Canuck Rushmore really got on my nerves. The movie makes a crucial miscalculation in the early going by introducing its puny teenaged hero, Duane Balfour (Douglas Smith), in revenge mode: Given that we already know Duane's girlfriend (Jane McGregor) is way out of his league, he would seem to have pre-emptively settled any scores he could possibly have with the Most Popular Kid in School (porcine Nicholas Carella, as miscast as Haylie Duff was…

TIFF ’06: The Host

Posted in2000s, 2006, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi, South Korea, TIFF
Gue-mool ***½/**** starring Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doo-na, Ko Ah-sung screenplay by Bong Joon-ho, Hah Joon-won, Baek Chul-hyun directed by Bong Joon-ho by Bill Chambers I knew I would love The Host as soon as I realized that the man in the surgical scrubs was none other than national treasure Scott Wilson, who, in his most heinous role since In Cold Blood (or maybe Shiloh), observes dust on the jars of formaldehyde in the morgue of a South Korean military base and bullies a reluctant attendant into disposing of them by dumping their contents down the sink. It's…

My TIFF So Far

Posted in2006, Austria, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Horror, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Mexico, Sci-Fi, South Korea, TIFF

Seems we’re all a little constipated right now but rest assured reviews are on the way; here’s a quick rundown of TIFFpix screened thus far by yours truly.

BABEL (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
It coheres better than 21 Grams, but Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga are really spinning their wheels at this point. A few funny extratextual lessons are imparted: never take a Fanning to Mexico (Elle has almost as harrowing an adventure there as sister Dakota does in Man on Fire); and never trust a director who includes a post-script dedication to his children. As with 21 Grams, though, Babel doesn’t make room for any intentional levity, eventually desensitizing you to all the calculated anguish. *½/****

TIFF ’06: Torn Apart

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
La Coupure ½*/**** starring Valérie Cantin, Marc Marans, Marie-Christine Perreault, Manon Brunelle written and directed by Jean Châteauvert by Bill Chambers As much as I'd love to jump on the C.R.A.Z.Y. bandwagon, I found its characters repellent and its soundtrack selections laughably pedestrian. (The picture's recycling of FM staples like "Space Oddity" and "Sympathy for the Devil" doesn't achieve suture so much as it makes the director, an alleged vinylphile, look like a philistine with an awfully small record collection.) Still, I can't deny that it marks a sort of progress for Canadian film in that it at least gropes…

Lucky Number Slevin (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu
screenplay by Jason Smilovic
directed by Paul McGuigan

Luckynumberslevincapby Walter Chaw I wonder if it's not ultimately a little too pat for its own good, but Paul McGuigan's Lucky Number Slevin is another slick, Guy Ritchie crime-manqué to pair with the director's breakthrough Gangster No. 1. It stars his muse Josh Hartnett (great in McGuigan's underestimated Hitchcock shrine Wicker Park) as the handsome Roger O. Thornhill/Wrong Man archetype–and it finds for Lucy Liu the first role that didn't make me sort of want to punch her mother. But the real star of a film that finds supporting roles for Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci, and Sir Ben Kingsley is McGuigan's restless camerawork: an intricate lattice of matching shots and glittering surfaces that becomes almost an impressionistic projection of the mad, labyrinthine interiority of a mind bent on vengeance. Flashbacks and CGI-aided swoops and zooms are woven into the picture's visual tapestry, so that Lucky Number Slevin is read best as a lurid, comic-book send-up of a genre–every scene is played with a good-natured nudge, and when it overstays its welcome with a round-up that verges on sickly, its only real crime is that it's less a grotesque than a screwball romance. Hitchcock did it like that sometimes, too.

TIFF ’06: The Page Turner

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Music, Thriller, TIFF
La Tourneuse de pages***/****starring Catherine Frot, Déborah François, Pascal Greggory, Julie Richaletscreenplay by Denis Dercourt, Jacques Sottydirected by Denis Dercourt by Bill Chambers I question whether Denis Dercourt's Chabrolian The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages)--which more than earns its presumptuous double entendre of a title--actually has anything of consequence to say, but I sure got a charge out of it. Mélanie, a butcher's daughter, blows her shot at getting into a music conservatory by becoming flustered when one of the entrance exam's administrators, famed concert pianist Mme. Fouchécourt (Catherine Frot), interrupts her audition to sign an autograph. Some years…

TIFF ’06: After the Wedding

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Norway, Sweden, TIFF, UK
Efter brylluppet **½/**** starring Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgård, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Stine Fischer Christensen screenplay by Susanne Bier & Anders Thomas Jensen directed by Susanne Bier by Bill Chambers Online critic N.P. Thompson recalls a colleague lamenting the absence of cell phones in Ingmar Bergman's recent swan song Saraband, and in many ways, Susanne Bier's overwrought but not ineffectual After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) is Bergman for these manic times. A fashionable strain of Western self-loathing courses through this tale of a fat cat, Jørgen (Rolf Lassgård), who summons Jacob (once and future Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen), the Danish head…

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) – DVD

Posted in1970s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Zohra Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O'Connor, Gretchen Corbett
screenplay by Norman Jonas and Ralph Rose
directed by John Hancock

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a sort of journeyman-hack remake of Repulsion: the fantasy-into-reality element is there without Polanski's jolting surrealism, while genre trappings are introduced to keep everybody from wondering what the hell they're watching. Strangely, the concoction successfully keeps you doing just that. Anchored by Zohra Lampert's convincing performance in the title role, the film manages to make its modest borrowings seem quaint and pleasant in a campfire-story way. Director John Hancock's craftsmanship prevents the whole thing from collapsing, and the gimmicky script, by Hancock and Lee Kalcheim (both writing under pseudonyms), has enough juicy plums to string you along for the next one. It isn't exactly good, but it's surprisingly watchable–if not always credible.

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991): Extended Version [Anniversary Edition] – DVD

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991): Extended Version [Anniversary Edition] – DVD

Posted in1990s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD

*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary-Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson
screenplay by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Flagg
directed by Jon Avnet

by Walter Chaw A seedy, sleight-of-hand weepie that mines tears from hilarious deaths, servile Negroes, cannibalism, itinerant rail-bo shanty towns, and a hint of lesbianism, Jon Avnet’s revered Fried Green Tomatoes is redneck porn and noble-geriatric/fat-girl uplift mashed whole-kernel into a confused feminist tirade that finds strength in the literary retardation and literal consumption of men. With castration or cannibalization the main options for boys, then, doomed cousin Buddy (Chris O’Donnell) should count himself lucky that a poignant train ends his contractual agreement as the film’s “good” white guy. It’s really no wonder that Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker) and Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) turn to the love that dare not speak its name after Buddy, the last virile, decent man, gets pasted into hash early in the flashback reverie of dotty old Ninny (Jessica Tandy).

The Quiet (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Elisha Cuthbert, Camilla Belle, Martin Donovan, Edie Falco
screenplay by Micah Schraft and Abdi Nazemian
directed by Jamie Babbit

by Walter Chaw Laden (leaden?) with melo-tragedy, Jamie Babbit’s The Quiet is a burlesque of high school and incest, and though I don’t doubt that there’s a great movie in the intersection of the two, this ain’t it. The film stars Elisha Cuthbert as the wounded “Heather,” Nina, whose reputation as the perfect girl (read: the head cheerleader) is stained by a home life dominated by a zombie mom, Olivia (Edie Falco), and an all-too-loving pedophile nice-guy dad, Paul (Martin Donovan). It wanders into the mind listlessly a time or two that Nina’s backstory is identical to something the crazed Christian Slater character from Heathers would manufacture to justify the “suicide” of some teenage girl he’s just murdered. The only way to really up the ante in The Quiet is through the introduction of deaf-mute orphan Dot (Camilla Belle), taken in by Paul and Olivia to act as the shadow/doppelgänger to our damaged-goods protagonist–and sure enough. But Dot can play Beethoven’s “Appassionata” and “Moonlight” as the situation demands, and she provides treacly narration throughout in her piping, irritating lilt. She even goes so far as to attract chronic masturbator Connor (Shawn Ashmore) away from Nina’s cartoon of a queen bitch pal, Michelle (Katy Mixon).

Quinceañera (2006); Fall to Grace (2006); The Puffy Chair (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

QUINCEAÑERA
**½/****
starring Jesus Castanos, Araceli Guzman-Rico, Emily Rios, Alicia Sixtos
written and directed by Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland

FALL TO GRACE
½/****
starring René Alvarado, Ricardo Azulay, Bill Johnson, Cassidy Johnson
written and directed by Mari Marchbanks

THE PUFFY CHAIR
**½/****
starring Mark Duplass, Kathryn Aselton, Rhett Wilkins, Julie Fischer
screenplay by Mark Duplass
directed by Jay Duplass

by Walter Chaw Gentrification is the inciting phenomenon of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s Quinceañera, only the second film to land both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance. Its celebration at the festival–which, like most festivals, prices itself culturally and financially out of most of the subjects its films exploit–should be regarded as something of a foregone conclusion: If it’s not a product born of self-flagellation, Quinceañera at least owes its existence to an instinct towards the atonement of its two white, privileged creators, shooting a quasi-documentary/half-improvised character drama in the Echo Park neighbourhood where they found themselves the land-investor fixer-uppers. But it’s even more complicated than that, owing to Glatzer and Westmoreland’s homosexuality and the specific insight that an unpopular, oft-misrepresented minority engaged in the creation of a non-traditional family unit might bring to a story of another unpopular, oft-misrepresented minority (Mexican working class) looking to create a haven of kinship in a sea of cultural turmoil. Inserting themselves into the story as unkind spoiler-avatars in the piece (a gay, white couple acts as Quinceañera‘s bogeymen)–the set for their tasteful duplex serves as Glatzer/Westmoreland’s real-life digs–is as thorny a po-mo entanglement as these two otherwise successful guys interpolating themselves in their neighbour’s lives, homes, and rituals with movie cameras and an evangelical mission.

Mildred Pierce (1945) – DVD

Mildred Pierce (1945) – DVD

Posted in1940s, 2006, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden
screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, based on the novel by James M. Cain
directed by Michael Curtiz

by Alex Jackson The difference between Joan Crawford and her inextricably linked contemporary Bette Davis is the difference between an icon and a mere actress. Davis was always acting and, in her lesser moments, downright hammy; Crawford simply was. A finished product, all she has to do is walk out and exude “Crawfordness.” If it’s not her best film, Mildred Pierce is certainly Crawford’s best-known film, and one of the fascinating things about it is how it illustrates her screen persona blending together with her personal one. I’m fascinated with the idea of transforming from an inferior being into a superior one–the leap from ape to Star Child in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to put it in its purest form. This is mankind’s most pressing drive, is it not–that is, to escape the banality of our mortal existence? Perhaps such philosophical musings are a function of my still living in young adulthood: I’m a year away from beginning a career in which I expect to spend the next forty years, and there is the persistent fear of this being “all there is.” That there’s nothing left; I’m going to spend the rest of my life attempting to maintain a constant state of security. The iconology of Crawford achieves such escape. She’s embraced the cinema in a way Davis never did. She’s drunk from the proverbial cup and is now immortal. Prick her, she doesn’t bleed; tickle her, she doesn’t laugh. She is beyond the flesh now, a creature of light and celluloid.

Little Jerusalem (2005) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France

La Petite Jérusalem
**/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras N/A
starring Fanny Valette, Elsa Zylberstein, Bruno Todeschini, Hédi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre
written and directed by Karin Albou

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The deck of Little Jerusalem (La Petite Jérusalem) is so obviously stacked from the very beginning that it's not much fun to actually play the game. We know from the outset that its philosophy-student heroine, Laura (Fanny Valette), is going to fly the coop from her stifling Orthodox Jewish home. (A few stern words from her married sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) are deemed sufficient grease for the wheels of antagonism for the full 94 minutes.) Laura's fall from vacillation between the two stools doesn't feel like much of a struggle, even though her Kantian walks upset her proper family (they'd rather see her hitched and making babies); it's hard to rally much enthusiasm for the film's foregone conclusions, which are telegraphed at that. Little Jerusalem is painless enough, but there's no there there, and the whole thing evaporates minutes after you've sat through it.

The Illusionist (2006) + Half Nelson (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

THE ILLUSIONIST
*½/****
starring Paul Giamatti, Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
screenplay by Neil Burger, based on a story by Steven Millhauser
directed by Neil Burger

HALF NELSON
***/****
starring Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie
screenplay by Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
directed by Ryan Fleck

Illusionistby Walter Chaw Out of the gate, Neil Burger's The Illusionist threatens to become the Viennese magician version of Amadeus, with Paul Giamatti's Inspector Uhl subbing for Salieri and Eisenheim the Illusionist (Edward Norton) his rabbit-hatted Mozart. But the film resolves itself in no time into something a good deal more mundane: a twisty crime drama complete with gauzy Guy Maddin visuals that cements Norton as the gravitas-heavy young actor most likely to be cast as Heathcliff in a badly-considered community theatre adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It's tedious and protracted, if not otherwise offensive–an elaborate piece of fluff that does its little tricks to the medium-delight of its tiny, undemanding audience before fading into the wings. Though it's tempting to laud it for having no pretensions to greatness, it's equally tempting to stay home and laud it from there.