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

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, 2005, 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

by 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.

Harry and Tonto (1974) – DVD

Harry and Tonto (1974) – DVD

Posted in1970s, 2006, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Road Movie, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Commentary B+
starring Art Carney, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Larry Hagman
screenplay by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld
directed by Paul Mazursky

by Alex Jackson I complain a lot about film criticism being reduced to archaeology, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite as impenetrable along these lines as Paul Mazursky’s 1974 sleeper Harry and Tonto. It never coheres, it never makes its point, and it never justifies its existence. You know Mr. Bernstein’s anecdote about the girl in the white dress in Citizen Kane, or Marge Gunderson’s drink with her old high school chum in Fargo–those nice little throwaway moments that haven’t much to do with the actual movie? In Harry and Tonto, Mazursky gets rid of the “actual movie” and gives us nothing but throwaway moments. Yeah, it’s that kind of film.

Only Human (2004) + House of Sand (2005)

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Brazil, Comedy, Drama, Portugal, Romance, Spain, Theatrical, UK

Seres queridos
**/****
starring Guillermo Toledo, Marián Aguilera, María Botto, Fernando Ramallo
written and directed by Dominic Harari & Teresa Pelegri

Casa de Areia
***½/****
starring Fernanda Montenegro, Fernanda Torres, Ruy Guerra, Seu Jorge
screenplay by Elena Soárez
directed by Andrucha Waddington

by Walter Chaw Married hyphenates Dominic Harari and Teresi Pelegri craft a screwball comedy (which has the audacity to end with the final line of Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot) about what happens when good Jewish girl Leni (Marián Aguilera) brings Palestinian nebbish boyfriend Rafi (Guillermo Toledo) home to meet her My Big Fat Greek Wedding ethnic cartoon family. There’s the blind, rifle-toting old fossil fond of recounting his days of potting Arabs along the Gaza strip; the short, hysterical Jewish mother; the slutty older sister who only fucks anything with a dick because mama loved little sister more; the younger brother who’s newly fanatical about the Koran and the observance of the Jewish Sabbath; and the niece who’s a monster because, well, who wouldn’t be in that household? Discomfort turns into farce when Rafi drops a cube of frozen soup out a window, killing someone who might be Leni’s father (said father later mistaking a black prostitute for Leni’s mother)–this event also leading to the discovery that Leni’s mother has never had an orgasm and the tableaux homorte where grandpa is caught groping Rafi during a trip to the loo.

Keane (2005) – DVD

Keane (2005) – DVD

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image B- Sound A Extras A
starring Damian Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Amy Ryan
written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan

by Walter Chaw Lodge Kerrigan’s astounding Keane deals not only with madness and the loss of a child but also with our preconceptions of the cold universe and, shaving it precisely, our expectations for the kinds of cold comfort we expect film to provide. It’s wrong to call it experimental, because the decision to shoot in four-minute takes doesn’t announce itself as a gimmick as much as it settles comfortably into a groove alternating small explosions and lulls laced with anticipation. A lot of movies pay lip service to carving space for their actors to find their way around difficult characters and emotionally taxing scenes–Keane actually does it. It’s about the belief that there are no certainties in life, and it understands that trusting–and loving–in a world so swiftly lurching is akin to a kind of insanity. When we meet William Keane (Damian Lewis), as he’s reeling around the Port Authority Bus Terminal looking for his daughter, it takes us a few minutes to realize that his daughter (if he’s ever even had a daughter) has been missing for a year and that his desperate attempts to find a witness to her abduction in the river of passers-by is spiced by a little too much stale urgency. Keane might be crazy. He also has good reason to be.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) + World Trade Center (2006)

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

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
**½/****
starring Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano
screenplay by Michael Arndt
directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

WORLD TRADE CENTER
**/****
starring Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello
screenplay by Andrea Berloff
directed by Oliver Stone

by Walter Chaw I laughed a little during Little Miss Sunshine, a piffle of a movie that boils down to that Blind Melon music video where the chubby girl in a bumblebee outfit finds joy at the end of three minutes of kicking ant piles by dancing in a field of misfits also wearing bumblebee outfits. It’s a smarter, less-angry version of Transamerica while featuring the same number of depressed gay people and Harold & Maude-esque teenage boys; it’s got the Wes Anderson stamp of approval for its coterie of sage oddballs, deadpan surrogates, and family decompositions; it has a stellar cast doing extremely predictable work at a stellar level; and it comes with the Sundance stamp of approval predestined for it because Little Miss Sunshine is a summary of every independent film since “dysfunction” became a hot-key button on critics’ keyboards.

Don’t Come Knocking (2005) – DVD

Don’t Come Knocking (2005) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Music, UK

**/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann
screenplay by Sam Shepard, based on his play
directed by Wim Wenders

by Walter Chaw Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a has-been western star knocked down a few pegs by alcohol, drugs, and groupies–and so like any good anti-hero, he takes off in the middle of shooting a film, on horseback, to reunite with his long-estranged mother (Eva Marie Saint) before heading off to Butte, Montana in search of a long-lost bastard son (Gabriel Mann). He has a few conversations with the barmaid (Jessica Lange) he knocked up once upon a time, while a sullen girl (Sarah Polley) carrying a blue urn stalks him around town, offering the occasional cryptic message before retreating again into the wallpaper. But what glorious wallpaper it is, with Wim Wenders and his cinematographer Franz Lustig finding in Butte a myth of the American West frozen in bright, primary, Edward Hopper amber. Twin painters of isolation and suspension, Wenders and Hopper–since long about The American Friend–have been on a mission to redraw the psychic divorce of one American from another in minor chords and long, drawn-out tremolos. Don’t Come Knocking, though, is only minor Wenders, and I do wonder if giving over too much faith in the flagging abilities of Shepard to write a script worth shooting has cost him his pitch this time around.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

Posted in1990s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Disability, Drama, DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Johnny Depp, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, Leonardo DiCaprio
screenplay by Peter Hedges, based on his novel
directed by Lasse Hallström

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s a cult following for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, but it’s peopled by folks without the stomach for a genuine cult outrage. Trafficking in low-level “unconventionality,” it’s fatally done in by Hollywood bet-hedging and the searing banality of director Lasse Hallström–a man who could turn William S. Burroughs into Norman Rockwell apple pie. Despite the potentially traumatic nature of the material (parental suicide, morbid obesity, self-abnegation), the film plays like every other mainstream weepie, with its straight edge only slightly dulled by trace elements of eccentricity. It’s one of those movies that works exactly as planned but bulldozes the implications that might make it less–or rather more–than stimulus/response emotional pornography.

Miami Vice (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Michael Mann, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris
written and directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw Slot Michael Mann’s Miami Vice in there alongside other millennial films about the disintegration of society and its subsequent renewal along tribal, exclusively masculine lines. It’s a film from whose nihilism I would’ve recoiled just a few years ago, but now I see that as perhaps the definitive trend of the first six years of this brave new world (first five after 9/11, the inciting event of this love affair with apocalyptic cultural reset) and not entirely divorced from our reality besides. The best illustration of how we’ve gone from the voodoo of self-esteem of the Reagan ’80s (for which the Mann-produced “Miami Vice” television show has become something of a cultural roadmark) to the blasted, self-abnegating, divided wasteland of Bush 2’s America might be the difference between the white suits and socks-less loafers of the previous incarnation to the flak-jackets and high-velocity splatter head-shots of this one. WWI introduced irony into our lexicon with the advent of long-range, impersonal murder–and 9/11 deepened it in the popular culture in the United States with an existential fatalism borne of the idea that not only is sudden, arbitrary destruction from above a possibility, but most likely an unavoidable eventuality.

Street Law (1974) + The Big Racket (1976) + The Heroin Busters (1977) – DVDs

Street Law (1974) + The Big Racket (1976) + The Heroin Busters (1977) – DVDs

Posted in1970s, 2006, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, DVD, Italy, Thriller

STREET LAW
Il cittadino si ribella
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Franco Nero, Giancarlo Prete, Barbara Bach, Renzo Palmer
screenplay by Massimo de Rita and Dino Maiuri
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

THE BIG RACKET
Il grande racket
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Fabio Testi, Vincent Gardenia, Renzo Palmer
screenplay by Arduino Maiuri, Massimo de Rita, Enzo G. Castellari
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

THE HEROIN BUSTERS
La via della droga
*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Fabio Testi, David Hemmings, Sherry Buchanan
screenplay by Massimo de Rita and Enzo G. Castellari
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There comes a point in every man’s life when he finds himself pushed too far. By “too far,” I naturally mean the moment where a) criminal thugs are roaming the streets, and b) innocent bystanders are completely expendable in their apprehension and/or bloody death. And if Blue Underground is to be believed, Enzo G. Castellari long ago reached that point. The champagne of exploitation labels has lavished infinite care on three of the master’s most lurid exploits: the Death Wish precursor Street Law; the police-vigilante epic The Big Racket; and the relatively routine drug drama The Heroin Busters. Each of these films does away with such nuisances as due process and respect for public safety. Castellari’s oeuvre reveals the dark underbelly of ’70s permissiveness, which on one hand extended the hippie mandate to less shaggy extremes but on the other encouraged right-wingers to embrace police-brutality extravaganzas.

MASH (1970) – DVD

MASH (1970) – DVD

Posted in1970s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, Palme d'Or Winner, War

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman
screenplay by Ring Lardner, Jr., based on the novel by Richard Hooker
directed by Robert Altman

by Walter Chaw On the shortlist of Robert Altman masterpieces, MASH compares best with his The Long Goodbye in that both are unapologetically informed by the cult of masculinity: fucking and fucking people up. Tenderness in the film is someone breaking their hand on someone else’s head when that someone else says something stupid to a kid. Better, it’s giving a different kid a stroke magazine to counteract his de facto religious training at the hands of an obvious nutjob (who’s nutty mainly because he’s trying to impose enlightenment where enlightenment cannot by definition exist). Accordingly, matters of spirituality and men of the cloth are to be scoffed at while other rituals–like the rites observed in an operating theatre, or golf (a game played with clubs), or football, or the pursuit of women–are regarded with the obsessive gravity of a lower primate. It’s about male bonding, all that cruelty towards women and disrespect of authority and open racism–the game of me-against-you in a film that, contrary to popular consensus, isn’t a Hellerian satire about the absurdity of war, but what may be the saddest war film ever made in that it identifies conflict as something that, however contrary to civilization, is inextricably hardwired into our bestial nature. We’re vile, stupid, ignoble apes, and we aspire to ideals we’re eternally incapable of honouring.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) [Cinema Classics Collection] – DVD

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) [Cinema Classics Collection] – DVD

Posted in1970s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Music

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, John La Zar
screenplay by Roger Ebert
directed by Russ Meyer

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s no point in whitewashing the career of Russ Meyer. Latter-day critics have tried to float the filmmaker/satirist/horndog as some kind of feminist despite much evidence to the contrary, and though against-the-grain readings are possible, really, who are we kidding? Similarly, his Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is loaded with all sorts of attitudes most thinking adults would rather like to forget, including a streak of homophobia that resonates as slightly nasty. But with Meyer, it’s impossible to separate an actual position from a sitting duck–and that confusion is what makes his films so uniquely mind-blowing. His fake morality tales blow up the very notion of morality, to the point where his less noble conceits are torpedoed with everything else.

L’Enfant (2005) + The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006)|L’Enfant (2005) – DVD

L’Enfant (2005) + The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006)|L’Enfant (2005) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Belgium, Crime, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Documentary, Drama, DVD, France, Music, Palme d'Or Winner, Romance, Theatrical

The Child
**½/****
starring Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard, Fabrizio Rongione
written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON
**/****
directed by Jeff Feuerzeig

by Walter Chaw I believe the title is meant to indicate the arrested protagonist more than it is the baby he tries to sell on the black market, thus The Child (L’Enfant)–another of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s mild, allegorical subversions of Robert Bresson and incrementally more violent subversions of the French New Wave–takes on Pickpocket via Breathless. In so doing, it conjures up this odd chimera of a stylistically backward-looking, formalist deconstruction, the first film of the Brothers (after La Promesse, Rosetta, and The Son) to feel this much like a knowing satire, to come so perilously close to being smug and post-modern that its style begins to become confused with its message. It could be a product of overfamiliarity with a fine and distinct sensibility (the last thing this kind of innovation can afford is to be outrun and second-guessed), or it could be that the Brothers are getting either bored of their shtick or fond of their reputation.

Gabrielle (2005) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras N/A
starring Isabelle Huppert, Pascal Greggory, Claudia Coli, Thierry Hancisse
screenplay by Patrice Chéreau & Anne-Louise Trividic, based on the novel The Return by Joseph Conrad
directed by Patrice Chéreau

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It’s official: the heritage movie is dead. Long the bane of young rowdies and middlebrow-haters the world over, the form breathed its last breaths earlier this century following a couple of decades of uncritical support. Witness Patrice Chéreau’s outstanding literary adaptation Gabrielle, which manages to avoid the pitfalls of the genre while simultaneously critiquing its lesser examples. There is no comfort to be had in well-appointed houses or the tasteful appreciation of “the arts”–only, after Joseph Conrad’s The Return, a vain and selfish man who uses such accoutrements for his self-aggrandizement. The film snatches away the cheap pleasures of heritage, blowing up its shallow comforts and rocking you in ways a mere “period piece” never could.

Fetching Cody (2005) – DVD

Fetching Cody (2005) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, DVD, Romance, Time Travel, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Jay Baruchel, Sarah Lind, Jim Byrnes, Robert Kaiser
written and directed by David Ray

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Canada is a nation of amateurs. Some terrible national weakness has taught us to be sheepishly inexact, as if trying to tell a story or form a coherent argument were about showing up and meekly filling in time as opposed to a complex array of intellectual and aesthetic decisions. We’ll do the job, but we won’t do it precisely–and frequently, the results are empty shells like Fetching Cody. I wouldn’t be nearly so angry about its failure if I didn’t know that there were more like it–long, unbroken streams of arrested preadolescents looking to get points for being “serious” and “meaningful”–coming down the pipeline. Critics are probably the largest segment of the population who’ll see them, which probably accounts for why we’re terse in our dismissals: we know we’ll wind up talking to no one but ourselves.