For Queen & Country (1989) – DVD

July 11, 2004Posted in1980s, Action, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

**½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Denzel Washington, George Baker, Amanda Redman, Dorian Healy
screenplay by Martin Stellman and Trix Worrell
directed by Martin Stellman

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: what the hell happened to British cinema? I don't just mean that the quality of the images has slipped–the general sense of contemporary life that it championed in the late '70s and '80s has vanished without a trace. Something in the water during the dark days of Thatcher's reign produced blunt, bracing films about subjects that would be demeaned by the tag 'social issues': the great, nimble Stephen Frears/Hanif Kureishi collaborations, for instance, or the brutally frank teleplays of Alan Clarke, demonstrated that you could engage working-class, non-white, and gay realities without looking like Tony Richardson or hiding in Merchant/Ivory denial. To be sure, For Queen & Country isn't in the league of the abovecited examples, and it isn't even very good on its own terms, but even its half-flubbed earnestness was committed enough to make me nostalgic for a cinema that was dedicated and fleet-footed–if not for the economic conditions that made it necessary.

Broken Wings (2002) – DVD

July 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Israel

Knafayim Shvurot
***½/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Orly Silbersatz-Banai, Maya Maron, Nitai Gaviratz, Vladimir Friedman
written and directed by Nir Bergman

by Walter Chaw Israeli filmmaker Nir Bergman's Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot) is a film about the intricacies of a family implosion told in the minimal, spare, largely unsentimental fashion of a Mike Leigh picture, managing to relay its tale uncorrupted by the Israeli-Palestinian issue and, in Bergman's discretion, making a stronger statement about the mad choreography of war by personalizing the victims on its periphery. It separates itself from Leigh (and another headwater, Ken Loach) with a few scenes of carefully-constructed mise-en-scène that locate Bergman as a fan of the magical possibilities of cinema–and establish Broken Wings as a picture that challenges the post-modern idea that emotional truth can't be achieved without the trappings of handheld vérité.

King Arthur (2004)

July 6, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Ireland, Theatrical, UK, War

*/****
starring Clive Owen, Kiera Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård, Stephen Dillane
screenplay by David Franzoni
directed by Antoine Fuqua

Kingarthurby Walter Chaw King Arthur wants to have it both ways. It wants to be smart and it wants to be stupid, too. It wants to appeal to eggheads, so it opens with a title card that promises what follows is based on "new" archaeological evidence; then, for the alleged delight of the peanut gallery, it trots out the same period epic dog-and-pony show to which we've been repeatedly subjected since Zulu Dawn. Strangely enough, this new archaeological evidence apparently dates feminism back to the fifth century (witness the dominatrix version of Guinevere, decked out at one point like Grace Jones), in addition to facilitating a clumsy political satire of twenty-first century America's religiosity, arrogance, and imperialism. Needless to say, when something tries to please everyone, everyone is seldom pleased; King Arthur is both stupid and boring, and the revelation that, stripped of tragedy, controversy, and resonance, Arthurian legend is as banal as and similar to Tears of the Sun (director Antoine Fuqua's previous film) displeases indeed.

The Mother (2003)

July 6, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

**/****
starring Anne Reid, Daniel Craig, Cathryn Bradshaw, Peter Vaughan
screenplay by Hanif Kureishi
directed by Roger Michell

Motherby Bill Chambers The latest from Roger Michell, The Mother seems die-cut for Stephen Frears (it was scripted by Hanif Kureishi, author of Frears's My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid), and one can imagine it having attracted Ken Loach or Mike Leigh with only minor tweaks. If we're not exactly stuck with Michell, he's florid in a way that Frears is not and in a way The Mother does not call for; the movie's look, though attractive in and of itself, is a syntax error. From the three Michell pictures I've seen (Titanic Town (which I barely remember), Notting Hill (which I like), and Changing Lanes (which I really like)), the director's specialty seems to be equalizing peculiar material through dynamic imagery, thus imbuing it with commercial appeal. It's a phenomenal talent, but one that betrays him on The Mother by making glib the film's subject matter. In Michell's hands, a relatively working-class set of characters becomes incongruously bourgeois through sensuous camera moves and catalogue-ready tableaux accentuated by not only walls of Kubrickian white, but also a decidedly 'upscale' piano score.

The Battle of Algiers (1966)

July 2, 2004Posted in1960s, Algeria, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, Italy, Theatrical, War

La battaglia di Algeri
***/****
starring Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Samia Kerbash
screenplay by Gillo Pontecorvo & Franco Solinas
directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Questions abound during a screening of The Battle of Algiers, first and foremost: what the hell is it? It’s not exactly agitprop, not quite a thriller, not really a historical epic–it’s a strange bird that combines each of these forms into a one-off genre all its own. The film has a reputation as high as the ceiling (as the multiple screenings in my film-school days can attest), and given its singularity, it’s not hard to see why: this is not some dowdy history lesson or humourless political screed, but a swift, shapely love letter to those who fought and died in the name of Algerian independence. As a love letter, it’s so typically wrapped up in its own feelings that it can’t relate the struggle to something outside of its own borders–but there’s no denying the writers’ commitment and depth of feeling, as well as the significant impact of The Battle of Algiers‘ bullet to the heart of empire.

Faithful (1996) – DVD

June 29, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Cher, Chazz Palminteri, Ryan O'Neal
screenplay by Chazz Palminteri, based on his play
directed by Paul Mazursky

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Back when I lived in arts residence at York University, I decided I had a pretty good way of gauging who was serious about their vocation and who was not: the (pitifully small) former group spoke of things outside of themselves, and the (vast, limitless) latter group spoke about "relationships." But though I was pretty contemptuous of the relationships crowd, I had to admit it's very easy to read earth-shattering significance into one's romantic woes, containing as they do the confusing DNA of gender roles, as well as those roles' implied responsibilities and the unnecessary pain that they cause. Understanding this to a point, Faithful proves to be an unusually cogent relationship movie, rich with male/female cross-examination and genuine anguish over the gulf between the two genders. Still, it's just as narcissistic as anything my old student colleagues would cook up, and so the good bits must compete for attention with grandstanding and breast-beating that would be better off in another movie.

The Dreamers (2004); Rhinoceros Eyes (2003); Stealing Beauty (1996) – DVD|The Dreamers (2004) [Original Uncut NC-17 Version] – DVD

June 26, 2004Posted in1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, UK

THE DREAMERS
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green, Robin Renucci
screenplay by Gilbert Adair
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

RHINOCEROS EYES
***½/****
starring Michael Pitt, Paige Turco, Gale Harold, Matt Servitto
written and directed by Aaron Woodley

Dreamerscapby Walter Chaw The danger is getting lost in fantasy, of being consumed by the lunar flame of lamplight filtered through celluloid. And the irony is that directors, the good ones, are already lost and have been for years. There have been pictures about an all-devouring cinephilia before (Cinema Paradiso, say, or 8½), and now a pair of films by two directors at opposite ends of their careers–Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers and Aaron Woodley's 2003 TIFF Discovery Award-winner Rhinoceros Eyes–strive to blur the line between movies and reality in twin tales of sexual maturation, of coming of age in a movie house–of, to parse The Judybats, learning how to kiss watching James Dean movies. Fascinatingly, the two films share Michael Pitt, forging a path for himself as the archon for the modern dreamer raised on lethal doses of popular culture, and weaning himself from that luxuriant udder only with great difficulty.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973) – DVD

June 23, 2004Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Italy, UK, War

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Graham Faulkner, Judi Bowker, Alec Guinness, Leigh Lawson
screenplay by Susio Cecchi D'Amico, Kenneth Ross, Lina Wertmüller, Franco Zeffirell
directed by Franco Zeffirelli

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover So: how do you get the young people back into church when they'd rather be out running wild and getting it on? If you're Mel Gibson, you break out the whips and chains and pour on the gore (an effective approach, to be sure), but if you're Franco Zeffirelli, you choose another path. You'll recall that Zeffirelli was the chap who brought kids back to Shakespeare by turning Romeo and Juliet into a make-out movie, scoring a few Oscar nominations in the bargain–but you can make certain sexy allowances for Shakespeare that you can't with the word of God. Against all odds, the man managed to make a religious tract in tune with the hormonal post-hippie youth of 1973 called Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which cleverly addresses the tender feelings of burgeoning bodies while glorifying a chaste life in the service of the Lord. Like Romeo and Juliet, though it's ludicrous in the extreme, its combination of low cunning and gawky earnestness makes it fascinating as a curio, if not as a fully functioning film on its own.

Bandolero! (1968); Myra Breckinridge (1970); Mother, Jugs & Speed (1975); One Million Years B.C. (1966) – DVDs

June 20, 2004Posted in1960s, 1970s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Romance, UK, Western

BANDOLERO!
**/**** Image A Sound B
starring James Stewart, Dean Martin, Raquel Welch, George Kennedy
screenplay by James Lee Barrett
directed by Andrew V. Mc Laglen

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE
**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A+
starring Mae West, John Huston, Raquel Welch, Rex Reed
screenplay by Michael Sarne and David Giler
directed by Michael Sarne

MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED
***/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch, Harvey Keitel, Allen Garfield
screenplay by Tom Mankiewicz
directed by Peter Yates

by Walter Chaw Very much the product of its time, Andrew V. McLaglen's Bandolero!, the last of the three westerns the director made with Jimmy Stewart, appeared in 1968, the same year as the end of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western cycle (Once Upon a Time in the West) and alongside such seminal generational discomfort flicks as Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead. And while it's not nearly so good as McLaglen/Stewart's devastating Civil War idyll Shenandoah, Bandolero! is still better than it probably should be, saved by its above-the-line talent. With Raquel Welch as a freshly widowed Mexican woman ("I was a whore when I was 12–my family never went hungry"–and so it went in Welch's career) and a good, if woefully miscast Dean Martin as Stewart's no-account, bank-robbin' outlaw brother, the picture is a border film, the basis in many ways for Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove and one that contents itself with tepid character melodrama unfolding at a snail's pace along the road to Ensenada.

The Clay Bird (2002)

June 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Bangladesh, Drama, Theatrical

***/****
starring Nurul Islam Bablu, Russell Farazi, Jayanto Chattopadhyay, Rokeya Prachy
screenplay by Catherine Masud & Tareque Masud
directed by Tareque Masud

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no sense in overestimating the virtues of Tareque Masud's The Clay Bird, a gentle–sometimes too gentle–look back at a Muslim education on the eve of Bangladesh's separation from Pakistan. The film has its share of problems: expository dialogue, sketchily drawn characters, and a determination to underplay some potentially charged material whether it serves the narrative or not. And yet, The Clay Bird's remaining pluses more than make up for its failings, serving as they do a humane sensibility and a keen visual sense that refuses, for better and for worse, to play into sensationalism or spite. Masud may have toned things down a little far for dramatic purposes, but he's still a sensitive man uninterested in rigid dogma of any sort–and as he's counteracting the heated polarization that led to violent repression in his country, he can be forgiven for erring in the opposite extreme.

The Terminal (2004)

June 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Spielberg, Theatrical

**/****
starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride
screenplay by Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw Early in the latest Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks collaboration The Terminal, Russian splinter exile Viktor Navorski (Hanks) runs up a staircase, throwing his suitcase onto the “up” escalator as he goes so that his baggage, in essence, is left to finish its journey on its own. It’s a lovely, complicated visual metaphor for abandonment or freedom, for Spielberg the scenarist’s twin obsessions with the idea of little boys lost and of little boys escaping and for Spielberg the director’s inability to take responsibility for his subtext so that he might finally make that mature film he’s so desperately wanted to since The Color Purple. But The Terminal is film-festival offensive, encouraging its audience to coo over the adorable antics of its madcap cast of society’s blue-collar “invisibles” (playing in this respect like the slick, imminently forgettable version of Stephen Frears’s working-class morality play Dirty Pretty Things) in a way that isn’t sympathetic so much as paternalistic. Foreigners and minorities are resourceful children, operating eternally at the mercy of the dominant majority, and Neverland is the big cities of the United States, where grown-ups have families and problems.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) – DVD

June 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Biopic, Drama, DVD, France, Luxembourg, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A Extras B-
starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt
screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier
directed by Peter Webber

by Bill Chambers It's a tad perverse to shoot a film about the world of Johannes Vermeer in 'scope, considering the artist's own cramped reflection of that world on portable canvasses. A shut-in, if we interpret his life through his surviving pictures, Vermeer didn't just paint in a lambent room on the upper level of his mother-in-law's house in Delft, he painted the room itself–the begrimed walls, the half-stained furniture, the Gingerbread-house windows that caught his human subjects (often, it appears, members of the servant class) in a tractor beam of light.

Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Complete Collection (1987) – DVD

June 16, 2004Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Muppets, Television, UK

Image C Sound B
“The Soldier and Death,” “Fearnot,” “The Luck Child,” “A Story Short,” “Hans My Hedgehog,” “The Three Ravens,” “Sapsorrow,” “The Heartless Giant,” “The True Bride”

by Walter Chaw For the span of nine delirious, enchanted episodes, “The Storyteller”, Jim Henson’s too-brief foray into mature anthology fantasy television, is gorgeous for its faithfulness to its mythic source material. Although the show’s longevity was certainly not helped by Henson’s hard-to-shake reputation as the benevolent primogenitor of “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show”, looking closer at Henson’s twin, sterling blue masterpieces The Muppet Movie (which he didn’t direct but definitely spearheaded) and The Dark Crystal reveals an artist steeped in a tradition of stung, existential melancholy. It’s easy to laugh at Kermit’s swamp lament or to dismiss, albeit less easily, the heroism of a soon-to-be-extinct species desperate to save a dying world that has all but snuffed them out, but from a perspective of legacy, it’s unwise to file Henson under “kid’s stuff” and leave well enough alone.

50 First Dates (2004) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

June 14, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider, Sean Astin
screenplay by George Wing
directed by Peter Segal

by Walter Chaw The stupid version of Groundhog Day, or, more to the point, the capering warm-up act for Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest Adam Sandler vehicle 50 First Dates is just like almost every other alleged comedy released in the first quarter of any year in that lacks pace and energy. I don't know when it got so hard to make a movie with forward momentum, but I can tell you that the point in the film where you start to count the "dates" to figure out when the damned thing is going to end comes early. Still, there's a moment in the picture involving a brain-damaged young woman making a decision to erase the love of her life from her memory that caught me off guard, causing me to realize how much I hold out hope that Sandler will do another film like Punch-Drunk Love. Sad fact is, though, that it may never happen.

Common Ground (2002) – DVD

June 14, 2004Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Spain

Lugares comunes
*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Federico Luppi, Mercedes Sampietro, Arturo Puig, Carlos Santamaria
screenplay by Adolfo Aristarain and Kathy Saavedra, based on the novel by Lorenzo F. Aristarain
directed by Adolfo Aristarain

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching the paralytically subdued spectacle of Common Ground, I had to wonder: what would my old Latin American Cinema prof make of this film? As he generally had us watching agitprop rip-snorters like The Hour of the Furnaces, my first guess is that he'd probably want to punch director Adolfo Aristarain square in the jaw for broaching the subject of the Argentine economic collapse in such flabby, bourgeois terms. True, Aristarain shows exactly what the middle class had to face once the World Bank shellacked the local economy, but he depicts it in such an insular and anesthetized fashion that Common Ground doesn't register very loudly as a protest. In fact, the film's only major distinction is its ability to make enormous economic upheaval seem like a cramp in the style of its formerly comfortable leads, and to block out the rest of the country in its slow crawl to its central character's final destination.

Love Me If You Dare (2003) + Valentin (2002)

June 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Comedy, Drama, France, Italy, Netherlands, Romance, Spain, ZERO STARS

Jeux d'enfants
ZERO STARS/****
starring Guillaume Canet, Marion Cotillard, Thibault Verhaeghe, Joséphine Lebas-Joly
screenplay by Jacky Cukier & Yann Samuell
directed by Yann Samuell

VALENTIN
**/****
starring Julieta Cardinali, Carmen Maura, Jean Pierre Noher, Mex Urtizberea
written and directed by Alejandro Agresti

Lovemevalentinby Walter Chaw Former animator Yann Samuell's Love Me If You Dare (Jeux d'enfants) is painfully, dedicatedly unwatchable. It's vile and perverse in a puerile way that bears no discernable fruit. For a romantic comedy, it's conspicuously lacking in romance and comedy, and for a dark, satirical look at the Hobbesian baseness of human love and nature, it's astonishingly childish. The picture is the equivalent of a little boy eating a worm to impress the little girl he has a crush on: a tireless series of schoolyard transgressions portrayed in the whip-pan jack-in-the-box way of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie that shares with that film a strong thread of misanthropic mischief, but reveals itself the classless poseur in its constant keening for attention. Love Me If You Dare is so awful that its constant "hip" references to George Lucas films not only somehow make Kevin Smith seem current again, but also suggest of all things a rom-com directed by the clown-prince of Skywalker Ranch himself. There's an idea gnawing in my head that the reason this picture was so popular in France has something to do with a failure to translate the satirical dimensions of a film that succeeds so spectacularly in alienating its audience, yet, like Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio (the Italian version of which Jonathan Rosenbaum proclaimed one of the best films of 2002), whatever's happened in transit has handily transformed any rewarding subtext into a rising din.

Spartan (2004) – DVD

June 7, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Commentary C+
starring Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, William H. Macy, Ed O'Neill
written and directed by David Mamet

by Walter Chaw Because we hate Arabs (and women almost as much as we think that Arabs hate women, those hateful Arabs), there are films like David Mamet's patently ridiculous, relentlessly offensive, unintentionally hilarious Spartan. A brilliant theatre man, the very definition of a keen cultural philosopher (his book of essays Some Freaks is must-reading), Mamet as film auteur has grown increasingly esoteric to the point now that his exclusive playpens of linguistic masturbation are so alien and self-conscious that they begin instantly to function as satires of themselves. His action is action as imagined by an egghead, all awkward movement and frustrated invective. His is the school of anti-casual cool, the drama club suiting up for the Friday night football game, and his supporters are cut from the same cloth, believing that there's a point to be made in Beckett for the brute while ignoring that Beckett is best staged with Spartan minimalism and left in the theatre besides. The films Mamet has directed range from sophomoric (House of Games) to grating (State and Main) to just incompetent (Heist), though Spartan reminds the most of one he only wrote: the wilderness howler The Edge, with its machismo over-examined and placed in a context that isn't allegorical as it must be, but hardboiled realism as it can't be. It's P.G. Wodehouse adapted for the screen by John Milius, and predictably awful.

Reality Bites (1994) [10th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

June 7, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A+
starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo
screenplay by Helen Childress
directed by Ben Stiller

Realitybitescap

by Bill Chambers If Some Kind of Wonderful is just an inverted Pretty in Pink, then Reality Bites is Some Kind of Wonderful inverted back again, with a proud young woman positioned at the apex of a love triangle and flanked by suitors from opposite poles of class who share a sincere affection for their mutual inamorata. More than conceivable that screenwriter Helen Childress was influenced by these John Hughes productions (whether or not she consciously chose to emulate them), it's probable: Childress was of breakfast-club age when they were released, and as any child of the '80s will tell you, they were too reverent of teenage travails to inspire much in the way of hipster backlash. (While some have speculated that Ferris Bueller is Hughes through the looking glass, the speech from that eponymous film in which a secretary canonizes Ferris–"The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads…they all adore him: they think he's a righteous dude"–suggests that Ferris is nothing less than the personification of Hughes's cottage industry.) What's interesting is that Reality Bites' loyalty to a proven formula only traps it in the same adolescent mindset it purports to preach against ("grow up" is a major refrain): If it were about the consequences of our heroine's choice of mate instead of about the choice itself once more, it might've satisfied Hughes's maturing constituency on a deeper level.

Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Sean Patrick Thomas, Eve
screenplay by Don D. Scott
directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan

by Walter Chaw If not for a cringe-worthy conclusion and the awkwardness of an entire Queen Latifah subplot too clearly an embedded trailer for the upcoming Beauty Shop, Barbershop 2: Back in Business would not only be better than the first film, but also almost worthy of consideration as a lighthearted version of Do the Right Thing. Firmly rooted in politics, the opening credit sequence–which charts black history through the evolution of the afro haircut, with each image group ending, incisively, with a shot that demonstrates how white culture invariably hijacks black trends–is alone worth the price of admission. It summarizes a sticky, Ouroborosian circle of self-consumption, owing to the fact that hip-hop culture itself takes elements of white culture and redefines them through its own prism. What's the explanation for Vanilla Ice's ski-slope pompadour in the bigger picture of race relations and cultural diffusion? A look at the progression of Michael Jackson would seem the cheap shot, and it would have been out of this context, but while no mention of Wacko Jacko fails to inspire reflexive groans anymore, Barbershop 2 actually, wordlessly, scores a poignant, precise, eloquent point about the state of our state. Taking a swipe at the King of Pop is easy–having it score in a way fresh with insight is invaluable.

Roswell: The Complete First Season (1999-2000) – DVD

June 1, 2004Posted in1990s, 2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Teen, Television, Thriller

Image A Sound A Extras B
"Pilot," "The Morning After," "Monsters," "Leaving Normal," "Missing," "285 South," "River Dog," "Blood Brother," "Heat Wave," "The Balance," "Toy House," "Into the Woods," "The Convention," "Blind Date," "Independence Day," "Sexual Healing," "Crazy," "Tess, Lies and Videotape," "Four Square," "Max to the Max," "The White Room," "Destiny"

by Walter Chaw What begins as something romantic and mysterious ends as something predominantly memorable for the impact it had on Dido's wan career. Charting the WB's "Roswell"'s downward trajectory from a piquant, lovely pilot to the worst of "The X Files" and "Dawson's Creek" is a fascinating, instructive thing to watch–not only for the schadenfreude of it all, but also for the way that corporate perception of what an audience purportedly wants invariably leads to production of the same kind of dull crapulence over and over again. (Though, in the WB's defense, a grassroots letter-writing campaign that saved the series from oblivion at least once indicates a fervid devotion to this kind of garbage.) In the fine tradition of making a self-pitying clone of "thirtysomething" for teen-somethings played by a cast of twenty-somethings, "Roswell" is "Sweet Valley High" mixed with the Troll Books variety of soft-core science fiction, making that "My So-Called Life" feeling of middle school alienation literal in its tale of three or four actual aliens getting teased by jocks in Roswell, NM. It's the love child of Robert A. Heinlein and Judy Blume, and it ain't pretty.