Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD

October 26, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy

**/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras C
screenplay by Joe Ansolabehere, Paul Germain, Bob Hilgenberg, Rob Muir
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Jefferson Robbins There's this thing in children's fiction I call the Curious George effect. A character transgresses, and in the context of that character's world it's a big hairy deal, potentially life-threatening. But the repercussions are so nifty-neato that the initial sin is shrugged off, perhaps never mentioned again, perhaps not explicitly identified as an error in the first place. The consequences for the guilty character are as follows: anxiety, cool adventure, reset to status quo.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – Blu-ray + DVD

October 26, 2010Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum
screenplay by W.D. Richter, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
directed by Philip Kaufman

mustown-7816294by Walter Chaw I've come to believe that Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not only better than Don Siegel's honoured 1956 original but also one of the best films of the best era in filmmaking. Even in so deep a well as this New American Cinema of ours–one that has forgotten gems like Cockfighter, Fat City, Law and Disorder, Night Moves, and Electra Glide in Blue in there propping up films like Chinatown, The Godfather I/II, Apocalypse Now, Nashville, The Conversation, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and on and on, trailing into incandescent, brilliant eternity–this little work of absolute paranoid craftsmanship bears up under multiple viewings and close scrutiny and provides a succinct, prescient, terrifying précis of the decade before and the decade to come. What better analogy for the looming Reagan administration than pods stalking in lock-step, armed with arbitrary titles and senses of entitlement, steadfastly incapable of heeding the drumbeat of doom in the black jungles around us? It's a film about the absolute horror of complete conformity and non-engagement, as well as a reintroduction to the McCarthy-ian ideal that the only thing to get terribly exercised about is the ferreting out and excoriation of differing values. Arriving as it does in 1978, at the tail end of the most creative period in American film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers offers up a warning against complacency in the immediate wake of Jaws and Star Wars, which sounded the death knell for the artistry of this period arm-in-arm with the dawning of some unknown, mass- consumed and marketed ethic.

Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy – DVD|Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy – Blu-ray + Digital Copy

October 24, 2010Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Time Travel

Backtothefuturecap1BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)
****/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale
directed by Robert Zemeckis

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (1989)
**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson
screenplay by Bob Gale
directed by Robert Zemeckis

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990)
**½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson
screenplay by Bob Gale
directed by Robert Zemeckis

Mustownby Bill Chambers GREAT SCOT! SPOILERS AHEAD! It's finally here. As not only a mighty-big fan of Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future but also a completist (and therefore keen to collect Back to the Future's substandard sequels), I've anticipated the DVD release of Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy (henceforth BTTF) since the format itself became a reality. Alas, the 3-disc set–from its unsexy blue-and-white cover layout to the cheap menus to a slipshod three-part documentary–is problematic. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy as a clam that the films (remastered in effervescent 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers–pan-and-scan sold separately–supervised by co-creator Bob Gale with Dolby Digital 5.1 remixes that beef up the re-entry effects especially) look and sound as good as they do and that, for the first time in home video's history, each picture is now being seen as it appeared in theatres (more on that below). But as a BTTF enthusiast, almost every single piece of supplementary material had me arrogantly believing I could've done a better job.

Sex and the City 2 (2010) + Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

October 3, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

SEX AND THE CITY 2
ZERO STARS/****
starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall
written and directed by Michael Patrick King

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina
screenplay by Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard
directed by Mike Newell

Sexandpersiaby Walter Chaw One may be a misguided liberal screed and the other a misguided conservative screed, but Sex and the City 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (hereafter Prince of Persia) are very much alike in that they're what a Tea Party meeting would look like with a budget. They're politically-confused hodgepodges of bad ideas and misplaced, incoherent outrage–most of it gleaned from the one or two times some idiot accidentally read the A-section of a newspaper, the rest gathered from Dummies primers on how to be cursorily informed in the Information Age. They're similarly infused with healthy doses of arrogance and cultural empiricism that speak directly to the reasons the United States is the target of fundamentalist whackos convinced we're all just like the randy quartet of aging bitches on a hedonism bender in the Middle East in Sex and the City 2. Hateful, vile, both films are also indicated by a distinct lack of artistry, representing a world post-Michael Bay in which a goodly portion of movies are dependent on not only other cultural touchstones (a TV series, a videogame) for the entirety of their alleged appeal, but on some of the most vapid cultural touchstones in the brief history of our popular culture, period.

Forbidden Planet (1956) [50th Anniversary Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

September 23, 2010Posted in1950s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Family, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

FORBIDDEN PLANET
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens
screenplay by Cyril Hume
directed by Fred McLeod Wilcox

THE INVISIBLE BOY (1957)
ZERO STARS/****
Image B- Sound C+
starring Richard Eyer, Philip Abbott, Diane Brewster, Harold J. Stone
screenplay by Cyril Hume, based on the story by Edmund Cooper
directed by Herman Hoffman

by Walter Chaw Outrageously influential and utterly unlike its contemporaries, Fred Wilcox's Forbidden Planet today suffers from prosaic pacing and long stretches where its groundbreaking special effects take centre-stage as the cast gapes in slack-jawed, dim-witted appreciation. I suppose it's not altogether antithetical to the themes of the picture, one that finds its heroes pontificating on their primitiveness in the face of an awesome (and extinct) alien culture–but this open love of its own coolness ultimately represents Forbidden Planet's broadest, most negative impact. The worst of our mainstream spectaculars, after all, are buried under reaction shots as the characters who should be the least mesmerized by their surroundings are impelled to be audience surrogates. What still works about Forbidden Planet is its high-mindedness: those moments where mad scientist Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) declares that the knowledge gleaned from the new technologies he discovers by reverse-engineering a cache of alien artifacts will be jealously rationed by him alone. The dangerous idea that one entity would take on the moral and intellectual superiority to judge who should and should not be allowed to educate themselves was germane here in the middle of the Cold War and remains applicable to our current state of foreign affairs, where just the threat of knowledge acts simultaneously as a spur to aggression and as a deterrent for invasion. Considered by many to be the best of the '50s science-fiction cycle, Forbidden Planet, at once Luddite and in love with the potential for technological expansion, is at least unique for its unabashed indulgence in its subtext–though mining subtext tends to have the obvious effect of leaving the subtext barren.

American Beauty (1999) [The Awards Edition] + Forrest Gump [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVDs + American Beauty [Sapphire Series] – Blu-ray Disc

September 20, 2010Posted in1990s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, Drama, DVD, Romance

AMERICAN BEAUTY
**/****
DVD – Image C+ Sound B- Extras C-
BD – B Sound A- Extras C
starring Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper
screenplay by Alan Ball
directed by Sam Mendes

FORREST GUMP
*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Sally Field
screenplay by Eric Roth, based on the novel by Winston Groom
directed by Robert Zemeckis

Americanbeautycap

by Walter Chaw People who say the Oscars suck aren't entirely wrong, but saying this tends to obscure the fact that most Best Picture honourees aren't terrible so much as dedicatedly mediocre. They're masterpieces of toeing the centreline, and in so doing they manage to offend neither side of the divide overly: The great American strive, Hollywood-style, isn't to rewire the mousetrap, as it were, any more than it is to produce a pile of crap on purpose. No, the goal is to achieve medium buoyancy. Too bloated to float, too fat to sink; if you don't reach too ambitiously, you won't get slapped down–and a career constructed around formula-prestige, 140-minute pictures is suddenly within your grasp, Ron Howard-like. The trick is to appeal as broadly as possible without appearing to do so–to recast convention in vague middlebrow hot-button terms and neither speak above the heads of your audience nor be obvious in your condescension.

Fame (1980) – Blu-ray Disc + Fame (2009) [Extended Dance Edition] – DVD

August 26, 2010Posted in1980s, 2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Musical, Romance, Teen

FAME (1980)
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Irene Cara, Lee Curreri, Laura Dean, Antonia Franceschi
screenplay by Christopher Gore
directed by Alan Parker

FAME (2009)
*/**** Image N/A Sound C Extras D
starring Debbie Allen, Charles S. Dutton, Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullaly
screenplay by Allison Burnett, based on the screenplay by Christopher Gore
directed by Kevin Tancharoen

by Walter Chaw Alan Parker seems to fancy himself a bit of a sociologist–a chronicler of Truth surveying man's inhumanity to man and the injustices perpetrated especially in the United States, offering up pictures that seek to expose just exactly what's wrong with his non-native land. When he makes a good movie, like Angel Heart, it's good because he's not proselytizing about corruption so much as he's indulging in his suspicions about the Home of the Brave. (Filthy with evil, right?) The matinee of appreciation for Parker is not surprisingly around fifteen, when stuff like Mississippi Burning and Midnight Express has the weight of sagacity rather than the reek of puerile outrage and unbecoming grandstanding. He's Stanley Kramer with a drug and counterculture fixation that marks him as a product less of Mod than of Free Love. Fame is the perfect Parker vehicle because it's an anthology of Parker's perception of inner-city woes, and as it appears at the end of the Seventies, the decade that was America's crucible of self-reflection, the sort of prison-wallet Passion Play of which Parker's most fond finds a more tolerable climate. It's perfect, too, because Parker's background in commercials often leads him to make films that are told in images impossible to misconstrue with concepts that aren't necessarily substantial enough for a feature. (See: his big-screen adaptations of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and Webber's awful Evita.) Fame's structure is a sequence of vignettes and its characters a collection of types, so that the demand to sustain itself over the course of two hours is ameliorated by the fact that it's basically an anthology piece.

Flaming Star (1961) – DVD

August 5, 2010Posted in1960s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Elvis Presley, Dolores Del Rio, John McIntire, Steve Forrest
screenplay by Clair Huffaker and Nunnally Johnson, based on the novel Flaming Lance by Huffaker
directed by Don Siegel

Flamingstarcap

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. In his compulsively readable autobiography A Siegel Film, Flaming Star director Don Siegel recounts a conversation he had with the film's producer, David Weisbart. Told that Elvis Presley has replaced Marlon Fucking Brando as the lead in their Nunnally Johnson-scripted western, a baffled Siegel observes, "He's no Marlon Brando."

"On the other hand, Brando's no Presley," Weisbart retorts, creating a kind of Lewis Carroll logic loop from which the only escape is to concur. Siegel is later ironically relieved to hear that the esteemed Johnson has bailed on the project in protest, as it confirms he's not the only one not taking the recasting lightly.

Daria: The Complete Animated Series (1997-2002) + Party Down: Season One (2009) – DVDs

August 2, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Teen

DARIA: THE COMPLETE ANIMATED SERIES
Image A- Sound B- Extras B+
"Esteemsters," "The Invitation," "College Bored," "Café Disaffecto," "Malled," "This Year's Model," "The Lab Brat," "Pinch Sitter," "Too Cute," "The Big House," "Road Worrier," "The Teachings of Don Jake," "The Misery Chick," "Arts 'N' Crass," "The Daria Hunter," "Quinn the Brain," "I Don't," "That Was Then, This Is Dumb," "Monster," "The New Kid," "Gifted," "Ill," "Fair Enough," "See Jane Run," "Pierce Me," "Write Where it Hurts," "Daria!," "Through a Lens Darkly," "The Old and the Beautiful," "Depth Takes a Holiday," "Daria Dance Party," "The Lost Girls," "It Happened One Nut," "Lane Miserables," "Jake of Hearts," "Speedtrapped," "The Lawndale File," "Just Add Water," "Jane's Addition," "Partner's Complaint," "Antisocial Climbers," "A Tree Grows in Lawndale," "Murder, She Snored," "The F Word," "I Loathe a Parade," "Of Human Bonding," "Psycho Therapy," "Mart of Darkness," "Legends of the Mall," "Groped by an Angel," "Fire!," "Dye! Dye! My Darling," "Fizz Ed," "Sappy Anniversary," "Fat Like Me," "Camp Fear," "The Story of D," "Lucky Strike," "Art Burn," "One J at a Time," "Life in the Past Lane," "Aunt Nauseam," "Prize Fighters," "My Night at Daria's," "Boxing Daria"

PARTY DOWN: SEASON ONE
Image A- Sound A- Extras B
"Willow Canyon Homeowners Annual Party," "California College Conservative Union Caucus," "Pepper McMasters Singles Seminar," "Investors Dinner," "Sin Say Shun Awards Afterparty," "Taylor Stiltskin Sweet Sixteen," "Brandix Corporate Retreat," "Celebrate Rick Sargulesh," "James Rolf High School Twentieth Reunion," "Stennheiser-Pong Wedding Reception"

by Jefferson Robbins If he hadn't helped oversee the death of the music video, Abby Terkuhle's tenure at MTV could be viewed as the network's Silver Age. "The State", "Liquid Television", "Beavis and Butt-Head"–apogees or nadirs, depending on your perspective, they defined the channel in the '90s, until "Road Rules" and "Cribs" redefined it into irrelevance. Terkuhle, the network's director of animation and overall creative chief, left MTV in 2002, but when hipsters in the decade just passed whined that such-and-such MTV show wasn't available on DVD, they were usually talking about something he'd incubated. His reign straddles the cultural shift from the Age of Irony (David Foster Wallace, "Daria") to the Age of Schadenfreude ("Mad Men", the shitty-childhood memoirs of Augusten Burroughs). We used to be able to contemplate human abasement and crack wise about it, like Daria Morgendorffer; now the abasement is our entertainment, and we sit slack-jawed before the awesome pathos of Snooki and The Situation.*

Insomnia (2002) – [Widescreen Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

July 27, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Christopher Nolan, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Maura Tierney
screenplay by Hillary Seitz, based on the screenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg
directed by Christopher Nolan

by Walter Chaw Director Christopher Nolan follows up his justifiably hailed indie masterpiece Memento with Insomnia, a mainstream Hollywood remake of Erik Skjoldbjærg's tremendous 1997 Norwegian film of the same name. Like the ill-fated American version of the French/Dutch Spoorloos (a.k.a. The Vanishing), what emerges from this studio remake is a frightened, sometimes patronizing, and ultimately ineffectual thriller that transforms all the controversy and introspection of the original into something rote and predictable. A close comparison between Skjoldbjærg and Nolan's visions for the material brings to light the defective machinery of big-budget motion pictures in Hollywood. The sad irony of such a discussion is that Nolan's Memento was so remarkable because it represented nearly everything that Insomnia is not.

Road to Perdition (2002) [Widescreen (Dolby Digital)] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

July 26, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Thriller

**½/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman, Jude Law
screenplay by David Self, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner
directed by Sam Mendes

by Walter Chaw A shot near the end of Road to Perdition, Sam Mendes's follow-up to his honoured American Beauty, needs to be singled-out. It's of a hotel room divided by a wall: on one end sits a boy in bed, weeping; on the opposite side of the partition enters the boy's father, wet from the rain with blood on his hands. With painterliness, Mendes and cinematographer Conrad Hall present this moody tableau in what is a continuation of the picture's running homage to the images, themes, even favourite subjects of American painter Edward Hopper, such as an all-night diner in the middle of nowhere, an unevenly lit apartment, and silhouettes imprisoned in blocks of yellow light.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 XVII – DVD

July 12, 2010Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Television

Image C+ Sound C+ Extras B-
2.1 "The Crawling Eye" (1989), 5.15 "The Beatniks" (1992), 10.10 "The Final Sacrifice" (1998), 11.5 "Blood Waters of Dr. Z" (1999)

by Alex Jackson I know it's loony, but I watched "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (or "MST3K") mostly for the movies. Oh, I liked the jokes. There were some episodes I laughed so hard at I had to turn off the television because I couldn't breathe. But I saw the riffing as a bonus, a way to make a good thing better. I didn't really watch the show just because it was funny, and its ironic appreciation of "bad movies" didn't strike me as all that different from the sincere appreciation I had for the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space as a child. In fact, I don't think it's all that different from the deeper appreciation I have for those movies today. Mocking them doesn't necessarily detract from them. Their sensually visceral aspect always shines through. You can easily tell if something is any good regardless of who is talking over it. Besides, there's something amiably homey and relaxed about the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" approach. If you like a film, you should be able to enjoy it on your sofa. You should be able to converse about it in the moment. And you should even be able to laugh at it. If you can only love something with reverence, I'm not sure that's love.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) [Special Edition] + Deathdream (1972) + Uncle Sam (1997) – DVDs|Uncle Sam – Blu-ray Disc

July 7, 2010Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Canada, Comedy, Directors: John Frankenheimer, Drama, DVD, Espionage, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Zombie

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon
directed by John Frankenheimer

Dead of Night
***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
starring John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Richard Backus, Henderson Forsythe
screenplay by Alan Ormsby
directed by Bob Clark

UNCLE SAM
**½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
BD – Image B Sound A Extras A-
starring Isaac Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Timothy Bottoms, Robert Forster
screenplay by Larry Cohen
directed by William Lustig

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As the zeitgeist is one of those things we tend to discuss in the past tense, you have to wonder whether it’s a vacuum or a barometer. In other words, the point at which culture-mongers finally lunge at a craze is usually once it’s begun shrieking its death rattle, and yet a post-mortem of said craze invariably divulges a complex tapestry of art and politics, the ascription of happenstance to which seems preposterous. Our own Walter Chaw brilliantly observes in recent omnibus reviews pairing Love Me If You Dare with Valentin and Dodgeball with Napoleon Dynamite that leitmotifs are emerging at the box office free of predetermination, and I myself got a faint chill when I became cognizant of having consecutively watched the upcoming DVDs of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, Bob Clark’s 1972 Dead of Night (a.k.a. Deathdream), and William Lustig’s 1997 Uncle Sam. The Manchurian Candidate is getting reissued because MGM wants to piggyback the P&A for this summer’s star-studded remake, Dead of Night because it’s a perennial cult fave, and Uncle Sam because Lustig owns the company; three separate objectives, then, for putting out three different pictures all concerning shell-shocked war veterans bringing the violence home with them. Considering the length of time it must have taken to prepare these beautifully mastered, supplement-rich discs, that they coincide with not only each other but also the cooling of patriotic fervour (coupled with the spontaneous theatrical release of Michael Moore’s anti-Dubya Fahrenheit 9/11) is like getting the rare privilege to see the forest for the trees.

Golden Age Romance on DVD

June 28, 2010Posted in****/****, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Billy Wilder, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD, Romance, Teen

RomanceomnititleROMAN HOLIDAY (1953)
[CENTENNIAL COLLECTION]
***½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C
starring Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Eddie Albert, Hartley Power
screenplay by Ian McLellan Hunter and John Dighton
directed by William Wyler

SABRINA (1954)
[CENTENNIAL COLLECTION]
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Walter Hampden
screenplay by Billy Wilder, Samuel Taylor and Ernest Lehman, based on Taylor’s play
directed by Billy Wilder

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (1957)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
½*/**** Image C Sound B
starring Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, John McGiver
screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, based on a novel by Claude Anet
directed by Billy Wilder

NOW, VOYAGER (1942)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
**½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras D
starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Gladys Cooper
screenplay by Casey Robinson, based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty
directed by Irving Rapper

MOGAMBO (1953)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
*/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardiner, Grace Kelly, Donald Sinden
screenplay by John Lee Mahin, based on a play by Wilson Collison
directed by John Ford

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
****/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Natalie Wood, Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie, Warren Beatty
screenplay by William Inge
directed by Elia Kazan

Loveintheaftcap2

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. It’s one of those seminal moments that movies provide the culture with now and again, like the swoop up a little rise to an impossibly fresh John Wayne in Stagecoach, or the intervention of a fortuitous steam vent in The Seven Year Itch, this introduction we have to Audrey Hepburn as she’s whirled around in a barber chair in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday to reveal the pixie-cut heard ’round the world. That she’s adorable is a given–the real issue is whether she’s an actress or just a bundle of inexplicable charisma, a ganglion of celluloid starlight that evaporates under the slightest critical scrutiny. I love Roman Holiday, but I vacillate between indifference and actual dislike of the rest of Hepburn’s films. I don’t find her winsome in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, am irritated by her in Charade, think she’s appallingly twee in Love in the Afternoon. She doesn’t hold her own against Sean Connery in Robin and Marian and gets blown off the screen by Albert Finney, Alan Arkin, and Rex Harrison in Two for the Road, Wait Until Dark, and My Fair Lady, respectively. If you ask me, Audrey isn’t an actress so much as someone you would like to have known and maybe had the opportunity to cuddle, which makes her mega-stardom in the Fifties and Sixties all the more testament to her ineffable appeal. Happening right when Method was rendering personalities like Hepburn déclassé, she was making a career of being terminally anachronistic. It’s Ozzie’s Harriet, sashaying while Rome burns. Instant nostalgia; even when she was introduced for the first time, it must have seemed like ages ago.

Futuramarama

June 21, 2010Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Television

FuturamatitleFUTURAMA: BENDER'S BIG SCORE (2007)
***½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
screenplay by Ken Keeler
directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill

FUTURAMA: THE BEAST WITH A BILLION BACKS (2008)
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
screenplay by Eric Kaplan
directed by Peter Avanzino

FUTURAMA: BENDER'S GAME (2008)
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
screenplay by Eric Horsted (parts one and two), Michael Rowe & Eric Kaplan (part three), David X. Cohen & Patric M. Verrone (part four)
directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill

FUTURAMA: INTO THE WILD GREEN YONDER (2009)
*/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Ken Keeler
directed by Peter Avanzino

by Ian Pugh While Matt Groening with "The Simpsons" had an incalculable effect on how I perceived movies, television, and just about everything else in life, truth be told I probably love his "Futurama" more. What can I say other than that it came at the right time in my life–it was my "Star Trek", my "Buffy", my "Doctor Who": the first sci-fi property to capture my heart, and the avatar into which I poured all my nerdy obsessions. I appreciated its ability to strike a perfect balance of comedy and characterization that legitimized its silliest scenarios. Who would have guessed that the search for a long-lost seven-leaf clover could turn into a touching tribute to brotherly love? Subplots often wore thin and jokes fell flat, but looking back, there isn't a single half-hour in its initial 72-episode run that can be considered an outright failure. Unfortunately, the show never got a chance to shine, placed at a ridiculous timeslot on Fox–Sunday at 7PM, where it was certain to be either pre-empted or overshadowed by Sunday Night Football (jocks vs. nerds!)–and thus doomed to an inevitably short life. The final episode of the fourth season promised that "Futurama" would "see you on some other channel," but the initial salvation came from Fox's home-entertainment division: The producers were offered the chance to do a direct-to-video movie, which was eventually negotiated up to four movies, made and released over a span of three years. Of course, the success of these paved the way for a sixth season due to air on Comedy Central beginning this week, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Alice in Wonderland (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD

June 14, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Mia Wasikowska
screenplay by Linda Woolverton
directed by Tim Burton

by Walter Chaw A diary of missed opportunities but not the disaster it could have been, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland reminds a great deal of Walter Murch's Return to Oz in that both are closer in spirit to the respective dark of their inspirations while still falling tantalizingly shy of the beguiling murk of their headwaters. (In terms of adaptations, No Country for Old Men holds the gold standard for cinema that understands its source well enough to use it in its own sentence.) It'll be compared of course to the Disney animated classic that mistook Lewis Carroll's misanthropy-soaked surrealism for whimsy–a comparison Burton tries to sidestep by incorporating more elements (the Bandersnatch, the Jabberwocky, the Jub-Jub Bird, snickersnack) from the largely-ignored second book, Alice Through the Looking Glass, but one that'll hound a film featuring plucked-out eyeballs and a castle moat traversed by skipping across severed heads.

Pontypool (2009) – DVD

May 22, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Canada, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Zombie

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly
screenplay by Tony Burgess, based on his novel Pontypool Changes Everything
directed by Bruce McDonald

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by Jefferson Robbins Few things give me the willies like the sublimation of self. The idea that my essential me-ness could someday drain away and be lost–to injury, dementia, what have you–makes me shudder. At the extreme, there's the fear that some invading force, a me supplanted by a not-me, might subjugate my personality. Little wonder that Brian O'Blivion's monologue in Videodrome about communicating with his own brain cancer, or almost any mind-control scenario scripted for comics by Grant Morrison, can set me cringing.

Blackboard Jungle (1955) – DVD

May 17, 2010Posted in1950s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD, Teen

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
starring Glenn Ford, Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, Margaret Hayes
screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the novel by Evan Hunter
directed by Richard Brooks

Blackboardjunglecapby Alex Jackson There are a few scenes in Richard Brooks’s Blackboard Jungle that hold up, legitimately, as a thoughtful and fruitfully provocative investigation of the “inspirational teacher” genre. And when the film isn’t working, it’s often valuable as a time capsule of the 1950s and can be appreciated in a detached, archaeological way. But there are also times when you just can’t help but condescend to it, and I’d hate for Blackboard Jungle to become a camp object. Blackboard Jungle may not be worthy of praise simply for dealing with issues of race and class, but the fact remains that some fifty years later, its subject matter continues to touch a raw nerve. By treating it ironically and laughing at it, we’re absolved of the responsibility to fully engage with the issues it raises.

Avatar (2009) – Blu-ray + DVD

May 17, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver
written and directed by James Cameron

by Walter Chaw A morally, historically, socially, and politically childish amalgam of Pocahontas and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Avatar finds James Cameron–still the Cameron of Titanic (or the uncomfortably simpering T2, if we're honest with ourselves) rather than the Cameron of Aliens and The Terminator–trying his hand at being Kevin Costner: powerful, dim, and only relevant for a tiny window of time he doesn't realize has already closed. The more simple-minded liberal proselytizing he perpetrates like Avatar, the farther away he gets from the B-movie muscularity that indicated his early career. It's a bad thing, believe me, that the first set of movies people think to compare your latest to is first George Lucas's ridiculous prequel trilogy–then Dances with Wolves.

The Yakuza (1975) – DVD

May 4, 2010Posted in1970s, 2010, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Crime, Drama, DVD, Japan, Romance, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound C Extras C
starring Robert Mitchum, Takakura Ken, Okada Eiji, Brian Keith
screenplay by Paul Schrader and Robert Towne
directed by Sydney Pollack

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by Jefferson Robbins We'll never know what might have been had Paul and Leonard Schrader's original screenplay for The Yakuza gone unmolested by '70s script king Robert Towne, or had Martin Scorsese or Brian De Palma made good on threats to direct. Instead, the obvious gets overlaid on top of the mysterious, and at least one partner in this marriage of the American and Japanese gangster genres winds up shorted. Producer-director Sydney Pollack makes the mistake his best peers in the decade's American cinema dodged: he mistrusts the audience, believing we can't absorb backstory through performance and suggestion.