The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) [2-Disc Deluxe Edition]; Wanted (2008) [2-Disc Special Edition]; Mamma Mia! [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVDs

February 17, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, China, Crime, DVD, Fantasy, Germany, Musical, Romance, Thriller, UK, War, ZERO STARS

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, Michelle Yeoh
screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar
directed by Rob Cohen

WANTED
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp, Angelina Jolie
screenplay by Michael Brandt & Derek Haas and Chris Morgan, based on the comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones
directed by Timur Bekmambetov

MAMMA MIA!
ZERO STARS Image B Sound A Extras C-
starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Stellan Skarsgård
screenplay by Catherine Johnson, based on the songs of ABBA
directed by Phyllida Lloyd

by Walter Chaw Fast becoming the post-Welles RKO without a commensurate Val Lewton to grease the transition from art to filthy lucre, today's Universal Pictures finds itself a long, long way from Psycho with a bumper crop of genuinely bad movies reverse-engineered from past box-office champions. Each of them–The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Wanted, and Mamma Mia!–broke the golden 100-million dollar mark, since they were made with just the Benjamins in mind; sadly, only the criticism of flaccid attendance was likely to curb an endless march of identical pictures this year. For the simpleminded, the success of these films despite the near-universal condemnation of them by anyone with a working prefrontal lobe is proof positive that critics are out of touch with the common man. On the contrary, I'd offer that, asked whether he thought the atrocious The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (hereafter The Mummy 3) would be financially successful, the average critic would have said he'd be surprised if it didn't do a hundred-mil in its first three weeks of release. Out of touch is believing that something is good because it makes a lot of money.

Groundhog Day (1993) [Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 10, 2009Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Time Travel

***½/****
DVD – Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliot, Stephen Tobolowsky
screenplay by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis
directed by Harold Ramis

by Bill Chambers I've heard the argument that Groundhog Day fails because it proposes the redemption of world-class crank Bill Murray–but, boy, does redemption fight an uphill battle against him. I suspect the criticism is misdirected at the prolific cinéma du redemption in general. Maybe the finest film yet directed by Harold Ramis (who's unfortunately been stuck in a high-concept rut since–his own personal Groundhog Day), Groundhog Day turns the titular Americana celebration into an existential abyss for Phil Connors (Murray), a self-centred weatherman for a TV station he considers a pit stop on the way to bigger and better things.

Dead & Buried (1981) [Limited Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc + I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) [Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

January 22, 2009Posted in1980s, 1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

DEAD & BURIED
***/****
DVD – Image B- Sound C+ (Remixes)/B (Mono) Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
starring James Farentino, Melody Anderson, Jack Albertson, Lisa Blount
screenplay by Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon
directed by Gary A. Sherman

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
**/****
DVD|BD – Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze, Jr.
screenplay by Kevin Williamson, based on the novel by Lois Duncan
directed by Jim Gillespie

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Gary A. Sherman's Dead & Buried and Jim Gillespie's I Know What You Did Last Summer, released theatrically fourteen years apart, together demonstrate that the more the horror genre stays the same, the more it changes. Each of these B-movies resorts to similar cheap tricks (first and foremost a coastal setting (the atmospheric equivalent of a non-perishable in horror)) and traffics in pessimism, yet one is genuinely hopeless and the other is trendily nihilistic–karo syrup as late-Nineties fashion accessory. A great gulf stands between the sensibilities of the two pictures that's unearthed by drawing other such subtle distinctions: one is cruel, the other callous; one is about death, the other about killing; one is sexy, the other exploitive; and so on and so forth. Virtually indescribable to modern audiences despite its familiar elements, Dead & Buried is a Darwinian fossil of the horror cinema, whose DNA has been perverted by the progressive commercialization of the culture and weakening of the intellectual position. Simplified: Current scare flicks still sometimes enjoy provocative subtext (like the recent Freddy Vs. Jason); more often, they die on the vine from WB-itis.

Miracle at St. Anna (2008) – DVD

January 20, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, DVD, Italy, War

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonzo, Omar Benson Miller
screenplay by James McBride, based on his novel
directed by Spike Lee

by Ian Pugh Beginning with a moment of vocalized contempt for the John Wayne-ification of World War II in popular culture, Miracle at St. Anna thoroughly establishes its primary aim to give credit where credit is due to the unsung black heroes of the era. Director Spike Lee brings a broader sense of humanism to the table as well, though, orchestrating innumerable moments of fear and sympathy across several languages to impress upon viewers that there were, indeed, honest-to-gosh people on each side of a conflict not typically remembered for its moral ambiguity. If it's been done before, considering that Valkyrie subtly co-opted righteous, intelligent rebellion as an exclusively Anglo-American invention just a few short months after St. Anna's release, it's something of a necessary evil. Yet the picture is finally done a near-fatal disservice by Lee's often-painful (and, some might say, trademark) didacticism, with plenty of telegraphed prophecies on hand to reiterate that faith is more important than religion and that the common link of humanity overrides any national divisions. Messages well worth repeating, no doubt, but the film feels the need to drive them home with talking heads spouting heavy-handed philosophical ruminations that subtly give the mind license to wander. Sure, whether or not God exists, we should all act like He does–what else ya got?

Day of the Dead (2008) + Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008) [Uncut Version] – DVDs

January 14, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Vampire, ZERO STARS, Zombie

DAY OF THE DEAD
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon, Michael Welch, Ving Rhames
screenplay by Jeffrey Reddick
directed by Steve Miner

LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE
*½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D
starring Tad Hilgenbrinck, Angus Sutherland, Autumn Reeser, Corey Feldman
screenplay by Hans Rodionoff
directed by P.J. Pesce

by Walter Chaw As I'm an avowed fan of George Romero's severely underestimated Day of the Dead, imagine my unsurprised chagrin when über-hack Steve Miner's remake of Romero's third zombie outing falls far nearer in quality to Tom Savini's dishonourable remake of Night of the Living Dead than to Zach Snyder's better-than-the-original Dawn of the Dead. A mess from conception to execution, the picture's first misstep is to turn the splatter effects over to cheap-o CGI phantoms and allow the ridiculous cardboard stencils played by Mena Suvari and–horrors–Nick Cannon to run roughshod. The soul of Romero's flicks–of all good zombie flicks–lies in their social awareness and in the ultimate feeling that whatever chills and thrills enjoyed along the way, it was all a metaphor for something more interesting than an end-of-days high concept.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

January 12, 2009Posted in****/****, 1950s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Directors: Orson Welles, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Thriller

****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia
screenplay by Orson Welles, based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson
directed by Orson Welles

by Alex Jackson Particularly in light of its 50th Anniversary DVD reissue, which gathers together all three extant versions of the film, I find myself grouping writer-director Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil with multiple-incarnated masterworks like Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, and, to a lesser extent, Dawn of the Dead and Brazil. Moreover, I don’t quite see it as a 1950s noir thriller from Universal, or even really as an Orson Welles picture–rather, I look at Touch of Evil as a canonical part of every young (male?) cinephile’s indoctrination. It occurs to me that you should be able to buy one-sheets for it at your local record store. So I was mildly surprised to hear Jonathan Rosenbaum admit in his audio commentary that he disliked the picture when he saw it as a teenager. He explains that he tied it too closely to the film noir genre and found it an unpleasant specimen. David Edelstein, in his theatrical review of the 1998 restoration, writes that he initially regarded it as one of the worst movies ever made. The picture neatly conformed to his preconceptions of what bad movies are like.

Hannah Montana: The Complete First Season (2006-2007) + Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) [Special Edition] – DVD

January 7, 2009Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, Television

HANNAH MONTANA: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image C Sound C+ Extras D+
"Lilly, Do You Want to Know a Secret?," "Miley Get Your Gum," "She's a Super Sneak," "I Can't Make You Love Hannah If You Don't," "It's My Party and I'll Lie If I Want To," "Grandma Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Play Favorites," "It's a Mannequin's World," "Mascot Love," "Ooh, Ooh Itchy Woman," "O Say Can You… Remember These Words?," "Oops! I Meddled Again," "You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Zit is About You," "New Kid in School," "More Than a Zombie to Me," "Good Golly, Miss Dolly," "Torn Between Two Hannahs," "People Who Meet People," "Money for Nothing, Guilt for Free," "Debt it Be," "My Boyfriend's Jackson And There's Gonna Be Some Trouble," "We Are Family–Now Get Me a Water!," "Schooly Bully," "The Idol Side of Me," "Smells Like Teen Sellout," "Bad Moose Rising"

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS
½*/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras D+
starring Jason Lee, David Cross, Cameron Richardson, Jane Lynch
screenplay by Jon Vitti and Will McRobb & Chris Viscardi
directed by Tim Hill

by Ian Pugh Contemplating the factors that pushed Hannah Montana into the limelight is automatically more interesting than devoting the least amount of attention to the eponymous Disney sitcom that introduced her to her gullible constituency. The concept behind the show, a kind of rock star wish-fulfillment that teaches its tweener audience that if you tell enough people you're famous, you'll get there eventually, has proved the foundation on which to make a mint. But sit down to watch "Hannah Montana" itself and you won't see much more than the same episodic drivel from the Disney Channel–standardized junior-high antics cushioned by lame slapstick. Any significance you cull from a deeper reading invariably leads back to the construction of the carefully-groomed personality that serves as its centrepiece. Flanked by her best friends (Mitchel Musso and Emily Osment) and supported by her manager/father (Billy Ray Cyrus) and brother Jackson (Jason Earles), Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) divides her time between a typical teenage life and a tour through fame as bubblegum diva Hannah Montana. What she actually does with that time hardly matters.

Revolver (2005) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

January 6, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Thriller, UK

*/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras C-
BD – Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Vincent Pastore, Andre Benjamin
written and directed by Guy Ritchie

Revolvercapby Walter Chaw Give Guy Ritchie a little credit for being ambitious and take a little away from him for being so relentlessly pussy-whipped that Revolver, his return to the neo-Mod gangster genre that made his name, is one part rumination on the mystical mumbo-jumbo of his then-wife's Kabbalah, one part exploration of the self-actualized ego, and every part pretentious, pseudo-intellectual garbage. It's so fascinated with itself that the yak-track on the film's DVD and Blu-ray releases finds Ritchie periodically consulting his assistant as an augur of whether or not Ritchie has gotten too complicated for the audience of nitwits not put off enough by the movie to avoid watching it again with the commentary activated. He believes he's created something of such vast, far-reaching, ungraspable, existential implication that this cheap, showy action pic is the ne plus ultra of modern experience, with Ritchie our schlock Zoroaster, guiding us through avatar Jake Green (Jason Statham) as he emerges from years of solitary confinement, during which he learned the parameters of the perfect con by intercepting the chess moves of the two prisoners on either side of him. Jake has claustrophobia, something Ritchie helpfully offers is a "metaphorical fear," by which I think he means that it's a metaphor for all fear; his clumsiness with the articulation of this single concept illustrates how it is that the rest of it is such a godawful mess. Consider Revolver's interesting only to the extent that Ritchie's self-absorption is ironic when applied to a picture about the internal struggle between Freud's personality strata–never mind that Jake's Super-Ego is André Benjamin and his Id appears to be motherfucking Big Pussy. Jesus, this is a stupid movie.

Into the Wild (2007) [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

December 29, 2008Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD

***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras C+
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook
screenplay by Sean Penn, based on the novel by Jon Krakauer
directed by Sean Penn

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Young and full of piss, Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch, amazing) is an idealist brimming with the kinds of ideas that young men entertain fresh out of school: diploma in hand, bile in throat, knowing everything about the world that there could possibly be to know. His politics, stringently black-and-white, aren't that different from the very politics against which he'd rail; for as bleeding heart as kids can be, they tend to subscribe to the foundational belief that the United States is responsible for the welfare (and travails) of the rest of the planet, which is the basis for our self-declared status as moral policemen. In defense of Chris, whose saga has been documented in print by Jon Krakauer and now on film by Sean Penn, he doesn't presume to change the world, he only wishes to escape it–the idea of zero impact taken to its logical conclusion. But the ideal of rediscovering Eden is as illusory (naïve, retarded, you name it) as the idea that a young, educated man from a privileged background and a family who loves him could ever retreat to Walden Pond with nary a ripple to mark his submersion. Into the Wild sports as infuriating a cipher at its centre as Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, and it's to Penn's credit that he doesn't shy away from presenting Chris as a first-class Pinko asshole living his dream with just enough hypocrisy to get him killed and not quite enough to get him saved. Prophet/fool. It's a manifestation of the smug maxim "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) – [Studio Classics] DVD|Blu-ray Disc

December 22, 2008Posted in1950s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi

***½/****
DVD/BD – Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe
screenplay by Edmund H. North, based on a story by Harry Bates
directed by Robert Wise

by Bill Chambers Fusing charm and menace to singularly imposing effect, Michael Rennie is Klaatu, a man who falls to Earth bearing important news for humankind only to be silenced almost immediately upon exiting his flying saucer in a case of the U.S. army literally shooting the messenger. His entreaty to the leaders of the free world to put aside their "stupidity" and let him hold a global press conference having fallen on deaf ears, a healed Klaatu breaks out of the military facility in which he's being kept prisoner and embarks on a fish-out-of-water scenario, adopting the name "Mr. Carpenter" and landing in the home of single mother Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her excitable son Bobby (Billy Gray). Old-fashioned American jealousy soon jeopardizes Klaatu's "plan B"–to receive assistance in spreading his gospel from the Einstein-like Prof. Barnhardt (a haunted Sam Jaffe)–when Helen's boyfriend (Hugh Marlowe), feeling threatened by the new border, decides to play detective.

The Heartbreak Kid (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

December 15, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*½/****
DVD – Image B- Sound A- Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Akerman, Rob Corddry
screenplay by Scot Armstrong and Leslie Dixon and Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly & Kevin Barnett, based on the short story "A Change of Plan" by Bruce Jay Friedman
directed by Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly

Heartbreakkidcapby Walter Chaw Elaine May used to be the comedy writing and performing partner of Mike Nichols, and because I like her 1972 film The Heartbreak Kid so much, I've always wondered how much better The Graduate would have been had May directed it. Indeed, a May-helmed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? could be excruciating–well, more so. For a while, anyway, May was the brave one, ethnically and otherwise, and I don't know of many people who could've turned the premise that drives the original The Heartbreak Kid into such a delicate, even sensitive (certainly human) piece. If it were going to be remade (and it has, with Ben Stiller in the Charles Grodin role and Malin Akerman in the Jeannie Berlin role), Peter and Bobby Farrelly would seem to be the right ones for the job.

Rails & Ties (2007) – DVD

December 9, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras D
starring Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Miles Heizer, Marin Hinkle
screenplay by Micky Levy
directed by Alison Eastwood

by Ian Pugh Alison Eastwood's directorial debut makes its first–and, as it turns out, fatal–misstep by taking the wrong page from her father Clint's own career, applying a fundamentally tragic story to the straightforward misery of his winter output, thus bypassing the elegiac poetry of his late fall period. Distant wives dying of cancer, mentally unstable mothers tossing themselves into the paths of moving trains, and no one given the benefit of any examination beyond the prodding reminder that such things happen every day: Rails & Ties is another stultifying entry in the post-Crash, post-Babel cycle of cinema that doesn't want to educate or enlighten you with any perspective about these occurrences or their effect on humanity–it just wants to transform you into an emotional punching bag.

The Go-Getter (2008) – DVD

December 8, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Road Movie, Romance

**½/**** Image B Sound C Extras C+
starring Lou Taylor Pucci, Zooey Deschanel, Jena Malone, Maura Tierney
written and directed by Martin Hynes

Gogettercap

by Alex Jackson Martin Hynes's The Go-Getter is a sweet but thin wafer of a movie. It isn't great art, it doesn't evoke an especially strong or complex emotional reaction, and it doesn't ask any difficult questions. It doesn't aspire to do anything more than pleasantly and efficiently eat up an hour-and-a-half of your time. That's the very definition of faint praise, but praise I'm offering it all the same. When I first saw the film at Sundance in 2007, I felt rejuvenated. This had come after a string of bad movies that nonetheless demanded a lot from me. The sheer frivolousness and good cheer of The Go-Getter was a kind of tonic that helped me remember why I love the movies in the first place. Still, I knew enough to only give it two-and-a-half stars, and my second viewing pretty much confirms that two-and-a-half stars is about right.

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

November 24, 2008Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

La sindrome di Stendhal
**½/****
DVD – Image B Sound C+ Extras B
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Asia Argento, Thomas Kretschmann, Marco Leonardi
written and directed by Dario Argento

Stendhalsyndromecap

by Walter Chaw It's hard for me to reconcile the Dario Argento of the Seventies through to 1982's Tenebre with the Dario Argento ever after (at least until what I've heard is a remarkable comeback, the upcoming completion of his Three Mothers trilogy). The inventor almost by himself of two distinct genres of film in Italy (and just the concept of the arthouse slasher in the world), a co-writer of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, and a revolutionizer of horror-movie music became this guy who stopped aping Hitchcock and started aping…Jeunet? Himself? Even with Max Von Sydow in the fold (Non ho sonno), the pictures post-Tenebre are cheap auto-knockoffs devoid of innovation and lacking the amazingly imaginative gore that marked Argento's early gialli, the archetypal resonance of his supernaturals, or the transcendent, sometimes sublime lawlessness of his hybrids (like Suspiria, for instance, still a towering achievement). They're almost to a one these gaudy, derivative, exhausted pieces of shit.

Girl on the Bridge (1999) – DVD

November 19, 2008Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Romance

***½/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Vanessa Paradis, Daniel Auteuil, Frédéric Pfluger, Demetre Georgalas
screenplay by Serge Frydman
directed by Patrice Leconte

by Walter Chaw Patrice Leconte's immaculately-constructed Girl on the Bridge is a lovely, hopelessly romantic little bauble that catches the light no matter how you turn it. The picture stars gamine Vanessa Paradis as Adèle, a suicide girl broken by the lack of a soul mate and a flurry of Parisian bedsheets contemplating a George Bailey-style leap off the edge of a bridge. Her Clarence is Gabor (Daniel Auteuil), a professional knife-thrower who trolls for winsome targets looking to ride the eternity express; and together they paint the world a Fellini shade of red. The similarity is more than cosmetic: in its carnival-of-life (or better, life-as-carnival) atmosphere, the romance that develops between Gabor and Adèle is sublimated into the act of extended, trembling foreplay–lots of knives hurled at naked thighs and only a few nicks here and there to show for it. The act of actual sex is seen as something less than penetrating (Adèle pillow-hops like an adrenalized bunny), but when the pair rushes off to an abandoned train car to be alone, true intimacy only comes once Gabor starts in with the cutlery. Breathless in love like P.T. Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love or Fellini's Nights in Cabiria (which likewise sports a woman of loose morals looking for love in Rome), Girl on the Bridge, Leconte's lightest confection, manages still to convey the director's themes of the mystery of luck as it governs chance meetings and meaningful hits and misses.

La Femme Nikita (1990) + Killing Zoe (1994) – DVDs|La Femme Nikita – Blu-ray Disc

November 17, 2008Posted in1990s, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, France, Italy, Thriller

Nikita
***/****
BD – Image A- Sound B+
DVD – Image B Sound A- (English)/B (French)
starring Anne Parillaud, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Tcheky Karyo, Jeanne Moreau
written and directed by Luc Besson

KILLING ZOE
***/**** Image A Sound B
starring Eric Stoltz, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Julie Delpy, Gary Kemp
written and directed by Roger Avary

by Bill Chambers When DVD screeners of La Femme Nikita and Killing Zoe arrived concurrently in my mailbox, I thought I had an angle for a piece: actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, a co-star in both films. I began taking notes, asking myself how they fit into his oeuvre and whether, viewed in tandem, these actioners represent career progression. That’s when I realized: What I know about the work of Jean-Hugues Anglade you could fit on the head of a pin; I’ve only seen him in one other performance, as Zorg in Betty Blue (a.k.a. 37°2 le matin), a movie with obvious but ultimately superficial parallels to La Femme Nikita. So howzabout this for a thematic compromise? Nikita (its native title) and Killing Zoe each take place in France–that’s as good a link between them as Anglade.

Beetlejuice (1988) [20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition] – DVD + Blu-ray Disc

November 4, 2008Posted in1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, DVD

Beetle Juice
***½/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B+ Extras C-
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Jeffrey Jones, Michael Keaton
screenplay by Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren
directed by Tim Burton

Beetlejuicecap

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Give Tim Burton's 1988 horror-comedy Beetle Juice credit for this: it's genuinely horrifying and genuinely hilarious. Sometimes both at once. The centrepiece of the film is a dinner party where new homeowners Delia (Catherine O'Hara) and Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones) and their guests uncontrollably lip-synch to Harry Belafonte's "Day-O." Seeing Jones struggle to protect himself through two outstretched hands as he growls the line "Hide thee deadly black tarantula" never fails to squeeze a chuckle out of me. At the end of the sequence, the partygoers' shrimp cocktails become large pink demonic hands that grab their faces and pull them down into their bowls. This final image is startling and very creepy in the way that it transforms a familiar object into something distinctly and unmistakably otherworldly.

The Polar Express (2004) [Two-Disc Widescreen Edition] – DVD|The Polar Express Presented in 3-D – Blu-ray Disc

October 29, 2008Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras C
BD – Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis & William Broyles Jr., based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg
directed by Robert Zemeckis

Polarexpresscap

by Walter Chaw Robert Zemeckis's The Polar Express seems to be the culmination of a lot of his weird obsessions: his celebration of middle-class Aryan heroes; his tendency towards the tense and anxious; his love of casting an actor in multiple roles; Tom Hanks; Eddie Deezen; and that subtle quality of nightmare that infects even the most innocuous of his movies. (Zemeckis produces horror films in his spare time under the "Dark Castle" imprint; I wonder if he'll ever, What Lies Beneath notwithstanding, just cut the bushwah and make a straight shocker.) When Christopher Lloyd's Nazi-esque Judge Doom from Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit "dips" an adorable animated shoe into a corrosive sludge, Zemeckis foreshadows the engine that drives all of The Polar Express. It's infernal entertainment and comparisons to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will are unavoidable (particularly in a disturbing rally scene), but it's hard to know how much of that intense martial creepiness is intended as satire, and how much of it is just what lies beneath.

The Shining (1980) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

October 28, 2008Posted in****/****, 1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Jack Nicholson, Stephen King

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A-
starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd
screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson, based on the novel by Stephen King
directed by Stanley Kubrick

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The Shining has perhaps dated the most of Stanley Kubrick’s films. It’s not as stylized as Dr. Strangelove or Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick pictures set in the “present” that nonetheless feel as foreign as those set in the future and distant past. Particularly with the earthy orange-pinks and piss-yellows dominating the Overlook Hotel’s lobby in the opening sequence, not to mention the child star’s shaggy head of hair, the film has deep roots in the late-Seventies to early-Eighties. However, I’m beginning to think that the aging process itself has provided the necessarily alienating “timeless” quality.

John Adams (2008) + Jimmy Carter Man from Plains (2007) – DVDs

October 21, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Biopic, Directors: Jonathan Demme, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Television

JOHN ADAMS
Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
“Join or Die,” “Independence,” “Don’t Tread on Me,” “Reunion,” “Unite or Die,” “Unnecessary War,” “Peacefield”

JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS
***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A
directed by Jonathan Demme

by Ian Pugh It’s hardly anything new to explore the professional brilliance and personal failings of those upon whom history has bestowed the title of Greatness, but Tom Hooper’s epic miniseries John Adams bucks genre expectations by refusing to keep us at arm’s length with a standardized character archetypally flawed, deigning to present us instead with an actual human being. Certainly, it forges an entry point in dismissing the sense of harmonious unity we usually attribute to those early American leaders: marvel as the opinion Adams (Paul Giamatti, a delightfully bitter pill) holds of stoic, wooden George Washington (David Morse) sours from respect to resentment; smirk as he barely hides his contempt for the hedonistic Ben Franklin (Tom Wilkinson) and his platitudinous adages; shock as he is too late in realizing the treachery orchestrated by that prick Alexander Hamilton (Rufus Sewell). But it’s not enough to tear down romantic icons by having General Washington–who looks as if he’s leapt out of a Stuart painting–crack one of his false teeth at breakfast. “Bed, both’a ya!” Adams shouts at his children shortly after witnessing the bloody aftermath of the Boston Massacre, and suddenly the shroud of tall tales collapses in a single powerful blast from a man who may represent the antithesis of any preconceived notions we have about the era of powdered wigs and stockings.