Metalocalypse: Season One (2006) + The Lair: The Complete First Season (2007) – DVDs

November 28, 2007Posted inAnimation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Horror, Music, Mystery, Romance, Television, Vampire

Metalocalypse: Season One
Image B+ Sound A Extras D+
"The Curse of Dethklok," "Dethwater," "Birthdayface," "Dethtroll," "Murdering Outside the Box," "Dethkomedy," "Dethfam," "Performance Klok," "Snakes n' Barrels," "Mordland," "FatKlok," "Skwisklok," "Go Forth and Die," "Bluesklok," "Dethkids," "Religionklok," "Dethclown," "Girlfriendklok," "Dethstars," "The Metalocalypse Has Begun"

The Lair: The Complete First Season
Image B+ Sound B Extras D
episodes 101-106

by Ian Pugh I never understood the appeal of Brendon Small's "Home Movies", a show I've always found more frustrating than anything else. Besides being hard on the eyes (its characters evolving from garish preschool squiggles to sharp-yet-shapeless Flash monstrosities), it gathers together a lot of smart, funny people to meander aimlessly through three or four of the same maddeningly droll scenarios. Teamed with "Conan O'Brien"/"TV Funhouse" alum Tommy Blacha, Small finally has a purpose to go with his aesthetic. Following the daily activities of death metal band Dethklok–idiot vocalist Nathan Explosion (voiced by Small), self-loathing bass player William Murderface (Blacha), balding Midwesterner Pickles the Drummer (Small), "the world's fastest guitarist" Skwisgaar Skwigelf (Small), and Norwegian naïf Toki Wartooth (Blacha)–"Metalocalypse" certainly allows its characters to ramble incoherently, but its premise demands such focus that even the incoherent rambling has to lead somewhere.

The Night of Truth (2005) – DVD

November 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Burkina Faso, Drama, DVD, France

La nuit de la vérité
**½/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Naky Sy Savané, Commandant Moussa Cissé, Georgette Paré, Adama Ouédraogo
screenplay by Marc Gautron and Fanta Régina Nacro
directed by Fanta Régina Nacro

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching the thoroughly detestable Blood Diamond recently, I wondered what it would take to get something approaching the process of suffering in the Third World without the added distraction of stupid white people and their irrelevant angst. But it turns out there are other ways to water down the story, too: The Night of Truth (La nuit de la vérité) would apparently do away with Hollywood's fondness for outsiders looking in, yet in many ways, it has its own simplistic solutions and vague sentiments. Whatever the film's good intentions, its depiction of fictional warring peoples enjoying a shaky truce leaves out much of the important data needed to understand the original conflict. Though fitfully moving in terms of the breadth of atrocities on display, it doesn't say much more than "war bad"–which, though true, doesn't bring anyone any closer to good peace.

Meet the Robinsons (2007) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

November 20, 2007Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Japan, Music, Musical, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
screenplay by Michelle Spitz, Stephen J. Anderson, Jon Bernstein, Nathan Greno, Don Hall, Joe Mateo, Aurian Redson, based on the book A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce
directed by Stephen J. Anderson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover You can't really get angry at a movie like Meet the Robinsons. Unlike most of the painfully credulous product that rolls off the Disney assembly line, it isn't interested in killing you with its dubious moral or bullying you into some dreadfully conformist position. But if it isn't ridiculously invested in all of the things that make kidpix horrible, those elements remain present and accounted for–just held at bay long enough to stop you from lobbing a brick through your monitor. Even the film's attempts at ironic wit come off as forced, as though the filmmakers could think of no other way to leaven the schmaltz. (This despite lacking the sensibility needed to pull it off.) The best you can say about Meet the Robinsons is that it appears to have been made with good intentions–but we all know about the road that's paved with those.

Superbad (2007) [Unrated Extended Edition] – DVD

November 19, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader
screenplay by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
directed by Greg Mottola

by Walter Chaw Raunchy teensploitation, sexploitation, you-name-itsploitation–it is what it is, and for what it is, Superbad‘s a fairly decent entry into Judd Apatow’s crusade for moral monogamy. What’s good about it is unsurprising (Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s script is occasionally brilliant–like when one kid speaks of looking into a kind-hearted rival’s eyes as “like the first time I heard The Beatles“), and what’s bad about it is unsurprising, too, such as its determination to be beloved beneath the crassness and scatology. I’ve come to the conclusion that this warm-fuzziness suggests not a heart so much a pulled punch; you compare Superbad to something like Revenge of the Nerds and find the latter’s themes of fellowship and family are unobtrusive, whereas the former is pushy to the point of searching glances and lingering goodbyes between its best-chum protagonists Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera). It’s terribly insightful on that point, mind you, that boys of a certain age often hold as their truest and deepest love the friendship of another boy they’ve known through the war years of early adolescence and high school. When college, or marriage, or even serious girlfriends intrude, men are invited to grow old into their new roles as civilians in the civil sense of the word. If you don’t, you have Rogen’s character in Knocked Up, or Steve Carell’s in The 40 Year Old Virgin–but even if you begin there, it seems this cycle of films is mainly interested in pushing them forward into the realm of the conventional.

Shark: Season One (2006-2007) – DVD

November 19, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Television

Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
"Pilot," "LAPD Blue," "Dr. Feelbad," "Russo," "In the Grasp," "Fashion Police," "Deja Vu All Over Again," "Love Triangle," "Dial M for Monica," "Sins of the Mother," "The Wrath of Khan," "Wayne's World," "Teacher's Pet," "Starlet Fever," "Here Comes the Judge," "Blind Trust," "Backfire," "Trial by Fire," "Porn Free," "Fall from Grace," "Strange Bedfellows," "Wayne's World 2: Revenge of the Shark"

by Ian Pugh The latest in a long line of television series to track the exploits of a douchebag-genius-misanthrope, "Shark" has a distinct leg up on progenitor "House" and the rest of the competition in its hiring of an undisputed master of such characters to lead the way. In a pantheon of pure indulgence, casting James Woods as the eponymous fast-talking asshole ranks up there with letting Nicolas Cage unleash his inner lunatic–and "Shark" certainly gives Woods a chance to go to town as famous defense attorney-turned-high-profile prosecutor Sebastian Stark. The actor almost completely embodies the pleasures to be found in the show, to such an overwhelming degree that his near-perpetual "step aside, junior" demeanour leaks through the fourth wall, simultaneously wowing the viewing audience and putting pretenders like Hugh Laurie firmly in their place.

RoboCop (1987) [20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition] – DVD

November 14, 2007Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B- Extras A+
starring Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox
screenplay by Edward Neumeier & Michael Miner
directed by Paul Verhoeven

Robocopcapby Walter Chaw I feel like I must've seen RoboCop, one of the key films slotted into my moviegoing sweet spot, at least two dozen times one summer on a shitty bootleg I made by hooking two VCRs together–the now-defunct Orion being one of those companies that apparently never adopted Macrovision to discourage such a thing. I watched it in regular rotation with the big movies of 19861 (Aliens, Big Trouble in Little China, Highlander, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Manhunter, Cronenberg's The Fly2, Blue Velvet) and 1987 (Predator, The Untouchables, Evil Dead II, Angel Heart, Innerspace, Near Dark, The Hidden, Full Metal Jacket, The Princess Bride, Hellraiser, Raising Arizona, The Living Daylights, The Big Easy, and Lethal Weapon). Those years in which I went from thirteen-to-fourteen in a haze of hormonal delirium (9½ Weeks, No Way Out, and Fatal Attraction are in my onanistic hall of fame) I consumed more film than I ever would again until fashioning movie-watching into a pastime resembling a career. I developed the ability to distinguish between popular movies and movies I was supposed to like (Manon of the Spring–the medicine of it going down smoother thanks to the not-shy Emmanuelle Béart) and began keeping journals of my adventures at the cineplex (Union Square Six, Green Mountain Six, Westland Two, Lakeside Two, Cinderella Drive-In–all gone now), carefully stapling my ticket stubs to the page as some tithe to my flickering, twilit devotionals. Movies were the angel/devil at war on my shoulders: morality and venality; virtue and hedonism; good and evil; Apollo and Dionysus; the sun and the moon. I ebbed and flowed with them. It would be another five years before I fully understood the import of cinema in articulating a good portion of my worldview–not to mention almost all of the strategies with which I deconstructed other mediums. I was lulled by the popular opinion of my generation that movies were not worthwhile objects of devotion and so I channelled my attention in formal education into poetry and literature–but the space between mattress-and-box-spring was always stuffed with this secret totem.

Cannibal Man (1972) – DVD

November 12, 2007Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Horror, Spain, Thriller

La semana del asesino
The Cannibal Man
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Vincente Parra, Emma Cohen, Eusebio Poncela, Vicky Lagos
screenplay by Eloy de la Iglesia and Anthony Fos
directed by Eloy de la Iglesia

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Despite some cheesily-gratuitous murders and an awkwardly-inserted sex scene, Cannibal Man clearly wants to be more than exploitation. Pity that for long stretches, the movie–a study of a man trying to hide a sin while committing many more to cover it up–doesn't have much else to go on besides the horrible irony that drives its gimmick: we're trapped with this guy repeating his brutal mistake over and over again to the point of irrationality and intimations of a Kids in the Hall parody. The working-class milieu and lack of leering stupidity soften the blow, but there's no denying that a certain dearth of invention keeps this from crawling all the way out of the grindhouse barrel. Still, it's a solid two-run hit and was clearly made by people with compassion; the film even earns remarkable points for its equation of a lonely gay voyeur with an unhappy man who can't cover up his escalating violence.

Man Push Cart (2006) – DVD

November 7, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval, Ali Reza
written and directed by Ramin Bahrani

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover As far as subject matter goes, Man Push Cart couldn't be more needed. A movie about an immigrant Pakistani coffee-stand operator is just what the doctor ordered in an American film culture devoted to the bourgeois angst of Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (when it's not padding Tom Cruise's wallet, that is), and it could have been a real antidote to the same's anti-political "Crisis? What Crisis?" mentality. Unfortunately, writer-director Ramin Bahrani's feature debut falls into the most obvious pitfall of social realism by treating its central character, Ahmad (Ahmad Razmi), like a lost puppy. There's no real dimension to Ahmad beyond his social-pariah status and the many indignities he suffers–and things only get worse when he gets a sort-of girlfriend named Noemi (Leticia Dolera), who makes him seem more a bashful teenager than a grown man stripped of his dignity. Though Bahrani doubtless understands the invisibility that Ahmad and co. endure, his idea of a credible hero is a protagonist treading water.

The Sarah Silverman Program.: Season One (2007) + Robot Chicken: Volume Two [Uncensored] (2006-2007) – DVDs

November 6, 2007Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Television

THE SARAH SILVERMAN PROGRAM.: SEASON ONE
Image B- Sound B- Extras C-
"Officer Jay," "Humanitarian of the Year," "Positively Negative," "Not Without My Daughter," "Muffin' Man," "Batteries"

ROBOT CHICKEN: VOLUME TWO (UNCENSORED)
Image B Sound A Extras B
"Suck It," "Easter Basket," "1987," "Celebrity Rocket," "Federated Resources," "Dragon Nuts," "Cracked China," "Rodiggiti," "Password: Swordfish," "Massage Chair," "Metal Militia," "Veggies for Sloth," "Sausage Fest," "Drippy Pony," "The Munnery," "Adoption's an Option," "A Day at the Circus," "Lust for Puppets," "Anne Marie's Pride," "Book of Corrine"

by Ian Pugh Sarah Silverman is an all-or-nothing proposition in the most literal sense. Her comedic ability rests squarely on her willingness to subscribe to extremes and your willingness to accept them–helping foster the impression that she is at once completely earnest in her reprehensible behaviour and completely oblivious to the same. Her infamous concert film, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, fails so catastrophically because of the uncrossable chasm between the moviegoer and a live audience, and because of the constant reassurance therein that her act is just that and not some frank discussion with a genuinely horrible person. And yet there are bright spots, few though they are, to be found in several of the movie's lavishly-produced musical numbers, such as "I Love You More," which drops Silverman into a mod-rock video as she exhausts a laundry list of slurs and stereotypes, sharing awkward, uproarious silences with those she offends. It establishes that for her shtick to be truly successful in a broader (i.e., televised/cinematic) sense, Silverman must be taken outside the parameters of what a traditional, straightforward rendition will allow.

Iraq in Fragments (2006) – DVD

November 5, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, DVD, War

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
directed by James Longley

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Aesthetically speaking, Iraq in Fragments isn't all that fragmentary. Although director James Longley essentially divides the country into thirds (according to Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd), the film is really quite fluid and harmonious. This has its drawbacks: we're released from the take-a-step-back God's-eye approach familiar from countless documentaries and thrown into what appears to be the scrum of social life in Iraq, sink or swim. A little context would be useful, as it would be if we were in the middle of the war zone itself. Whatever the shortcomings of this approach, however, Iraq in Fragments takes a necessary swipe at the idea that the eponymous country was a mass of undifferentiated Oppressed yearning for a conquering hero to release it from bondage. It suggests that Iraq is at least as complex as that of its invading "liberators"; and if Longley's three snapshots can contradict each other, that's to be expected from any nation with more than one cultural faction.

Dr. Giggles (1992) [Twisted Terror Collection] – DVD

October 30, 2007Posted in1990s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Horror

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Cliff De Young, Glenn Quinn
screenplay by Manny Coto and Graeme Whifler
directed by Manny Coto

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I have a sentimental attachment to Manny Coto’s Dr. Giggles. This was the movie I saw the night I lost my virginity–October 22, 2000. (I kept the receipt from the video store.) That was my third viewing of the film, the first being when I was 10. My mother rented it and we watched it with her boyfriend Johnny, who had already seen it on cable and called it “kind of a B-movie.” I loved Dr. Giggles so much I showed it to my dad later that summer. Afterwards, I remember him chanting the “Dr. Giggles” nursery rhyme in jest.

The Invisible (2007) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

October 29, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, South Africa, Sweden, Thriller

*½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, Chris Marquette, Marcia Gay Harden
screenplay by Mick Davis and Christine Roum, based on the novel Den Osynlige by Mats Wahl
directed by David S. Goyer

Invisiblecapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover I never thought I'd find myself comparing a movie unfavourably to Disturbia, but the technical success of that hormonal-teenagers-in-peril flick bears directly on the failure of The Invisible, which aspires to the same kind of hooky teen angst without really understanding it. Say what you like about Disturbia (and I frequently do), it both completely understood and refused to condescend to the power fantasies and frustrated desires of its adolescent audience. The Invisible doesn't get that constituency–it's just cynically and transparently aimed at it. It goes through the motions of depicting the agonies of adolescence without ever seeming credible, as if the filmmakers knew they wanted to grab the teen market but had no desire to learn what that demographic actually cared about. When it throws in its supernatural device, it registers as exactly that: there's no metaphor, just a high concept in search of a purpose. The disparity between the two movies, Disturbia and The Invisible, shows why one was a surprise hit while the other sank without a trace.

Hostel Part II (2007) [Unrated Director’s Cut] – DVD

October 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Czech Republic, DVD, Horror

***/**** Image A Sound B Extras C
starring Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips
written and directed by Eli Roth

Hostelpartiicap

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. A continuation of the original film's premise of murder as a commodity available to those who can afford it, death is the only earthly pleasure in the world of Eli Roth's Hostel Part II, not just as a metaphorical substitution but as an active replacement for every other human itch as well. Killing and dying are the only ways to earn respect from your peers–the only ways to pass the time and especially the only ways to get your rocks off. In this sense, the film simultaneously embraces and resists the notion of subtext in the images that seem to most warrant some kind of allegorical interpretation; when some poor bastard has his penis placed in mortal jeopardy, you might see it as an exertion of sexual supremacy–but more likely, the act is simply the last word in torture for a disturbing landscape where mutilation is the alpha and the omega. Where visual suggestions of the Grim Reaper are so omnipresent because the phrase "I am become Death" has become orgasmic in its literality.

Face/Off (1997) [2-Disc Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

October 26, 2007Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: John Woo, DVD, Nicolas Cage, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon
screenplay by Mike Webb & Michael Colleary
directed by John Woo

by Walter Chaw Arriving right smack dab in the latter half of a decade in American cinema that saw digital “reality” supplant filmic “reality” (and appearing the same year as James Cameron’s Forrest Gump: Titanic), Hong Kong legend John Woo’s high-camp Face/Off directly (and presciently) addresses issues of identity theft, terrorism, and the digital corruption of reality and indirectly addresses Woo’s émigré influence on the modern action film. It’s a key picture in a ten-year cycle obsessed with mercurial personality shifts–with sliding effortlessly in and out of various personae according to expediency and whim. (Michael Tolkin’s awesome Deep Cover being the pinnacle of this trend.) Gauge the state of the nation from its most democratic entertainment; for his part, Woo–struggling to translate the heroic bloodshed of his HK work for western audiences and revealing himself in the process to be a starfucker with questionable taste in Hollywood stars (Christian Slater? John Travolta? Nicolas Cage? Seriously?)–went the self-parodic route with Face/Off (is that Joe Bob Briggs as a lobotomizer in a futuristic supermax, by gum?), wisely un-harnessing Cage’s and Travolta’s intimidating inner hams in turn to roam free-range through the picture’s exuberantly ridiculous tableaux.

The Graduate (1967) [40th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

October 26, 2007Posted in1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross, William Daniels
screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, based on the novel by Charles Webb
directed by Mike Nichols

WATCH IN iTUNES – USA|CANADA

Graduatecapby Walter Chaw Bonnie and Clyde's counter-cultural bridesmaid, Mike Nichols's The Graduate is the "easy" version of Arthur Penn's American nouvelle vague classic. It's too "straight," too deadpan–a safer Harold & Maude (think of it as doing for cradle-robbing what Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? did for miscegenation) with a similarly "hip" period soundtrack of previously-released hits (there Cat Stevens, here Simon & Garfunkel). 'Nuff said that the film failed to offend Bosley Crowther. Bonnie and Clyde is the blueprint for Quentin Tarantino–The Graduate is the blueprint for Wes Anderson; and while both 1967 pictures find a goodly portion of their bedrock in images mined from Truffaut, Godard, Antonioni, and the rest of the film-brat arthouse pantheon, it's only Bonnie and Clyde that speaks at all to the culture in revolt at the close of the Flower Power generation. By the climax of Penn's picture, the rebellious youth, contemplating integration into the society at large, are betrayed by The Father, gunned down in cold blood by The Law. By The Graduate's finale, there's just that old, one-second reconsideration of the wisdom of vowing to spend the rest of your life with an unbelievably beautiful, fresh-faced starlet in the full bloom of her attractiveness.

Cujo (1983) [25th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

October 25, 2007Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Horror, Stephen King, Thriller

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh-Kelly, Danny Pintauro, Ed Lauter
screenplay by Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier, based on the novel by Stephen King
directed by Lewis Teague

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It takes more than Lewis Teague to make a St. Bernard scary. His awkward, lifeless adaptation of one of Stephen King's less celebrated high-period novels is so thoroughly incapable of rendering its central "monster" even slightly disturbing that the end result is more hilarious than horrifying. What's worse is that Teague isn't good for much else in this movie, either: the extended set-up to Cujo's rabies rampage is completely lacking in style or subtext, leaving the occasional titter to be had during the climax as hollow compensation. The director is clearly treating this as a bread job, what with every story beat pursued apathetically and the loaded (if banal) violation of middle-class home and hearth left unexamined. King has peddled some pretty awful ideas in his day, but at least he can be said to have conviction.

Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke (1978) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

October 23, 2007Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Music

Up in Smoke
***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Tom Skerritt, Stacy Keach
screenplay by Tommy Chong & Cheech Marin
directed by Lou Adler

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Two things are remarkable about Up in Smoke when considering it in retrospect. The first is that, unlike the attack-and-kill self-righteousness of most comedians, screenwriters/stars Cheech and Chong are quiet, gentle, and completely uninterested in anything except feeling good and doing next to nothing. The second is that despite its formless narrative, confused direction, and total refusal to acknowledge solid aesthetic principles, Up in Smoke is a real movie, albeit barely. Though I once begrudgingly admired the duo's Nice Dreams in these pages, that was because it struck me as a bizarrely compelling mess–not necessarily a roaring endorsement. By contrast, this thing–their fabled big-screen debut, and a summit they would sadly never surpass–is consistently funny, surprisingly well-timed, and possessed of a devastating performance by Stacy Keach, and it doesn't blow it all by tacking on a sickly moral or engaging in mean-spirited shenanigans. All of which is more than I can say for a lot of comedies with higher levels of self-importance.

Wolf Creek (2005) [Widescreen Edition – Unrated Version] – DVD + Hostel (2006) [Unrated Widescreen Cut] – DVD|[Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

October 22, 2007Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Czech Republic, DVD, Horror, Thriller

WOLF CREEK
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring John Jarratt, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath, Kesti Morassi
written and directed by Greg McLean

HOSTEL
**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova
written and directed by Eli Roth

by Walter Chaw When I say that I enjoy a nihilistic film on occasion, I don’t mean movies that aren’t about anything. There are films that adhere to the philosophy that life is meaningless, that there’s not much hope, that we might be in Hell or, better, a godless maelstrom of happenstance and entropy. And then there are ostensibly nihilistic films like Wolf Creek and Hostel that are more accurately examples of nihilism. Both inspired by real-life events*, they seem to use their basis in fact as protection against not actually telling a story with gravity or purpose. They’re not governed by a prevailing philosophy or buoyed by any artistry–they have nothing beneath their grimy veneers to reward a careful deconstruction (though we’ll try). Worse, they know only enough about their genres to (further) discredit them in the popular conversation. I look at these films as though I were observing an alien artifact, an insect with solid black eyes. If there’s intelligence to them, it’s not a kind I understand.

The Monster Squad (1987) [Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

October 18, 2007Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Teen, Vampire, Werewolf

**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras A
starring André Gower, Duncan Regehr, Stephen Macht, Tom Noonan
screenplay by Shane Black & Fred Dekker
directed by Fred Dekker

Monstersquadcap

by Bill Chambers Since I caught myself mouthing a portion of the dialogue while revisiting it for the first time in almost two decades, I think it's fair to say I internalized The Monster Squad through multiple viewings in my misspent youth. Still, as that TriStar horse sprouted wings, I realized I had no tactile memory of the film, no real recollection of what it felt like–and the answer is: it feels like 80 minutes, give or take. It's pabulum, albeit pabulum with a pedigree. The latest nostalgia trap to get a nerd baptism (an AICN-sponsored reunion screening at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse is more or less single-handedly responsible for the picture's splashy DVD release), it's at least better than the movie to which it's most often compared, the Steven Spielberg-produced The Goonies, if only because it's a good half-hour shorter and, by extension, comparatively unpretentious. Beneath its own Spielbergian façade, The Monster Squad works like those old horror hosts used to by sanctioning the classic monsters for a younger generation, whereas The Goonies aims only to erect a shrine to itself.

The Reaping (2007) – DVD

October 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller

*/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, Stephen Rea
screenplay by Carey W. Hayes & Chad Hayes
directed by Stephen Hopkins

Reapingcapby Walter Chaw Brave enough to show a few kid corpses hanging up in a basement but not brave enough to actually be about a tormented woman murdering an adorable antichrist, Stephen Hopkins's The Reaping harvests its share of not-startling jump scares and not-interesting scripture for a frugal repast of mainstream diddle. Neither bad in the way of End of Days nor good in the way of Stigmata, it is instead another millennial picture about sacrificing our children to questionable causes and Old Testament vengeance wrought upon the unholy. I understand why we get films like this in 2007, films full of dead kids and religious wrath, but understanding why isn't the same thing as valuing the picture. Its confusion between being neo-conservative while believing that it's ultra-liberal muddies the final "twist" of the picture, posing the interesting conundrum of whether or not abortion is okay if the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Though it's pretty clear where the film has led its audience, that doesn't make the question any less thorny. (What it does do is make The Reaping's consummate, dedicated emptiness its only lingering aftertaste.) Count as its scattershot sources Rosemary's Baby, The Bad Seed, The Amityville Horror, Alien, I Walked with a Zombie, The Skeleton Key, Exorcist: The Beginning, and so on–the only purpose of composing such a list to point out how much the film allows for masturbatory skylarking, harking back to genre pictures better and worse.