DVD Archives - Page 29 of 85 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

December 4, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna, based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger
directed by David Frankel

by Walter Chaw "Sex and the City" fashion porn married to The Princess Diaries 'tween ugly-duckling uplift, David Frankel's facile sitcom The Devil Wears Prada allows Meryl Streep free reign to craft the titular, nattily-attired hellspawn. Her presence here gives the film the kind of starfuck quotient tied to Jack Nicholson genre vehicles once upon a time; without much effort, one can imagine a carnival barker pulling the wide-eyed bumpkins into the freak tent with the promise of blue-chip capering. Alas, Streep disappoints by turning in a human performance as an Anna Wintour manqué, drifting about as "Miranda Priestly" in Cruella DeVil mane and couture, operating a publishing empire (fictional RUNWAY MAGAZINE substituting for VOGUE, though Madonna's "Vogue" features prominently in the soundtrack for the terminally dim) with a soft voice and a sibilant brittleness.

Springfield Rifle (1952) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] – DVD

November 28, 20061950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Thriller, War, Western

***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Gary Cooper, Phyllis Thaxter, David Brian, Paul Kelly
screenplay by Charles Marquis Warren & Frank Davis
directed by André De Toth

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Springfield Rifle is a fat-free, plot-centric Gary Cooper western with a difference. While its counter-intelligence plot bears a passing resemblance to that of Henry Hathaway's docu-noir The House on 92^nd Street, it's mostly about brisk movement through rough terrain as we wait for a climax in which the newly-minted Springfield rifle will prove its worth on the battlefield. There's absolutely no serious need to look for subtexts (director André De Toth keeps everything (moving quickly) on the surface), but it's a reasonably entertaining time-killer that's never exactly smart yet never exactly boring. Coming as it did on the heels of the star's High Noon, it could perhaps be considered counter-programming.

Wild at Heart (1990) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 28, 20061990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Directors: David Lynch, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Palme d'Or Winner, Road Movie, Thriller

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover
screenplay by David Lynch, based on the novel by Barry Gifford
directed by David Lynch

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Back when I ran my website DAYS OF THUNDER, I identified the problem with David Lynch in general (and with Mulholland Drive in specific) as that of a man who didn’t want to know: his films tend to revolve around bland milquetoast heroes and heroines who open Pandora’s Box and then either become destroyed or must stuff horrible people back inside. But when I wrote that, I had repressed the memory of Wild at Heart, which chucks Velveeta America entirely and imagines a world run by Frank Booth and his ilk. Indeed, Wild at Heart wallows in the kinds of kinky horrors that are viewed in Lynch’s other films from a distance, and it’s not a pretty sight. Here is the fallen Eden, Lynch-style, where everyone has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been cast out of paradise to fuck, shoot, and act unnaturally before meeting untimely, gory ends.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (1981/2006) – DVD

November 27, 20061980s, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Romance, Sci-Fi, Superhero, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper
screenplay by Mario Puzo, David Newman and Leslie Newman
directed by Richard Lester

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. A would-be victim of its own London After Midnight-esque mystique, the "Richard Donner Cut" of Superman II is marginally superior to Richard Lester's mutilation, but mitigating circumstances prevent it from being a totally viable alternative. Reconstructed from suppressed outtakes with due diligence (if a journeyman sensibility) according to pre-Lester drafts of the screenplay, the film follows the same basic storyline, though it's a little more efficiently plotted. (While a few Lester bits remain, there is almost certainly less Lester-generated footage here than there is Donner-generated footage in the theatrical version.) Gone is the Eiffel Tower set-piece, replaced by a charming sequence better allied–aesthetically speaking–with the previous Superman in which Lois tries to call Clark's bluff by jumping out a window of THE DAILY PLANET's headquarters; now the weapon of mass destruction responsible for freeing the three supervillains from the Phantom Zone is an errant missile from the climax of the original, which is clever but probably made more sense before they transposed the dopey turning-back-time conceit from the second film onto the first. (More on that later.)

A Slight Case of Murder (1938) – DVD

November 22, 20061930s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Gangster

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Edward G. Robinson, Jane Bryan, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly
screenplay by Earl Baldwin and Joseph Schrank, based on the play by Damon Runyon and Howard Lindsay
directed by Lloyd Bacon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's nothing much that can be said about the creamy goodness of A Slight Case of Murder. Debuting at the tail end of the gangster cycle, the film spoofs Edward G. Robinson's Little Caesar persona as Remy Marko, a limitlessly vulgar bootlegger who's gone legit with the end of Prohibition, though his beer still tastes of the bathtub and isn't selling well. Marko thus finds himself in several binds: how to fend off creditors while being $500k in the hole; how to reconcile the fact that his daughter (Jane Bryan) is engaged to a state trooper (Willard Parker); and how to deal with his country house having just played host to five armoured-car robbers–four of whom were plugged by the most sociopathic of the bunch. All good fun, to be sure, but it's not a film for the sussing out of complexities: everything here is blunt, on the surface, and immediately gratifying without the necessity of comment.

The Fountainhead (1949) – DVD

November 21, 20061940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey, Kent Smith
screenplay by Ayn Rand, based on her novel
directed by King Vidor

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover By now, it's tedious to recount the many intellectual sins of Ayn Rand. Anyone with the intelligence to put two and two together knows that her "radical individualism" is mere solipsism with a pretty face, but this of course has not stopped teenagers of all ages from thrilling to her Freudian, sexed-up literature, which preaches the "virtue of selfishness," i.e., whatever the audience decides is in its best interest. Still, one has to attest to the compelling nature of her screwball oeuvre, and the film version of her The Fountainhead pretty much sums up why she's so hilariously entertaining. The problem isn't that she's not acquainted with reason, but that she's not acquainted with human behaviour; her script is so outrageously presumptive of how the mediocre and the mob-driven think that it's impossible to keep from laughing long and heartily.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) + Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)|An Inconvenient Truth – DVD

November 20, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD

AN INCOVENIENT TRUTH
**½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B+
directed by Davis Guggenheim

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?
*½/****
directed by Chris Paine

by Walter Chaw Spend much time mining the cultural divorce in these delightfully divided United States and you'll discover that the stereotypes governing our perceptions of either side (bellicose vs. pussified) tend to be by and large accurate. Given the choice between violent and dogmatic or simpering and equivocal, the American electorate has erred badly on the side of a unified message, no matter how dangerous–and who can blame them? I mean, shit, whatever the leadership qualities, Custer didn't die alone. The mess of our national politics (and the mess that it's made of our standing in the international community) inevitably must inspire a spate of left-wing documentaries and, judging by last year's Clooney-fest, a handful of well-intentioned (if simpering and scattershot) partisan fictions. It's a strange world out there, and in it find Al Gore (did he lose office to a coup d'état?) as the breakthrough star of the non-fiction summer, following the path ploughed by Michael Moore and Penguins before him. It's not strange because he's uncharismatic; it's strange because in An Inconvenient Truth, he's both charismatic and on-topic. He's become that rarest of beasts: a democrat in the public eye who's not afraid to make strong statements and take his shots at obvious targets without indulging in self-abnegating ambiguities.

Strangers with Candy (2006) + Accepted (2006) [Widescreen] – DVDs

November 13, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Teen

STRANGERS WITH CANDY
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Ian Holm
screenplay by Stephen Colbert & Paul Dinello & Amy Sedaris
directed by Paul Dinello

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It may be churlish to hold a film to the standards of a TV show I recently panned, but comparing “Strangers with Candy” the series to Strangers with Candy the movie reveals a massive gulf between the two in both wit and style. The show at least had a sensibility and an idea of what it was satirizing, and it always delivered the goods; if those goods were not to my liking, it wasn’t for lack of trying. But the stillborn film version has neither a sense of craft nor a reason for being: apparently thrown together over a kegger weekend, it’s horribly paced, ugly to look at, and mostly rehashes the broader points of a sitcom that had moved on from its basic premise by the time it reached its final season. Strangers with Candy is neither the movie fans were waiting for nor an attractive intro for neophytes, and will most likely be cable filler before it shuffles off into well-deserved obscurity.

Bullets or Ballots (1936) – DVD

November 7, 20061930s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Blondell, Barton MacLane
screenplay by Seton I. Miller
directed by William Keighley

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On evidence of three films I've recently screened (the others being G Men and Each Dawn I Die), I'd say that William Keighley is a sadly underrated director, if not quite an auteur. He's the kind of lively entertainer who'd trade drinks with solid studio craftsmen like Michael Curtiz. The fact that he doesn't rate a mention in the Sarris canon is a bit surprising to me: on evidence of those two films and Bullets or Ballots, he deserved at least a footnote in the Lightly Likable section. "Lightly likable" also sums up the charms of Bullets or Ballots, which doesn't offer much of the meat and bone of art but moves briskly, offers the occasional smart line, and schools its audience in the ABCs of crime and punishment in a manner befitting a Warners crime melodrama.

Platoon (1986) [20th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

November 6, 20061980s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, UK, War

***/**** Image A Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras B
starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Forest Whitaker
written and directed by Oliver Stone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A watershed in American cultural history, Platoon parsed the Vietnam subject in ways that broke from the defensive trend, trading Sylvester Stallone's hard, unyielding Rambo physique for the infinitely penetrable bodies of various poor sods on their way to destruction. This was the moment when Americans let go of the past and resigned themselves to the war's negative impact–so much so that the quality of the movie proper now seems irrelevant. Let it be known that Platoon is far from perfect: it's often schmaltzy, sometimes schematic, and burdened by a director's innocence that would later curdle at the altar of a "dying king" in JFK. But its accumulation of details distinguishes it from the efforts of message-mongering artists like Coppola, Cimino, and Kubrick. It's not a statement so much as a list of indignities on the road to nothing at all–a life in Hell rather than a glorious campaign that as we know led to pointless ruin.

Little Man (2006) [Loaded with Extra Crap Edition] – DVD

November 6, 20062000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD

Littleman
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kerry Washington, John Witherspoon
screenplay by Keenen Ivory Wayans & Shawn Wayans & Marlon Wayans
directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans

by Walter Chaw An adult male the size of a baby masquerades as a toddler in order to retrieve a diamond he's stolen and secreted in the purse of a young suburban wife (Kerry Washington) who happens to be contemplating starting a family. This sets the stage for man-baby mistaken for baby-baby jokes, man-baby resenting being mistaken for baby-baby jokes, man-baby trying to suck tits, man-baby raping his adopted mother, and getting-pissed-on gags. Meanwhile, a crotchety old man character (John Witherspoon) suspects foul play but, as he represents the other demographic no one listens to (besides black people), no one listens to him. That's it. Gut the Wayans machine's latest, Little Man, and all that slops out is a Möbius strip of high-concept sketch-comedy garbage that isn't really objectionable (save for the happy rape and the infantilization of a grown man and all that) in any way while actually managing to know itself as owing a debt to Baby Buggy Bunny en route to offering a few nightmarish, surreal images. Marlon and, I think, Shawn are the key instigators of this one, with Keenen (I bet) the man behind the flat, uninvolved camera set-ups and pacing. On the scale of such things, it's not as bad as Son of the Mask, Are We There Yet?, or Problem Child, though it's vastly inferior to Marci X.

Henry II: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1998) + Tales from the Crypt Presents Ritual (2002)

November 1, 20061990s, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Horror, Thriller, ZERO STARS, Zombie

Henry Part 2
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound D Extras D
starring Neil Giuntoli, Rich Komenich, Kate Walsh, Carri Levinson
written and directed by Chuck Parello

RITUAL
*½/**** Image B Sound B-
starring Jennifer Grey, Craig Sheffer, Daniel Lapaine, Kristen Wilson
screenplay by Rob Cohen and Avi Nesher, based on the screenplay for I Walked with a Zombie by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray
directed by Avi Nesher

by Walter Chaw John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is that rare exploitation film that at once transcends and wallows in the ugly strictures of its sub-genre. A commentary on itself by dint of its honesty and intelligence, it lives and dies by the irony that despite the extremes to which it goes in its imagining and depiction of atrocity, it succeeds mainly through the quality of its reserve. It's maybe the first realistic-seeming film about a serial killer in that any prurient satisfaction one derives from the events depicted therein one suspects is entirely due to the angle of twist to one's own shadow. It's both a personality and an endurance test–and at the end of it we're left feeling as though we've witnessed some kind of emotional documentary about the psychic toll of murder on the societal organism. At its heart, it's an experiment in collectivism where the individual is tested against the insurgent: the body politic challenged to cohere against an anarchist. The power of Henry is that it engenders something like hope–an almost naïve belief that the humanity represented by the audience will identify with the dregs of society because said dregs, likable in no other way, are being preyed upon by something other than human. And humans, no matter how irredeemable, are still the "home team," as it were.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – DVD

October 30, 20061940s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

***/****
OUV DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
AE DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi
screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra
directed by Frank Capra

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The year was 1990. I was 17, and had managed to elude the silver-backed beast known as It's a Wonderful Life for most of my young life. Having heard of the corn factory known as Frank Capra, I, a hard-bitten cynic, naturally feared the worst–I was more interested in corrosive (and recent) films like Do the Right Thing or Drugstore Cowboy than in some schmaltzy old battleaxe starring Jimmy Stewart. But I was working in a video store at Christmastime, which meant only one thing: the constant rotation of It's a Wonderful Life on the store monitor. And I was shocked to discover that the movie is pretty disturbing; it may have come dressed as the lamb of sentimentality, but inside it was a howling wolf, seething with failure and loneliness and wishing for something to take it all away.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) [2-Disc Ultimate Edition] – DVD

October 30, 2006****/****, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Tobe Hooper, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow
screenplay by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper
directed by Tobe Hooper

by Walter Chaw If we start from the position that Sally (Marilyn Burns) is burdened from the get-go by two misfit monsters, then we can look at Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as not only a keen autopsy of a particular moment in our country's history (circa 1974), but also a profoundly sensitive look at social prejudices and the toll said prejudices take on the human social organism. More than the typical rise-of-the-bumpkins horror conceit, it is, along with John Boorman's Deliverance from two years earlier, the classic example of a film that isn't about what it's ostensibly about. Look at the assiduous reduction of wheelchair-bound outcast Franklin (Paul A. Partain), a character who remains for the efforts of Hooper and Partain (apparently so irritating in real life that his cohorts were relieved by his on-screen demise) one of the most unapologetically irritating and pathetic figures in film and find noteworthy not that a handicapped person is allowed to be a self-pitying asshole, but that we're not let off the hook (as it were) for our own prejudices. Franklin is an anchor–and we're glad that he's dead, too.

Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes (2003) – DVD

October 26, 20062000s, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Television

Image A Sound A Extras A-
"Naked Beach Frenzy," "Stimpy's Pregnant," "Altruists," "Ren Seeks Help," "Fire Dogs, Part 2," "Onward and Upward"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There are, believe it or not, those who miss the days of the Production Code as a tool for making writers try harder to suggest things instead of spelling them out. I never really bought into the argument, but it seems almost sensible to me now that I've seen Ren and Stimpy unleashed and uncensored. To be sure, no loyalist can be without the six adventures contained on Paramount's new-to-DVD "Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes" (only half of which ever reached the airwaves, under the banner "Ren & Stimpy 'Adult Party Cartoon'"), whose scripts were suppressed by Nickelodeon for being too raunchy for kids; and when they're on, they take the formula out of the cage of decency so that it might run around free and unfettered. Alas, the introduction of naked women and actual foul language somehow dampens the charm of the Nickelodeon run. The thrill of "Ren & Stimpy" lies in its childish, anal-stage irresponsibility, with its suppression of the sexual in favour of the scatological–to say nothing of the florid insults ("You bloated sack of protoplasm!") with which mere expletives can't possibly compete.

Sealab 2021: Season IV (2004-2005) + Arrested Development: Season Three (2005-2006) – DVDs

October 24, 20062000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Television

SEALAB 2021: SEASON IV
Image C Sound B Extras D
"Isla de Chupacabra," "Joy of Grief," "Green Fever," "Sharko's Machine," "Return of Marko," "Casinko," "Butchslap," "Monkey Banana Raffle," "Shrabster," "Cavemen," "Moby Sick," "No Waterworld," "Legacy of Laughter"

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: SEASON THREE
Image A Sound B Extras B
"The Cabin Show," "For British Eyes Only," "Forget Me Now," "Notapussy," "Mr. F," "The Ocean Walker," "Prison Break-In," "Making a Stand," "S.O.B.s," "Fakin' It," "Family Ties," "Exit Strategy," "Development Arrested"

by Walter Chaw Oh, I get it. It's hostile.

Stella: Season One (2005) – DVD

October 23, 20062000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Television

Image B- Sound A- Extras B
"Pilot," "Campaign," "Office Party," "Coffee Shop," "Paper Route," "Camping," "Meeting Girls," "Novel," "Vegetables," "Amusement Park"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a difference between being smart and being "smart." Smart involves the recombination of concepts into some kind of thesis or analysis; "smart" is the mere name-checking of said concepts and the class trappings they afford. The problems begin when people act "smart" and feel they're actually smart–when the pose of intelligence becomes the real thing. And despite many contortions in a vaguely surrealist direction, the masterminds behind "Stella" clearly belong in the poser category. Although their juxtaposition of overgrown children against a world somewhat less mad than they are is fastidiously groomed and played to the hilt, it's not really smart about anything: by putting these naïf characters next to the supposed intelligence of the people who write their lines, they only reveal their "smarts" in comparison to a very limited test group.

Slither (2006) – DVD

October 23, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry
written and directed by James Gunn

by Walter Chaw Paying tribute to his Lloyd Kaufman roots with a shot in which The Toxic Avenger is on TV in the background, James Gunn's Slither is more in line with the hipster revisionism of his screenplay for Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. Postmodernism its point, then, drying up the musty cellars somewhat of the films it riffs on, Slither misses when it does only because it has little resonance beyond the basic Cronenbergian sexual-parasites thing and the shopworn idea that Americans are voracious, disgusting, ignorant swine. (In truth, the one moment that really bugs me is a fairly demented rape sequence (involving more infant-menace than anything in the new The Hills Have Eyes) and its played-for-giggles fallout.) In place of useful sociology, it does for redneck archetypes what Shaun of the Dead did for workaday slobs, poking fun at the thin line between slack-jawed yokels (initiating deer season with a barn-busting hoedown) and beef-craving, slug-brained zombies (recalling that NASCAR now boasts its own brand of meat). The biggest surprise is that Gunn appears to have seen and liked Night of the Creeps, and that, like that film, Slither does what it does without sacrificing too much of its good-natured, self-deprecating sense of humour along the way.

Over the Hedge (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 18, 20062000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
screenplay by Len Blum and Lorne Cameron & David Hoselton and Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the comic strip by Michael Fry and T Lewis
directed by Tim Johnson & Karey Kirkpatrick

by Walter Chaw It's just a largely inoffensive, vaguely environmentalist (inasmuch as being anti-sprawl is pro-environment) assembly-line animation featuring the usual passel of aging and/or second-run celebrities subbing for trained voice performers as anthropomorphic CGI animal bodies engaged in slapstick, stink jokes, and other interchangeable ephemera for the delight of our toddlers. If you feel as though you've seen Over the Hedge a hundred times already, that's because it's been cobbled together from a hundred other identical pictures; and if you have a little trouble afterwards remembering a thing about it, well, it's only natural that something with no nutritional value would pass right through you. That's not to say there's no fertile ground to be mined here in exploring the line between the natural-natural and the human natural (a line that the Japanese puzzler Pom Poko attempts to describe to similar effect)–safe to say, in fact, that a great satire lies in the suburban morass as viewed through the eyes of the "un-civilized." But Over the Hedge is a slave to the theoretical peanut gallery, resorting to manufacturing a villain and then staging a series of boom/crash operas. Though Pixar's Cars can pretty fairly be described as awful, it's Pixar's legacy of brilliant children's entertainments that DreamWorks has tried to ape with its puerile, art-destroying, post-pop Shrek series, and if Over the Hedge at least resists the scatology that marks Shrek as low entertainment for the lowest common denominator, it still can't quite make that jump from loud noises to real insight and value.

Hard Candy (2006) + The King (2006) – DVDs

October 18, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Thriller, UK

HARD CANDY
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page, Sandra Oh, Odessa Rae
screenplay by Brian Nelson
directed by David Slade

THE KING
*½/**** Image B+ Sound C+ Extras C+
starring Gael García Bernal, Laura Harring, Paul Dano, William Hurt
screenplay by Milo Addica & James Marsh
directed by James Marsh

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Arriving on DVD with its cult status in the bag, Hard Candy was inspired by a Japanese crimewave that found underage girls posing as prostitutes to bait wealthy businessmen they subsequently drugged, robbed, and in some cases tortured. I think I'd rather see that movie–in dealing more with entrapment than with vigilantism, it probably wouldn't want for integrity like this one does. Hard Candy pulls its punches too often for its own good (mainly, it would appear, in the interest of sustaining momentum, pendulum-like), and its literalmindedness only makes things worse. The picture's chiaroscuro tableaux brazenly paraphrase Edward Hopper, for instance, and lest there be any doubt about artistic intentionality, the two lost souls at the centre of this chamber piece arrange to meet at Nighthawks Diner. But then a T-shirt with Hopper's seminal "Nighthawks" silkscreened onto it turns up as part of the narrative, which is overkill and self-defeating besides, as in reducing Hopper to a decal, Hard Candy itself becomes kitsch.