X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

September 25, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero

½*/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras C+
starring Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen
screenplay by Simon Kinberg & Zak Penn
directed by Brett Ratner

Xmenlaststandcapby Walter Chaw As an example of what can happen when a homophobic, misogynistic, misanthropic moron wildly overcompensates in a franchise that had as its primary claim to eternity that it was sensitive to the plight of homosexuals, Brett Ratner's painfully queer X-Men: The Last Stand (hereafter "X3") manages to present its series of melodramatic vignettes in such a way as to completely negate any sense of peril, individuality, or struggle for the characters. Without a sense of weight, the references in the piece to genocide and The Holocaust ("Ink shall never again touch my skin!" says Ian McKellen's Magneto) become pure, laggard exploitation in the service of a sub-par superhero action film that shows its true colours time and again in its hatred of women ("Hell hath no fury!") and loathing of female sexuality, as well as in its flat-eyed regard of children trying to hasp off their wings while their fathers attempt to break down the bathroom door. It's Michael Bay's Schindler's List: a reptilian populist, at ease with the slick and facile, has been asked to take the reins of a project that, for whatever its crimes of pacing and exposition, had in its Bryan Singer-helmed episodes the good sense not to kick over ant piles it wasn't prepared to contain.

Each Dawn I Die (1939) – DVD

September 25, 2006Posted in1930s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Prison, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring James Cagney, George Raft, Jane Bryan, George Bancroft
screenplay by Norman Reilly Raine and Warren Duff, based on the novel by Jerome Odlum
directed by William Keighley

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Ever the superficially civic-minded studio, Warners saw fit to release this lovely prison-reform drama in the banner year of 1939. It holds up remarkably well: lacking much of the florid speechifying that makes watching 'classic' Hollywood inadvertently risible, it's taut, tight, and unpretentious for most of the way. James Cagney once again delivers as journalist Frank Ross, whose framing for manslaughter (long story) sends him up the river to Hell. The actor is constantly on the edge of tearing someone's throat out with his teeth, a fitting restraint for a film about the pent-up horror of living in stir. Though they inevitably break out the thesis statements for a rather unconvincing finale, Each Dawn I Die is solid entertainment until that point and in spite of its higher instincts.

Eaten Alive (1977) [Special Edition] – DVD

September 18, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Directors: Tobe Hooper, DVD, Horror

a.k.a.  Death Trap, Legend of the Bayou, Murder on the Bayou, Starlight Slaughter, Horror Hotel, Horror Hotel Massacre
**½/**** Image C+* Sound B Extras B+
starring Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Marilyn Burns
screenplay by Alvin L. Fast, Kim Henkel and Mardi Rustam
directed by Tobe Hooper

by Alex Jackson The disparity between the reputation of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and that of everything he made thereafter had been eating away at me ever since I polished off his 1977 follow-up, Eaten Alive. You see, Eaten Alive seemed to me to be very much the same movie as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, only instead of a maniac with a chainsaw and a sledgehammer, it had a maniac with a sickle and a man-eating crocodile. Why exactly is it that critics and audiences alike consider The Texas Chain Saw Massacre canonical, a masterpiece of the genre, while Eaten Alive floundered in relative obscurity until being referenced in a Quentin Tarantino film?

Strangers with Candy: The Complete Series (1999-2000) – DVD

September 7, 2006Posted in1990s, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Television

Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
"Old Habits, New Beginnings," "A Burden's Burden," "Dreams on the Rocks," "Who Wants Cake?," "Bogie Nights," "Let Freedom Ring," "Feather in the Storm," "Jerri Is Only Skin Deep," "The Trip Back," "The Virgin Jerri," "Behind Blank Eyes," "Yes, You Can't," "The Goodbye Guy," "The Blank Page," "Hit and Run," "To Love, Honor & Pretend," "Blank Stare, Part 1," "Blank Stare, Part 2," "A Price Too High for Riches," "Jerri's Burning Issue," "Is Freedom Free?," "Trail of Tears," "Invisible Love," "Is My Daddy Crazy?," "Blank Relay," "Ask Jerri," "There Once Was a Blank from Nantucket," "Bully," "The Last Temptation of Blank"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover "Strangers with Candy" is at once extremely clever and not quite clever enough. On the one hand, its gleeful shredding of After School Specials is fanatically faithful to its target, turning the form's mealy-mouthed platitudes into the kind of dispiriting cruelty that is part and parcel of actual high school. On the other hand, the show's total devotion to that bit of satire means it doesn't hit any other targets. Though its heroine–Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), a 46-year-old former "boozer, user and loser" attempting to turn her life around by going back to secondary school–receives a constant stream of parent/teacher figures and learns negative life lessons as a result of her own corruption, the whole thing is fanciful to the point where you can shrug it off as one more naughty bit of college humour. Authority here isn't based on any real-life examples: they're just cartoons dishing out arbitrary meanness; the show's spirited inhumanity often drew a blank face out of me.

Lucky Number Slevin (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

September 5, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu
screenplay by Jason Smilovic
directed by Paul McGuigan

Luckynumberslevincapby Walter Chaw I wonder if it's not ultimately a little too pat for its own good, but Paul McGuigan's Lucky Number Slevin is another slick, Guy Ritchie crime-manqué to pair with the director's breakthrough Gangster No. 1. It stars his muse Josh Hartnett (great in McGuigan's underestimated Hitchcock shrine Wicker Park) as the handsome Roger O. Thornhill/Wrong Man archetype–and it finds for Lucy Liu the first role that didn't make me sort of want to punch her mother. But the real star of a film that finds supporting roles for Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci, and Sir Ben Kingsley is McGuigan's restless camerawork: an intricate lattice of matching shots and glittering surfaces that becomes almost an impressionistic projection of the mad, labyrinthine interiority of a mind bent on vengeance. Flashbacks and CGI-aided swoops and zooms are woven into the picture's visual tapestry, so that Lucky Number Slevin is read best as a lurid, comic-book send-up of a genre–every scene is played with a good-natured nudge, and when it overstays its welcome with a round-up that verges on sickly, its only real crime is that it's less a grotesque than a screwball romance. Hitchcock did it like that sometimes, too.

Hoot (2006) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

August 30, 2006Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Luke Wilson, Logan Lerman, Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson
screenplay by Wil Shriner, based on the novel by Carl Hiaasen
directed by Wil Shriner

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On the subject of keeping young people away from R-rated movies, Pauline Kael once remarked: "How are kids supposed to appreciate movies if they only see the crap that's aimed at them?" That "crap," of course, is usually stuff that's been interrogated for controversial subject matter and aesthetic interest alike, as if a sweeping camera or a finely-tuned mise-en-scène would disturb the kiddies. And on past performance, Walden Media is a leading exponent of this kind of subdued mediocrity: not only did they issue that ultra-bland C.S. Lewis adaptation from last winter, but they also cranked out the thoroughly innocuous Hoot to disastrous box office this spring. It's a movie that treats potentially charged material like No Big Deal–which is the supposed position to take with young minds in the room.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) – DVD

August 29, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Zohra Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O'Connor, Gretchen Corbett
screenplay by Norman Jonas and Ralph Rose
directed by John Hancock

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a sort of journeyman-hack remake of Repulsion: the fantasy-into-reality element is there without Polanski's jolting surrealism, while genre trappings are introduced to keep everybody from wondering what the hell they're watching. Strangely, the concoction successfully keeps you doing just that. Anchored by Zohra Lampert's convincing performance in the title role, the film manages to make its modest borrowings seem quaint and pleasant in a campfire-story way. Director John Hancock's craftsmanship prevents the whole thing from collapsing, and the gimmicky script, by Hancock and Lee Kalcheim (both writing under pseudonyms), has enough juicy plums to string you along for the next one. It isn't exactly good, but it's surprisingly watchable–if not always credible.

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991): Extended Version [Anniversary Edition] – DVD

August 28, 2006Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD

*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary-Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson
screenplay by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Flagg
directed by Jon Avnet

by Walter Chaw A seedy, sleight-of-hand weepie that mines tears from hilarious deaths, servile Negroes, cannibalism, itinerant rail-bo shanty towns, and a hint of lesbianism, Jon Avnet's revered Fried Green Tomatoes is redneck porn and noble-geriatric/fat-girl uplift mashed whole-kernel into a confused feminist tirade that finds strength in the literary retardation and literal consumption of men. With castration or cannibalization the main options for boys, then, doomed cousin Buddy (Chris O'Donnell) should count himself lucky that a poignant train ends his contractual agreement as the film's "good" white guy. It's really no wonder that Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker) and Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) turn to the love that dare not speak its name after Buddy, the last virile, decent man, gets pasted into hash early in the flashback reverie of dotty old Ninny (Jessica Tandy).

Mildred Pierce (1945) – DVD

August 21, 2006Posted in1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden
screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, based on the novel by James M. Cain
directed by Michael Curtiz

by Alex Jackson The difference between Joan Crawford and her inextricably-linked contemporary Bette Davis is the difference between an icon and a mere actress. Davis was always acting and, in her lesser moments, downright hammy; Crawford simply was. A finished product, all she has to do is walk out and exude “Crawfordness.” If it’s not her best film, Mildred Pierce is certainly Crawford’s best-known film, and one of the fascinating things about it is how it illustrates her screen persona blending together with her personal one. I’m fascinated with the idea of transforming from an inferior being into a superior one–the leap from ape to Star Child in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to put it in its purest form. This is mankind’s most pressing drive, is it not–that is, to escape the banality of our mortal existence? Perhaps such philosophical musings are a function of my still living in young adulthood: I’m a year away from beginning a career in which I expect to spend the next forty years, and there is the persistent fear of this being “all there is.” That there’s nothing left; I’m going to spend the rest of my life attempting to maintain a constant state of security. The iconology of Crawford achieves such escape. She’s embraced the cinema in a way Davis never did. She’s drunk from the proverbial cup and is now immortal. Prick her, she doesn’t bleed; tickle her, she doesn’t laugh. She is beyond the flesh now, a creature of light and celluloid.

Just My Luck (2006) – DVD

August 21, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Lindsay Lohan, Chris Pine, Faizon Love, Missi Pyle
screenplay by I. Marlene King and Amy B. Harris
directed by Donald Petrie

Justmyluckcap

by Bill Chambers A movie as ill-conceived as the original Bring It On (yeah, let's root for the privileged white chicks against the…all-black inner-city cheerleading squad?), Donald Petrie's Just My Luck fatally hitches its wagon to the miniscule charms of Lindsay Lohan. The migraine begins to form as soon as Lohan makes her grand entrance as PR chick Ashley Albright, striding out into the pouring rain without an umbrella knowing full well that the weather will clear up to accommodate her. (It does.) After scraping his jaw off the sidewalk, her Stepin Fetchit of a doorman hails a taxi, and while climbing into it Ashley notices a five-dollar bill stuck to the bottom of her boot. Does this cosmically-pampered princess tip the doorman with it? LOL! She's admiring the creases in Lincoln's beard as the cab peels away. Later, Ashley will receive two barely-provoked, if wholly deserved, punches in the face from a jailed black woman, while a Suge Knight-type record company overlord (Faizon Love) will declare: "I used to be [an idealist and a purist]…but then I decided to become filthy rich." I'm as surprised as you are that D.W. Griffith didn't write the treatment for this thing.

Little Jerusalem (2005) – DVD

August 20, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France

La Petite Jérusalem
**/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras N/A
starring Fanny Valette, Elsa Zylberstein, Bruno Todeschini, Hédi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre
written and directed by Karin Albou

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The deck of Little Jerusalem (La Petite Jérusalem) is so obviously stacked from the very beginning that it's not much fun to actually play the game. We know from the outset that its philosophy-student heroine, Laura (Fanny Valette), is going to fly the coop from her stifling Orthodox Jewish home. (A few stern words from her married sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) are deemed sufficient grease for the wheels of antagonism for the full 94 minutes.) Laura's fall from vacillation between the two stools doesn't feel like much of a struggle, even though her Kantian walks upset her proper family (they'd rather see her hitched and making babies); it's hard to rally much enthusiasm for the film's foregone conclusions, which are telegraphed at that. Little Jerusalem is painless enough, but there's no there there, and the whole thing evaporates minutes after you've sat through it.

2001 Maniacs (2006) – DVD

August 16, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Horror

*½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Robert Englund, Lin Shaye, Giuseppe Andrews, Travis Tritt
screenplay by Chris Kobin and Tim Sullivan
directed by Tim Sullivan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Carol Clover has a lot to answer for. Prior to the advent of her Men, Women, and Chain Saws, slasher films were unambiguously misogynist, and hillbilly horror was unambiguously anti-South. Now the converse is stridently true, failing to take into account the infinitesimal cross-identifications that make both readings possible. 2001 Maniacs is interesting as a film that simultaneously mocks and sympathizes with ruthless killers from the destroyed South–it at once punishes and identifies with its Yankee victims, thwarting a straight-ahead reading. Its genre is rather like Daniel Auteuil in Caché: aware that there might be some crime in the past, but unable to deal with it once confronted with it. Alas, 2001 Maniacs is not interesting on any other level. The film is an 87-minute issue of FANGORIA, complete with bad puns and hard-R violence and distended by some smarmy shots at the characters who might be expected to want revenge.

Harry and Tonto (1974) – DVD

August 14, 2006Posted in1970s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Road Movie, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Commentary B+
starring Art Carney, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Larry Hagman
screenplay by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld
directed by Paul Mazursky

by Alex Jackson I complain a lot about film criticism being reduced to archaeology, but I don't think I've ever seen anything quite as impenetrable along these lines as Paul Mazursky's 1974 sleeper Harry and Tonto. It never coheres, it never makes its point, and it never justifies its existence. You know Mr. Bernstein's anecdote about the girl in the white dress in Citizen Kane, or Marge Gunderson's drink with her old high school chum in Fargo–those nice little throwaway moments that haven't much to do with the actual movie? In Harry and Tonto, Mazursky gets rid of the "actual movie" and gives us nothing but throwaway moments. Yeah, it's that kind of film.

Scary Movie 4 (2006) [Unrated & Uncensored] – DVD

August 14, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Satire

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Bill Pullman
screenplay by Craig Mazin & Jim Abrahams & Pat Proft
directed by David Zucker

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The problem with Scary Movie 4 isn't that the jokes are cheap–indeed, we'd be disappointed if they weren't. No, the problem is that the film has no real point-of-view beyond a) black people are funny; b) gay people are funny; c) lascivious black women are hilarious; and d) recent horror movies fit together (however uneasily). The torrent of hit-or-miss gags is perhaps par for the course, but these bits aren't held together by some overarching idea or sensibility–there's no satire of current horror titles, just a parade titles and the lazy ethnic/sexual/bathroom humour that is this sort of movie's bread and butter. Which probably won't mean squat to the people who've made the series a cash cow, but anyone looking for genuine comedy (as opposed to listless shtick) is advised to look elsewhere.

Equinox [The Criterion Collection] – DVD

August 13, 2006Posted in1960s, 1970s, Action, Adventure, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, The Criterion Collection

THE EQUINOX …A JOURNEY INTO THE SUPERNATURAL (1967)
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Skip Shimer, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers, Jr., Robin Snider
screenplay by Mark Thomas McGee
directed by Mark Thomas McGee & Dennis Muren

EQUINOX (1970)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Edward Connell, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers jr., Robin Christopher
written and directed by Jack Woods

Equinoxcapby Walter Chaw Four teens on a double-date venture into the hills around California in search of an old, dotty professor only to learn that the crazy old bat's unleashed the spawn of Hell with a book written by the devil. When producer Jack Harris bought The Equinox …A Journey Into the Supernatural (hereafter The Equinox) and hired B-hack Jack Woods to partially rewrite and reshoot it three years after its completion, he would insert a new character in evil, unibrowed park ranger Asmodeus (Woods), thus imposing a weird element of pervy grope cinema while handily washing away in a wave of lowbrow mediocrity most of what makes The Equinox so exceptional. Comparing the two versions (the revamp's title streamlined to Equinox) is an example of the difference between gifted amateurs pursuing a passion and slick exploitation artists applying their own interpretations (this time the burgeoning drive-in market) of where they might grab the quickest buck. For The Equinox to endure as an underground classic despite its co-optation is something like The Magnificent Ambersons maintaining its masterpiece status despite the non-existence of Welles's original cut. It's quite a relief, in other words, that Dennis Muren's The Equinox has survived for comparison's sake.

Keane (2005) – DVD

August 9, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image B- Sound A Extras A
starring Damian Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Amy Ryan
written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan

Mustownby Walter Chaw Lodge Kerrigan's astounding Keane deals with not only madness and the loss of a child but also our preconceptions of the cold universe and, shaving it precisely, our expectations for the kinds of cold comfort we expect film to provide. It's wrong to call it experimental, because the decision to shoot in four-minute takes doesn't announce itself as a gimmick as much as it settles comfortably into a groove alternating small explosions and lulls laced with anticipation. A lot of movies pay lip-service to carving space for their actors to find their way around difficult characters and emotionally taxing scenes–Keane actually does it. It's about the belief that there are no certainties in life, and it understands that trusting–and loving–in a world so swiftly lurching is akin to a kind of insanity. When we meet William Keane (Damian Lewis), as he's reeling around the Port Authority Bus Terminal looking for his daughter, it takes us a few minutes to realize that his daughter (if he's ever even had a daughter) has been missing for a year and that his desperate attempts to find a witness to her abduction in the river of passers-by is spiced by a little too much stale urgency. Keane might be crazy. He also has good reason to be.

30 Days (2005) – DVD

August 7, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, DVD, Television

Image A- Sound A- Extras B
"Minimum Wage," "Anti-Aging," "Muslims and America," Straight Man in a Gay World," "Off the Grid," "Binge Drinking Mom"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The least interesting thing about Super Size Me was the gimmick for which we showed up. Morgan Spurlock's month-long Mickey-D's binge yielded nothing any reasonably well-informed person couldn't have guessed about fast-food nutritional horrors. Rather, it was the supporting information on the extent and pervasiveness of those horrors that made the film worth the effort. Of course, there are large numbers of people who won't invite facts into their home without entertainment as incentive, so maybe the Spurlock method is craftier than a first glance would suggest. In any event, we now have six more cases with which to test it: debuting on DVD in conjunction with its second-season premiere, his FX program "30 Days" puts the Month-Long Gimmick to work on a variety of unsuspecting innocents in the name of informing the public. And though there are limits to the success of each 44-minute episode, our man harmoniously blends information with rubbernecking.

Don’t Come Knocking (2005) – DVD

August 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Music, UK

**/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann
screenplay by Sam Shepard, based on his play
directed by Wim Wenders

by Walter Chaw Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a has-been western star knocked down a few pegs by alcohol, drugs, and groupies–and so like any good anti-hero, he takes off in the middle of shooting a film, on horseback, to reunite with his long-estranged mother (Eva Marie Saint) before heading off to Butte, Montana in search of a long-lost bastard son (Gabriel Mann). He has a few conversations with the barmaid (Jessica Lange) he knocked up once upon a time, while a sullen girl (Sarah Polley) carrying a blue urn stalks him around town, offering the occasional cryptic message before retreating again into the wallpaper. But what glorious wallpaper it is, with Wim Wenders and his cinematographer Franz Lustig finding in Butte a myth of the American West frozen in bright, primary, Edward Hopper amber. Twin painters of isolation and suspension, Wenders and Hopper–since long about The American Friend–have been on a mission to redraw the psychic divorce of one American from another in minor chords and long, drawn-out tremolos. Don't Come Knocking, though, is only minor Wenders, and I do wonder if giving over too much faith in the flagging abilities of Shepard to write a script worth shooting has cost him his pitch this time around.

Yours, Mine & Ours (2005) [Special Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] – DVD

August 1, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C-
starring Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo, Rip Torn, Linda Hunt
screenplay by Ron Burch & David Kidd, based on the screenplay by Melville Shavelson and Mort Lachman
directed by Raja Gosnell

by Walter Chaw Hand it to deal-with-the-devil Raja Gosnell's Yours, Mine & Ours, a worthless update of the mostly worthless Henry Fonda/Lucille Ball original: at least it hurries up and cranks Admiral Frank (Dennis Quaid) and hippie-chick Helen (Rene Russo) into holy matrimony. But then, it's not about the parents–it's about getting covered in goop and obnoxious kid gags, so once we jettison the only two possible reasons to see this shipwreck (ignoring poor Rip Torn and Linda Hunt in perfunctory supporting roles), we're offered eighteen adorable reasons to open our wrists and tie our tubes. You know the drill: disgusting food jokes, barf jokes, fart and poop and piss and pet jokes, sped-up moments, weird references to The Parent Trap, and then the obligatory soupy plot machinations that get the arch-enemy family camps to join forces to manufacture a feel-good throb of family against all odds. As Robert Altman himself couldn't work a miracle with these twenty-two main characters (eighteen of them pre-adolescent), maybe it's not fair to expect Gosnell to conjure something watchable from this infernal clips reel of children screaming–but one did have the reasonable expectation that he wouldn't twice humiliate Quaid in silly-noise-augmented slapstick scenarios.

Mondovino (2004) – DVD

August 1, 2006Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, DVD, France, Italy

***½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
directed by Jonathan Nossiter

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I like order, but I also like disorder."
-Hubert de Montille, Mondovino

Like a lot of people unconnected to the better households, I always viewed the obsessive discernment of wine lovers with a dash of incredulity. Cultivating taste in the arts, now that seemed to make sense: it was where the beliefs of a culture were stored, where competing values duked it out for the right to call themselves a representation of reality. But wine? The other grape juice? Something didn't jibe–which made me nervous about approaching Jonathan Nossiter's Mondovino. Yet the film's subject isn't really wine at all: this is a tract on how globalization is sucking local identity and individual quirk out of everything it touches. The subject could be art or food or, dare I say it, film. It's a preview of what we're going to be stuck with, and a message to those atomized in their fields that things are tough all over.