Ask the Dust (2006) – DVD

July 16, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Romance

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Colin Farrell, Salma Hayek, Donald Sutherland, Eileen Atkins
screenplay by Robert Towne, based on the novel by John Fante
directed by Robert Towne

by Walter Chaw As a male of the average chauvinist-pig variety, you find yourself inclined to give Robert Towne's Ask the Dust the benefit of the doubt because he's convinced Salma Hayek to strip naked a few times and roll around in the surf. And yet the realization dawns inescapable that no matter the acres of flesh, the film is every bit as horrible as that self-serious, neo-camp sexploitation classic Original Sin (another noir based on a lesser-known, period-dependent novel–that one by Cornell Woolrich, this one by John Fante), with only the gender/race roles reversed–that watching naked Angelina Jolie writhe around with Antonio Banderas can be every bit as disturbingly sexless as Hayek and Colin Farrell doing same. Promising to follow the James M. Cain pot-boiler formula with its dense voiceovers and faux-sordid, sepia-stained sexing, Ask the Dust is actually just inert, a painfully-overwritten, impossible-to-execute picture loaded down with self-conscious slatted shadows and mirrors (and all manner of noir affectations) that isn't only set in 1930s Los Angeles, but plays exactly as anachronistic and fusty as most films produced in the Thirties, too. It's the kind of movie that makes much of a character's English-impaired malapropisms ("Not 'grew on me,' grew in me…like a baby," mewls Hayek's character in one of many excruciating proclamations); to its core, it's the kind of movie that sucks now and always has in exactly the same way.

Running Scared (2006) – DVD

July 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C
starring Paul Walker, Cameron Bright, Vera Farmiga, Chazz Palminteri
written and directed by Wayne Kramer

by Walter Chaw I liked Wayne Kramer's Running Scared because Running Scared isn't ashamed of itself. It's not terribly audacious (in direct contradiction to the consensus opinion that the film is "over-the-top," I found it to be sort of tame in its sexuality, violence, and atrocity) and it's not witty or smart or loaded with the archetype that a direct homage to the Brothers Grimm (the picture is set in the fictitious hamlet of "Grimley") would imply. Its prologue's cliffhanger, for instance, is paid off at the end in absolutely the most spineless way possible, betraying the dark fairytale template of which the film is so proud. (Fairytales were never this squeamish about strangers actually injuring–sometimes killing–children.) Besides, there's nothing terribly subversive about suggesting that the world is a dangerous place for kids. And yet, there is embedded in Running Scared's clueless schizophrenia (it wants to be edgy even as it's spending the majority of its energy on slick editing tricks, comic-book CGI effects, and a restless camera that doesn't hold still long enough for a fly to land on it) a nasty, seductive class of real cinematic infatuation and a knowledge, idiot savant-like or otherwise, of how to implicate a viewer in the things unfolding onscreen. A neat trick. Neater because the protagonist with which we suture, as it were, is played by one Paul Walker: possibly the worst actor the United States has ever produced, no matter what Armond White says.

Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll (1987) [The Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – DVD

July 13, 2006Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Concert Doc, Documentary, DVD, Music

***/**** Image B+ Sound A (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras A+
directed by Taylor Hackford

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover One thing is clear from Taylor Hackford’s Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll: not even the most dedicated hagiographer could ignore the more irascible aspects of Chuck Berry’s personality. Leaving aside his arrests (something Berry forces Hackford to do) and sexual peccadilloes (no prompting required), there’s no denying a general self-possession and pig-headedness that would awe General Patton himself. That Berry can inspire loyalty in the many famous admirers he’s abused is testament to both his personal charm and his shattering influence in the field of rock-and-roll. Although one gets the feeling that people let their starry eyes get in the way of popping him one, he’s one hell of a camera subject and manages to grab your attention for the full two-hour running time.

Magic (1978) – DVD

July 10, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Romance

***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, Ed Lauter
screenplay by William Goldman, based on his novel
directed by Richard Attenborough

by Walter Chaw I’ve never been able to contextualize Richard Attenborough’s Magic in any meaningful way. I think the best William Goldman pulp novels (Control, The Princess Bride, Marathon Man, Tinsel) defy categorization and emerge as artifacts out of time and genre. The homosexual twists, the sexualized fairytales, the exploding breast implants, the first-person narration taken from “Fats’s Diary” of Magic, his thriller about a mad artist engaged in that hard-to-contextualize discipline of ventriloquism…

BloodRayne (2006) [Unrated Director’s Cut] – DVD

July 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Germany, Horror, Vampire, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras C
starring Kristanna Loken, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley
screenplay by Guinevere Turner
directed by Uwe Boll

by Walter Chaw It seems sort of pointless at this juncture to keep kicking at Uwe Boll–indeed, there's a minor backlash against all the lash, most of it dedicated to defending the Kraut Ed Wood along the lines of his latest, the excrescent BloodRayne, as being only as bad as ordinary bad films and not as bad as getting your eyelid caught on a nail. The secret to this bountiful wealth of backhanded praise, Boll has discovered, is found somewhere in the intersection of gratuitous gore and gratuitous nudity–both virtues forgiving a multitude of the director's other shortcomings (a tin ear, a blind eye, a plugger's grace, and so on), because it transforms his sword-and-sorcery saga into something that looks and sounds just like the crap most of us squandered our misspent youth surfing for on late night cable, tissue in one hand, lotion in the other. Without stretching too extravagantly, it's easy to see in that great sloppy act of pubescent self-abuse the very same method guiding Boll's hand at the camera through his ersatz trilogy of terrible. Fair to wonder a time or two over the course of the film if someone should invoke the Geneva Convention and get the fuck outta dodge. I guess there's a purpose to everything under the sun, and BloodRayne, based on a video game series of the same name, must be around to give hope to anyone with a camera in a country with a tax loophole that they, too, can make really bad movies with which to waste other peoples' lives.

Lifespan (1976) [Uncut Special Edition] – DVD

July 6, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Belgium, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Netherlands, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C-
starring Klaus Kinski, Hiram Keller, Tina Aumont, Fons Rademakers
screenplay by Judith Rascoe, Alva Ruben, Alexander Whitelaw
directed by Alexander Whitelaw

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Lifespan appears to be comprised of inserts from somebody else's movie. It huffs and puffs in expositional voiceover largely because it hasn't written any self-evident drama–we see loving shots of scenic Amsterdam and a lot of people walking in/out/through buildings, but nothing that might actually clue us into what the hell is going on. You could (as the special features on the film's DVD release do) insist that this is a Last Year at Marienbad-esque ploy, since there are other elements to support that thesis. Alas, Alexander Whitelaw is no Alain Resnais, and his rudimentary exploration of the meaning of eternal life sounds most like a biology student on the make. Aside from a bit of gratuitous skin, there's almost nothing to watch–but all sorts of terrible, pretentious things you never need to hear.

Masters of Horror: Chocolate (2005) + Masters of Horror: Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (2005) – DVDs

July 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Television, Thriller

MASTERS OF HORROR: CHOCOLATE
Image A Sound A- Extras D
starring Henry Thomas, Matt Frewer
teleplay by Mick Garris, based on his short story
directed by Mick Garris

MASTERS OF HORROR: INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD
Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Bree Turner, Ethan Embry
teleplay by Don Coscarelli & Stephen Romano, based on the short story by Joe R. Lansdale
directed by Don Coscarelli

by Walter Chaw Add to the hypocrisies and inconsistencies plaguing Mick Garris's Showtime-broadcast "Masters of Horror" the fact that Garris has the audacity to dub himself one of the titular Masters (on the strength of which, Sleepwalkers or Riding the Bullet?). When Stephen King unofficially bestows upon you the title of best steward of his work to the screen, you need to take a full step back and assess King's track record in the medium. If Garris considers himself to be on a par with any of the other directors in this show's roster, he's got another thing coming–the pudding and the proof being his episode Chocolate, presented by Anchor Bay on an exhaustive DVD as part of their second wave of "Masters of Horror" releases. Lacklustre and non-starting, it stars a craggy Henry Thomas as Jamie, a creator of artificial food flavourings who one day discovers that he's occasionally channelling, Being John Malkovich-like, the consciousness of someone else. That someone else is French-Canadian hottie Catharine (Lucie Laurier), who, as is given away in the trailer and the box text, kills someone, inspiring putz Jamie to travel to the Great White North in search of his bloodthirsty Beatrice to declare his undying love.

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (2005) – DVD

July 3, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, DVD

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
directed by Keith A. Beauchamp

by Alex Jackson For most of us Americans, our view of the pre-civil rights movement South has focused more on the sun than on the storm. While Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks are an established part of our cultural history, the lynching of Emmett Louis Till has more or less floundered in relative obscurity despite being just as if not more essential to racial progress. We understand, in a perfunctory way, that those who led the civil rights movement were heroes, but our understanding of what they were fighting against is diffused and vague. So… Martin Luther King, Jr. made it so that blacks could sit at the front of the bus and use the same water fountains as whites? That is essentially all that this period of history has come to mean in a society that believes children should be protected from the uglier facts of history at the cost of retaining an ignorance of a backyard holocaust. The greatest achievement of The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, perhaps its only real achievement, is that it provides some sort of visual record of this time and place. The film works on the most primitive level of documentary cinema: it educates you about something important that has otherwise been grossly underexposed.

Monterey Pop (1968) [The Criterion Collection] – DVD

July 3, 2006Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Concert Doc, DVD, Music, The Criterion Collection

***/**** Image A- Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras A
directed by D.A. Pennebaker

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's impossible for a certain generation to not feel wistful looking back at Monterey Pop. Those who only know a world with a DVD for every band might be blasé about an early concert doc with mere clips of soon-to-be foregone conclusions, but for those who can remember a time (or have endured the rantings of those who can remember) know that in the Summer of Love, a music festival wasn't just the names above the title. The film captures the relaxed atmosphere surrounding some fabulous furry freaks safe in the knowledge that they were about to take on the world; the music is but affirmation of the groundswell bubbling up in the milling crowds. D.A. Pennebaker's camera is deft enough to capture the mood in addition to the tunes, coming up with something more than a hippie variety act.

Valley of the Dolls (1967) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 30, 2006Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Paul Burke, Sharon Tate
screenplay by Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley, based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann
directed by Mark Robson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's little left to say about Valley of the Dolls that hasn't already been said by either its contemporary critics or legions of mock-adoring fans. The former were correct in establishing it as a cynical cash-in crushed under the weight of its vapidity, the latter justified in their identification of its trash playground of mansions, film sets, and nightclubs as the ideal stage for queening and camping. By all rational standards, the movie is awful, yet its rapid-fire stream of meshuggah takes it into some realm of nonsensical fantasy that makes it as good or better than successful films of its genre. There are so many critical errors in judgment that they meld together to become a hyperbolic cocktail that goes to your head and knocks your legs out from under you.

Eraserhead (1977) – DVD

June 29, 2006Posted in****/****, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Lynch, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates
written and directed by David Lynch

Eraserheadcap

by Walter Chaw MustownDavid Lynch makes documentaries of the human subconscious. He captures–in a deadpan, almost scientifically-objective way–the processes through which we assimilate and interpret machine-fed data, replicating in that sense the sort of Pop aesthetic of Warhol's ilk without the snarky sense of milk-fed superiority. Take the cultural cues in his work: the Rockwellian Americana he essays in Blue Velvet; the Bauhaus by way of Antoni Gaudi of Dune; or the late-Hitchcock identity puzzles he rejiggers in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive–both commonly seen as satires of what they represent but more accurately described, perhaps, as simple, uncommented-upon representations of what a lower layer of consciousness might consider to be unadorned gospel. Call the best moments of his best films Expressionism of the Id. (Mulholland Drive could be Vertigo shot by Hitch's bile and libido, unchained and unembarrassed.) Lynch's pictures are the very opposite of pretentious: they're unguarded images projected directly from a place of null intentionality. If the aim of art is to touch the sublime, to strum the thread of the collective unconscious that binds us each to each, as it were, then Lynch becomes a figure like Rainer Maria Rilke or William Blake or Beethoven–or in filmic terms, like Luis Buñuel or Carl Theodor Dreyer or moments of Sergio Leone.

The Short Films of David Lynch + Dumbland (2002) – DVDs

June 29, 2006Posted in1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: David Lynch, DVD, Esoterica, Short Films

THE SHORT FILMS OF DAVID LYNCH
Image A Sound A Extras B-

DUMBLAND
Image B Sound A-

by Bill Chambers One is tempted to appropriate Jean-Luc Godard's oft-misquoted "The cinema is Nicholas Ray" in discussing the origins of David Lynch, whose blossoming sophistication unwittingly paralleled that of film itself. From the magic lantern-style innovation of his sculpture installation Six Men Getting Sick to the fixed camera placements of The Alphabet to the rudimentary narrative of The Grandmother (whose heavy's freakishly accentuated jawline transforms his countenance into that of a snarling villain in the "Perils of Pauline" mode) to, finally, the total aesthetic compromise of the shot-on-video The Amputee, the first few entries contained on "The Short Films of David Lynch" imply that there is only one destiny for the medium, whether its evolution is spread out over a century or concentrated in the time it takes for an artist to develop a conscience. If most film students go through a similar rite of passage, there's often an attendant, ineffable impatience with primitive techniques in undergrad films that's absent in Lynch's early work.

Caché (2005) – DVD

June 26, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

Hidden
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot
written and directed by Michael Haneke

by Walter Chaw Gone uncommented-upon in greater detail, a glimmer of hope does exist in Michael Haneke’s difficult Funny Games, the scabrous Austrian auteur’s last picture that dealt with a brutal home invasion. Therein, the victims overcome their tormentors and are well on their way to freedom when Haneke inserts himself as the capricious godhead of his own piece (indeed, a director is never anything else) and rewinds the film like videotape, providing a different eventuality for his players. It’s a move as audacious and wry as anything in Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (and as existentially devastating as anything in Pirandello), something that’s earned Haneke his reputation for uncompromising–some would say sadistic (or intellectually austere)–morality plays about apocalypses proximate and ultimate.

Orca: The Killer Whale (1977) – DVD

June 26, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Revenge, Thriller

Orca
***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson, Bo Derek
screenplay by Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati
directed by Michael Anderson

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I was scared off of Orca, widely considered to be one of the worst films of all-time. The movie had a reputation as a bad Jaws rip-off and my last viewing of a bad Jaws rip-off was Lamberto Bava's Devilfish on "Mystery Science Theater 3000", which was awful enough to make me question what I was doing spending my Saturday mornings watching "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Well, I'm pleased to report that Orca's reputation is completely unwarranted. Critics and audiences were wrong, they just didn't get it. They labelled it a "Jaws rip-off" before setting foot in the theatre and watched it on autopilot.

Basic Instinct 2 (2006) [Unrated Extended Cut] – DVD

June 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sharon Stone, David Morrissey, Charlotte Rampling, David Thewlis
screenplay by Leora Barish & Henry Bean
directed by Michael Caton-Jones

Basicinstinct2capby Walter Chaw Picture Chappaquiddick re-imagined as a Kylie Minogue video. Thus, auspiciously, begins Michael Caton-Jones's will-breaking Basic Instinct 2, a picture so magnificently awful that it demonstrates a special, indefinable kind of genius en route to being just another of the worst films in history. Schlock writer Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), who publishes under the nom de plume of "Woolf" (because she is one, get it?), is behind the wheel of a sporty little number as a drugged-up soccer hero fingers her snatch, climaxing at the moment she runs her racer through a glass crash barrier (?!) into an icy drink. (Perhaps the Thames–we're in Jolly Old England this time around.) Catherine then finds herself on the wrong side of the law again, ordered to undergo sessions with brilliant British shrink Michael Glass (David Morrissey, who has Liam Neeson's face down pat) on behalf of Scotland Yard's finest, Washburn (David Thewlis). Washburn calls Tramell a "cunt" and a "bitch" and accuses Glass at one point of being beguiled by the "smell of her pussy," which is the sort of elderly banter the knitting cotillion might still find shocking–though it's light years more appalling than Tramell's pleased reference to Masters & Johnson and her constant litany of "cum" [sic] declarations. "He was alive, he was making me cum," she says, and, "I think of you when I cum," and so on and so forth, marking her vampy, thumb-on-the-turntable performance as the most hideous bit of creaky past-prime tarting-about since Mae West was dropping the same dusty come-ons in support hose and pancake makeup. All that's missing are references to Kinsey and "bloomers."

Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams (1981) – DVD

June 13, 2006Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

Nice Dreams
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Stacy Keach, Evelyn Guerrero
screenplay by Thomas Chong & Richard "Cheech" Marin
directed by Thomas Chong

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover To say that Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams is not a critic's picture would be putting it mildly. Its thick, aimless cloud of pot smoke clearly targets a demographic that is determined (or chemically primed) to laugh at the most formless of gags and sketchily-designed comic situations. Still, I found myself admiring Cheech and Chong's balls in crafting a film that would cause Syd Field and his devotees some serious hemorrhaging. A wafer-thin plot is contrived as the means of our pair indulging in what used to be disparagingly called "drug humour": nothing is about the completion of the narrative task except in the crudest sense of the term. Instead, the film is dogged in its recreation of nonsense talk on a night spent passing around a joint or two, where nobody reaches a conclusion and everybody laughs themselves silly.

Three Extremes II (2002) – DVD

June 12, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Hong Kong, Horror, Mystery, South Korea, Thailand

3 Extremes II
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
Memories ***½/****
starring Kim Hye-Soo, Chung Bo-Seok
written and directed by Kim Jee-woon
The Wheel **/****
starring Suwinit Panjamawat, Komgichi Yuttiyong, Pongsanart Vinsiri
screenplay by Nitas Singhamat
directed by Nonzee Nimibutr
Going Home **½/****
starring Leon Lai, Eric Tsang, Eugenia Yuan
screenplay by Jojo Hui/Matt Chow
directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The vogue for Asian pop culture is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we have irrefutable proof that, aside from maybe that of France, Asian cinema has eclipsed the West's in terms of consistency, potency, and sheer aesthetic brio. And yet, the fact that so much of Asia's more subdued product is often shunted aside for the nasty, brutish, and weird has certain negative consequences. Trolling the shelves of my local indie video store, I was a bit distressed to discover a second-tier Japanese "extreme" title insultingly promoted as being from "The Most Perverted Country on Earth"–a conclusion to which you might not jump if you peppered your Takashi Miike viewings with some Naomi Kawase or Hirokazu Kore-eda. Would you judge American culture entirely through the prism of Larry Flynt and Hostel? Does Italian film begin and end with Cannibal Holocaust and Strip Nude for Your Killer?

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic (2005) – DVD

June 11, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Concert Doc, DVD, Music

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
directed by Liam Lynch

Jesusismagiccap

by Walter Chaw It starts off on the wrong foot and never recovers, this first showcase for the brilliant Sarah Silverman to strut her aggressively, pointedly offensive stuff. Something about the deadpan seriousness of her delivery sells jokes about being raped by her doctor ("A very bittersweet experience for a Jewish girl"), about the "alleged" Holocaust, about how the best time to have a baby is "when you're a black teenager," or about how she'll always remember 9/11 as the day she discovered how many calories were in a soy chai latte. And that you're never meant to know with absolute certainty if she's aware exactly how horrible are the things she's saying could be part of the schtick.

Dumbo (1941) [60th Anniversary] – DVD + Dumbo [Big Top Edition] – DVD

June 8, 2006Posted in1940s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Disability, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical

***/****
60TH ANNIVERSARY DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B
BTE DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras B
screenplay by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer, based on the book by Helen Aberson & Harold Perl
directed by Ben Sharpsteen

Dumbocapby Bill Chambers With Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney had established two story prototypes between which he would all but vacillate over the next couple of decades. In 1937's Snow White, the eponymous heroine trusts that Prince Charming will one day steal her away from life's ills; in 1940's Pinocchio, a misfit innocent is navigated by his surrogate conscience (Jiminy Cricket) through an unkind world back to the parental figure he left behind. Disney didn't really return to the Prince Charming myth until the Fifties, when he began a run that includes Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan (a movie about a swashbuckler's repeated rescue of the damsel in distress who fancies him)–Pinocchio's template just seemed to have more resonance during the war years.

Riddick Trilogy: The Franchise Collection – DVD

June 7, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Thriller

PITCH BLACK – UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT (2000)
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David
screenplay by Jim & Ken Wheat and David Twohy
directed by David Twohy

DARK FURY (2004)
The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
screenplay by Brett Matthews
directed by Peter Chung

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK – UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT (2004)
***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C
starring Vin Diesel, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Judi Dench
written and directed by David Twohy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover At the dawn of the century came a little movie called Pitch Black that didn't seem like an opportunity for blockbuster inflation. Produced for a mere $20 million, it turned out to be only moderately successful yet built up a cult following on video and cable. In the interim, its star Vin Diesel did smash business in The Fast and the Furious and xXx, positioning him as the next bankable action hero and generating a hunt for properties with which to exploit his appeal. Thus did the chamber piece Pitch Black beget the big-budget extravaganza The Chronicles of Riddick, a sequel nobody was particularly salivating for but which showed up anyway to widespread confusion and audience indifference. The two films couldn't be more disparate: where the former is a guilt-ridden ensemble piece in which the ensemble rapidly dwindles, the latter is an over-designed star spectacular with a glut of supporting supplicants and plenty of action set-pieces.