The Rapture (1991) – DVD

November 17, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ (DD)/A (DTS) Commentary A
starring Mimi Rogers, David Duchovny, Patrick Bauchau, Will Patton
written and directed by Michael Tolkin

Rapturecapby Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Based on a single viewing in the winter of 1993, I used to call Michael Tolkin's The Rapture a masterpiece. At the time, a friend of mine who felt the same way about the film wondered aloud how I could've connected with it, since he'd had a religious upbringing and I'd never even been to church. The question genuinely caught me off guard–nobody'd challenged my love of The Last of the Mohicans just because I didn't grow up on a reservation. Nevertheless, it's honestly taken me eleven years to formulate an adequate response: When I first saw The Rapture, which is more or less about the wait for Judgment Day to arrive, I was on the verge of graduating from high school; my future was presaged in university applications but no less unknowable or nerve-racking, and the movie leeched off that anxiety in a way that invoked empathy. Alas, many a "bell jar" of my youth–Taxi Driver, The Tenant, Boyz N the Hood–seems a little alien to me now that I've progressed beyond teen angst, and I can no longer subscribe to The Rapture outside its affecting portrait of bachelor ennui. Perhaps it's a true Heisenberg movie, changing with me.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) + The Pickle (1993) – DVDs

November 15, 2004Posted in1960s, 1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE
*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon
screenplay by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker
directed by Paul Mazursky

THE PICKLE
*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Danny Aiello, Dyan Cannon, Shelley Winters, Jerry Stiller
written and directed by Paul Mazursky

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There are certain talented but minor directors–"second-rank," as opposed to "second-rate"–who sadly manage to outlive their moment. John Frankenheimer was one of them, Alan J. Pakula another: both made key popular films of their time and then had nowhere to go once the cultural ground shifted beneath them. Add to this list the name of Paul Mazursky. Watch his 1969 comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and his 1993 summation The Pickle and you'll see two completely different people at work: one bases his work on observation and the mood of his times, and the other is so far behind the curve that his characters hardly seem human. Though it's painful to retrace Mazursky's slide and ultimately impossible to connect Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice to The Pickle, the juxtaposition of the two films is instructive in terms of what not to do when you're no longer the hot young thing and the industry contradicts your every single move.

The China Syndrome (1979) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 11, 2004Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady
screenplay by Mike Gray & T.S. Cook and James Bridges
directed by James Bridges

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover For long passages, The China Syndrome is the usual Hollywood liberal tripe. A compendium of "social issues" more name-checked than dealt with, it was clearly assembled for the greater glory of a bunch of rich white entertainment professionals rather than for the oppressed and threatened individuals who have been forced from centre stage. So obsessed with the spectacle of the principal cast being heroic is The China Syndrome that for an agonizing stretch, it fails to communicate anything besides the nobility of Hanoi Jane. But though the film is boring to look at and painful to listen to for an hour or so, once it sorts out its priorities, it has a certain grip as a spooky end-of-days industrial thriller. What the film says about nuclear power could be fit into twenty words or less, but it says it loudly and clearly and with enough editorial skill to help you forget the sins of that sluggish first half. Whether that serves the "message" I leave entirely up to you.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2004) – DVD

November 11, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image A Sound B
starring Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Malcolm McDowell
screenplay by Trevor Preston
directed by Mike Hodges

by Walter Chaw Mike Hodges has only made a handful of films in the last three decades, even disowning a couple of them along the way because they were taken from him and edited to accommodate someone else's vision. Hodges's first film is the legendary revenge flick Get Carter featuring a never-better Michael Caine, and his latest, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, functions very much as a bookend to his directorial debut: it's the tale of a man of few words on a mission to avenge a wrong. Reuniting Hodges with Clive Owen, star of his modest hit Croupier, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is beautifully-lensed by long-time DP Michael Garfath in a manner that, although the picture was shot in London, looks extraordinarily like an Edward Hopper painting. Hodges, beyond being a narrative stylist, has evolved into something of a visual stylist as well. In this way, he suggests a British Wim Wenders.

Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas (2004) + It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) [Special Edition] – DVDs

November 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Muppets, Musical

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C
directed by Matthew O'Callaghan

by Bill Chambers 2-D animation is dead, long live 2-D. Mickey Mouse and his apostles move into the realm of 3-D with Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, cementing this maddeningly disposable gewgaw's place in the history books next to far more sublime firsts like 1928's Steamboat Willie (Mickey's debut) and 1935's The Band Concert (Mickey's colour debut). But while it's tempting to lob cheap shots along the lines of "Uncle Walt is spinning in his grave," fact is Disney's frosty remains were already a veritable "Price is Right" wheel by the early '70s, and if he'd lived to see the digital revolution, he probably would've been one of its pioneers. In other words, it's not sacrilege to experiment with a CGI Mickey, but the results probably never should've seen the light of day.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) – DVD

November 9, 2004Posted in1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Harry E. Edington, Gene Raymond
screenplay by Norman Krasna
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Even a cursory glance at Alfred Hitchcock's favoured themes would find the idea of rules–particularly as they're expressed by written forms of communication–to be the ineffectual rein seeking to subdue the protean tumult of human identity, greed, and passion. The way that books hide the body in Rope, for instance; the newspaper headlines discovered too late in Shadow of a Doubt; the contracts and penny dreadfuls of Suspicion; Norman Bates's hotel book; the profession of Foreign Correspondent; Carlotta's engraved headstone and Mozart's mathematical structure in Vertigo; Melanie's birthday wishes in The Birds; the beckoning empty cages in Rutland's house in Marnie; or how the lines of a ledger page predict North by Northwest's astonishing play on humans reduced to numbers before a brilliant bit of business involving a message written inside a matchbook cover. In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Hitchcock pairs with good friend Carole Lombard (on her second-to-last film before a plane crash ended her life), a prototypical Hitchcock blonde for whom the term "screwball comedy" was invented, to produce what's widely seen as an anomaly in Hitchcock's career: a slapstick romantic imbroglio. And indeed, the film is different from nearly anything Hitchcock ever did (though it shares a similar plot with Rich and Strange and a similar antic energy with The Trouble with Harry), but not because it deviates from his themes. Rather, Mr. and Mrs. Smith seems to be a film that outlines what it is exactly about rules and written communication that Hitchcock perceives to be so fundamentally unstable and misleading.

The Clearing (2004) + Before Sunset (2004) – DVDs

November 9, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, UK

THE CLEARING
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, Willem Dafoe, Alessandro Nivola
screenplay by Justin Haythe
directed by Pieter Jan Brugge

BEFORE SUNSET
***½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
screenplay by Richard Linklater & Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke
directed by Richard Linklater

by Walter Chaw Nothing much happens in Pieter Jan Brugge's The Clearing–so little happens, in fact, that it's difficult to pinpoint what all the to-do was about by film's end. Laid-off everyman schlub Arnold Mack kidnaps car rental magnate Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) from the front gate of his palatial estate. He leads Hayes through the woods to meet up with his partners-in-crime, having a heart-to-heart concerning the dissatisfactions of modern living along the way. Hayes's wife Eileen (Helen Mirren) and grown children (Alessandro Nivola and glassy-eyed Melissa Sagemiller) gather with disaffected FBI agent Fuller (Matt Craven) to field ransom demands and likewise have heart-to-hearts about the dissatisfactions of modern living. Brugge plays with time in interesting ways: the events of the first day with Wayne and Arnold are intercut with the events of several weeks with the Hayes clan. But the picture's biggest trick is making ninety minutes seem like an eternity.

Elf (2003) [Infinifilm] – DVD

November 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen
screenplay by David Berenbaum
directed by Jon Favreau

by Walter Chaw Some of the preview spots for Jon Favreau's Elf are hysterical, leading me to think that the film's failure to be very funny has a lot to do with bad direction, editing, or maybe both. It's a lightweight, unapologetically warm-hearted picture that earns a lot of respect for avoiding scatological humour en route to honouring nearly every other ingredient of the The Jerk bumpkin-out-of-water formula. Like Steve Martin, Will Ferrell announces himself with this film (and Old School) as a smart comedian unusually committed to effect and the directions his performance might take him. Ferrell isn't a chaotic jester. His clowning compels because it has the quality of internal logic, enough so that it's somehow possible to accept his man-raised-by-elves creation at face value.

Christmas in Connecticut (1992) + Jingle All the Way (1996) – DVDs

November 8, 2004Posted in1990s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance, Schwarzenegger, ZERO STARS

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C+
starring Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Roundtree, Tony Curtis
screenplay by Janet Brownell, based on the screenplay by Lionel Houser and Adele Comandini and story by Aileen Hamilton
directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger

JINGLE ALL THE WAY
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound C+
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson
screenplay by Randy Kornfield
directed by Brian Levant

by Walter Chaw A man of many talents (a jag-off of all trades, let’s say), the honourable Arnold A. Schwarzenegger made his directorial debut with the 1992 telefilm Christmas in Connecticut, a remake of a 1945 Barbara Stanwyck flick and the sort of unqualified failure that finds something like thirty dozen ways to redefine “fatuous.” Dyan Cannon, she of the toothy, shark-like grin, stars as Elizabeth Blane, a popular cooking-show host without any actual cooking skills who’s led around by her pert snoot by her queen of a producer, Alexander (Tony Curtis, playing Harvey Fierstein). When heroic Colorado park ranger Jefferson Jones (Kris Kristofferson, one definition of “fatuous” all by his own self) saves a kid from the wilderness, Alexander hatches the brilliant plan to capitalize on Grizzly Adams’s national hero status by inviting him to a live broadcast of a fake dinner at a fake house in Connecticut populated by a family of terrible actors and an unspeakable mammy stereotype. It’s hard to draw the line between fiction and reality sometimes, isn’t it?

Festival Express (2004) [2-Disc Set] – DVD

November 5, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Concert Doc, Documentary, DVD, Music, Netherlands, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B
directed by Bob Smeaton

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover JULY 30, 2004. We are so inundated with directives to be entertained that we've lost track of those few entertainments that don't smack us hard in the face with their laboured irrelevance. Simple, innocent pleasures have been replaced by exercises in industrial power that make you feel guilty for looking anywhere beyond them or for anything milder than their artificial amplifications. Surrounded as I find myself by these faceless giants (i.e., virtually every studio film released this summer), I find I am thankful for anything that features some fine music, a few good stories, and a wistful memory of a more innocent time before the entertainment industry was totally corrupted–something like the rock documentary Festival Express. If the film boasts of no miracles, neither does it have any pretenses of miracle-making. It asserts the pleasures of pleasure-making instead of the crushing weight of its force.

Father & Son (2003) – DVD

November 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Russia

Father and Son
Otets i syn
**/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring Andrev Shchetinin, Aleksey Neymyshev
screenplay by Sergey Potepalov
directed by Alexander Sokurov

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover After Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, I was ready to accept almost anything Sokurov did–a TV movie, some Wheaties ads, those trivia slides before the show starts, anything. Surely in the wake of the dense, virtuoso track of that earlier film, I could expect more philosophical fireworks, more challenging juxtapositions, more dazzling movements. Alas, it was not in the cards: Sokurov's follow-up Father & Son turns out to be the same old homosocial militarism familiar to a million lesser talents, tarted up with elite finery. (Think Top Gun with Tchaikovsky instead of Kenny Loggins.) Though the controversy surrounding its alleged homoeroticism is a red herring inasmuch as it fails to consider other sources (the film is about the mortal flesh of religious painting, not the pornographic bodies of pop), it's all in the service of the ain't-boys-grand, I-love-a-man-in-uniform vagueness that might be profundity but also suggests Tony Scott with a haircut and a new suit.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – DVD

November 2, 2004Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Family, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour
screenplay by Fredric M. Frank, Barré Lyndon and Theodore St. John
directed by Cecil B. DeMille

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is pretty close to being the Biggest Crock on Film. A lame assortment of soapy intrigues, bloated set-pieces, and garish colours, it's calculated to alienate the highbrows and haunt Guy Debord's nightmares. Some allege that it's the worst film ever to win the Best Picture Oscar, a hard claim to challenge no matter how unquantifiable the distinction. But while The Greatest Show on Earth is aimed squarely at those loathsome people who speak of films as "rollercoaster thrill-rides," there's no denying that it was made with a zesty vulgarity and executed with loving care. It's professional in both senses of the word: too much of a static thing to have artistic merit, yet big fun to watch as a well-engineered Rube Goldberg vehicle captained by Jack Smith across a field of giant marshmallows.

The Hunting of the President (2004) – DVD

November 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
directed by Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry

by Walter Chaw Galling to the abused outrage assimilator is Nickolas Perry's and Harry Thomason's The Hunting of the President, based on a book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons (subtitled The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton) in which the "massive right-wing conspiracy" is given a face (Kenneth Starr) and an agenda. Eighty million of our taxpayer dollars were funnelled into discovering whether or not our then-Commander-and-Chief got a blowjob in the Oval Office. I wonder how many of us would trade that worry for the ones we have now? Probably not enough. The horror of it all is the general horror of it all: the idea that justice in the United States has become a plaything for the rich and powerful. Worse is that I begin to wonder if it hasn't always been this way (presidents getting hummers under the Lincoln Archway; presidents hiring their undergrad boosters to decide how to distribute reconstruction money in a country we've summarily invaded)–whether corruption and constitutional manipulation knows no party lines.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994) – DVD

November 1, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Directors: Gus Van Sant, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance, Western

***/**** Image A- Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS)
starring Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, Angie Dickinson, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita
screenplay by Gus Van Sant, based on the novel by Tom Robbins
directed by Gus Van Sant

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover From its disastrous premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (which prompted a hasty re-edit) to the unanimous critical drubbing it received a short while later, few films have had harder luck than Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The reviews were at best vague, alluding to some thing in the theatre that defied description as much as it discouraged it, while those brave souls not scared off by the word-of-mouth–even fans of Tom Robbins's 1973 source novel, people who could at least be said to have known what they were in for–came away hostile and perplexed. But anything that inspires this kind of uncomprehending panic is a special sort of film–that's right, I'm one of those lonely few who actually liked Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. And analyzing its successful failure is hugely instructive, specifically in showing how certain social forces, then as now, unfairly shape what is considered aesthetic treason.

Mulan (1998) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 28, 2004Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, China, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Eddie Murphy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, War

**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
screenplay by Rita Hsiao, Christopher Sanders, Philip LaZebnik, Raymond Singer & Eugenia Bostwick-Singer
directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft

by Bill Chambers If Disney’s animated features can be reduced to a stable of alternating boy movies and girl movies, then the studio’s decision to make the cross-dressing fable Mulan at a juncture when they really needed mass approval (that is, after striking out post-Katzenberg with Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules) comes across as conspicuously non-partisan–and the hero’s androgyny isn’t the only bet-hedging the filmmakers practice. A meticulous recreation of Imperialist China, for instance, is compromised by anachronisms cultural and temporal (the eponymous Mulan (voice of Ming-Na Wen), a pre-Tang Dynasty Chinese maiden, is introduced to us wearing a tank top and what resemble capri pants; later, she is served bacon and eggs for breakfast), while musical numbers, subversive humour, and Spielbergian spectacle perpetually collide like bumper cars. The end-product is neither fish nor fowl, though it certainly leans towards foul.

The Rose Tattoo (1955) – DVD

October 26, 2004Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Burt Lancaster, Anna Magnani, Marisa Pavan, Ben Cooper
screenplay by Tennessee Williams, based on his play
directed by Daniel Mann

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Anna Magnani is the kind of actress people describe using all the wrong superlatives. Everybody talks about her “big” presence, about how she’s a “powerhouse” and a “force of nature,” as though she were the Italian Shelley Winters. This kind of blather hardly approximates the scope of Magnani’s talent. She’s big all right, but she’s more than the pyrotechnic scenery-chewer that “big” normally designates: she’s that rare combination of big and nuanced, a crushing blend of uninhibited physicality and the willingness to take every line, word, and punctuation mark personally. Technically, even a luminary like her has her work cut out for her in something like The Rose Tattoo, what with its middling Louisiana Peyton Place scenario by Tennessee Williams, the dry, emotionless direction of Daniel Mann, and a supporting cast of Hollywood phoneys conspiring to waste her talent. But Magnani never betrays the thought that her part might be less than worth her time, and in so doing, she makes it worth her time. Ours, too, more often than not.

Deathwatch (2002) – DVD

October 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Germany, Horror, Thriller, UK, War

**½/**** Image B Sound A Extras C+
starring Jamie Bell, Ruaidhri Conroy, Laurence Fox, Torben Liebrecht
written and directed by Michael J. Bassett

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Reading the blurb on the keepcase for Deathwatch, I had to wonder: what kind of individual sets a horror film in World War I? The connection isn't obvious until you see the movie, whereupon you realize that this most pointless of military adventures provides an ideal location for the nihilism and futility that defines the genre. The conflict here serves as proof of the original sin that will result in the retributive deaths of the cast (whether they actually deserve it or not); simply put, it's a slasher movie, but with Kaiser Wilhelm instead of sex. The association is so suggestive that Deathwatch threatens to say things about the Great War that I've never really seen on film before–but alas, it doesn't fully grasp the potential of the link, forcing us instead to contend with fairly standard combat intrigue and officer-bashing as we wait for another flash of intelligence. Still, it's a cut above most straight-to-disc fare (it opened theatrically in the UK), and at its best it has a dank resonance setting it apart from the war and horror movie rabbles.

The Alamo (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, War, Western, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound A Extras C+
starring Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson
screenplay by Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gaghan and John Lee Hancock
directed by John Lee Hancock

by Walter Chaw There's an old joke from "Hee Haw" about crossing a potato with a sponge: "It didn't taste too good, but boy did it soak up the gravy!" In John Lee Hancock's appalling and sidesplitting The Alamo, Billy Bob Thornton as Davy Crockett tells a gruesome variation on that punchline, only as an actor's moment (and with the "grease" off of slaughtered and incinerating Indians substituted for gravy). "Now, when someone passes me the potatoes, I just pass them right on." An interesting lesson taught about genocide and cannibalism: it's not the commission of atrocity to be mourned, it's the loss for a taste for French fries that's really the tragedy. The Alamo is essentially how "Hee Haw" saved the world–every time Davy pops his head above the titular fort's ramparts, visions of Roy Clark and Buck Owens popping out of a cornfield dance in your head. There are moments when, I kid you not, I looked to see if there was a price tag dangling, Minnie Pearl-style, from Jim Bowie's (Jason Patric) hat.

A Home at the End of the World (2004) – DVD

October 19, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D
starring Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, Robin Wright Penn, Sissy Spacek
screenplay by Michael Cunningham, based on his novel
directed by Michael Mayer

by Walter Chaw Glib, facile, essentially misguided, and exhibiting a kind of misunderstanding about film craft that sends exactly the opposite of the intended message in every scene, Michael Mayer's directorial debut A Home at the End of the World is a trial from start to finish. It makes appalling soundtrack choices first in establishing period, then in demolishing mood, and finally in screwing up the chronology enough so that the viewer is left completely unmoored. If you're using a jovial Seventies soundtrack to place your film in the Seventies, it's a really bad idea to start using a classic Motown soundtrack when your picture actually moves forward in time. (Not even mentioning what a perverse boner it is to accompany the discovery of a dead father with "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard.") Add to that a screenplay by The Hours scribe Michael Cunningham that displays the same kind of top-heavy, more or less off-base pretension and disdain for such outmoded values as loyalty and generosity, and what you have is a recipe for a very particular kind of disaster.

Van Helsing (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 19, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, DVD, Romania, Vampire, Werewolf

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham
written and directed by Stephen Sommers

Vanhelsingcapby Walter Chaw There are times now and again over the course of Stephen Sommers's unspeakable Van Helsing when the film is so brazenly bad that it threatens to be satirical–so bad that one is left to scramble to pull some sort of gestalt sense from the carnage. But it's just a mess, a cesspool of half-formed ideas and images ripped off whole from The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Hugh Jackman reprising Wolverine from X-Men and Kate Beckinsale essentially reprising her role from Underworld. All of it's wrapped up in a cacophonous jumble of dour mattes, really (really) bad CGI, and an Alan Silvestri score that is itself a rip-off of everything that made John Williams famous (that is, Holst's "The Planets"). Way too long at just over two hours with no story to speak of justifying its length, the piece is stolen by David Wenham as a deadpan 19th century Q, Friar Carl, and grinds to a dead standstill whenever Jackman delivers one of his twenty lines, Beckinsale chimes in with a jarring non sequitur ("There's a bright side to death in Transylvania"), Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein's monster threatens to cry out "Puttin' on the Riiiitz," or Richard Roxburgh as Count Dracula vamps around like a diva in a John Waters film. If only Van Helsing were campy.