Stage Fright (1950) – DVD

September 7, 2004Posted in1950s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Thriller

Stagefrighthitch

**½/**** Image C+ Sound C+ Extras B-
starring Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd
screenplay by Whitfield Cook; adaptation by Alma Reville; additional dialogue by James Bridie, based on a novel by Selwyn Jepson
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Blame it on the subject matter: Stage Fright, especially for postwar Hitchcock, is all elbows. Its technique is its narrative, plot, character, and motive–something that's a relative rarity in the master's oeuvre despite his notoriously stringent preparation and acumen. And though it works pretty well as an academic inquiry into how the artificiality of the stage can comment with eloquence, "Hamlet"-like, on the bigger picture, the film stumbles along in fits and starts, pulled forward by its mechanism instead of anything like momentum or logic. In truth, I wonder if the "play-within-a-play" trope doesn't work better as either microcosm (as in the final confession of I Confess) or leitmotif (as in the numerous references to performance in North by Northwest, which most likely owes its title to a line about pretending to be crazy from "Hamlet"). Of particular issue is one of Marlene Dietrich's mannered turns, which is potentially excusable (given the staginess of the piece), and a horrible score by Leighton Lucas, which isn't. Still a Hitchcock film in his middle-period, however, Stage Fright, no doubt owing to its nature, is particularly focused in on disguises, perceptions, mirrors, eyeglasses, and cigarettes–finding our hero, Eve (Jane Wyman, fantastic), taking on the guise of a Dorothy Parker-esque reporter at one moment and a maid infiltrating a fatale's lair at another, all for the cause of a suspect flashback from an unreliable narrator.

Foreign Correspondent (1940) – DVD

September 7, 2004Posted in1940s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Romance, Thriller, War

Foreigncorrespondent

***/**** Image B Sound B Extras B-
starring Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders
screenplay by Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison; dialogue by James Hilton, Robert Benchley
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Largely dismissed as a jingoistic anomaly in the generally anti-establishment Hitchcock canon (and dwarfed by the meatier fort/da of the same year's Rebecca), Foreign Correspondent is arguably a superior representation of the screwball genre to which the later Mr. and Mrs. Smith aspired. That it has political undertones is undeniable (its spies and hunters plot a throwback to Hitch's Gaumont years), but most conspicuous is the kind of macabre visual wit that would define the bulk of Hitchcock's early American output. Consider a haunting sequence with titular journalist Huntley Haverstock (Joel McCrea) trying to find a missing getaway car in a Dutch field dotted with windmills that begins with a gust of wind blowing off his hat (a castration metaphor–the film is full of them) as his girl-Friday Carol Fisher (Laraine Day) laughs uncontrollably, proceeds to the inside of a false mill where Haverstock is nearly discovered when he gets his coat caught in gears, and ends with an exchange with non-English speaking Dutch police resolved by one of Hitch's precocious little-girl characters. With an intimidating self-possession, an already mature Hitchcock presents in fast fashion a dizzying series of technical gags (the suspicious windmill suspicious because it's turning in the wrong direction–compare to the tennis crowd of Strangers on a Train and this film's own chase beneath a canopy of umbrellas); a preoccupation with birds as representatives of the corruption of social order (introduced in Young and Innocent, it became a central throughline in Hitchcock's career); a serio-comic scene of near-discovery; and a slapstick vignette that makes asses of the police, Hitch's favourite target.

Suspicion (1941) – DVD

September 7, 2004Posted in1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

Suspicion

**½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce
screenplay by Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison and Alma Reville
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw In truth, watching any of Alfred Hitchcock’s American films is like hearing the voice of your master. So it is even with 1941’s Suspicion: Probably the most compromised of Hitchcock’s major pictures, it nevertheless sports a trio of sequences that rank among his best. An early flirtation between Cary Grant’s layabout playboy Johnnie Aysgarth and Joan Fontaine’s unlikely take on a dowdy spinster, for instance, looking for all the world like a rape and featuring brilliant, Lubitsch-esque purse-play, is as dense a five minutes as whole pictures. (The second virtuoso sequence involves a staircase and a glass of milk lit from inside the liquid while the third is a fantasy that transforms laughter into the howls of a dying man.) So coy and hesitating that it’s a lot like courting a eunuch, Suspicion is not easy to like, but it does offer a glimpse of what’s possible within a studio system that won’t allow one of its marquee players to play a villain. The picture gives lie to the idea that creative people suddenly lose their creativity when they move to Hollywood: It’s still there, it just goes (in this case, deep) underground.

The Vanishing (1993) + Hardcore (1979) – DVDs

September 6, 2004Posted in1970s, 1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: Paul Schrader, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

THE VANISHING
**½/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, Sandra Bullock
screenplay by Todd Graff, based on the novel The Golden Egg by Tim Krabbé
directed by George Sluizer

HARDCORE
***/**** Image A- Sound B
starring George C. Scott, Peter Boyle, Season Hubley, Ilah Davis
written and directed by Paul Schrader

by Bill Chambers 1993 was the year that American remakes of two estimable foreign thrillers became instant poster boys for Hollywood condescension. While John Badham's Point of No Return is every bit as egregious as they said it was (although I prefer its "Cleaner" sequence with Harvey Keitel to Nikita's field test of Jean Reno's Léon persona), George Sluizer's The Vanishing, an Americanization of his own Spoorloos, often stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its forerunner–or is at the very least too provocative in its departures to dismiss out of hand. A lot of people wondered how Sluizer could desecrate what had been the crowning achievement of his career in this way, but what artist wouldn't jump at the chance to view a piece of work through the looking glass without physically altering the original? (A kindred impulse drives novelists to sell the screen rights to their books.) All I can say is that the end result is more seductive than, say, Vanilla Sky, or Christopher Nolan's Insomnia.

Twisted (2004) [Special Collector’s Edition – Widescreen Collection] – DVD

September 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Garcia, David Strathairn
screenplay by Sarah Thorp
directed by Philip Kaufman

Twistedcapby Walter Chaw Ashley Judd's stab at In the Cut, Twisted washes out to be closer to a distaff Tightrope. It's just another Judd film co-starring Morgan Freeman, here played by Samuel L. Jackson. Once again humiliated and physically abused for her sexuality, Judd has this perverse penchant for self-mortification legitimized by yet another contractually required African-American mentor. What really wounds is that it's a movie with a pedigree and a little promise (unlike Judd's constant dalliances with the best of the airport bookrack), what with Philip Kaufman, back on the west coast in his favourite American setting of San Francisco, at the reins. A love of the City by the Bay is on display in a gorgeously-composed opening sequence that finds the Golden Gate Bridge floating on a bed of fog and, later, when the first body is discovered in Twisted's requisite corpse gallery against the nighttime backdrop of Pac Bell Ballpark, and there's an underlying menace to San Francisco that no one aside from Hitchcock has been able to capture quite like Kaufman, especially in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So the possibility that this ostensibly dark psychological thriller might actually be good springs eternal for a full five minutes, exactly the amount of time that passes until someone utters the first of screenwriter Sarah Thorp's tragically over-written lines–and for us to rediscover Judd as an extremely limited actress whose best film remains the grossly underestimated Eye of the Beholder.

The Osterman Weekend (1983) [Sam Peckinpah Commemorative 2-Disc Edition] – DVD

August 31, 2004Posted in****/****, 1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Thriller

****/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper
screenplay by Alan Sharp, adaptation by Ian Masters, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Sam Peckinpah

by Walter Chaw

"We rely too much on sight, don't you think? Appearances being what they are."

And so encapsulates the genius and the madness of Sam Peckinpah's final film, the contentious, still-relevant The Osterman Weekend. Serving as a bridge of sorts between the psychosexual circus of Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill (1980) and the technology/media fear of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), the film strikes a balance between the paranoia cinema of the 1970s and the technophilic sci-fi wonderland of the 1980s. It's brilliant–mark the ways that Peckinpah implies that every shot in the film is taken from a hidden camera for the pleasure of the audience. (A picture hasn't been this successful in indicting the criminal aspect of watching a movie since Hitchcock's heyday.) More than brilliant, like the best of Peckinpah's films, it gets under your skin with scalpel-grace. He made films of intimate violation–of rape, essentially; when you stare into the abyss of Peckinpah's pictures, Peckinpah stares into you.

The Three Musketeers (2004) – DVD

August 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers
*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Mickey Evans
directed by Donovan Cook

by Bill Chambers I must confess to something like a fetish for the joint screen ventures of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy, animation's answer to The Ritz Brothers. Their 1937 short Lonesome Ghosts is one of the essential building blocks in my love of cinema: I used to own a silent 8mm cartridge of it that could be viewed by handcranking a to-the-eye projector, and I unwittingly taught myself persistence of vision through bored frame-by-frame dissections of Mickey tiptoeing across the floor and Donald losing his cool. And as far as Mickey Mouse is concerned, he has Donald and Goofy in tow in his best colour outings–with a handful of exceptions (such as 1941's guardedly wistful The Nifty Nineties, or the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence from Fantasia) that cast Mickey as an emblem of virtue rather than as a virtuous individual (thus seizing on the iconic resonance of the character's design), Mickey's solo shorts circa the war years are far too polite for their own good. Mercurial Donald and accident-prone Goofy add a much-needed pinch of salt. 

The Marx Brothers Collection – DVD

August 30, 2004Posted in1930s, 1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, Romance, Sports, Western
by Walter Chaw Hand in hand with their release of "The Tarzan Collection", Warner issues seven Marx Bros. films on five DVDs in a box set commemorating the comedy team's MGM output. Diving into the films in this collection, one finds the Marx Bros. in clear decline and willing--because the failure of their final picture at Paramount, Duck Soup, neutered a lot of their courage--to have Hollywood narratives foisted on their unrestrained chaos. A Night at the Opera is the last near-great Marx Bros. film, and it was their first at MGM; A Day at the Races followed before they…

Walking Tall (2004) – DVD

August 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD

½*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring The Rock, Neal McDonough, Johnny Knoxville, Kristen Wilson
screenplay by David Klass and Channing Gibson and David Levien & Brian Koppelman
directed by Kevin Bray

Walkingtall2004dvdcapby Walter Chaw Kevin Bray's remake of Walking Tall is so empty of substance, so full of nihilistic bile, that it makes the shorthand of First Blood seem like an Ibsen play in its complexity and character development. A mysterious vet proves Thomas Wolfe correct, going home to a town completely changed by a corrupt local government and a posse of redneck law enforcers. Our red-blooded desire to take the law into our own hands drives the instinct to cheer once he resorts to the Neanderthal brutality of "eye for an eye" or, as the case may be, "a truck for a truck."

Living Hell (2000) [Special Edition] – DVD

August 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Japan, Short Films

Iki-jigoku
**½/**** Image C- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Hirohito Honda, Yoshiko Shiraishi, Rumi, Kazuo Yashiro
written and directed by Shugo Fujii

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Hype sometimes expects too much of a film, forcing it into boxes where it doesn't belong and dressing it up as something it's not. Thus the keepcase for Living Hell had me worried: it references not only luminaries like Hitchcock and DePalma, but also cult faves Evil Dead 2, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Dead Alive. To be sure, Living Hell lacks the visionary quality that makes the abovementioned figures and movies so memorable to so many people, and yet, taken on its own terms, this debut feature has plenty to offer the attentive viewer, starting with a supremely jaundiced take on the family and a stylistic intelligence that surprises for such a low-budget effort. Miraculous it's not, but given the budget ($100,000) and the length of the shoot (nine days!), it's astonishing how effective Living Hell really is. Despite the occasional borrowing from better movies, its deliciously cruel sense of humour gets to you in the end.

Laws of Attraction (2004) – DVD

August 16, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Ireland, Romance, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna and Robert Harling
directed by Peter Howitt

by Walter Chaw Utterly mediocre and hence better than most of the romantic comedies cranked out by the Hollywood schmaltz factory these days, Peter Howitt's Adam's Rib throwback Laws of Attraction has the over-polished sheen of an apple waxed and stroked so many times that it's more aesthetically impressive than palatable. The film bears a Sandra Bullock/Julia Roberts checklist for a screenplay, with blacked-out boxes next to: meet-cute (she sticks a pencil in his ear); two musical montages (one happy, one sad); a celebration of bad behaviour (binge-drinking); fetishizing of one metaphor-laden item (broken leprechaun figurine); baguette sticking out of a grocery bag; betrayal of half-hearted feminist tenets by making heroine bedazzled by jewellery and men; betrayal of female gender by having model-perfect heroine have the "earthy" habit of binge-eating and not vomiting; quirky elderly/gay/parental comic relief figure; a scene where heroine falls down; a scene where hero does/admits to bad thing; travel/architectural pornography; and temporary break-up leading to nauseating epilogue. Yep, Laws of Attraction is pounded earth complete with a tiresomely whimsical score by Ed Shearmur, opening titles lifted from "Dynasty", and a streak of potential subversion so neutered that it's completely childlike.

The Passion of the Christ (2004) – DVD

August 15, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A
starring James Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Claudia Gerini, Maia Morgenstern
screenplay by Benedict Fitzgerald and Mel Gibson
directed by Mel Gibson

Passionofthechristcap

by Walter Chaw The danger of a film like The Passion of the Christ is the fervour with which people will declare that it is unadorned "truth," will imagine that writer/director/hands-that-pound-the-nails-into-Christ Mel Gibson has somehow pointed a camera through a porthole into 33 A.D.–will forgive the piece any number of otherwise unforgivable cinematic sins, any abundance of opposing historical and canonical evidence, for fear that their discomfort with the picture might be read as blasphemy and that their ignorance of the minutia of scripture will be revealed. It is the sort of fearful, hysterical, insular, self-righteous groupthink in which the rabble Gibson blames for Christ's death engages, and the ironies embedded in the film and its reception don't end there. It seems ridiculous to remind that the film is no more and no less than Gibson's interpretation of the last twelve hours of Christ's life. The question worth asking is before this film, how many of its defenders looked to Gibson for guidance in cosmological (or any) issues? How it is that making a film in our cult-of-celebrity culture gifts any filmmaker the credentials of theologian pundit? Mel's on the cross, he blames the Jews (and now the critics) for putting him there, and his whole career begins to coalesce as a parade of martyrs.

The Princess Diaries (2001) [Special Edition – 2-Disc Collector’s Set] – DVD

August 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Sound B-
starring Anne Hathaway, Heather Matarazzo, Hector Elizondo, Mandy Moore
screenplay by Gina Wendkos, based on the novel by Meg Cabot
directed by Garry Marshall

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Mention the word "movies" and you're generally deluged with syrupy talk of "dreams" and "fantasy" and "adventure" and all that jazz, yet no matter how much you see this as the devalued coin of our entertainment-journalism realm, you have to admit that this image means an awful lot to an awful lot of people. The least a pop movie can do is live up to such reverence and be a holy object worthy of some worship, marshalling all the beauty and craft that has generally been Hollywood cinema's one redeeming virtue. But somehow, movies that dishonour this basic pact with the audience not only get made, but also ring the box-office bell to the tune of $108-million–that's how much The Princess Diaries managed to rake in during its 2001 theatrical run, despite the fact that it's as beautiful and dreamlike as a sheet of particle board. Once again, I am left with the dilemma: should I hate the filmmakers for generating this slop, or should I blame the audience for swilling it with pleasure?

Thunderbirds International Rescue Edition – DVD

August 11, 2004Posted in1960s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi, UK

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO (1966)
**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
screenplay by Gerry Anderson & Sylvia Anderson
directed by David Lane

THUNDERBIRD 6 (1968)
*/**** Image A- Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras B+
screenplay by Gerry Anderson & Sylvia Anderson
directed by David Lane

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Why is it that "Thunderbirds", the marionette sci-fi TV series of 1960s vintage, exerts such weird fascination? Narratively, it's nothing to get excited about–just the usual conservative guff involving stiff-necked operators of sci-fi machinery, all of whom are given one trait each and are as pure in heart as they are heavy on exposition. One wants to make an obvious joke about the delivery being as wooden as the puppets, except that to do so would be missing the point: the erotics of the series are powerful specifically because everything is made of wood. The figures themselves are as rigid and rock-solid as the meticulously-designed machinery, making the stylization of the series total and more convincing than if it were superimposed over the documentary image of mere human flesh. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the two lavish and colourful movies made under the "Thunderbirds" brand, which, despite their formulaic tendencies, manage to hold our attention with a rich and affective sense of necrophilia.

The Girl Next Door (2004) [Unrated Version] – DVD

August 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Emile Hirsch, Elisha Cuthbert, Timothy Olyphant, James Remar
 screenplay by Stuart Blumberg and David T. Wagner & Brent Goldberg
directed by Luke Greenfield

Girlnextdoorcap

by Walter Chaw Though it reminds a great deal of Paul Brickman's Risky Business, The Girl Next Door reminds all the more that there's really only one Paul Brickman, and while this picture sustains the sleazy wish-fulfillment of Risky Business for a good long run, it can't replicate the same kind of insouciant rebellion. The exercise feels forced in a way that Risky Business doesn't, the earlier film's ease owing mostly to Brickman but also to another of Tangerine Dream's definitive Eighties scores and, perhaps, the bestial liquid chemistry between Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay–a chemistry that's never quite replicated by a very fine Emile Hirsch and the very fine Elisha Cuthbert. Without the reckless air of youth on the verge, The Girl Next Door starts to feel like calculated imitation, becoming affected and, eventually, what a teenage sex comedy can't be: restrained. Its bark is worse than its bite, and in the end, only its premise is subversive.

Wizards (1977) – DVD

August 4, 2004Posted in1970s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A-
written and directed by Ralph Bakshi

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I like Ralph Bakshi movies. I wish I didn’t, because they’re shrill and vulgar and slightly immature, and not even examples of brilliant cartooning. But they’ve got a working-class desperation to them that most American movies are too posh and moneyed to accurately capture. Hollywood filmmakers typically see poverty as an occasion for condescension from above; Bakshi sees it at ground level–consider the generations of failure that littered American Pop, or the chaotic skid-row scramble that defined Heavy Traffic. Thus I find myself in the unenviable position of guardedly praising his 1977 Wizards, which in the hands of any other director would have been merely a sleazy Tolkien-meets-Heavy-Metal fantasy riff. This is not to say that it isn’t a sleazy Tolkien-meets-Heavy-Metal fantasy riff, but it’s one with moments that resonate beyond simplistic sex and violence and wipe the goofy grin off of the normally flighty and gossamer-draped genre.

Johnson Family Vacation (2004) – DVD

August 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie

½*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Cedric the Entertainer, Bow Wow, Vanessa Williams, Shannon Elizabeth
screenplay by Todd R. Jones & Earl Richey Jones
directed by Christopher Erskin

by Bill Chambers Big fan of National Lampoon's Vacation that I am, I was actually intrigued by the prospect of its central characters undergoing a racial inversion. On their trip to a mecca of family fun known as Wally World, the Caucasian Griswolds left their suburban cocoon only to discover how socially ill-equipped they were for the rest of an increasingly stratified America–an apologue in the vein of The Wizard of Oz that's more than un-PC: it's anthropological; a black retread hewed to its line has the potential to be far more applicable to the African-American experience than, say, The Wiz. Unfortunately, while National Lampoon's Vacation was scripted by John Hughes, the Reagan era's premier commentator on class relations, the creators of something called "C-Bear and Jamal" wrote Johnson Family Vacation. Maybe their lack of pedigree is irrelevant, but so is the film, which we can only generously call a pale imitation of National Lampoon's Vacation. After the opening credits, I wished the movie had had the wit to rib its derivative genesis with a parody of National Lampoon's Vacation's signature song ("Ease on Down the Holiday Road"–isn't it obvious?). By the end of the movie, I wished it had wit.

Decoys (2004) – DVD

August 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Corey Sevier, Stefanie Von Pfetten, Meghan Ory, Kim Poirier
screenplay by Matt Hastings & Tom Berry
directed by Matt Hastings

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Faithful watchers of Canadian film held their collective breath when it was announced recently that the major funding bodies would no longer be supporting arthouse fare. Instead of nurturing the next Atom Egoyan, the country would shepherd in Hollywood-esque fare like Foolproof (ironically co-produced by Atom Egoyan), hoping for an increase in ticket sales and perhaps a rejoinder to those critics who attack our cinema for being a ruthless killjoy. The question remained: would a simple shift in mode rid us of the tag of funbusters? In the case of the recent, terrible Decoys, the answer is: not bloody likely. Despite its dedicated efforts at reproducing American-style mindlessness, it rings all of the Canadian bells about sexual disgust, aversion to pleasure, and fear of decisive action that have bedevilled our country's cinema from the very beginning. That it's awful on its own terms is beside the point: it's how it's awful that's most instructive.

New York Minute (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

August 2, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D+
starring Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Eugene Levy, Andy Richter
screenplay by Emily Fox and Adam Cooper & Bill Collage
directed by Dennie Gordon

Newyorkminutedvdcapby Walter Chaw At some point in New York Minute, a Chihuahua gives Andy Richter (playing an Asian man, natch) a golden shower in the backseat of a limousine, saving one of the Olsen twins from the intimidation and possibly torture of Richter's distaff Fu Manchu archetype mother, Mama Bang (Alannah Ong). (Mama Bang later threatens that Chihuahua with a pair of chopsticks. Because chinks eat dogs–get it?) At another point in the picture, director Dennie Gordon, a woman who should be ashamed of herself, films the seventeen-at-the-time-of-shooting twins in sexy-commercial slow-motion; they're wearing towels after having showers in a cute guy's hotel room, and when said guy (Jared Padalecki) walks in on them, he asks, "Hey, is today my birthday?"

Wyatt Earp (1994) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

July 27, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Western

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras D
starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Jeff Fahey
screenplay by Dan Gordon and Lawrence Kasdan
directed by Lawrence Kasdan

by Walter Chaw It seemed like a good idea at the time: Kevin Costner–still a hot commodity just four years removed from Dances with Wolves, fresh from what might be the most important film of his career (A Perfect World), and not yet stigmatized by Waterworld–reteaming with his Silverado director Lawrence Kasdan, then one of the best genre writers in Hollywood, for a biopic of the famous lawman Wyatt Earp. Unfortunately, Wyatt Earp flopped like Kurt Rambis in the paint. It was too long, too prosaic, and in what appears in retrospect to be a pathological lack of pretense, too pretentious by half. It was the first real nail in Costner's career coffin–a product of his having way too much power and way too little savvy in a cynical America that had outgrown his kind of aw-shucks long about Gary Cooper. Costner's still shouting, but it's hard to hear him from all the way back there in 1940.