Lucía, Lucía (2003) – DVD

January 12, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mexico, Mystery, Romance, Spain, Thriller

La hija del caníbal
**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C+
starring Cecilia Roth, Carlos Álvarez-Novoa, Kuno Becker, Manuel Blejerman
screenplay by Antonio Serrano, based on the novella Homónima by Rosa Montero
directed by Antonio Serrano

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A critic at the CHICAGO READER once pointed out that movies often show events that would traumatize us if they happened in real life. But what happens when they cheat and fail to traumatize the characters to which they occur? That's the major problem with Lucía, Lucía (La hija del caníbal), a film that takes a threatened murder and a shocking betrayal and treats them as springboards for a character-building "adventure." In reality, the events swirling around the protagonist would crush her spirit and leave her a broken woman, but in Antonio Serrano's Learning Annex version, everything is a conduit to her self-actualization–a desperately naïve approach that so lowers the stakes of the film that it barely registers.

Overnight Delivery (1998) – DVD

January 11, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie, Romance

½*/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Christine Taylor, Larry Drake
screenplay by Marc Sedaka and Steven Bloom
directed by Jason Bloom

by Bill Chambers A cult film without a cult, Overnight Delivery has gained a reputation, if not a following, for being the uncredited inspiration behind slippery documentarian Todd Phillips’s official fiction debut, Road Trip. And, of course, it stars the Reese Witherspoon who had not yet been body-snatched by the species that also got Ashley Judd, although it’s worth noting that Overnight Delivery is a harbinger of Sweet Home Alabamas to come, with Witherspoon a conduit for one meet-cute cliché after another. I’ll admit that she’s adorable in the picture, but her character, a college student whose bad taste in men is made a virtue by the workhorse plot, is a cipher steadily depleting the goodwill she shamelessly earns in her introduction as a stripper in a Catholic school uniform named Ivy Von Trapp. In true Hollywood fashion, Ivy’s striptease is cut short before her Pointer Sisters get to do the Neutron Dance–she’s too busy squatting for the patrons stuffing bills into her skirt.

The Office: The Complete First Series (2001) – DVD

January 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Pseudo-Documentary, Television, UK

Image A- Sound A Extras B+
"Downsize", "Work Experience", "The Quiz", "Training", "New Girl", "Judgement"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I've had several e-mails complaining about a suggestion I made in this column that we should give cannabis to anorexics so they get the munchies. This was a satirical joke and was not meant to offend. I do not advocate the use of illegal drugs and I do not find any eating disorders amusing."
-David Brent, writing in the WERNHAM-HOGG NEWS

Catwoman (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

January 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Superhero, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C
starring Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson
screenplay by John Brancato & Michael Ferris and John Rogers
directed by Pitof

Catwomandvdcapby Walter Chaw Catwoman is all the bad that Gigli promised to be and more. It’s bad enough that not only are careers over, but somebody should be slapped. The question arises as to whether it’s as bad as Glitter, and though the answer is “sure,” that doesn’t fully address the fact that it’s bad in the same way as Glitter. It’s fabulously, deliriously, egregiously awful–a queer camp classic in the making, and the second film so far this summer to squeeze a lovely young actress into S&M gear (see: Keira Knightley in King Arthur). If this is the face of modern feminism (“I’m bad, but only as bad as I wanna be,” Berry’s Catwoman skanks), then count me in: I’m strangely un-threatened by the show-all boom-boom girl power of Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, the Olsen Twins, and so on. Call me crazy.

In the Line of Duty 4 (1989) – DVD

January 8, 2004Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Hong Kong, Martial Arts

In the Line of Duty IV
皇家師姐Ⅳ直擊證人
Wong ga si je IV: Jik gik jing yan
**½/****
starring Donnie Yen, Cynthia Khan, Yat Chor Yuen, Michael Wong
screenplay by Cheung Chi Shing & Wang Wing Fa
directed by Yuen Woo Ping

by Bill Chambers Generally regarded as the best chapter in the series (and released in America prior to any of the others), Yuen Woo Ping’s In the Line of Duty 4 is an effective action spectacle and a mediocre cop drama; intense though it may be, the film is simply not of a calibre that leaves you remembering it as such. I know there are people who swear by its star, Donnie Yen, but I’ve seen him in about six pictures now (most recently, Zhang Yimou’s awesome Hero), and I don’t find his screen presence all that enthralling. If he’s eschewed the peacocking that has catapulted his contemporaries in HK cinema to international stardom, he’s also lacking in the animal magnetism that keeps your eyes on one blur as opposed to another blur during a martial-arts brawl. Good fighter, of course. Yen is probably the biggest name in In the Line of Duty 4‘s bargain cast, a fact only emphasized by the wishful misprinting of Ping’s name above the title (implying that he’s Yen’s co-star rather than his director) on the front of Fox’s new R1 DVD release.

The Red Pony (1949) – DVD

January 7, 2004Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Family, Western

**½/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, Shepperd Strudwick, Peter Miles
screenplay by John Steinbeck, based on his short story collection Red Pony
directed by Lewis Milestone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In the simplest possible terms, The Red Pony is a Disney true-life adventure with a literary pedigree. As far as Disney true-life adventures go, it’s a superior one, thanks largely to competent direction by Lewis Milestone and a screenplay by John Steinbeck. But even the reasonably A-list personnel on hand can’t lift it above the lowliness of the genre–largely because what you see is what you get. There’s nothing to read between the lines of its tale of a boy and his pony, and despite some peripheral interest involving the boy’s parents and a stableman, the film fails completely to evoke the spaces between their words and the tension in their relationships, making it come and go with little rhyme or reason.

The Outer Limits: The Original Series – The Entire First Season (1963-1964) – DVD

January 6, 2004Posted in****/****, 1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Television, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Outerlimitstuesdayby Walter Chaw In the hour or so past my bedtime in the endless dusk of UHF syndication, I used to watch Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” and Joseph Stefano’s “The Outer Limits” with my father. The previous fed the nightmares of my youth, the latter fed my fondest desires and deepest faith in the eternal verity, and nobility, of asking questions, of ambition, of being courageous enough to fail to change the world. “The Outer Limits”, I realize in these first months after my father’s death, represented the best things about him–and about me: that line pure that stretches between where we are and where we hope to go. “The Outer Limits” is, more so than “The Twilight Zone”, about how we never feel as though we are the men we ought to be because our fathers have set too difficult an example. Where Serling dazzled with O. Henry-like twists, “The Outer Limits” sobered with existential frustrations: one is the dove resolution, the other the hat forever emptying.

I Remember Mama (1948) + George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey (1984) – DVDs

January 3, 2004Posted in1940s, 1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Family

I REMEMBER MAMA
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka, Philip Dorn
screenplay by Dewitt Bodeen, based on the play by John Van Drutten
directed by George Stevens

GEORGE STEVENS: A FILMMAKER'S JOURNEY
**/**** Image A- Sound A-
directed by George Stevens, Jr.

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Andrew Sarris once remarked that George Stevens was "a minor director with major virtues" who became "a major director with minor virtues." He was referring to the point at which Stevens cast screwball frivolity aside in favour of the lugubrious, but there's more complexity to the A Place in the Sun helmer than that: he was simultaneously light and heavy, keeping details in focus as he blew small stuff way out of proportion. His dramatic talent is the kind that gets overestimated by Oscar-watchers but underestimated by intellectuals, falling in some distorted medium that is major and minor at the same time.

Johnny English (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, France, UK

*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
starring Rowan Atkinson, Natalie Imbruglia, Ben Miller, John Malkovich
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and William Davies
directed by Peter Howitt

by Bill Chambers The only thing mustier than James Bond movies are parodies of them, and as if we needed proof, along comes the excruciatingly predictable 007 send-up Johnny English, in which Rowan Atkinson soars to the lows of Leslie Nielsen at his most contemptibly greedy (see: Spy Hard). (I like both comedians, Atkinson and Nielsen, but only when they're leashed to masters Richard Curtis and David Zucker, respectively.) If it's true that Atkinson was recently motivated by the stateside failure of this very film to check himself into an Arizona rehab centre for depressed celebrities (and frankly, don't blame audiences–distributor Universal didn't exactly tax themselves advertising Johnny English to domestic moviegoers), I hope his caretakers remind him in haste that none of Monty Python's features grossed an enviable sum abroad, that the James Bond franchise has already satirized itself into the ground (it's no casual point that Johnny English was co-scripted by the same writing team behind The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day), and that his first problem is trying to please a country that opens rehab centres for depressed celebrities.

The Long, Hot Summer (1958) + Hud (1963) – DVD

December 31, 2003Posted in****/****, 1950s, 1960s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, Western

THE LONG, HOT SUMMER
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, Orson Welles
screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., based on the William Faulkner stories "Barn Burning" and "The Spotted Horses"
directed by Martin Ritt

by Walter Chaw The Long, Hot Summer is a classic example of Hollywood trying to have it both ways: it combines the seriousness of a literary property and some young Method talent with the lurid garishness of a dime-store novel. Seizing upon the exploitable elements–all that decadent behaviour and sexual dysfunction–of William Faulkner's work, the film pushes them to the fore, giving the cast the opportunity to sex things up in bare-shirted, post-Brando fashion. As a result, the film resembles soapy melodrama much more than Faulkner ("NOT SINCE PEYTON PLACE!" screams the trailer), but it's melodrama with the strength of its fetid convictions that makes for lively entertainment, whatever its shortcomings.

S.W.A.T. (2003) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

December 30, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Crime, DVD, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Jeremy Renner, Michelle Rodriguez
screenplay by David Ayer and David McKenna
directed by Clark Johnson

by Walter Chaw The promise of the premise is a return to John Carpenter's Escape from L.A., or his Rio Bravo redux Assault on Precinct 13, an idea of a seething urban cess erupting at the promise of notoriety and filthy lucre, but S.W.A.T. washes out as a flaccid, almost wholly uninteresting bit of macho formula. The potential of the film to be Aliens with rampaging hordes of West Coast gangsters seems, at the least, acknowledged in the United Colors of Benetton casting, down to the tough-talking, one-named Latina, but like everything else in the film, the only thing that S.W.A.T. genuinely achieves is a feeling of squandered opportunities and a lot of quiet time to think about them. More, the picture has that distinctive feeling of something that never started by the time it ends–a laggardly-paced two hours of limp set-up that hobbles across the finish line, sputtering on fumes and bluster, boasting mainly of the questionable achievement that it is the exact simulacrum of any episode of the dated '70s television series on which it is based.

Assassination Tango (2003) – DVD

December 29, 2003Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller

***/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Robert Duvall, Ruben Blades, Kathy Baker, Luciana Pedraza
written and directed by Robert Duvall

by Walter Chaw In one of a series of largely-improvised exchanges about the mystical hold of the tango on the spirit of Argentines, a crusty veteran confides in enigmatic Yankee hitman John J. (Robert Duvall, also writer-director) that the tango, among absolutes such as love and hate, is life. In Assassination Tango, the titular dance is also the metaphor for the desire to find balance between the brutish and the sublime or, failing that, to provide a strict framework within which the brute can prowl. (A visit to a caged panther in a Buenos Aires zoo becomes the visual manifestation of the idea as well as oblique reference to Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," the hero of which searches, like J., for sustenance.) The tango is the urgent pull of ritual that binds animal sexuality into the meticulous structure of dance, working on the literal level as doppelgänger to John J.'s carefully-controlled, gradually encroaching chaos and on another level as metaphor for a filmmaker seeking equilibrium between personal crisis and professional ambition at the end of his career. It's rationale enough for a picture so often interested in frustrating narrative to the benefit of the richness of its palimpsest; if ever there were a film that lives entirely in its subtext, Assassination Tango (even its title a semantic conundrum) is it.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) – DVD

December 24, 2003Posted in1950s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Pat Boone, James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Diane Baker
screenplay by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett
directed by Henry Levin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover By any rational standards, the 1959 version of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is swill, an all-pro hackjob that marshalls a vast array of technicians and designers in the hopes that the money and effort expended will mask the total artistic void at its, um, centre. There's no sense of cinema to its mechanical vision of life beneath the surface–and yet somehow, despite Henry Levin's non-direction and the bizarre casting of James Mason alongside Pat Boone, the film works like gangbusters. Watching it is like being a kid at Christmas and getting a thoroughly useless but fun piece of plastic to play with. It won't do you any good in the long run, but as a mass-produced waste of 129 minutes, it has the steel-and-chrome charm of a bloated '50s gas-guzzler.

Destry Rides Again (1939) + The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) – DVDs

December 23, 2003Posted in1930s, 1960s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Western

DESTRY RIDES AGAIN
***/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Brian Donlevy, Charles Winninger
screenplay by Felix Jackson, Gertrude Purcell and Henry Mayers, based on the novel by Max Brand
directed by George Marshall

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
***/**** Image A- Sound A
starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kruger
screenplay by Lukas Heller, from the novel by Elleston Trevor
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The word "clever" can be used as a compliment or an insult–it's either a means of saying how ingenious you are, or a way of showing how far you are from being "intelligent." The same goes for the star rating, which can be used to mark a sleeper that shows some real talent or to warn you that something is "only entertainment"–when is three stars just right, and when is it not enough? This is the conundrum that faces me in reviewing Destry Rides Again and The Flight of the Phoenix, two films completely separate in time and subject matter, but which both rate about the same in terms of their achievement. But despite their equal entertainment value, I have a better feeling about Phoenix than I do about Destry: it's more creative and resourceful, even if it doesn't come off perfectly. That doesn't mean you shouldn't see Destry, though it is an indication that you shouldn't raise your hopes too high for it–and that you might be surprised by the lesser-known Phoenix.

Jeepers Creepers II (2003) [Special Edition] – DVD

December 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror

Jeepers Creepers 2
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Travis Schiffner, Nicki Lynn Aycox
written and directed by Victor Salva

by Walter Chaw Beyond the pretty fair rhetorical question of what convicted child molester Victor Salva is doing making another film about children in peril, in showers, and pissing en masse in a field, Jeepers Creepers II is a surprisingly run-of-the-mill action/adventure film with horror elements that reminds mostly that Jaws is still the high-water mark for stuff like this. Promising to be a Spam-in-a-bus sort of picture, it washes out eventually as a rip-off that’s only missing someone deadpanning “We’re gonna need a bigger bus” when the creature from the deep starts pounding on their stranded conveyance. Credit is due Salva, however, for employing some sharp non-CGI creature effects, even if the premise this time around (and its showcase special effects set-piece) is starting to more resemble John McNaughton’s The Borrower and less an original concept of a demon that, for twenty-three days every twenty-three years (not insignificantly, the description of high holy Jewish feasts is set out in Leviticus: 23), gets to feed.

Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Second Season (1998-1999) – DVD

December 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Teen, Television

Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
"The Kiss", "Crossroads", "Alternative Lifestyles", "Tamara's Return", "Full Moon Rising", "The Dance", "The All-Nighter", "The Reluctant Hero", "The Election", "High Risk Behavior", "Sex, She Wrote," "Uncharted Waters", "His Leading Lady", "To Be or Not to Be…", "…That is the Question", "Be Careful What You Wish For", "Psychic Friends", "A Perfect Wedding", "Abby Morgan, Rest in Peace", "Reunited", "Ch…Ch…Ch…Changes", "Parental Discretion Advised"

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. In striving for an original approach to reviewing the sophomore year of a show for which there are already umpteen online episode guides at one's disposal, I've decided to take inventory of "Dawson's Creek: The Complete Second Season"'s seven major players. A series driven by personalities, if far from light on incident, "Dawson's Creek", as executive producer Paul Stupin says in his DVD commentary for the season finale (or is it the premiere?), hit pay dirt with its core ensemble, so let's examine how their roles evolved beyond the preliminary 13-episode run–and meet a couple of interlopers while we're at it.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003) [Special Collector’s Edition|Widescreen Collection] – DVD

December 16, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds, Djimon Hounsou
screenplay by Dean Georgaris
directed by Jan De Bont

Laracroft2by Walter Chaw The weirdest thing about the pretty weird Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (hereafter Tomb Raider 2) is that the filmmakers either haven't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark or, more likely, hope that no one in the target audience has. With Angelina Jolie and her costume-enhanced bod serving as the distaff version of Harrison Ford's grizzled globetrotting heartthrob, the doubling becomes fascinating when looked at through the prism of Hollywood's (and society's, if you want to go there) hots for professorial old men and sexy young women. Consider, after all, that Indy gets eyes made at him while providing exposition in a dusty classroom (fully clothed), while Lara Croft delivers vital plot information in a rubber bikini; the dichotomy between brains and bust is pretty striking, even as the faux ancient frieze featuring the Ark of the Covenant/Pandora's Box appears to be identical, along with the dire consequences of opening the respective crates.

Jet Lag (2002) – DVD

December 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, France, Romance, UK

Décalage horaire
½*/**** Image B Sound A Extras N/A
starring Juliette Binoche, Jean Reno, Sergi López, Scali Delpeyrat
screenplay by Christopher Thompson & Danièle Thompson
directed by Danièle Thompson

by Walter Chaw A beautician (Rose (Juliette Binoche)) fleeing an abusive relationship and a frozen-food magnate (Félix (Jean Reno)) on his way to the funeral for an ex-in-law meet when Charles de Gaulle Airport is shut down during some kind of labour strike. Bonding over a constantly ringing cell phone (ah, what's more romantic than a goddamned cell phone?), the unlikely twosome decides to share a hotel room, where Félix browbeats Rose into taking off some of her makeup, and Rose decides that she's already ready to settle down into another abusive relationship. With the airport forever threatening to open, Binoche and Reno move around various sets in exact two-shot medium compositions that find them spouting their deadening monologues at one another in a failed attempt to convince that they are actually occupying the same space, head or heart or otherwise.

The Brave Little Toaster (1987); The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998); The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue (1999) – DVDs

December 11, 2003Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Sci-Fi

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER
****/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C-
screenplay by Jerry Rees & Joe Ranft, based on the book by Thomas M. Disch
directed by Jerry Rees

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER GOES TO MARS
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
screenplay by Willard Carroll, based on the book by Thomas M. Disch
directed by Robert C. Ramirez

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER TO THE RESCUE
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
screenplay by Willard Carroll
directed by Robert C. Ramirez

by Walter Chaw I'm most familiar with Thomas M. Disch for his sterling non-fiction work (The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of and The Castle of Indolence) and a few samplings of his less impressive genre short fiction, and though I was aware that he'd written a couple of children's books about a band of appliances, I'd never felt compelled to investigate. The first taste of Disch's novella The Brave Little Toaster, then, came to me by way of a feature-length animated adaptation from Disney that, a little like Babe: Pig in the City, probably caused enough consternation in the hearts and minds of studio PR to result in its relegation to a minor theatrical push with a botched advertising campaign. Here's a film, after all, that's as innovatively disturbed–as usefully frightening–as any of Uncle Walt's own vintage Merry Melodies and Silly Symphonies. In the whitewash of modern American children's entertainment via the Big Mouse, anything that isn't facile and patronizing is to be avoided and disdained.