Spun (2003) – DVD (R-rated)

July 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Esoterica

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Jason Schwartzman, John Leguizamo, Mena Suvari, Patrick Fugit
screenplay by Creighton Vero & William De Los Santos
directed by Jonas Åkerlund

by Walter Chaw I don't have anything in particular against music-video directors making the transition to feature films, except that so often strobe-lighting and images-per-second are the only lessons about film craft they've ever learned. Swedish wunderkind Jonas Åkerlund, who cut his teeth as a chop-horse for Madonna and Moby, makes his feature film debut with jittery crystal meth opera Spun, a picture so misconstrued and haphazardly slapped together that it doesn't so much suggest the sensation of being "spun" on meth as it does getting thrown off a tall building in a washing machine. It strives for a sort of grimy realism but succeeds mainly in being Ken and Barbie Take a Shit-Bath: the young and the beautiful are covered in a patina of grotesquerie, it's true, but the filth isn't taking

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 6, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Keiko Nobumoto
directed by Shinichiro Watanabe

by Walter Chaw Yôko Kanno’s soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (hereafter Cowboy Bebop) is a jubilant a blend of funk, jazz, blues, soul, and punk that soars even though it’s a pale shadow of the “bebop” innovated by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell (and Kenny Clarke and Max Roach) in Minton’s Playhouse in the early 1940s. It functions as something of a brilliantly mellifluous backbone to the film and the series that spawned it–chimeric and socially significant, again like Bird’s bebop, in that the 26-episode Japanese television series became one of the most recognized and revered crossovers in animated series history. The bebop idea of riffing on a melody to the extent that the melody becomes unrecognizable (with an attendant introduction of dozens of beats to the standard four-beat bar) carries through in the frenetic kineticism of series that also, by its format, mirrors jazz bebop’s compact agility (generally carried by quartet and quintet arrangements)–making a feature-length film, then, a strange place for the “Cowboy Bebop” franchise to go.

It’s My Party (1996) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 6, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C
starring Eric Roberts, Margaret Cho, Lee Grant, Gregory Harrison
written and directed by Randal Kleiser

by Walter Chaw The only way to explain how disjointed and patchwork is Randal Kleiser’s It’s My Party, is by presuming out loud that the director is trying to simulate the vertiginous feel of a weekend of revelry culminating in the auto-euthanasia of a mortally ill man. As it is, the picture can only be taken in terms of theory and possibility–the piece, as it sits extant, is puerile in a self-obsessed sort of way, from performance to scripting to organization. The presence of Bruce Davison in a minor role serves mainly to remind that there are better films out there about the AIDS epidemic in its early days, recalling Longtime Companion (starring Davison) and the genuine emotions found therein that stand as sharp indictment of the dreadful, manufactured pathos of It’s My Party. Any movie trying this hard to get me misty is a lot more likely to make me angry.

Shanghai Knights (2003) – DVD

July 1, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Western

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Aidan Gillen, Fann Wong
screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar
directed by David Dobkin

by Walter Chaw Crossing the Big Pond hasn’t exactly done wonders for the heroes of the halcyon days of Hong Kong cinema. Lured by the prestige and mythology of the Hollywood dream factory, folks like Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, John Woo, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark, and so on have transformed the honesty of their craft into the same sort of boom crash opera we’ve been churning out on Yankee shores for decades now. Without a strong sense of how to film action, of the martial arts tradition in Chinese cinema, nor of the particular strengths of a particular artist, even as this genre has taken a dramatic upturn in popularity in the West, the folks most responsible for its sophistication have become sidekicks (Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies), B-list hunks (Yun Fat), villains (Li), failures (Lam, Hark), starfuckers (Woo), and, in the sad case of Jackie Chan, broad racial caricatures at the mercy of people like Brett Ratner, Kevin Donovan, and Tom Dey. Chan has made over 100 films over the course of forty years as an actor, director, writer, producer, and stuntman; the first thing that happens to him when he comes to the United States is that he’s placed in the company of idiots and neophytes. It feels like racism.

From the Terrace (1960) – DVD

June 30, 2003Posted in1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound B Extras D+
starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Myrna Loy
screenplay by Ernest Lehman
directed by Mark Robson

by Walter Chaw The term “melodrama” comes from the Greek and the French, finding its literal meaning in something like “musical drama,” and Mark Robson’s From the Terrace (1960)–packed front to back with Elmer Bernstein’s gorgeous but intrusive and, in at least a few moments, hysterical orchestrations–fits the bill nicely. Adapted from a John O’Hara bodice-ripper by chronic adaptor Ernest Lehman and released during the gap between the Lehman-scripted marvels North by Northwest and West Side Story, the picture drips with the charged sexual innuendo of the former (and of Robson’s Peyton Place, come to think of it) while falling short of the caustic social commentary of the latter.

Family Reunion: The Movie (2003) – DVD

June 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound C+ Extras D
starring Red Grant, Reynaldo Rey, Bebe Drake, Sommore Jamal
written and directed by Red Grant

by Walter Chaw The sort of movie where Klansman dressed in the Teletubby rainbow are brutally beaten in a Southern Methodist church when they submit themselves to the mercy of the Lord, Red Grant’s Family Reunion: The Movie is a scattershot Def Comedy Jam routine filmed with a noxious, hostile artlessness made all the more impotent by its desire to be whimsical. Rather than being the sort of amateurish gut-rot that can make a claim to activism through its nihilistic misanthropy and racism, it’s the redheaded stepchild of the Friday series: screwball ethnic humour long on volume and short on laughs.

The Big Trail (1930) – DVD

June 24, 2003Posted in1930s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, Western

**½/**** Image B Sound B
starring John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall
screenplay by Hal G. Evarts
directed by Raoul Walsh

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Big Trail is the kind of movie that comes wrapped in a big piece of butcher’s paper with the word WESTERN stamped on it. It offers the barest structural skeleton of the genre, with pioneers fulfilling their Manifest Destiny over terrain both harsh and unforgiving, and it sticks with its forward march to Oregon with only minor narrative flourishes to distract from the standard-issue myth of America. Later westerns would meditate on the nature of both the lone-wolf cowboy hero and the value of the westward expansion, but this early John Wayne vehicle is quaintly naïve in its taking it all for granted, making for great film-historical fascination when the drama and the intrigue flag.

Phone Booth (2003) – DVD

June 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A Commentary A
starring Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell
screenplay by Larry Cohen
directed by Joel Schumacher

by Walter Chaw Responsible for some of my favourite weirdo low-tech cult films (Q, God Told Me To, It’s Alive!), underground auteur Larry Cohen’s output is a lollapalooza of high-concept hokum invested equally in the Catholic and the apocalyptic. Joining forces with master hack Joel Schumacher (who’s made a mean schlock classic or two himself–Flatliners, The Lost Boys, The Incredible Shrinking Woman) on the unfortunately-timed sniper fantasy Phone Booth, Cohen’s script reveals the man up to his old tricks: a barely feature-length product (about seventy-five minutes without credits) set inside a confessional-cum-8th Avenue phone booth that mires an anti-hero in an old-school oasis amidst our sterile technological wasteland. What should have been an agreeable bit of nonsense, however, gets tangled up in Cohen’s desire to proselytize, transforming the potential for a paranoid piece of B-sociology into something empty and pretentious–a tale directed by an idiot, full of some admittedly innovative sound design and a surplus of Method fury.

Empire Records (1995) [Remix! Special Fan Edition] – DVD

June 22, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance, Teen

Empire Records: Remix!
*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
starring Liv Tyler, Anthony LaPaglia, Renee Zellweger, Maxwell Caulfield
screenplay by Carol Heikkinen
directed by Allan Moyle

by Bill Chambers Allan Moyle’s Empire Records has defenders too staunch to disregard–and because I listened to them, I’m left with the sensation that I chewed a piece of bubblegum until well after its flavour ran dry. The Canadian Moyle, whose inauspicious directorial debut was the 1977 tax-shelter crime flick The Rubber Gun, discovered teenagers three years later with his oddity of a second film Times Square and has rarely looked back since. Yet although his cinematic beginnings predate those of John Hughes, Moyle’s Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records are eclipsed by even the lesser entries in Hughes’s teen canon, such as Sixteen Candles and the Hughes-produced Pretty in Pink.

Me Without You (2001) – DVD

June 20, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Germany, UK

***/**** Image F Sound B-
starring Anna Friel, Michelle Williams, Oliver Milburn, Kyle MacLachlan
screenplay by Sandra Goldbacher and Laurence Coriat
directed by Sandra Goldbacher

by Walter Chaw Sandra Goldbacher’s Me Without You is feral and alive and home to two of the best performances of last year, courtesy Michelle Williams and Anna Friel. One of the more uncompromising films about the things women do to one another over the course of a long friendship, it becomes a bit repetitive by the end and a bit like a Jane Austen novel (“Emma, actually,” the film helpfully informs) transplanted to the England of the past three decades, but its conventions skate with the honesty of performances from its main trio of Williams, Friel, and Oliver Milburn as the prototypical rakish, misunderstood Austen hero.

Laurel Canyon (2003) – DVD

June 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Frances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale, Natascha McElhone
written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko

by Walter Chaw Buoyed by a fantastic performance from Frances McDormand, Lisa Cholodenko’s follow-up to her deft, well-regarded High Art is the disappointing, sprawling, somewhat overreaching Laurel Canyon. In its ambition it resembles Rose Troche’s third film, The Safety of Objects–that picture also saddled with a large, veteran cast and a problem with focus, but most importantly with the responsibility of a young filmmaker given the opportunity, with a bigger budget and well-regarded performers, to produce a piece commensurate in scale to that perceived expectation. The problem with the situation is that more times than not it leads to the type of film that Laurel Canyon is: ostentatious in structure, but in that way also a departure from the succinct character observations that brought the young artist the opportunity in the first place.

The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988)/The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989) [2 Disc Set]; The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990); The Incredible Hulk (1996) – DVDs

June 17, 2003Posted in1980s, 1990s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Superhero

THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS
**/**** Image B- Sound B Extras A+
starring Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, Lee Purcell, Jack Colvin
written by Nicholas Corea
directed by Bill Bixby & Nicholas Corea

THE TRIAL OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK
*/**** Image B- Sound B Extras A+
starring Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, Rex Smith, John Rhys-Davies
written by Gerald Di Pego
directed by Bill Bixby

by Walter Chaw It all comes back in a rush, the crosshairs fixing David Banner’s (Bill Bixby) face, the breathless narration summarizing the whole of the creation story in ninety seconds, the shots of long-haired Lou Ferrigno, in full body paint, embodying the rage and frustration of the flower-power generation in all its ripped-jean glory. Punked with a horse’s dose of gamma radiation, mild-mannered Dr. Banner turns into a ball of flexing id that gets most wroth until running across a kitten or something and calming down. Jekyll and Hyde for the “me” generation; that a research scientist disinterested in the particulars of cashing in turns into a giant green ball of type-A is one avenue for discussion, though a better one is the fact that Banner represents in a real way the idea of hope and compassion in a time more interested in “Hulk smash”–making the moldy Marvel hero a potentially good match for the reflective sensibilities of Ang Lee. That Banner’s pacifist nature is always defeated by his “anger” speaks volumes about the inevitability of the metamorphosis of hippie to yuppie, as well as the death of a dream that transformation encompasses.

Spider-Man (2002) [Full Screen Special Edition + Superbit] – DVDs

June 13, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Sam Raimi, DVD, Sci-Fi, Spider-Man, Superhero

***½/****
SE – Image C Sound A- Extras B
SUPERBIT – Image A Sound A (DTS) A- (DD) Commentary B
starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco
screenplay by David Koepp
directed by Sam Raimi

Spidermansbitcap1

by Walter Chaw Sam Raimi’s banana yellow, 1973 Dodge 88 Oldsmobile is Uncle Ben’s (Cliff Robertson, himself the happy–however briefly–subject of a lab experiment in 1968’s Charley) ride in Spider-Man, and it is as canny and appropriate a cameo as any since Hitchcock’s greedy quaff of a champagne flute in Notorious. The good news is, the appearance of said vehicle is as clever as the rest of Spider-Man, that rare variety of modern popular film boasting of subtext and tricky riptides tackling puberty and abrupt Oedipal splits with good humour, insight, and grace. If not for the abominable CGI (really only overused in two scenes), I would have a hard time finding fault with Spider-Man, the model comic book movie in its surprisingly dark tone, lively pace, shrewd performances, sense of humour, and sly intelligence.

Basic (2003) – DVD

June 12, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

*½/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Brian Van Holt
screenplay by James Vanderbilt
directed by John McTiernan

by Walter Chaw It occurred to me about midway through Basic that director John McTiernan, having nowhere to go but up after last year’s amusingly noxious Rollerball, was taking a page from the Michael Bay book of filmmaking before realizing that Bay had the McTiernan school (the McTiernan of Die Hard and Predator) to thank for the whole of his austere career. The Hollywood shooting match is an incestual Moebius strip, it seems, and for who was once the best action director in the United States to find himself a hollow shade of not only his past glory, but also Bay, is depressing beyond words. Which is not to say that Basic doesn’t start out extremely well: For a full minute, the picture provides a brief history of the French attempt at digging a canal in Panama in the 1880s scored to Bizet’s Carmen; the problem is that by the end of Basic, the only justification for the Carmen cue is that it’s also packed to the gills with bull.

Mad About You: The Complete Second Season (1993-1994) – DVD

June 11, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Television

Image C- Sound B
"Murray's Tale", "Bing Bang Boom", "Bedfellows", "Married to the Job", "So I Married a Hair Murderer", "An Unplanned Child", "Natural History", "Surprise", "A Pair of Hearts", "It's a Wrap", "Edna Returns," "Paul Is Dead", "Same Time Next Week", "The Late Show", "Virtual Reality", "Cold Feet", "Instant Karma", "The Tape", "Love Letters", "The Last Scampi", "Disorientation", "Storms We Cannot Weather", "Up All Night", "With this Ring Parts I & II"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Right up there with crop circles and the Bermuda Triangle, one of the great unexplained phenomena of our time is the long and storied success of the '90s sitcom "Mad About You". Somehow its cloying, sub-Woody Allen New York-isms touched a nerve with the public to make it a ratings winner, but it's a collection of fuzzy relationship humour too nice to grab the sensibilities of this viewer. Next to something like "Seinfeld" (whose namesake was constantly being compared–favourably–to "Mad About You"'s star and co-creator Paul Reiser), the show lacked the goods necessary to limp to the end of one season, let alone the seven it would eventually clock.

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) – DVD

June 10, 2003Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Musical

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Frank Morgan
screenplay by Leon Gordon and George Oppenhemer
directed by Norman Taurog

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover If you are like me, you will like Broadway Melody of 1940–that is to say, if you sing the praises of the Hollywood musical. If you thrill to pointless dance numbers and unlikely romantic pairings. If you rejoice at absurdly lavish sets and novelty numbers involving sailors and palm trees. If you have ever hated someone for "not getting" musicals, or wanted to punch someone for complaining that the numbers happen "for no reason," content that there is never a reason beyond the pleasure of the moment and the beauty of aesthetic movement. If you are not, God forbid, John Grierson.

Franchise Boogie: The Jungle Book 2; The Brady Bunch Movie; A Very Brady Sequel; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Die Another Day; The Animatrix

June 9, 2003Posted in1990s, 2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, James Bond, Musical, Sci-Fi

THE JUNGLE BOOK 2 (2003)
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Karl Geurs
directed by Steve Trenbirth

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE (1995)
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christine Taylor, Christopher Daniel Barnes
screenplay by Bonnie Turner & Terry Turner
directed by Betty Thomas

A VERY BRADY SEQUEL (1996)
***½/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Christine Taylor
screenplay by Harry Elfont & Deborah Kaplan and James Berg & Stan Zimmerman
directed by Arlene Sanford

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
screenplay by James Cameron & William Wisher Jr.
directed by James Cameron

DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)
**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade
directed by Lee Tamahori

THE ANIMATRIX (2003)
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
written by The Wachowski Brothers*, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe, Peter Chung
directed by Peter Chung, Andrew R. Jones, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, Mahiro Maeda, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe

(*We defer to screen billing but recognize this is inaccurate.-Ed., 2016)

by Bill Chambers The studios apply their stratagem for summertime theatrical releases to DVD in 2003, having overcrowded video store shelves this month and last with sequels and offshoots to the degree that, a few weeks from today, you will notice that a Matrix film and a Terminator film are vying for attention both at home and at the multiplex. As Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II, and Legally Blonde 2 touch down in theatres, Die Another Day, The Jungle Book 2, and the Brady Bunch movies land on DVD, and then there are the cross-promotions: It seems like everyone wants a piece of the fallout from Universal’s big-screen Hulk, with Fox, Buena Vista, Anchor Bay, and Universal itself issuing “Hulk”-branded discs prior to the feature film’s June 20th opening. Synergy this aggressive may well erase the line separating legitimate media from its ancillaries yet; Fox takes a bold step in this direction with the upcoming From Justin to Kelly, slated to debut on disc a mere six weeks past its theatrical premiere date, thus rendering the latter a glorified trailer for the former.

Dark Blue (2002) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 6, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Kurt Russell, Scott Speedman, Ving Rhames, Brendan Gleeson
screenplay by David Ayer
directed by Ron Shelton

by Walter Chaw Lost in the familiarity of critics calling films combinations of two similar films is the truism that, in all likelihood, these films were pitched exactly the same way to stuffed wallets lacking in much imagination. In this spirit, Dark Blue is Training Day meets L.A. Confidential–to that end, Training Day scribe David Ayer wrote the screenplay from a story by James Ellroy, author of L.A. Confidential the novel. In other words, Dark Blue is a chimera composed of the worst parts of a pair of better films–a green rookie/corrupt grizzled vet police thriller set in Los Angeles (Training Day) that, banking on the borrowed gravity of historical events to lend itself a measure of importance, features an evil Irish mentor/supercop responsible for the picture’s central crime (L.A. Confidential) and a tired storyline riddled with exhausted characters (a showboat role, a thankless role) and racial conveniences. It’s by now fair to wonder if director Ron Shelton will make another Blaze, let alone another Bull Durham.

My Friend Flicka (1943) – DVD

June 4, 2003Posted in1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Western

**/**** Image A+ Sound B
starring Roddy McDowall, Preston Foster, Rita Johnson, James Bell
screenplay by Francis Edwards Faragon, based on the book by Mary O’Hara
directed by Harold Schuster

by Walter Chaw Revealing itself as a primary source for Spielberg’s E.T. (complete with scene in which a boy and his extra-species pal are found unconscious in a stream), Harold Schuster’s prototypical horse opera My Friend Flicka finds its locus in the relationship between a boy and his animal, its comic relief in a bratty little sister (Diana Hale) who can’t be trusted, and its antagonist in a stern but loving father (Preston Foster). Released to good success in 1943, the film (based on three novels by Mary O’Hara) fostered two sequels and a popular television show that banked on the syrupy good old-fashioned paterfamilias values that proliferated in TV’s late-’50s “Golden Age.” Accordingly, the film is burdened by a surplus of problem/solution climaxes and a perversely invasive score by Hollywood legend Alfred Newman that telegraphs every emotional response with a moldy insistence best described as “John Williams-y.”

The Other Side of Heaven (2002) – DVD

June 3, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Disney, Drama, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Christopher Gorham, Anne Hathaway, Nathaniel Lees, Joseph Folau
written and directed by Mitch Davis

by Walter Chaw To call The Other Side of Heaven “appalling” would be to underestimate just how dangerous entertainments like it can be. The film positions itself as “based on a true story” and “based on a memoir” without understanding that the two are often mutually exclusive. Then, without apology, it proceeds to manufacture scenes for maximum manipulation, everything from the messianic to the mundane. An opening dance sequence set in a Cleaver American Fifties features more stunt people, professional dancers, and trampolines than Cirque du Soleil, its artificiality setting the tone for the rest of the film, while the scene’s conclusion (with the picture’s hero trapping the celebrants in a giant dance hall, dooming them to death should a fire break out) serves as a pretty succinct summary of the film’s feckless themes and carelessness.