Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000) – DVD

February 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Gangster, Germany, Ireland, UK

*/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Kevin Spacey, Linda Fiorentino, Peter Mullan, Stephen Dillane
screenplay by Gerard Stembridge
directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan

by Walter Chaw Completed about a year after John Boorman’s infinitely superior The General, Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s Ordinary Decent Criminal is a sporadic “fictionalizing” of the life of Irish crime boss Martin Cahill that dresses up Cahill’s exploits with slick visuals while attempting the unsavoury task of doing exactly what The General was accused of doing: making urban terrorism and torture whimsical caper fare. Recasting Cahill as a Keyser Soze with a sense of oily humour and renaming him Michael Lynch (Kevin Spacey), Ordinary Decent Criminal is extraordinarily lightweight blather free entirely of the sense of scale and place of Boorman’s film. The General is fantastic, Ordinary Decent Criminal: just fatuous.

The Money Pit (1986) [Widescreen] – DVD

February 22, 2003Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Spielberg

**/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Tom Hanks, Shelley Long, Alexander Godunov, Maureen Stapleton
screenplay by David Giler
directed by Richard Benjamin

by Bill Chambers Many comedies are padded by slapstick–here’s slapstick padded by jokes, every single one of which bears the tang of a warm-up act. There is dialogue that advances a scene and there is dialogue that fills a page count, and David Giler’s screenplay for The Money Pit toils almost exclusively in the latter. On the one hand, that’s exactly the right approach, as it relegates stars Tom Hanks and Shelley Long to the status of Chachi and Joanie whilst elevating the titular house to starring role. But “the money pit” can only fall down and go boom so many times, thus making The Money Pit a stop-and-go feature that would kill as a short. I’ve often toyed with doing my own edit of the film.

Sports Night: The Complete Series Plus Pilot Episode (1992-1993) – DVD

February 22, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Sports, Television

Image B Sound B
SEASON 1 – “Pilot,” “The Apology,” “The Hungry and the Hunted,” “Intellectual Property,” “Mary Pat Shelby,” “*The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail,” “Dear Louise,” “Thespis,” “The Quality of Mercury at 29K,” “Shoe Money Tonight,” “The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee,” “Smoky,” “Small Town,” “Rebecca,” “Dana and the Deep Blue Sea,” “Sally,” “How Are Things in Gloca Morra?,” “The Sword of Orion,” “Eli’s Coming,” “Ordnance Tactics,” “Ten Wickets,” “Napoleon’s Battle Plan,” “What Kind of Day Has it Been”
SEASON 2 – “Special Powers,” “When Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “Cliff Gardner,” “Louise Revisited,” “Kafelnikov,” “Shane,” “Kyle Whitaker’s Got Two Sacks,” “The Reunion,” “A Girl Named Pixley,” “The Giants Win the Pennant, the Giants Win the Pennant,” “The Cut Man Cometh,” “The Sweet Smell of Air,” “Dana Get Your Gun,” “And the Crowd Goes Wild,” “Celebrities,” “The Local Weather,” “Draft Day: Part I – It Can’t Rain at Indian Wells,” “Draft Day: Part II – The Fall of Ryan O’Brian,” “April is the Cruelest Month,” “Bells And A Siren,” “La Forza Del Destino,” “Quo Vadimus”

by Walter Chaw Taken as a whole, and a box set from Buena Vista allows one to do just that, Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night” takes on the character of an extended experiment that starts tentatively and ends as one of the genuinely valuable moments of television in the year before HBO and flagship show “The Sopranos” became the benchmark for quality boob-tubery in the post-post-modern age. Detailing the behind-the-scenes drama of producing an “ESPN SportsCenter”-esque news program, it draws inevitable comparison to James L. Brooks’s Broadcast News (and accordingly, during the first season, episode five, Felicity Huffman gets to knock over a production assistant à la Holly Hunter’s character in that film), but distinguishes itself with an understanding that in many ways, sports is an effective locus for the hot-button issues of modern society: misogyny, race, addiction, violence.

Swimfan (2002) – DVD

February 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Teen, Thriller

½*/**** Image A Sound B Extras B-
starring Jesse Bradford, Erika Christensen, Shiri Appleby, Kate Burton
screenplay by Charles Bohl & Phillip Schneider
directed by John Polson

by Walter Chaw It’s one thing to say that Swimfan is a boldly unoriginal rip-off of such gems as The Crush, Deadly Friend, Wicked, and Poison Ivy, but it’s another, far more disturbing thing altogether to note that Swimfan travels the same inexplicable path of the moon-faced pork-pie Lolita so purposefully trundled by the likes of Alicia Silverstone, Kristy Swanson, Julia Stiles, and Drew Barrymore. Erika Christensen–memorably spacey as the troubled daughter in Soderbergh’s Traffic–reveals herself in Swimfan as just the next completely interchangeable cherubic baby-fat starlet to try (or continue) to sully her ephemeral image in a role day-trippers might mistake for “edgy.” Make no mistake, Swimfan may be many things, but it’s about as edgy as Christensen’s Romanesque elbow.

From Here to Eternity (1953) [Superbit] – DVD

February 18, 2003Posted in1950s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Romance, War

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed
screenplay by Daniel Taradash, based on the novel by James Jones
directed by Fred Zinnemann

by Bill Chambers Lovelorn soldiers stationed in Hawaii have their romantic lives torn asunder when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor: You can add remaking Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winning From Here to Eternity without due credit to the tally of Pearl Harbor‘s sins, although a picture as cool and sensitive–the two qualities exactly lacking from Pearl Harbor–as From Here to Eternity would hardly want the acknowledgment. Based on the novel by James Jones, a veteran wounded at Guadalcanal who also wrote the book on which Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line is based, the film finds the director of High Noon following his didactic muse into an allegory that is considerably less paint-by-numbers, even arcane. From Here to Eternity is a sudser, ultimately, albeit one that may be of more significance to those who’ve served. That’s a step up from Pearl Harbor, at least, which will most directly appeal to chimpanzees.

Brown Sugar (2002) – DVD

February 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Mos Def, Nicole Ari Parker
screenplay by Michael Elliot and Rick Famuyiwa
directed by Rick Famuyiwa

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a lot of talk of integrity in Brown Sugar, and a lot more of the defiant nature of good hip-hop; if the film embodied either of those traits in its words or pictures it would be a perfect ten. Alas, for all of Brown Sugar's hue and cry over the mainstreaming of the music, the film is tediously commonplace in its attitudes; director/co-writer Rick Famuyiwa treats hip-hop mania like the sedate cream-coloured furniture his protagonists seem to enjoy–just another tony item to be collected. He simply isn't smart or passionate enough to evoke an obsessive love for anything, be it musical or human, and both his romance plot and his professing of musical devotion are borrowings from other movies and conversations overheard. While it's too low-key and oblivious to be offensive (and the furniture does have its qualities), it makes no impression at all beyond the miracle one fluky, inspired performance that belongs in a better movie.

All in the Family: The Complete Second Season (1971-1972) – DVD

February 15, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Christopher Heard, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Television

Image B- Sound C-
"The Saga of Cousin Oscar," "Gloria Poses in the Nude," "Archie in the Lock-Up," "Edith Writes a Song," "Flashback: Mike Meets Archie," "The Election Story," "Edith's Accident," "The Blockbuster," "Mike's Problem," "The Insurance is Canceled," "The Man in the Street," "Cousin Maude's Visit," "Christmas Day at the Bunkers'," "The Elevator Story," "Edith's Problem," "Archie and the F.B.I," "Mike's Mysterious Son," "Archie Sees a Mugging," "Archie and Edith Alone," "Edith Gets a Mink," "Sammy's Visit," "Edith the Judge," "Archie is Jealous," "Maude"

by Christopher Heard It has to be stated at the outset that I am one of the world's most ardent "All in the Family" fans–I believe this television series to be the greatest ever. Producer Norman Lear bought the rights to Johnny Speight's British kitchen-sink comedy "Till Death Do Us Part" and relocated it to Queens, New York, and in so doing he unwittingly rewrote the books on the power of the medium. A show that weekly served up major sociological storylines, dressing them in darkly comedic depictions of the ugliness of racism and intolerance, in "All in the Family", you were laughing at Archie Bunker, not with him. And in the end, the moral right always won out over Archie's ignorance.

The Magic Christian (1969) – DVD

February 15, 2003Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Isabel Jeans, Caroline Blakiston
screenplay by Terry Southern & Joseph McGrath, based on Southern's novel
directed by Joseph McGrath

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The worst thing about The Magic Christian is that it thinks it's good for you. Essentially a series of blackout sketches in which people are induced by cash to do embarrassing and/or unprincipled things, it comes on like it's revealing some hitherto concealed facet of "straight" society, the better to seem irreverent and "with-it" in that vaguely-defined Sixties kind of way. But a movie where a rich guy with a briefcase full of money delights in its power to destroy other people's self-image is more than a little cynical, and sure enough, The Magic Christian seems to like its self-appointed judge/jury/executioner roles too much for comfort. The more it tries to convince you that it's everyone else who's rotten and corrupt, the more the film reveals its own misanthropy–and its mean-spirited nature thwarts whatever meagre stabs at merriment it attempts.

O (2001) [Signature Series] – DVD

February 12, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, Shakespeare, Teen, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, Julia Stiles, Elden Henson
screenplay by Brad Kaaya, based on the play “Othello” by William Shakespeare
directed by Tim Blake Nelson

by Walter Chaw Tim Blake Nelson’s updating of Shakespeare’s “Othello” is hamstrung by a deficient script that hastily neglects motivation and character depth in favour of a dependence on our familiarity with the source material to lend O its tragic gravity. It overuses animalism and the specious equation of high school basketball with military conquests and prowess, and it unforgivably consigns the Desdemona character to a haughty afterthought and a series of shrill, shallow pronouncements. Another fatal misjudgment of the hackneyed and over-complicated plot (which actually seems to contradict itself right at its conclusion) reduces Iago’s wickedness to his need to earn daddy’s approval. Admittedly, though, O‘s transplanting of “Othello”‘s insular Venetian political setting to an exclusive upper-class prep school is a wry and excellent decision, offering any number of opportunities for satirizing the glowering atmosphere and claustrophobic in-fighting of high school at its most advantaged.

Ultimate X: The Movie (2002) – DVD

February 10, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Sports

ESPN’s Ultimate X
**/**** Image B- Sound B Extras B
written and directed by Bruce Hendricks

by Bill Chambers Notoriously anti-sports (or at the very least sports-agnostic), I thought maybe the X-Games would win me over–so much colour, so much thunder, like Hal Needham’s rushes out of context. Alas, they’re yet another not-for-me athletics event. I was made painfully aware of this fact while watching ESPN’s Ultimate X, an IMAX production: In a sight fertile with joy, a man mounts a plastic shovel not much bigger than the one that comes with children’s sandpails and slides down a snowy hilltop; but then you find out that “Super Modified-Shovel Racing” besmirched the X-Games in the eyes of its organizers and has since been gonged. With it went a new sport’s sense of humour, and I am definitely the genre of film buff more entertained by the dancing mascots at half-time than by the repetitive “thrill” of competition.

Little Secrets (2002) – DVD

February 9, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Music

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Angarano, David Gallagher, Vivica A. Fox
screenplay by Jessica Barondes
directed by Blair Treu

by Bill Chambers Little Secrets, a movie about the fear of honesty we have when we’re children, begins in the vein of a Joe Dante suburban satire but ends, oh so detrimentally, like a nightmare of Chris Columbus pap. Directed with genuine zest by Blair Treu, a man whose resume includes a film with the title “Just Like Dad” and episodes of the quickly-jettisoned television adaptation of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Little Secrets grows so self-involved that the dial of its own moral compass comes off its hinge: Treu (ironic spelling, don’t you think, for the director of a film dealing with the subject of lying?) and screenwriter Jessica Barondes steer their picture irreversibly south in the final minutes in what amounts to an act of belligerence–the filmmakers are too proud to admit they’ve made a gross miscalculation of plot, leading not only to the most aggravating closing smooch in a kids’ flick since Columbus’s own Adventures in Babysitting, but also Little Secrets‘ misogynistic aftertaste.

Stargate (1994) [Ultimate Edition – Director’s Cut] – DVD

February 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, France, Sci-Fi, Time Travel

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Viveca Lindfors
screenplay by Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Bill Chambers Spawning a television show and solidifying the Hollywood career of German director Roland Emmerich, 1994’s Stargate was the last movie to get the memo that Abyss-ian water walls and morphing technology no longer evoked World’s Fair awe. These special effects are merely the epitome of Stargate‘s second-hand wonder; part of the film’s value as a curiosity piece is its New York street-merchant vibe: like peddlers of the Rolux watch or Parda handbag, Emmerich and co-producer/co-writer Dean Devlin are selling us an approximation of a blockbuster by a licensed hitmaker, and we excuse them the same way we allow for the smudgy print of carbon copies or the colour bleed on VHS dubs. It must be a human impulse to absolve a facsimile of its absence of novelty.

blind date: UNCENSORED (2002) – DVD

February 6, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Documentary, DVD, Television

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+

by Bill Chambers The only reality-TV (whatever that oxymoron means) series I watch, “blind date” has a crack writing staff, photogenic–and certifiable–‘contestants,’ and editing that’s breezy without feeling clipped. For the uninitiated: Cameras follow a couple apparently arbitrarily but more often, one imagines, cruelly matched on their first date and, in the vein of pop-up video, word balloons and subtitles provide patronizing though often uproarious and surreal commentary on the proceedings. My personal favourite moment of the show to date is the oblivious bodybuilder who is asked what he is thinking by his companion: a thought-bubble appears above his head containing a chicken smoking a cigarette. Mostly these asides are, as Homer Simpson would say, funny ’cause they’re true.

Monster’s Ball (2001) – DVD|Monster’s Ball [Lions Gate Signature Series] – DVD

February 2, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

***½/****
DVD – Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
DVD (SIGNATURE SERIES) – Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger
screenplay by Milo Addica & Will Rokos
directed by Marc Forster

by Walter Chaw Two men tell poor Leticia Musgrove (Halle Berry) that she’s beautiful during the course of Marc Forster’s pitch-black Monster’s Ball. The first is her condemned husband Lawrence (Sean Combs), and the second is Hank (Billy Bob Thornton), the head of the death-row guard team responsible for bringing Lawrence to the electric chair. The circumstances and timing of their compliments, separated by almost the entire body of the film, says a great deal about where Monster’s Ball has gone in the interim. Lawrence says it as his last words to his wife during their last time together on the last day of his life. Hank says it over a pint of ice cream, just after an important revelation has been claimed without his knowledge. In both instances, there is a simple, fated truth to the words: the first utterance represents the realization that there’s nothing left to say, the second the recognition that some things are best left unspoken.

Q&A (1990) + I’ll Do Anything (1994) – DVDs

February 1, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Directors: Sidney Lumet, Drama, DVD, Satire, Thriller

Q&A
***/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Nick Nolte, Timothy Hutton, Armand Assante, Luis Guzman
written and directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the novel by Edwin Torres

I’LL DO ANYTHING
***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Nick Nolte, Albert Brooks, Julie Kavner, Joely Richardson
written and directed by James L. Brooks

by Bill Chambers When news of Nick Nolte’s arrest for driving under the influence of the date-rape drug hit the Toronto International Film Festival last year, just days after he’d made a strong showing there with Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief, I immediately flashed back to the time I met Nolte–“met,” alas, a figure of speech in this case: We crossed paths in the lobby of the Park Hyatt Hotel. His beanstalk frame sheathed in an emasculating banana-yellow housecoat, Nolte wore a pair of bookish specs that offset his craggy mug, and his snow-coloured hair stood unnaturally on end, as though he’d just seen a ghost. On his way to record interviews for Breakfast of Champions (and looking a lot more like that film’s Kilgore Trout than like the erstwhile Tom Wingo), Nolte growled this to a gawping me in passing:

Swept Away (2002) – DVD

January 30, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Italy, Romance, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Madonna, Adriano Giannini, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Bruce Greenwood
screenplay by Guy Ritchie, based on the screenplay by Lina Wertmüller
directed by Guy Ritchie

by Bill Chambers No, it's not a masterpiece, but the deck was already stacked against Guy Ritchie's Swept Away long before anyone saw the picture. That it was a remake (of Lina Wertmüller's squirm-inducing Swept Away… by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August) was strike one; that it starred Madonna, a lousy film actress considered box-office poison, strike two; that Ritchie is married to Madonna, marking Swept Away as the kind of vanity project that power couples make to spend more time together than their private life allows, strike three. And every review you read of Swept Away–that I read, at least–parroted these three strikes, sizing them to fit a column's allotment; there's no doubt in my mind that, even though it became the whipping-boy of late-night talk-show hosts and assured its victory at the 2003 Golden Raspberrys with near-universal placement on year-end worst-of lists, you haven't any meaningful clue as to what's actually wrong with Swept Away.

Sweet Home Alabama (2002) – DVD

January 29, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

½*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Fred Ward
screenplay by C. Jay Cox
directed by Andy Tennant

by Walter Chaw The first clue as to the vileness of Andy Tennant's Sweet Home Alabama is that it's named after a Lynyrd Skynrd song (paving the way, one supposes, for Freebird: The Movie and Smokestack Lightning); the second clue is that it's the first Reese Witherspoon picture in a while to find a way to squander her almost preternatural ability to salvage terrible scripts and spent concepts floating her way post-Election. Extraordinarily boring and unfunny while redolent with the sort of bad behaviour-made-cutesy that made stars of Julia Roberts and Ashley Judd, Sweet Home Alabama at least has the unlikely distinction of rendering Witherspoon shrill, dull, and during one ugly drunken tirade, irredeemable.

Blue Crush (2002) [Collector’s Edition] (Widescreen) – DVD

January 27, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Romance, Sports

***/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, Matthew Davis, Sanoe Lake
screenplay by Lizzy Weiss & John Stockwell, based on the article "Surf Girls of Maui" by Susan Orlean
directed by John Stockwell

by Walter Chaw Bob Marley sings "Could You Be Loved" as a quartet of surf girls in a finned vintage powder-blue ride, yellow surfboards strapped to its roof, chase the dawn to catch the perfect pipe breaking over Hawaii's sand bars and coral reefs. There is possibly no finer capsule of the adrenaline of early morning and youth in recent memory, and while Blue Crush, the movie surrounding this moment, can't sustain that feeling of hope springing eternal, what it manages is an estrogen opera so intensely feminine that it serves as the antidote (and cannier doppelgänger) to Diesel's xXx flex-a-thon.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) – DVD

January 26, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan
screenplay by Nia Vardalos
directed by Joel Zwick

by Walter Chaw Destined to be one of those much-touted Hollywood discovery stories, Nia Vardalos's one-woman play "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was seen by Rita Wilson (Mrs. Tom Hanks) and ultimately conceived as a film for veteran bad-TV director Joel Zwick (Hanks's "bosom buddy," as it were). The results are predictably sloppy: all expansive gestures, big emotions, and ethnic sitcom generalities that were handled with more intelligence and wit by Moonstruck. The sad reality of My Big Fat Greek Wedding's stultifying predictability and stand-up sensibility–what plays well as a monologue translates clumsily as film narrative–is that there are enough broad stabs at overbearing mothers and in-law tensions that folks will come away from the film mistaking a warmth for their own experiences with an overabundance of affection for My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Dreamers (1999) – DVD

January 24, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD

½*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Jeremy Jordan, Courtney Gains, Portia Dawson
written and directed by Ann Lu

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a film-within-the-film in Ann Lu's Dreamers that underlines everything that makes Dreamers itself so terrible. Ethan (Mark Ballou), Dreamers' chief wannabe auteur, shoots a fantasy sequence involving an asylum-style treatment program for those who suffer from movie love; the idea would seem to be that would-be filmmakers are martyrs, regardless of talent. It becomes obvious that this aspirant has nothing else to put on film but annoyance at his frustrated ambitions, and we'd wonder who'd watch such an empty exercise in self-pity if we were not, in fact, watching one just like it at the time. I don't recommend that you become part of that elite club of Dreamers-watchers, because, despite an incidental evocation of squalid life on the fringes of film, it has little reason to live–save as a warning to all indie dreamers not to follow its shabby path to destruction.