Storytelling (2002) [Unrated and R-rated Versions] – DVD

July 12, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance, Satire

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamatti
written and directed by Todd Solondz

by Walter Chaw The line between love and misanthropy is thin, and Todd Solondz is a cunning cartographer of that precarious divide. He sees political correctness as an insidious product of the kind of paternalistic racism that discards truth in favour of generally held truisms, a crutch for well-meaning racists who lack the wit to grasp that the basic misunderstanding of difference driving a desire to discriminate against minorities is identical to that which drives a desire to protect minorities. Solondz’s films are confrontational in the extreme, full-frontal assaults on the hypocrisy that fuels most relationships and stark dissections of the politics of cruelty.

Fathom (1967) – DVD

July 10, 2002Posted in1960s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, Satire, UK

*/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Tony Franciosa, Raquel Welch, Ronald Fraser, Greta Chi
screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr.
directed by Leslie H. Martinson

by Walter Chaw There’s something desperately wrong with veteran television director Leslie H. Martinson’s spy spoof Fathom, and it took me the whole movie to figure it out: Raquel Welch, as the titular va-va-va-voom dental hygienist cum parachutist cum superspy spends the entire film running from symbols of aggressive virility. Clad fetchingly in a variety of swimsuits and tight shirts (but never pants), our Fathom is pursued by a man with a speargun, by a Russian paramour mistaking our heroine for a prostitute, through various tunnels, and through a train. In its barest form, Fathom appears to be a rape fantasy involving a helpless, screaming, occasionally castrating Welch (though, tellingly, the only person she kills is another woman), who plays a variation on her standard cocktease and–naturally–deserves getting prodded about by a bull while a collection of bad guys poke at her with phallic shunts.

Hart’s War (2002) – DVD

July 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, War

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell, Terrence Dashon Howard, Vicellous Reon Shannon
screenplay by Billy Ray and Terry George, based on the novel by John Katzenbach
directed by Gregory Hoblit

by Walter Chaw Director Gregory Hoblit’s fourth consecutive celluloid guilty pleasure, Hart’s War constantly dances the razor’s edge of offensively pat (equating Nazi Germany with Macon, GA circa 1944) while providing enough canned tension and studied theatricality to put A Few Good Men to shame. With Bruce Willis as a smirky secondary character and largely-untested Irishman Colin Farrell asked to shoulder the brunt of the courtroom hijinks, Hart’s War is an exceptionally well-done bad movie that hums along on its earnestness. Though if you think about the film at all after the lights come up, best not to contemplate the plot, which is littered with holes like P-51 rocket craters.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001) – DVD

July 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by John A. Davis and David N. Weiss & J. David Stem and Steve Oedekerk
directed by John A. Davis

by Jarrod Chambers There is a new innocence abroad. You can see it in movies such as Spider-Man and the Academy Award-nominated Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, which feel no need to undercut the goodness of their heroes or the morality of the story with black irony. They tell us, in effect, that it is okay to be a nice guy whose heart is in the right place, who uses his abilities in the service of good, who makes mistakes and pays for them without becoming bitter or psychotic. I, for one, think it’s a breath of fresh air after the dark, depressing visions of the Tim Burton Batman era.

Pearl Harbor (2001) [60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition]|Pearl Harbor: The Director’s Cut [VISTA Series] – DVDs

June 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, War

*½/****
ACE DVD – Image A+ Sound A (DD) A+ (DTS) Extras C+
VISTA DVD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Tom Sizemore
screenplay by Randall Wallace
directed by Michael Bay

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I must shamefully admit that I greeted the approach of Pearl Harbor‘s release with a mixture of moral righteousness and secret anticipation. I knew that no good could come from the intersection of the WWII nostalgia wave and the craven instincts of producer Jerry Bruckheimer; anyone who had seen Top Gun, his earlier effort in military pornography, would have to surmise that his new film’s potential for right-wing jingoism was clearly off the scale. These suspicions were confirmed once I saw the trailer, its sickening combination of swelling music, explosions, dashing soldiers and the FDR “Day of Infamy” speech promising propaganda of Riefenstahlian proportions. Anyone who reads me would expect me to give it a good shellacking, and so I hoped for a total outrage to crucify without remorse–reaping me the happy side effect of securing me the moral high ground from which to preach.

Gosford Park (2001) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

June 24, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, Italy, Mystery, UK

***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Stephen Fry, Emily Watson, Ryan Phillippe
screenplay by Julian Fellowes
directed by Robert Altman

by Walter Chaw A thematic continuation of The Player‘s violent iconoclasm, Robert Altman takes on the very British “Upstairs, Downstairs” class struggle in Gosford Park, a film that resolves itself as another full-frontal assault on the Hollywood studio system. Misanthropic, smug, and pessimistic, it behaves like an Agatha Christie chamber mystery, complete with secretive service staff, bumbling policemen, and the usual upper-crust suspects, but it’s ultimately little more than an unavoidable homage to Renoir’s The Rules of the Game and a dig at a system outside of which Altman eternally finds himself. Thankfully, Gosford Park more resembles the genre-bending Altman of Kansas City than the truculently proselytizing Altman of Dr. T & the Women.

Black Hawk Down (2001) – DVD

June 22, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, UK, War

****/**** Image A- Sound A+
starring Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana
screenplay by Ken Nolan, based on the book by Mark Bowden
directed by Ridley Scott

Mustownby Walter Chaw Black Hawk Down is a living, seething animal, full of courage and heroism, stinking of blood and gunpowder. It lacks the paternalistic moralizing of Saving Private Ryan as well as much of the poetry of The Thin Red Line, but it captures the best images of both while discarding the chaff of the former. One scene towards the end of the film, as exhausted U.S. Rangers are led to safety by a group of Somali children, is a fine example of that brute synergy. Ridley Scott’s film is the only big budget spectacle film of the last several years (Pearl Harbor, The Perfect Storm, all the way back to Titanic) that actually has the nerve to honour the event it seeks to recreate. The characters aren’t stock movie stereotypes–in fact, they’re so minimally portrayed that the general homogeny of its soldiers in battle serves to highlight mainly a minimalist “us against them” mentality. Black Hawk Down trusts its audience; it is perhaps the first and only time that this will be said of a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) [The Two-Disc Awards Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

June 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Disability, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany
screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar
directed by Ron Howard

by Walter Chaw Mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. gained his reputation in theoretical economics and/by discerning patterns in impossibly complicated numerical models. A Beautiful Mind, a film based very loosely upon his life, likewise deals with theoretical economics (in regards to Christmas box office), but offers bland predictable patterns in place of complexity. For example, because this is DreamWorks’/Universal’s Oscar tentpole, the running time falls safely in the “adult contemporary holiday respectable” range of 130-145 minutes, and it features a big name actor in a role that requires him to be some combination of mentally disabled (I Am Sam, Forrest Gump, Rain Man), insane (As Good As It Gets), or that delicate combination of the two: a genius (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester).

Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows (2000)

June 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Clint Eastwood, Documentary, DVD, Television

***/**** Image B Sound A
directed by Bruce Ricker

by Walter Chaw Directed by Bruce Ricker, Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows is a particularly good biographical account featuring clips from dozens of the titular subject’s work, interviews with former Eastwood co-stars as diverse as Meryl Streep and Richard Burton, and a smooth narration read by Morgan Freeman that links the periods of the actor’s professional life with grace and alacrity. Of particular interest are the moments in which such admirers as French director Bertrand Tavernier discuss Eastwood’s reception overseas. Blissfully lacking scrutiny into the actor’s personal life, the picture is more A&E than E!, choosing the road less travelled in tracing the actor’s evolution from studio stable hand to one of the most powerful directors in the United States.

Frank Herbert’s Dune (2000) – DVD|Frank Herbert’s Dune [Special Edition: Director’s Cut] – DVD

June 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi, Television

***/****
DVD – Image C+ Sound C+ Extras C+
DVD (SEDC) – Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring William Hurt, Alec Newman, Saskia Reeves, James Watson
screenplay by John S. Harrison, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by John Harrison

by Jarrod Chambers On the whole, I enjoyed the 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert’s Dune, which was adapted and directed by John Harrison. It has a sustained mood, it conveys some of the spirit of its source material, and it is entertaining, especially the last episode. The plot, stated baldly: Paul Atreides (Alec Newman), the young son of Duke Leto Atreides (William Hurt) comes to a desert planet called Arrakis, notable as the only source in the universe of the mysterious substance “spice.” The spice unleashes psychic powers in young Paul, who, along with his mother, Jessica (Saskia Reeves), is driven from his home and must join the Fremen, a group of desert nomads. He grows up with the tribe and eventually leads a rebellion against House Harkonnen, who now rule Arrakis, finally brokering peace with Emperor Shaddam IV (Giancarlo Giannini) and the mysterious Spacing Guild, which owns all the spaceships.

Vidocq (2001) [Signature Collection] – DVD

June 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, DVD, France, Mystery, Thriller

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras (see review)
starring Gérard Depardieu, Guillaume Canet, Ines Sastre, André Dussolier
screenplay by Jean-Claude Grange
directed by Pitof

by Bill Chambers Bona fide criminologist Eugene Francois Vidocq has been the subject of several films, including Douglas Sirk’s little-known A Scandal in Paris. What makes him ripe for mythologizing is his pre-detective career as a thief: he’d learned the streets so well as one of their own that he knew which rocks to turn over in his police work. Among his achievements as a purported inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, master of disguise Vidocq pioneered the science of ballistics and founded the first detective agency. Little biographical detail finds its way into Francophone director Pitof’s anti-biopic Vidocq, but a cursory knowledge of the gumshoe’s legacy can’t hurt. You may otherwise find yourself doubting the layout of Vidocq’s office–which suggests Sam Spade’s circa 1830–or his talent for slipping in and out of corners unnoticed, even though he’s portrayed by the unmistakable Gérard Depardieu.

The Great American Songbook (2002) – DVD

June 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Music, Television

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
directed by Andrew J. Kuehn

by Walter Chaw Starting off fascinating and ending up feeling slightly overlong, the expansive musical travelogue The Great American Songbook traces the roots of “American” popular music from the War of 1812 through to the early Christy minstrel shows, Bessie Smith, Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, and beyond. If it’s true that things go in cycles on a grand scheme, it’s also true of an individual’s life: Reviewing The Great American Songbook for me coincides with my first reading of Griel Marcus’s brilliant Mystery Train; touches hands with my interview with Andrei Codrescu, who’s working on a documentary about the Mississippi blues; and follows fast my exposure to the brilliant Sarah Vowell’s brilliant piece on the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The piece found me, in other words, already on a journey into our heritage of American music, and if the picture is more travelogue than encyclopedia, its value is as timeline and supplement.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete First Season (1997) + Friends: The Complete First Season (1994-1995) – DVDs

June 17, 2002Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Romance, Television, Vampire

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image B- Sound B Extras B
"Welcome to Hellmouth," "The Harvest," "The Witch," "Teacher's Pet," "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," "The Pack," "Angel," "I Robot – You Jane," "The Puppet Show," "Nightmares," "Out of Mind, Out of Sight," "Prophecy Girl"

FRIENDS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
"Pilot," "The One With the Sonogram at the End," "The One With the Thumb," "The One With George Stephanopoulos," "The One With the East German Laundry Detergent," "The One With the Butt," "The One With the Blackout," "The One Where Nana Dies Twice," "The One Where Underdog Gets Away," "The One With the Monkey," "The One With Mrs. Bing," "The One With the Dozen Lasagnas," "The One With the Boobies," "The One With the Candy Hearts," "The One With the Stoned Guy," "The One With Two Parts," "The One With All the Poker," "The One Where the Monkey Gets Away," "The One with the Evil Orthodontist," "The One with Fake Monica," "The One with the Ick Factor," "The One with the Birth," "The One Where Rachel Finds Out"

by Bill Chambers Like a child experiencing puberty, the first season of a television series hopes you don't notice that it hasn't settled into its voice yet, that it has no sense of style, that it's unprepared for the microscope of society. The pressures are great for a teenager, but the stakes for a TV show are similarly high: While going through its growing pains, it has a limited number of chances to catch ratings lightning in a bottle. Imagine saying to a gawky adolescent, "Impress me." With the near-simultaneous DVD releases of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete First Season" and "Friends: The Complete First Season", there's an occasion to reflect on how a series becomes popular (although the zeitgeist is always such a mystery we can't ever hope for a demonstrable hypothesis) and, for fun's sake, to retrace the evolution of these unique TV-watching experiences.

Rollerball (2002) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Japan, Sci-Fi, Sports

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
screenplay by Larry Ferguson and John Pogue
directed by John McTiernan

by Walter Chaw When John McTiernan’s Rollerball was scheduled for the summer 2001 movie season, it boasted of a full-frontal Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and some graphic violence. What it didn’t have was the confidence of MGM, who pushed the release of the film into the doldrums of the new year and presided over the cutting of the only two possible reasons (the nudity and the gore) that anyone would have for seeing the film in the first place. Doubtless the rationale was to garner a PG-13 rating and the expanded pre-teen first-weekend box-office it confers; they’d better hope for a whopper opening, because no one is seeing this turkey twice. It strikes me as telling that a major studio would have so little confidence in a film that it is deemed somehow too prurient and also not “good” enough for a summer audience. Rollerball proves the truism that a studio often doesn’t know if it has a winner–but almost always knows when it has a stinker. Saying that Rollerball is better than the simultaneously released Collateral Damage is likely the only praise it will garner this weekend.

Bad Company (1972) – DVD

June 15, 2002Posted in1970s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Jeff Bridges, Barry Brown, Jim Davis, David Huddleston
screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton
directed by Robert Benton

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover How the mighty do fall. By the end of the '70s, Robert Benton had lowered himself to Oscar-whoring with the tepid Kramer vs. Kramer–a fact impossible to reconcile with the promise he showed in Bad Company, his smashing directorial debut. Utterly distinct amongst revisionist westerns, Benton's marvel ditches the genre's boilerplate cynicism and revels in the freedom of lawlessness; instead of a clumsy knee-jerk finger-pointer, we get the joys and sorrows of life amongst scavengers. Having more in common with My Own Private Idaho or Going Places than with the pseudo-critical genre on whose margins it skulks, Bad Company lets us roam the landscape instead of following the road to town, and in so doing makes us feel things that no mere western could possibly make us feel.

I Am Sam (2001) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

June 12, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disability, Drama, DVD

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Doug Hutchison
screenplay by Kristine Johnson & Jessie Nelson
directed by Jessie Nelson

by Walter Chaw I Am Sam‘s premise is a strange one: a mentally retarded* man (titular Sam, played by Sean Penn) impregnates a homeless woman he has invited to stay with him. After giving birth to the impossibly precocious Lucy (Dakota Fanning), the vagrant mom vamooses (“I never wanted this! I just wanted a place to sleep!”), leaving Sam solely responsible for the raising of the child. With the help of eccentric piano-playing recluse Dianne Wiest (perhaps fulfilling a bizarre ambition to play Madame Sousatzka), Sam learns an infant’s feeding schedule (by timing it to late-night Nickelodeon programming), shops for diapers, and realizes that he needs to find daycare if he wants to keep his job tidying sugar cozies at the local Starbucks. (Feel-good, politically-correct bullshit being a saltlick for corporate sponsors, Starbucks, International House of Pancakes, Target, and Pizza Hut all helped fund I Am Sam.) When Child Services finally collects Lucy into protective custody on her seventh birthday, Sam gets frosty type-A lawyer Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer) to take on his cause pro bono. In the process, of course, Sam’s infectious goodness teaches Rita, and us, a little about what’s really important in life.

Shallow Hal (2001) – DVD

June 8, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander, Jimmy Badstibner
screenplay by Sean Moynihan & Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly
directed by Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly

by Walter Chaw Sadness saturates every frame of Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s Shallow Hal like a melancholy tune. It seeps into the corners of a scene–into the wounded eyes of a young woman who has never been asked for her phone number and the wary acceptance of a compliment by someone accustomed to casual abuse. The premise of the film is deceptively simple: an extremely shallow man, the titular Hal (Jack Black), is given the ability by self-help guru Tony Robbins to see the “inner beauty” of people. This means that suddenly for Hal, many beautiful people appear ugly and many physically unattractive people gorgeous. Some folks remain unchanged. In the case of the guarded and acerbic 300 lb Rosemary, she resembles Gwyneth Paltrow in Hal’s eyes.

The Pagemaster (1994) – DVD

June 4, 2002Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance

*½/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras B-
starring Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, Ed Begley, Jr., Mel Harris
screenplay by David Casci, David Kirschner, Ernie Contreras
live-action director Joe Johnston, animation director Maurice Hunt

by Walter Chaw Tailor-made as a public service announcement for going to the library and reading the classics, The Pagemaster makes up for what it lacks in grace with an admirable and perhaps misplaced faith in its audience. Clearly intended as an introduction to discussion rather than a particularly entertaining animated film, it becomes the role of the parents with The Pagemaster to point out the references it makes along the way: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Melville’s Moby Dick, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Verne’s 20,000 Leagues, Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The extent to which a parent is able to fulfill this obligation is the extent to which The Pagemaster is worthwhile; using this film as an eighty-minute babysitter-cum-opiate negates any possible positive effect conferred by the picture–raising the question, clearly, of how best to approach criticism of the piece.

Fidel (2002) – DVD

June 4, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Television

*½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Victor Huggo Martin, Gael Garcia Bernal, Patricia Velasquez, Cecilia Suarez
screenplay by Stephen Tolkin, based on the books Guerrilla Prince by Georgie Anne Geyer and Fidel Castro by Robert E. Quirk
directed by David Attwood

by Walter Chaw Fidel is a very long, frustrating, exculpatory biopic of Cuba’s dictator that, in its near-fanatical dedication to even-handedness, provides a piece devoid of a moral compass. In certain instances, pacifism implies an endorsement of one side and director David Attwood is certainly guilty of not taking a stand on one of the most controversial, inflammatory, murderous, megalomaniacal, and charismatic figures in modern history. Beginning, intriguingly, in 1949 with a young Castro (Victor Huggo Martin) as a clean-shaven lawyer incensed by certain acts of vandalism perpetrated by the American Navy in Havana, the film promises to draw an interesting connection to Gandhi’s legal background and, most fascinatingly, the starkly different ways these two revolutionary leaders conduct their rebellions (and to what eventual purposes).

Hombre (1967) – DVD

June 3, 2002Posted in1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone, Diane Cilento
screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by Martin Ritt

by Walter Chaw Paul Newman’s Hombre is his fourth and final “H” film of that decade–a quartet that includes The Hustler, Harper, and another of his six collaborations with Martin Ritt, the fantastic Hud. Each (and feel free to lump Cool Hand Luke and Paris Blues in with this esteemed crowd) features Newman as an outsider influence, a catalyst for change and a hero testing the boundaries of acceptable social mores (as was much of the cinema of the ’60s), made all the more shocking for his matinee idol good looks and all-American cool. Newman, arguably the biggest and best star of the Sixties, was the quintessential anti-hero for a dissenting cinematic age, and he brought that brooding outcast sensibility to what was perhaps the quintessential outsider role: a half-breed in a western in Ritt’s 1967 film Hombre.