Hard Lessons (1986) – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Television

The George McKenna Story
*/**** Image C- Sound C
starring Denzel, Lynn Whitfield, Akosua Busia, Richard Masur
screenplay by Charles Eric Johnson
directed by Eric Laneuville

by Walter Chaw Hot on the heels of Denzel Washington’s second Oscar–which was sort of a relieved, honorary accolade for avoiding the umpteenth resurrection of his Glory performance, another collaboration with Spike Lee, and a third slain civil rights leader–comes Artisan’s hasty repackaging of 1986’s TV movie The George McKenna Story, ironically dubbed Hard Lessons and refurbished with new promotional art.

Taking Care of Business (1990) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

½*/**** Image D Sound D
starring James Belushi, Charles Grodin, Anne De Salvo, Loryn Locklin
screenplay by Jill Mazursky & Jeffrey Abrams
directed by Arthur Hiller

by Walter Chaw Proving that hope springs eternal in the hearts of idiots and madmen, Taking Care of Business features the Cubs in a World Series and Jim Belushi in one of those showcase roles in which a nominal comedian gets to demonstrate his alleged madcap skills. Occurring in that weird twilight zone of cinema where once-topical humour is briefly funny again in a retro-Gen-X way (Jim’s exclamation upon entering a mansion, “I’m on freakin’ ‘Dynasty’!” would find a home in any neo-Tarantino screenplay), Taking Care of Business also features two “Star Trek: The Next Generation” stars (Gates McFadden and John de Lancie)–the one making a joke out of her breasts, the other nodding quietly in appreciation of them. The flick is, to summarize, interesting in a surreal sort of way.

Flesh and Bone (1993) – DVD

Posted in****/****, 1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance

****/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Dennis Quaid, James Caan, Meg Ryan, Gwyneth Paltrow
written and directed by Steve Kloves

by Walter Chaw Steve Kloves’s follow-up to his exceptional The Fabulous Baker Boys is Flesh and Bone, a dark-hued journey through the Southern Gothic that represents career pinnacles for Meg Ryan and (until The Royal Tenenbaums) Gwyneth Paltrow. That Flesh and Bone–a doom-filled piece that glowers with malevolence from its horrifying opening sequence to its unsettling conclusion–never received a great deal of attention upon its initial release isn’t as much of a surprise as the fact that not even the passage of time has cemented it as a minor classic. There are few pictures more deserving of critical revisionism.

From Hell (2001) [Director’s Limited Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czechoslovakia, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras A
starring Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm, Paul Rhys
screenplay by Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell
directed by Albert Hughes & Allen Hughes

by Walter Chaw Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel From Hell is first a work of Romanticism (in that it evolves from a mistrust of industry, a demonizing of all that the rail represents to the continued corruption of nature), then a nostalgia for a hopelessly idealized past. Once his Romantic roots are established, Moore clarifies the evolutionary link between British Romanticism and Modernism by lifting a quote from Jack the Ripper’s infamous letter: “One day, men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century.” As it’s employed by Moore and in consideration of the author’s grasp of literary theory, this one quote eloquently juxtaposes the impact of Bloody Jack’s Grand Guignol rampage in London of 1888 with the fin de siècle (The French Revolution) that marked the actual birth of Romanticism in the Lake District of 1789. In simpler terms, From Hell is a work of incomparable incandescence–smart stuff for smart people and theoretically the easiest of Moore’s works to translate to the big screen.

Performance (1970) – DVD

Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Gangster, Music, UK

Performancecap

***½/**** Image B+ Sound C Extras C
starring James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton
screenplay by Donald Cammell
directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg

by Walter Chaw Emerging in the middle of one of the most experimental, challenging periods in cinematic history, Performance–completed in 1968 but shelved until 1970–is a product at once ahead of its time and two years too late. Had its trippy-dippy, anachronistic cross-cutting and madly-inappropriate scoring appeared in 1968 (the year of Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead, If…, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the film to which it perhaps owes its greatest allegiance, Once Upon a Time in the West), Performance would’ve found traction and good company as a foundational film for the American New Wave instead of as a picture that, for all its foment and formal revolution, seemed hysterical against a maturing, more sedate(d) mainstream avant-garde parade of stuff like El Topo, Zabriskie Point, MASH, and Five Easy Pieces.

Metropolis (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
screenplay by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, based on the comic book by Osamu Tezuka
directed by Rintaro

by Walter Chaw There is a sense of wonder inherent in the exploration of new mediums. A young Maxim Gorky’s 1896 review of one of the first Lumiére Cinématographe shows in Russia begins, “Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.” As I began exploring the anime medium (not a “genre,” I am assured, and I have come to concur) a scant couple of years ago, I felt similarly the interloper in a dreamscape conjured by a culture steeped in tradition, mythology, and the sort of artistic sensibility that could only evolve from the only people victimized by the most terrible weapon of mass destruction humans have devised. Anime is–perhaps predictably, then–often-post-apocalyptic (its themes exploring the existential by way of William Gibson’s cyberpunk and Philip K. Dick’s identity crisis) finding elements of the rapture in such rapturous fantasies as the lyrical Princess Mononoke, the viscerally charged Ninja Scroll, and the ferocious yet delicate Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind.

Three Fugitives (1989) – DVD

Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

½*/**** Image B Sound B-
starring Nick Nolte, Martin Short, Sarah Rowland Doroff, James Earl Jones
written and directed by Francis Veber

by Walter Chaw Written and directed by Francis Veber, remaking his own Les Fugitifs from two years previous, Three Fugitives is one of the middle-period films under Disney’s Touchstone imprint, although the growing pains are still obvious. What works in a French farce is wearying and disturbing in a purportedly “light-hearted” American comedy (see also: Three Men and a Baby, The Birdcage, and Cousins); not helping, of course, is a screenplay in English by a non-English speaker and a performance by Nick Nolte that is by turns unnecessarily terrifying and unintentionally grotesque. It is not as terrifying and grotesque, however, as the implications of a man released from prison after five years cuddling a little girl in an abandoned warehouse, nor of that same man demanding that little Martin Short dress up in drag.

Ocean’s Eleven (2001) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Brad Pitt
screenplay by Ted Griffin
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Walter Chaw Impeccably-costumed and impossibly-handsome action figures are arranged in cool poses throughout Ocean's Eleven, Steven Soderbergh's updating of the same-named Rat Pack caper. A throwback to the star-driven cinema of the Fifties and a reflection of our own fanatical interest in cults of personality, the film features transparent performances (with the exception of Don Cheadle, each performer in Ocean's Eleven is playing his- or herself), and the same kind of sadistic voyeurism that impels us to simultaneously deify and find fault with our favourite actors keeps our peepers glued to the screen as George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Elliot Gould, and Carl Reiner revolve around one another in a loose heist intrigue intended to relieve Andy Garcia of both his millions and his girlfriend.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Teen, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Chyler Leigh, Chris Evans, Jaime Pressly, Deon Richmond
screenplay by Mike G. Bender & Adam Jay Epstein & Andrew Jacobson and Phil Beauman & Buddy Johnson
directed by Joel Gallen

by Walter Chaw The first thing one notices about Joel Gallen’s Not Another Teen Movie is that it appears to have been shot on 16mm stock off the back of someone’s truck–grainy and shaky, it’s easily the cheapest-looking major studio release of the year. After a brief prologue in which our heroine Janey Briggs (Chyler Leigh, whose character’s name appears to spoof “Jason Biggs,” the star of American Pie–that’s as clever as the film gets) is caught by her entire extended family and clergy en flagrante with a giant mechanized dildo, the second thing one notices about Not Another Teen Movie is that it has no sense of timing, no sense of shame, and no reason for being.

Mulholland Drive (2001) – DVD

Mulholland Drive (2001) – DVD

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Lynch, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, France, Mystery, Thriller

Mulholland Dr.
****/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Ann Miller
written and directed by David Lynch

by Walter Chaw

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
 Fled is that music — Do I wake or sleep?
– John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive contends that the answer to the eternal struggle between what is real and what is fantasy comes in the form of a Keatsian confusion–it’s the difference between Adam’s dream and Eve rendered flesh, blurred in the mind of the creator and his audience. A film is a dream of the director made tangible, a conceit familiar from the fourth-wall-breaking in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (banishing any mystery there might have been regarding the visual references to that film in Lynch’s piece), and a movie’s characters therefore become projections of its maker’s sublimated longing (clarifying too the auteur’s use of wardrobe and colour schemes from Hitchcock’s meditation on objectification, Vertigo, as well as those of his first collaboration with inamorata Tippi Hedren, The Birds).

Less Than Zero (1987) – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound B-
starring Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, Robert Downey Jr., James Spader
screenplay by Harley Peyton, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis
directed by Marek Kanievska

by Walter Chaw The quality of dislocation in Marek Kanievska’s Less Than Zero is startling and sinister. It creeps up on you after a confusing opening that skips forward six months from a high school graduation before flashing back a month and then reorienting itself again in Beverly Hills at Christmastime in 1987. But by the middle of the film, the temporal decisions made during its disorienting prologue suddenly make perfect sense: while Less Than Zero will never be as narratively jumpy again, the pervasive mood of the piece remains disconnected and frightened. It feels breathless in a way that movies about drug addiction must. Though Less Than Zero seems, despite its sterile apocalyptic blight, almost naïve in the wake of Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, it retains (especially in retrospect, given the lost spirit of the Eighties and Robert Downey Jr.’s offscreen problems), something approaching the laden nostalgia of Romanticism. Something by Thomas de Quincey, no doubt.

All the Right Moves (1983) – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports

½*/**** Image C Sound C-
starring Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson, Lea Thompson, Charles Cioffi
screenplay by Michael Kane
directed by Michael Chapman

by Walter Chaw Seedy in that ineffable Eighties way, Michael Chapman’s All the Right Moves is a star vehicle for a young Tom Cruise, following up his leading role in Risky Business with what is essentially a feature-length Steve Earle song about a downtrodden Pennsylvania steel town. Think Flashdance (released in the same year, strangely enough) with teenage boys instead of merely for them. Turmoil on a high-school football team (the Ampipe Bulldogs) functions as the microcosm for factory layoffs, teen pregnancy, and the existential angst embedded in the image of a horrible Lea Thompson playing a mournful saxophone on a street corner. Though there are a few moments of “was this ever cool” cheeseball nostalgia sprinkled here and again, All the Right Moves is teeth-clenchingly awful: half “The White Shadow”, half somehow more embarrassing and dated than even that popular TV series.

Black Knight (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Time Travel

**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B
starring Martin Lawrence, Tom Wilkinson, Marsha Thomason, Vincent Regan
screenplay by Darryl J. Quarles and Peter Gaulke & Gerry Swallow
directed by Gil Junger

by Walter Chaw Jamal Walker (Martin Lawrence) is a groundskeeper at an all-black amusement park who, just prior to falling in a stagnant moat, is given a dressing down for being “selfish” and not community-minded enough. (“Community” referring to the African-American populace of South Central Los Angeles.) Sharp-eyed viewers should instantly recognize that Black Knight will at some point metastasize from a farce to a public service announcement. (Luckily, we’re given a solid first act and a few moments in the second before it does.) When Jamal goes into the moat in pursuit of a golden medallion, he surfaces from a fetid stew in a never-never land where the plain protagonist becomes the keystone in a kingdom-wide intrigue.

Highlander (1986) [The Immortal Edition] – DVD

Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, UK

*½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Christopher Lambert, Roxanne Hart, Clancy Brown, Sean Connery
screenplay by Gregory Widen and Peter Bellwood & Larry Ferguson
directed by Russell Mulcahy

by Walter Chaw It is perhaps the very definition of a cult classic: a film so bad it breaks through that fetid envelope into the heady climes of “camp.” So much is forgiven when a picture’s earnest ineptness translates into that subterranean rhythm heard by those “in the know,” and the twelve-year-old in me remembers the derision I ladled upon those who just didn’t “get” the coolness of Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander. The passage of seventeen years brings the realization that not only have I gotten very old very fast, but that I may have arrived at the age where it is no longer wise to revisit films that I liked as a child.

Husbands and Wives (1992) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***½/**** Image A Sound C+
starring Woody Allen, Blythe Danner, Judy Davis, Mia Farrow
written and directed by Woody Allen

by Bill Chambers Husbands and Wives is a rawer tapestry of couples in flux from Woody Allen than his paternalistic Hannah and Her Sisters. It's reasonable to consider this Woody's Cassavetes movie, just as the previous Shadows and Fog was his Fellini (the title sounds like a sequel to Cassavetes's Husbands)–although Cassavetes wouldn't have couched the film's scenario in a faux-documentary framework, as Allen has. That's closer to Bob Fosse's turf; one imagines that Woody sees more of himself in Fosse, the entertainer, than he does Cassavetes, the brute poet. Shot in vérité handheld with an urgency that perhaps feels contrived, the film begins with the break-up of long-time marrieds Jack (a brilliant Sydney Pollack) and Sally (Oscar-nominated Judy Davis) and goes on to measure the shockwaves this sends through the lives of their friends, Gabe Roth (Allen) and his wife Judy (Mia Farrow). Sexually frustrated Jack falls into a relationship with a woman many years his junior (the lissome Sam (Lysette Anthony)), planting the seed for Gabe to act on his attraction to one of his writing students (Juliette Lewis). Judy, meanwhile, hooks Sally up with a co-worker, Michael (Liam Neeson). It's Judy's way of dealing with her own feelings for the guy, and needless to say, she didn't think it through.

Bandits (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Bruce Willis, Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton, Troy Garity
screenplay by Harley Peyton
directed by Barry Levinson

by Walter Chaw Joe (Bruce Willis) and Terry (Billy Bob Thornton) break out of an Oregon prison and begin robbing banks while making their way down the west coast to an idealized Acapulco. Along the way, they pick up Joe’s dimwit wannabe stuntman cousin Phil (Anthony Burch) to act as getaway driver, and Kate (Cate Blanchett), an unbalanced passerby who becomes intoxicated by life on the lam. Shunning the more usual tactic of ski masks and gun-waving, Joe and Terry take the banks’ presidents and their families hostage the night before heists, earning them the nickname “The Sleepover Bandits.” In the schizophrenically sprawling and tight script, these hold-ups share time with a developing love triangle between Joe, Terry, and Kate, and, less successfully, a framing story involving an “America’s Most Wanted”-like host.

Wedding Night (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Romance

Nuit de noces
½*/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D+
starring François Morency, Geneviève Brouillette, Pierrette Robitaille, Jacques Girard
screenplay by Marc Brunet, Émile Gaudreault
directed by Émile Gaudreault

by Walter Chaw A film so precious and insipid that it hurts, Émile Gaudreault’s screwball roundelay is an exercise in self-indulgence and cliché. Hailed as one of the best Canadian comedies in recent memory, Wedding Night (Nuit de noces) is a haphazard collection of slapstick, magic realism, sped-up Benny Hill interludes, dream sequences, absurdist wall-breaking, and terrifyingly trite musical cues (poor Bernard Herrmann is spinning in his grave). The film is a disaster, neither funny nor poignant nor observant of the poetics of love and marriage, a horror of malformed ideas and unearned moments. Who are these people? Why should we care about what happens to them?

Spy Game (2001) [Collector’s Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, DVD, Espionage, France, Germany, Japan, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane
screenplay by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw The defining moment of Spy Game, Tony Scott’s latest exercise in stylistic excess, occurs at about the midway point. Playing CIA spymaster Nathan Muir, Robert Redford debriefs his best agent Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) atop a building in Cold War Berlin. After a tense exchange, an enraged Bishop throws his chair off the barren, windswept rooftop. The problem with the scene is neither the preposterous screenplay by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata to which it belongs, nor Scott’s infatuation with the panoramic aerial shot, nor the way that Harry Gregson-Williams’s ubiquitous score threatens here and at every other moment to rupture your eardrums. It’s not even in the ridiculously out-of-place imagistic Xerox of Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders’s melancholy ode to love and Berlin.

Ali (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Directors: Michael Mann, Drama, DVD, Sports, Will Smith

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight, Mario Van Peebles
screenplay by Stephen J. Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson and Eric Roth & Michael Mann
directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw The craft of Ali is every bit as dazzling as we’ve come to expect from its director, Michael Mann; the film is a loving coronation of fighter Muhammad Ali’s myth. But at the same time, Ali is too dependent on our familiarity with its subject’s life, and spends altogether too much time in slow-motion reveries of choice bouts public and personal. Reminding at times of Martin Scorsese’s rapturous Kundun, the film falls far short of that razor-fine, impressionistic masterwork by aspiring to be all things to all people (docudrama, tribute, demystification)–an impulse never indulged by “The Greatest” himself.

Ultimate Fights from the Movies (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Martial Arts

*/**** Image A – D Sound A – D Extras A

by Walter Chaw For the purist, an idea like Ultimate Fights from the Movies (from the creators of the horror compilation Boogeymen) is simply abominable: a collection of short fight clips (none running longer than five minutes, regardless of the length of the scene quoted) culled from action films and introduced by cheesy bout cards that do nothing to establish the motives behind the conflict. This is particularly confusing for those who haven't seen the films in question, as–often–these climactic fight sequences involve key plot points that play into their resolutions. Essentially, the DVD is a thinly disguised promotional ploy that targets the demographic that doesn't care to wade through such niceties as plot and character. It targets, in other words, the lowest common denominator–a condemnation supported by its decision to present all of the fights in a cropped, full-screen aspect ratio, handily robbing some of the more beautiful and intricate sequences (cribbed from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Fist of Legend, The Legend of Drunken Master) of a good deal of their visual information.