The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) + Shock Treatment (1981) [Bodice-Ripping Fabulous 3-Disc Set] – DVD

October 11, 2006Posted in1970s, 1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Musical

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW 
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O’Brien
screenplay by Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien
directed by Jim Sharman

SHOCK TREATMENT
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Jessica Harper, Cliff De Young, Patricia Quinn, Richard O’Brien
screenplay by Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman
directed by Jim Sharman

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I have never attended an actual theatrical showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and for the longest time, I doubted that I was completely receptive to every significant nuance and intricacy of the film, what with its name-dropping of Michael Rennie and the presence of a performer called “Little Nell” who wears Mickey Mouse ears during the “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me” number. The picture’s esoteric quotient has always eluded my radar, preventing me from fully identifying with it, much less condescending to it. This idea of familiarity with extra-textual elements or training in a specific method of watching as essential in the evaluation process is a perennial issue in film criticism for me. My default position is that the two things don’t have that much to do with each other: Learning more about a film can deepen an appreciation that was already there, but the initial call of yea or nay is one that every king, scholar, and prole is equally qualified to make. Beautiful idea, I think–it helps me sleep at night and keeps me from being too scared to see and write about films outside my realm of experience. So why is it that I am so intimidated by this movie?

The Science of Sleep (2006) + Jet Li’s Fearless (2006)

September 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, China, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Martial Arts, Romance, Theatrical

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
*½/****
starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou
written and directed by Michel Gondry

Fearless
**/****
starring Jet Li, Nakamura Shidou, Sun Li, Dong Yong
screenplay by Chris Chow, Christine To
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw A cacophony of cascading whimsy, Michel Gondry's exercise in Freudian bric-a-brac The Science of Sleep plays like a movie based on a thrift store specializing in Harlequin novels–French Harlequin novels. It adheres to the music-video director's maxim of maximum images per second, and it casts Gael García Bernal as Stéphane, a useless lug endlessly working on a calendar of calamitous events and pining after his across-hall neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), with whom he is too smitten to confess that his mother is her landlord. His dreams take the form of a one-man variety show, while Gondry revels in scenes where he inflates his hero's hands and has him ride an animated patchwork horse. But The Science of Sleep is more exhausting than illuminating–more a loud masturbation than any kind of intercourse with the audience. The difference between the Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Gondry of The Science of Sleep, it seems obvious to say, is the difference between a film scripted by Charlie Kaufman and one not, though it's more complicated than that in that the Kaufman of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an artist who finally struck a balance between affectation and a much finer connective tissue. Gondry is still just engaged in the twist.

My TIFF So Far

September 9, 2006Posted inAustria, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Horror, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Mexico, Sci-Fi, South Korea, TIFF

Seems we’re all a little constipated right now but rest assured reviews are on the way; here’s a quick rundown of TIFFpix screened thus far by yours truly.

BABEL (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
It coheres better than 21 Grams, but Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga are really spinning their wheels at this point. A few funny extratextual lessons are imparted: never take a Fanning to Mexico (Elle has almost as harrowing an adventure there as sister Dakota does in Man on Fire); and never trust a director who includes a post-script dedication to his children. As with 21 Grams, though, Babel doesn’t make room for any intentional levity, eventually desensitizing you to all the calculated anguish. *½/****

The Wicker Man (2006)

August 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Esoterica, Germany, Horror, Mexico, Mystery, Nicolas Cage, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Frances Conroy
screenplay by Neil LaBute, based on the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer
directed by Neil LaBute

Wickerman2006by Walter Chaw You mark off certain literary flourishes in Neil LaBute's remake of Robin Hardy's classic The Wicker Man, and then you can't help but note that beneath the pagan matriarchy that is its villain and the hangdog cop (Nicolas Cage) that is its dullard hero, the film is just the auteur's latest unnecessarily reductive gender deconstruction. It's another major disappointment from the man who put humanity on the spit in In the Company of Men and–to a lesser, if no less affecting, degree–Your Friends and Neighbors. This redux hates women and, more, it hates femininity–typical LaBute, you could fairly offer, especially after Possession and The Shape of Things; The Wicker Man demonstrates again that LaBute is one of the brightest, most well-read American directors working–and that he's become incapable of focusing his smarts on a target other than the cruel and essentially alien nature of women. Hitchcock's films are arguably as obsessed, but his "wrong men" were hardly free of complicity in the construction of their own downfalls. Fatal to the production, then, is the introduction of an unsullied male hero–a literal martyr this time instead of the figurative types of LaBute's last couple pictures: a man of action (no milquetoast intellectuals here) struggling against a rising tide of castrating, hippie harpies.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) [Cinema Classics Collection] – DVD

July 24, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Music

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia Mc Broom, John La Zar
screenplay by Roger Ebert
directed by Russ Meyer

Beyondthevalleycapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no point in whitewashing the career of Russ Meyer. Latter-day critics have tried to float the filmmaker/satirist/horndog as some kind of feminist despite much evidence to the contrary, and though against-the-grain readings are possible, really, who are we kidding? Similarly, his Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is loaded with all sorts of attitudes most thinking adults would rather like to forget, including a streak of homophobia that resonates as slightly nasty. But with Meyer, it's impossible to separate an actual position from a sitting duck–and that confusion is what makes his films so uniquely mind-blowing. His fake morality tales blow up the very notion of morality, to the point where his less noble conceits are torpedoed with everything else.

Lifespan (1976) [Uncut Special Edition] – DVD

July 6, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Belgium, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Netherlands, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C-
starring Klaus Kinski, Hiram Keller, Tina Aumont, Fons Rademakers
screenplay by Judith Rascoe, Alva Ruben, Alexander Whitelaw
directed by Alexander Whitelaw

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Lifespan appears to be comprised of inserts from somebody else's movie. It huffs and puffs in expositional voiceover largely because it hasn't written any self-evident drama–we see loving shots of scenic Amsterdam and a lot of people walking in/out/through buildings, but nothing that might actually clue us into what the hell is going on. You could (as the special features on the film's DVD release do) insist that this is a Last Year at Marienbad-esque ploy, since there are other elements to support that thesis. Alas, Alexander Whitelaw is no Alain Resnais, and his rudimentary exploration of the meaning of eternal life sounds most like a biology student on the make. Aside from a bit of gratuitous skin, there's almost nothing to watch–but all sorts of terrible, pretentious things you never need to hear.

Eraserhead (1977) – DVD

June 29, 2006Posted in****/****, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Lynch, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates
written and directed by David Lynch

Eraserheadcap

by Walter Chaw MustownDavid Lynch makes documentaries of the human subconscious. He captures–in a deadpan, almost scientifically-objective way–the processes through which we assimilate and interpret machine-fed data, replicating in that sense the sort of Pop aesthetic of Warhol's ilk without the snarky sense of milk-fed superiority. Take the cultural cues in his work: the Rockwellian Americana he essays in Blue Velvet; the Bauhaus by way of Antoni Gaudi of Dune; or the late-Hitchcock identity puzzles he rejiggers in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive–both commonly seen as satires of what they represent but more accurately described, perhaps, as simple, uncommented-upon representations of what a lower layer of consciousness might consider to be unadorned gospel. Call the best moments of his best films Expressionism of the Id. (Mulholland Drive could be Vertigo shot by Hitch's bile and libido, unchained and unembarrassed.) Lynch's pictures are the very opposite of pretentious: they're unguarded images projected directly from a place of null intentionality. If the aim of art is to touch the sublime, to strum the thread of the collective unconscious that binds us each to each, as it were, then Lynch becomes a figure like Rainer Maria Rilke or William Blake or Beethoven–or in filmic terms, like Luis Buñuel or Carl Theodor Dreyer or moments of Sergio Leone.

The Short Films of David Lynch + Dumbland (2002) – DVDs

June 29, 2006Posted in1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: David Lynch, DVD, Esoterica, Short Films

THE SHORT FILMS OF DAVID LYNCH
Image A Sound A Extras B-

DUMBLAND
Image B Sound A-

by Bill Chambers One is tempted to appropriate Jean-Luc Godard's oft-misquoted "The cinema is Nicholas Ray" in discussing the origins of David Lynch, whose blossoming sophistication unwittingly paralleled that of film itself. From the magic lantern-style innovation of his sculpture installation Six Men Getting Sick to the fixed camera placements of The Alphabet to the rudimentary narrative of The Grandmother (whose heavy's freakishly accentuated jawline transforms his countenance into that of a snarling villain in the "Perils of Pauline" mode) to, finally, the total aesthetic compromise of the shot-on-video The Amputee, the first few entries contained on "The Short Films of David Lynch" imply that there is only one destiny for the medium, whether its evolution is spread out over a century or concentrated in the time it takes for an artist to develop a conscience. If most film students go through a similar rite of passage, there's often an attendant, ineffable impatience with primitive techniques in undergrad films that's absent in Lynch's early work.

Drawing Restraint 9 (2006)

May 12, 2006Posted inAuthors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Esoterica, Japan, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Matthew Barney, Björk, Shigeru Akahori, Koji Maki
written and directed by Matthew Barney

by Walter Chaw Where Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 falls short of his brilliant, seminal Cremaster series is in its decision to focus on the exploitation of natural resources from whaling through to oil–as filtered through the prism of Japanese industry (using Shinto as the primary test)–rather than on, as in Cremaster, the process and scope of myth-making from the Celts to the Masons to Gary Gilmore. The focus is too discrete for the far-reaching archetypes Barney's disquieting, biomechanical surrealism suggests (he's somewhere at the fulcrum between Salvador Dali and David Cronenberg)–the attempt to articulate the perversity of man's exploitation of their natural resources seems a little like what it is: an artist too good and too provocative to waste his time on something that sells so trite.

Quintet (1979) [Robert Altman Collection] – DVD

April 27, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Paul Newman, Bibi Andersson, Fernando Rey, Vittorio Gassman
screenplay by Frank Barhydt & Robert Altman and Patricia Resnick
directed by Robert Altman

Robertaltmanquintetcapby Bill Chambers Set during another Ice Age (in a featurette on the DVD, co-writer/director Robert Altman makes the even loopier suggestion that the action takes place on another planet, perhaps to either demonstrate what little use he has for prologue or account for a total absence of people of colour), Quintet stars Paul Newman–never particularly well-matched with the iconoclasts–as Essex, a seal hunter trekking across the frozen tundra with pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) in search of his brother Francha (Tom Hill), who lives in candlelit ruins that now constitute a metropolis. Francha greets Essex by inviting him to play Quintet, a glyphic board game that has developed a religious following in these joyless times (some of Quintet's adjudicators have even adopted the names of patron saints, and they all wear makeshift Tudor caps), and when Essex goes off to fetch firewood, Altman pulls a Psycho and kills off every member of his party. It turns out that latter-day Louis XIV Grigor (Fernando Rey) has turned this dystopia into a human Quintet board by orchestrating the deaths of losing players. For largely nebulous reasons, Essex assumes the identity of Francha's assassin and joins a high-stakes tournie; Grigor sees through this ruse but decides to humour him, if only because to do otherwise would be unsportsmanlike.

They Shoot Movies, Don’t They? …The Making of Mirage (2000) – DVD

March 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Pseudo-Documentary

***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C-
directed by Frank Gallagher

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover BIG-TIME SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There's a deception driving They Shoot Movies, Don't They? …The Making of Mirage that almost invalidates its considerable power. I can't actually write an in-depth review without telling you that this doc-doppelgänger is, in fact, fiction–a detail conveniently omitted from the keepcase and promotional materials so as to drive home its point while you take it all at face value. I was furious once the commentary finally cemented that "subject" Tom Paulson wasn't real and that his rise and fall never actually took place–but although I question the ethics of that sin of omission, there's no denying that the film is totally convincing as the genuine article. Director Frank Gallagher and his collaborators have clearly lived at the foot of the Hollywood mountain long enough to note the kind of desperation that destroys perspective and inflates egos, and they're painfully accurate in showing how an obsession with success can be a sure path to destruction.

Repo Man (1984) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

February 6, 2006Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Esoterica, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash
written and directed by Alex Cox

Repomanunicapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The question I ask after a screening of Repo Man is this: is it punk? And if it isn't punk, what is it? Those used to the anarcho-communitarian (i.e., "nice") ideals adopted by punk's intelligentsia would have no truck with the mentality of this film, whose hero, Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez), is in it for cheap thrills and hasn't got an ideal in his head. Indeed, once he gets sucked into the more "intense" world of car repossessor Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) and thus gainful employment, he distances himself from his punk friends–as represented by the three mohawk'd chumps whose idea of "doing crimes" is "let's order sushi and not pay!" But the repo gig leads to another dead end, as Bud turns out to be a blowhard full of idiot rules and his compatriots prove more unstable than Otto's old friends. There is no future to Otto's dreaming–just the cul-de-sac of punk's dark flipside: nihilism.

The Alan Clarke Collection – DVD

January 24, 2006Posted in1970s, 1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Crime, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Prison, Television, UK
SCUM (BBC VERSION) (1977) ***½/**** starring Ray Winstone, Phil Daniels, David Threfall screenplay by Roy Minton directed by Alan Clarke SCUM (THEATRICAL VERSION) (1979) ***½/**** starring Ray Winstone, Phil Daniels, Mick Ford screenplay by Roy Minton directed by Alan Clarke MADE IN BRITAIN (1982) ***½/**** starring Tim Roth, Eric Richard, Terry Richards screenplay by David Leland directed by Alan Clarke THE FIRM (1989) ***/**** starring Gary Oldman, Lesley Manville, Phillip Davis screenplay by Al Hunter directed by Alan Clarke ELEPHANT (1989) ***½/**** screenplay by Bernard MacLaverty directed by Alan Clarke DIRECTOR: ALAN CLARKE (1991) **/**** directed by Corin Campbell-Hill by…

The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes (2006); Mutual Appreciation (2006); Unknown (2006)

January 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Family, Fantasy, France, Germany, Music, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

THE PIANOTUNER OF EARTHQUAKES
*½/****
starring Amira Casar, Gottfried John, Assumpta Serna, César Saracho
screenplay by Alan Passes and The Quay Brothers
directed by The Quay Brothers

MUTUAL APPRECIATION
***½/****
starring Justin Rice, Rachel Clift, Andrew Bujalski, Seung-Min Lee
written and directed by Andrew Bujalski

UNKNOWN
½*/****
starring Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Bridget Moynahan, Joe Pantoliano
screenplay by Matthew Waynee
directed by Simon Brand

by Walter Chaw The Quay Brothers, Stephen and Timothy, are marvellous animators, having shepherded stop-motion and a disquieting biomechanical ethic into a series of notably discomfiting shorts, more than one of which pays tribute to their hero/mentor Jan Svankmajer. I met their 1995 transition to live-action features (Institute Benjamenta) with equal parts excitement, curiosity, and trepidation–I believed they'd be a little like either fellow animator-turned-director Tim Burton or those masters of a form who overreach by switching to a different medium, à la Michael Jordan. The truth is somewhere in-between, as the Quays have retained a bit of their glacial patience and a marked affection for created environments but have miscalculated the extent to which our fascination with animate clockworks translates into a commensurate fascination with people sitting around, staring at a wall. The former inspires existential thoughts on the nature of sentience; the latter generally inspires boredom. No question in my mind that something's lurking in the Quays' underneath, but it's important to mark that fine line distinguishing fascination from obtuseness for the sake of itself. Exploring the waking/dreamlife divide is interesting–but it's neither original nor terribly useful when the main tactic seems to be to conjure up pomposity-inspired sleepiness.

DIFF ’05: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

November 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Esoterica, Film Festivals, UK
***/****starring Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Gillian Anderson, Keeley Hawesscreenplay by Martin Hardy, based on the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Esq. by Laurence Sternedirected by Michael Winterbottom by Walter Chaw This whole idea of post-modern meta-movies just doesn't thrill me the way it used to. Nonetheless, Brit maverick Michael Winterbottom's once around on the Adaptation. wheel is buoyed by a game cast and an actual purpose: rather than the impossibility of a blocked writer trying to adapt a bad novel, find here a post-modern film about a novel that predicted, in a way, post-modernism itself. Winterbottom addresses…

Oliver Twist (2005) + Kings & Queen (2004)

October 5, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Czech Republic, Drama, Esoterica, France, Romance, Theatrical, UK

OLIVER TWIST
**/****
starring Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Leanne Rowe, Mark Strong
screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Roman Polanski

Rois et reine
***½/****
starring Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Maurice Garrel
screenplay by Roger Bohbot, Arnaud Desplechin
directed by Arnaud Desplechin

by Walter Chaw Roman Polanski is an architectural director. By that I mean he moves his camera in careful, constructed motions, and the characters he places within these movements are best when they seem restrained by them, oppressed by the presence of the director in a way similar to Hitchcock’s protagonists. Indeed, Polanski at his best (Repulsion, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown) makes films that Hitchcock might have made: alight with social revulsion, weighted by claustrophobic set-pieces, and thick with subtext. But Polanski at his worst (Bitter Moon, The Ninth Gate, Frantic, Pirates, Tess) betrays a tendency towards the frenetic–an unbecoming manic energy that leans towards the childish instead of what I think is the intended demoniacal. Polanski close to the vest is Polanski at his best, and when midway through something tending towards mediocre like The Pianist, he erected a literal wall within which to restrain his antihero (tellingly, the best Polanski protagonists are acted-upon)–that architectural boundary allowing the director to regain his footing, if only for the last part of the film.

TIFF ’05: Dear Wendy

September 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Romance, TIFF, UK
*½/****starring Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordonscreenplay by Lars von Trierdirected by Thomas Vinterberg by Bill Chambers It's a classic catch-22: Dear Wendy reveals that Jamie Bell was born to play Billy the Kid, but it probably also squanders his chances of doing so. As Dick, the orphaned son of a miner, Bell dons Michael J. Fox's effeminate cowboy duds from Back to the Future Part III and transforms the town's social lepers into a gang of gun fetishists known collectively as the Dandies; director Thomas Vinterberg and screenwriter Lars von Trier give us the gay burlesque version…

TIFF ’05: Mary

September 14, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Esoterica, Thriller, TIFF
**/****starring Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Marion Cotillardscreenplay by Simone Lageoles, Abel Ferrara, Mario Isabelladirected by Abel Ferrara by Bill Chambers There are really three-tiers to Abel Ferrara's output, as indicated by his choice of avatar. Arguably the most commercial, at least until New Rose Hotel, his Christopher Walken movies have also been the director's most meticulously crafted, while his Harvey Keitel movies resonate as Ferrara's most personal, with Dangerous Game probably the closest he's ever come to a roman à clef. Then there is Matthew Modine, star of The Blackout and now Mary--relatively minor films seemingly motivated by…

Mac and Me (1988) – DVD

May 30, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Family, Satire, Sci-Fi, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound D
starring Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward, Katrina Caspary, Lauren Stanley
screenplay by Stewart Raffill and Steve Feke
directed by Stewart Raffill

by Walter Chaw One of the most woeful and dispiriting films ever made, Stewart Raffill's Mac and Me qualifies as a hate crime. It's a feature-length commercial for McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Skittles, and Sears masquerading as a rip-off of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ("MAC" = "Mysterious Alien Creature") that, what with Alan Silvestri's awful score, indicates that it's also ripping off Back to the Future during a key scene in which our wheelchair-bound hero, Eric (Jade Calegory), grabs the fender of a passing car and hitches his way to relative safety. Chips it might earn for casting an actual disabled kid in the role are cashed in when it's revealed that Eric's wrinkled-flesh puppet alien pal can only be sustained on this island earth by a combination of Coke and Skittles. It's enough to put you off not only junk food, but movies altogether. There's a place in Hell reserved for the clowns who peddle stuff like this (Ronald McDonald makes a cameo in the picture, and an even longer one in the trailer)–the movie is so venal and grasping in its conception, so astonishingly inept in its execution, that upon death, Raffill and writing partner Steve Feke should have this piece of crap projected onto their caskets to counter the pain of their passing. I'm serious. Mac and Me lowers the conversation for everyone, to the extent that it's almost a satire of greed and corporate malfeasance. Show it in a double-bill with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room for an example of what corporations think they can get away with–and what they do.

Layer Cake (2004); 3-Iron (2004); Palindromes (2005)

May 12, 2005Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Japan, Romance, South Korea, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

LAYER CAKE
***/****
starring Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham, Michael Gambon
screenplay by J.J. Connolly, based on his novel
directed by Matthew Vaughn

3-IRON
****/****
starring Lee Seung-yeon, Jae Hee
written and directed by Kim Ki-duk

PALINDROMES
***½/****
starring Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Masur
written and directed by Todd Solondz

Layercakeby Walter Chaw Producer Matthew Vaughn makes his directorial debut with the Brit underground gangster flick Layer Cake, and he does it with a sexy, cool savoir-faire that runs slick and smooth. It's softer than Jonathan Glazer's fabulously decadent Sexy Beast (most of that due, no doubt, to there being no baddie the equivalent of Ben Kingsley's Don Logan in Vaughn's film) and more coherent than Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1, but it slips snug into the same conversation. Now that Guy Ritchie's been gobbled whole by his very own vagina dentate, it stands to reason that Vaughn, Ritchie's producer on Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, would seek to fill the void left in the only U.K. pop genre with any sort of international currency all by his own self. Yet the product of Vaughn's hand isn't so much an imitation as it is a refinement: not better necessarily, but calmer–closer to the lounge lizard James Bond of the 1960s than to the feisty punk Michael Caine heisters from roughly the same period, though Layer Cake is infused, of course, with a healthy dose of nastiness and post-modern irony.