Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

January 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Esoterica, Horror, Luxembourg, Satire, Theatrical, UK, Vampire

**/****
starring John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Catherine McCormack, Eddie Izzard
screenplay by Steven Katz
directed by E. Elias Merhige

by Bill Chambers They certainly dressed the part in those days. As the pre-eminent German filmmaker F.W. Murnau, John Malkovich declares: “We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory.” On set, before the lamps are fired up and action is called, Murnau and his crew don tinted aviator goggles, looking as if they’re about to launch an atomic bomb. This was standard practice during cinema’s formative years, when it took an intense amount of light to satisfactorily expose an image. (It was not uncommon for those who didn’t take precautions to go blind later in life.) But Malkovich/Murnau is not describing costumes; he’s probably, in fact, speaking for the makers of the gothic comedy in which he appears as the catalyst, Shadow of the Vampire. Director E. Elias Merhige, working from a screenplay by Steven Katz, forges a new memoir of Nosferatu, Murnau’s unauthorized, silent-film-era take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula that was rumoured to star a real vampire.

When Harry Met Sally… (1989) [Special Edition] + Prelude to a Kiss (1992) – DVDs

January 8, 2001Posted in1980s, 1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY…
***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby
screenplay by Nora Ephron
directed by Rob Reiner

PRELUDE TO A KISS
***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Alec Baldwin, Meg Ryan, Kathy Bates, Ned Beatty
screenplay by Craig Lucas, based on his play
directed by Norman Rene

by Bill Chambers Meg Ryan, the Princess of Perk, gets a makeshift career retrospective this month with the DVD releases of three high-profile gigs: When Harry Met Sally…, Prelude to a Kiss, and The Doors. I’m forsaking any further mention of The Doors to focus on the first two–delightful, whimsical films, unlike The Doors–and Ryan’s romantic-comedy stranglehold. Call it the curse of the button nose: the actress, who is more talented than anyone, myself included, is willing to admit, seems out of her element by a country mile in pictures that don’t require her to meet cute and kvetch over the subsequent courtship. And now that she’s pushing 40, Ryan is becoming to chick flicks what Stallone and Schwarzenegger were to actioners after Clinton got elected: we’re sick to death of seeing her in these Nora Ephron-type movies–yet, as Proof of Life, um, proved, we also don’t want to see her in anything but.

The Virgin Suicides (2000) – DVD

December 18, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Sofia Coppola, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
starring James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett
screenplay by Sofia Coppola, based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
directed by Sofia Coppola

by Bill Chambers The Virgin Suicides is perverse, but I don't mean dirty. Everything about it is a little bit lopsided–James Woods, of all people, is cast as a henpecked husband, for instance. But its director, Sofia Coppola, doesn't play it as pop kink; instead, she strives for the reverie quality of David Lynch at his most suburban, which makes everything that's in principle out of the ordinary seem in tune, even unexotic. Watching The Virgin Suicides, a fractured nostalgia piece, is like trying to deduce the story of someone's life from a box of snapshots. It's wispy yet substantial (let's call it ethereal), and it stumbles upon a few great images and many more lasting ones.

Mother Night (1996) + Waking the Dead (2000) – DVDs

November 16, 2000Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, War

MOTHER NIGHT
***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A
starring Nick Nolte, Sheryl Lee, Alan Arkin, John Goodman
screenplay by Robert B. Weide, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut
directed by Keith Gordon

WAKING THE DEAD
****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly, Molly Parker, Janet McTeer
screenplay by Robert Dillon, based on the novel by Scott Spencer
directed by Keith Gordon

by Bill Chambers In Timequake, the most recent and arguably most flawed of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novels (like many of his fans, I found it only intermittently readable), the author writes: “…I have never used semicolons. They don’t do anything, don’t support anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites.” Perhaps Keith Gordon’s Mother Night is one of the few artistically successful cinematic adaptations of a Vonnegut work because Gordon avoids semicolons in his filmmaking–there is no straining to cohere, here.

Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) – DVD

June 7, 2000Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, Timothy Carey
written and directed by John Cassavetes

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The experience of seeing Minnie and Moskowitz is like asking for a glass of milk and receiving a tequila shooter. Both might do good things for you in separate circumstances, but they are far from interchangeable. Similarly, the simple pleasures of a boy-meets-girl movie and the method bombast of John Cassavetes have their times and places, but they run on entirely different schedules. When the two actually collide, as they do in Minnie and Moskowitz, the cataclysm is so great it cancels out anything good that might have come from either one staying on their own turf: the wispy romance plot is mangled beyond all recognition and the soulful Cassavetes style is left pounding on the walls, resulting in a singularly unpleasant parade of standard cliché and acting overkill that leaves neither side standing by the end.