War Gods of the Deep (1965)/At the Earth’s Core (1976) [Double Feature] – DVD

November 29, 2005Posted in1960s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, UK

War-Gods of the Deep
The City Under the Sea
½*/**** Image A Sound B
starring Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, Susan Hart, David Tomlinson
screenplay by Charles Bennett and Louis M. Heyward
directed by Jacques Tourneur

AT THE EARTH'S CORE
½*/**** Image A Sound B
starring Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro, Cy Grant
screenplay by Milton Subotsky, based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Kevin Connor

by Walter Chaw Jacques Tourneur kicks all kinds of ass. He shone in the Forties with his Val Lewton collaborations and his magnificent, atmosphere-laden pictures Night of the Demon and Out of the Past. Having turned his attention primarily to moody Joel McCrea westerns and adventure pulpers in the Fifties, Tourneur, by the time the Sixties rolled around, unfortunately found himself outside his black-and-white comfort zone (his last great work is probably an episode of the original "The Twilight Zone", "Night Call") and at the helm of productions starring people like Steve Reeves and Vincent Price. One of his last pictures–1965's abominable War-Gods of the Deep–finds its way onto DVD via MGM's admirable "Midnite Movies" line as the front end of a double feature. It's a flat, fish-eyed stinker that positions itself as a ripper of both the Price-anchored Roger Corman/Edgar Allan Poe films and the bona fide cycle of Jules Verne spectacles that began with Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), continued through From the Earth to the Moon (1958) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), and culminated in 1964's still-creepy First Men in the Moon, to which this film might owe its greatest debt. Ostensibly based on a Poe poem called "The City in the Sea," War-Gods of the Deep grafts its gothic settings (complete with another voiceover intro of Price reading a poem) to a Verne-like tale of a mysterious egomaniac (named "The Captain," of course, and played by Price) living in a giant, velvet-lined mansion beneath the sea, just off the coast of Cornwall.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

November 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Theatrical, UK

**/****
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane
screenplay by Steven Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by Mike Newell

Harrypotter4by Walter Chaw Just as Harry and the other arms of his archetypal triangle stumbled into adolescence with aplomb and poetry under the guidance of Alfonso Cuarón in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, they awkward-and-gangly their way into a holding pattern in Mike Newell's puttering Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (hereafter Harry Potter 4). It looks grungy and it lacks grace: the moments meant to inspire are tired and the moments meant to edify are portentous and unbearably drawn-out. There's not a lot here for the non-fanatic, with screenwriter Steve Kloves failing the material for the first time and Newell showing himself to be exactly the kind of director who would make slick, protracted nothings like Mona Lisa Smile and Pushing Tin. The Newell film Harry Potter 4 most resembles, however, is Four Weddings and a Funeral (his conduit to the big time and, consequently, the one he's most likely to cannibalize when handed the golden ticket), in that this third sequel tries to worry itself about the trials of youngsters falling in puppy love, going to their first formals, and learning that there are such things in the world as death and taxes. A noble pursuit, chasing characters as they grow from chapter to chapter, from innocence to churlishness to experience (we presume)–but for me, at least, Harry Potter 4 is the first wholly dispensable instalment, repeating the best parts of Cuarón's film and adding to the conversation only the disturbing resurrection of archenemy Voldemort.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) – DVD

November 9, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, DVD, Family, Fantasy

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly, Helena Bonham Carter
screenplay by John August, based on the novel by Roald Dahl
directed by Tim Burton

Charlieandthecapby Walter Chaw The first hour is so obsessively faithful to the Roald Dahl source material that I was lulled into believing that Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was going to be a classic, a magnificent return to form for the dark fantasist who, once upon a time, denied Edward Scissorhands a happy ending, and let the Headless Horseman come back for the little kid under the floorboards. The set design of little Charlie's hovel on the edge of an industrial town is stunning–a throwback to the German Expressionism of Burton's Vincent and, in its canted walls, the best of its kind since The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Thus the tragedy and the irony of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's return to earth is that its ultimate mediocrity has a lot to do with the addition of a worthless backstory that draws it closer to Burton's auteur tendencies and away from Dahl's cruel, austere master plots. Burton's loner-punk heroes (Edward Scissorhands, Bruce Wayne, Pee-Wee, Ichabod Crane, Ed Wood), see, live alone or in a metaphor for isolation, divorced from their horror-legend father figures (Vincent Price, Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, now Christopher Lee) and largely failing to hide their disfigurements while struggling to achieve a semblance of "ordinariness" in their familial relationships. (Even the demon Beetlejuice has a moment where he throws his arms around his victims and yells, "C'mon, we're simpatico here!") At their core, Burton's films are by and large hopeful–bittersweet or piquant, they're consistently portraits of misfits with dreams. But until Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they hadn't been trite or, perish the thought, fearful.

Save the Green Planet! (2003) – DVD

November 3, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Thriller

Jigureul jikyeora!
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Shin Ha-gyun, Baik Yun-shik, Hwang Jung-min
written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan

by Walter Chaw The first third of hyphenate Jeong Joon-hwan's cinematic debut Save the Green Planet! (Jigureul jikyeora!) is sort of like Fargo if David Fincher had directed it, the second third like Sleuth if Terry Gilliam had directed it, and the final third like a mescaline hallucination, complete with a portly/heroic high-wire artist (Sooni (Hwang Jeong-min) and a swarm of murderous bees thrown into action by a jar of royal jelly. There's a crucifixion, entirely unspeakable and lawless references to 2001 and Blade Runner, and, without warning, a flashback to the unhappy childhood of our hero, Lee (Shin Ha-Kyun), composed with a lyrical sadness that brings a wholly-unexpected tear to the eye. Save the Green Planet! has been shot with scary confidence in a style long on provocative evocation and clarity and short on pyrotechnics for their own sake–something astonishing given that the plot revolves around alien invasion, gruesome torture, serial murder, corporate malfeasance, and Korea's tumultuous recent history. It's indescribable, is what I'm trying to say, but I do know that I was rapt through two screenings, seduced by its sprung logic and affected during its wordless epilogue of a child at play with his parents in a past unrecoverable full of light and love.

Mirrormask (2005)

September 30, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, UK

**/****
starring Stephanie Leonidas, Gina McKee, Rob Brydon, Jason Barry
screenplay by Neil Gaiman
directed by Dave McKean

Mirrormaskby Walter Chaw Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean are responsible, between the two of them, for one of the seminal works of fiction from the 1990s: a run of comics called "The Sandman" (the success of which moved the World Fantasy Awards to forbid the comic medium from again winning that prize) that proposed a new mythological pantheon, "Endless," to hold sway over the vicissitudes of the world's belief systems. For as long as it lasted, it was an astonishing demonstration of post-mod pop art; with Gaiman writing the text and McKean providing the cover art, the two would collaborate on stand-alone series (like "Violent Cases" and a short run of "Miracle Man"), children's books (Mr. Punch and The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish), and now a feature film and illustrated screenplay, Mirrormask, which finds Gaiman scripting and McKean behind the camera. I wish I could report that the results are more than murky, derivative, and hard to see. Taking place primarily in a digitally-created environment (à la Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), it looks, unfortunately, a lot like it was shot on last-generation digital video–even the non-fantasy portions of Mirrormask deliver the kind of grimy, ugly picture that Robert Rodriguez makes with his children. With a film version of "The Sandman" languishing in near-permanent hiatus, it's a shame that this first cinematic product from two of that project's major players is such a disappointment.

TIFF ’05: The Myth

September 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, China, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, TIFF
½*/****starring Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Kim Hee-seon, Mallika Sherawatscreenplay by Stanley Tong, Wang Hui-ling, Li Hai-shudirected by Stanley Tong by Bill Chambers The Myth, or: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Turdbath. Sabotaging a potential comeback by trying to catch a wave (not unlike the myriad has-beens in the music industry who jumped on the disco bandwagon), Jackie Chan dips a toe in the unfriendly, nay, hostile waters of the wu xia genre recently revitalized by the likes of Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou. Although The Myth is cruddy-looking (HD's fine for George Lucas excretions and Robert Rodriguez fantasias, but it has…

Pom Poko (1994) + My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) – DVDs

September 12, 2005Posted in1990s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Japan

POM POKO
*½/**** Image A Sound B Extras D+
written and directed by Isao Takahata

MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
screenplay by Isao Takahata, based on the comic strip by Hisaichi Ishii
directed by Isao Takahata

by Walter Chaw Two films by the other guy at Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata's Pom Poko and My Neighbors the Yamadas have the director deviating extravagantly from his masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies–one of the bona fide classics of the anime medium–by hopping from that film's heartbreaking war idyll to these films' anthropomorphic mysticism and broad slapstick. Anime gets a bad rap in the United States for being either pornographic or inscrutable (indeed, much anime pornography is inscrutable)–it's an easy way to dismiss an entire medium as foreign and/or amoral, but as a blanket condemnation it's as misguided at its essence as deriding black-and-white pictures, or talkies, or films altogether–and the truth of it is that for every memorable anime, there are probably fifty forgettable ones. As that ratio holds pretty steady for all films, though, the problem for fair-minded folks approaching the medium for the first time boils down to a picture with, crucially, a pedigree like Pom Poko.

The Brothers Grimm (2005)

August 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Czech Republic, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Peter Stormare, Lena Headey
screenplay by Ehren Kruger
directed by Terry Gilliam

Brothersgrimmby Walter Chaw A film with all the drama and flair of a Tuesday Morning tchotchke shop, The Brothers Grimm is the only Terry Gilliam film since Jabberwocky that I've actively disliked. It's the star-crossed director's most conventional, most compromised work, the first to betray the behind-the-scenes strife–the desperation that has defined Gilliam's career to this point. Already pre-emptively disowning the finished product (citing various impasses with the Brothers Weinstein), Gilliam doesn't, this time around, have the aegis of a subversive finished product to hide behind. There may be a lot of people responsible for what's wrong with The Brothers Grimm, but the bulk of the responsibility for its failure is parked square at Gilliam's doorstep–and the rest of it belongs to nitwit screenwriter Ehren Kruger, whose flavour-of-the-month status might finally be souring. It's perhaps unfair to expect the director to constantly pull his Waterloos out of the woods, but The Brothers Grimm is finally the film that his detractors have always accused him of making: busy, unfocused, obnoxious, and lousy.

Dracula III: Legacy (2005); Hellraiser: Deader (2005); The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005) – DVDs

August 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Revenge, Romania, Thriller, Vampire, Wes Craven

DRACULA III: LEGACY
**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Jason Scott Lee, Jason London, Alexandra Westcourt, Rutger Hauer
screenplay by Joel Soisson & Patrick Lussier
directed by Patrick Lussier

HELLRAISER: DEADER
*/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras B
starring Kari Wuhrer, Paul Rhys, Simon Kunz, Doug Bradley
screenplay by Neal Marshall Stevens and Tim Day
directed by Rick Bota

THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER
½*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B
starring Edward Furlong, Tara Reid, David Boreanaz, Emmanuelle Chriqui
screenplay by Lance Mungia & Jeff Most and Sean Hood
directed by Lance Mungia

by Walter Chaw This is the game plan if you’re in the business of producing direct-to-video schlock for Dimension: go to Romania (the poor man’s Czech Republic, itself the poor man’s Toronto–itself the poor man’s New York), show some tits, throw buckets of blood against the wall, and scrimp, wherever possible, on niceties like script and direction. It’s sure-fire–particularly if you can skim a month or two off the shooting schedule and lure a few has-beens in serious decline. But the question with urgency is, “Sure-fire what?” Not good art–because they seldom have anything to say about the society that spawned them (and because the directors of these messes are generally assclowns)–and not good travelogues, either, these little straight-to-home penny dreadfuls tend to be tired variations on the same quasi-Christian mythos, tarted up with surprisingly good production values and the kind of cheap thrills that kept EC Comics, then Hammer Films, then Italian giallos, in business.

Steamboy (2004) [Collector’s Gift Set] – DVD

July 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras B+
screenplay by Sadayuki Murai and Katsuhiro Otomo
directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

Steamboycapby Walter Chaw Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira is both the best and the worst thing ever to happen to anime in the United States. For the believer, its Blade Runner cyberpunk ultra-cool was an eye-opener, but to hold the film up as the standard for the medium means that a lot of people looking to it as their introduction believe that anime is a little excitement cordoned off by long stretches of confused, gravid exposition. It tries to condense hundreds of pages of metaphysical text into scientist characters delivering what seem like endless exchanges in high-minded gobbledygook. Akira's popularity obscures the finest examples of the medium, films that manage to balance serious metaphysical musing with actual forward momentum (the two Ghost in the Shell films, for instance); to tell adult tales in affecting ways (Grave of the Fireflies); to redefine genre thriller (Perfect Blue), action (Ninja Scroll), and fantasy (Princess Mononoke); and to present children's fables as artifacts that are as useful for adults as they are for kids (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro). Akira isn't the greatest anime film, just the most well-known, and it's worth speculating how its notoriety may have retarded the maturation of American animation.

Bewitched (2005)

June 23, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine
screenplay by Nora Ephron & Delia Ephron and Adam McKay
directed by Nora Ephron

Bewitchedby Walter Chaw Five minutes into Bewitched I was sick to death of its cutesy, smarmy self-satisfaction. This is Nicole Kidman talking something like Marilyn Monroe crossed with a feather duster, doing her best to work her mouth around Delia and Nora Ephron's vapid dialogue while wishing all the while that someone would solve the mystery of how she could be so accomplished at picking independent projects (Birth, Dogville) and so incompetent in picking mainstream ones (The Stepford Wives, Cold Mountain). It's a movie completely dependent on the belief that everyone has seen the Sol Saks sitcom upon which the flick is based (a belief supported at least in part by the warmth with which a multitude of clips from said sitcom were received), meaning it's the picture for which the term "meta" was created. Not the endlessly replicating screenplay, but the fabled film that is about nothing, is based on nothing, and features big stars struggling to overcome the freakish inconsequence of a project that should never have gotten beyond the what-if stage. (Who outside of coma would even consider starring in a film written by the Ephron sisters, directed by Nora, and produced by Penny freaking Marshall?) This is the film that cotton candy would imagine because it cheerfully has no mind to speak of, making Kidman's freaky, alien, doll-like performance (her Isabel eats buckets of Miracle Whip in one of the film's concessions to its powder-puff inconsequence) a minor stroke of genius, if only in hindsight.

The Dead Zone: The Complete Second Season (2003) – DVD

June 6, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Stephen King, Television

Image B+ Sound A- Extras A
“Valley of the Shadow,” “Descent,” “Ascent,” “The Outsider,” “Precipitate,” “Scars,” “Misbegotten,” “Cabin Pressure,” “The Man Who Never Was,” “Dead Men Tell Tales,” “Playing God,” “Zion,” “The Storm,” “Plague,” “Deja Voodoo,” “The Hunt,” “The Mountain,” “The Combination,” “Visions”

by Walter Chaw I’ll say this at the get-go, that “The Dead Zone”, the television series, will never completely escape the shadow of David Cronenberg’s enduring feature film adaptation of the Stephen King source novel, and that Anthony Michael Hall is a pale substitute for Christopher Walken, particularly for Walken at what might be the actor’s finest hour. Luckily, Hall has an easier time shedding his John Hughes days, having doubled in size (he’s still trim, just not Farmer Ted), donned a black leather pea coat (mine found the Salvation Army bin about five episodes in–I never, ever want to look like Hall in Vancouver playing Johnny Smith), and acquired a Vulcan arch to his brow that all but screams “serious actor.” Yet there’s something since “The X-Files” that rubs me wrong about most American shows shot north of the 49th Parallel: the genericness of the setting doesn’t scream Anytown, USA so much as “Canada: it’s cheaper and blander up here.” Lacking atmosphere and vibrancy, “The Dead Zone” is an extrapolation, especially in Season Two, of the further adventures of John Smith, a reluctant clairvoyant who can touch any person or thing (including air, which raises its own set of problems/questions) and summon up visions of past or future that inevitably put Johnny in the position of a powder-dipped saint in a Mexican parade.

Fat Albert (2004) – DVD

March 23, 2005Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Kenan Thompson, Kyla Pratt, Dania Ramirez, Bill Cosby
screenplay by William H. Cosby, Jr. & Charles Kipps
directed by Joel Zwick

by Bill Chambers The memory I have of watching Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" as a wee lad is that it always left me a little bit depressed, like listening to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" or dining at the Ponderosa restaurant. (Doesn't "ponderosa" mean "weighty" in English?) Subtext is a kind of phantom presence when you're five or six years old: you're too young to be able to read it but also young enough that you've not yet been blinded by anti-intellectualism to everything below the surface. I realize now that it was probably through the Saturday-morning buzzkill of "Fat Albert…" that I became cognizant of poverty, and just the fact that the show was populated with an all-black cast of ragamuffins (almost all of whom suffered from learning disabilities) took the patronizing sting out of its NBC Life Lessons–it was less pious than it was possessed of an old soul. I'm happy to report that Fat Albert, an anachronism of a live-action feature film based on the long-running (and long-cancelled) cartoon, captures a lot of its source's melancholy appeal. Moreover, its ideas are provocative verging on profound, although they're shackled to a sketchy screenplay (by Cosby and Charles Kipps) and an aesthetic that is as paint-by-numbers as the animation that inspired it. No surprise that director Joel Zwick hails from television–multi-camera sitcoms, to be precise.

Carnivàle: The Complete First Season (2003) – DVD

March 22, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C
"Milfay," "After the Ball Is Over," "Tipton," "Black Blizzard," "Babylon," "Pick a Number," "The River," "Lonnigan, Texas," "Insomnia," "Hot and Bothered," "The Day of the Dead," "The Day That Was the Day"

by Walter Chaw It's the Depression in Dust Bowl United States, and Ben (Nick Stahl) really needs a bath: His mother's just died (but not before hissing at him to keep his distance, Mr. Antichrist) and he's in the act of burying her when a traveling carnival happens along to spirit him away before the local constabulary can. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy threatens briefly to break out as a bulldozer shows up to raze Ben's ramshackle homestead, but hey diddley hee, the roustie's life for me, says Ben. In a way, comparisons of HBO's handsomely-mounted "Carnivàle" to Douglas Adams's brilliant stuff is apt as Ben, like Adams's everyman Arthur, is orphaned from his home, set adrift in an absurd universe in the company of freaks, and burdened with the responsibility for the salvation of all mankind. A parallel story, joined to Ben's by a couple of early dream sequences, involves preacher-man Brother Crowe (Clancy Brown) navigating some tricky incestual straits with spinster sister Iris (Amy Madigan) in the midst of trying to establish a mission for the dislocated Okies flooding the Golden State–a purpose at odds with a Church hierarchy represented by kindly Father Balthus (Ralph Waite). In almost no time (well, actually, just barely in time for the end of the first season), the opening narration provided by Management liaison Samson (Michael J. Anderson) telling of one avatar for good and one for evil born into each generation comes into focus with Ben on one side and Brother Crowe on the other. No prize for guessing who's who.

Son of the Mask (2005)

February 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, France, Germany, Romania, Superhero, Theatrical, Venezuala, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jamie Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Traylor Howard, Steven Wright
screenplay by Lance Khazei
directed by Lawrence Guterman

Sonofthemaskby Walter Chaw Towards the end of the uniquely awful Son of the Mask, star Jamie Kennedy gets two fistfuls of his screen-wife Traylor Howard’s bosom (this after pummelling her head against the ground in a scary depiction of domestic violence) and declares, in so many words, “Eureka–so it is you, honey.” It’s a charming vignette that follows about an hour of fart, snot, golden shower, and Exorcist jokes, each trumping the last in level of inappropriateness until finally the deadened synapses begin to register that with sets like “Edge City” and “Fringe City”, the brain trust behind this abortion might actually have had something subversive in mind. A shame, then, that they’ve confused “edge” and “fringe” elements with puerile scatology and institutional dehumanization, intercut with baby and animal reaction shots and a marginal and failed television comedian (playing a marginal and failed television animator) mugging in an astoundingly lifeless approximation of “manic.” For a film that might want to be taken as “edgy,” in other words, Son of the Mask caters to the absolute lowest and commonest of the lowest common denominators.

Sky Blue (2003)

February 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, South Korea

Wonderful Days
**/****
screenplay by Kim Moon-saeng & Park Sun-min & Park Yong-jun
directed by Kim Moon-saeng & Park Sun-min


by Walter Chaw Pretty much your standard anime post-apocalyptic master plot, what distinguishes Kim Moon-saeng and Park Sun-min's Korean contribution Sky Blue is the oppressive weight of its visual accomplishment. Blending the character animations of, say, a Satoshi Kon with the environmental concerns of an early Miyazaki, the movie is beautiful. But at the same time, it slathers on such a thick layer of obfuscating dialogue and glowering plot complications that it's hard to muster up much enthusiasm beyond the initial "wow" factor. Still, that "wow" factor: I don't know that I've ever seen a better blend of CGI and traditional cel animation–in terms of how it looks, Sky Blue even trumps last year's astonishing Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. A shame that a person can only really be dazzled for a few minutes before becoming something closer to "stunned."

Aladdin II & III Collection – DVD

February 8, 2005Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

THE RETURN OF JAFAR (1994)
Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
written by Kevin Campbell and Mirith J.S. Colao & Bill Motz & Steve Roberts & Dev Ross & Bob Roth & Jan Strnad & Brian Swenlin
directed by Toby Shelton, Tad Stones, Alan Zaslove

ALADDIN AND THE KING OF THIEVES (1996)
*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by Mark McCorkle & Bob Schooley
directed by Tad Stones

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover About the only reason for Disney to send out their direct-to-video product to be reviewed is to accumulate free advertising. They know that no sensible critic will tolerate anything so obviously thrown together as a cash grab, just as they know that no reader of critics will willingly sign up to watch them; instead, the assumption is that said readers will have kids, and that the review will act as one more reminder (in concert with the saturation ad campaigns in print and on television) that those kids are undiscerning and will probably want the discs bad. So here's my link in the chain of avarice: two age-old attempts to cash in on Disney's Random Ethnic Stereotype Generator are back on the market, and if your children are lacking in aesthetic sense (they are), these might be right up their alley. Just make sure you bite down on a leather strap as you watch them with your goggle-eyed rugrat, and take heart in the knowledge that someone on the World Wide Web knows your pain.

Mulan II (2004) – DVD

February 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Japan, Musical

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
directed by Darrell Rooney, Lynne Southerland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Let it be known that Mulan II is out on DVD, and that it's surprisingly good. The House That Walt Built appears to have learned from its early, awful forays into the direct-to-video realm and decided to put a little elbow grease (not to mention money) into these glorified policy redemptions; once you get past its pitifully limited research of actual Chinese culture (no mean feat, believe me), you can't help but notice that the movie looks stellar. Content-wise, it's a decent, if not great, do-what-makes-you-happy message picture slightly curtailed by its minuscule running time and bolstered by a couple of songs that sound like somebody cared how they turned out. Nothing in Mulan II is brilliant, but it's a couple of notches above eyewash–and just smart enough not to drive unwilling parents completely insane. I can think of worse things to show your attention-deficient knee-biter.

Circle of Iron (1978) – DVD

January 11, 2005Posted in1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, DVD, Fantasy, Martial Arts

The Silent Flute
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring David Carradine, Anthony De Longis, Carl Maynard, Erica Creer
screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and Stanley Mann
directed by Richard Moore

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover You can't exactly call The Silent Flute a good movie. This "mystical" martial-arts extravaganza, an early pet project of Bruce Lee that he abandoned after becoming too famous to care, is pompous in its pretensions and shallow in its follow-through, which under normal circumstances would damn it to well-deserved ridicule. But there's something strangely poignant about its stumblebum view of Zen, filtered as it is through a bunch of well-meaning Hollywood westerners bending over backwards to honour something they don't understand. The sheer earnestness of the thing wins your begrudging respect–it's brave enough to be what it wants to be even if it doesn't really know what that is. Somewhere, Jack Smith is smiling.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

December 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Germany, Theatrical

A Series of Unfortunate Events
**½/****
starring Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning
screenplay by Robert Gordon, based on the books The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window by "Lemony Snicket"
directed by Brad Silberling

Lemonysnicketby Walter Chaw The best children's entertainments accentuate a child's strengths, encouraging the pursuit of aptitude and bliss instead of impossible pipe dreams. It's the lesson of The Incredibles, one of the bravest, most subversive films the year–and it seems to be the lesson of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events as well until the picture caves in to kid-flick conventions and worse. But while it's humming along with the freshly-orphaned Baudelaires–Violet (Emily Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken), and little Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman)–doing what they do best (Violet the engineer, Klaus the reader, Sunny the biter), Lemony Snicket, with its gothic sets and grotesque gallery of rogues, offers up a brilliant antidote to the saccharine blather of traditional holiday fare. Fleetingly effective or no, it's a shot of insulin in a season that generally offers up bloated prestige items for the grown-ups and freakishly genial, accidentally perverse fare for the kiddies.