Sundance ’06: Cinnamon

January 29, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance
*½/****starring John Bowles, Erin Stewart, Ashley Bowles, Larry Bowleswritten and directed by Kevin Jerome Everson by Alex Jackson Taking my cue from the official description in the Sundance Film Festival Film Guide, I've been referring to Cinnamon as "the black race-car driver movie." Depiction of race in the movies is a real dilemma: being black is either meaningful or meaningless. If it's meaningful, that means that the black identity is distinguished from non-blacks and is more or less alien and incomprehensible to non-blacks. If being black is meaningless, well, then why make a racing movie with an all-black cast? You…

Sundance ’06: The Ground Truth

January 28, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance, War
The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends**/****directed by Patricia Foulkrod by Alex Jackson Too often I feel that critics and audiences place documentaries at the kid's table, refusing to critique them on the same level they do fiction films. Narration from the director, sit-down interviews with the subjects--in terms of filmmaking, we let documentaries get away with a lot of really primitive shit we probably wouldn't otherwise. Patricia Foulkrod's The Ground Truth is a pretty good rant, but not much of a movie; Foulkrod made it because she had a burning desire to say something, not because she had a…

Sundance ’06: Jewboy

January 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance
***½/****starring Ewen Leslie, Naomi Wilson, Saskia Burmeister, Leah Vandenburgwritten and directed by Tony Krawitz by Alex Jackson Following his father's death, Orthodox Jew Yuri quits his rabbinical training and applies for a job as a taxi driver. He's mad at God, mad at his Jewish faith, and eager to experience a world that has been denied him all his life. Jewboy is perhaps the best Martin Scorsese film Martin Scorsese never made--and by that I mean, of course, the Scorsese of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and The Last Temptation of Christ rather than the more imitated (and imitable) Scorsese of…

Sundance ’06: The Proposition

January 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance, UK, Western
*/****starring Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, John Hurtscreenplay by Nick Cavedirected by John Hillcoat by Alex Jackson In his review of Rene Cardona's exploitation quickie about the Jonestown Massacre Guyana: Cult of the Damned, Roger Ebert describes how Cardona ends the film with photos of the real-life victims while the audience is solemnly reminded "that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it," prompting Ebert to crack, "So remember, don't drink cyanide." I only wish that John Hillcoat's The Proposition were that lucid in delivering its Important Lesson. This is a movie at least as gory and…

DIFF ’05: Love, Ludlow

November 24, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Romance
**/****starring Alicia Goranson, David Eigenberg, Brendan Sexton III, Andrea Maulellascreenplay by David Patersondirected by Adrienne J. Weiss by Walter Chaw Utterly stagebound and seldom anything but a small Sundance indie version of Dominick & Eugene, Adrienne Weiss's Love, Ludlow, against all odds, kicks free of its quirk crutches at around the halfway mark--long enough for it to modestly divert, if not especially edify. "Roseanne"'s Alicia "Lecy" Goranson is a tough-talking Queens girl, Myra, charged with the care of her bi-polar, Shakespeare-quoting brother Ludlow (Brendan Sexton III). That she gives the most self-conscious performance in a film about some sort of…

DIFF ’05: The President’s Last Bang

November 20, 2005Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, South Korea, Thriller
****/****starring Song Jae-ho, Han Suk-kyu, Baek Yun-shik, Jeong Won-jungwritten and directed by Im Sang-soo by Walter Chaw Im Sang-soo's transcendently good political satire The President's Last Bang is so far the smartest, chanciest flick of the year--an alchemical brew of balls and technical brilliance that produces tremors of recognition and aftershocks of import. Whether it's DP Kim Woo-heong's rapturous tracking shots or Kim Hong-jib's tango soundtrack, there is something ineffable embedded in the fabric of the piece, making of the assassination of South Korean president Park Chung-hee something like the boxing sequences of Scorsese's Raging Bull. It's appropriate, with Park…

DIFF ’05: Duane Hopwood

November 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals
*½/****starring David Schwimmer, Janeane Garofalo, Judah Friedlander, Susan Lynchwritten and directed by Matt Mulhern by Walter Chaw David Schwimmer goes the grimy indie route for actor-turned-director Matt Mulhern's sophomore feature Duane Hopwood, finding himself an alcoholic pit boss in Atlantic City about to lose custody of his two daughters to ex-wife Linda (Janeane Garofalo). Duane (Schwimmer) takes in aspiring stand-up comedian Anthony (Judah Friedlander) as a roommate/sidekick in the mold of Friedlander's previous role as a lovable spaz in American Splendor, their travails building to an unlikely custody hearing and an even unlikelier climax at one of Anthony's gigs as…

DIFF ’05: Brick

November 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Thriller
**½/****starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Nora Zehetner, Laura Dannonwritten and directed by Rian Johnson by Walter Chaw Brick is a cult classic-in-the-making and one for which I harbour a goodly amount of affection. (I should say I admire its chutzpah, if not its ultimate success.) It's an experiment in screenwriting and matching shots, a gimmick stretched to feature-length by first-time hyphenate Rian Johnson that puts Raymond Chandler's hardboiled lexicon into the mouths of disconsolate teens seething at a high school somewhere in the twenty-first century. It would've been a fantastic noir except for that displacement, as its coolness decomposes every…

DIFF ’05: The Matador

November 16, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Thriller
**½/****starring Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hallwritten and directed by Richard Shepard by Walter Chaw Wearing a sleazebag moustache and an ugly print shirt, Pierce Brosnan watches a bartender shake his drink instead of stirring it and the film slows down and blurs accordingly. It's post-modernism as gauzy, lazy hallucination--a swoon that suggests a minor, nearly-imperceptible tremor in reality and the only moment in which hyphenate Richard Shepard acknowledges the irony of the former 007's presence in another licensed-to-kill role as assassin-for-hire Julian Noble. Fond of bottomless tequila and "sucky-fucky" instead of "blushy-blushy," Noble is an unctuous,…

DIFF ’05: The White Countess

November 15, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Germany, Romance, UK, War
**/****starring Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgravescreenplay by Kazuo Ishigurodirected by James Ivory by Walter Chaw Even without recently-deceased partner-in-crime Ismail Merchant, stalwart period-costume-drama codger James Ivory delivers the slavishly middlebrow, meandering, Anglo-centric goods with The White Countess, the tale of a sightless American ex-diplomat, Jackson (Ralph Fiennes), who falls for refugee Russian countess Sophia (Natasha Richardson) in Shanghai on the eve of Japanese occupation. Packed to the rafters with Redgraves (Lynn and Vanessa also appear) and meticulously airless accents, the picture represents a certain ossified breed of prestige picture of the A Room with a View and…

DIFF ’05: Casanova

November 13, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Romance
*/****starring Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Oliver Plattscreenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher and Kimberly Simidirected by Lasse Hallström by Walter Chaw Casanova is a perfectly dreadful Lasse Hallström/Miramax picture that can be claimed, appropriately enough, by Buena Vista now that the Weinsteins have moved on to produce this kind of stuff for their new company. It's "The Merchant of Venice" stripped of any whiff of controversy, going through the motions of its shrivelled little romantic-comedy checklist with the miserable meticulousness of the truly unimaginative. For a change, why don't you tell me how it works? Two people meet and hate…

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…

DIFF ’05: Duck

November 10, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, ZERO STARS
ZERO STARS/****starring Philip Baker Hall, Bill Brochtrup, Amy Hill, Noel Gugliemiwritten and directed by Nicole Bettauer by Walter Chaw In Duck, hale character actor Philip Baker Hall finds himself delivering long, rambling, and likely improvised monologues to a duck that has imprinted itself on him in Los Angeles, 2009. Though it's probably more interesting to talk about why so many science-fiction films are set in Los Angeles, it's more fascinating to try to reconcile all the car-wreck non-sequiturs that comprise the mismatched, miasmic whole of this piece. Hall plays Arthur, freshly widowed and ready to pill himself into oblivion when…

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: Heading South

September 24, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, France, TIFF
Vers le sud***½/****starring Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Louise Portal, Ménothy Cesarscreenplay by Laurent Cantet & Robin Campillo, based on short stories by Dany Laferrièredirected by Laurent Cantet by Bill Chambers Heading South (Vers le sud) represents such a departure from the milieu of Laurent Cantet's previous film (2001's brilliant psychological thriller Time Out (L'Emploi du temps)) that you can't really say it rounds out a trilogy he started with Human Resources. Nevertheless, it resumes his fascination with people in transience, people who've erected complex façades to avoid the repercussions of personal or professional failure; Cantet's pictures are screwball comedies played…

TIFF ’05: Wassup Rockers

September 23, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Teen, TIFF
**½/****starring Jonathan Velasquez, Francisco Pedrasa, Milton Velasquez, Usvaldo Panamenowritten and directed by Larry Clark by Bill Chambers These days, when I think of Larry Clark, I think of Stephen Wiltshire, the outsider artist profiled in Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars. Diagnosed with autism early in life, Wiltshire soon after began doing immaculately detailed sketches of animals before moving on to buses and eventually cityscapes. So advanced was Wiltshire's technique at such an early age that Sacks and co. were fascinated to learn that his talent came pre-evolved: as a child, he drew like a grown-up, but he drew like…

TIFF ’05: All the Invisible Children

September 20, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: John Woo, Directors: Ridley Scott, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Italy, TIFF

Fest2005children**½/****
directed by Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, Jordan Scott and Ridley Scott, Kátia Lund, Stefano Veruso, John Woo

by Bill Chambers Named after an initiative of the Italian Development Cooperation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that supports Unicef and other global charities, this omnibus project assembles seven short subjects about children from a handful of world-class directors, all of whom were instructed to locate their contributions in their home and native land. Poverty seems to be the unifying theme until Jordan and Ridley Scott's vaguely autobiographical segment, which sticks out like a sore thumb but subversively suggests that if All the Invisible Children proper has any lessons to impart, they revolve around the auteur theory. Having never seen a film by Mehdi Charef or Stefano Veneruso, I don't know how closely their episodes hew to their previous work, but I can tell you that Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, the Scotts, Kátia Lund, and John Woo tread familiar ground in a borderline egotistical fashion.

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…

TIFF ’05: Romance & Cigarettes

September 16, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Musical, Romance, TIFF
*½/****starring James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemiwritten and directed by John Turturro by Bill Chambers Dennis Potter was a genre unto himself, and when he died, he took his recipe for what Heinz Antor called "humanist postmodernism" with him. It's painful to watch writer-director John Turturro, one of the great character actors of our time, invoke the writer in Romance & Cigarettes, as he reduces Potter's notion of pop music as existential catharsis to exactly what it wasn't: a gimmick--an alibi for air band. In the spellbinding film version of Potter's Pennies from Heaven, Christopher Walken comically menaces…

More Two-Second TIFF Reviews

September 15, 2005Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF
originally published September 15, 2005Wassup Rockers (d. Larry Clark) Somehow the most humanistic film of Clark's career is also his most nihilistic. Nice to see him acknowledge the "other," but they're still skater punks. *** (out of four)Romance & Cigarettes (d. John Turturro) A fugue. In the words of David Lynch, "Fugues make me crazy!" Actually eager to rant about this one. *½ (out of four)All the Invisible Children (ds. Various)As with any omnibus film, hit-or-miss. I think I liked Kátia Lund's segment best, but John Woo does his best work since heading West. Your mileage will vary. **½ (out of four)