King Kong (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

March 20, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Germany, New Zealand, Romance

****/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the screenplay by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace
directed by Peter Jackson

Mustownby Walter Chaw Naomi Watts is absolutely adorable in King Kong. Good thing, too, because she has to convince that with a few vaudeville pratfalls and a strategically-wielded switch she can win the heart of one of the most venerated monsters in movie history. The way Peter Jackson films her suggests that he’s found his own muse: she’s always set against impossible backlot sunsets, asked to feign love for a fake film before transforming herself–in the same, wonderful shot–into feigning real love for a man in this film when she spots her suitor, playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), author of a play (“Isolation”) for which she sees herself as perfect for the melancholy lead. (“You must be the saddest girl in New York.” She is.) In a lot of ways, Watts’s Ann Darrow is the logical extension of her Betty from Mulholland Drive: both are actresses with hidden elements to their personalities, both are asked to audition for us on an imaginary stage, and both, in the end, find themselves embroiled in a dark romance that ends in show-business betrayal. During the final third of King Kong, once the beast famously has Ann in his clutches while scaling the side of a mighty edifice in the Big Apple, it’s fair to be distracted by the rapture on her face–and to wonder if she knows that there’s only one eventuality possible to her quiescence.

Jarhead (2005) – DVD

March 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Germany, UK, War

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx
screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., based on the novel by Anthony Swofford
directed by Sam Mendes

Jarheadcap

by Walter Chaw I went to high school with a guy who fought in the first Gulf War. I remember him as a delicate, sensitive, beautiful boy who in retrospect looked a lot like Cillian Murphy. I directed him in a play–and though I haven't spoken to him since, I heard that when he returned home, he was not quite the same. I remember chortling about the first Gulf War, too, thinking how funny it was that our military pounded fourth-generation Chinese armour with bombs left over from Vietnam in a withering blitz that left Saddam Hussein's vaunted "million man army" of non-volunteer soldiers buried in their trenches and surrendering to the press. I've never been able to completely reconcile the two impressions of that war through the haze of my own youth–this introduction to modern warfare as complex and confusing to my adolescent mind as love and looming responsibility. War was either something frightening and mysterious that left you ineffably changed, or it was hilarious and chuff to a chest-pounding nationalistic ego. Whatever the case, you surmise that it involves the slaughter of hordes of faceless huns.

Lord of War (2005) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

March 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Nicolas Cage, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan, Ethan Hawke
written and directed by Andrew Niccol

by Walter Chaw At times the film that Paul Brickman's brilliant screenplay for Deal of the Century promised, Aussie futurist Andrew Niccol crafts with Lord of War a sometimes transcendent, sometimes finger-wagging fable about a ridiculously successful gunrunner, Yuri (Nicolas Cage), prowling the hot spots of the Third World like a vampire in trenchcoat and shades. (I'm not convinced it wasn't the effect Niccol was going for, what with the obvious connection between spreading pestilence and feeding on death–and, of course, what with Cage's best role arguably being the quasi-vampire in Vampire's Kiss.) Without much of a narrative, even subplots concerning Yuri's mad, druggie brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) and model wife Ava (Bridget Moynahan) seem like way-stations along a dotted line. Too often, the picture lives and dies on its ability to keep the pace fluid–but just that need for momentum suggests something amiss at the heart of the piece, a certain surface tension that would pop should the rock-star protagonist we envy ever collide against the satire of the kind of colossal moral vacuity required of his vocation. It's the embedded problem of what Hitchcock observed as a character we like because he does his job well: what if that job is essentially reprehensible and, moreover, what if the ultimate desire of the film is that we experience righteous repugnance?

16 Blocks (2006)

March 3, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Bruce Willis, Mos Def, David Morse, Cylk Cozart
screenplay by Richard Wenk
directed by Richard Donner

16blocksby Walter Chaw There's a lot to like about Richard Donner's ultimately simpering retread of the long-dormant corrupt-cop/asphalt-jungle genre 16 Blocks. Among the highlights is Bruce Willis's drunken, crooked detective Jack, who–sporting a pot belly, a gimpy leg, bad facial hair, flop sweat, and breath you can practically smell through the screen–makes a decision early on to be the hero at odds with ex-partner Frank (David Morse) in transporting his charge Eddie (Mos Def) the titular sixteen city blocks so that Eddie can testify against New York's finest. Standing in their way: an arbitrary time limit and a whole department of collectors for the widows and orphans club, looking to exact a little Giuliani on the suddenly-vigilante pair. Comparisons to Firewall, that other picture buried in the first quarter 2006 starring an over-the-hill tough guy, are inevitable–and revealing, too, in charting the extent to which ego allows Ford and Willis to age as action heroes (Ford: not at all; Willis: a good bit) and, consequently, how successful these films are in crafting their respective scenarios. The standard against which 16 Blocks will be held, however, is one established by the likes of Prince of the City and Serpico (or even a later Sidney Lumet like Q&A)–it's they to which Donner clearly aspires, what with the picture's setting, its admittedly spurious exposé of bad apples on the force, and at least the first hour of Willis's performance, equal parts broken-down gunsel and brown-bagging wino.

Walk the Line (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

February 20, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Germany, Music, Romance

**½/**** Image B Sound A- (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick
screenplay by Gill Dennis & James Mangold
directed by James Mangold

Walkthelinecap

by Walter Chaw I'm no longer certain what kind of currency there is in producing a biography of an iconoclast whose life is an exact simulacrum of every other iconoclast's life. Here's an entirely respectable film about Johnny Cash that begins in his childhood, proceeds into the Big Break, then segues from there into the euphoria of fame; the drug abuse and the groupies; the "Come to Jesus"; the rehabilitation; and the closing obituary. (It's like Denis Leary said about Oliver Stone's The Doors: "I'm drunk. I'm nobody. I'm drunk. I'm famous. I'm drunk. I'm fucking dead.") Though it claims not to be a hagiography, Walk the Line (like last year's Ray) featured the freshly-dead legends as advisors up until their untimely demises, a kind of personal involvement (and Cash's son John Carter is one of Walk the Line's executive producers, just as Ray Robinson Charles Jr. was for Ray) that precludes, methinks, most controversy in the telling. That's fine, I guess, this new vogue for these modern Gene Krupa Storys and Eddy Duchin Storys and Glenn Miller Storys–I mean, really, who does it hurt? But after praising the almost supernatural channelling of very public figures by talented actors, the only thing left is the drive home, a hot bath, dreamless sleep, and maybe the impulse purchase of the soundtrack at Starbucks in a couple of weeks.

Sundance ’06: Into Great Silence

February 7, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Sundance, Switzerland
Die Große Stille****/****directed by Philip Gröning by Alex Jackson I actually saw director Philip Gröning's previous film at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. It was called L'Amour, l'argent, l'amour, and it was kind of awful, I guess, very long and very pretentious. But it was kind of mesmerizing, too, and the mesmerizing and the awful become inextricable--it's the sort of "bad" movie that only a true genius could make. Gröning's Into Great Silence is in the same insane tradition. I offer no intellectual defense towards either of these two movies; I don't know if I'm complimenting the Emperor on his…

Sundance ’06: Adam’s Apples

January 31, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Germany, Sundance
Adams æbler*/****starring Ulrich Thomsen, Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Nicolas Browritten and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen by Alex Jackson Adam's Apples begins with a Danish skinhead (Ulrich Thomsen) getting off a bus at a halfway house out in the country and keying the vehicle as it drives away, immediately telling us that this isn't going to be a movie that seriously considers the economic origins and social ramifications of the Danish white-supremacist movement. The skinhead, whose name is Adam, meets the other inhabitants of the halfway house, which include an Arabic stickup-man (who speaks in adorably broken Danish and…

In Her Shoes (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 30, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Germany, Romance, UK

**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Feuerstein
screenplay by Susannah Grant, based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner
directed by Curtis Hanson

Inhershoescapby Walter Chaw It looks like exactly the kind of formula chick-lit/chick-flick I detest, and not just because, for the most part, when you call something a "chick-" anything, you're doing it at the expense of the "Sex and the City" bimbos you imagine flock to this garbage like a swarm of Jimmy Choo shoe-flies. But Curtis Hanson, with In Her Shoes, overcomes (for an hour or so) that pigeonholing the same way he survived working with Eminem and Brittany Murphy–the same way he brought an adaptation of James Ellroy's un-adaptable L.A. Confidential to the screen and managed to tremor the delicate, carefully-sheathed grace nerve of Michael Chabon in Wonder Boys. His protagonists are worried about their weight, their bank account, and their shoes, of course, but Hanson (whose biggest accomplishment may be in disguising screenwriter Susannah Grant's propensity to pander to her audience in nasty, hypocritical strokes) makes those worries seem important in dissecting the psychology and interpersonal dynamics of his feuding sisters and wizened grandmamma. He shoots Philadelphia as though it were a blight and Florida like a shimmering summer daydream (or a Coppertone commercial)–and I thought that the moment that I would lose respect for it would come around the corner of every single epiphany, but it didn't arrive until admirably late in the game. It's a chick-flick, no question, but it's one with half a brain. Not much, but half a brain is half more than expected.

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.

Tristan + Isolde (2006)

January 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, UK, War

*/****
starring James Franco, Sophia Myles, Rufus Sewell, David O'Hara
screenplay by Dean Georgaris
directed by Kevin Reynolds

Tristanisoldeby Walter Chaw After bravely transforming the Robin Hood legend into a case of thirtysomething love jones with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner's well-known ex-best friend Kevin Reynolds turns the Tristan + Isolde legend into a WB/TIGER BEAT-friendly, mouth-breathing bodice-ripper indicated by lots of backlighting, orgasmic slow-mo, and dialogue purple enough to blind a Bronte sister. It's shot like a perfume commercial and written like a florid creative-writing exercise, one packed with such AM Gold, Luther Ingram treasures as: "Why does loving you feel so wrong?" Well, it might have something to do with said love being the basis for the Guinevere/Lancelot adultery story in which a woman comes between a king and his most trusted knight, leading to the ideological and literal collapse of a kingdom. Or it might have something to do with the fact that the actors playing the lovers in question never for a moment manage to spark the soggy tinder packed beneath the story. This allows a great deal of time for the sentient beings left in the audience after the ten-minute-mark exodus to suss out why this thing was delayed, then dumped in the middle of the January dead zone. It also, incidentally, caused me to fantasize about somehow harnessing the ability of films like this to make 125 minutes feel like six days for youth-giving effects and racing box scores.

The Devil’s Rejects (2005) [Two-Disc Director’s Cut] – DVD

December 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Horror

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A+
starring Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe
written and directed by Rob Zombie

by Walter Chaw The Devil's Rejects is a minor grindhouse classic that betrays writer-director Rob Zombie as a self-hating cinephile (he inserts a movie critic character only to abuse him) who saddles his villains with Marx Brothers aliases and cribs scenes from sources as varied as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Taxi Driver. His family of Ed Geins (Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), her brother Otis (Bill Moseley), their uncle Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig)) proceed to Petrified Forest a family of rodeo cowboys (Geoffrey Lewis and Priscilla Barnes and others) at a motor inn after a rousing break from a siege on their farmhouse of horrors, then get hunted down and tortured by avenging angel Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe). His tongue firmly in cheek, Zombie casts a couple of '80s sitcom queens from TV shows worried about family dynamics (Barnes of "Three's Company" and Deborah Van Valkenburgh of "Too Close for Comfort") in meatbag roles while spinning southern rock classics like The Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider" over a virtuoso credit sequence (shades of Scott Caan's exceptional debut Dallas 362) and Lynrd Skynrd's "Free Bird" during its conclusion in a way that actually manages not to feel ironic or snarky. That's the tightrope Zombie walks here and he walks it with a surplus of style and skill: it's an exploitation flick about audience culpability, a splatter flick about morality, and a post-modern film that actually cares about movies.

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…

The War Within (2005) + Paradise Now (2005)

November 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Palestine, Theatrical, Thriller, War

THE WAR WITHIN
**/****
starring Ayad Akhtar, Firdous Bamji, Nandana Sen, Sarita Choudhury
screenplay by Ayad Akhtar, Joseph Castelo, Tom Glynn
directed by Joseph Castelo

PARADISE NOW
***/****
starring Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel
screenplay by Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, Pierre Hodgson
directed by Hany Abu-Assad

by Walter Chaw Two films, one by New Jersey filmmaker Joseph Castelo, the other by Palestinian lenser Hany Abu-Assad, begin to make inroads into what is perhaps the most inscrutable phenomenon of the so-called War on Terror: suicide bombing. They’re important films, I think, mostly because suicide bombers, like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots of WWII, make it easier to generalize and dehumanize/demonize the enemy as faceless zealots. Every manned car-bomb, every explosives-strapped martyr, creates ideological schisms on either side–more so and deeper, I’d offer, than conventional missiles or rifle shells do, because here we’re striking at the very heart of the way we perceive life and the afterlife: holiness and sin, valour and cowardice. If there’s ever to be some sort of olive branch in this millennia-old conflict, it has to start with an agreement not only to recognize the humanity beneath the atrocities committed by both sides in the name of defending home and hearth, but also to admit that centuries-old texts about the supernatural are piss-poor signposts pointing the light of right reason.

Doom (2005) + Stay (2005)

October 21, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, UK

DOOM
½*/****
starring The Rock, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, DeObia Oparei
screenplay by David Callaham and Wesley Strick
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

STAY
*½/****
starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Janeane Garofalo
screenplay by David Benioff
directed by Marc Forster

by Walter Chaw For a split second, the clouds part and I think I’ve kenned a glimmer of an idea in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s video game adaptation Doom that doesn’t involve homoerotic gun worship or ripping off everything from Aliens save its humanity. Semper Fi, gung ho, muscle-bound jarhead Sarge (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) takes it upon himself to order his own mini-Mai Lai because he’s a stickler for details, and his stock marines balk to varying degrees of morality-inspired mutiny. Suddenly, and just for that split second, Doom of all things becomes Casualties of War (and, in fact, literalizes that film’s tagline of “In war, innocence is the first casualty”), and although what’s leading up to the moment isn’t that great, I was ready to roll with this totally unexpected, thought-provoking tickle. Alas–it flees like hope so often does, leaving fifteen minutes of semi-gory first-person perspective to simulate the first-person perspective of the video game (marking this as the first–and probably last–time someone thought that ripping off Uwe Boll was a good idea), ending with the sort of mano-a-mano showdown between its warring alpha males that everyone’s seen enough of by now.

Crash (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 10, 2005Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito
screenplay by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
directed by Paul Haggis

Crash2005cap

by Walter Chaw In peeking under the satin-slick bedclothes of the latest crop of high-falutin' liberal diatribes tarted-up with matinee idols and compromised ideals, one finds that whatever the trappings of sophistication, we're still making Stanley Kramer movies, all of grand speeches and peachy endings. Seems to me the common denominator among the Interpreters and Constant Gardeners and Lord of Wars is a good unhealthy dollop of white man's guilt, that could-be beneficial malady that afflicts the affluent and socially well-established once in a while so they'll pay lip service to Africa, and race, and class. (Just as long as it has nothing to do with actual activism.) They're issues considered phantom offices at which to give and then leave with a sense of closure at best or, at the least, a feeling that all the tempests in the world are fit for a teacup you can put away somewhere in a mental cupboard. Race as a fable, Africa as a fantasy–and the last reel interested in beautiful, rich white people falling in love; I think about Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels and a couple of challenges presented therein to white, privileged, "morbid rich" filmmaker Sully, played by Joel McCrea: "What do you know about trouble?" and, later, "I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir." To which Sully responds: "Who's caricaturing?"

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…

A Sound of Thunder (2005)

September 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Germany, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Edward Burns, Catherine McCormack, Ben Kingsley, Jemima Rooper
screenplay by Thomas Dean Donnelly & Joshua Oppenheimer and Gregory Poirier, based on the story by Ray Bradbury
directed by Peter Hyams

Soundofthunderby Walter Chaw Dr. Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) lives in 2055 Chicago, where he conducts hunting trips back to the same moment in the Cretaceous period to hunt the same dinosaur fated to die moments later in a tar pit. Cheap thrills for the future's bluebloods, the outfit is called "Time Safari," and it's owned by an evil capitalist, Hatton (Ben Kingsley), who, in trying to appease future-Chicago's strict time-travel regulatory agency, warns his clients to stay on the path and keep their hands to themselves lest the shockwaves of fucking with prehistory change the course of evolution. It's a term that A Sound of Thunder bandies about with some confidence, "evolution," but it does so without conveying the first idea of what evolution actually is or how it works. It's the kind of film that creationists and other retarded people will like because it mounts a pretty good case for the intelligent design-/flat earth-inspired "Heck, we don't know shit, anything could be true!" school of thought.

Transporter 2 (2005)

September 2, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, France, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Kate Nauta
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Louis Leterrier

by Walter Chaw After the unqualified triumph of Unleashed, the other Luc Besson/Louis Leterrier flick from 2005, my expectations were sky high for Transporter 2, the sequel to Cory Yuen's fitfully-entertaining, unapologetically puerile throwback to the delirious Hong Kong cinema of John Woo and Ringo Lam. (Yuen returns as choreographer.) What a disappointment, then, that this picture's even weaker than its predecessor in terms of character development and plotting, content as it is to be a Jackie Chan ripper with Man on Fire's plot. What so intoxicated about Jackie Chan was this gathering cult of personality born of the man's reckless disregard for his own well-being in the pursuit of fashioning a body of work (individual scenes, not films–the films mostly suck) that for a while resurrected Buster Keaton in every movie theatre outside American soil. Without that sense of Chan's legacy (no one is "collecting" Jason Statham's groovy but inorganic fight scenes), all that's left is a vacuous, utterly-disposable chop-socky flick that pervs on girls with the same kind of childishness with which it pervs on cars. Telling that the MacGuffin of the piece is a hyper-phallic syringe and that the chief henchman is Lola (Katie Nauta), an Aryan Grace Jones with a fondness for lingerie and submachine guns.

The Constant Gardener (2005)

August 25, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Germany, Kenya, Mystery, Romance, Switzerland, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
starring Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy
screenplay by Jeffrey Caine, based on the novel by John Le Carré
directed by Fernando Meirelles

Constantgardnerby Walter Chaw An interesting companion piece to both Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American and Andrew Niccol’s upcoming Lord of War, non-antipodean Fernando Meirelles’s follow-up to City of God, the John Le Carré adaptation The Constant Gardener, is beautifully shot in the murky style of David Fincher or high-fashion photography. Not a bad thing–indeed, The Constant Gardener is one of the most technically proficient pictures of the year–but not a great thing, either, when talking about children killing children in Brazil’s favelas or, as is the case here, a British diplomat confronting his culture’s pathological politeness in the plague-fields of Kenya. What recommends The Constant Gardener is the uniform tonal perfection of the performances, and even if the film itself seems to glamorize (and condescend to) the plight of starving and exploited African nations, it at least demonstrates, along with its cinematic brethren (add The Interpreter and Stephen Gaghan’s forthcoming Syriana to that list), cinema’s willingness to take a more global stance. A paternalistic one, for the most part, but a global one just the same.