Speed Racer (1967) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

May 2, 2003Posted in1960s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Family, Japan, Sci-Fi, Sports, Television

Image C Sound C Extras C+
"The Great Plan, Parts 1 & 2", "Challenge of the Masked Racer, Parts 1 & 2", "The Secret Engine, Parts 1 & 2", "The Race Against the Mammoth Car, Parts 1 & 2", "The Most Dangerous Race, Parts 1, 2 & 3"

by Bill Chambers The theme song says he's a demon on wheels, and in one traumatizing, out-of-step dream sequence, Trixie, Speed Racer's Girl Friday, meets a version of Speed Racer with a face like the Green Goblin's and scaly arms capable of summoning hellfire. Unmotivated by anything other than the fact that Trixie has fallen asleep, the scene embodies half the charm of the Americanized "Speed Racer": we're only given exposition if it matches the lip movements mapped out for the original Japanese scripts, leading to dialogue so profoundly aimless (but synchronized!) that US producer and former child model turned dubbing impresario Peter Fernandez should've called his version of the show "Samuel Beckett's Speed Racer". While the narration occasionally attempts to bridge story points A and C (with B either overdubbed into oblivion or lying on a cutting-room floor somewhere), for the most part it refamiliarizes us ad nauseam with the origin of Racer X, Speed's-older-brother-who-ran-away-from-home-when-he-crashed-Pops'-racecar-and-now-wears-a-facemask-to-conceal-his-true-identity.

Russian Ark (2003)

February 21, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Finland, Germany, Japan, Mystery, Russia, Theatrical

****/****
starring Sergei Dontsov, Mariya Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy, David Giorgobiani
screenplay by Boris Khaimsky & Anatoli Nikiforov & Svetlana Proskurina & Alexander Sokurov
directed by Alexander Sokurov

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Russian Ark is a film that hoists its middle finger high against the cultural practices of nearly a hundred years. Implicitly appalled by the twin forgettings of communist and free-market logic, director Alexander Sokurov retaliates by erecting a monument to the proceeding three centuries of image-making–one that marks the entrance to a crypt perhaps, as Sokurov knows that time is running out on its preservation. Surely there’s a heaping dose of snobbery in his approach, and a whole lot of wilful obscurity as well, but his expression of his thesis is so passionate, and his technical execution is so seamless and beautiful, that I could have forgiven him almost anything.

Film Freak Central Does San Franciso’s 2002 Dark Wave Film Festival

October 27, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Spain, Thriller, UK, Werewolf

Darkwavelogoby Walter Chaw The question, and it's a question with currency, is why anyone in their right mind would subject themselves (and their long-suffering editors) to coverage of two concurrent film festivals. A pair of answers: the obvious is that I'm not in my right mind, but as obvious is the fact that San Francisco's Dark Wave, which ran from October 18-20, is one of the most exciting "small" film festivals in the United States. I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about it, in other words–ulcers be damned. Presented by the hale San Francisco Film Society evenings and midnights at the historic Roxie, last year's presentation included one of this year's best films (Larry Fessenden's superb Wendigo) as well as the finest example of retro euro-horror (Lionel Delplanque's Deep in the Woods) since Dario Argento lost his marbles.

DIFF ’02: Swing

October 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Japan, Music
***/****starring Oscar Copp, Lou Rech, Tchavolo Schmitt, Mandino Reinhardtwritten and directed by Tony Gatlif by Walter Chaw An infectiously good-natured and bittersweet film about the Manouche Gypsy culture in France, Tony Gatlif's musical history Swing wraps a story of first love around the story of passion for the creation of music. A dream of flight scored by a haunting Gypsy lullaby marks the centre point of the film and defines as well the feeling of eternity that marks the picture and its threads of love, music, and place. (A burial at sea consists of the axe of a guitar sent…

DIFF ’02: The Princess Blade

October 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Japan, Sci-Fi
Shurayukihime***/****starring Hideaki Ito, Yumiko Shaku, Shirô Sano, Yoichi Numatascreenplay by Kei Kunii, Shinsuke Sato, based on the comic by Kazuo Kamimura and Kazuo Koikedirected by Shinsuke Sato by Walter Chaw An indescribably cool post-apocalyptic martial-arts fairy tale, Shinsuke Sato's The Princess Blade follows the saga of a young woman named Yuki (Yumiko Shaku, bearing a startling resemblance to Pat Benatar) who discovers that her adoptive band of assassin ronin might have killed her mother and stolen her birthright as the heir to a kingdom. With swordplay choreographed by Hong Kong master Donny Yen (Iron Monkey), Shurayuki-Hime has moments that defy description…

TIFF ’02: Dolls

September 14, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, Japan, Romance, TIFF
***/****starring Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi, Chieko Matsubarawritten and directed by Takeshi Kitano by Bill Chambers The Yakuza doesn't rear its head until well into Dolls, a gripping, fractured ensemble piece written and directed by that down-and-dirty poet of Japanese cinema, Takeshi Kitano. I must confess to feeling ill-equipped to discuss the mechanics of the film--it's storytelling that gives you the impression of being steeped in oral tradition, and all I can say is that Dolls is accessible to monkey-brained North American viewers like myself all the same. Beginning with an elaborate puppet show shot with verve and affection,…

TIFF ’02: L’Idole

August 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Japan, Romance, TIFF
The Idol**½/****starring Leelee Sobieski, James Hong, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Jalil Lespertscreenplay by Gérard Brach, Samantha Lang, based on the novel À l'heure dite by Michelle Tourneurdirected by Samantha Lang by Bill Chambers I'm largely indifferent to L' Idole, a Gallic production directed by an Australian and co-starring two Americans of different ethnicities who admirably perform their parts in French. Leelee Sobieski's task is made more difficult by the role's requirement of her to deliver foreign-language dialogue in a tertiary accent, as the native New Yorker plays an Australian touring France with a theatre company. (I'm not enough of a linguist to…

Trouble Every Day (2001)

July 20, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Claire Denis, Drama, France, Germany, Horror, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, Vampire

****/****
starring Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle, Alex Descas
screenplay by Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau
directed by Claire Denis

by Walter Chaw Plaintive and sad, Claire Denis’s remarkable Trouble Every Day is a rare combination of honesty, beauty, and maybe even genius. It isn’t enough to say that the picture captures the barbarism festering at the core of gender dynamics, nor is it sufficient to express my frank amazement at how Denis subverts genre in ways perverse and powerful. Here’s a canny director who knows the vocabulary of cinema as well as the cruel poetics of sexual anthropology; perhaps it’s enough to say that Trouble Every Day captures something ineffably true about the sex act with images vital, frank, and unshakable.

Rollerball (2002) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 15, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Japan, Sci-Fi, Sports

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
screenplay by Larry Ferguson and John Pogue
directed by John McTiernan

by Walter Chaw When John McTiernan’s Rollerball was scheduled for the summer 2001 movie season, it boasted of a full-frontal Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and some graphic violence. What it didn’t have was the confidence of MGM, who pushed the release of the film into the doldrums of the new year and presided over the cutting of the only two possible reasons (the nudity and the gore) that anyone would have for seeing the film in the first place. Doubtless the rationale was to garner a PG-13 rating and the expanded pre-teen first-weekend box-office it confers; they’d better hope for a whopper opening, because no one is seeing this turkey twice. It strikes me as telling that a major studio would have so little confidence in a film that it is deemed somehow too prurient and also not “good” enough for a summer audience. Rollerball proves the truism that a studio often doesn’t know if it has a winner–but almost always knows when it has a stinker. Saying that Rollerball is better than the simultaneously released Collateral Damage is likely the only praise it will garner this weekend.

Platform (2000)

June 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, China, Drama, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Theatrical

***/****
starring Hong Wei Wang, Tao Zhao, Jing Dong Liang, Tian Yi Yang
written and directed by Jia Zhang-Ke

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover To recommend or not to recommend Jia Zhang-ke’s Platform? The question depends on who you are. For those with even a passing interest in Chinese cinema and culture, it’s virtually mandatory viewing: the film is one of the most dense and nuanced portraits of a society in transition from any nation I can think of, and for Westerners, it puts a face to events that we normally hear mentioned only in passing. Those seeking narrative thrills, however, had better look elsewhere, because Platform‘s glacial pace and oppressive mise-en-scène are calculated to test the patience of even the most sympathetic viewer. But even though the film is tough slogging at times (a circumstance I attribute to its having been re-edited for export), those with intellectual priorities are advised to get on this Platform and ride the train to the last stop.

Film Freak Central does the Fifth Aurora Asian Film Festival

May 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Japan, Music, UK, Vietnam

AurorafestpagelogoMay 31, 2002|by Walter Chaw Now in its fifth incarnation, Denver’s Aurora Asian Film Festival has grown year by year to become one of the region’s most interesting cinematic events. Under the guidance of Denver Film Society program director Brit Withey, the decidedly small festival (twelve films are being screened over the course of four days) will feature eleven Denver-area debuts–including the much-lauded The Turandot Project and Tony Bui’s Green Dragon–as well as a restored 35mm print of Conrad Rooks’s 1972 film Siddhartha. It is a rare opportunity to see a largely-unknown film projected (an adaptation of Hermann Hesse’s novel of the same name, the picture features the cinematography of the great Sven Nykvist), and an example of the kind of value a festival this intimate can provide.

Metropolis (2001) – DVD

April 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
screenplay by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, based on the comic book by Osamu Tezuka
directed by Rintaro

by Walter Chaw There is a sense of wonder inherent in the exploration of new mediums. A young Maxim Gorky’s 1896 review of one of the first Lumiére Cinématographe shows in Russia begins, “Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.” As I began exploring the anime medium (not a “genre,” I am assured, and I have come to concur) a scant couple of years ago, I felt similarly the interloper in a dreamscape conjured by a culture steeped in tradition, mythology, and the sort of artistic sensibility that could only evolve from the only people victimized by the most terrible weapon of mass destruction humans have devised. Anime is–perhaps predictably, then–often-post-apocalyptic (its themes exploring the existential by way of William Gibson’s cyberpunk and Philip K. Dick’s identity crisis) finding elements of the rapture in such rapturous fantasies as the lyrical Princess Mononoke, the viscerally charged Ninja Scroll, and the ferocious yet delicate Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 1

April 5, 2002Posted in****/****, 1950s, 1990s, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Czech Republic, Drama, Fantasy, France, Horror, Japan, Mexico, Mystery, Netherlands, Satire, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

by Walter Chaw

BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956)
***½/****
starring Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Roger Duchesne, Guy Decomble
screenplay by Jean-Pierre Melville, dialogue by Auguste Le Breton
directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

With every minute of Henri Decaё’s cinematography looking like a Eugène Atget photograph, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur is a visually stunning film from a director who influenced filmmakers as diverse as Jean-Luc Godard (who quotes Bob Le Flambeur at least twice in Breathless) and John Woo (whose The Killer takes its basic plot from Melville’s Le Samourai). It is film noir of the highest order, reminding in its ensemble intricacy of Kubrick’s The Killing (released a year later in 1956) and evoking the kind of chiaroscuro, gin-joint, smoke-drenched milieu where every ashtray has a name. It’s a love letter to the grim American gangster drama of the Forties that subverts the genre even as it reinvents it as a lyrical ballad to gamblers, losers, hoods, and wayward dames–a snapshot of the Montmarte district of Paris 47 years before Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s reinvention of the same.

Spy Game (2001) [Collector’s Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

March 28, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, DVD, Espionage, France, Germany, Japan, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane
screenplay by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata
directed by Tony Scott

Spygamecap

by Walter Chaw The defining moment of Spy Game, Tony Scott’s latest exercise in stylistic excess, occurs at about the midway point. Playing CIA spymaster Nathan Muir, Robert Redford debriefs his best agent Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) atop a building in Cold War Berlin. After a tense exchange, an enraged Bishop throws his chair off the barren, windswept rooftop. The problem with the scene is neither the preposterous screenplay by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata to which it belongs, nor Scott’s infatuation with the panoramic aerial shot, nor the way that Harry Gregson-Williams’s ubiquitous score threatens here and at every other moment to rupture your eardrums. It’s not even in the ridiculously out-of-place imagistic Xerox of Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders’s melancholy ode to love and Berlin.

Kon Ichikawa – Books

November 15, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Books About Movies, Japan

FFC rating: 8/10
edited by James Quandt

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I've read that in America, they'll screen the finished film for ordinary fans in a movie theatre free of charge. Then they have the audience write what they think was good or bad about the film. Looking at the responses, the star or director will sometimes try to reshoot scenes the audience didn't like… That attitude toward filmmaking is really conscientious; I think it's a great way to make films."

Those, believe it or not, are the words of a world-class director, trusted by millions and still active at the age of 86. And such remarks go a long way towards explaining why, despite being one of the four best-known Japanese directors (along with Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu), he has never attracted the personality cult the other three have enjoyed. For unlike that trio's relentless vision, doggedly pursued in film after film, Kon Ichikawa refracted his through the distorted lens of studio insistence and assignments, which may explain why he has worked consistently throughout the Eighties and Nineties when younger directors like Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura have often had to struggle to get a film made.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2001)

November 9, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Hong Kong, Horror, Japan, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Vampire

***½/****
screenplay by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, based on the novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi
directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Vampirehunterdbloodlustby Walter Chaw Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s name is probably not as familiar to anime’s United States fanbase as Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Ôtomo, Mamoru Oshii, Isao Takahata, or Shinichirô Watanabe, but amid those in the “know,” his Ninja Scroll is among the best pure action/fantasy films of the last fifty years in any medium. Tightly plotted and drawn in a style that crosses Bernie Wrightson with Kelley Jones’s work in Neal Gaiman’s Sandman comic series, Ninja Scroll is one of few eloquent stand-alone justifications for Japanese animation as a movement of true cinematic value and lasting merit. Perhaps accounting for his relatively anonymous standing, Kawajiri’s other films veer wildly from the sloppily drawn though viscerally intriguing Wicked City to the frankly awful Demon City Shinjuku. With Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Kawajiri’s first film since Ninja Scroll six years back, the director takes on Hideyuki Kikuchi’s popular manga D–yousatsukou (the sequel to Kyuuketsuki Hantaa ‘D’, made into 1985’s Vampire Hunter D by Toyoo Ashida), and produces something that falls in quality somewhere between the dizzying heights of Ninja Scroll and the occasionally weak Wicked City, while borrowing images and elements from both.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Fantasy, Japan, Romance, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring the voices of Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Ming-Na
screenplay by Al Reinert and Hironobu Sakaguchi and Jeff Vintar
directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi

by Walter Chaw So the dialogue’s not so bad (having seen Pearl Harbor), the story’s not so obscure (having seen Akira), and the voice acting’s pretty decent (having listened to Claire Danes do San in Princess Mononoke). It almost goes without saying that the film is hands-down the best ever based on a videogame, and that Squaresoft’s 3-D captured animation is breathtaking and exciting, not just for the fact of itself but for what it portends of big-budget Stateside anime. What Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within reminded me of the most is Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s seminal 1988 anime Akira, and the revolution Akira heralded for the popularity and scope of the anime genre in Japan.*

Akira (1988) – DVD (THX)

July 24, 2001Posted in1980s, Action, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound B (English)/A (Japanese)
screenplay by Katsuhiro Otomo & Izo Hashimoto
directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

by Walter Chaw What begins as a miracle of cinema ends as an obscure endurance test, but the visual landmarks that you pass along this strange animated journey’s way make the trip one of value. Akira is two hours and five minutes of philosophical soup, a surrealistic melding of Blade Runner, X-Men, Firestarter, and Frank Miller’s “Sin City” mixed with the melancholic sensibilities of the only culture that has experienced the Atomic bomb, with a healthy sampling of really fast motorcycles tossed in for visceral crunch.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 19, 2001Posted in1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Japan, War

***½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras A
starring Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, E.G. Marshall, Tatsuya Mihashi
screenplay by Larry Forrester, Ryuzo Kikushima, Hideo Oguni
directed by Richard Fleischer and Kinji Fukasuka & Toshio Masuda

by Walter Chaw A joint project between a Japanese film crew and veteran American director Richard Fleischer (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Tora! Tora! Tora! had Akira Kurosawa assigned as the lead Japanese director, poised to make his American debut with a mammoth script weighing in at well over four-hundred pages–and that just for the Japanese side of the story. Accustomed to complete autonomy in his projects, Kurosawa bowed out after several weeks following a series of run-ins with Fox executives over not only the unwieldiness of his vision, but also disagreements concerning the shade of white used in the interiors of the Japanese carrier ward rooms! Unfortunately, Kurosawa’s initial involvement with the picture resulted in his regular cohort Toshiro Mifune turning down the role of Admiral Yamamoto (a role he would play in Jack Smight’s 1976 Midway and in 1968’s Yamamoto biopic Rengo kantai shirei chôkan: Yamamoto Isoroku), as the two titans of Japanese cinema had lingering bad feelings over their last collaboration, the underseen Akahige.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

June 15, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Germany, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*½/****
starring Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig, Leslie Phillips, Mark Collie
screenplay by Simon West and Patrick Massett & John Zinman
directed by Simon West

by Walter Chaw To say that Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is completely incomprehensible is not entirely accurate, for the basic plot appears to be pretty straightforward. The British Lara Croft (played by the American Angelina Jolie) is a sort of jet-setting archaeologist in the Indiana Jones mold who is extremely well outfitted by a gadget man in the James Bond mold, and who boasts of a loyal, shotgun-packing butler in the Batman mold. Her task is to discover two pieces of a triangular artifact before the Illuminati do on the day that a rare syzygy coincides with a solar eclipse, allowing the triangle-bearer to control time.