Masked and Anonymous (2003)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Music, Theatrical, UK, Western

*/****
starring Bob Dylan, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson
screenplay by Bob Dylan & Larry Charles, writing under very dumb pseudonyms
directed by Larry Charles

Maskedanonymousby Walter Chaw The three or four times that Larry Charles's Masked and Anonymous features musical performances by its star Bob Dylan (particularly a rousing rendition of "Dixie"), the picture manages to be something just north of unbearable. The rest of the time, it's an interminable ego trip through Dylan's towering sense of self-importance, his almost total inability to relate with reality, and that curious phenomena of popular artists who are at once imperiously patronizing and desperate to be seen as common men. When failed concert promoter Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman) asks down-on-his-luck folk singer Jack Fate (Dylan) about the importance of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin to American rock-and-lore, the inanity of the answer (and the evasiveness of Dylan's demeanour–"Well, it matters to someone, I guess") isn't mysterious so much as inane and disingenuous; even the evocation of social phenomena as important and galvanizing to roots rock and the inner city as the myth of Stagger Lee is tossed off with a wry flick of the hand. Pretending that he doesn't know himself to be an icon in American music (and, arguably, even of American letters) is the worst kind of arrogance: the sin of false modesty, which Dylan doesn't wear particularly well and is frightfully unbecoming besides.

Empire Records (1995) [Remix! Special Fan Edition] – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance, Teen

Empire Records: Remix!
*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
starring Liv Tyler, Anthony LaPaglia, Renee Zellweger, Maxwell Caulfield
screenplay by Carol Heikkinen
directed by Allan Moyle

by Bill Chambers Allan Moyle’s Empire Records has defenders too staunch to disregard–and because I listened to them, I’m left with the sensation that I chewed a piece of bubblegum until well after its flavour ran dry. The Canadian Moyle, whose inauspicious directorial debut was the 1977 tax-shelter crime flick The Rubber Gun, discovered teenagers three years later with his oddity of a second film Times Square and has rarely looked back since. Yet although his cinematic beginnings predate those of John Hughes, Moyle’s Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records are eclipsed by even the lesser entries in Hughes’s teen canon, such as Sixteen Candles and the Hughes-produced Pretty in Pink.

Laurel Canyon (2003) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Frances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale, Natascha McElhone
written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko

by Walter Chaw Buoyed by a fantastic performance from Frances McDormand, Lisa Cholodenko’s follow-up to her deft, well-regarded High Art is the disappointing, sprawling, somewhat overreaching Laurel Canyon. In its ambition it resembles Rose Troche’s third film, The Safety of Objects–that picture also saddled with a large, veteran cast and a problem with focus, but most importantly with the responsibility of a young filmmaker given the opportunity, with a bigger budget and well-regarded performers, to produce a piece commensurate in scale to that perceived expectation. The problem with the situation is that more times than not it leads to the type of film that Laurel Canyon is: ostentatious in structure, but in that way also a departure from the succinct character observations that brought the young artist the opportunity in the first place.

The Pianist (2002) [Limited Soundtrack Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Music, Palme d'Or Winner, Poland, UK, War

***/**** Image C Sound A Extras B+
starring Adrien Brody, Daniel Caltagirone, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay
screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman
directed by Roman Polanski

by Walter Chaw It comes as little surprise that when the Nazis begin to build a wall around the Warsaw ghetto is also when Roman Polanski’s Holocaust drama The Pianist becomes distinctive, as the director is at his best bound by the endlessly symbolic edifices and crannies of architecture. The story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) and his survival under the auspices of the Polish underground, serendipity, and fear is almost anti-heroic, its central figure passive like the most memorable of Polanski’s heroes (Rosemary, Carol Ledoux, Trelkovsky, even Jake Gittes after a fashion), and its indignities more intimate than the grand tapestry of the Holocaust generally allows. The loss of Szpilman’s entire family to The Final Solution is less wrenching than the line that precedes it as Szpilman says to his sister, “I wish I knew you better,” and less difficult again as the musician’s inability to play a piano he’s imprisoned with in a tenement flat while in hiding. Far from insensitive, The Pianist is actually intensely humanist, focused as it is on the little indignities that bring a man from his comfortable environment to the furtive edge of capricious extinction.

A Mighty Wind (2003)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Music, Pseudo-Documentary, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Bob Balaban
screenplay by Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy
directed by Christopher Guest

Mightywindby Walter Chaw Though Waiting for Guffman remains the best of the three Christopher Guest-directed improv-sketch mockumentaries, A Mighty Wind finds Guest’s troupe returning somewhat to form after the disappointing and mean-spirited dog show spoof Best in Show. Following the efforts of grieving son Jonathan Steinbloom (Bob Balaban) to reunite the folk acts represented by his late father Irving for a tribute concert to be broadcast on public television, the picture is essentially an outline fleshed-out through a bunch of improvisations tied loosely together by largely disconnected vignettes. Free, for the most part, of the cheap shots of Best in Show, A Mighty Wind‘s failures are again a cartoonish turn by Eugene Levy and a healthy dose of sentiment that goes down suspiciously like arrogance. If there’s a unifying thread to Guest et al’s forays into parody (including Rob Reiner’s directorial debut This is Spinal Tap), it’s that faint, pervasive whiff of superiority… And the atmosphere appears to be getting thicker.

Biggie & Tupac (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Documentary, DVD, Music, UK

***/**** Image B- Sound B Extras B+
directed by Nick Broomfield

by Bill Chambers A few days ago in THE HOT BUTTON, Dave Poland distinguished Nick Broomfield from his peers in the documentary field better–or, at least, more succinctly–than I’ve ever seen it done: “[Broomfield] creates an atmosphere in which you connect emotionally not with the characters in the film, but with his plight in trying to get his film made.” That’s certainly true of Broomfield’s Biggie & Tupac, in which almost every sequence carries the subtext of peril: A bona fide Dante in headphones, Broomfield latches onto a Virgil (ex-police officer Russell Poole) who escorts him, more or less, through circles of Hell (the gang-marked territories of Compton, the rap-music industry, and finally prison). An alarming number of the director’s interviews in Biggie & Tupac begin with a summary of attempts on the subject’s life, and in a deleted scenes section on the DVD, we see that Broomfield tried and failed to chat with the owner of L.A.’s notorious “Last Resort,” a bar at which gangbangers receive an ace-of-spades merit badge for their first killshot. A red ace means a flesh wound; a black ace means fatality.

Drumline (2002) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Nick Cannon, Zoë Saldaña, Orlando Jones, GQ
screenplay by Tina Gordon Chism and Shawn Schepps
directed by Charles Stone III

by Bill Chambers Appealing newcomer Nick Cannon stars in Drumline as Devon, a Harlem high-school graduate making the transition from a big fish in a small pond to a guppy in the ocean that is Atlanta A&T. Devon begins his gruelling training for A&T’s mostly-black drumline on the wrong foot, wearing dark colours when white was demanded, failing to get his roommate to the first tryout on time, and claiming an instrument reserved for upper-tier members of the drumline–and refusing to give it back until he’s shown some respect by veritable drill sergeant Sean (Leonard Roberts). The one bold move that works in Devon’s favour at the start is hitting on Laila (Zoë Saldaña), captain of the cheerleading squad; she and Devon’s superiors, including the drumline’s manager, Dr. Lee (Orlando Jones), aim to turn the boy into a man through demonstrations of tough love peppered with encouragement.

8 Mile (2002) [Widescreen w/Uncensored Bonus Features] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Music

*/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Eminem, Kim Basinger, Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer
screenplay by Scott Silver
directed by Curtis Hanson

by Walter Chaw I was of a mind once that Kim Basinger is pretty good at playing a milquetoast and a sexual victim (I liked her in 9½ Weeks, and she won the Oscar, after all, for L.A. Confidential), but I stand corrected. As a milquetoast sexual victim (not to Eminem, surprisingly) and mother to a steel worker-cum-rapper, Ms. Basinger’s every moment in Curtis Hanson’s 8 Mile is a moment that the film, an otherwise serviceable underdog Flashdance intrigue, grinds to a halt. In reprising her abominable cornpone accent from the aptly named No Mercy, she fails to understand that “country-fried bayou redneck” makes a lot less sense in the liminal “8 Mile” section of Michigan than it does in New Orleans.

The Beach Boys: An American Band (1985)/Brian Wilson: “I just wasn’t made for these times” (1995) [Double Feature] – DVD

Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Music

THE BEACH BOYS: AN AMERICAN BAND
****/**** Image C+ Sound B+
directed by Malcolm Leo

BRIAN WILSON: “I JUST WASN’T MADE FOR THESE TIMES”
***½/**** Image B Sound B+
directed by Don Was

by Walter Chaw There are a handful of albums indispensable to a comprehensive understanding of the roots of modern music, and The Beach Boys‘ “Pet Sounds”–a sort of Apocalypse Now for band-leader Brian Wilson, a mad compendium of musical fragments (Bach’s progressions, The Four Horsemen‘s harmonies) that cohered into a Spector-esque Wall of Sound sparsity/harmony–is irrefutably among them. Intent on making definitive, album-length statements, spurred on by his obsessive competitiveness with The Beatles (“Rubber Soul” predates “Pet Sounds”, and though Paul McCartney cited “Pet Sounds” as a primary influence on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the release of that album is often blamed for Brian Wilson’s nervous breakdown), and sensing the opportunity in 1966 of being at the vanguard of the psychedelic movement with a follow-up album (the never-completed “Smile”), the story of The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson is as operatic and tinged with ironic destiny as an Aeschylean tragedy.

Brown Sugar (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Mos Def, Nicole Ari Parker
screenplay by Michael Elliot and Rick Famuyiwa
directed by Rick Famuyiwa

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a lot of talk of integrity in Brown Sugar, and a lot more of the defiant nature of good hip-hop; if the film embodied either of those traits in its words or pictures it would be a perfect ten. Alas, for all of Brown Sugar's hue and cry over the mainstreaming of the music, the film is tediously commonplace in its attitudes; director/co-writer Rick Famuyiwa treats hip-hop mania like the sedate cream-coloured furniture his protagonists seem to enjoy–just another tony item to be collected. He simply isn't smart or passionate enough to evoke an obsessive love for anything, be it musical or human, and both his romance plot and his professing of musical devotion are borrowings from other movies and conversations overheard. While it's too low-key and oblivious to be offensive (and the furniture does have its qualities), it makes no impression at all beyond the miracle one fluky, inspired performance that belongs in a better movie.

Little Secrets (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Music

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Angarano, David Gallagher, Vivica A. Fox
screenplay by Jessica Barondes
directed by Blair Treu

by Bill Chambers Little Secrets, a movie about the fear of honesty we have when we’re children, begins in the vein of a Joe Dante suburban satire but ends, oh so detrimentally, like a nightmare of Chris Columbus pap. Directed with genuine zest by Blair Treu, a man whose resume includes a film with the title “Just Like Dad” and episodes of the quickly-jettisoned television adaptation of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Little Secrets grows so self-involved that the dial of its own moral compass comes off its hinge: Treu (ironic spelling, don’t you think, for the director of a film dealing with the subject of lying?) and screenwriter Jessica Barondes steer their picture irreversibly south in the final minutes in what amounts to an act of belligerence–the filmmakers are too proud to admit they’ve made a gross miscalculation of plot, leading not only to the most aggravating closing smooch in a kids’ flick since Columbus’s own Adventures in Babysitting, but also Little Secrets‘ misogynistic aftertaste.

KylieFever2002 (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Concert Doc, DVD, Music, UK

Kylie Minogue: Kylie Fever 2002 in Concert – Live in Manchester
*/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
directed by William Baker, Alan MacDonald

by Walter Chaw A quick glance at the back cover of the KylieFever2002 <In Concert – Live in Manchester> DVD divulges three questions I couldn't help but answer before actually indulging in the spectacle from start to finish. The answers are that "Fever" and "In Your Eyes" are not what you think they are, and that "Locomotion" and "The Crying Game" are indeed, exactly what you think they are. The exercise, in short, is a good news/bad news scenario.

A Picture of Sam Jones Goes Here: FFC Interviews Sam Jones

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews, Music, Theatrical

December 1, 2002|An accomplished photographer whose work has been featured in ESQUIRE, GQ, VANITY FAIR, and ROLLING STONE, Sam Jones makes his directorial debut with the raw, fantastic music documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which follows alt-country band Wilco as they complete their album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” Shot in Super16 and resembling such seminal rock-docs as Don’t Look Back, Jones’s debut is a superbly-crafted, expertly-paced piece that details the band as they’re dropped by their record label, lose a key member, and struggle through the agonies and ecstasies of creation and commerce. The picture impresses most with the universality of its themes, hitting narrative highs and lows that have nothing to do with a familiarity with the band in question. All the same, fans should be well pleased with Jones’s photographer’s eye as he captures the musicians at work in their small loft and from behind the mixing board.

Finding the Giant Within: FFC Interviews A.J. Schnack

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews, Music

AjschnackinterviewtitleOctober 24, 2002|The kind of interview that They Might be Giants (hereafter TMBG) might appreciate, my chat with filmmaker A.J. Schnack was short, sweet, and to the point. In town for the 25th Denver International Film Festival with his film Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, a pop journalist-laden look at the phenomena of geek rockers TMBG, I shared a large sofa with the nebbishy Mr. Schnack and asked what moved him to make a feature-length documentary on his favourite band.

DIFF ’02: Together

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Music, South Korea
Together with YouHe ni zai yi qi**/****starring Tang Yun, Chen Hong, Chen Kaige, Liu Peiqiscreenplay by Xue Lu Xiao, Chen Kaigedirected by Chen Kaige by Walter Chaw Sentimental and overlong if beautifully shot and carefully structured, Chen Kaige's latest film Together is, in most respects, very much like his other films despite a contemporary setting. Focusing on music as a metaphor for transcendence and release in a way that has become a recurring hallmark of his career (Life on a String, Farewell My Concubine), Together follows a gifted young violinist, Xiaochen (Tang Yun), who finds that music is his only…

DIFF ’02: Swing

Posted 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: Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music
***/****directed by A.J. Schnack by Walter Chaw A.J. Schnack's Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns has a title perfect for a withering exposé on the seedy underworld of prostitution and pornography but is instead a breezily enjoyable documentary on quirk-rock pioneers they might be giants. Its title referring to the name of the band and its two frontmen (John Flansburgh and John Linell), the piece succeeds as an introduction for the neophyte and a detailed retrospective for the long-time fan (some of whom are featured to great comic effect), even as it slightly overstays its welcome for the former. With a…

TIFF ’02: Standing in the Shadows of Motown

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, TIFF
*½/****directed by Paul Justman by Bill Chambers They had more number-one hits than Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys combined. They were...The Funk Brothers? That reversal of expectations, which occurs in the opening voice-over of Paul Justman's Standing in the Shadows of Motown, is one of the few clever touches that actually works in this documentary about the rotating panel of studio musicians who helped turn Berry Gordy's Detroit record company into a hit factory. In the film's first reel, producer/drummer Steve Jordan offers that it wouldn't matter if "Deputy Dog" had sung the songs…

Little Secrets (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Family, Music, Theatrical

*/****
starring Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Angarano, David Gallagher, Vivica A. Fox
screenplay by Jessica Barondes
directed by Blair Treu

by Walter Chaw I fear that Blair Treu’s Little Secrets is the latest picture to fall victim to my predisposition against insipid and trite films. The problem with my bias in this instance is that there is a considerable segment of the middle-class population at large that seems particularly enamoured with such fare, particularly as it manifests under the aegis of “family entertainment” or Meg Ryan movies. It’s only a problem, I hasten to add, because I hate arguing with the upper-reaching bourgeoisie–there is no good way, after all, to explain to the fuzzily intractable why a self-pitying adopted girl who makes money like Lucy from the “Peanuts” strip while staying home to practice violin in anticipation of an orchestra tryout is more suited for the dinosaur prose of big-print Beverly Clearys than for the voluntary consumption of any self-respecting human being.

24 Hour Party People (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Drama, Music, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Steve Coogan, Keith Allen, Rob Brydon, Enzo Cilenti
screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce
directed by Michael Winterbottom

by Walter Chaw Inviting direct comparisons to Todd Haynes’s ebullient Velvet Goldmine with a flying saucer, Michael Winterbottom’s brilliant 24 Hour Party People apes, too, a great deal of the style and tone from that film: insouciant, arch, and invested in giving over the stage to the zeitgeist of an era through its youth culture and its music. 24 Hour Party People distinguishes itself, however, with a flip, post-modern absurdism that includes asides to the camera (“I’m being post-modern before it became popular”) and a certain self-awareness that somehow encapsulates the discursive, free-associative madness of Factory Records founder Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan). Beginning with The Sex Pistols‘ first performance in 1976 before a rapt crowd of 42 people, the picture takes on a dizzying kind of animal logic, stalking the fortunes of the “New Wave” Manchester ethos of Joy Division (into the band they became, New Order), Happy Mondays, the Hacienda dance club, and, most importantly, Wilson himself–part huckster, part savant. All along, Wilson cues us that the world is about to change and that this band of brothers, this group of bouncing, sullen, devotees to a new punk energy, are the men who will change it.