TIFF ’06: The Last Winter

September 18, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, Horror, Iceland, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF
***/****starring Ron Perlman, James Le Gros, Connie Britton, Zachary Gilfordscreenplay by Larry Fessenden & Robert Leaverdirected by Larry Fessenden by Bill Chambers Larry Fessenden has always been an artist and a consummate professional, but there's a newfound commercial glaze to The Last Winter--however ironic its use of widescreen--that makes one feel somehow less inclined to coddle it. An ambiguous statement, I know; I guess what I'm saying is that if I have any reservations about the piece (and I had fewer about Wendigo and Habit), I don't really fear seeming anti-intellectual in voicing them. Fessenden's own private The Thing, The Last…

Hollywoodland (2006); The Black Dahlia (2006); Factotum (2006)

September 15, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Norway, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, Thriller

HOLLYWOODLAND
*/****
starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins
screenplay by Paul Bernbaum
directed by Allen Coulter

THE BLACK DAHLIA
**½/****
starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank
screenplay by Josh Friedman, based on the novel by James Ellroy
directed by Brian De Palma

FACTOTUM
**½/****
starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand
screenplay by Bent Hamer and Jim Stark, based on the novel by Charles Bukowski
directed by Bent Hamer

Hollywooddahliafactby Walter Chaw Deadening, dull, sepia-drenched faux-noir period hokum of a suddenly popular stripe, Allen Coulter's Hollywoodland casts lantern-jawed, wooden-countenanced Ben Affleck as his way-back literal and metaphorical doppelgänger George Reeves. An apparent suicide that has fostered a small measure of conspiracy theories, Reeves, television's original Superman, is shot in the head, naked in bed, on a summer night in 1959, briefly throwing a generation of kids into minor existential turmoil. But casting Reeves's death into suspicion is a far stickier wicket: Even with the introduction of a woefully-underwritten fictional gumshoe (Adrien Brody) with his own crew-cut, wayward boy, and ice queen ex (Molly Parker) to match, the suggestion that someone in the portly statue's coterie (including his wife-of-a-studio-bigwig-mistress, played by the ageless Diane Lane) might have had a motive for slaying him is given a quick spin and then stabled without a whimper. What's left is the typical and unsurprising Hollywood fable of the high price of fame and the dreadful cost of its pursuit. The central irony that drives Hollywoodland is that, in its desperate attempt to make a mystery of Reeves's death, the only thing it succeeds in doing is cataloguing the myriad reasons Reeves had to justifiably cap himself.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) – DVD

August 29, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Zohra Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O'Connor, Gretchen Corbett
screenplay by Norman Jonas and Ralph Rose
directed by John Hancock

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a sort of journeyman-hack remake of Repulsion: the fantasy-into-reality element is there without Polanski's jolting surrealism, while genre trappings are introduced to keep everybody from wondering what the hell they're watching. Strangely, the concoction successfully keeps you doing just that. Anchored by Zohra Lampert's convincing performance in the title role, the film manages to make its modest borrowings seem quaint and pleasant in a campfire-story way. Director John Hancock's craftsmanship prevents the whole thing from collapsing, and the gimmicky script, by Hancock and Lee Kalcheim (both writing under pseudonyms), has enough juicy plums to string you along for the next one. It isn't exactly good, but it's surprisingly watchable–if not always credible.

Mildred Pierce (1945) – DVD

August 21, 2006Posted in1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden
screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, based on the novel by James M. Cain
directed by Michael Curtiz

by Alex Jackson The difference between Joan Crawford and her inextricably-linked contemporary Bette Davis is the difference between an icon and a mere actress. Davis was always acting and, in her lesser moments, downright hammy; Crawford simply was. A finished product, all she has to do is walk out and exude “Crawfordness.” If it’s not her best film, Mildred Pierce is certainly Crawford’s best-known film, and one of the fascinating things about it is how it illustrates her screen persona blending together with her personal one. I’m fascinated with the idea of transforming from an inferior being into a superior one–the leap from ape to Star Child in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to put it in its purest form. This is mankind’s most pressing drive, is it not–that is, to escape the banality of our mortal existence? Perhaps such philosophical musings are a function of my still living in young adulthood: I’m a year away from beginning a career in which I expect to spend the next forty years, and there is the persistent fear of this being “all there is.” That there’s nothing left; I’m going to spend the rest of my life attempting to maintain a constant state of security. The iconology of Crawford achieves such escape. She’s embraced the cinema in a way Davis never did. She’s drunk from the proverbial cup and is now immortal. Prick her, she doesn’t bleed; tickle her, she doesn’t laugh. She is beyond the flesh now, a creature of light and celluloid.

The Illusionist (2006) + Half Nelson (2006)

August 17, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

THE ILLUSIONIST
*½/****
starring Paul Giamatti, Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
screenplay by Neil Burger, based on a story by Steven Millhauser
directed by Neil Burger

HALF NELSON
***/****
starring Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie
screenplay by Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
directed by Ryan Fleck

Illusionistby Walter Chaw Out of the gate, Neil Burger's The Illusionist threatens to become the Viennese magician version of Amadeus, with Paul Giamatti's Inspector Uhl subbing for Salieri and Eisenheim the Illusionist (Edward Norton) his rabbit-hatted Mozart. But the film resolves itself in no time into something a good deal more mundane: a twisty crime drama complete with gauzy Guy Maddin visuals that cements Norton as the gravitas-heavy young actor most likely to be cast as Heathcliff in a badly-considered community theatre adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It's tedious and protracted, if not otherwise offensive–an elaborate piece of fluff that does its little tricks to the medium-delight of its tiny, undemanding audience before fading into the wings. Though it's tempting to laud it for having no pretensions to greatness, it's equally tempting to stay home and laud it from there.

Equinox [The Criterion Collection] – DVD

August 13, 2006Posted in1960s, 1970s, Action, Adventure, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, The Criterion Collection

THE EQUINOX …A JOURNEY INTO THE SUPERNATURAL (1967)
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Skip Shimer, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers, Jr., Robin Snider
screenplay by Mark Thomas McGee
directed by Mark Thomas McGee & Dennis Muren

EQUINOX (1970)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Edward Connell, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers jr., Robin Christopher
written and directed by Jack Woods

Equinoxcapby Walter Chaw Four teens on a double-date venture into the hills around California in search of an old, dotty professor only to learn that the crazy old bat's unleashed the spawn of Hell with a book written by the devil. When producer Jack Harris bought The Equinox …A Journey Into the Supernatural (hereafter The Equinox) and hired B-hack Jack Woods to partially rewrite and reshoot it three years after its completion, he would insert a new character in evil, unibrowed park ranger Asmodeus (Woods), thus imposing a weird element of pervy grope cinema while handily washing away in a wave of lowbrow mediocrity most of what makes The Equinox so exceptional. Comparing the two versions (the revamp's title streamlined to Equinox) is an example of the difference between gifted amateurs pursuing a passion and slick exploitation artists applying their own interpretations (this time the burgeoning drive-in market) of where they might grab the quickest buck. For The Equinox to endure as an underground classic despite its co-optation is something like The Magnificent Ambersons maintaining its masterpiece status despite the non-existence of Welles's original cut. It's quite a relief, in other words, that Dennis Muren's The Equinox has survived for comparison's sake.

Keane (2005) – DVD

August 9, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image B- Sound A Extras A
starring Damian Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Amy Ryan
written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan

Mustownby Walter Chaw Lodge Kerrigan's astounding Keane deals with not only madness and the loss of a child but also our preconceptions of the cold universe and, shaving it precisely, our expectations for the kinds of cold comfort we expect film to provide. It's wrong to call it experimental, because the decision to shoot in four-minute takes doesn't announce itself as a gimmick as much as it settles comfortably into a groove alternating small explosions and lulls laced with anticipation. A lot of movies pay lip-service to carving space for their actors to find their way around difficult characters and emotionally taxing scenes–Keane actually does it. It's about the belief that there are no certainties in life, and it understands that trusting–and loving–in a world so swiftly lurching is akin to a kind of insanity. When we meet William Keane (Damian Lewis), as he's reeling around the Port Authority Bus Terminal looking for his daughter, it takes us a few minutes to realize that his daughter (if he's ever even had a daughter) has been missing for a year and that his desperate attempts to find a witness to her abduction in the river of passers-by is spiced by a little too much stale urgency. Keane might be crazy. He also has good reason to be.

The Wicker Man (2006)

August 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Esoterica, Germany, Horror, Mexico, Mystery, Nicolas Cage, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Frances Conroy
screenplay by Neil LaBute, based on the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer
directed by Neil LaBute

Wickerman2006by Walter Chaw You mark off certain literary flourishes in Neil LaBute's remake of Robin Hardy's classic The Wicker Man, and then you can't help but note that beneath the pagan matriarchy that is its villain and the hangdog cop (Nicolas Cage) that is its dullard hero, the film is just the auteur's latest unnecessarily reductive gender deconstruction. It's another major disappointment from the man who put humanity on the spit in In the Company of Men and–to a lesser, if no less affecting, degree–Your Friends and Neighbors. This redux hates women and, more, it hates femininity–typical LaBute, you could fairly offer, especially after Possession and The Shape of Things; The Wicker Man demonstrates again that LaBute is one of the brightest, most well-read American directors working–and that he's become incapable of focusing his smarts on a target other than the cruel and essentially alien nature of women. Hitchcock's films are arguably as obsessed, but his "wrong men" were hardly free of complicity in the construction of their own downfalls. Fatal to the production, then, is the introduction of an unsullied male hero–a literal martyr this time instead of the figurative types of LaBute's last couple pictures: a man of action (no milquetoast intellectuals here) struggling against a rising tide of castrating, hippie harpies.

Scoop (2006)

July 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Mystery, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Woody Allen, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane
written and directed by Woody Allen

Scoopby Walter Chaw Woody Allen's stock had been falling when the surprising restraint and structure of the frankly-just-decent Match Point temporarily staunched a hemorrhage of appalling failures. Call Scoop a return to form, then, with Allen doing Allen again to rapidly-diminishing returns, spicing things up this time around with a teeny dose of post-modern self-deprecation that seems not so much thoughtful as pathetic. The Woodman plays a fast-talking, stammering, Catskills comedian calling himself "The Great Splendini" (for the "square haircuts," he Rickles) who, as Allen is wont to do nowadays, acts as the panderous mentor for a hot young couple. What's most shocking is that a puff of dust and cobwebs don't erupt from his mouth every time it creaks open to deliver another pun about Trollope/trollop and Ruebens/Rueben (the corned beef and sauerkraut variety). Otherwise, it's The More the Merrier ad infinitum: the old fart helping a couple of good-looking kids get their groove on–with the twist of a Jack the Ripper subplot woven awkwardly into the narrative. It's far easier to identify the Victorian rake as Allen himself, what with his vaguely pedophilic sleights-of-hand lurking in every frame. That's not necessarily bad if the film's about a Tom Ripley sociopath (à la Match Point), of course, but it's pretty bad when it's a piece of fluff starring his favorite new obsession.

Monster House (2006)

July 20, 2006Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Horror, Mystery, Spielberg, Theatrical

***/****
screenplay by Dan Harmon & Rob Schrab and Pamela Pettler
directed by Gil Kenan

Monsterhouseby Walter Chaw There's a lightness to the heroes of Monster House, as well as a certain callous insouciance in the way the film handles itself as a metaphor for puberty, but the effects for the titular monster and the care with which it sketches the human monster living inside it make the picture fascinating. When it's humming, above and below, the contraption identifies the malady of adolescence as loneliness, as becoming an outcast caste of one ("This is why we sit by ourselves at lunch"), if in mind only. It knows the sudden, emboldening rush of recognizing a girl's charms, and it sees in friendship the bonds and courage that time hasn't yet had the chance to disdain. None of this is surprising, particularly, especially since its executive producers are Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg–who, between them, have fashioned some of our finest monuments to the cult of childhood. But then Monster House throws a curveball and makes its bad guys…tragic. And not just tragic but unbearably tragic–tragic enough that they become ennobled through their tragedy; by the end of the film, with its surprising declaration of "freedom," what could have been a trite affirmation of the ironic swap of the fears of childhood for the anxieties of the teenage years is transformed into a more ecumenical discussion about how life is sacrifice and love is sometimes unrequited, and about loyalty to causes in which we believe and the people in whom we invest ourselves.

Lifespan (1976) [Uncut Special Edition] – DVD

July 6, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Belgium, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Netherlands, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C-
starring Klaus Kinski, Hiram Keller, Tina Aumont, Fons Rademakers
screenplay by Judith Rascoe, Alva Ruben, Alexander Whitelaw
directed by Alexander Whitelaw

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Lifespan appears to be comprised of inserts from somebody else's movie. It huffs and puffs in expositional voiceover largely because it hasn't written any self-evident drama–we see loving shots of scenic Amsterdam and a lot of people walking in/out/through buildings, but nothing that might actually clue us into what the hell is going on. You could (as the special features on the film's DVD release do) insist that this is a Last Year at Marienbad-esque ploy, since there are other elements to support that thesis. Alas, Alexander Whitelaw is no Alain Resnais, and his rudimentary exploration of the meaning of eternal life sounds most like a biology student on the make. Aside from a bit of gratuitous skin, there's almost nothing to watch–but all sorts of terrible, pretentious things you never need to hear.

Caché (2005) – DVD

June 26, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

Hidden
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot
written and directed by Michael Haneke

by Walter Chaw Gone uncommented-upon in greater detail, a glimmer of hope does exist in Michael Haneke’s difficult Funny Games, the scabrous Austrian auteur’s last picture that dealt with a brutal home invasion. Therein, the victims overcome their tormentors and are well on their way to freedom when Haneke inserts himself as the capricious godhead of his own piece (indeed, a director is never anything else) and rewinds the film like videotape, providing a different eventuality for his players. It’s a move as audacious and wry as anything in Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (and as existentially devastating as anything in Pirandello), something that’s earned Haneke his reputation for uncompromising–some would say sadistic (or intellectually austere)–morality plays about apocalypses proximate and ultimate.

Basic Instinct 2 (2006) [Unrated Extended Cut] – DVD

June 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sharon Stone, David Morrissey, Charlotte Rampling, David Thewlis
screenplay by Leora Barish & Henry Bean
directed by Michael Caton-Jones

Basicinstinct2capby Walter Chaw Picture Chappaquiddick re-imagined as a Kylie Minogue video. Thus, auspiciously, begins Michael Caton-Jones's will-breaking Basic Instinct 2, a picture so magnificently awful that it demonstrates a special, indefinable kind of genius en route to being just another of the worst films in history. Schlock writer Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), who publishes under the nom de plume of "Woolf" (because she is one, get it?), is behind the wheel of a sporty little number as a drugged-up soccer hero fingers her snatch, climaxing at the moment she runs her racer through a glass crash barrier (?!) into an icy drink. (Perhaps the Thames–we're in Jolly Old England this time around.) Catherine then finds herself on the wrong side of the law again, ordered to undergo sessions with brilliant British shrink Michael Glass (David Morrissey, who has Liam Neeson's face down pat) on behalf of Scotland Yard's finest, Washburn (David Thewlis). Washburn calls Tramell a "cunt" and a "bitch" and accuses Glass at one point of being beguiled by the "smell of her pussy," which is the sort of elderly banter the knitting cotillion might still find shocking–though it's light years more appalling than Tramell's pleased reference to Masters & Johnson and her constant litany of "cum" [sic] declarations. "He was alive, he was making me cum," she says, and, "I think of you when I cum," and so on and so forth, marking her vampy, thumb-on-the-turntable performance as the most hideous bit of creaky past-prime tarting-about since Mae West was dropping the same dusty come-ons in support hose and pancake makeup. All that's missing are references to Kinsey and "bloomers."

Three Extremes II (2002) – DVD

June 12, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Hong Kong, Horror, Mystery, South Korea, Thailand

3 Extremes II
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
Memories ***½/****
starring Kim Hye-Soo, Chung Bo-Seok
written and directed by Kim Jee-woon
The Wheel **/****
starring Suwinit Panjamawat, Komgichi Yuttiyong, Pongsanart Vinsiri
screenplay by Nitas Singhamat
directed by Nonzee Nimibutr
Going Home **½/****
starring Leon Lai, Eric Tsang, Eugenia Yuan
screenplay by Jojo Hui/Matt Chow
directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The vogue for Asian pop culture is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we have irrefutable proof that, aside from maybe that of France, Asian cinema has eclipsed the West's in terms of consistency, potency, and sheer aesthetic brio. And yet, the fact that so much of Asia's more subdued product is often shunted aside for the nasty, brutish, and weird has certain negative consequences. Trolling the shelves of my local indie video store, I was a bit distressed to discover a second-tier Japanese "extreme" title insultingly promoted as being from "The Most Perverted Country on Earth"–a conclusion to which you might not jump if you peppered your Takashi Miike viewings with some Naomi Kawase or Hirokazu Kore-eda. Would you judge American culture entirely through the prism of Larry Flynt and Hostel? Does Italian film begin and end with Cannibal Holocaust and Strip Nude for Your Killer?

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

May 18, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Malta, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno
screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Dan Brown
directed by Ron Howard

Davincicodeby Walter Chaw The greatest threat that Dan Brown's novel, and now Ron Howard's film of the same, poses to spirituality is the same threat that any bad art presents the human soul. The Da Vinci Code is a retarded attempt to summarize painstaking scholarship and liturgy into broadly digestible gruel. In the eyes of many, it's what the Christian Bible is to centuries of pagan mythology and millennia of cultural anthropology: the greatest stories ever told, retold in a form that illiterates and the gullible can appreciate. It's nothing more and nothing less than The Celestine Prophecy (itself adapted for the silver screen this annus mirabilus) for fallen Catholics and armchair intellectuals: books so poorly-written, so bereft of poetry and grace, that they cannot offend (or repel) the unschooled and the indiscriminate with their oblique-ness, each about poetry and grace so brusquely raped and "decoded" that the "conspiracy"–the great mystery of great art–is laid bare as bad thriller material. It's skipping forward to read the last page of the book–and the wrong book at that. Is it really ironic that Ron Howard, who has never directed a graceful scene, has never had a film with a hint of a whiff or subtext (his version of "genius at work" is a holodeck (see: A Beautiful Mind and now The Da Vinci Code)) is the chosen one for the adaptation (along with partner in extreme, middlebrow-pleasing mendacity Akiva Goldsman) of an obscenely popular book (60-million copies sold and counting) that makes anyone with a half a brain crazy with grief for the plight of the sublime in our culture?

Laura (1944) [Fox Film Noir] + Pinky (1949) [Cinema Classics Collection] – DVDs

May 16, 2006Posted in1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance

LAURA
***/**** Image B Sound B- Extras B
starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson
screenplay by Jay Dratler and Samuel Hoffenstein and Betty Reinhardt, based on the novel by Vera Caspary
directed by Otto Preminger

PINKY
*/**** Image C Sound B- Extras A+
starring Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, William Lundigan
screenplay by Philip Dunne and Dudley Nichols, from a novel by Cid Ricketts Sumner
directed by Elia Kazan

by Walter Chaw A camp classic of a very particular variety, Otto Preminger’s stylish, pedigreed Laura might best be read as a satire of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, reuniting that film’s Judith Anderson with another late, lamented mistress and acres more scenery to chew. It replaces George Sanders with Vincent Price, Laurence Olivier with stiff-as-a-board Boy Scout Dana Andrews, and a never-present heroine with Gene Tierney, she of the unspeakably gorgeous cheekbones. Laura easily laps most films for narrative complexity, the sheer number of audacious hairpins it negotiates on the road of logic dizzying for their arbitrary contortions. The character of a fey, fifty-ish critic, Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who introduces himself to a detective investigating the murder of the titular Laura (Tierney) by stepping out of a bath like some hybrid of Smithers and Mr. Burns, acts as the piece’s unreliable narrator, stalking through his scenes like a dandy in honorary high collar and spats while providing the strangest contention in a strange film: that this aging, fey, homosexual lothario was passionately in love with his ward, Laura. The picture might be the most overt iteration of film noir as a genre about emasculation ever put to celluloid, and trying to puzzle out whether Waldo’s for real and chief gumshoe McPherson (Andrews) buys any of his honeyed hooey constitutes a good portion of what’s fun and maddening in equal measure about it. That tension between what’s ridiculous and what the characters take seriously makes Laura a mystery, for sure, but not for the obvious reasons.

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970) – DVD

May 11, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, DVD, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Thriller

Le foto proibite di una signora per bene
**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Dagmar Lassander, Pier Paolo Capponi, Simon Andreu, Susan Scott
screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi
directed by Luciano Ercoli

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Minou (Dagmar Lassander) is speaking of her beloved spouse Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi): "He's been everything to me," she says, "husband, father…" Yes, it's 1970, and women were still expected in some quarters to be adoring children gazing upward at their supermen companions. To be sure, The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion tries to disabuse its luscious red-haired protag of her habit, but not before preying on her trusting nature in the name of lurid shenanigans and psychological abuse. More than feel the S&M knot tightening, you get the sneaking suspicion that this would be the result if Hugh Hefner had decided to direct Diabolique. Throw in a manipulative sex offender (Simon Andreu) and a racy best friend named Dominique (Susan Scott) with a penchant for porn and you've got a delightfully retrograde giallo that's as childish as it is lurid.

Art School Confidential (2006)

May 9, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, John Malkovich, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Daniel Clowes
directed by Terry Zwigoff

Artschoolconfidentialby Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. When Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff sat down to adapt the former’s graphic serial Ghost World for the screen, they divided up the task generationally, if you will, with the younger Clowes writing the Enid parts and Zwigoff writing the Seymour parts, which themselves have no correlative in the graphic novel. Clowes flew solo on the semi-autobiographical script for the pair’s latest collaboration, Art School Confidential, and the main problem with it is that it’s all Enid and no Seymour. In fact, the film is so relentlessly glib that the Enid doppelgänger who pops up now and again seems gratuitous–and moreover belabours a Ghost World comparison (much like the extended cameo from an unbilled Steve Buscemi) that only finds Art School Confidential wanting. The closest thing the movie has to a moral compass is Joel Moore’s Bardo, one of those career students who becomes the Virgil to freshman Dante Jerome (Max Minghella). Adrift in a sea of poseurs, Jerome struggles in vain to win over his contemporaries, including comely life-drawing model Audrey (Sophia Myles). Meanwhile, a serial strangler trolling the campus for victims not only becomes Jerome’s unwitting muse, but also provides one of his roommates, Vince (Ethan Suplee), with fodder for his thesis film.

Quintet (1979) [Robert Altman Collection] – DVD

April 27, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Paul Newman, Bibi Andersson, Fernando Rey, Vittorio Gassman
screenplay by Frank Barhydt & Robert Altman and Patricia Resnick
directed by Robert Altman

Robertaltmanquintetcapby Bill Chambers Set during another Ice Age (in a featurette on the DVD, co-writer/director Robert Altman makes the even loopier suggestion that the action takes place on another planet, perhaps to either demonstrate what little use he has for prologue or account for a total absence of people of colour), Quintet stars Paul Newman–never particularly well-matched with the iconoclasts–as Essex, a seal hunter trekking across the frozen tundra with pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) in search of his brother Francha (Tom Hill), who lives in candlelit ruins that now constitute a metropolis. Francha greets Essex by inviting him to play Quintet, a glyphic board game that has developed a religious following in these joyless times (some of Quintet's adjudicators have even adopted the names of patron saints, and they all wear makeshift Tudor caps), and when Essex goes off to fetch firewood, Altman pulls a Psycho and kills off every member of his party. It turns out that latter-day Louis XIV Grigor (Fernando Rey) has turned this dystopia into a human Quintet board by orchestrating the deaths of losing players. For largely nebulous reasons, Essex assumes the identity of Francha's assassin and joins a high-stakes tournie; Grigor sees through this ruse but decides to humour him, if only because to do otherwise would be unsportsmanlike.

High Anxiety (1977) – DVD

April 17, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Mystery, Satire, Thriller

**/**** Image B Sound B
starring Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman
screenplay by Mel Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca, Barry Levinson
directed by Mel Brooks

Melhighanxietycapby Bill Chambers There are three clever sight gags in Mel Brooks's disingenuous love letter to Alfred Hitchcock High Anxiety, all of which poke fun at Hitchcock's invasive camera. As far as I can tell, the remaining laughs have no real precedent in the Master's work, while riffs on signature moments from Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds elicit nary a titter. (It doesn't help that filmmakers straight-faced and tongue-in-cheek alike had plundered those pictures long before Brooks came along; the movie was destined to be impotent in a Brian DePalma world.) Choosing the misbegotten Spellbound, oddly, as its jumping-off point, High Anxiety stars Brooks as acrophobic Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke, the new Chief of Staff at "The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous." After stumbling upon some corrupt bookkeeping, Thorndyke is hustled off to a psychiatric convention by the scheming Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman, perhaps doing Rebecca's Mrs. Danvers) and her S&M-craving toady Dr. Charles Montague (Harvey Korman), where he meets the requisite blonde bombshell (Madeline Kahn) and becomes a murder suspect.