Bloody Murder II: Closing Camp (2003) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Bloody Murder 2: Closing Camp
**/**** Image D Sound C-
starring Katy Woodruff, Kelly Gunning, Amanda Magarian, Tiffany Shepis
screenplay by John Stevenson
directed by Rob Spera

by Walter Chaw Amateurish, awkward, and bordering on genuinely offensive, Bloody Murder II: Closing Camp surprises by actually being a nice walk down ’80s slasher flick memory lane. Shot on a zero-budget by Rob Spera (the man behind the infamous Leprechaun in the Hood), the picture is packed with some nice gore, a great deal of nudity, and almost no aspirations towards cleverness. Save one Scream-influenced exchange about the dangers of flashing skin and being African-American in this genre, Bloody Murder II is a mindless series of sadistic stalking/slashing sequences that pick on the nerd, the slut, and the jock while a virginal heroine (with a blood tie to the masked murderer, natch) tries to unravel the mystery in time to save herself.

Russian Ark (2003)

Posted 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.

The Life of David Gale (2003)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Germany, Mystery, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, Laura Linney, Gabriel Mann
screenplay by Charles Randolph
directed by Alan Parker

Lifeofdavidgaleby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. One wonders if there isn’t, after all, a subtle right-wing conspiracy at work in the entertainment industry, where ultra-liberal stumps are turned into the sort of ostensibly pro-leftist propaganda reel that does serious harm to the pro-leftist agenda. If it’s not the reprehensible The Contender, with its Ayn Rand-ian hypothetical, it’s I Am Sam and its bizarre vilification of the child welfare system–or worse, John Q, with its curiously misdirected lament against our obviously broken health-care state. Trumping them all in terms of muddle and melodrama, however, is The Life of David Gale, an anti-death penalty tirade that, by the end, feels like a life sentence the audience wishes hadn’t been commuted. The only way to make any sense of the film is to suspect it of darker motives: Its ultimate message–and it’s not a bad one–seems to be that the criminal justice system the film so actively vilifies is, in fact, the only honest (though imperfect) force in the entire mess.

The Bourne Identity (2002) – DVD

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, DVD, FFC Must-Own, France, Germany, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Clive Owen, Chris Cooper
screenplay by Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Doug Liman

Mustownby Walter Chaw The Bourne Identity is a composition of gestures stripped of romance and presented in their barest forms. It is the most cannily cinematic film of the year and one that, during its first half-hour, boasts blissfully of but one minute of dialogue. The picture recognizes that Matt Damon is best as an everyman with potential by presenting him as a character born at the age of thirty-three. And the Oedipal detective story that forms the centre of the tale (“Who am I?”) is so ripe for examination that it may flower in time to be as debated and revered a fantasy as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (which likewise features the murder of The Father prior to a kind of manhood and subsequent mate choice). Very loosely based on Robert Ludlum’s novel of the same name, indie punk Doug Liman (director of Swingers) has constructed a parable of self-discovery that can as easily be read as a subversion of the conventions of the thriller genre, a discussion of the ways in which the audience participates in the process of genre fiction, or as a science-fiction piece in which strangely robotic über menschen run amuck in a technocratic world metropolis.

Cherish (2002) – DVD

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

**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Robin Tunney, Tim Blake Nelson, Brad Hunt, Liz Phair
written and directed by Finn Taylor

by Walter Chaw A marked improvement over his sporadically interesting but ultimately flat Dream with the Fishes, indie wunderkind Finn Taylor’s Cherish is one-half a fantastic film tied to one-half a terrible film. It leaves plot threads hanging, has a great deal of uncertain character motivation, and transforms into a Tom Tykwer film near the end for no good reason. But Cherish is also home to what is easily Robin Tunney’s best performance to date, another smart and quirky turn by Tim Blake Nelson, a disabled person in a heroic and human role, and a premise that is sharp, intriguing, and original. That it features two Hall & Oates songs on the soundtrack only helps its cause.

Wendigo (2002) – DVD

Wendigo (2002) – DVD

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Patricia Clarkson, Jake Weber, Erik Per Sullivan, John Speredakos
written and directed by Larry Fessenden

FFC Must-Ownby Walter Chaw Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo plays like a chthonic rite: it’s terrifying in its brutal purity and delicious in its ability to pull domestic trauma into the well of archetype where it festers. The film is a further examination of what William Blake cajoles in his “Marriage of Heaven and Hell”–that “men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast,” and it justifies itself beautifully in a Romanticist discussion, a Jungian explication, even a socio-political and historical examination. Wendigo is an extraordinarily thorny film, no question; that it manages to be so without pretension while providing an experience that is terrifying and gorgeous is a remarkable achievement. It’s why we go to the cinema: to be fed through the eye, the heart, the mind.

Narc (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Ray Liotta, Jason Patric, Chi McBride, Busta Rhymes
written and directed by Joe Carnahan

Narcby Walter Chaw Anchored by a powerhouse performance from Ray Liotta, Joe Carnahan’s Narc is a police procedural buddy psychodrama that reminds a great deal of Sidney Lumet’s underappreciated Q&A. The first film mounted in part by Liotta’s new production company, the film is fond of the kind of fluid tracking shots popularized by Martin Scorsese (and Goodfellas, as it happens) and has a crackling ear for dialogue that sadly doesn’t translate into a gift for monologue. Still, there’s a rough intelligence and visceral edge to the film–hewn from its tough-talking vernacular and graphic violence–that feels great in an era where both sides of the ratings divide: PG and R, are hell-bent on edging into the grey PG-13 arena where mental adolescents and the easily-diverted play. Narc works largely because it’s a mature film for adults, smoothing over some of the rough spots where the film begins to lose itself in a labyrinth of flashbacks and surprise revelations.

Solaris (2002)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, Esoterica, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

****/****
starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis
screenplay by Steven Soderbergh, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Walter Chaw Steven Soderbergh's best film since sex, lies, and videotape (and the film most like it in theme and execution), Solaris is a moving, hypnotic adaptation of the classic Stanislaw Lem novel, which was first made into a film in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky. Co-produced by James Cameron's company Lightstorm, Solaris fits loosely into Ridley Scott's Alien future with its monolithic "Company" and the need for a specialist to infiltrate a corrupted interstellar outpost–a future Cameron plumbed in 1986 with his modern genre classic Aliens. But Solaris is less a science-fiction film than it is an existentialist melodrama that, by winnowing itself down to the fierce romanticism at the heart of Lem's novel (and Tarkovsky's trance-like adaptation), locates the core issues of identity and love that plague the dark hours.

Highlander TV Series: Season One (1992-1993) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Fantasy, France, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Television

Image C – D+ Sound C Extras B
“The Gathering,” “Innocent Man,” “Road Not Taken,” “Bad Day in Building A,” “Free Fall,” “Deadly Medicine,” “Mountain Men,” “Revenge is Sweet,” “The Sea Witch,” “Eyewitness,” “Family Tree,” “See No Evil,” “Band of Brothers,” “For Evil’s Sake,” “For Tomorrow We Die,” “The Beast Below,” “Saving Grace,” “The Lady and the Tiger,” “Avenging Angel,” “Eye of the Beholder,” “Nowhere to Run,” “The Hunters”

by Walter Chaw It always struck me as the height of synergy that Queen would score a homoerotic cock opera involving swords and decapitations (and a first episode flat-of-the-blade ass-slap that would make Boy George blush), so, despite all of the things that are extravagantly wrong about the “Highlander” franchise moving to weekly television, the one thing that’s right about the transplant is the use of Freddie Mercury’s creepy ballad to immortal Scottish duellists as its theme song. Essentially a variation on that favourite fantasy of morbid teenagers–the vampire rock star mythos (live forever, fight clandestine battles with leather-horse foes, bed beautiful women and have a non-queer justification for not wanting to commit, pretend to have a cool accent, feel sorry for the small worries of mere mortals, look great)–the main difference in the “Highlander” universe is that the Highlanders aren’t capable of making new Highlanders. It’s as gay as a French holiday, is what I’m saying–not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Theatrical, UK

***½/****
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh
screenplay by Steven Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by Chris Columbus

Harrypotterchamberby Walter Chaw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (hereafter Harry Potter 2) treats its audience with respect while comporting itself with intelligence, wit, and passion. The things missing from the first film have been satisfactorily addressed in the second: the crucial racial bullying subplot; the unfortunate attention on special effects as spectacle; and the lamentable lack of character development. Perhaps most importantly, the sense of darkness and fear endemic to any great children’s story has been honoured in the sequel. I completely expected to dislike Harry Potter 2 (as I disdain the films of Chris Columbus in general and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone in particular), but the picture is more winningly indicative of screenwriter Steve Kloves’s (The Fabulous Baker Boys, Flesh and Bone) dark character studies than of Columbus’s childish desire for frothy restorations of a nuclear order.

The Pool (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Swimming Pool – Der Tod feiert mit
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Kristen Miller, Elena Uhlig, Thorsten Grasshoff, Cordelia Bugeja
screenplay by Lorenz Stassen and Boris Von Sychowski
directed by Boris Von Sychowski

by Walter Chaw In an ineffable way, Boris von Sychowski’s The Pool reminds of those old Eighties television teensploitation summer camp movies starring the butch from “Facts of Life” and the fascist from “Family Ties”: poor production values enslaved to the straitjacket of rigid formula filmmaking, wrapped around G-rated titillation that at least in The Pool recognizes is the result in some part of submerged menace. Cabin date rape and teen pregnancy are represented here by the rude insertion of phallic blades through water slides.

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

Posted 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: The Weight of Water

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Thriller
*½/****starring Catherine McCormack, Sarah Polley, Sean Penn, Josh Lucasscreenplay by Alice Arlen and Christopher Kyle, based on the novel by Anita Shrevedirected by Kathryn Bigelow by Walter Chaw Sort of a "Crucible" of period repression and sexual hysteria tied uncomfortably to Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, Kathryn Bigelow's unreleased and maybe unreleasable The Weight of Water looks to parallel two distinct genres by mining the sexual tension in both. The problem with such a conceit is not its ambition--the picture's sort of admirable in a soggy, pretentious way--but rather the essential misunderstanding of the disparateness of the sources of that tension:…

The Mummy: Quest for the Lost Scrolls (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Television, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound B- Extras C-

by Walter Chaw Universal and Kids’ WB present the abominable and derivative The Mummy: Quest for the Lost Scrolls, the first three episodes of a tragically bad action-adventure cartoon based on characters from Stephen Sommers’s live-action blockbuster The Mummy Returns. After Aryan-izing Fraser’s Rick O’Connell and his irritating moppet Alex (who is, predictably, the star of the show), the animators proceed to rip-off sources as disconcertingly varied as The Evil Dead, Star Wars, and Sommers’s Mummy saga, natch, all while perpetuating myths of the wilting femme and the foppish Brit that, shockingly, its adult counterparts never did.

Scooby-Doo (2002) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Mystery

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini
screenplay by James Gunn
directed by Raja Gosnell

Scoobydoovelmacapby Walter Chaw At one point in Raja Gosnell’s Scooby-Doo, Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) tells the titular pooch, “We’re like two trippin’ peas in a freaky pod, man”–and the counter-cultural freak flag just keeps on flyin’ in a live-action film more for the late-twentysomethings who grew up with the subversive Hanna-Barbera-Iwao Takamato cartoon than the kids of today being weaned on the much tamer, direct-to-video “Scooby” fare. I love that the reviled Scrappy-Doo is given a much-deserved vilification (“Puppy power! He’s not even a puppy–he’s got some kind of glandular thing”), that there’s a scene in which Shag and Scoob are unseen in the Mystery Machine–while smoke billows out of its sunroof to a reggae refrain Shaggy can be heard rapturously intoning, “So toasted, soooo toasted,” and that when Shaggy gets a girlfriend (the smokin’ Isla Fisher), her name is Mary Jane (“That’s, like, my favourite name!”). I love that Velma gets slyly “outed” (“I’m going on a journey of self-discovery”), and I love that one of the main villains is a Telemundo wrestler.

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) [Widescreen] + [3-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVDs

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, DVD, Film Festivals, France, Horror, Mystery

Le Pacte des loups
***½/****
WIDESCREEN DVD – Image A Sound A+ Extras B
3-DISC COLLECTOR’S EDITION DVD – Image B Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Samuel Le Bihan, Mark Dacascos, Emilie Dequenne, Vincent Cassel
screenplay by Christophe Gans, Stephane Cabel
directed by Christophe Gans

by Walter Chaw A beautiful girl adrift in a vast natural expanse is set upon by an unseen menace and slammed against a solid object before being dragged away to her bloodily-masticated doom. Enter a famed naturalist (Samuel Le Bihan), considered the expert in the breed of beast that might be responsible for the heinous deed; his investigations mostly reveal that the culprit is larger than your average monster. Alas, no one in the isolated and picturesque community believes him, consoling themselves in an amateur hunt that bags a load of smaller members of the creature’s species. When the killing continues, the famed naturalist, his highly-trained sidekick (martial artist Mark Dacascos, here reunited with his Crying Freeman director), and a meek member of the ruling class along for the adventure, lay down a series of traps, gather hunting implements, and, after some derring-do, overcome their foe, incurring tremendous losses in the process.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Germany, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Roger R. Cross, Ray Park
screenplay by Peter M. Lenkov and Alan B. McElroy
directed by Kaos

Ballisticby Walter Chaw Walking away with the title of Most Incomprehensible Film of 2002 (walking away is also, incidentally, what you should do when presented with the prospect of seeing this film), Wych Kaosayananda’s ponderously branded Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever is a collection of puzzling explosions married to a series of alternately stunning and hilarious line deliveries of, to be fair, unspeakable exposition. It hopes to obscure its awfulness with its volume or, failing that, to dress up its stupidity with backlit shots of a woman communing with a captive manatee.

TIFF ’02: Femme Fatale

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF
**/****starring Antonio Banderas, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Peter Coyote, Gregg Henrywritten and directed by Brian De Palma by Bill Chambers Given the genre affiliation of its title and that it opens with a clip from Double Indemnity, Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale is unapologetically a film noir--which is not to say the picture has nothing to apologize for. Oh, for a pair of Armond White's De Palma goggles to beautify Femme Fatale, a flat, trés familiar, idly tongue-in-cheek caper starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in a role she's not dangerous enough to play, that of a bisexual American thief who switches places with her…

City by the Sea (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Robert De Niro, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Frances McDormand, James Franco, Eliza Dushku
screenplay by Ken Hixon, based on an article by Michael McAlary
directed by Michael Caton-Jones

by Walter Chaw Leaden with mock gravitas and embarrassing aspirations to the Shakespearean, Michael Caton-Jones’s aggressively uninteresting City by the Sea is a purported true story (based on an article by Michael McAlary) that proves to be just another by-the-numbers police procedural crunched with an abortive middle-age romance and a stultifying Oedipal complication. Opening with archive newsreel footage of Long Beach as a place of fun and hope before juxtaposing the burnt-out crack-house dead wonderland of the Long Beach of just a couple of years ago (a conceit carried out with far more grace in Stacy Peralta’s Dogtown and Z-Boys), the picture quickly reveals itself to be infatuated with a certain kind of dramatic irony in which the stock characters are unaware that they are clumsy allegorical pawns in a metaphorical landscape.

High Crimes (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, James Caviezel, Adam Scott
screenplay by Yuri Zeltser & Cary Bickley, based on the novel by Joseph Finder
directed by Carl Franklin

by Walter Chaw Its title too easy a condemnation of the film itself, the otherwise-talented Carl Franklin’s High Crimes is a sickly, by-the-numbers member of a proud lineage of films that includes such abortive boondoggles as The Presidio, A Few Good Men, The General’s Daughter, True Crime, and eventually What Lies Beneath. It begs the question of whether Morgan Freeman, unquestionably the American actor with the most commanding presence and charisma, will ever get a film that’s truly worthy of him–and whether professional punching-bag Ashley Judd will meekly get the stuffing knocked out of her in the upcoming Catwoman as well. It confirms that Jim Caviezel should consider either a cup of coffee or a different career, that Amanda Peet was probably born sucking on a lollipop and wearing Daisy Dukes, and that after having seen some variation on High Crimes for the umpteenth uncountable time, I have grown, unquestionably, very weary of it.