Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2001)

August 16, 2001Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Drama, Mystery, Palme d'Or Winner, Theatrical, War

Apocalypse Now
****/****
starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest
screenplay by John Milius and Francis Coppola, narration by Michael Herr
directed by Francis Coppola

by Walter Chaw Taking his cue from Orson Welles’s aborted screen translation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now sought to transplant Marlow’s journey down the Congo in pursuit of mad ivory trader Kurtz to Vietnam during the war. America’s involvement in Southeast Asia is, of course, a good fit with what Conrad calls “one of the dark places of the world,” and Apocalypse Now, easily one of the most literary big-budget blockbusters of the modern era, is utterly faithful to the intellectual and visceral impact of Conrad’s vision. Apocalypse Now is so overheated and pretentious, in fact, that the best way to explain its thematic core might be through an examination of the ways it uses three T.S. Eliot poems (The Wasteland, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Hollow Men) and nods obliquely towards a fourth (The Dry Salvages, which refers to the animalism of rivers as the “brown god”).

Second Skin (2000) – DVD

August 13, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, DVD, Mystery, South Africa, Thriller, UK

**½/**** Image B+ Sound C
starring Natasha Henstridge, Angus MacFadyen, Liam Waite, Peter Fonda
screenplay by John Lau
directed by Darrell James Roodt

by Bill Chambers Second Skin is centred in and around a used bookshop where owner Sam Kane (Angus MacFadyen) cares more about indulging in the dog-eared pulp than making a living. Crystal (Natasha Henstridge) wanders in looking for a job, though, and while Sam doesn’t get enough customers to warrant an employee, he could use a tall blonde woman in his life, and tentatively hires her. Satisfied, she walks backwards out the door, bidding adieu, and is thwacked by a car in a hit-and-run. When Crystal comes to, in a hospital bed, she’s amnesiac. In what must be a rare act of altruism for him, Sam volunteers to assist Crystal in a rummage for her forgotten past.

The Others (2001)

August 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Elaine Cassidy, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan
written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar

by Walter Chaw The Others is an intricate character drama that takes turns shifting its suspicions on any number of scenarios and suspects. It subtly considers each of its small troupe of players as alternately worthy of mistrust, and its fantastic cast is more than equal to director Alejandro Amenábar’s quiet attributions of innocence and diabolical attributions of wickedness. Throughout, Amenábar maintains the unnerving possibility that, despite the spectre of a hoax or a plot ever-looming in the sometimes-inexplicable actions of one or more of its characters, something paranormal might, in fact, be at work.

The Wicker Man (1973) [Limited Edition] – DVD

August 7, 2001Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Mystery, UK

Anthony Shaffer’s The Wicker Man
***½/**** Image B+ (Theatrical)/C (Extended) Sound C Extras A
starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland
screenplay by Anthony Shaffer
directed by Robin Hardy

by Walter Chaw Early in The Wicker Man, poor Sergeant Howie of the West Highland Police shows the picture of a missing lass to a gaggle of locals on remote Summerisle Island. As he turns away, having received no information of value, the camera crops his head off. Later, during a pagan May Day festival, Sergeant Howie nearly gets his head cut off again, this time by six swords forming an interlaced sun symbol. The loss of the head represents castration (Sergeant Howie is shown to be impotent from the start), one of literally dozens of symbols both overt and subtle employed in this unique and brilliant genre film.

The Caveman’s Valentine (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

July 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Music, Mystery, Superhero, Thriller

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Ann Magnuson, Aunjanue Ellis, Tamara Tunie
screenplay by George Dawes Green, based on his novel
directed by Kasi Lemmons

by Walter Chaw A strange mixture of Shine, Basquiat, Angel Heart, and Grant Morrison & Dave McKean’s graphic novel Arkham Asylum, The Caveman’s Valentine is a feverish tale of a homeless madman-cum-detective who, on the morning of February 14th, discovers a “valentine” just outside his New York cave: one of Ella Fitzgerald’s strange fruit, stuck in the crotch of a tree–a young male model murdered and frozen to a branch. Believing at first that his imagined nemesis Stuyvesant, who shoots evil rays into his mind from atop the Chrysler Building, is responsible for the murder, Romulus (Samuel L. Jackson) is put on the trail of an avant-garde photographer in the Mapplethorpe mold, David Leppenraub (Colm Feore). His minor sleuthing interrupted by the occasional delusional fit and bouts with an ecstasy of creation (Romulus was a brilliant Julliard-trained pianist prior to his psychosis), Romulus uncovers clues and harasses suspects on his way to convincing his police-woman daughter (Aunjanue Ellis) that even though he’s a nut, that doesn’t mean he can’t solve a high-profile society murder.

Valentine (2001) – DVD

July 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound B Extras C+
starring David Boreanaz, Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Katherine Heigl
screenplay by Donna Powers & Wayne Powers and Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts, based on the novel by Tom Savage
directed by Jamie Blanks

by Bill Chambers There was a time in my life, not necessarily a proud one, when I based my video-rental selections on whether the box pictured some configuration of pointy knife, mask, and bug-eyed victim. Call it my 'boo' period; without it, I may never have seen Prom Night, and therefore not understood just how banal Valentine, its unofficial remake, really is. Prom Night is brain food by comparison, and it stars Leslie Nielsen! Still, I'd sooner watch Valentine again before much of today's quickie horror, if only to re-experience Denise Richards's eyebrow-raising performance. She suggests here an understudy for the understudy–the custodian who's been around long enough to pick up the lines but not necessarily the context in which they belong. In the words of Radiohead, she's like a detuned radio, but she's easily the most compelling thing in the film.

The Gift (2000) – DVD

July 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: Sam Raimi, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes
screenplay by Billy Bob Thornton & Tom Epperson
directed by Sam Raimi

by Bill Chambers The Golden Razzies are the worst: Earlier this year, they (dis)honoured Keanu Reeves for one of the only decent performances he’s ever given, in Sam Raimi’s The Gift. With his horrendous turns in The Replacements and The Watcher also up for grabs, I can only say that these anti-Oscars would be more clever and thought-provoking if they quit aiming their guns at sitting hams (witness George C. Scott’s Raspberry for his outstanding work in The Exorcist III); they long ago became the spoof-awards equivalent of a male comedian cracking wise about his mother-in-law. But then, The Gift hasn’t garnered much respect at all, except from those who watched for the specific purpose of glimpsing “Dawson’s Creek”‘s Katie Holmes in the buff. She plays a society slut in this southern gothic, which failed to exceed genre expectations during its curiously staggered theatrical release last winter. Yet there are times when a film should be lauded for fulfilling a set of obligations, and this is one of them.

Manhunter (1986) – DVD (THX)

June 26, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Michael Mann, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring William L. Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen, Brian Cox
screenplay by Michael Mann, based on the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon
directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw Director Michael Mann’s third film is the remarkable Manhunter, the second cinematic adaptation of a Thomas Harris novel (the first being 1977’s John Frankenheimer-helmed Black Sunday) and the first to feature Harris’s dark serial killer antihero, Hannibal Lecter (spelled “Lecktor” in Manhunter). It is visually lush and possessed of the attention to craft and detail that has become a hallmark of Mann’s work; to say that it’s superior in nearly every way to the much-lauded and wildly popular The Silence of the Lambs would be something of an understatement.

The Pledge (2001) – DVD

June 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Jack Nicholson, Mystery, Thriller

***½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Jack Nicholson, Benicio Del Toro, Aaron Eckhart, Helen Mirren
screenplay by Jerzy Kromolowski & Mary Olson Kromolowski, based on the novel by Fredrich Durrenmatt
directed by Sean Penn

by Bill Chambers The Pledge implicates anyone and everyone, especially its viewers. There are critics who like to remain situated on a high horse looking down at the movies: that group loathed The Pledge, because it knocked the saddle out from under them. Their reviews are full of defensive posturing, refusing to deal with the film head-on, denouncing exploitation before deciding on whom or what is being exploited. It’s easy to call The Pledge “sick,” for instance, because of the moment where Jack Nicholson’s Jerry Black sifts through crime-scene photographs of slain children and, because the camera is over his shoulder, so do we.

Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) – DVD

June 2, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott, Kristy Swanson, Jennifer Garner
screenplay by Philip Stark
directed by Danny Leiner

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Anyone who cares about film doesn't need me to warn him or her away from Dude, Where's My Car?, and anyone who doesn't probably wouldn't listen to me, anyway. But for what it's worth, here's the skinny: Jesse (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester (Seann William Scott) are a pair of stoners living in what appears to be sunny California. Recently, they have managed to get themselves in a bit of a fix: After a night of intense partying, they find that they cannot remember what happened the day before. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that Jesse's car, on which their addled lives depend, has mysteriously vanished–presumably in the massive frolic mentioned earlier. Thing is, today is their anniversary with their girlfriends (The Twins), their gifts are in their car, and they trashed the Twins' house in the previous night's revelries to begin with, making it necessary to get back in their good books. And so they must ask, "Dude, Where's My Car?"

The X Files: The Complete Third Season (1995-1996) – DVD

May 4, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Television, Thriller

Image A Sound A- Extras B+
"The Blessing Way," "Paper Clip," "D.P.O.," "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," "The List," "2Shy," "The Walk," "Oubliette," "Nisei," "731," "Revelations," "War of the Coprophages," "Syzygy," "Grotesque," "Piper Maru," "Apocrypha," "Pusher," "Teso Dos Bichos," "Hell Money," "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'," "Avatar," "Quagmire," "Wetwired," "Talitha Cumi"

by Bill Chambers They're folded compactly in a box, similar to those gift packages of Life Savers I used to find in my stocking on Christmas morning. Likewise, they inspire trial-and-error taste tests (I never ate the butterscotch ones), the names often betraying little about the flavours. I'm talking about the seven-disc/24-episode collection of "The X Files"' third season, which bows on DVD a year after Season One did and arguably improves upon the high standards set by it. It helps that this is the series in top form.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) – DVD + CD

March 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

*½/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Jeffrey Donovan, Kim Director, Erica Leerhsen, Tristine Skyler
screenplay by Dick Beebe and Joe Berlinger
directed by Joe Berlinger

by Bill Chambers Despite the brainy posturing of director/co-writer Joe Berlinger, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 will probably never be canonized in a sequel debate, that lunchtime activity of film freaks everywhere which has brought a nerdish ascendancy to, among the handful, The Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back. Why? Well, for starters, it’s pretentious as hell; when the DVD liner notes–written by no less than Berlinger himself–for a fast-tracked cash-grab include such descriptive phrases as “mollify the cynics” and “post-modern approach,” you know you’re in for everything but a good time.

In the Mouth of Madness (1995) – DVD

February 15, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Directors: John Carpenter, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness
*½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Sam Neill, Jurgen Prochnow, Julie Carmen, Charlton Heston
screenplay by Michael DeLuca, from stories by H. P. Lovecraft
directed by John Carpenter

by Vincent Suarez John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness opens as John Trent (Sam Neill) is being dragged into an insane asylum, with characters making vague references to a seemingly-widespread epidemic of madness. After Trent covers his padded cell, face, and clothing with black crosses (an image featured in the trailer and which hooked me, proving that while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it may not be worth 95 minutes of one’s time), he recounts the events leading to his current state, and the film proceeds in flashback.

Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000) – DVD

February 5, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, DVD, Horror, Mystery

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Jennifer Morrison, Matthew Davis, Hart Bochner, Joseph Lawrence
screenplay by Paul Harris Boardman & Scott Derrickson
directed by John Ottman

by Bill Chambers The absent piece of biographical info in John Ottman’s “talent file” on Columbia TriStar’s DVD release of his directorial debut, Urban Legends: Final Cut, is that the USC vet actually attended film school in a fairytale world of limited oversight and unlimited resources. This quasi-sequel to Urban Legend-minus-the-“s” is perhaps the least conscientious of modern slasher flicks by virtue of setting up myriad Spielberg wannabes for disappointment. It’s (just barely) amusing in that regard to people like myself who consider themselves “in the know,” but misleading to cineaste undergrads and the people who already hate them on principle.

What Lies Beneath (2000) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 29, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

***/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Diana Scarwid, Miranda Otto
screenplay by Clark Gregg
directed by Robert Zemeckis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover What Lies Beneath isn't very nasty, but it's nice. The film takes Polanski-style horror, the kind where the environment itself seems to be falling apart and the individual has to navigate through miles of decay, and gives it a white-enamel Hollywood gloss that makes it fearfully cold and sinisterly antiseptic. It's a given from the get-go that this pure whiteness will, by film's end, be defiled by the blood of the innocent and the violence of the guilty. It's only a matter of time before it gets there, but the travel involved is bracing and loaded with suspense. While the end of What Lies Beneath wallows in some rather familiar horror-movie scare tactics, the rest of it is a nicely understated affair that cleverly plays on your nerves without relying too much on brutality or not enough on jolt.

Mother Night (1996) + Waking the Dead (2000) – DVDs

November 16, 2000Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, War

MOTHER NIGHT
***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A
starring Nick Nolte, Sheryl Lee, Alan Arkin, John Goodman
screenplay by Robert B. Weide, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut
directed by Keith Gordon

WAKING THE DEAD
****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly, Molly Parker, Janet McTeer
screenplay by Robert Dillon, based on the novel by Scott Spencer
directed by Keith Gordon

by Bill Chambers In Timequake, the most recent and arguably most flawed of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novels (like many of his fans, I found it only intermittently readable), the author writes: “…I have never used semicolons. They don’t do anything, don’t support anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites.” Perhaps Keith Gordon’s Mother Night is one of the few artistically successful cinematic adaptations of a Vonnegut work because Gordon avoids semicolons in his filmmaking–there is no straining to cohere, here.

Me Myself I (1999) + Passion of Mind (2000) – DVDs

September 19, 2000Posted in1990s, 2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller

ME MYSELF I
**/**** Image B Sound A Extras C
starring Rachel Griffiths, David Roberts, Sandy Winton, Yael Stone
written and directed by Pip Karmel

PASSION OF MIND
**/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård, William Fichtner, Peter Riegert
screenplay by Ron Bass and David Field
directed by Alain Berliner

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With a bumper crop of "what if?" movies hitting screens over the past couple of years–enough of them, perhaps, to signify a genre–the time is nigh to examine, in the hope of capping, this Cinema of Regret, a marriage propagandist's dream. Both Me Myself I and Passion of Mind arrive (coincidentally?) on DVD this week, and each in its roundabout way encourages its existentially lost central character to attach sentimentalism to family values. Dan Quayle must be happy as a clam.

The Omen (1976) [Special Edition] – DVD

September 4, 2000Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Horror, Mystery, UK

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw
screenplay by David Seltzer
directed by Richard Donner

by Bill Chambers I kind of enjoyed having nightmares as a child because they produced the most intense sensations then within my ken; the threat of death, as was so often the crux of these bad dreams, made me feel gloriously alive. Thus, when The Omen came into my life at the tender age of nine, it became an instant favourite, for it closely approximated the terrifying experiences I'd had with my eyes wide shut. In other words: it scared the pants off me.

Dead Again (1991) – DVD

June 28, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi
screenplay by Scott Frank
directed by Kenneth Branagh

by Jarrod Chambers A convicted murderer on death row, about to be executed. A stolen pair of scissors, he lunges–a woman wakes up screaming. It was all a dream, or was it? The door opens, a flash of lightning, illuminating a silver cross dangling from the neck of an attendant nun.

The Green Mile (1999) – DVD

June 18, 2000Posted in1990s, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Stephen King

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse, Doug Hutchison
screenplay by Frank Darabont, based on the serialized novel by Stephen King
directed by Frank Darabont

by Vincent Suarez In his review of The Thin Red Line, your host at FILM FREAK CENTRAL laments that viewers often are inclined to choose whether they prefer that film or its contemporary, Saving Private Ryan. I find that the same unfortunate phenomenon exists among those who’ve seen both of Frank Darabont’s first two films, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. (Curiously, Tom Hanks stars in each pair of films.) While the two share many traits (their prison setting, their writer-director, and their source material: short stories by Stephen King), they are vastly different films. For while The Shawshank Redemption is an institutional morality tale, The Green Mile is a death-row fairy tale.