It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – DVD

October 30, 2006Posted in1940s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

***/****
OUV DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
AE DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi
screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra
directed by Frank Capra

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The year was 1990. I was 17, and had managed to elude the silver-backed beast known as It's a Wonderful Life for most of my young life. Having heard of the corn factory known as Frank Capra, I, a hard-bitten cynic, naturally feared the worst–I was more interested in corrosive (and recent) films like Do the Right Thing or Drugstore Cowboy than in some schmaltzy old battleaxe starring Jimmy Stewart. But I was working in a video store at Christmastime, which meant only one thing: the constant rotation of It's a Wonderful Life on the store monitor. And I was shocked to discover that the movie is pretty disturbing; it may have come dressed as the lamb of sentimentality, but inside it was a howling wolf, seething with failure and loneliness and wishing for something to take it all away.

Little Children (2006)

October 18, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Esoterica, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Gregg Edelman
screenplay by Todd Field & Tom Perrotta
directed by Todd Field

Littlechildrenby Walter Chaw Kate Winslet is a joy if no longer a revelation, and in Todd Field's Little Children, she demonstrates the kind of courage that has made her the most essential actress of her generation. Aside from Winslet, Little Children feels like a burlesque of deep-feeling pictures: the lesser of two possible sophomore efforts from the guy who brought us In the Bedroom, which was, in 2001, my since-regretted pick for best of the year. (I can be a sucker for well-played big emotions, I guess.) But Little Children is icy, stentorian, and patrician in its staginess and self-consciousness, and its disdain for its subject matter is front and centre. The picture presents its tale of suburban woe as the world's most condescending fairytale, inserting an omniscient narrator in a way that, along with the upcoming Stranger Than Fiction, makes me wonder what it is about unseen movers that is so seductive in the modern conversation. I also wonder how Field and co-screenwriter Tom Perrotta (adapting his own book) could have rationalized the amount of bile mustered in reconfiguring American Beauty to include a raincoat perv (Jackie Earle Haley, the heart and soul of the film–if also its patsy and mule) and a sweaty adultery punctuated fatally by a winking nod to Madame Bovary.

The Science of Sleep (2006) + Jet Li’s Fearless (2006)

September 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, China, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Martial Arts, Romance, Theatrical

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
*½/****
starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou
written and directed by Michel Gondry

Fearless
**/****
starring Jet Li, Nakamura Shidou, Sun Li, Dong Yong
screenplay by Chris Chow, Christine To
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw A cacophony of cascading whimsy, Michel Gondry's exercise in Freudian bric-a-brac The Science of Sleep plays like a movie based on a thrift store specializing in Harlequin novels–French Harlequin novels. It adheres to the music-video director's maxim of maximum images per second, and it casts Gael García Bernal as Stéphane, a useless lug endlessly working on a calendar of calamitous events and pining after his across-hall neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), with whom he is too smitten to confess that his mother is her landlord. His dreams take the form of a one-man variety show, while Gondry revels in scenes where he inflates his hero's hands and has him ride an animated patchwork horse. But The Science of Sleep is more exhausting than illuminating–more a loud masturbation than any kind of intercourse with the audience. The difference between the Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Gondry of The Science of Sleep, it seems obvious to say, is the difference between a film scripted by Charlie Kaufman and one not, though it's more complicated than that in that the Kaufman of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an artist who finally struck a balance between affectation and a much finer connective tissue. Gondry is still just engaged in the twist.

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.

TIFF ’06: The Pleasure of Your Company

September 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Film Festivals, Romance, TIFF
½*/****starring Jason Biggs, Isla Fisher, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Weston, Edward Herrmannwritten and directed by Michael Ian Black by Bill Chambers To paraphrase comedian Andy Kindler talking about The Three Stooges, I finally figured out why I don't like sketch comic Michael Ian Black: he's not funny. Until The Pleasure of Your Company, Black's hyphenate debut, I thought maybe it was a/n natural/irrational aversion to his countenance--he looks bizarrely like a member of Our Gang, one who just keeps getting taller. But that ferret face is only the most appropriate avatar for Black's hipster snottiness. Around these parts, we often talk…

Quinceañera (2006); Fall to Grace (2006); The Puffy Chair (2006)

August 23, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

QUINCEAÑERA
**½/****
starring Jesus Castanos, Araceli Guzman-Rico, Emily Rios, Alicia Sixtos
written and directed by Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland

FALL TO GRACE
½/****
starring René Alvarado, Ricardo Azulay, Bill Johnson, Cassidy Johnson
written and directed by Mari Marchbanks

THE PUFFY CHAIR
**½/****
starring Mark Duplass, Kathryn Aselton, Rhett Wilkins, Julie Fischer
screenplay by Mark Duplass
directed by Jay Duplass

by Walter Chaw Gentrification is the inciting phenomenon of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's Quinceañera, only the second film to land both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance. Its celebration at the festival–which, like most festivals, prices itself culturally and financially out of most of the subjects its films exploit–should be regarded as something of a foregone conclusion: If it's not a product born of self-flagellation, Quinceañera at least owes its existence to an instinct towards the atonement of its two white, privileged creators, shooting a quasi-documentary/half-improvised character drama in the Echo Park neighbourhood where they found themselves the land-investor fixer-uppers. But it's even more complicated than that, owing to Glatzer and Westmoreland's homosexuality and the specific insight that an unpopular, oft-misrepresented minority engaged in the creation of a non-traditional family unit might bring to a story of another unpopular, oft-misrepresented minority (Mexican working class) looking to create a haven of kinship in a sea of cultural turmoil. Inserting themselves into the story as unkind spoiler-avatars in the piece (a gay, white couple acts as Quinceañera's bogeymen)–the set for their tasteful duplex serves as Glatzer/Westmoreland's real-life digs–is as thorny a po-mo entanglement as these two otherwise successful guys interpolating themselves in their neighbour's lives, homes, and rituals with movie cameras and an evangelical mission.

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.

Just My Luck (2006) – DVD

August 21, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Lindsay Lohan, Chris Pine, Faizon Love, Missi Pyle
screenplay by I. Marlene King and Amy B. Harris
directed by Donald Petrie

Justmyluckcap

by Bill Chambers A movie as ill-conceived as the original Bring It On (yeah, let's root for the privileged white chicks against the…all-black inner-city cheerleading squad?), Donald Petrie's Just My Luck fatally hitches its wagon to the miniscule charms of Lindsay Lohan. The migraine begins to form as soon as Lohan makes her grand entrance as PR chick Ashley Albright, striding out into the pouring rain without an umbrella knowing full well that the weather will clear up to accommodate her. (It does.) After scraping his jaw off the sidewalk, her Stepin Fetchit of a doorman hails a taxi, and while climbing into it Ashley notices a five-dollar bill stuck to the bottom of her boot. Does this cosmically-pampered princess tip the doorman with it? LOL! She's admiring the creases in Lincoln's beard as the cab peels away. Later, Ashley will receive two barely-provoked, if wholly deserved, punches in the face from a jailed black woman, while a Suge Knight-type record company overlord (Faizon Love) will declare: "I used to be [an idealist and a purist]…but then I decided to become filthy rich." I'm as surprised as you are that D.W. Griffith didn't write the treatment for this thing.

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.

Harry and Tonto (1974) – DVD

August 14, 2006Posted in1970s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Road Movie, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Commentary B+
starring Art Carney, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Larry Hagman
screenplay by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld
directed by Paul Mazursky

by Alex Jackson I complain a lot about film criticism being reduced to archaeology, but I don't think I've ever seen anything quite as impenetrable along these lines as Paul Mazursky's 1974 sleeper Harry and Tonto. It never coheres, it never makes its point, and it never justifies its existence. You know Mr. Bernstein's anecdote about the girl in the white dress in Citizen Kane, or Marge Gunderson's drink with her old high school chum in Fargo–those nice little throwaway moments that haven't much to do with the actual movie? In Harry and Tonto, Mazursky gets rid of the "actual movie" and gives us nothing but throwaway moments. Yeah, it's that kind of film.

Only Human (2004) + House of Sand (2005)

August 10, 2006Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Brazil, Comedy, Drama, Portugal, Romance, Spain, Theatrical, UK

Seres queridos
**/****
starring Guillermo Toledo, Marián Aguilera, María Botto, Fernando Ramallo
written and directed by Dominic Harari & Teresa Pelegri

Casa de Areia
***½/****
starring Fernanda Montenegro, Fernanda Torres, Ruy Guerra, Seu Jorge
screenplay by Elena Soárez
directed by Andrucha Waddington

by Walter Chaw Married hyphenates Dominic Harari and Teresi Pelegri craft a screwball comedy (which has the audacity to end with the final line of Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot) about what happens when good Jewish girl Leni (Marián Aguilera) brings Palestinian nebbish boyfriend Rafi (Guillermo Toledo) home to meet her My Big Fat Greek Wedding ethnic cartoon family. There's the blind, rifle-toting old fossil fond of recounting his days of potting Arabs along the Gaza strip; the short, hysterical Jewish mother; the slutty older sister who only fucks anything with a dick because mama loved little sister more; the younger brother who's newly fanatical about the Koran and the observance of the Jewish Sabbath; and the niece who's a monster because, well, who wouldn't be in that household? Discomfort turns into farce when Rafi drops a cube of frozen soup out a window, killing someone who might be Leni's father (said father later mistaking a black prostitute for Leni's mother)–this event also leading to the discovery that Leni's mother has never had an orgasm and the tableaux homorte where grandpa is caught groping Rafi during a trip to the loo.

Yours, Mine & Ours (2005) [Special Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] – DVD

August 1, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C-
starring Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo, Rip Torn, Linda Hunt
screenplay by Ron Burch & David Kidd, based on the screenplay by Melville Shavelson and Mort Lachman
directed by Raja Gosnell

by Walter Chaw Hand it to deal-with-the-devil Raja Gosnell's Yours, Mine & Ours, a worthless update of the mostly worthless Henry Fonda/Lucille Ball original: at least it hurries up and cranks Admiral Frank (Dennis Quaid) and hippie-chick Helen (Rene Russo) into holy matrimony. But then, it's not about the parents–it's about getting covered in goop and obnoxious kid gags, so once we jettison the only two possible reasons to see this shipwreck (ignoring poor Rip Torn and Linda Hunt in perfunctory supporting roles), we're offered eighteen adorable reasons to open our wrists and tie our tubes. You know the drill: disgusting food jokes, barf jokes, fart and poop and piss and pet jokes, sped-up moments, weird references to The Parent Trap, and then the obligatory soupy plot machinations that get the arch-enemy family camps to join forces to manufacture a feel-good throb of family against all odds. As Robert Altman himself couldn't work a miracle with these twenty-two main characters (eighteen of them pre-adolescent), maybe it's not fair to expect Gosnell to conjure something watchable from this infernal clips reel of children screaming–but one did have the reasonable expectation that he wouldn't twice humiliate Quaid in silly-noise-augmented slapstick scenarios.

L’Enfant (2005) + The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006)|L’Enfant (2005) – DVD

July 23, 2006Posted in2000s, Belgium, Crime, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Documentary, Drama, DVD, France, Music, Palme d'Or Winner, Romance, Theatrical

The Child
**½/****
starring Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard, Fabrizio Rongione
written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON
**/****
directed by Jeff Feuerzeig

Lenfantcapby Walter Chaw I believe the title is meant to indicate the arrested protagonist more than it is the baby he tries to sell on the black market, thus The Child (L'Enfant)–another of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's mild, allegorical subversions of Robert Bresson and incrementally more violent subversions of the French New Wave–takes on Pickpocket via Breathless. In so doing, it conjures up this odd chimera of a stylistically backward-looking, formalist deconstruction, the first film of the Brothers (after La Promesse, Rosetta, and The Son) to feel this much like a knowing satire, to come so perilously close to being smug and post-modern that its style begins to become confused with its message. It could be a product of overfamiliarity with a fine and distinct sensibility (the last thing this kind of innovation can afford is to be outrun and second-guessed), or it could be that the Brothers are getting either bored of their shtick or fond of their reputation.

Gabrielle (2005) – DVD

July 20, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras N/A
starring Isabelle Huppert, Pascal Greggory, Claudia Coli, Thierry Hancisse
screenplay by Patrice Chéreau & Anne-Louise Trividic, based on the novel The Return by Joseph Conrad
directed by Patrice Chéreau

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's official: the heritage movie is dead. Long the bane of young rowdies and middlebrow-haters the world over, the form breathed its last breaths earlier this century following a couple of decades of uncritical support. Witness Patrice Chéreau's outstanding literary adaptation Gabrielle, which manages to avoid the pitfalls of the genre while simultaneously critiquing its lesser examples. There is no comfort to be had in well-appointed houses or the tasteful appreciation of "the arts"–only, after Joseph Conrad's The Return, a vain and selfish man who uses such accoutrements for his self-aggrandizement. The film snatches away the cheap pleasures of heritage, blowing up its shallow comforts and rocking you in ways a mere "period piece" never could.

Fetching Cody (2005) – DVD

July 17, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, DVD, Romance, Time Travel, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Jay Baruchel, Sarah Lind, Jim Byrnes, Robert Kaiser
written and directed by David Ray

Fetchingcodycapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Canada is a nation of amateurs. Some terrible national weakness has taught us to be sheepishly inexact, as if trying to tell a story or form a coherent argument were about showing up and meekly filling in time as opposed to a complex array of intellectual and aesthetic decisions. We'll do the job, but we won't do it precisely–and frequently, the results are empty shells like Fetching Cody. I wouldn't be nearly so angry about its failure if I didn't know that there were more like it–long, unbroken streams of arrested preadolescents looking to get points for being "serious" and "meaningful"–coming down the pipeline. Critics are probably the largest segment of the population who'll see them, which probably accounts for why we're terse in our dismissals: we know we'll wind up talking to no one but ourselves.

Ask the Dust (2006) – DVD

July 16, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Romance

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Colin Farrell, Salma Hayek, Donald Sutherland, Eileen Atkins
screenplay by Robert Towne, based on the novel by John Fante
directed by Robert Towne

by Walter Chaw As a male of the average chauvinist-pig variety, you find yourself inclined to give Robert Towne's Ask the Dust the benefit of the doubt because he's convinced Salma Hayek to strip naked a few times and roll around in the surf. And yet the realization dawns inescapable that no matter the acres of flesh, the film is every bit as horrible as that self-serious, neo-camp sexploitation classic Original Sin (another noir based on a lesser-known, period-dependent novel–that one by Cornell Woolrich, this one by John Fante), with only the gender/race roles reversed–that watching naked Angelina Jolie writhe around with Antonio Banderas can be every bit as disturbingly sexless as Hayek and Colin Farrell doing same. Promising to follow the James M. Cain pot-boiler formula with its dense voiceovers and faux-sordid, sepia-stained sexing, Ask the Dust is actually just inert, a painfully-overwritten, impossible-to-execute picture loaded down with self-conscious slatted shadows and mirrors (and all manner of noir affectations) that isn't only set in 1930s Los Angeles, but plays exactly as anachronistic and fusty as most films produced in the Thirties, too. It's the kind of movie that makes much of a character's English-impaired malapropisms ("Not 'grew on me,' grew in me…like a baby," mewls Hayek's character in one of many excruciating proclamations); to its core, it's the kind of movie that sucks now and always has in exactly the same way.

Magic (1978) – DVD

July 10, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Romance

***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, Ed Lauter
screenplay by William Goldman, based on his novel
directed by Richard Attenborough

  Magiccap

by Walter Chaw I've never been able to contextualize Richard Attenborough's Magic in any meaningful way. I think the best William Goldman pulp novels (Control, The Princess Bride, Marathon Man, Tinsel) defy categorization and emerge as artifacts out of time and genre. The homosexual twists, the sexualized fairytales, the exploding breast implants, the first-person narration taken from "Fats's Diary" of Magic, his thriller about a mad artist engaged in that hard-to-contextualize discipline of ventriloquism…

Valley of the Dolls (1967) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 30, 2006Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Paul Burke, Sharon Tate
screenplay by Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley, based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann
directed by Mark Robson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's little left to say about Valley of the Dolls that hasn't already been said by either its contemporary critics or legions of mock-adoring fans. The former were correct in establishing it as a cynical cash-in crushed under the weight of its vapidity, the latter justified in their identification of its trash playground of mansions, film sets, and nightclubs as the ideal stage for queening and camping. By all rational standards, the movie is awful, yet its rapid-fire stream of meshuggah takes it into some realm of nonsensical fantasy that makes it as good or better than successful films of its genre. There are so many critical errors in judgment that they meld together to become a hyperbolic cocktail that goes to your head and knocks your legs out from under you.

The Lake House (2006)

June 16, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical, Time Travel

*/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dylan Walsh, Christopher Plummer
screenplay by David Auburn
directed by Alejandro Agresti

Lakehouseby Walter Chaw I couldn't help but conjecture, while watching the trailer for Alejandro Agresti's inexplicable The Lake House, that when Keanu Reeves's character is poring over a letter, a little thought bubble above his head would say, "Dude, I totally can't read." Continuing to think that is the only thing providing much of a distraction during the laggardly-paced, sloppily-scripted, hilariously-acted proceedings, which, as that same preview gives away, concern the romance of two people separated by two years, exchanging letters through the providence of a magic mailbox. Argentinean director Agresti's visual compositions are meticulous and his eye for architecture is almost as good as that of his protagonist, Alex Wyler (Reeves), but it's cold comfort against the raging inferno of illogic attending this scenic, stupid, Nicholas Sparks-ian shipwreck. Not helping things is Agresti's lamentable penchant for cornpone, exhibiting itself most stridently in the piano-tinkle, magical-elf-opening-a-treasure-chest score and a series of whimsical wipe-edits and dog reaction shots. Among its dedicated sub-genre of time-warp kiss-face (Somewhere in Time, Happy Accidents), The Lake House is a dud, too, frustrating first because its big gushy epiphany is solved by everyone with a working pre-frontal within a second of it happening, and second because Wyler, lagging two years behind his beloved Kate (Sandra Bullock), never once thinks to ask for a lotto number or a World Series winner.

The Break-Up (2006)

June 2, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

**/****
starring Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Joey Lauren Adams, Ann-Margret
screenplay by Jeremy Garelick & Jay Lavender
directed by Peyton Reed

by Walter Chaw Vince Vaughn can never seem sincere, only dazed and slack, making his proto-slob Gary in Peyton Reed’s infernal The Break-Up an odd object of desire for art gallery receptionist Brooke–or he would be if Brooke weren’t played by vanilla pudding Jennifer Aniston. The problem with the picture is that it’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (or the more-often-invoked Scenes from a Marriage)–with healthy doses of Swingers and The 40 Year Old Virgin to confuse the rancour–played by one-note actors who demonstrate not a soupçon of chemistry, thereby engendering zero rooting interest in their counterparts’ reunion. (The fact that the two stars appear to have found love off camera regardless suggests the Proof of Life Effect for the anti-romcom set.) You have to respect a picture that sports at least three or four scenes straight out of Hell and has the good sense at one point to mention it in so many words, like when Brooke comes home to find Gary engaged in some weird bacchanal, the two exchanging a long wordless look across the wasteland as the world comes to an end. But there’s so little presence demonstrated by either of the principals that the movie finally feels disconnected and inconsequential.