Random Harvest (1942) – DVD

January 25, 2005Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Ronald Colman, Greer Garson, Philip Dorn, Susan Peters
screenplay by Claudine West, George Froeschell and Arthur Wimperis
directed by Mervyn LeRoy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Random Harvest isn't really a good movie, but it's strangely satisfying. Though its double-amnesia contrivance would perhaps embarrass an episode of "Diff'rent Strokes", it's impossible not to be a little touched–if not by a literal interpretation of the plot, then by the yearning for the titanic reconciliation facilitated by its crisis. As it takes away, gives back, and takes away again in its narrative rush to final release, the film's grasp of the Freudian fort/da dynamic becomes prime fodder for a Psych-101 term paper. You're never sure which part of the equation is more important, but its primitive game of deprivation and wish fulfilment is too powerful to dismiss. And while Random Harvest borders on camp, it's sincere (or oblivious) enough not to cross the line.

Are We There Yet? (2005)

January 21, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Family, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Ice Cube, Nia Long, Aleisha Allen, Philip Bolden
screenplay by Steven Gary Banks & Claudia Grazioso and J. David Stem & David N. Weiss
directed by Brian Levant

Arewethereyetby Walter Chaw Hot on the heels of the abominable Racing Stripes comes Are We There Yet?, an Ice Cube vehicle the rapper-turned-actor also produced that teaches in broad terms that black people like rims on their cars and bling around their necks, that Asians are just irritating and venal under/oversexed white people, and that actual white people are either hillbilly truckers or dancing, rapping grandmothers. Projectile vomit, scary slapstick, and pissing on women share equal time with forced sentiment and actions so inexplicable as to exist only in the infernal nether-verses reserved for this kind of jerk-finds-a-heart flick. Piling on the pleasure, a pair of demonic children carry on director Brian Levant's (Problem Child, Beethoven, Jingle All the Way) proud tradition of featuring insufferable kids in unwatchable movies that will be popular enough to ensure that this grade-A assclown gets to continue to making them. Levant's a racist and a card-carrying Neanderthal–and if he's not, he's actually something worse. If he's not the retarded ogre that his films suggest he is, then he's exuding this gruel with a calculated purpose instead of just a moronic fecklessness. That the little boy in this film has a doll that resembles the MegaMan toy at the centre of Jingle All the Way tells me that Levant is harking back on that debacle with fondness, which is a little like the Catholic Church harking back fondly on indulgences, child molestation, and the Crusades.

Nobody’s Fool (1986) – DVD

January 19, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Rosanna Arquette, Eric Roberts, Mare Winningham, Jim Youngs
screenplay by Beth Henley
directed by Evelyn Purcell

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I haven't very much to say about 1986's Nobody's Fool (no relation to the 1936 or 1994 films of the same name), a Southern-set romantic saga in which a young woman named Jessie (Rosanna Arquette) must either reconcile with lost ex-boyfriend Billy (Jim Youngs) and the dead-end small town he represents, or blow away into the frightening unknown with travelling stagehand Riley (Eric Roberts). No guessing how it ends up: as one suitor is played by Eric Roberts and the other is not, it's pretty obvious what's going to go down long before it actually does. Also in Riley's/Roberts's corner is that everyone in the town of Buckeye–a cultural backwater that's destructive to free souls like Jessie's–is either completely loathsome (such as Billy, who deserted poor Jessie when she got pregnant) or dismissive (such as Jessie's mother, played by Louise Fletcher with superb restraint). In a narrative sense, it's all as surprising as snow in January.

First Daughter (2004) – DVD

December 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Katie Holmes, Marc Blucas, Amerie, Michael Keaton
screenplay by Jessica Bendinger and Kate Kondell
directed by Forest Whitaker

by Walter Chaw Forest Whitaker's First Daughter is so much better than the other two films this year dealing with the distaff fruit of the loins of the most powerful man in the free world (i.e., David Mamet's Spartan and Andy Cadiff's Chasing Liberty) that it's easy to make the mistake that the film is worth much of a damn. The sad fact of it is, there's nothing much at the centre of this babysitter's-club artifact. Saving it from the dustbin of total inconsequence, if only just, is its essential sense of decency and, of course, star Katie Holmes. She's not so much gifted, I think, as genuine-seeming–despite one's better judgment, you find yourself wishing her well. Holmes is able to batter defenses; the stratosphere isn't for her, but Anne Baxter had a pretty nice career, all things considered.

Meet the Fockers (2004)

December 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Robert De Niro, Romance, Theatrical
½*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand
screenplay by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg
directed by Jay Roach
 
Meetthefockersby Walter Chaw There's a scene towards the end of Jay Roach's pathologically unfunny Meet the Fockers where Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro sit across from each other in a front-yard bower and prepare to exchange dialogue. Thirty years ago, such a tableau would have been cause for held breath and tingles up and down; today, it's just two miserable old has-beens cashing a paycheck borrowed against their dimming reputations and acting like clowns for the bemusement of the very same audience of folks who used to demand something from their entertainment. Something like energy, for instance, or invention, or–perish the notion–insight into the world of thought. Meet the Fockers throws itself onto the growing pyre of disposable gag reels built entirely on humiliation and scatology. Urine, feces, vasectomies, foreskins, senior citizens dry-humping to the nasal exhortations of a muumuu-clad Barbra Streisand while somewhere else a cat is flushing a little dog down a toilet. A toddler (Spencer and Bradley Pickren) signals for milk every time he sees a woman with large breasts, says "asshole" a lot, and, as if that's insufficient, makes lewd sucking faces, sticks out his tongue, and appears to mime cunnilingus. He's almost as adorable as Ben Stiller, sliding comfortably now into the role of eternal jackass and requisite redheaded stepchild.

The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 21, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Romance

*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C-
starring Anne Hathaway, Heather Matarazzo, John Rhys-Davies, Julie Andrews
screenplay by Shonda Rhimes
directed by Garry Marshall

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I had rather hoped that my previous DVD tussle with Garry Marshall, on the subject of his The Princess Diaries, would be my last. But here it is five months later, and I'm stuck with the unenviable task of a) watching and b) working up the enthusiasm to write about The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, which is, if anything, worse than the not-so-original original. Again we have a hypocritical be-yourself message for people whose self is largely determined by what they see on the Disney channel, a horrible white-on-tan colour scheme, graceless design, and shallow characterizations–in other words, everything that made the first film such a chore to sit through. But where The Princess Diaries felt complete in its cornball wish-fulfillment, The Princess Diaries 2 is clearly an afterthought made to wring more cash out of impressionable tweens. You and I are smarter than that; one of us should flee in terror.

Spanglish (2004)

December 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Adam Sandler, Téa Leoni, Paz Vega, Cloris Leachman
written and directed by James L. Brooks

Spanglishby Walter Chaw Take a real close look at the two fertile women in James L. Brooks’s Spanglish: one, Deborah (Téa Leoni), is a fright-masked, screeching harridan who resurrects all by herself the offense once implied by the term “hysterical,” and the other, a fiery Latina clothed in soft browns named Flor (Paz Vega), is nurturing, reasonable, and maternal to the point of smothering her daughter. Which is the worse stereotype would be an interesting conversation to have; how the both of them torment John (Adam Sandler), the decent white guy hero (Deborah with outbursts, Flor with forbidden fruit), is a conversation not worth having. You expect a lot of things from a Brooks film: lethal levels of schmaltz, diarrheic streams of introspective dialogue, precocious tots–but you generally don’t anticipate a lot of underdeveloped characters, a disquieting undercurrent of paternalistic racism, and one central personality apparently constructed for the sole purpose of being the lightning rod for the audience’s every aggression. (Deborah is the most hellish–and consequently the most memorable–affront to rich white women I’ve seen since Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.) The only two interesting characters in the piece are Deborah’s alcoholic mother Evelyn (Cloris Leachman) and chubby daughter Bernice (Sarah Steele)–not coincidentally, the two characters least like convenient pastiches. Frankly, the film should have been about them.

Grande école (2004) – DVD

December 16, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
starring Gregori Baquet, Jocelyn Quivrin, Arthur Jugnot, Alice Taglioni
screenplay by Robert Salis, based on the play "Editions Actes Sud Papiers" by Jean-Marie Besset
directed by Robert Salis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's often interesting to watch people try to justify their actions–especially when they themselves know that what they're doing is wrong. Such is the case with Robert Salis's Grande école, a film that shortchanges class in its attempts to address sexual identity. Its saga of an upper-middle-class snob and his love for, among others, an Arab labourer, wants desperately to do the right thing as far as social levelling is concerned, but it's too impressed with its own benevolence to really serve much purpose. The main event is always its hero's conflicts, in particular his desire to remove the shackles of his upbringing–his illicit love is more a prod to his essential goodness than it is a genuine challenge to privilege. But if Grande école fails as a critique, it succeeds as a weird conflicted thing making excuses for itself.

Sleepover (2004) [Special Edition] – DVD

December 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Alexa Vega, Mika Boorem, Jane Lynch, Sara Paxton
screenplay by Elisa Bell
directed by Joe Nussbaum

Sleepoverdvdcapby Walter Chaw Okay, I admit it: I'm fascinated by Joe Nussbaum's squirmy, sleazy Sleepover, a comedy for kids so queasy in its conception and execution that I'm reasonably certain it qualifies as child abuse in most states. It's not as bad as the Olsen Twins' New York Minute, mainly because it isn't disgustingly racist in addition to disturbingly paedophilic–but I have a sneaking suspicion that Sleepover engages in with some measure of cunning what New York Minute engages in recklessly. It's thus better than the evil 13 Going on 30 as well, though not nearly as good as the only so-so Mean Girls, marking it as one of those pieces of swill whose chief claim to glory is that it's subversive for adult audiences. Tragically, Sleepover is pitched at 'tweens, and the only adults likely to see it are either parents stupid enough to rent it to watch with their children or critics stupid enough to review it themselves in lieu of running Kevin Thomas's predictably lonesome positive review off the wire.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure (2003); National Lampoon’s Holiday Reunion (2003); Dorm Daze (2004) – DVDs

November 29, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Mystery, Romance, Television

Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure
½*/****
 Image B Sound B Extras F
starring Randy Quaid, Miriam Flynn, Dana Barron, Jake Thomas
screenplay by Matty Simmons
directed by Nick Marick

Thanksgiving Family Reunion
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Bryan Cranston, Judge Reinhold, Hallie Todd, Penelope Ann Miller
screenplay by Marc Warren & Dennis Rinsler
directed by Neal Isreal

DORM DAZE
*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Tatyana Ali, Botti Bliss, James DeBello, Marieh Delfino
screenplay by Patrick Casey, Worm Miller
directed by David Hillenbrand and Scott Hillenbrand

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Did anybody ever actually read NATIONAL LAMPOON? That question occurred to me while contemplating the idea of reviewing three recent, awful exploitations of the magazine's name, and I came to the conclusion that I've never met anybody who in fact had. Maybe I was slightly too young to know the rag's heyday, for all I remember were the movies stamped with their logo–and it's largely through the popularity of Animal House and the Vacation series that most of the non-snarky population felt their influence. Whatever its content as a publication, it sold tickets for a good stretch–but decades have passed and the Lampoon brand has lost its currency, meaning it's been largely reduced to whoring itself out to low-grade imitations of past successes. Thus we have the ignominy of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2 (relegated to television), Holiday Reunion (cable), and Dorm Daze (more or less straight-to-video), all of which cost money better spent on special editions of National Lampoon's glory-days titles.

A Very Long Engagement (2004)

November 26, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, War

Un long dimanche de fiançailles
**½/****
starring Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Dominique Pinon, Clovis Cornillac
screenplay by Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Guillaume Laurant, based on the novel by Sébastien Japrisot
directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

by Walter Chaw Jean-Pierre Jeunet reunites immediately with his Amélie minx Audrey Tautou in this curious little Great War bauble, which locates the last time the French were considered military powers in a story of cowardly self-mutilation at the Front that results in the obsessive search of one war widow for the erstwhile deserter fiancé she knows in her heart is still alive. The picture, in other words, blows the patriotic flute for both the French and the Yanks, who, surely coincidentally, are the two entities financing the piece. (It’s also probably a coincidence that a period epic romance set against war is opening just in time for Oscar consideration.) A Very Long Engagement is a tale of suffocating, all-consuming love, thus it works as something like a bloody companion piece to the oppressive romantic illness of Amélie, going so far as to dip into that film’s bag of tricks (the matte Paris, the heroine returning lost artifacts, the butter-smooth montage introductions, the affection for idiosyncratic secondary characters) and recycle its tone of freakish insouciance. Jeunet’s latest is so charming that it feels aggressive–and so well made that the horrors of trench warfare have all the impact of a beautifully dressed, slightly morbid department store window.

Alexander (2004)

November 24, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Netherlands, Romance, Thailand, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto
screenplay by Oliver Stone and Christopher Kyle and Laeta Kalogridis
directed by Oliver Stone

Alexanderby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Oliver Stone's Alexander is packed tight to the girders with catchphrases like "By the sweet breath of Aphrodite" and "By Apollo's eye" and "By Dionysus yours is the very soul of Prometheus!" It's stuffed to the gills with sword-and-sandal histrionics and props that become kitsch artifacts the instant they're rolled out for display in this awards season's gaudiest rummage sale. If it's not going to set anybody's codpiece on fire, Alexander at least lays claim to being one of the funniest movies of the year. It would have worn the title Oliver! more comfortably, opening as it does with Virgil's "fortune favours the bold" and ending, after a ridiculously long time, with the not-stunning revelation that what Stone has done is imagine the travails of a fourth-century B.C. Macedonian king as his very own. Conspiracies abound, popularity in the court of public opinion fades, bottomless campaign budgets are squandered in faraway lands for mysterious personal reasons, Oedipus rears his travel-worn head, and gay subtext begins to feel a little homophobic because it's subtext. Rosario Dawson in all her animalized glory? No problem. Colin Farrell giving Jared Leto a little peck on the cheek? Not in this house, buddy.

Chastity (1969) – DVD

November 23, 2004Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Road Movie, Romance

½*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Cher, Barbara London, Stephen Whittaker, Tom Nolan
screenplay by Sonny Bono
directed by Alessio de Paola

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There is nothing more dangerous than a cuddly celebrity with avant-garde pretensions. The idea of a cheesy popular entertainer pouring his heart into something "serious" and "artistic" is wrong on so many levels: not only does it usually show him up as ignorant of the good work in the field he wants to hijack, but it also denigrates the deflationary appeal of what he actually does well. Normally the result just falls flat on its face, but with a little flamboyance–as in the case of William Shatner's "Transformed Man" album–the effort can result in a camp howler of uncommon magnitude. That would likewise be the fate of Chastity, a Sonny Bono-penned opus meant to endow his then-paramour Cher with the gravitas she clearly lacked on their variety show. With every (drunken, staggering) motion it takes towards significance, Chastity gets further and further away from it. We're talking planets.

The Complete Gidget Collection – DVD

November 19, 2004Posted in1950s, 1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

GIDGET (1959)
***/**** Image F Sound C
starring Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson, James Darren, Arthur O'Connell
screenplay by Gabrielle Upton, based on the novel by Frederick Kohner
directed by Paul Wendkos

GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN (1961)
*/**** Image D+ Sound C
starring James Darren, Michael Callan, Deborah Walley, Carl Reiner
screenplay by Ruth Brooks Flippen
directed by Paul Wendkos

GIDGET GOES TO ROME (1961)
**/**** Image D+ Sound C
starring James Darren, Jessie Royce Landis, Cesare Danova, Danielle De Metz
screenplay by Ruth Brooks Flippen, Katherine and Dale Eunson
directed by Paul Wendkos

by Walter Chaw Breaking the cresting wave of surf films that ran as counter-programming to the medium-cool cinema of the early Sixties, 1959's Gidget, despite finding itself as the bane of the real surf counterculture, is a surprisingly dark-hued entry into the evolution of generational rebellion that heralded the new-real of the coming decade. It works as a sunnier mirror to the next year's West Side Story, likewise spinning off from a tomboy's infiltration of an insular boys' club to examine some of the friction that exists between the staged artificiality of Old Hollywood and the grittier verisimilitude of the American new wave. As grizzled beach bum The Big Kahuna, for instance, Cliff Robertson has a thousand-yard stare, a couple of tours in Korea under his belt, and a disturbing rape/pedophilia moment wherein he realizes that his life of retreat is all of glittering sun-kissed surfaces and carefully-waxed emptiness. Kahuna's surrender to the bourgeois is more The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause than it is Psycho and Hud, but therein lies the embryonic hint of the theme that drives Sixties films: acceding to Mrs. Bates makes you a psycho.

Dolls (2002) – DVD

November 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Japan, Romance

***/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi, Chieko Matsubara
written and directed by Takeshi Kitano

by Walter Chaw Dolls is beautiful–that much can be expected from Japanese director Takeshi Kitano. It's meticulously-framed, interested in theatre, obsessed with the ocean, and stately in a way that re-establishes Kitano as a bridge of sorts between the formalism of Japanese cinema's past and the lawlessness of its present. But the film, the rare Kitano-directed piece in which he does not also appear, dispenses with hinting around at his absurdist auteur tendencies and sublimates his subtext into the text. To that end, it opens with an extended Bunraku performance–shot with a devouring fascination that hints at the ningyo (doll worship) suggested by the title and set to follow–concerning two doomed lovers that parallels the three barely-intersecting couples whose stories comprise the body of this anthology. The decision to make a film that is all subtext, however, is seldom successful: such pictures tend towards the pretentious, for one; and in emptying the basement, logic follows, they leave the basement empty. So it is with Dolls, which says everything it has to say, leaving only the speculation upon a repeat viewing (if one is necessary or desired) for how personal a project this might have been for Kitano and ultimately what this film tells us about the rest of Kitano's films. Then again, there's something that nags about Dolls, opening the possibility for another possible eventuality for this kind of piece.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) + The Pickle (1993) – DVDs

November 15, 2004Posted in1960s, 1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE
*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon
screenplay by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker
directed by Paul Mazursky

THE PICKLE
*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Danny Aiello, Dyan Cannon, Shelley Winters, Jerry Stiller
written and directed by Paul Mazursky

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There are certain talented but minor directors–"second-rank," as opposed to "second-rate"–who sadly manage to outlive their moment. John Frankenheimer was one of them, Alan J. Pakula another: both made key popular films of their time and then had nowhere to go once the cultural ground shifted beneath them. Add to this list the name of Paul Mazursky. Watch his 1969 comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and his 1993 summation The Pickle and you'll see two completely different people at work: one bases his work on observation and the mood of his times, and the other is so far behind the curve that his characters hardly seem human. Though it's painful to retrace Mazursky's slide and ultimately impossible to connect Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice to The Pickle, the juxtaposition of the two films is instructive in terms of what not to do when you're no longer the hot young thing and the industry contradicts your every single move.

Finding Neverland (2004)

November 12, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Family, Romance, Theatrical, UK

**/****
starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell
screenplay by David Magee, based on the play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan" by Allan Knee
directed by Marc Forster

Findingneverlandby Walter Chaw Marc Forster's Finding Neverland is well-traveled territory: a historical melodrama that's been over-scored to the point of diabetes and overwritten to the point of retardation. The presumption isn't that we're unfamiliar with J.M. Barrie's play "Peter Pan", but that we're incapable of understanding that this adaptation of Alan Knee's play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan", now three degrees removed from history, lives and dies by its conveyance of the idea that the dagger of make-believe is mightier than the mundane sword of reality. How better, after all, to tell the tale of the man who created one of the darkest, most brilliantly subversive attacks on the status quo than to return him to the land of storytelling and mythmaking? Forster seems to get it–the film looks ravishing and the casting of sprightly, ethereal Johnny Depp as Barrie is a stroke of genius, but both actor and director are betrayed by a project that side-steps the disturbing issues at hand in its suggestion of this Barrie's suspected paedophilic tendencies and his inability to grow up. "Peter Pan" is the shadow; the tedious and evasive Finding Neverland is the candle. The J.M. Barrie estate is upset that the film isn't accurate. They should be upset that it isn't very good.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) – DVD

November 9, 2004Posted in1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Harry E. Edington, Gene Raymond
screenplay by Norman Krasna
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Even a cursory glance at Alfred Hitchcock's favoured themes would find the idea of rules–particularly as they're expressed by written forms of communication–to be the ineffectual rein seeking to subdue the protean tumult of human identity, greed, and passion. The way that books hide the body in Rope, for instance; the newspaper headlines discovered too late in Shadow of a Doubt; the contracts and penny dreadfuls of Suspicion; Norman Bates's hotel book; the profession of Foreign Correspondent; Carlotta's engraved headstone and Mozart's mathematical structure in Vertigo; Melanie's birthday wishes in The Birds; the beckoning empty cages in Rutland's house in Marnie; or how the lines of a ledger page predict North by Northwest's astonishing play on humans reduced to numbers before a brilliant bit of business involving a message written inside a matchbook cover. In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Hitchcock pairs with good friend Carole Lombard (on her second-to-last film before a plane crash ended her life), a prototypical Hitchcock blonde for whom the term "screwball comedy" was invented, to produce what's widely seen as an anomaly in Hitchcock's career: a slapstick romantic imbroglio. And indeed, the film is different from nearly anything Hitchcock ever did (though it shares a similar plot with Rich and Strange and a similar antic energy with The Trouble with Harry), but not because it deviates from his themes. Rather, Mr. and Mrs. Smith seems to be a film that outlines what it is exactly about rules and written communication that Hitchcock perceives to be so fundamentally unstable and misleading.

The Clearing (2004) + Before Sunset (2004) – DVDs

November 9, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, UK

THE CLEARING
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, Willem Dafoe, Alessandro Nivola
screenplay by Justin Haythe
directed by Pieter Jan Brugge

BEFORE SUNSET
***½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
screenplay by Richard Linklater & Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke
directed by Richard Linklater

by Walter Chaw Nothing much happens in Pieter Jan Brugge's The Clearing–so little happens, in fact, that it's difficult to pinpoint what all the to-do was about by film's end. Laid-off everyman schlub Arnold Mack kidnaps car rental magnate Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) from the front gate of his palatial estate. He leads Hayes through the woods to meet up with his partners-in-crime, having a heart-to-heart concerning the dissatisfactions of modern living along the way. Hayes's wife Eileen (Helen Mirren) and grown children (Alessandro Nivola and glassy-eyed Melissa Sagemiller) gather with disaffected FBI agent Fuller (Matt Craven) to field ransom demands and likewise have heart-to-hearts about the dissatisfactions of modern living. Brugge plays with time in interesting ways: the events of the first day with Wayne and Arnold are intercut with the events of several weeks with the Hayes clan. But the picture's biggest trick is making ninety minutes seem like an eternity.

Elf (2003) [Infinifilm] – DVD

November 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen
screenplay by David Berenbaum
directed by Jon Favreau

by Walter Chaw Some of the preview spots for Jon Favreau's Elf are hysterical, leading me to think that the film's failure to be very funny has a lot to do with bad direction, editing, or maybe both. It's a lightweight, unapologetically warm-hearted picture that earns a lot of respect for avoiding scatological humour en route to honouring nearly every other ingredient of the The Jerk bumpkin-out-of-water formula. Like Steve Martin, Will Ferrell announces himself with this film (and Old School) as a smart comedian unusually committed to effect and the directions his performance might take him. Ferrell isn't a chaotic jester. His clowning compels because it has the quality of internal logic, enough so that it's somehow possible to accept his man-raised-by-elves creation at face value.