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The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

May 21, 20131990s, 2013, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, Satire

*/**** Image B Sound B-
starring Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Morgan Freeman
screenplay by Michael Cristofer, based on the novel by Tom Wolfe
directed by Brian De Palma

by Walter Chaw Based on Tom Wolfe’s instantly-legendary (and instantly dated, truth be known) novel about the upper crust of Manhattan society in the ’80s, Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities is a disaster mitigated now and again by the odd extraordinary shot–exhibit A in what happens when too much money is spent in the creation of too sure a thing. The production was besieged by distraction and calamity, all of it captured in Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy in what, after watching the movie again for the first time since its release, seems too measured a hatchet job. After all, Salamon’s book is really just proof of what’s evidenced on screen and observed by contemporary audiences: Decisions were made to pander to the lowest common denominator, and say what you will about the lowest common denominator, but it often knows when it’s being condescended to. More, it confirms that Bruce Willis was outmatched by the demands of the material; that Tom Hanks was disengaged; that Melanie Griffith was badly miscast; and that Morgan Freeman was inserted as a sop to an African-American community that not only would have to endure multiple comic-effect uses of the word “nigger” during the course of the film, but would likely never go see it in the first place. The great irony of pandering to the lowest common denominator in an adaptation of an arch Tom Wolfe novel, is…well, you finish it. Frankly, when you can’t get Peter Travers to like it, you’re in seriously deep shit.

Cosmopolis (2012) – Blu-ray Disc

January 6, 2013****/****, 2012, 2013, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: David Cronenberg, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Satire

Cosmopolis1

****/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, Paul Giamatti
screenplay by David Cronenberg, based on the novel by Don DeLillo
directed by David Cronenberg

by Walter Chaw David Cronenberg’s North by Northwest, his adaptation of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis functions as a difficult, arctic précis of the Canadian filmmaker’s career-long obsession with the insectile nature of, and indulgence in, hunger. Cronenberg’s proclivity for parasites, after all, is essentially the admiration of creatures defined by their hunger. His latest is Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), a voracious sexual predator who lives in the dark cocoon of his stretch limo as it inches its way across Midtown to a barbershop that would be more at home in the bucolic small town of A History of Violence than in the metal canyons of Manhattan. Its existence, like a little diner along the way, like a bookshop with paper- and leather-lined walls, is further evidence of infestation–pockets of disease on the glistening skin and sterile surfaces of industry. No wonder the filthy rabble protesting in Gotham’s streets have as their unifying symbol the rats that are the true inheritors of man’s work. Cronenberg recalls his own Crash in these ideas–and not just in his desire to adapt literary properties considered unadaptable. He recalls his Naked Lunch in the idea that language is a neurological contagion, and he recalls most of all both his Videodrome (in his identification of screens with every intercourse) and his eXistenZ (in the erasure of any meaningful line between our interiors and exteriors). Cosmopolis is dense and multifarious–the absolute pinnacle of pretentious, too, in its desire to explain not only its creator, but all of the world at this moment in time in our age of missing information.

Torso (1973) + Maniac Cop (1988) – Blu-ray Discs

October 21, 20121970s, 1980s, 2012, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Satire, Thriller

I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale
***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont, Luc Merenda, John Richardson
screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Martino
directed by Sergio Martino

MANIAC COP
**½/**** Image B Sound A Extras B
starring Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Larson, Sheree North
screenplay by Larry Cohen
directed by William Lustig

by Jefferson Robbins Slasher movies are concerned with not just murder, but with its root cause–not motive, really, but motivation. There has to be a detonator, or else stalker-horror is what its most strident critics accuse it of being: all body-count, no brains. The films have leeway to be less concerned with motive than, say, those Ustinov-as-Poirot adaptations, where the whole cast learns whodunit while seated for tea and cakes in the third act. (I sort of miss those; I wish “mystery” hadn’t been usurped by “thriller” in the moviemaking lexicon, and in part I blame Jonathan Lynn’s 1985 Clue.) But they have to successfully allude to a trigger point, some match to the killer’s keg of gasoline.

Child’s Play (1988) [Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc + Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection

October 1, 20121980s, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Romania, Satire, Thriller, UK

CHILD'S PLAY
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini and John Lafia and Tom Holland
directed by Tom Holland

CHILD'S PLAY 2 (1990)
**/**** Image C+ Sound A-
starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by John Lafia

CHILD'S PLAY 3 (1991)
*/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Jack Bender

BRIDE OF CHUCKY (1998)
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl, Nick Stabile
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Ronny Yu

SEED OF CHUCKY (2004)
*/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C-
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy Boyd, Redman
written and directed by Don Mancini

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Twenty years and four sequels later, it's obviously pointless to try to conceal that Child's Play is about a serial killer (Brad Dourif) who transfers his soul into an innocuous doll, but watching it today–more than a decade after it thoroughly traumatized me as an impressionable preteen–I was surprised to learn that the film itself didn't do much to hide that fact from the start. Oh, sure, when you first approach Child's Play, you're ostensibly supposed to wonder whether little Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) is responsible for the murders peppered throughout, despite his loud protestations that Chucky did it. But no, it never really tries to pretend that these horrible acts are being committed by anyone other than that godawful doll. In taking that perspective, Child's Play preys upon the irrational fears we all harbour–that sting of dread we get at the sight of an unintentionally unsettling toy, immediately wished away by safe, immutable reason: that's impossible–a doll can't hurt you.

TIFF ’12: Antiviral

September 9, 20122012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Film Festivals, France, Horror, Mystery, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, TIFF

*½/****
written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg

by Bill Chambers Featuring more close-ups of needles piercing flesh than a booster-shot training video, Antiviral, the debut feature by Cronenberg offspring Brandon, takes place in a world evolutions ahead of TMZ, where fans pay to have themselves infected with viruses extracted from their celebrity crushes. (“Biological communion,” the film calls this process–a phrase that links father and son filmmakers as efficiently as a paternity test.) The slightly repulsive Caleb Landry Jones is Syd March, a rogue technician for The Lucas Clinic who breaks protocol by contaminating himself with the disease that is rapidly, unexpectedly killing superstar Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), making him a target of Hannah’s family–who figure he’ll be useful in their search for a cure–and fans, who want to watch him expire as a proxy for their beloved Hannah. Yes, it’s pretty silly.

TIFF ’12: Reality

September 3, 20122012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Satire, TIFF

***½/****
directed by Matteo Garrone

by Angelo Muredda Reality, Matteo Garrone’s follow-up to the urban planner’s nightmare of Gomorrah, is a nasty little thing, at once an indictment of the mass delusion of celebrity culture and a finely-wrought character study of Luciano, a fish merchant and small-town Neapolitan crook who dreams of being a contestant on “Big Brother”. Luciano is played with wide-eyed wonder and deep sincerity by Aniello Arena, a mafia hitman currently serving a life sentence for a triple-homicide–unlike his modest fictional counterpart, who’s involved in a baffling scheme to resell pastry-making robots on the black market. It’s a terrific performance, somehow sweet and deranged in equal measure, and it’s the reason Reality works as well as it does when it begins to assume his warped perspective.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) [Unrated Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

August 19, 20121990s, 2012, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: John Frankenheimer, Horror, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras F
starring Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk
screenplay by Richard Stanley and Ron Hutchinson
directed by John Frankenheimer

by Walter Chaw This is a tough one. As an avowed if guarded fan of director John Frankenheimer, his involvement with The Island of Dr. Moreau is something like a gobsmacker. Sure, he’d ventured into genre before with the ridiculous Prophecy, while, arguably, his two best films–The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds, his masterpiece–are genre pieces, too. But I think at the time, bringing in Frankenheimer three days into a troubled shoot to replace that assclown Richard Stanley was more an act of expediency than of ingenuity. If New Line thought they were getting a closer, they were right; if they thought they were getting someone who could corral the downward-spiralling Val Kilmer, they were less right (“Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer,” Frankenheimer famously said). What they probably weren’t expecting was that Frankenheimer would turn in something that, though critically-savaged at the time, had some legs. No, The Island of Dr. Moreau isn’t a whole, falling apart as it does in the last half-hour or so, but it is the sort of movie that hints at larger issues and boasts enough indelible moments to deserve another look. Truth is, only movies this odd and discomfiting earn this amount of misdirected ire. It’s not to say there’s not a lot wrong with the film, but rather to suggest that the chief criticisms of it being strange and “a mess” aren’t among them.

The Campaign (2012)

August 9, 20122012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical

*/****
starring Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Brian Cox
screenplay by Chris Henchy & Shawn Harwell
directed by Jay Roach

by Walter Chaw Empty, apolitical, and ultimately cowardly, Jay Roach’s The Campaign appears this election year with a promising head of steam that fast dissipates. Honestly, the only thing really memorable about the film to me is that the high-powered rifle that shoots Will Ferrell’s corrupt Democratic congressman through the leg is a crossbow in the ubiquitous TV spots. Blowback from the Aurora shooting? Possibly–but if that’s the case, why wasn’t it changed in the movie proper? And if it is changed some time between the press screening and Friday’s opening, what will they do with the next scene when someone says something about how great it is that a candidate received a bump in the polls for shooting someone? A better question is how all of this could go down without mention of the National Rifle Association. Being more comfortable with assaulting the general stupidity of rednecks, gentried or free-range, than the dangerous politicism of the NRA is just one example of how The Campaign never misses a chance to miss a chance. Except for a couple of brief swipes, it doesn’t even take on the Bible Belt, or gay marriage, or the hypocrisies of our representatives beyond the not-stunning revelation that Big Money controls the course of our country’s political fortunes. On the scale of observations, that one fits snugly between “duh” and “no shit.”

True Blood: The Complete Fourth Season (2011) – Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy

June 17, 20122011, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Romance, Satire, Television, Vampire, Werewolf

Image A- Sound A Extras B
“She’s Not There,” “You Smell Like Dinner,” “If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin’?,” “I’m Alive and on Fire,” “Me & the Devil,” “I Wish I Was the Moon,” “Cold Grey Light of Dawn,” “Spellbound,” “Let’s Get Out of Here,” “Burning Down the House,” “Soul of Fire,” “And When I Die”

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. To recap: “True Blood”‘s third season ended with Vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) and his queen (Evan Rachel Wood) revealing a heretofore-unseen ability to defy gravity as they prepared to duel to the death; Hoyt (Jim Parrack) and Jessica (the staggeringly beautiful Deborah Ann Woll) receiving a creepy housewarming present (unseen by them) in the form of a moldy doll; Tara (Rutina Wesley) departing Bon Temps for anywhere less likely to be a hub of supernatural activity; and a newly liberated Sookie (Anna Paquin) disinviting Bill and Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) from her home before vanishing in a ball of light with her literal fairy godmother.

The Rules of the Game (1939) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

January 30, 2012****/****, 1930s, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Jean Renoir, Drama, FFC Must-Own, France, Satire, The Criterion Collection

La règle du jeu
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Nora Grégor, Marcel Dalio, Mila Parély, Roland Toutain
screenplay by Jean Renoir and Carl Koch
directed by Jean Renoir

by Jefferson Robbins One political cue most firmly plants Jean Renoir’s masterwork in pre-World War II France, and it doesn’t come amidst the posturing of the elegant rich at La Colinière country manor. Rather, it’s in the kitchen, where the domestic staff breaks bread and gossips about the master of the house, the Marquis Robert De La Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio), outed by the help as a “yid” whose family made good with money and a title. The gossipers turn for confirmation to the huntsman who’s just materialized on the stairs, and the combination of words is chilling: “Isn’t that right, Schumacher?” The italics are mine, and despite the fierce Teutonic consonants of his name, the Marquis’s game warden (Gaston Modot) is Alsatian. He remains metaphorically sticky, though, since his home state was variously French or German for 200 years, and his dress and cap bespeak armed authority. He’s rough and field-hardened, arguably ignorant, and looked down upon by his fellow servants, who see him as a thing apart from their world. Cuckolded and exiled from his wife, the housemaid Lisette (Paulette Dubost), he’s also the most prone to physical violence as he seeks to control her and eliminate all rivalry. On the matter of La Chesnaye’s Jewishness, Schumacher demurs: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But the point is made, the knife already twisted.

The Wes Craven Horror Collection – DVD

October 26, 20111980s, 1990s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Satire, Thriller, Wes Craven

THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (1988)
**½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield
screenplay by Richard Maxwell and A.R. Simoun, based on the book by Wade Davis
directed by Wes Craven

SHOCKER (1989)
**/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Michael Murphy, Peter Berg, Cami Cooper, Mitch Pileggi
written and directed by Wes Craven

THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991)
***/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Brandon Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A.J. Langer
written and directed by Wes Craven

by Jefferson Robbins The three late-’80s/early-’90s films gathered in Universal’s DVD set “The Wes Craven Horror Collection” are far from the director’s best, but they show him gathering his powers for the satirical play of the Scream franchise. It’s as if Craven careened into the ditch a few times trying to talk about Big Topics before finally deciding that what he was best suited to talk about was slasher movies. That’s not to say these pre-emptive excursions have no value, it’s just that he had to scout the territory thoroughly before drawing a definitive map. He had to shed some dependencies, too–most notably, given his legacy from A Nightmare on Elm Street, his fondness for dreams as an interface with horror.

Scre4m (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

October 12, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Satire, Wes Craven

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts
screenplay by Kevin Williamson
directed by Wes Craven

by Walter Chaw It seemed like a neat idea, didn’t it, to offer a riff on horror movies while making a horror movie? To prove smarter than the genre while producing an effective genre product just the same–something Wes Craven couldn’t quite pull off with his New Nightmare (though it was a good try). He did pretty well with the first Scream film, however, which not only gave faint, and ultimately false, hope that Craven was back, but also launched Kevin Williamson as a geek flavour of the month in the Joss Whedon mold. But looking back, Scream is the proverbial slippery slope, pulling off a neat trick at the cost of a couple of sequels (the underestimated first, the godawful second) that require that this deconstructionist urge be carried through to its only logical end: the destruction of the subject. What made Craven interesting initially, with stuff like Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, wasn’t the lo-fi, kitchen sink aspect of his films (the lousiness of them, truth be told), but that they understood essential horror. Fear for your children, mainly–the thing that really moves A Nightmare on Elm Street, and powerful enough that even Craven’s shitty sense of humour and timing (remember the banjo music in Last House?) couldn’t undermine it. The problem with the long-postponed fourth instalment of the Scream franchise, Scre4m, is that it doesn’t have anything essential about it. Built on a specious concept and the backs of films that actually have something at their centres, it’s a smug, arch, irritating thing that hates its audience, hates genre films, and, curiously, hates itself most of all.

Your Highness (2011)

April 8, 20112011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Satire, Theatrical

*/****
starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel
screenplay by Danny R. McBride & Ben Best
directed by David Gordon Green

by Walter Chaw David Gordon Green continues his burnout trilogy with the medieval stoner swords & sorcery flick Your Highness, a sharp, incisive satire that rips the lid off the long-held secret of smart people-in-the-know that Red Sonja is a piece of shit. It's an extended, hostile slam of stuff like Clash of the Titans, and just because it's better than, say, Excalibur, that doesn't excuse it for being the kind of movie "Mystery Science Theater" would make if it made movies instead of taking shots at them from a privileged position. There's no love in Your Highness–replacing Harryhausen's clockwork Bubo with an animatronic crow that's resurrected from a trash heap in an offhand rejection of the Clash of the Titans remake doesn't go nearly far enough towards convincing me that Green and his writers, Danny McBride and Ben Best, actually give a damn about the genre or any of its key films. I'm not sure the genre merits much respect, frankly, but all I'm really certain of after this one is that the filmmakers thought Ladyhawke would be a lot better with a fat slob saying "fuck" and wearing a penis around his neck. Indeed, in case you were wondering, Your Highness is in the same family as the asshole who writes "faggot" on your forehead in Sharpie while you're sleeping.

Mars Attacks! (1996) – Blu-ray Disc

November 29, 20101990s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, Jack Nicholson, Satire, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A- Sound C
starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan
screenplay by Jonathan Gems
directed by Tim Burton

by Jefferson Robbins When Tim Burton calls in his Hollywood chips, it's usually, to our benefit, to facilitate his darker impulses. 1989's Batman gave him free reign to make Edward Scissorhands, for instance, and Warner Bros. incubated the bitter confection of Sweeney Todd after raking in more traditional bucks on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I daresay one of those Burton Unbound documents is his A-list romp Mars Attacks!, which today gives off strange vibrations that echo forward as well as back. It's a '50s UFO-invasion flick farce, of course, based on a 1962 trading card set illustrated by, among others, comics great Wally Wood. It's anarchic, unexpected ("Wha? Trading cards?" we all said at the time), and darkly funny. It plays in the massive footprint of the same year's Independence Day, and in its more biting moments, it somehow speaks to the great collapses of the subsequent decade.

The Return of the Living Dead (1985) – DVD (2002) + Collector’s Edition DVD|Blu-ray + DVD

November 26, 20101980s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Satire, Sci-Fi, Zombie

***/****
'02 DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A
'07 DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews
written and directed by Dan O'Bannon

by Walter Chaw Sort of a cross between Dawn of the Dead and Valley Girl, Dan O'Bannon's hysterical The Return of the Living Dead most resembles in the final analysis O'Bannon's own cult favourite Dark Star, directed by John Carpenter. Both pictures exist in an insular environment, both skewer genre and societal mores, and both, oddly enough, have something of a political conscience. Positing that Night of the Living Dead was based on a true story and that the remnants of that zombie conflagration have been stored in barrels accidentally shipped to the Uneeda Medical Supply Company (where goofy stock manager Frank (a fabulous James Karen) carelessly starts the horror cycle), The Return of the Living Dead turns a satirical eye on Reagan's hawkish heart, the sprung logic of Italian zombie movies, and John Hughes's brat-pack films.

I’m Still Here (2010)

September 22, 2010****/****, 2000s, 2010, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Esoterica, Jack Nicholson, Music, Satire, Theatrical

****/****
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Antony Langdon, Casey Affleck, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs
screenplay by Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix
directed by Casey Affleck

by Ian Pugh It’s far too easy to believe that Casey Affleck’s I’m Still Here hinges on whether or not its subject has perpetrated a hoax. Joaquin Phoenix grows a lunatic’s beard, declares he’s quitting acting, and starts planning a hip-hop career? Surely, he can’t be serious. But here’s how it ends, kids: yes, I guess you could call it a “put-on” in the strictest sense of the word–yet at the same time, he is deadly serious. What needs to be understood about Phoenix, and this film, is that there was a kernel of truth to everything the man mumbled through that maniacal persona. I do believe that Phoenix is tired of acting (or, at least, tired of stardom), and, for his farewell performance, he’s blurred the line between actor and role so completely as to obliterate all our preconceived notions of who he is and what he is supposed to represent. The false Phoenix–the bedraggled, abusive prophet spouting non-sequiturs–is, for all intents and purposes, the “real” Phoenix, the iconic artist who pulls a disappearing act by forcing the art and the iconography to consume his entire being. You can’t call I’m Still Here a mockumentary, exactly, because, inside and outside of the “act,” that is precisely what happened. And what came out of it is a harrowing thought exercise about artistic failure and the baggage of celebrity.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) [Special Edition] + Deathdream (1972) + Uncle Sam (1997) – DVDs|Uncle Sam – Blu-ray Disc

July 7, 2010****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Canada, Comedy, Directors: John Frankenheimer, Drama, DVD, Espionage, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Zombie

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon
directed by John Frankenheimer

Dead of Night
***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
starring John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Richard Backus, Henderson Forsythe
screenplay by Alan Ormsby
directed by Bob Clark

UNCLE SAM
**½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
BD – Image B Sound A Extras A-
starring Isaac Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Timothy Bottoms, Robert Forster
screenplay by Larry Cohen
directed by William Lustig

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As the zeitgeist is one of those things we tend to discuss in the past tense, you have to wonder whether it’s a vacuum or a barometer. In other words, the point at which culture-mongers finally lunge at a craze is usually once it’s begun shrieking its death rattle, and yet a post-mortem of said craze invariably divulges a complex tapestry of art and politics, the ascription of happenstance to which seems preposterous. Our own Walter Chaw brilliantly observes in recent omnibus reviews pairing Love Me If You Dare with Valentin and Dodgeball with Napoleon Dynamite that leitmotifs are emerging at the box office free of predetermination, and I myself got a faint chill when I became cognizant of having consecutively watched the upcoming DVDs of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, Bob Clark’s 1972 Dead of Night (a.k.a. Deathdream), and William Lustig’s 1997 Uncle Sam. The Manchurian Candidate is getting reissued because MGM wants to piggyback the P&A for this summer’s star-studded remake, Dead of Night because it’s a perennial cult fave, and Uncle Sam because Lustig owns the company; three separate objectives, then, for putting out three different pictures all concerning shell-shocked war veterans bringing the violence home with them. Considering the length of time it must have taken to prepare these beautifully mastered, supplement-rich discs, that they coincide with not only each other but also the cooling of patriotic fervour (coupled with the spontaneous theatrical release of Michael Moore’s anti-Dubya Fahrenheit 9/11) is like getting the rare privilege to see the forest for the trees.

The Crazies (1973) – Blu-ray Disc

March 4, 20101970s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: George A. Romero, Horror, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Lane Carroll, W.G. McMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, Lloyd Hollar
screenplay by Paul McCollough & George A. Romero
directed by George A. Romero

by Walter Chaw It's tough for a dyed-in-the-wool George Romero apologist to observe that a film of Romero's in good repute is an amateurish, exploitative piece of shit that banks heavily on the afterglow of his seminal Night of the Living Dead. The Crazies, his third movie in the wake of that masterpiece, finds itself ripping off the last half-hour of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers–in lurid colour with a cast of atrocious actors in high-'70s, porn-ugly wardrobe and appearance–in its tale of how you shouldn't trust anyone over 30, so keep on truckin', man, steal this book, and if it feels good, do it. Its tragedy is airless and ineffectual, played as it is as this instantly (and hopelessly) dated relic of the flower-power generation that already had its epitaph with Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider four years prior. While its philosophy is tired and childish (a product of reading HIGH TIMES rather than an actual newspaper), it's also dreadfully paced, with the lion's share of time given over to exhausted harangues about how the government doesn't really care about the little guy and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Never mind the greater good here, as The Crazies is so fervently incomprehensible in its hippie politic that the threat of real contamination for the rest of the country/world should one of our erstwhile heroes escape into the general population forces the audience to ally its sympathies with the jack-booted thugs. Besides, there's already a problem of identification in the film when its ostensible villains, dressed in contamination suits to save on the extras budget, are clearly just underpaid civil servants who most definitely do not deserve to be slaughtered by the yokel populace–crazy or not.

A Serious Man (2009); The Invention of Lying (2009); Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

October 7, 20092000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Esoterica, France, Romance, Satire, Theatrical, UK

A SERIOUS MAN
***½/****
starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick
written and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

THE INVENTION OF LYING
*½/****
starring Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill, Tina Fey
written and directed by Ricky Gervais & Matthew Robinson

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
**½/****
directed by Michael Moore

by Ian Pugh The appropriate, even inevitable capper to a loose nihilist trilogy following No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading, the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man is so utterly dark and dire that it almost plays like self-reflexive parody–an adaptation of Barton Fink's "beautiful" wrestling script, perhaps, or an honest-to-gosh realization of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? Preston Sturges imagined once upon a time. Even the title is sarcastic. This is a scenario whereby life-altering misfortunes fall with ridiculous timing and precision; the dismal tides and the coming storms are now damningly literal, such that it's nearly impossible to take it with any semblance of seriousness. In making time during the game to explain Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, our hapless Job, physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), offers, if you haven't surmised, a fairly concise metaphor for everything that happens in this film. Why are the Coens being so on-the-nose about themes they've lately approached with a legitimately intimidating brilliance? Maybe it's because their mordant philosophy has amassed unprecedented critical and commercial acceptance over their last two pictures. Maybe the idea that anyone could actually commiserate with them strikes the Coens as so terrifying that the time has come to cast such notions aside in the most punishing way possible.¹ For now, anyway.

Adventureland (2009) + Alien Trespass (2009)|Adventureland (2009) – Blu-ray + Digital Copy

September 1, 20092000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Horror, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller

ADVENTURELAND
***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Jake Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Margarita Levieva
written and directed by Greg Mottola

ALIEN TRESPASS
***/****
starring Eric McCormack, Jenni Baird, Robert Patrick, Dan Lauria
screenplay by Steven P. Fisher
directed by R. W. Goodwin

by Ian Pugh In everyone's life there's a summer of '42, but of course it was never as wonderful as you remember. Although Greg Mottola's Adventureland is set in 1987, that's almost incidental–it really takes place in that hazy cloud known as "the past," full of fly-by-night jobs rife with fraud and deceit, fairweather friends who sock you in the crotch, and, of course, the music that brings to mind painful experiences perhaps best left forgotten. (Funny to think that this might be the ideological inverse of another great 2009 film about memory, The Uninvited: unhealthily obsessive instead of unhealthily in denial.) The key to understanding the film, I think, lies in Falco's New Wave anthem "Rock Me Amadeus," here serving as an inescapable nightmare at the titular amusement park, where it's pumped through the sound system ad nauseam ("Can you give me an ice pick that I can just jam into my ears?"). But then the romantic confusion driving the plot unravels in a series of betrayals, and that same song becomes a damning elegy. Seems strange that the director of Superbad, an instant classic of maturity-through-childishness and nostalgia-without-precedent, should deliver something so angry and contradictory for a follow-up. Perhaps it is strange–but Adventureland is also a more honest, more personal, and, most importantly, more mature film than Superbad.