Storytelling (2002) [Unrated and R-rated Versions] – DVD

July 12, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance, Satire

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamatti
written and directed by Todd Solondz

by Walter Chaw The line between love and misanthropy is thin, and Todd Solondz is a cunning cartographer of that precarious divide. He sees political correctness as an insidious product of the kind of paternalistic racism that discards truth in favour of generally held truisms, a crutch for well-meaning racists who lack the wit to grasp that the basic misunderstanding of difference driving a desire to discriminate against minorities is identical to that which drives a desire to protect minorities. Solondz’s films are confrontational in the extreme, full-frontal assaults on the hypocrisy that fuels most relationships and stark dissections of the politics of cruelty.

Fathom (1967) – DVD

July 10, 2002Posted in1960s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, Satire, UK

*/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Tony Franciosa, Raquel Welch, Ronald Fraser, Greta Chi
screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr.
directed by Leslie H. Martinson

by Walter Chaw There’s something desperately wrong with veteran television director Leslie H. Martinson’s spy spoof Fathom, and it took me the whole movie to figure it out: Raquel Welch, as the titular va-va-va-voom dental hygienist cum parachutist cum superspy spends the entire film running from symbols of aggressive virility. Clad fetchingly in a variety of swimsuits and tight shirts (but never pants), our Fathom is pursued by a man with a speargun, by a Russian paramour mistaking our heroine for a prostitute, through various tunnels, and through a train. In its barest form, Fathom appears to be a rape fantasy involving a helpless, screaming, occasionally castrating Welch (though, tellingly, the only person she kills is another woman), who plays a variation on her standard cocktease and–naturally–deserves getting prodded about by a bull while a collection of bad guys poke at her with phallic shunts.

Undercover Brother (2002)

May 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Eddie Griffin, James Brown, Chris Kattan, Denise Richards
screenplay by John Ridley and Michael McCullers
directed by Malcolm D. Lee

Undercoverbrotherby Walter Chaw A comedy with ideas, courage, and intelligence, Malcolm D. Lee’s follow-up to his surprisingly good The Best Man is the blaxploitation riff Undercover Brother–and man, when it’s right, it’s really right. Unfortunately, it’s only right about half of the time. Its digs at racial stereotypes and dedication to honouring the images and conceits of black cinema from the Seventies are dead on-target for the most part, while its attempts to marry it all into some sort of spy plot are subject to the same extended dull spots suffered by any dinosaur Bond flick. All is forgiven, though, when Eddie Griffin, as the titular afro-super-agent, splashes through a window like Dolemite, does a “white man’s” dance while singing a karaoke version of “Ebony and Ivory” (with über-bimbo Denise Richards, not in on the joke), and navigates his caddy through a tailspin without spilling a drop of his orange soda.

Hollywood Ending (2002)

May 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Satire, Theatrical

**/****
starring Woody Allen, George Hamilton, Téa Leoni, Debra Messing
written and directed by Woody Allen

Hollywoodendingby Walter Chaw Woody Allen’s pictures are exhausting things about absolutely nothing save Manhattan and Woody Allen–Allen’s fascination with the cinema and younger women, Allen’s disingenuous fear of writer’s block, and more recently, Allen’s desire to reconcile with his children. Sometimes any one of those is enough.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 1

April 5, 2002Posted in****/****, 1950s, 1990s, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Czech Republic, Drama, Fantasy, France, Horror, Japan, Mexico, Mystery, Netherlands, Satire, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

by Walter Chaw

BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956)
***½/****
starring Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Roger Duchesne, Guy Decomble
screenplay by Jean-Pierre Melville, dialogue by Auguste Le Breton
directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

With every minute of Henri Decaё’s cinematography looking like a Eugène Atget photograph, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur is a visually stunning film from a director who influenced filmmakers as diverse as Jean-Luc Godard (who quotes Bob Le Flambeur at least twice in Breathless) and John Woo (whose The Killer takes its basic plot from Melville’s Le Samourai). It is film noir of the highest order, reminding in its ensemble intricacy of Kubrick’s The Killing (released a year later in 1956) and evoking the kind of chiaroscuro, gin-joint, smoke-drenched milieu where every ashtray has a name. It’s a love letter to the grim American gangster drama of the Forties that subverts the genre even as it reinvents it as a lyrical ballad to gamblers, losers, hoods, and wayward dames–a snapshot of the Montmarte district of Paris 47 years before Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s reinvention of the same.

No Man’s Land (2001)

February 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Drama, France, Italy, Satire, Slovenia, Theatrical, Thriller, War

**½/****
starring Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Georges Siatidis
written and directed by Danis Tanovic

by Walter Chaw Chiki (Branko Djuric) is one of two surviving members of a front-line relief party that was decimated after their guide got them lost in a fog. (From the first, the visual metaphors fly as thick as pea soup.) His companion Cera (Filip Sovagovic), thought dead by the enemy, has been placed on a pressure-sensitive mine; his antagonist, Nino (Rene Bitorajac), has been disarmed and wounded. The three of them (four if you consider the mine a character) decry their causes while overlooking their similarities. No Man’s Land is at its best when it tantalizes with the possibility for resolution–and at its worst when it explodes the claustrophobia of its first hour to include the UN, the press, and a newsreel montage lending background to a conflict the movie’s only ostensibly about in the first place.

Heathers (1989) – DVD

October 25, 2001Posted in****/****, 1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Satire, Teen

****/**** Image A Sound B- Extras A-
starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk
screenplay by Daniel Waters
directed by Michael Lehmann

Mustownby Walter Chaw Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) is the only non-Heather "Heather," one of four girls in Westerberg High's most popular and fashionable clique. The conscience of a harridan quartet responsible for much of the insecurity and intimidation at their institution, Veronica confides to new kid J.D. (Christian Slater), "I don't really like my friends." Nor is there much to admire about Westerberg's other clusters, who spend their time destroying overweight students, tormenting the "geek squad," and placing themselves in humiliating situations for the sake of imagined boosts to their ill-gained status. J.D., a rebel with a cause, functions as the catalyst for Veronica's revenge fantasies: The two begin a killing spree of the beautiful people, getting away with it by playing on grown-ups' propensity to romanticize teenage suicide.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

September 14, 2001Posted in1970s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical, UK

***/****
starring Monty Python
screenplay by Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Terry Gilliam & Eric Idle & Terry Jones & Michael Palin
directed by Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

by Walter Chaw Comprising Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Graham Chapman, the comedy troupe Monty Python had as their stock in trade the dialogue-dense, mildly absurdist short-form sketch. To that extent, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a series of comedic skits and improvisations bound loosely–very loosely–by the contention that this merry sextet of Britons is attempting to tell the Arthur myth without the aid of budget, plot, or accuracy. All of them are classically educated, and the film seems to be a giant flip of the nose at the pretension of the British literary tradition. In the act of being such, it nearly becomes the best telling of the Grail legend available. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a satire that instructs with its informed irreverence, a piece that knows the rules before it breaks them and has shown itself over the course of 26 years to be almost as immediate and hilarious as it was upon initial release.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

August 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Road Movie, Satire, Theatrical

**/****
starring Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Jason Lee, Chris Rock
written and directed by Kevin Smith

by Walter Chaw Self-referential and self-satisfied, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is a continual stream of grotesque sexual references, leering at scantily clad, foul-mouthed women, and enough broad swipes at mainstream cinema (while featuring a parade of celebrity cameos) that it ends up being a cross between “Beavis and Butthead”, Cecil B. Demented, and a Bob Hope Christmas special, not to mention an endurance test. It is, in other words, exactly the kind of film that Jay and Silent Bob would make if they were real and given fifteen million dollars to hock their adventures in arrested development to fawning fans, as well as the other 99% of the world.

Bamboozled (2000) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

May 15, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, DVD, Music, Satire

***½/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Damon Wayans, Savion Glover, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Tommy Davidson
written and directed by Spike Lee

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I can see from the negative press surrounding Bamboozled that Spike Lee has supposedly overshot the mark. Nobody, they say, really likes the racist imagery of the minstrel show anymore, and they say that Lee’s insistence that people might pretty much disqualifies his film from serious attention. But I wonder. I remember being in a college-dorm common room watching a horribly racist production number in the Marx Brothers’ A Day at the Races, to hear one viewer shrug it off simply because the participants “looked happy,” and I remember having a roommate who owned a publicity knick-knack of a black baby bursting out of an orange who had no idea how it could be construed as offensive.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

January 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Esoterica, Horror, Luxembourg, Satire, Theatrical, UK, Vampire

**/****
starring John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Catherine McCormack, Eddie Izzard
screenplay by Steven Katz
directed by E. Elias Merhige

by Bill Chambers They certainly dressed the part in those days. As the pre-eminent German filmmaker F.W. Murnau, John Malkovich declares: “We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory.” On set, before the lamps are fired up and action is called, Murnau and his crew don tinted aviator goggles, looking as if they’re about to launch an atomic bomb. This was standard practice during cinema’s formative years, when it took an intense amount of light to satisfactorily expose an image. (It was not uncommon for those who didn’t take precautions to go blind later in life.) But Malkovich/Murnau is not describing costumes; he’s probably, in fact, speaking for the makers of the gothic comedy in which he appears as the catalyst, Shadow of the Vampire. Director E. Elias Merhige, working from a screenplay by Steven Katz, forges a new memoir of Nosferatu, Murnau’s unauthorized, silent-film-era take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula that was rumoured to star a real vampire.