Hitchcock (2012)

Posted in2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical

Hitchcock

½*/****
starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette
screenplay by John J. McLaughlin, based on Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello
directed by Sacha Gervasi 

by Walter Chaw It’s hard to know where to even begin to pick apart Sacha Gervasi’s dishonourable drag show Hitchcock, a schlock domestic melodrama with Anthony Hopkins delivering a freak impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock from under a ton of prosthetics that make him look not like Sir Alfred, but like Jim Sturgess as a heroic celestial from Cloud Atlas. Start with the framing story, in which Wisconsin necrophiliac and amateur taxidermist Ed Gein (Michael Wincott, one of the only inspired bits of casting in the entire benighted project) acts as Hitch’s father confessor, greatest confidant, and Freudian conduit to the darker recesses of the auteur’s soul. He appears, see, the way Dustin Hoffman’s imaginary monk appeared to Milla Jovovich’s Joan of Arc in Luc Besson’s The Messenger: In one scene, Hitch, on a couch, admits to Ed that he has unwholesome thoughts about his leading ladies now and again. It’s that obsession for the “Hitchcock blonde” that leads to the discovery of a few sticky headshots in Hitch’s den, and for the everlasting resentment of mousy wife Alma (not-mousy Helen Mirren), who decides to have her own fling with failed writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston)–one of several credited writers on Hitchcock’s Stage Fright and Strangers on a Train, though Hitchcock doesn’t mention that. It doesn’t mention much. I suspect that’s because no one involved knows anything, which is quite extraordinary when you consider that possibly no other director in the history of Hollywood has had more written about him than Alfred Hitchcock.

The Horse Whisperer (1998) – Blu-ray Disc

The Horse Whisperer (1998) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disability, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance, Scarlett Johansson

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras D+
starring Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Scarlett Johansson
screenplay by Eric Roth and Richard LaGravenese, based on the novel by Nicholas Evans
directed by Robert Redford

by Bill Chambers  SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Revisiting Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer fourteen years after I last saw it, I am relieved to encounter a film that isn’t simply marking time until a climactic moment that was for me a cherished eureka at the movies. The picture begins with Grace (13-year-old Scarlett Johansson) rising at the crack of dawn to go horseback riding with her friend Judith (Kate Bosworth, billed as “Catherine”). Redford focuses on Johansson’s socked feet slinking past her parents’ bedroom door, and subsequently draws a lot of attention to legs and feet here–not in a fetish-y way, but as if they’re a person’s “tell.” I misremembered this scene, for what it’s worth, as Grace doing something wrong by sneaking out, but in fact her parents are not at all surprised to find her gone by the time they’re up and around. Mom (Kristin Scott Thomas) is basically Anna Wintour–her name’s even Annie–and Dad, Robert (Sam Neill), is, we infer, the kind of lawyer who does a lot of pro bono work.

Lost in Translation (2003) – Blu-ray Disc + Anything Else (2003) – DVD

Lost in Translation (2003) – Blu-ray Disc + Anything Else (2003) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Sofia Coppola, Drama, DVD, France, Japan, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK, ZERO STARS

LOST IN TRANSLATION
***½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B
starring Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris
written and directed by Sofia Coppola

ANYTHING ELSE
ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Woody Allen, Jason Biggs, Christina Ricci, Danny DeVito
written and directed by Woody Allen

by Walter Chaw It feels a lot like life is an endless succession of heartsickness and anticipation of heartsickness. After a while, taking a line from Tender Mercies, it’s hard to trust happiness anymore when happiness feels so ephemeral compared to the weight of grief. Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is about the wear of time and the unbearable burden of experience–it’s about how even what’s new and fresh is darkened by the ghosts of regret and time. When Bill Murray’s fading star Bob Harris arrives in Tokyo to lend his image to a top-shelf whiskey, he is suffused with so much of the sadness of living that the surprise of life has become something to be viewed with suspicion. Newness fades, and that familiar malaise, weary and grey, inevitably takes its place, sometimes even before the exhilaration of newness can reinvigorate. Bob meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) in the hotel bar; she’s in town with her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi), and together Bob and Charlotte paint the town blue.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Scarlett Johansson, Superhero, Theatrical

*/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson
screenplay by Justin Theroux
directed by Jon Favreau

by Walter Chaw A multi-million-dollar machine carefully engineered to generate the ridiculous amount of money it’s about to, Iron Man 2 is kept from total, instant obsolescence by its “too good for this shit” cast, which cleverly manages to distract from the fact that this flick is a tone-deaf, laborious mess. Front and centre is Mickey Rourke as wronged Russian physicist Ivan Vanko, an amalgam of two Iron Man villains and so enigmatic a presence that although the dumbass screenplay (by actor Justin Theroux) takes pains to make Vanko’s angst father-based, it’s hard not to be distracted by the more mysterious depths of Rourke’s performance. Similarly good are Gwyneth Paltrow, whose Girl Friday Pepper Potts is given the keys to her boss’s Stark Industries and burdened instantly by expectation and cable-news notoriety; Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, again playing himself as a tech billionaire; and Sam Rockwell as an unctuous, fake-baked rival defense contractor. Not so great are the bland set-pieces, the misguided attempt to parallel Vanko’s avenge-daddy motivation with Tony’s make-dead-daddy-proud motivation into one legacy-based leitmotif, and a series of convoluted plot mechanisms (Tony’s dying! Tony loves Pepper! No, he loves dead-eyed, one-note-but-hot Natasha (Scarlett Johansson)! Tony’s company is in trouble! Tony’s in trouble with the government! Tony likes to get drunk!) that grind the whole enterprise to a standstill at short intervals. If you can maintain your interest during an extended sequence in which our Tony plays with a bunch of virtual computer screens while building a long tube, you either drank the Kool-Aid that makes you care whether Tony lives or dies, or you’ve slipped blissfully into a coma.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK

**/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Kristin Scott Thomas
screenplay by Peter Morgan, based on the novel by Philippa Gregory
directed by Justin Chadwick

by Bryant Frazer Pop culture works in mysterious ways. I suppose the Tudor dynasty never really goes out of style, but it’s interesting to see two completely different takes on the tale of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, reach audiences more or less simultaneously. The second season of Showtime’s lavish series “The Tudors” just concluded with the (spoiler?!) beheading of Boleyn, followed by a close-up of a beautiful little girl who would become Queen Elizabeth I. The Other Boleyn Girl, produced in part by BBC Films, ends much the same way, with that same act of reprisal followed by a beaming young face representing that same incipient monarch.

The Prestige (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Christopher Nolan, Drama, Mystery, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***/****
starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine
screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, based on the novel by Christopher Priest
directed by Christopher Nolan

by Walter Chaw It’s possible to say that Christopher Nolan’s perplexing chimera of a film, The Prestige, has something on its mind about not only the nasty, zero-sum game of vengeance but also the belief that if you cut one head off a malevolent beast, it will, hydra-like, sprout another. It’s a costume drama that feels like the world’s darkest, dour-est, most inappropriate thriller serial, placing a series of increasingly complicated and unpleasant revenge scenarios in chronological order and reminding, if anything, of just how bad Nolan’s Memento makes you feel. The Prestige shares a heart of darkness, after all, with that film: a belief that men are essentially callow opportunists and liars who will misuse the people in their lives in order to maintain an illusion of command, however tenuous, over entropy. The manipulation of illusion is arguably the auteur mark of Nolan, who played with the idea of the manipulation of fear as a weapon in Batman Begins, the practical purpose of dream sleep in his remake of Insomnia, and of course of identity as fluid, ephemeral, and dangerously malleable in Memento and Following. Matching this director with a strange, campy film about turn-of-the-century magicians engaged in mortal combat makes a lot of sense.

Hollywoodland (2006); The Black Dahlia (2006); Factotum (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, 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

by 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.

Scoop (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Mystery, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Woody Allen, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane
written and directed by Woody Allen

Scoopby Walter Chaw Woody Allen's stock had been falling when the surprising restraint and structure of the frankly-just-decent Match Point temporarily staunched a hemorrhage of appalling failures. Call Scoop a return to form, then, with Allen doing Allen again to rapidly-diminishing returns, spicing things up this time around with a teeny dose of post-modern self-deprecation that seems not so much thoughtful as pathetic. The Woodman plays a fast-talking, stammering, Catskills comedian calling himself "The Great Splendini" (for the "square haircuts," he Rickles) who, as Allen is wont to do nowadays, acts as the panderous mentor for a hot young couple. What's most shocking is that a puff of dust and cobwebs don't erupt from his mouth every time it creaks open to deliver another pun about Trollope/trollop and Ruebens/Rueben (the corned beef and sauerkraut variety). Otherwise, it's The More the Merrier ad infinitum: the old fart helping a couple of good-looking kids get their groove on–with the twist of a Jack the Ripper subplot woven awkwardly into the narrative. It's far easier to identify the Victorian rake as Allen himself, what with his vaguely pedophilic sleights-of-hand lurking in every frame. That's not necessarily bad if the film's about a Tom Ripley sociopath (à la Match Point), of course, but it's pretty bad when it's a piece of fluff starring his favorite new obsession.

Match Point (2005)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Luxembourg, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***/****
starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode
written and directed by Woody Allen

by Walter Chaw Match Point is a quasi-Patricia Highsmith flick about a rudderless Ripley cruising like a shark amongst England’s polite society, and the extent to which it works has to do with the degree to which its philosophy of chance and living with ghosts attaches itself to the zeitgeist. The picture opens with a shot of a tennis ball lobbed low and in slow-motion into the top of a net, an image that has as its echo a key moment where a wedding ring tossed towards a river rebounds against a fence into the street. The voiceover talks about the common fear that our lives are governed by happenstance and entropy, transforming the ball going forward into a metaphor for winning–and back into one for losing. Using this as gospel, it’s interesting to wonder what it means that, when push comes to shove, our hero’s victory is defined by his defeat. Match Point is Woody Allen’s best film in some time, which is a left-handed compliment at best; better to say that it’s another decent millennial fable about class, the vicissitudes of fate, the reptilian hunger of infiltrating the social strata, and living with ghosts.

The Island (2005)

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Michael Bay, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean
screenplay by Caspian Tredwell-Owen and Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci
directed by Michael Bay

Islandby Walter Chaw What films often get wrong in depicting Satan is that Satan is beautiful. He tells intoxicating lies, was–at least according to Milton–the most stunning of the angels, and, if modern hackery is to be honoured, directs action movies that are kinetic and exciting. The problem of a guy like Michael Bay is that for as close to vermin as the man may be (and stories of his on-set behaviour, especially his treatment of women, are legion and ugly), his films are, at least on the surface, sleek, pulpy, thrill-ride fun. He's defined almost by himself a new way of seeing that has infected lesser technical talents with those same quick scissor-fingers and the attention spans of mayflies. Would that that were all, but this influence has secondary victims in a generation of young male moviegoers, bludgeoned with Bay's rubber mallet into a tacit acceptance of/complicity with Bay's opinion of women (strippers or bimbos or bimbo strippers), race, and how best to feed a movie into a Cuisinart. Still, his latest film, The Island, came with reasons to be hopeful: writers from sometimes-smart (as in not-always-stupid) show "Alias"; stars in Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson; and no Jerry Bruckheimer in sight. But the result isn't good so much as more of the same except without any excitement or novelty. His mask is slipping, and The Island is awkward, dated, and so fuddy-duddy (like in its retarded Logan's Run finale, shot on Bay's trademark Lazy Susan) that I actually caught myself feeling, just for an eye-blink, embarrassed for the guy. That Satan, he's a slippery puck, ain't he.

In Good Company (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Scarlett Johansson

***/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B
starring Dennis Quaid, Scarlett Johansson, Topher Grace, Marg Helgenberger
written and directed by Paul Weitz

Ingoodcompanycapby Walter Chaw A film about what happens when Benjamin Braddock decides to pursue a career in plastics, Paul Weitz's flawed In Good Company (its title, formerly Synergy, may be the worst thing about it) boasts a distinct human quality that lends depth where there might not otherwise be any. It's bolstered by the central trio of performers: Topher Grace, continuing his winning streak; Dennis Quaid, affecting in the kind of role that Harrison Ford should be doing now instead of Indiana Jones; and Scarlett Johansson, rapidly growing into something like a national treasure. And though Weitz is too in love with the extreme close-up, his tactic of displacing his characters in various visual terrariums does a good job of suggesting just how isolating it can be to balance breaking your back for a job you don't particularly like with enjoying the people for whom you do it in the first place. At its heart, In Good Company is a love song to hoary old axioms concerning love, loyalty, and honour–its charms are old-fashioned and its bromides, if not entirely unexpected, are at least earned.

A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical

*/****
starring John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson, Gabriel Macht, Deborah Kara Unger
screenplay by Shainee Gabel, based on the novel Off Magazine Street by Ronald Everett Capps
directed by Shainee Gabel

by Walter Chaw Scarlett Johansson’s character in Shainee Gabel’s Faulknerian idiot man-child of a Southern Gothic A Love Song for Bobby Long is named “Pursey,” which strikes me as the least lascivious but still accurate way to describe the suddenly-gorgeous starlet. Though she’s adequately attired in her country-fried accent and long, hot summer finery, truth be told, she’s already too good for this kind of material–a compliment that sheds light on her co-stars (John Travolta, Gabriel Macht), who are, to a one, not up to the film’s desperate pretensions. In A Love Song for Bobby Long, see, every other line of dialogue is either a George Sand quote or a drawling, laconic narrative voiceover. (If it weren’t overlit and lousy with drowsy exteriors, I would have mistaken it for another Clint Eastwood film.) And if you don’t have a strong sense of self-awareness, you have no place in the sort of turgid julep this post-Tennessee Williams potboiler serves up as refreshment.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Biopic, Drama, DVD, France, Luxembourg, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A Extras B-
starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt
screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier
directed by Peter Webber

by Bill Chambers It's a tad perverse to shoot a film about the world of Johannes Vermeer in 'scope, considering the artist's own cramped reflection of that world on portable canvasses. A shut-in, if we interpret his life through his surviving pictures, Vermeer didn't just paint in a lambent room on the upper level of his mother-in-law's house in Delft, he painted the room itself–the begrimed walls, the half-stained furniture, the Gingerbread-house windows that caught his human subjects (often, it appears, members of the servant class) in a tractor beam of light.

The Perfect Score (2004)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Scarlett Johansson, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Scarlett Johansson, Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Darius Miles
screenplay by Mark Schwahn and Marc Hyman & Jon Zack
directed by Brian Robbins

Perfectscoreby Walter Chaw A remake in quality and spirit of the "what were they thinking" classic Hackers, Brian Robbins's The Perfect Score is one of those stunted adolescent teensploitation flicks that makes one pine for the suddenly-glory days of Fresh Horses and The Breakfast Club–which, as it happens, seems to serve as this flick's carbuncular muse. A band of five disparate high school washouts meet in detention–errr, during a PSAT test–and plot to steal the answers from SAT headquarters. The Jock is played by real-life jock Darius Miles; the basket case is Roy (Leonardo Nam); the princess is Anna (an even more zombie-like than usual Erika Christensen); the brain is Francesca (Scarlett Johansson); and the punk is Kyle (Chris Evans). It takes some doing, it goes without saying, to cause one to reassess the acting acumen of the Brat Pack.

Eight Legged Freaks (2002) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scarlett Johansson, Scott Terra
screenplay by Jesse Alexander & Ellory Elkayem
directed by Ellory Elkayem

by Walter Chaw Ellory Elkayem’s Eight Legged Freaks (sic) is less a throwback to the giant-bug howlers of Gordon Douglas and Jack Arnold than just another post-modern fright comedy long on ironic genre in-references and short on any real thrills. In tone, it reminds a great deal of Joe Dante’s Gremlins II–more jokey than scary, in other words, and, like Gremlins II, Eight Legged Freaks works better than it ought to because of some fairly nifty special effects (I’ve seen worse CGI) and better-than-average performances from its B-list cast.

An American Rhapsody (2001) – DVD

An American Rhapsody (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Scarlett Johansson

**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Commentary B
starring Nastassja Kinski, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Goldwyn, Mae Whitman
written and directed by Éva Gardos

by Walter Chaw Editor Éva Gardos’s An American Rhapsody, her first film as writer-director, is riddled with inconsistencies, lacklustre performances, and convenient platitudes that are perhaps not terribly surprising for a debut screenwriter and director, but disheartening from a veteran cutter who gained experience with the likes of Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich. The problem with an autobiography, after its inherent onanistic self-absorption, is that it will too often hide behind the aegis of truth to excuse a multitude of narrative sins. An American Rhapsody is deeply felt, no question, but it jerks and lurches along without much regard for secondary characters, continuity, motivation, and coherence. It is ultimately little more than an episodic patchwork of overburdened vignettes that share only a desire to manufacture unearned pathos and manipulate events towards the most expedient solution.

DIFF ’01: The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Scarlett Johansson, Thriller, UK

****/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw The noir genre was born of discomfort with women in the workplace, the rise of cynicism, and a world polarized by international conflict (WWII). Its symbol, the hard-boiled detective, became the projection of the collective paranoia about the ascent of globalism and the death of Pollyannaism. Women and foreigners are not to be trusted in the noir universe; information is slippery and expensive; and the solution of the puzzle more often than not points back to a rot at the heart of the detective. It is the Oedipus/identity trajectory, complete with a blasted plague land, a murder, its thinly veiled culprit (noir is typically invested in process, not mystery), the appearance of a femme fatale, and a solution involving mortal self-knowledge. The noir hero may save the day, but at the price of being betrayed by those he loves. He is impotent to avenge his fallen friends and lovers, and at the mercy of a larger corruption that is unalterable and serves only to further degrade individual confidence. Tellingly, a great many noir works in literature and film begin with the death of a best friend or a partner and end with the realization that any victory is a hollow one in light of society’s inexorable fall into chaos.