The Ωmega Man (1971) – DVD

September 1, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

The Omega Man
*/**** Image A- Sound B Extras D
starring Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, Rosalind Cash
screenplay by John William Corrington and Joyce H. Corrington, based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
directed by Boris Sagal

by Walter Chaw Its dialogue and score at constant war with the tickle of poignancy threatening to justify The Ωmega Man‘s cult status, Boris Sagal’s at times astonishingly awful adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic short novel I Am Legend is some kind of weird hippie elegy spiced with a few disturbing religious images and a lot of casual racism. The idea that Matheson’s vampires are now black-hooded (monastic and judicial) albino mutants living in an abandoned civic building, representative of not a new order but the oppressive old, is too clearly a lament for the doom of the flower-power generation. Frankly, the image of broken-down hippies trying to plant seeds in blasted earth in the middle of Easy Rider said it all with more elegance and brevity.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) – DVD + John Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness – Books

August 17, 2003Posted in1990s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Books About Movies, Directors: John Carpenter, DVD, Sci-Fi

MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN
**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, Sam Neill, Michael McKean
screenplay by Robert Collector & Dana Olsen and William Goldman, based on the book by H.F. Saint
directed by John Carpenter

JOHN CARPENTER: THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS
FFC rating: 6/10
written by Gilles Boulenger

by Bill Chambers In John Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness, a new interview book by Gilles Boulenger, John Carpenter says that you don’t see the possessory credit on Memoirs of an Invisible Man (i.e., “John Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man“) because the film is not 100% his, but rather the product of studio interference he knew full well would take place prior to signing on. (“Warner Bros. is in the business of making audience-friendly, non-challenging movies,” Carpenter declares.) Boulenger doesn’t ask his subject how he stomached accepting the project–funnyman Chevy Chase’s darling, which Chase had shepherded through an abortive incarnation to be directed by Ivan Reitman and scripted by William Goldman before Carpenter climbed aboard–despite his misgivings, since he obviously did it for the A-list boost and the last time he did that (Christine) felt tormented about it for years after. (“When there is no connection between the movie and my inner soul, I get lost and I walk through it.”) You’ll find that’s the pattern of Boulenger’s Q&A: Carpenter feeds his interrogator provocative morsels, and they go untested because Boulenger has a set-list he wants to get through. (It’s the spontaneous follow-up question, the willingness to confront, that tests an interviewer’s mettle.) I fear we may have another Laurent Bouzereau on our hands, for Boulenger’s favourite query–he uses it over and over again–is also his most reductive: “Do you recall one telling anecdote about the shoot?”

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003)

July 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Sci-Fi, Stallone

Spy Kids 3: Game Over
½*/****
starring Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez

Spykids3dby Walter Chaw Robert Rodriguez’s deeply unpleasant conclusion to his Spy Kids trilogy lacks the smarts and inventiveness of the first two films in the series, putting all of its eggs in a 3-D basket that is so certain to cause headache that bottles of aspirin should be passed out alongside the flimsy red/blue glasses. All the weaknesses of the previous Spy Kids entries, unbolstered in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (hereafter Spy Kids 3) by a sense of joy and innovation, are unforgivable in this film: the genuinely awful child actors, the cheesy special effects, and that certain air of imported moral superiority that seems a late-hour attempt to justify the emptiness of the exercise. Out of nowhere, the lessons of family and respect for disability find themselves grafted to this flimsiest of low-tech frameworks–special effects that are so amateurish and poorly implemented they don’t so much remind of Tron as replicate Tron bit-for-bit twenty-one years after the fact. The narrative of the film, such as it is, reveals itself to be a life-support system for hyperactive incompetence, and for a series of stupid cameos that are at least preferable to Sylvester Stallone as something called The Toymaker.

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 6, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Keiko Nobumoto
directed by Shinichiro Watanabe

by Walter Chaw Yôko Kanno’s soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (hereafter Cowboy Bebop) is a jubilant a blend of funk, jazz, blues, soul, and punk that soars even though it’s a pale shadow of the “bebop” innovated by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell (and Kenny Clarke and Max Roach) in Minton’s Playhouse in the early 1940s. It functions as something of a brilliantly mellifluous backbone to the film and the series that spawned it–chimeric and socially significant, again like Bird’s bebop, in that the 26-episode Japanese television series became one of the most recognized and revered crossovers in animated series history. The bebop idea of riffing on a melody to the extent that the melody becomes unrecognizable (with an attendant introduction of dozens of beats to the standard four-beat bar) carries through in the frenetic kineticism of series that also, by its format, mirrors jazz bebop’s compact agility (generally carried by quartet and quintet arrangements)–making a feature-length film, then, a strange place for the “Cowboy Bebop” franchise to go.

The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988)/The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989) [2 Disc Set]; The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990); The Incredible Hulk (1996) – DVDs

June 17, 2003Posted in1980s, 1990s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Superhero

THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS
**/**** Image B- Sound B Extras A+
starring Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, Lee Purcell, Jack Colvin
written by Nicholas Corea
directed by Bill Bixby & Nicholas Corea

THE TRIAL OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK
*/**** Image B- Sound B Extras A+
starring Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, Rex Smith, John Rhys-Davies
written by Gerald Di Pego
directed by Bill Bixby

by Walter Chaw It all comes back in a rush, the crosshairs fixing David Banner’s (Bill Bixby) face, the breathless narration summarizing the whole of the creation story in ninety seconds, the shots of long-haired Lou Ferrigno, in full body paint, embodying the rage and frustration of the flower-power generation in all its ripped-jean glory. Punked with a horse’s dose of gamma radiation, mild-mannered Dr. Banner turns into a ball of flexing id that gets most wroth until running across a kitten or something and calming down. Jekyll and Hyde for the “me” generation; that a research scientist disinterested in the particulars of cashing in turns into a giant green ball of type-A is one avenue for discussion, though a better one is the fact that Banner represents in a real way the idea of hope and compassion in a time more interested in “Hulk smash”–making the moldy Marvel hero a potentially good match for the reflective sensibilities of Ang Lee. That Banner’s pacifist nature is always defeated by his “anger” speaks volumes about the inevitability of the metamorphosis of hippie to yuppie, as well as the death of a dream that transformation encompasses.

Spider-Man (2002) [Full Screen Special Edition + Superbit] – DVDs

June 13, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Sam Raimi, DVD, Sci-Fi, Spider-Man, Superhero

***½/****
SE – Image C Sound A- Extras B
SUPERBIT – Image A Sound A (DTS) A- (DD) Commentary B
starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco
screenplay by David Koepp
directed by Sam Raimi

by Walter Chaw Sam Raimi’s banana yellow, 1973 Dodge 88 Oldsmobile is Uncle Ben’s (Cliff Robertson, himself the happy–however briefly–subject of a lab experiment in 1968’s Charley) ride in Spider-Man, and it is as canny and appropriate a cameo as any since Hitchcock’s greedy quaff of a champagne flute in Notorious. The good news is, the appearance of said vehicle is as clever as the rest of Spider-Man, that rare variety of modern popular film boasting of subtext and tricky riptides tackling puberty and abrupt Oedipal splits with good humour, insight, and grace. If not for the abominable CGI (really only overused in two scenes), I would have a hard time finding fault with Spider-Man, the model comic book movie in its surprisingly dark tone, lively pace, shrewd performances, sense of humour, and sly intelligence.

Franchise Boogie: The Jungle Book 2; The Brady Bunch Movie; A Very Brady Sequel; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Die Another Day; The Animatrix

June 9, 2003Posted in1990s, 2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, James Bond, Musical, Sci-Fi

THE JUNGLE BOOK 2 (2003)
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Karl Geurs
directed by Steve Trenbirth

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE (1995)
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christine Taylor, Christopher Daniel Barnes
screenplay by Bonnie Turner & Terry Turner
directed by Betty Thomas

A VERY BRADY SEQUEL (1996)
***½/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Christine Taylor
screenplay by Harry Elfont & Deborah Kaplan and James Berg & Stan Zimmerman
directed by Arlene Sanford

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
screenplay by James Cameron & William Wisher Jr.
directed by James Cameron

DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)
**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade
directed by Lee Tamahori

THE ANIMATRIX (2003)
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
written by The Wachowski Brothers*, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe, Peter Chung
directed by Peter Chung, Andrew R. Jones, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, Mahiro Maeda, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe

(*We defer to screen billing but recognize this is inaccurate.-Ed., 2016)

by Bill Chambers The studios apply their stratagem for summertime theatrical releases to DVD in 2003, having overcrowded video store shelves this month and last with sequels and offshoots to the degree that, a few weeks from today, you will notice that a Matrix film and a Terminator film are vying for attention both at home and at the multiplex. As Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II, and Legally Blonde 2 touch down in theatres, Die Another Day, The Jungle Book 2, and the Brady Bunch movies land on DVD, and then there are the cross-promotions: It seems like everyone wants a piece of the fallout from Universal’s big-screen Hulk, with Fox, Buena Vista, Anchor Bay, and Universal itself issuing “Hulk”-branded discs prior to the feature film’s June 20th opening. Synergy this aggressive may well erase the line separating legitimate media from its ancillaries yet; Fox takes a bold step in this direction with the upcoming From Justin to Kelly, slated to debut on disc a mere six weeks past its theatrical premiere date, thus rendering the latter a glorified trailer for the former.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) [Widescreen Collection] – DVD

May 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton
screenplay by John Logan
directed by Stuart Baird

by Walter Chaw For a film in a tired franchise trying to duplicate Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (inarguably the best of the cinematic “Trek” line) down to an articulate arch-villain, heroic sacrifice, and mind-meld cheat, the irony of having the central conflict revolve around a defective clone is delicious and hilarious. Star Trek: Nemesis (hereafter Nemesis) is abominable pretension draped in the sheep’s frock of sci-fi pulp–pap of the first water invested in undergraduate doubling subtexts and ridiculous stabs at existentialism reminding of the discovery of the wizard of God in the fifth Trek flick.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) [Special Edition] + Atlantis: Milo’s Return (2003) – DVDs

May 20, 2003Posted in1950s, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A+
starring Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre
screenplay by Earl Felton, based on the novel by Jules Verne
directed by Richard Fleischer

ATLANTIS: MILO’S RETURN
*½/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras D+
screenplay by Thomas Hart & Henry Gilroy & Kevin Hopps & Tad Stones & Steve Englehart & Marty Isenberg
directed by Victor Cook, Toby Shelton, Tad Stones

“Climb aboard the Nautilus…and into a strange undersea world of spellbinding adventure! Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre star as shipwrecked survivors taken captive by the mysterious Captain Nemo, brilliantly portrayed by James Mason. Wavering between genius and madness, Nemo has launched a deadly crusade across the seven seas. But can the captive crew expose his evil plan before he destroys the world?” –DVD liner summary for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

by Bill Chambers The trained seal is impressive, but enough about Kirk Douglas. Disney’s epic live-action adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea proves three things over the course of its thick running time: that director Richard Fleischer (the man who brought us Fantastic Voyage, the film that inspired Innerspace) was a gifted special-effects marshall–20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is still eye- popping/fooling 49 years after its release; that James Mason essayed the cinema’s definitive Bligh archetype; and that there’s always some asshole in a striped shirt in submarine movies. (Here it’s Douglas’s scurvy harpoonist Ned Land.) What’s surprising is how prosaic the film can be with so many assets in place, i.e., Mason, the Seussian interiors of the Nautilus, head-hunters, an enthralling killer squid, a seal with the charisma of Fred Astaire, and an especially vein-popping Douglas.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966) + The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) (Anchor Bay) – DVDs

May 18, 2003Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Satire, Sci-Fi, UK

FAHRENHEIT 451
****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring
screenplay by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury
directed by Francois Truffaut

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark, Buck Henry
screenplay by Paul Mayersberg, based on the novel by Walter Tevis
directed by Nicolas Roeg

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The second film of Francois Truffaut’s “Hitchcock Period” (and the Nouvelle Vague legend’s first English-language feature), Fahrenheit 451 is swathed in dread and melancholy–a sense belying cinematographer Nicolas Roeg’s bright, elemental colour scheme and simply blocked mise-en-scéne, though a sense completely in line with Roeg’s subsequent work as auteur. The weight of Roeg’s compositions–and arguably the genius of them–is the way in which he uses the weak side of the screen to introduce an element of disquiet into otherwise innocuous situations. The brilliance of the man’s eye in locating the menace and ineffable sadness in the midst of the bright and the mundane.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

May 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Esoterica, Martial Arts, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving
written and directed by Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski

by Walter Chaw In the middle of a scene where Keanu Reeves's trench-coated Neo fights dozens of Hugo Weaving's Mr. Smiths in a Brooklyn schoolyard, it occurred to me that, what with its wah-chuka-chuka soundtrack and meticulously choreographed (read: programmed) simulacrum of violence, The Matrix Reloaded is at this moment the nuttiest redux of West Side Story, in addition to the very definition of neo-blaxploitation. Cool vehicles, cool weapons, cool tunes, villains cast as endless iterations of The Man in monkey suits (and a set of albino kung fu twins), all with attitude to spare… Call it "techsploitation," perhaps–the hijacking of native cultures in the service of a Romanticist struggle against machine gods rendered, ironically, by mainframes and hackers.

Speed Racer (1967) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

May 2, 2003Posted in1960s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Family, Japan, Sci-Fi, Sports, Television

Image C Sound C Extras C+
"The Great Plan, Parts 1 & 2", "Challenge of the Masked Racer, Parts 1 & 2", "The Secret Engine, Parts 1 & 2", "The Race Against the Mammoth Car, Parts 1 & 2", "The Most Dangerous Race, Parts 1, 2 & 3"

by Bill Chambers The theme song says he's a demon on wheels, and in one traumatizing, out-of-step dream sequence, Trixie, Speed Racer's Girl Friday, meets a version of Speed Racer with a face like the Green Goblin's and scaly arms capable of summoning hellfire. Unmotivated by anything other than the fact that Trixie has fallen asleep, the scene embodies half the charm of the Americanized "Speed Racer": we're only given exposition if it matches the lip movements mapped out for the original Japanese scripts, leading to dialogue so profoundly aimless (but synchronized!) that US producer and former child model turned dubbing impresario Peter Fernandez should've called his version of the show "Samuel Beckett's Speed Racer". While the narration occasionally attempts to bridge story points A and C (with B either overdubbed into oblivion or lying on a cutting-room floor somewhere), for the most part it refamiliarizes us ad nauseam with the origin of Racer X, Speed's-older-brother-who-ran-away-from-home-when-he-crashed-Pops'-racecar-and-now-wears-a-facemask-to-conceal-his-true-identity.

Treasure Planet (2002) – DVD

May 1, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
screenplay by Ron Clements & John Musker and Rob Edwards, based on the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
directed by John Musker & Ron Clements

by Walter Chaw Beginning as a clever updating of Robert Louis Stevenson’s kiddie adventure classic Treasure Island, by its end, Disney’s Treasure Planet washes out as another bombastic familial reconciliation fable that marks the flat trajectory of most Disney “boy” animations. Released just a few months removed from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away in North America, Treasure Planet‘s narrative and character shortfalls are all the more glaring for their studied lack of depth and the picture’s general overreliance on excess, broad comic relief, and all of the stale portfolio of hackneyed Disneyisms. Treasure Planet even comes complete with that most irritating of cutesy crutches: an anthropomorphic globular whatzit created with what appears to be more of a concern for ease of holiday season polymer mass-reproduction than narrative foundation. The existence of one slapstick comic-relief gag not enough, enter Martin Short as homosexual robot B.E.N.–an animated caricature of Short’s Ed Grimley character whose appearance mid-film is as handy a signal as any that Treasure Planet, for all serious intents and aesthetic purposes, is over.

The Core (2003)

March 28, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Disaster Movie, France, Germany, Italy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**½/****
starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci
screenplay by Cooper Layne and John Rogers
directed by Jon Amiel

by Walter Chaw Jon Amiel’s poorly-timed disaster throwback The Core is a by-the-numbers affair that features the sort of special effects mayhem that folks will reference when terrorists blow-up the Acropolis–perhaps explaining in part why this bombastic summer film is being rushed into release in the late-winter doldrums: better to get it in movieplexes before it has to be delayed for a few months. But with unfortunate mentions of the Al Jazeera news agency and a botched shuttle landing that is exceedingly uncomfortable given its proximity to NASA’s recent tragedy, it could just be that The Core is a bad idea for any time, and releasing it when no one is likely to see it is just a cut-your-losses sort of thing. The Core is probably betting that people are more fatigued by the Riefenstahl-ian “embedded” live coverage of our troops in action than by their over-familiarity with this kind of Armageddon/Deep Impact/Poseidon Adventure falderal, when the truth is that it’s possible to be tired of both.

Inspector Gadget 2 (2003) – DVD

March 10, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Disney, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring French Stewart, Elaine Hendrix, Caitlin Wachs
sceenplay by Ron Anderson and William Robertson & Alex Zamm
directed by Alex Zamm

by Bill Chambers Edited with the Cuisinart clarity of a car commercial, designed with a balloon-animal colour palette similar to that of last year’s psychedelic Thomas in Love, Inspector Gadget 2 (henceforth IG2–incidentally, the on-screen logo reads Inspector 2 Gadget) has style in theory, like Avril Lavigne, but is monotonous and exasperating–also like Avril Lavigne. I haven’t seen the original film, but I did watch the cartoon every morning before school as a kid (we used to sing our own version of the theme song in the playground: “Doo doo doo doo do, Inspector Goo-head“–ah, those halcyon days), so I recognize certain touchstones the sequel, um, touches: faceless supervillain with the pussycat emblem Dr. Claw (who, robbed of his synthetic speech in addition to his lap kitty, looks and acts like Truman Capote in IG2); Inspector Gadget’s niece, Penny (Caitlin Wachs), and her dog Brain (in IG2, a beagle without the flexibility of his animated counterpart), both fledgling detectives; and the always-fuming Chief Quimby (Mark Mitchell), who does not pop out of mailboxes and such things here to deliver messages to Gadget that self-destruct. More disappointingly, he does not have a moustache.

David Cronenberg Re-examines David Cronenberg: A Retrospective Interview

March 9, 2003Posted in1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Directors: David Cronenberg, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Interviews, Sci-Fi

Cronenberg Re-Examines Cronenberg

March 9, 2003 | Offered the opportunity to visit with David Cronenberg a second time recently, I sat down with the legendary director the morning after moderating a post-screening Q&A with him at Denver’s Landmark Mayan Theater (where a sell-out crowd of over 450 was enthusiastically in attendance for a sneak of Spider) to discuss his work from student films Stereo and Crimes of the Future all the way through to what is arguably his best–certainly his most mature–film, the oft-delayed Spider. Dressed in casual cool as is the director’s habit, Mr. Cronenberg exudes supreme confidence; gracious in the extreme and unfailingly polite, not given to displays of false modesty or overly interested in compliments, his speech is pleasant and carefully modulated–a sort of intellectual detachment that has marked even his earliest, “tax shelter” work. It seemed clear to me that Mr. Cronenberg was not generally accustomed to talking of his earlier work on the junket circuit. Speaking only for myself, it was a wonderful break from the usual stump.–Walter Chaw

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) + Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) – DVDs|[Special Collector’s Edition] – DVDs

March 5, 2003Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi, Star Trek

STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
***/****
DVD – Image A Sound A
SCE DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei
screenplay by Harve Bennett
directed by Leonard Nimoy

STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME
**/****
DVD – Image B- Sound B Extras C
SCE DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan
screenplay by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer
directed by Leonard Nimoy

by Vincent Suarez I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the middle installments of the six Star Trek films featuring Captain James T. Kirk and his crew; I would have been content had the series ended with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, which is not only a great Trek movie but also an extremely fine piece of filmmaking in itself. (The seventh film in the series, Star Trek: Generations, passed the phasers to Captain Picard of “The Next Generation”, and included only brief appearances by a select few under Kirk’s command.) For me, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock seemed to betray the spirit, morality, and philosophy of its predecessor, while Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home represented the low point in cinematic “Trek,” reducing the series to formulaic farce.

Daredevil (2003)

February 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Colin Farrell
written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson

Daredevilby Walter Chaw There’s a real grittiness to Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil–most of it attributable to Frank Miller’s “Daredevil: Born Again” comic-book series (penned just prior to the author’s seminal “The Dark Knight Returns”), from which the film borrows tone, religious iconography, and a certain washed-out colour scheme as reflected in Ericson Core’s moody cinematography (which is closer to his work on Payback than on The Fast and the Furious). The problem is that the film’s tenor and Catholic fetishism are moored to the light redemption of the titular hero, the bizarre stigmata and martyrdom of one villain (and forced genuflection of another), and perhaps the suggested rebirth of a femme fatale. Daredevil, then, is interesting for its borrowed elements, but it doesn’t have any real weight to justify the treatment.

Stargate (1994) [Ultimate Edition – Director’s Cut] – DVD

February 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, France, Sci-Fi, Time Travel

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Viveca Lindfors
screenplay by Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Bill Chambers Spawning a television show and solidifying the Hollywood career of German director Roland Emmerich, 1994’s Stargate was the last movie to get the memo that Abyss-ian water walls and morphing technology no longer evoked World’s Fair awe. These special effects are merely the epitome of Stargate‘s second-hand wonder; part of the film’s value as a curiosity piece is its New York street-merchant vibe: like peddlers of the Rolux watch or Parda handbag, Emmerich and co-producer/co-writer Dean Devlin are selling us an approximation of a blockbuster by a licensed hitmaker, and we excuse them the same way we allow for the smudgy print of carbon copies or the colour bleed on VHS dubs. It must be a human impulse to absolve a facsimile of its absence of novelty.

S1m0ne (2002) – DVD

January 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Satire, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Al Pacino, Catherine Keener, Jason Schwartzman, Winona Ryder
written and directed by Andrew Niccol

“Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman came anywhere near it… His art was so perfect that it concealed itself and its product looked like the workmanship of nature.” – Bulfinch’s Mythology

Andrew Niccol’s brilliant S1m0ne is an updating of the Pygmalion myth substituting a sculptor of clay for a sculptor of film and his disdain for women for disdain towards the peccadilloes of actors. The ending, however, stays the same.