All the Right Moves (1983) – DVD

April 11, 2002Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports

½*/**** Image C Sound C-
starring Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson, Lea Thompson, Charles Cioffi
screenplay by Michael Kane
directed by Michael Chapman

by Walter Chaw Seedy in that ineffable Eighties way, Michael Chapman’s All the Right Moves is a star vehicle for a young Tom Cruise, following up his leading role in Risky Business with what is essentially a feature-length Steve Earle song about a downtrodden Pennsylvania steel town. Think Flashdance (released in the same year, strangely enough) with teenage boys instead of merely for them. Turmoil on a high-school football team (the Ampipe Bulldogs) functions as the microcosm for factory layoffs, teen pregnancy, and the existential angst embedded in the image of a horrible Lea Thompson playing a mournful saxophone on a street corner. Though there are a few moments of “was this ever cool” cheeseball nostalgia sprinkled here and again, All the Right Moves is teeth-clenchingly awful: half “The White Shadow”, half somehow more embarrassing and dated than even that popular TV series.

Ali (2001) – DVD

March 28, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Directors: Michael Mann, Drama, DVD, Sports, Will Smith

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight, Mario Van Peebles
screenplay by Stephen J. Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson and Eric Roth & Michael Mann
directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw The craft of Ali is every bit as dazzling as we’ve come to expect from its director, Michael Mann; the film is a loving coronation of fighter Muhammad Ali’s myth. But at the same time, Ali is too dependent on our familiarity with its subject’s life, and spends altogether too much time in slow-motion reveries of choice bouts public and personal. Reminding at times of Martin Scorsese’s rapturous Kundun, the film falls far short of that razor-fine, impressionistic masterwork by aspiring to be all things to all people (docudrama, tribute, demystification)–an impulse never indulged by “The Greatest” himself.

Breaking Away (1979) – DVD

March 12, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports

***/**** Image C- Sound C-
starring Dennis Christopher, Dannis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley
screenplay by Steve Tesich
directed by Peter Yates

by Walter Chaw For me, Peter Yates’s Breaking Away is the logical precursor to the particular nostalgia of Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story. It details in its limpid, lissom way small-town life through the prism of quaint friendships and a family with a sympathetic mom (Barbara Barrie), a curmudgeonly pop (Paul Dooley), and David (Dennis Christopher), their stargazer son.

Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World (2001) – DVD

February 11, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Sports

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
directed by Phil Grabsky

by Bill Chambers One can't accuse the documentary Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World of false advertising: it filters Ali's life story through the perspective of people who don't necessarily know him but were around to feel the ripple effect he had on pop and politics in the hippie era. There is Billy Crystal, who says he couldn't sleep for days after Ali lost his title to Joe Frazier; there is Maya Angelou, she of the voice that's like a lozenge for our spiritual ills, saying she might have co-opted Ali's "Float like a butterfly/Sting like a bee" verse were it not spoken during the peak of his fame.

Snow Dogs (2002)

January 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disney, Family, Sports, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Cuba Gooding Jr., James Coburn, Randy Birch, Joanna Bacalso
screenplay by Jim Kouf and Tommy Swerdlow & Michael Goldberg and Mark Gibson & Philip Halprin, based on the book Winterdance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen
directed by Brian Levant

Snowdogsby Walter Chaw Brian Levant’s Snow Dogs counts on adult audiences rationalizing that although it was terrible, at least their kids liked it. Why is it that the standards we hold for our children are substantially lower when it comes to the movies? (And if kids will probably like anything, why not expose them to something a little less offensive than Snow Dogs?) It isn’t so much that Snow Dogs finds its humour in a black man getting humiliated by a pack of dogs who are smarter than him, nor that it also mines for yuks by placing a black man in mortal peril because of his suicidal stupidity. No, the moment that Snow Dogs crossed a line for me was when Cuba Gooding Jr., an Oscar-winning African-American actor (one of, what, six?), gets comically treed by a ferocious dog.

Summer Catch (2001) – DVD

January 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C
starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Courtney Driver, Jessica Biel, Matthew Lillard
screenplay by Kevin Falls and John Gatins
directed by Michael Tollin

by Walter Chaw Summer Catch bulges the already-overcrowded shelves reserved for appalling Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicles that no one saw in theatres and, predictably, no one is renting given a second chance. Determining which of Prinze’s performances and films is the worst is an exercise both diverting and daunting; to that end, I’d have to say that Summer Catch falls squarely in the middle: it’s physically impossible to sit through the whole thing without a lengthy break or some sort of medium-bore narcotic, thus making it inferior to the stolid water-torture of I Know What You Did Last Summer (that film’s relative enjoyability no doubt owing a great deal to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s oft-invoked bustline). Still, it has going for it that it doesn’t cause your eyes and ears to bleed with the consistency and volume of Down to You or Wing Commander.

Backyard Dogs (2000) – DVD

November 28, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Sports, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound C
starring Scott Hamm, Bree Turner, Walter Emanuel Jones, Roger Fan
written and directed by Robert Boris

by Walter Chaw A painfully amateurish reworking of Play It to the Bone set against the turgid, redneck world of backyard wrestling, Robert Boris’s Backyard Dogs is the kind of head-scratcher that makes filmmakers of folks who never realized that making a movie was this easy. See, using the template provided, all you need is a digital camera, a bimbo who doesn’t mind flashing the groceries a couple of times, and a rent-a-script that shows how an already terrible mainstream film might actually be made worse with a little effort. Backyard Dogs is so hideous that with only a little imagination it begins to function as something of a satire of both Kickboxer-type death sports movies and gay pornography. You know you’re in trouble when the highlight of your film is an opening montage comprising real footage of idiots trying to kill one another in their backyards; you know you’re in bigger trouble when the title of your movie comes from an early moment in which a character steps on a pile of dog excrement.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000) – DVD

November 17, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Sports

**½/**** Image B Sound B- Extras A-
directed by Aviva Kempner

by Walter Chaw Thirteen years in the making, Aviva Kempner’s The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg is an exhaustive and affectionate, if tunnel-visioned, documentary about “the Jewish Jackie Robinson”: Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg, who broke cultural barriers during the anti-Semitic Father Coughlin/Henry Ford years, just prior to the onset of WWII. Towering over his teammates at 6’4″ and 210lbs, Greenberg became a stereotype-busting role model for an entire generation of Jewish youngsters and, unlike many of his modern athletic counterparts, Greenberg didn’t take his responsibility for granted.

DIFF ’01: Go Tigers!

October 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sports

*½/****
directed by Kenneth A. Carlson

by Walter Chaw Although it starts out well enough and detours in the middle with a vaguely interesting, if too-brief, look at how it must be for intellectuals to live in a place like Massillon, OH, Kenneth A. Carlson's documentary Go Tigers! is a repetitive and unenlightening piece whose attitude alternates between sympathy and scorn. The small town of Massillon, it seems, is obsessed with football–glimpses of other Ohio towns suggest that Massillon's fanatical fervour is perhaps the small-town Ohio norm. (Apocryphal tales suggest that Texas and Nebraska might be worse.) The revelation that rubes like their blood sports served rare is more than a trifle unsurprising; Go Tigers! very gradually amends our rooting for the high-school gridiron heroes to succeed, and we start to wish that the team bus would crash and save the world from a couple dozen illiterate, ill-bred, spoiled animals who dangerously reached their peak at the tender age of seventeen–er, nineteen.

Driven (2001) – DVD

September 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Sports, Stallone

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Kip Pardue, Til Schweiger
screenplay by Sylvester Stallone
directed by Renny Harlin

by Walter Chaw A homoerotic cock-opera showing the sad and pathetic multiplicity of forms that mid-life crises can take, Driven, Renny Harlin’s ode to thick necks and macho poses, is more “programmed” than “directed.” The film resembles a particularly irritating and impenetrable video game juxtaposed with pages torn from the jug-heavy EASY RIDER magazine and scenes paraded out of the Big Book of Movie Clichés, all performed by a cast that provides a definitive example of the way “legendary” can be used in a derisive sense.

The Replacements (2000)

August 11, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Sports, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Jack Warden
screenplay by Vincent McKewin
directed by Howard Deutch

by Bill Chambers Did the makers of The Replacements realize that Major League had already been reinvented as a football movie, under the title Necessary Roughness? (So indiscreetly, in fact, that the former's sunglasses-wearing baseball logo was transmogrified into a sunglasses-wearing football one.) Given how many other motion pictures The Replacements–which, for what it's worth, appears to have been edited with a blender–openly (and badly) plagiarizes, I'm sure the answer is "yes." "But," they'd very possibly tell you, "our movie has Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman. Theirs had Sinbad and Kathy Ireland."

Back to School (1986) – DVD

April 17, 2000Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Sports

**½/**** Image D+ Sound B-
starring Rodney Dangerfield, Sally Kellerman, Burt Young, Keith Gordon
screenplay by Steven Kampmann & Will Porter and Peter Torokvei & Harold Ramis
directed by Alan Metter

by Bill Chambers Rodney Dangerfield, alas, still gets no respect. Recently the comic was denied membership to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, allegedly on the basis of his profane turn as an abusive father in Natural Born Killers. (Gee, I thought demonstrating range and talent would be two guarantees of an actor’s admittance into the Oscar-voting body.) The poor showings for his last two screen outings, Ladybugs and Meet Wally Sparks, have perhaps permanently sealed Dangerfield’s fate as a Vegas stand-up.

Without Limits (1998)

September 11, 1998Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, Sports, Theatrical, Tom Cruise

**/****
starring Billy Crudup, Donald Sutherland, Monica Potter, Jeremy Sisto
screenplay by Robert Towne and Kenny Moore
directed by Robert Towne

by Bill Chambers Does Robert Towne deserve his reputation as a Hollywood Great? (I'm not playing Devil's Advocate here.) After all, Roman Polanski is responsible for Chinatown's brilliant ending (Towne, its screenwriter, bowed out when Polanski opted to alter his comparatively bittersweet finale); Warren Beatty extensively reshaped his screenplay for Shampoo; Towne caved to studio pressure and destroyed the climax of his sophomore feature as writer-director, Tequila Sunrise; and it took him several years to pen the misfire Love Affair.