Inland Empire (2006)

April 27, 2007Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Lynch, Drama, Esoterica, France, Horror, Mystery, Poland, Theatrical, Thriller

****/****
starring Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux, Grace Zabriskie
written and directed by David Lynch

by Walter Chaw Nikki (Laura Dern) is an actress landing her dream role opposite Devon (Justin Theroux) in a film directed by the great Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons). Alas the project, “On High in Blue Tomorrows”, has a history in which a previous, doomed production ended as reality seeped into its fiction and the film’s onscreen/offscreen lovers were killed. For a moment, it seems as though David Lynch’s Inland Empire might be as straightforward as a haunted Hollywood genre exercise–but time slips, it’s suddenly the next day, and as one character says to another, you’re sitting over there. Displaced, distracted, the picture is a masterpiece that, for the patient, the active, and the curious, may be the most literal definition of “dread” captured on film. That feeling you get when Henry Spencer contemplates his feral baby in Eraserhead is the same species of disgusted, familiar fascination that infects this film like a murder of maggots.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

April 20, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, France, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***/****
starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton
screenplay by Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg
directed by Edgar Wright

Hotfuzzby Walter Chaw Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost return after the triumph of Shaun of the Dead with the nominal success of Hot Fuzz: the one a dead-on skewering of/homage to the zombie genre, the latter an equally-dead-on skewering of/homage to the buddy-cop genre that leads one to conclude that the zombie genre is infinitely more fulsome a target than the buddy-cop genre. Though it's clearly the product of smart guys who care about the films they lampoon, there's obviously a difference between making a movie that can stand proudly alongside George Romero's body of work and making one that could keep good company with Michael Bay's. (There's a lot of meat to be mined in a clever dissection of the zombie genre, in other words, whereas most action flicks of this type are already self-parodying exercises in excessive hetero-affirmation amidst much piece-fondling and weeping.) What works best about Hot Fuzz isn't its admirable respect for and similarly keen understanding of films like Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man and Richard Rush's fondly-remembered Freebie and the Bean, but that it, like Shaun of the Dead, functions remarkably well as an example of the genre–something of which most parodies (i.e. arbitrary garbage like Shrek) are completely incapable.

Color Me Kubrick (2006) + The Hoax (2007)

April 10, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Drama, France, Isle of Man, Theatrical, UK

Colour Me Kubrick: A True…ish Story
½*/****
starring John Malkovich, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant, Luke Mably
screenplay by Anthony Frewin
directed by Brian W. Cook

THE HOAX
**½/****
starring Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Marcia Gay Harden, Stanley Tucci
screenplay by William Wheeler
directed by Lasse Hallström

Colormehoaxby Walter Chaw Suffice it to say that any picture featuring a sped-up version of the "William Tell Overture" is so drunk on its own whimsy that it most likely sucks with a dedicated vigour. Case in point: Brian W. Cook's twee Color Me Kubrick, which chronicles, sort of, the life and times of impostor Alan Conway (John Malkovich) as he sashays through days of getting free drinks and the occasional hummer by telling people he's the eponymous director. Never mind that Conway doesn't appear to know the difference between Stanleys Kubrick and Kramer, or that Malkovich's portrayal of him is so offensively fey that it could be used as a fright vid at "Focus on the Family" scare revivals–Color Me Kubrick is a grand drag revue without a rudder, and because it's not particularly entertaining, it harbours no purpose great or small. Malkovich is only ever Malkovich in all his alien glory, neatly eclipsing his supporting cast, any momentum in the script or direction, and, ultimately, any pathos in Conway's sad need to be someone else. (More egregiously unexamined is everyone else's sadder need to be in the orbit of celebrity.) Unimaginatively shot and, it can't be reiterated enough, abominably written (one scene has Conway suggesting he's cast John Malkovich in 3001: A Space Odyssey, to which his dinner mate asks, "John who?"–droll, no?), the picture is mainly interesting because, after having sat on the shelf for a while, it's finally surfaced in tandem with Lasse Hallström's similarly-mothballed film about another fabulist, Clifford Irving.

Grindhouse (2007)

April 5, 2007Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Esoterica, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
Planet Terror (**/****): starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez
Death Proof (****/****): starring Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoe Bell
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Grindhouseby Walter Chaw Robert Rodriguez is better at making an old exploitation movie and Quentin Tarantino is better at capturing the joy of watching old exploitation movies, meaning that the Rodriguez half of Grindhouse is exuberant, post-modern camp and the Tarantino half is, as Tarantino's films usually are, pure delight. Rodriguez winks and tries maybe too hard; Tarantino, being the sui generis of a very specific kind of film, proceeds to create something that resembles Vanishing Point and Two-Lane Blacktop while steering clear of irony, self-indulgence, and post-modernism in its reverence. The mistake is in seeing some of Tarantino's casting choices as ironic: what's wrong with the careers of the world's Travoltas and Pam Griers and even De Niros is that they started cashing in on the ironic value of their brand. No, what Tarantino does is remember why they became a brand in the first place. A moment where Kurt Russell, as Tarantino's bogey Stuntman Mike, flashes a giant, shit-eating grin right through the fourth wall doesn't come off as self-congratulatory so much as it shows an old genre vet excited to be back in the saddle. While Rodriguez's Planet Terror is fun in a back-clapping way, Tarantino's Death Proof is a profound insight into the sort of dick-raising entertainments that made Tarantino who he is as fanboy artist. Rodriguez likes to show off–Tarantino can only make the movies he makes: it's not the pulpiness of the subject matter that feels like the true faith in Tarantino's films, it's the sense that for all the artificiality of his aesthetic, there's not an ounce of pretense in his decisions. In short, Rodriguez is the Salieri to Tarantino's Mozart.

The Lookout (2007)

March 29, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher
written and directed by Scott Frank

Lookoutby Walter Chaw Perfectly workmanlike in execution, Scott Frank's hyphenate debut The Lookout is a mash of admirable capers (A Simple Plan, Memento, and Fargo are high in its pantheon of giants' shoulders), but it lacks suture in its crime arc, making one wish that its small character moments–highlighted by a superlative cast–were allowed to anchor its climax and epilogue. As Chris Pratt, a brain-damaged youth suffering after an act of high school chutzpah that resulted in the annihilation of his golden life, Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to cement his claim as the best young actor of his generation, delivering a performance revolving around the life and death of the mind that is heartbreaking in its observation and subtlety. I think a lot about a moment near the end of the film where he makes change for an old acquaintance and lament that the twenty minutes or so that precede its conclusion–twenty minutes that drag The Lookout into convention and cheap formula–even happened. Until then, the picture drags some seriously dark shit out from under the psychic bed, such as how being a sports hero in high school can hide the fact that you're maybe an asshole setting yourself up for a fall, and how robbing anyone of virility and self-esteem (not to mention Everybody's All-American) can lead to dangerous explosions involving women and long firearms. Once exposed to this genre's sputtering arc light, however, all that darkness in The Lookout is suddenly at the mercy of a lot of travel-worn underdog revenge bullshit. The tightrope of genre pictures is that the first time I can predict what's going to happen is usually when it loses me for good.

Blades of Glory (2007)

March 29, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Sports, Theatrical

*/****
starring Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Craig T. Nelson
screenplay by Jeff Cox & Craig Cox and John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky
directed by Will Speck & Josh Gordon

Bladesofgloryby Walter Chaw A goodly portion of Will Ferrell's fame has to do with his complete comfort with his body and sexuality. No surprise, then, that Blades of Glory's one-trick pony is straight men doing gay things in what is widely regarded as the gayest sport at the Winter Olympics. Not necessarily that figure skating is dominated by gay men (aside: isn't it?), but that the sight of men in spandex and codpieces pretending to be swans is uncomfortable for great swaths of middle-America and thus subject to ridicule and hatred. The first shot of the film suggests the divide as little Jimmy MacElroy (Zachary Ferrin as a child, the untalented Jon Heder as an adult) joyfully Salchows on an ice rink segregated from the "normals" playing hockey below. Recognized for his nascent useless talent, he's adopted by a megalomaniacal millionaire (William Fichtner in too small a role) who grooms little Jimmy into an Olympic champion whose only rival on the ice is portly sex machine Chazz (Will Ferrell). When the two get into a fistfight on the awards stanchion, they're banned from competing in their division–leading, of course, to their decision to return to glory in the pairs division. I'm not suggesting that Blades of Glory is hateful, really, so much as facile and easy. If you think Ferrell not wearing much as one half of the first man-man figure skating team is hysterical, and if you consider the gag of straight men touching each other's groins for the sake of a spectacle that's already beyond parody to be comedy gold, then have I got a movie for you.

Premonition (2007)

March 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Nia Long, Peter Stormare
screenplay by Bill Kelly
directed by Mennan Yapo

Premonitionby Walter Chaw There's a scene in the middle of Mennan Yapo's thunderously bad Premonition where two little moppets do a little "Who Killed Cock Robin?" hopscotch that is meant, I think, to mirror their mother's tripping back and forth through time to before and after her husband's timely/untimely death. See? I get it. Premonition, with its faux-spiritual, quasi-pretentious, Hallmark Hall of Fame-enshrined machinations, not only thinks pretty highly of itself in its Lake House fashion, but also corroborates a whole new genre behind the ample wake generated by newly-solemn Sandra Bullock involving fractured narratives (see also: Crash), often time travel (The Lake House), and pat morals having to do–like the ironic moral to another time travel fable–with being excellent to one another. Not even the sight of a severed head rolling around at a funeral or Peter Stormare as the voice of reason lends the picture the slightest flicker of life. It's less damning than Bullock's primary career as the poor man's Julia Roberts in vaguely misogynistic romantic comedies, I suppose, though the best that could be said about Bullock's dreary new path is that while the films are still appallingly bad, at least they're not especially popular. This predilection for knocking off Nicholas Sparks master plots should be a short-lived one.

The Number 23 (2007)

February 23, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston
screenplay by Fernley Phillips
directed by Joel Schumacher

by Walter Chaw The wilted potential part of it reminding a great deal of Ramsey Campbell's The Count of Eleven, the new Jim Carrey vehicle The Number 23 finds professional hack Joel Schumacher returning to his Flatliners camp/schlock phase: a sort of supernatural thriller (sort of) that goes the Secret Window route towards absolute stunning mediocrity. Hardest to watch isn't Schumacher's umpteenth treatise on how to shine any project to a frictionless, dimwit, burlesque sheen, but rather Carrey's betrayal of himself by following Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with a limp Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, a dreadful Fun with Dick and Jane, and now this. It suggests to me a lot of things, most of all the impression that Carrey, despite still wanting at least in part to be taken seriously as an actor, may have lost the critical facility first to avoid Schumacher projects and second to differentiate between high-concept dreck and Charlie Kaufman existential inspiration. Neither mysterious nor enthralling, The Number 23 is ridiculous, not for its complexity, but for its belief in its complexity–not for its Byzantine twists and turns, but for its utter self-delusion. It's READER'S DIGEST: the presumption that people who actually read would prefer to read this truncated, pandering, aggressively-neutered pap.

Because I Said So (2007)

February 2, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Gabriel Macht, Stephen Collins
screenplay by Karen Leigh Hopkins & Jessie Nelson
directed by Michael Lehmann

by Walter Chaw From the guy who once upon a time made Heathers–a film that remains the pithiest commentary on school violence and the sea of troubles faced by adolescents lost in the blackboard jungle–comes a fearsome rampage against mankind and art, the excrescent Because I Said So. The best that can be said about this early contender for the worst film of 2007 is that it’s properly keystone’d by Diane Keaton, who, between this and The Family Stone, cements her position as the most smug, insufferable, unwatchable persona in a long and tumescent line of such personae. She embodies the absolute worst of every single stereotype of the domineering mother: dotty, ditzy, Luddite, sexless/oversexed, cruel, racist, otherwise intolerant, and above all hysterical. Throw her psychotic mommy dearest from The Other Sister into the stew and it’s hard to find a more stalwart movie monster in the last ten years than Keaton, who’s gone from a charming neurotic to a cobwebbed, cell-phone-wielding vagina dentata.

Smokin’ Aces (2007) + Seraphim Falls (2007)

January 26, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War, Western

SMOKIN' ACES
½*/****
starring Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Common, Andy Garcia
written and directed by Joe Carnahan

SERAPHIM FALLS
*/****
starring Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Angie Harmon, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Abby Everett Jaques & David Von Ancken
directed by David Von Ancken

by Walter Chaw Director Joe Carnahan replicates a heart attack in the prologue of Narc, and David Von Ancken, in the action-packed opening to his feature debut Seraphim Falls, simulates a mildly hysterical bout of narcolepsy–but more on that later. Carnahan's third film, Smokin' Aces, is drawing a lot of unfavourable comparisons to Guy Ritchie's gangster sagas, but the real lineage can be traced to whatever strain of viral ADD infected Tony Scott. The film is so like Scott's Domino in its visual affectations and uniform incompetence that the two pictures could exchange scenes willy-nilly without losing a step. (Compare it to Wayne Kramer's similarly canted Running Scared for a mini-primer on when lawless misanthropy and the coked-up editor aesthetic can be wielded with delighted, visceral purpose as opposed to simply wielded.) Ultimately, Smokin' Aces is little more than a parade of sad "didn't you used to be…" stunt cameos installed for the missing "edge" that buckets of blood, rains of bullets, and a few power tools seem incapable of manifesting. With Narc, Carnahan showed real growth from his directorial debut (Blood, Guts, Bullets & Octane, which is actually not unlike the new one at all). Now he's just showing off.

Children of Men (2006) + Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

January 5, 2007Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Clint Eastwood, Drama, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Theatrical, Thriller, War

CHILDREN OF MEN
****/****
starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam
screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby, based on the novel by P.D. James
directed by Alfonso Cuarón

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
***½/****
starring Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase
screenplay by Iris Yamashita, based on the book Picture Letters from Commander in Chief by Tadamichi Kuribayashi and Tsuyoko Yoshido
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Walter Chaw Stop on any single frame of Alfonso Cuarón's remarkable war idyll Children of Men–a film that's rarely in repose, sometimes seeming composed of one long, frantic shot–and I suspect the sharp-eyed, educated viewer would be able to cull a reference to modern art, most likely one about men reduced to their base animal nature. For me, the two visual landmarks come in the form of a cue to the cover design for Pink Floyd's 1977 "Animals" when hero Theo (Clive Owen) goes to see his industrialist cousin Nigel (Danny Huston) for help and a re-creation of Richard Misrach's remarkable series of 1987 photographs documenting, among other things, a dead-animal pit in Nevada purportedly used to dispose of victims of a plutonium "hot spot." Both share a space with surrealism in the positioning of animals (artificial or deceased) in industrial spaces (London's Battersea Power Station is the iconic backdrop of the "Animals" cover) as mute commentary, perhaps, on man's destructive relationship with his environment–a read that jibes comfortably with the thrust of Children of Men, in which we're told that one day in the not-too-distant future, humans suddenly stop reproducing. (Fertile ground for science-fiction, this obsession with progeny (see: everything from Frankenstein to I Am Legend).) The picture opens with a Fleet Street terrorist bombing, a little like Terry Gilliam's dystopic Brazil–though rather than take the easier route of satirizing our current state of instability and free-floating paranoia, Children of Men makes a serious attempt to allegorize it.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

December 29, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, Mexico, Spain, Theatrical, War

****/****
starring Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú
written and directed by Guillermo del Toro

by Walter Chaw Brutal and ignoble, the antithesis of romantic, the violence in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth slaps metal against flesh like the flat of a hand against a steel table. It's the only element of the picture that isn't lush, that isn't laden with the burnished archetype of Catholic superstition as it exists in eternal suspension with the pagan mythologies it cannibalized. By itself, this seems a metaphor for the pain and the magic of how fable turns the inevitability of coming-of-age into ritual. An early scene where hero girl Ofelia (Ivana Baquero)–a storyteller equal parts experientially innocent and allegorically savvy, making her the manifestation of del Toro's ideal avatar–tells her prenatal brother a story about a rose that blooms nightly on a mountain of thorns touches in one ineffably graceful movement all the picture's themes of immortality, aspiration, isolation, and the promise of escape held, sadistically, just out of reach. There's something of the myth of Tantalus in Ofelia's tale, as much as there is of Lewis Carroll's Alice and the sagas of parental absence by the Brothers Grimm, which surface in the premise of a young girl traveling, as the film opens, with her pregnant mother into the war-torn Spanish countryside during Franco's rule to join her wicked stepfather Captain Vidal (Sergi López) at his remote outpost. Ofelia will be reminded repeatedly throughout the film that there's no such thing as justice or innocence left in the world, and that the best intentions are crushed by cynicism and rage. The question left as the picture closes has to do with whether Ofelia's taken the lesson to heart, to say nothing of del Toro–or us.

Dreamgirls (2006)

December 20, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Eddie Murphy, Musical, Theatrical

**/****
starring Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover
screenplay by Bill Condon, based on the play by Tom Eyen
directed by Bill Condon

by Walter Chaw Hailed as one of the more innovatively-staged musicals in the modern pantheon of such entertainments, Dreamgirls, transferred to the big screen, is nothing special in the way of something trying way too hard to dazzle. It’s the plain girl swathed in a gallon of makeup: there’s so much misdirection that you actually try harder to dig up a foundation that can’t bear the scrutiny. Said base for Dreamgirls is of course one of the most successful Broadway musicals (6 Tonys, 1,522 performances) from an era that counts “Les Miz”, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s dreadful operettas, and, what, “A Chorus Line”(?), among its chief rivals. You want to attribute its Broadway success to its spinning stage, choreographed and motorized $3.2M tower set, and coy deconstruction of bitch-goddess Diana Ross and her Supremes, but it’s hard not to wonder if it merely benefits from the relative quality of its competition. Then again, its success is likely the by-product of a fairly consistent mass appetite for cookie-cutter musical biopics, which have been self-satirized to near-total inconsequence first by VH1’s “Behind the Music” series, then to quickly-diminishing returns at the multiplex by Ray and Walk the Line.

Lady in the Water (2006) + Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)|Lady in the Water [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

December 18, 2006Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Revenge, South Korea, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

LADY IN THE WATER
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bob Balaban, Jeffrey Wright
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Chinjeolhan geumjassi
****/****
starring Lee Yeong-ae, Choi Min-sik, Kim Shi-hoo, Kwon Yea-young
written and directed by Park Chanwook

by Walter Chaw The creeping, inescapable feeling is that M. Night Shyamalan would like to be known as “M. Christ Shyamalan”: a guy who wants you to drink the Kool-Aid; a messiah with a shrinking flock preaching a platform that his increasingly deluded, astonishingly arrogant fables are actually themselves the secret to world peace. He claims to hear voices–the first couple of times he did so (here in the stray interview, there in The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, that abhorrent mock-documentary he did for the Sci-Fi Channel), I thought he was kidding. Hell, the first couple of times he did it, he probably was kidding. But I don’t think he’s kidding anymore. And there’s no longer any currency in playing this ethereal shaman card. Prancing about like a mystic while shitting away millions of other people’s money isn’t a pastime with longevity: it’s something only a zealot would do. I think he’s gone off the deep end, hubris first, overfed to bloating on a steady diet of his own press and the tender ministrations of yes-men too afraid to set off Shyamalan’s diseased persecution complex by telling him that while he might be good at a few things, Lady in the Water was unsalvageable. When Disney executives did approximately that, Shyamalan took his ball and went across the street to Warner Brothers.

The Holiday (2006)

December 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black
written and directed by Nancy Meyers

Holidayby Walter Chaw There are bad movies, and then there are Nancy Meyers movies (first What Women Want, followed by the similarly excrescent Something’s Gotta Give): chick flicks in the most damning, insulting sense of the patronizing term and reason enough to question the wisdom of ever spending money to see a movie. If you go to Meyers’s latest, not only are you about to watch what is easily the worst movie of the year–you’re most likely going to do it in the company of people who’ll actually like it. The Holiday is appallingly written and icky besides in that familiar way of this brand of Love Actually/The Family Stone yuletide romantic refuse, casting Cameron Diaz and Jude Law as lovers fucking away the hours inside a Thomas Kincaid painting while Diaz’s frumpy house-swap buddy, played by Kate Winslet, finds meaning in Santa Monica by propping up a fossil (Eli Wallach) and falling for a James Horner-esque composer of horrible soundtracks (Jack Black). Parliament on the Thames is featured as prominently as the Pacific Coast Highway to underscore either how vacuous the filmmakers are or how stupid they think the audience is while Hans Zimmer’s soul-sucking, teddy bears-humping score saps away the last hints of credibility anyone has after participating in this gingerbread death march. If the opening voiceover narration by Winslet’s lovelorn Iris isn’t warning enough, consider that the narrative crutch used by Diaz’s emetic movie trailer editor Amanda is a series of fake movie trailers about Amanda’s romantic imbroglios.

Eragon (2006)

December 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Hungary, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Edward Speleers, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Guillory, John Malkovich
screenplay by Peter Buchman and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal, based on the novel by Christopher Paolini
directed by Stefen Fangmeier

Eragonby Walter Chaw Fears that veteran F/X man Stefen Fangmeier's directorial debut Eragon, a feature-length adaptation of a fifteen-year-old trying on Anne McCaffrey's jodhpurs, would be the sequel to Dragonheart nobody wanted prove unwarranted, as Eragon is actually the sequel to BloodRayne that nobody wanted. It's ugly as sin, with the much-vaunted dragon at its centre (voiced by Rachel Weisz), designed by skilled craftspeople from both Peter Jackson's WETA workshop and Industrial Light and Magic, looking fatally inorganic to its environment. Not helping matters, the titular rider (Edward Speleers) resembles a younger, equally rubbery David Lee Roth and sports the acting chops of the same. Eragon is the towheaded farmboy who heeds a call to glory to save Sienna Guillory's beautiful Princess Arya ("Help me Eragon, you're my only hope") while gaining a mysterious old hermit mentor (Jeremy Irons–the poor sod should've learned his lesson with Dungeons & Dragons) who dies during a daring raid on the Death Star–er, on the castle keep of Darth Vader, er, King Galbatorix (John Malkovich). Alas, this Luke Skywalker also has an Uncle Owen (Uncle Garrow (Alun Armstrong)), and his Darth Vader has a henchman (Robert Carlyle) who at one point kills an underling general and declares the second-in-command "promoted." Eragon is a rip-off and a bad one, a carbon copy made on one of those old mimeograph machines: washed out, juvenile (even weighed against the not-exactly-mature example of Star Wars), and nigh unbearable for anyone so much as cursorily familiar with genre fare.

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

December 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Theatrical, Will Smith

*/****
starring Will Smith, Thandie Newton, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Brian Howe
screenplay by Steven Conrad
directed by Gabriele Muccino

Pursuitofhappynessby Walter Chaw They should pass out insulin plungers with the purchase of a ticket to the new Will Smith vehicle The Pursuit of Happyness, which sports a subtle tickle of plantation politics that's overwhelmed by a sense of smug entitlement and ugly elitism. Inspired by the true story of Eighties Wall Street bootstrap wizard Chris Gardner, it's a telling in a way of the Hercules legend, complete with insurmountable, fickle tasks and divine inheritance. Our mythological hero solves the Rubik's Cube in the back of a taxi for the bemused delight of potential employer Jay Twistle (Brian Howe); deals with the abandonment of his frustrated wife (Thandie Newton); and figures out a way to retrieve a pair of the bone-density scanners (the sale of which were his profession pre-Dean Witter) stolen by the homeless peers he disdains. It's true: the picture–even with its ghetto-cred misspelled title and restroom-to-boardroom fable–is intolerant of people consigned to the impoverishment the film contorts to assure us will be Chris' plight for only the time it takes his uplift to ripen.

Blood Diamond (2006) + Apocalypto (2006)

December 8, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Germany, Mexico, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

BLOOD DIAMOND
*/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Charles Leavitt
directed by Edward Zwick

APOCALYPTO
***/****
starring Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead
screenplay by Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia
directed by Mel Gibson

Bloodapocalyptoby Walter Chaw After sending Matthew Broderick to head a Negro battalion in the Civil War and Tom Cruise to witness–and survive–the end of Feudal Japan, director Edward Zwick dispatches Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly to Sierra Leone and its own diamond-fuelled Civil War to moralize endlessly from the superior ethical vantage afforded by time and privilege. (That they also lend a much-needed nougat centre to Blood Diamond's thin chocolate coating goes without saying.) The Denzel Washington/Ken Watanabe token this time around is the oft-similarly-abused Djimon Hounsou: as the DC Comics-sounding Solomon Vandy, Hounsou seeks to trade a rare pink diamond for the life of his son, who's been molded by the evil Sierra Leonians into a soulless murdering/raping machine.

The Nativity Story (2006) + 3 Needles (2006)

December 1, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Family, Theatrical

THE NATIVITY STORY
*/****
starring Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, Hiam Abbass, Shaun Toub
screenplay by Mike Rich
directed by Catherine Hardwicke

3 NEEDLES
½*/****
starring Shaun Ashmore, Stockard Channing, Olympa Dukakis, Lucy Liu
written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald

Nativityby Walter Chaw The nativity, consigned primarily in my imagination to bad children's pageants and gaudy lawn displays, gets a third image in my own private trinity with Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story: a thunderously boring film so circumscribed in scope and crippled in execution that it's destined to be a minor hit fuelled by the line of buses stretching from your local bible chapel. It's another teen melodrama from Hardwicke, complete with disapproving adults and pregnant little girls batting doe-eyes at rough-and-tumble shepherds; you see Hardwicke occasionally attempting an anachronistic Fast Times at Golan Heights à la Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, but Coppola, for all her dips into self-pity, is a filmmaker of note, while Hardwicke is just beating someone else's drum on someone else's dime. (Proof positive is that despite the uniformity of Hardwicke's output across three identically-non-descript flicks, there is still no sense that decisions are being made, or that anything more than a sickly colony from a thin scrape across the John Hughes petri dish has been born.) Mary is played by young Maori actress Keisha Castle-Hughes–her race of note because if there's something important about the instantly forgotten pic, it's that its cast is comprised of people who look like people might have looked in Nazareth around two thousand years ago and not like Andy Gibb. A shame that Castle-Hughes is dreadful (and not helped a bit by another dreadful, pop-eyed screenplay courtesy Mike Rich of Radio and Finding Forrester fame) and that Oscar Isaac (as Joseph)–who is not dreadful–is trapped in this prosaic sinkhole. Tempting to use terms like "sanctimonious" and "smug," but The Nativity Story is more accurately dissected with the observation that it's a faithful telling of a story that has as its only purpose the drumming up of ecstatic anticipation for a foregone conclusion.

Déjà Vu (2006)

November 22, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**½/****
starring Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Paula Patton, Jim Caviezel
screenplay by Bill Marsilii & Terry Rossio
directed by Tony Scott

Dejavuby Walter Chaw Who woulda thunk that crap-meister Tony Scott could be so in tune with the spirit of the times? Scott follows up Man on Fire–a vile piece of revenge-on-foreign-soil wish-fulfillment schlock–and Domino (another slice of the vigilante kind) with Déjà Vu, a time-travel fantasy complete with a horrifying act of domestic terrorism that noble ATF agent Carlin (Denzel Washington) is offered the chance, through the providence of limited time travel, to prevent. It’s one of those questions, right? Would you smother infant Hitler in his cradle to prevent the tears that will follow–and, if you did, would it change the course of history or just substitute that Adolf for another? Alas, Scott ultimately degrades this fun cocktail party conundrum into an action-movie finale involving heartbreakingly beautiful love interest Claire (Paula Patton), clean-Marine grassroots sicko Carroll (Jim Caviezel, doing High Crimes all over again), and a ferryboat full of people crossing over from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. Working in the picture’s favour is that it’s thick with national calamity, making one wonder if Scott would even get a movie made anymore were he not so quick to jab a needle into the collective jugular. The pall of our recent history hangs over the proceedings like a borrowed mourning veil, but Scott muse Washington is so good–and the film’s premise so loopy–that en route to touching the steadily more tiresome post-9/11 bases of illegal/omniscient surveillance and sour regret, Déjà Vu actually breathes a little. It’s the best Tony Scott film since the underestimated, unofficial The Conversation sequel Enemy of the State, which ran over on the same technophobic ground. Call it another science-fiction romance to join this season’s already-bursting slate of Children of Men, Stranger Than Fiction, and The Fountain.