Theatrical Archives - Page 50 of 65

Young Adam (2003); Millennium Mambo (2001); Secret Things (2002)

April 23, 2004****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, France, Romance, Taiwan, Theatrical, UK

YOUNG ADAM
**½/****
starring Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan, Emily Mortimer
screenplay by David Mackenzie, based on the novel by Alexander Trocchi
directed by David Mackenzie

Qian xi man po
****/****
starring Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Tuan Chun-hao, Chen Yi-Hsuan
screenplay by Chu T'ien-wen
directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien

Choses secrètes
***½/****
starring Coralie Revel, Sabrina Seyvecou, Roger Mirmont, Fabrice Deville
written and directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau

by Walter Chaw David Mackenzie's Young Adam opens with a shot from below of a duck paddling placidly along the surface of a lake that's replaced by a woman's corpse, then replaced by a filthy barge-worker and his mate fishing the cadaver out with a gaffing hook. Young Adam is a beautiful picture, really, its interiors sepia-tinged like a cameo photograph and its exteriors bleached and desperate, and as a film about surfaces, it marches to its own logic with the dyspeptic malaise, if not the consistent nihilistic poetry, of a Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Surfaces include skin, of course, and a scene where tattooed Les (Peter Mullan) washes his hired help Joe (Ewan McGregor) is as blandly erotic as a scene where Joe performs cunnilingus on Les's wife Ella (Tilda Swinton), an act that wins him the fried egg he was denied at breakfast. Consumption suggesting sustenance seeps into a scene where Joe covers his girlfriend, Cathie (Emily Mortimer), with custard, ketchup, and mustard before caning and raping her. Joe's furnace is unquenchable: as Biblical doppelganger, his carnal curiosity is constantly stoked by the invitation of moribund English housewives and widows–and his ire is only aroused when an appropriate mate choice threatens to free him from his fleshy fixations. Young Adam is about being trapped and listless, about the lost generation afflicted by a plague of ennui–paddling in a circle, floating between updrafts in the widening gyre.

The Punisher (2004)

April 20, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Germany, Revenge, Romance, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Tom Jane, John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Laura Harring
screenplay by Michael France and Jonathan Hensleigh
directed by Jonathan Hensleigh

by Walter Chaw A barometer of our culture–an exploding western world balanced between listless fatalism on the one side and violent nihilism on the other (Elephant and Young Adam vs. Walking Tall, The Passion of the Christ, and Man on Fire)–at this exact moment in time, long-time blockbuster scribe Jonathan Hensleigh's hyphenate debut is his adaptation of Marvel Comics' vigilante title The Punisher. With the possible exception of Mel Gibson's ode to sadism, this is the year's most irredeemable picture thus far, but it's elevated by a bracing idea, an astonishingly courageous idea: that its hero and villain are equally reprehensible, and, by extension, that both of them do what they do because in their psychotic haze, the only thing they have to tie them to any kind of illusion of equilibrium is the dangerous idealization of their families. When a picture like this appears in the middle of a glut of vigilante flicks and in the middle of a society that may have been led into a predictably cruel and bloody war on the basis of a personal grudge, one forgiven by many for its specious association with a collective insult to our illusion of sanctuary, people should prick up their ears. While The Punisher may not be a particularly good film, it is a particularly important one.

The United States of Leland (2004)

April 16, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disability, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Don Cheadle, Ryan Gosling, Chris Klein, Jena Malone
written and directed by Matthew Ryan Hoge

Unitedstatesofleland by Walter Chaw Featuring the valedictorians of the indie brat pack past and present, Matthew Ryan Hoge’s sophomore hyphenate feature The United States of Leland is woefully overwritten, self-indulgent, and plodding–a shame given the squandering of another nice clenched-jaw performance from Ryan Gosling, and no surprise given the full martyred weight of actor/producer/saviour-of-mankind Kevin Spacey, thrown behind the project as simultaneous catalyst for completion and guarantee for failure. Pedestrian in look and execution, it’s the sort of kiddie cautionary tale (wed here uneasily to our new cinema of disaffected nihilism) in which a message of the tragedy of the widening gyre is resolved with its main adult character cradling a limp body and howling his outrage to the uncaring heavens. If Mel Gibson were to take on a Judy Blume adaptation, it’d look a little like this.

Bulletproof Monk (2003)

April 15, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Fantasy, Theatrical

*/****
starring Chow Yun-Fat, Seann William Scott, Jamie King, Karel Roden
screenplay by Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris
directed by Paul Hunter

by Walter Chaw There is a moment in the middle of Bulletproof Monk: Chow Yun-Fat leaps to the top of a car, brandishing two pistols, his overcoat flaring in slow-motion as he rains down bullets on the bad guys. It's an homage to Brother Chow's work with John Woo, of course, in the seminal HK action flicks The Killer, Hard-Boiled, and A Better Tomorrow–and Woo is listed among the film's producers. It sort of makes you wonder why the pair doesn't stop dancing around and just make another movie together already, particularly since neither Chow nor Woo has really made a film worth a damn since sailing over to a Hollywood that doesn't understand them. The American film industry would rather marginalize them into racial caricatures than take advantage of their unique talents.

Connie and Carla (2004) + Japanese Story (2003)

April 15, 20042000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical

CONNIE AND CARLA
*½/****
starring Nia Vardalos, Toni Collette, David Duchovny, Stephen Spinella
screenplay by Nia Vardalos
directed by Michael Lembeck

JAPANESE STORY
*/****
starring Toni Collette, Gotaro Tsunashima, Matthew Dyktynski, Lynette Curran
screenplay by Alison Tilson
directed by Sue Brooks

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Pity Toni Collette, her inability to land a lead role that might catapult her into the limelight bespeaking of either a general dearth of quality lead actress roles or an inability to choose her "breakthrough" projects carefully. The highlight of a lot of good movies (The Sixth Sense, Clockwatchers, About a Boy) and bad ones (Muriel's Wedding, Hotel Splendide), too, her latest chance to evolve beyond accomplished second fiddle has elicited a glorified supporting role in Nia Vardalos's latest bit of unwatchable crowd-pleasing garbage (Connie and Carla) and the ingenue part in an embarrassing bit of housewife Orientalism erotica that transplants the Yellow Peril of the American 1950s to a modern-day Outback setting (Japanese Story).

The Whole Ten Yards (2004)

April 9, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Gangster, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Kevin Pollak
screenplay by George Gallo
directed by Howard Deutch

by Walter Chaw Oz (Matthew Perry, racing Ray Romano for title of television personality least suited for the big screen) is a dentist married to ex-moll Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge) and ex-hitman Jimmy (Bruce Willis) is married to ex-dental hygienist Jill (Amanda Peet). Oz is constantly mugging, falling down, running into things, and making funny faces, which leads me to believe that Oz might be afflicted by some toxic stew of epilepsy, Tourette’s Syndrome, and limited comic actor’s disease–the last of which the sort of thing that otherwise dull or homely children contract to get attention in class. Through a devastatingly disinteresting sequence of convoluted events, our whimsical quartet is menaced by Hungarian mobster Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak, in his fourth decade of needing a bullet to the head) and his dimwit son Strabo (Frank Collison)–resulting in a shootout and a desperate series of speeches that don’t do a thing to explain how Jimmy pretending to be a housewife in a David Lee Roth wig relates to stealing millions from the mob.

Rana’s Wedding (2003) + Osama (2003)

April 8, 20042000s, Afghanistan, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Netherlands, Palestine, Theatrical, United Arab Emirates

Al Qods Fee Yom Akhar
***½/****
starring Clara Khoury, Khalifa Natour, Ismael Dabbag, Walid Abed Elsalam
screenplay by Liana Badr, Ihab Lamey
directed by Hany Abu-Assad

OSAMA
*½/****
starring Marina Golbahari, Arif Herati, Zubaida Sahar, Gol Rahman Ghorbandi
written and directed by Siddiq Barmak

by Walter Chaw About thirty minutes into Hany Abu-Assad’s Rana’s Wedding (Al Qods Fee Yom Akhar), an old Palestinian man sets a small table down outside his building in Israeli-occupied Jerusalem, places a typewriter on top of it, and watches as Rana (Clara Khoury) is almost shot by an Israeli patrol when her cell phone is briefly mistaken for a revolver. The moment isn’t commented upon, and the next scene finds her wondering, as she’s wondered for the first parts of the film, where her true love is on this, the day that her father demands that she marry one of the suitors he’s approved for her or leave for Egypt to continue her schooling. The deadline sends Rana careening across the country in an increasingly complex quest to assemble the right people together to allow her to marry the man that she loves–the one who “understands me, and puts up with me when I’m angry.” The line is funny as the sentiment is familiar–it’s a grace note in a picture that somehow cloaks its ferocity in a sheath of gentility. Make no mistake that not commenting on the Israeli/Palestinian situation is not the same as avoiding the Israeli/Palestinian situation; as political films go, Rana’s Wedding is high among the films finding release in election year 2004 (Osama, The Fog of War, Broken Wings).

The Prince & Me (2004)

April 2, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Theatrical

**/****
starring Julia Stiles, Luke Mably, Ben Miller, James Fox
screenplay by Jack Amiel & Michael Begler and Katherine Fugate
directed by Martha Coolidge

by Walter Chaw Surprisingly good not the same thing as genuinely good, Martha Coolidge's The Prince & Me returns the director to her Valley Girl formula of cross-cultural teen romantic hurlyburly with a few nice moments and the pleasing aura of a light fantasy, but the film finds itself weighed down at the end by the requirements of its exhausted genre. Moreover, The Prince & Me fails the courage test, needing desperately to have ended about ten minutes before it actually does, and though not a moment of it demands (nor could a moment of it bear) to be assessed through the prism of realism, the gadget of its finale is less "fairytale" than insipid. One cliffhanger is more than enough in most fables, so when The Prince & Me decides to follow twist fast with preordained turn, it exposes its structure as far too flimsy to support the burden of those contortions.

Hellboy (2004)

April 2, 20042000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

***/****
starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Karel Roden
screenplay by Guillermo del Toro, based on the comics by Mike Mignola
directed by Guillermo del Toro

by Walter Chaw A bona fide auteur in an age of facile pretenders, Guillermo del Toro is the pulp genre’s Martin Scorsese, his films filtering devout Catholic imagery through a lurid colour palette and obsessed with insectile machineries and mentor relationships between boys and old men. Del Toro’s pictures are deeply personal explorations of faith, of redemption and resurrection–he made of Blade II a tale of the prodigal son, and now with Hellboy he’s crafted a story of an evolving passion.

Jersey Girl (2004)

March 26, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, Will Smith

*½/****
starring Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, George Carlin, Raquel Castro
written and directed by Kevin Smith

by Walter Chaw Self-satisfied and self-congratulatory, Kevin Smith’s films generally give off the feeling of a by-invitation-only party attended by Smith, Matt Damon, Jason Lee, Ben Affleck when he’s not gambling, and Jason Mewes when he’s not in prison or missing. Apparently a smart guy, the moments in his films that suggest evidence of that brightness are overwhelmed by repetitive profanities, puerile devices (i.e. Dogma‘s shit monster), cameos by his cool friends, and old jokes retold in coarse fashion. He’s the love child of David Mamet and a thirteen-year-old virgin at the mercy of pals handsomer and more popular than he, always trying to impress with his blue toughness without the maturity to understand that what made him cool way back when with Clerks wasn’t his scatological horniness, but his intelligence and flashes of observational sophistication.

Made-Up (2003) + The Reckoning (2004)

March 26, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, UK

MADE-UP
**½/****
starring Brooke Adams, Lynne Adams, Eva Amurri, Gary Sinise
screenplay by Lynne Adams
directed by Tony Shalhoub

THE RECKONING
*/****
starring Paul Bettany, Tom Hardy, Willem Dafoe, Gina McKee
screenplay by Mark Mills, based on the novel by Barry Unsworth
directed by Paul McGuigan

by Walter Chaw The problem with Tony Shalhoub’s directorial debut Made-Up is a certain forced artificiality in presentation and execution that, though in keeping with the mock-documentary-within-a-mock-documentary format, makes the consideration of it emotionally and aesthetically removed. It’s a slippery criticism to level at a picture that seems to be about emotional and aesthetic remove, of course, but there comes a point when the form imitates the message to an obfuscating degree–in other words, when it’s no longer about the distance, but is the distance. So for all the empty extra-textual readings the film culls for its subtext (Brooke Adams, an actress out of the scene for a decade or so, plays an actress out of the scene for at least a decade; sisters play sisters; the daughter is played by the daughter of Susan Sarandon; and so on), Made-Up is salvaged by a sense of decency, and one meta-read that carries some weight as Shalhoub, an Arab-American of Lebanese descent, directs a film about the ills of stereotyping based on appearance.

Dogville (2003)

March 26, 2004****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Denmark, Directors: Lars von Trier, Drama, Esoterica, Theatrical

****/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Harriet Anderson, Lauren Bacall
written and directed by Lars von Trier

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Movie pop art is enjoying a renaissance (cf Elephant, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), of which Lars von Trier's savagely cathartic Dogville is the consummate centrepiece. This despite–and partly because of–outward appearances belying its status as a movie at all: Chalk outlines stand in for traditional sets, designating walls, fences, rosebushes, even the dog, Moses, of the titular locale, a pious community (is there any other kind in von Trierland?) situated in the Rocky Mountains circa Prohibition. A void surrounds the rectangle of pavement that constitutes Dogville–it turns white to indicate day and black to indicate night. One could be forgiven for momentarily mistaking Dogville for that fourth-wall-breaking production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town that aired on HBO last year; as Dogville's narrator, John Hurt is as thorough and intrusive a commentator as Our Town's own Stage Manager.

Good Bye Lenin! (2003)

March 19, 20042000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, Germany, Romance, Theatrical

Good bye, Lenin!
***½/****
starring Daniel Brühl, Kathrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, Maria Simon
screenplay by Bernd Lichtenberg and Wolfgang Becker
directed by Wolfgang Becker

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Good bye, Lenin! is that rarest of beasts, a popular film that's actually about something. Detailing a former East German's mixed emotions at the demise of communism, it's precise in its modelling of a historical turning point without either trivializing or preaching. One doesn't have to pick out the plums of insight from a thin pudding of plot: The elements of analysis and narrative fuse so seamlessly that they carry you along, making a happy medium that is supremely satisfying. One wishes that Hollywood could turn out a film such as this, which, for all its movie-movie gusto, deals with complex issues real people have to deal with, making its huge success back home a heartening sign in this age of Amélie and cultural amnesia.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

March 19, 2004****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Charlie Kaufman, Drama, Esoterica, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

****/****
starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst
screenplay by Charlie Kaufman
directed by Michel Gondry

by Walter Chaw Manny Farber wrote this about Orson Welles over fifty years ago: “Welles bequeathed to Hollywood, which had grown fat and famous on hurtling action films, a movie (Citizen Kane) that broke up into a succession of fragments, each one popping with aggressive technique and loud, biased slanting of the materials of real life.” During that same period, Farber referred to Preston Sturges as a filmmaker working eternally within “the presence of Dada and surrealism”–and it’s taken over fifty years, it seems, for the United States to produce what is at its essence the product of a marriage between Welles’s self-conscious audacity and Sturges’s common touch: Charlie Kaufman–more specifically, the Charlie Kaufman Screenplay.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

March 19, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, France, Horror, Japan, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, Zombie

***/****
starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer
screenplay by James Gunn
directed by Zack Snyder

by Walter Chaw Heretical to even suggest it, I'm sure, Zack Snyder's remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead surpasses the original in any number of ways. It gives the idea of consumerism run wild the short shrift that it deserves (and the cynicism that an intervening quarter-century demands), touching on the original's explanation of the zombies' affinity for the shopping mall and the human heroes' delight at their newfound material wealth before becoming a bracing action film that, like Marcus Nispel's reworking of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the source of which didn't need updating as much as Dawn arguably did), is more firmly entrenched in the James Cameron Aliens tradition than the Seventies institution of disconcerting personal horror film. There's nothing like fat on the bone of this picture (something the original can't claim), providing a canny demonstration of how comedy and satire can work without descending into slapstick (no pies in zombie faces this time around), and of how great performances and smart direction can craft a piece that honours its origins while significantly upping the effectiveness of its themes and premise.

Greendale (2004)

March 12, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Esoterica, Musical, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Eric Johnson, Ben Keith, Elizabeth Keith, Erik Markegard
written and directed by Neil Young

by Walter Chaw The Wall shot on Super8 and given a decidedly 'green' spin, Neil Young's raw nerve of a semi-experimental/semi-feature length music video Greendale is literal, unabashedly liberal, and saved by its energy, earnestness, and Young's electric song score. Inspired and rejuvenated, like a few of our better artists have been, by 9/11 and George W.'s reign of evil aw-shucksism, Young contributes to the soundtrack for Greendale some of his best music with Crazy Horse since their eclectic album "Sleeps with Angels". In fact, Ralph Molina's work on the skins here is something like a revelation, even when Young's lyrics lag a little in the picture's middle section, an unsuccessful chunk revolving uneasily around a personification of Old Scratch: in that tattoo, banging fulsome in the song cycle's underbelly, is the freshness and vitality that has kept Young current over four decades.

Love, Sex and Eating the Bones (2004)

March 5, 20042000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

Eating the Bones
***/****
starring Hill Harper, Marlyne Afflack, Mark Taylor, Kai Soremekun
written and directed by Sudz Sutherland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Rightly or wrongly, the romantic comedy is usually viewed as a low-priority genre and handed out to style-free directors settling for second best. On the surface, Love, Sex and Eating the Bones would appear to be one of these films, beset as it is by an obsequious realist aesthetic that stays out of the way of the narrative. But writer-director Sudz Sutherland instils it with something that most rom-coms don’t normally have: speed. Instead of lingering ponderously over the content of the screenplay, he states his points, lets them speak for themselves, and moves on. This makes Love, Sex and Eating the Bones a brisk, energizing experience–no masterpiece, perhaps, but easily the most fleet-footed Canadian film to emerge in a long time.

Starsky & Hutch (2004)

March 5, 20042000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Theatrical

*/****
starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Snoop Dogg, Fred Williamson
screenplay by John O'Brien and Todd Phillips & Scot Armstrong
directed by Todd Phillips

by Walter Chaw The problems with Todd Phillips's lifeless and auto-consumptive Starsky & Hutch begin with a lack of imagination and end with a lack of pace. The one thing a comedy can't be is boring, and Starsky & Hutch is that in spades, banking far too much on the inherent hilarity of the '70s (its title declares "Bay City. The Seventies" like a plot outline and mission statement) while depending upon Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller to keep doing the same thing they've been doing for what's beginning to seem like decades. If I never see Stiller do a silly dance again, not to mention engage in a dance-off, it'll be too soon. Hope/Crosby for an age of lowered expectations, both are talented artists when they're not just cashing a paycheck. The danger is that a few more like Starsky & Hutch and The Royal Tenenbaums will begin to seem like a fluke.

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)

February 27, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Romola Garai, Diego Luna, Mika Boorem, Jonathan Jackson
screenplay by Boaz Yakin and Victoria Arch
directed by Guy Ferland

by Walter Chaw A treacly clone in nearly every miserable, measurable aspect of the surprise hit of 1987, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights' one point of deviation is that where the first film delicately pranced around the issue of race in its gentile/Jew Catskills confusion, its sequel stampedes over its own blue-eyed/brown-eyed intrigue roughshod with a plodder's grace. The decision to transport the insipid love story/underdog dance competition formula to the days leading up to the January 1, 1959 flight of Batista before Castro's rebels is already, by itself, an unspeakable contrivance in the Pearl Harbor tradition, although the decision to make another insipid love story/dance competition flick is certainly bad enough. This is garbage so misguided and poorly executed that in an act of self-defense, the mind spends long minutes contemplating other bad ideas that will probably one day find their way to the screen: Footloose 2: Khmer Rouge, for instance, or the inevitable remake of Hero set in Jersey and starring tireless Miramax pack-mule Ben Affleck.

The Other Side of the Bed (2002)

February 20, 20042000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Musical, Romance, Spain, Theatrical

El Otro lado de la cama
**/****
starring Ernesto Alterio, Paz Vega, Guillermo Toledo, Natalia Verbeke
screenplay by David Serrano
directed by Emilio Martínez Lázaro

by Bill Chambers By the fifteen-minute mark of The Other Side of the Bed (El Otro lado de la cama), actresses Paz Vega and Natalia Verbeke have both doffed their clothes and bedded down the same man, but the movie, a musical, is–or wants to be–as sanitary as an Elvis vehicle. Director Emilio Martínez Lázaro labours to make promiscuity innocent again, if ever there was such a thing, and his sense of whimsy is quite seductive at first, since films about the self-interested are so often as shallow or tunnel-visioned as their protagonists (see: Thirteen). Lázaro risks, of course, glossing over his characters’ predicaments to the point of condescension by leeching the film of any gloom, but something possibly worse insinuates itself, a kind of apathy as it occurs that frothiness is being used to evade subjecitivity altogether. The Other Side of the Bed is colourfully sterile, if you will, an ensemble piece in the noncommittal sense of the term, and if you find yourself empathizing with anyone on screen, it’s generally because she’s not wearing pants at the time.