Good Bye Lenin! (2003)

March 19, 2004Posted in2000s, 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

Goodbyeleninby 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, 2004Posted in****/****, 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

Eternalsunshinereduxby 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, 2004Posted in2000s, 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

Dawnofthedeadby 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, 2004Posted in2000s, 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, 2004Posted in2000s, 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, 2004Posted in2000s, 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

Starskyandhutchby 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, 2004Posted in2000s, 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

Dirtydancing2by 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, 2004Posted in2000s, 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

Othersideofthebedby 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.

Welcome to Mooseport (2004) + EuroTrip (2004)

February 20, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Czech Republic, Germany, Romance, Theatrical

WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT
ZERO STARS/****
starring Gene Hackman, Ray Romano, Marcia Gay Harden, Maura Tierney
screenplay by Tom Schulman
directed by Donald Petrie

EUROTRIP
**½/****
starring Scott Mechlowicz, Jacob Pitts, Kristin Kreuk, Nial Iskhakov
screenplay by Alec Berg & David Mandel & Jeff Schaffer
directed by Jeff Schaffer

Welcometoeurotripby Walter Chaw Has there ever been a prospective leading man this self-immolating? Ray Romano on the big screen comes off as some kind of etherized cross between Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen: a nightmare auto-consumptive, allegedly comic offspring who, left alone for long enough, will eventually swallow his own face. I haven’t felt this much aggressive antipathy towards a personality since the heyday of George Raft. Romano’s performances in Ice Age and now Welcome to Mooseport deposit him square in the David Caruso/Sean Hayes school of engaging television performers whose charms are unique to the boob tube. They’re small-screen vampires, and 35mm is their sunlight.

The Republic of Love (2004)

February 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

***/****
starring Bruce Greenwood, Emilia Fox, Edward Fox, Connor Price
screenplay by Deepa Mehta and Esta Spalding, based on the novel by Carol Shields
directed by Deepa Mehta

Republicofloveby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Not long ago in these pages, I gave Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed a thumbs-up for leading us out of Canadian master-shot hell with a bold use of montage. Little did I know that the master shots would deliver a riposte so soon afterwards, but lo and behold, here is The Republic of Love, a movie that finds a way to use Canada's compositional rhythm of choice to fairly spectacular effect. True, it has some narrative deficiencies, and it builds to a climax that never really arrives, but Deepa Mehta's slick and stately use of cinematography and colour redeems what could have been another leaden exercise in choice-free Canadian aesthetics.

Against the Ropes (2004) + Catch That Kid (2004)

February 6, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Family, Germany, Romance, Sports, Theatrical

AGAINST THE ROPES
*/****
starring Meg Ryan, Omar Epps, Skye McCole Bartusiak, Tony Shalhoub
screenplay by Cheryl Edwards
directed by Charles Dutton

CATCH THAT KID
**/****
starring Kristen Stewart, Corbin Bleu, Max Thieriot, Jennifer Beals
screenplay by Michael Brandt & Derek Haas
directed by Bart Freundlich 

by Walter Chaw  AgainstthekidErin Brockovich with more boxing, Charles S. Dutton's Against the Ropes (released in the same time of year as Steven Soderbergh's surprise obliterating feminist uplift drama and likewise inspired by the true story of a crass woman from a blue-collar background making good) is interested in mythmaking in the way that boxing manager Jackie Kallen, the subject of this would-be biopic, was. Oddly enough, the film is also interested in marginalizing its minority "product" in the way that Kallen is portrayed to have been by the film. Ostensibly the story of Kallen (Meg Ryan) discovering middleweight James Toney on the streets and fashioning from such rough loam the stuff of a boxing hall of fame shoo-in, the film takes so many liberties with history that the "truth" resembles a Hallmark Hall of Fame production complete with a jaunty score by the late Michael Kamen that made me want to punch something. It's lowest-common-denominator filmmaking, a shake-and-bake Oprah Winfrey urban melodrama that hits all the Wildcats-meets-Rocky moments of saccharine populist uplift on its road to instant Palookaville.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) + Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002)|Once Upon a Time in Mexico – DVD

February 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Germany, Revenge, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Rubén Blades
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS
*/****
starring Robert Carlyle, Vanessa Feltz, Ricky Tomlinson, Kathy Burke
screenplay by Paul Fraser & Shane Meadows
directed by Shane Meadows

Onceuponatimeby Walter Chaw Ferociously patriotic but lacking in the epic scope suggested by its obvious debt to Sergio Leone's late masterpieces, pastiche-meister Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a magnification of John Woo in a lot of the same ways that Woo was a magnification of Leone–a post-post modern exercise bound together with a compelling sense of style but an alarming dearth of even the basics of sense. At the same time, if Leone understood the raucous humanism at the heart of Kurosawa, and Woo the insolent demystification of genre archetype of Leone, Rodriguez seems mainly to have ported the puerile macho fantasy of Woo while glancing off the deeper well of questions of honour and the mysterious bond between killers of men. I'm beginning to think that Rodriguez is a cheap filmmaker, interested in the mechanics of a piece more than the motivations of them. He can shoot a mean picture, he just can't set it up, pay it off, or explain it–and in replicating the best shoot-outs of Woo and Leone, he demonstrates that he's no Woo and most definitely no Leone.

The Perfect Score (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Scarlett Johansson, Teen, Theatrical

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

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

Emile (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Ian McKellen, Deborah Kara Unger, Tygh Runyan, Theo Crane
written and directed by Carl Bessai

Emileby Travis Mackenzie Hoover In Survival, Margaret Atwood's seminal 1972 study of Canadian literature, she identifies Canadian writers' use of the family as "the trap you're caught in" and identifies a number of inescapable families that shut tight like a prison. Faced with this preponderance of smothering clans, she notes: "What one misses [from these books] is joy. After a few of these books, you start wanting someone, sometime, to find something worth celebrating." Flash forward 32 years and you will have the same complaint about Emile, a film in which the family is a tangled web from which there is no escape–and those who try to escape are doomed to guilt and destructiveness. Teamed with a somnambulistic pace and a painful, childlike politeness, the film so reeks of disappointment that it can't even find the courage to allow its most wronged character any kind of catharsis.

The Big Bounce (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Romance, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, Sara Foster, Charlie Sheen
screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by George Armitage

Bigbounceby Walter Chaw By the end of The Big Bounce, I was mildly surprised that it was still the same day I sat down to watch it. The film is aspiring to give Owen Wilson the role of the breezy, insouciant rake popularized by authors like Gregory MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, and, more to the point, Elmore Leonard (who I guess wrote the source material, previously adapted into a vehicle for Ryan O'Neal), but succeeds mainly in making the likable Wilson tedious. More a mood piece than a heist flick, The Big Bounce also casts ex-MTV news anchorperson Sara Foster as some kind of femme fatale so vacuous, so bad an actress, that although she's stunning in a Nicolette Sheridan sort of way, she fails to convince that there's enough going on upstairs to be even vaguely dangerous. Foster's entire performance is a yellow bikini and a variety of lucky sheets used as impromptu wraps–an object who never convinces that she's an object on purpose.

Open Range (2003) + Northfork (2003)|Open Range – DVD

January 29, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance, Theatrical, Western

OPEN RANGE
**½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A-
starring Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon
screenplay by Craig Storper, based on the novel The Open Range Men by Lauran Paine
directed by Kevin Costner

NORTHFORK
**½/****
starring James Woods, Nick Nolte, Claire Forlani, Duel Farnes
screenplay by Mark Polish & Michael Polish
directed by Michael Polish

Openrangeby Walter Chaw A little like Neil Diamond, Kevin Costner is an anachronism whose earnestness has landed him in Squaresville when the tragedy is that with a little tweaking in perspective, his peculiar brand of old-school earnestness might have his contemporaries looking upon him with more admiration than mirth. Costner is also the great American Gary Cooper hero archetype: tall, good-looking, dim-witted, and dull as dishwater–working almost exclusively in the realm of the sort of guileless red-blooded manifest determinism that loves mom, apple pie, horses, dogs, and guns. And why not? Costner has never stricken me, at least with his own projects, as the slightest bit condescending, his gift the reality or illusion that America's favourite simpleton is learning things at the same pace as his screenplays. His films, from Waterworld to Dances with Wolves to The Postman, are lovable for their complete lack of irony and self-reflection.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

January 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, Time Travel

***/****
starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Kevin Schmidt, Melora Walters
written and directed by J. Mackye Gruber & Eric Bress

Butterflyeffectby Walter Chaw The Butterfly Effect is tidy, nifty even, a great little genre picture that wallows in ugliness, child abuse, animal abuse, classism, and misogyny but with a dirty polish that tends to distract a little from the nastiness. Evan (Ashton Kutcher) suffers from blackouts, has ever since he was a kid, and no wonder, as there seems to be some nasty bouts of molestation, baby murder, and dog immolation buried in there, desperately in need of some good old-fashioned repression. Now a psych student at State U (his research having something to do with memory, naturally), he discovers that he can "possess" himself at various stages of his youth after being triggered by the comp book journals he's been keeping ever since he started having his spells. His efforts at "fixing" the tragedies of his life all tend towards failure, however, as every little wrinkle he puts in the fabric of time results in catastrophic changes in the present. The Butterfly Effect owes a great debt, then, to Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," Brian Aldiss's "Poor Little Warrior," William Goldman's Control, and Clive Barker's "The Inhuman Condition"; that it manages to honour to some degree each one of its sources (if only with the precision lavished on the telling of its dank tale) identifies the picture as a most difficult beast to embrace–and just as difficult to dislike. The craft above reproach, it's the content that worries.

Touching the Void (2003) + Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)

January 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Romance, Sports, Theatrical, UK

TOUCHING THE VOID
**/****
starring Nicholas Aaron, Richard Hawking, Brendan Mackey, Joe Simpson
based on the book by Joe Simpson
directed by Kevin Macdonald

WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON!
*½/****
starring Kate Bosworth, Topher Grace, Josh Duhamel, Ginnifer Goodwin
screenplay by Victor Levin
directed by Robert Luketic

Touchingtadby Walter Chaw For those wondering what it would be like if one of those READER'S DIGEST "Drama in Real Life"s were ever made into a film, wonder no longer, for Touching the Void, packaged complete with suspense-shattering survivor testimonials and manageable tidbits of easily-digestible narrative, is a cunning simulacrum of the same. A feature-length dramatic re-creation in the television tabloid style, Touching the Void tells of a harrowing mountaineering cock-up that is, I guess, legendary in mountaineering circles for the same reason that dead NASCAR drivers are legendary in their sport. The problem though isn't with the ultimate banality of this account of one guy who crawls to safety down the bottom half a mountain he's already fallen down the top half of, but that the film of it mixes the victims of their own daredevil genes offering their perspective in front of a black backdrop with re-enactments featuring wheezy actors not entirely up to the task.

Along Came Polly (2004)

January 16, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bryan Brown
written and directed by John Hamburg

Alongcamepollyby Walter Chaw A half-baked, underfed comedy of body function that doesn't even manage the wit to successfully honour the threadbare conventions of its idiot slapstick sub-genre, Along Came Polly isn't offensive so much as apocalyptically tiresome. Even at an anaemic eighty-five minutes, the film drags somehow, limping across the finish line with an ass rimshot that isn't funny at the beginning of the picture with Hank Azaria and hasn't gotten any funnier by the end of it with Ben Stiller. How something so indebted to dozens upon dozens of other films can't get the imitation right buggers the imagination, providing a nation of yearning hacks that dulcet feeling of hope that results in a few more horrifically inept screenplays (produced and directed with commensurate incompetence) just like this one probably in the first half of 2004 alone. Bleak doesn't even begin to describe it.

21 Grams (2003)

December 31, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Esoterica, Theatrical

**/****
starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg
screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga
directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

21gramsby Bill Chambers Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros was the first film in the wake of Pulp Fiction to wallow in criminal behaviour and monkey with chronology that still managed to stake its own cinematic claim (not the least of which, inaugurating the Mexican New Wave) far removed from the squatters in Tarantinoland, and if I found its fatalism terribly endearing, I realize now that I also derived a lot of pleasure from its trip-hop vibe, which served a function as the film's levity. To its great detriment, 21 Grams has no sense of humour: Iñárritu seeks to depress you with his English-language sophomore effort by weaving a tapestry of dejection and sorrow, but unless the sun breaks through the clouds once in a while, how can we lament it? That Iñárritu dismisses the human process of adaptation in examining the aftermath of a fatal car accident is only half the problem: he underestimates the swiftness with which an audience grows acclimated and eventually impervious to suffering, too.