Ghost Rider (2007) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

July 17, 2007Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Superhero, Thriller

*½/**** Image A- Sound A (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras B-
starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Peter Fonda
written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson

Ghostridercapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Never let it be said that I have my finger on the pulse of the public. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me into a theatre showing Ghost Rider when it opened in the first quarter of this year, but that didn't stop it from ringing the box-office bell more times than it ever deserved. As it turns out, my aversion to the film proved largely justified: Though one can savour Ghost Rider's campier elements (i.e., the toploading of Nicolas Cage with nutty things to do), it's otherwise a pretty pallid affair, with professional but uninspired direction and a ludicrous screenplay both courtesy Daredevil perpetrator Mark Steven Johnson. The film cries out for the gonzo treatment of a Joe Dante, whereas Johnson acts like nothing untoward is happening as his characters say and do absurd things. Even the centrepiece action sequences have no flavour because he hasn't invested anything other than budget in the proceedings.

Live Free or Die Hard (2007) + Transformers (2007)

July 3, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Michael Bay, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Theatrical, Thriller

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
***½/****
starring Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Cliff Curtis
screenplay by Mark Bomback
directed by Len Wiseman

TRANSFORMERS
*/****
starring Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Jon Voight
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by Michael Bay

Livefreeortransformby Walter Chaw I remember the way I felt as a lad of fifteen when I saw John McTiernan's Die Hard, that tingly excitement of not being able to figure out how we were going to get out of this fine mess. The bad guys were smarter than the good guys, their plan was perfect, the henchmen were ruthless eurotrash, and the hero didn't have shoes. Understand it wasn't fear that the baddies would win, but trust that the filmmakers knew what they were doing even though their methods were mysterious: I could let myself relax because the heavy-lifting was already done for me. I felt the same way as Live Free or Die Hard (hereafter Die Hard 4) unspooled its tale of computer hackers running the world from the basements of their mothers' homes: if the bad guys could hijack anything controlled by a computer (that is, pretty much everything), then what hope would a bald, 52-year-old, Luddite cop with an estranged family and a worn-out smirk have? The film plays on that despair and, unlike in the second (awful) and third (excellent) instalments of this series, John McClane (Bruce Willis) seems fresh again, a walking revelation that even action heroes get old and obsolete to the point where they're cautionary tales for young studs and metaphors for their own careers. Remember Harrison Ford in Firewall? Instead of acknowledging that the world eventually passes you by, leaving you embittered and bellicose (as Die Hard 4 shows), Ford's character in Firewall is not only good with a knuckle sandwich, but also a "with it" computer stud. As miscalculations go, that's more pathetic than most.

A Mighty Heart (2007)

June 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
starring Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irrfan Khan, Archie Panjabi
screenplay by John Orloff, based on the book by Mariane Pearl
directed by Michael Winterbottom

Mightyheartby Walter Chaw An avowed Michael Winterbottom fan, I think he's amazing even when he fails. I marvel at his Thomas Hardy adaptations–the devastating Jude and the redemptive The Claim (his take on The Mayor of Casterbridge)–and I hadn't thought, before I actually saw him do it, that anyone but Charlie Kaufman would have a shot at turning Tristram Shandy into a viable film. When the extremely prolific Winterbottom decided to explore how music and sex evolve sympathetically in culture, he turned out a little unofficial trilogy (24 Hour Party People, Code 46, 9 Songs) in the span of two years. And now that he's become politicized–something he would say he always was, with 1997's vérité Welcome to Sarajevo as evidence–he's turned out, in the same span, In This World, The Road to Guantanamo, and now A Mighty Heart. This is the story of Mariane Pearl, widow of WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter Daniel Pearl, who was infamously beheaded while covering Al-Qaeda in Pakistan in the early days leading up to our current boondoggle. As that fan of Winterbottom's, I'm inclined to give the picture a benefit of a doubt I nevertheless wonder if it deserves. First run through my head, A Mighty Heart strikes me as pointless and unsurprising; Winterbottom is of course a better anthropologist than he is a political philosopher: if he's trying to apply Donald Symons's models of cultural evolution to ethics instead of more immediately compatible pursuits (music, or literature), then what's emerged from the experiment is the revelation that ethics and morality appear to have nothing to do with the base nature of man–and, moreover, that Angelina Jolie will never be Nicole Kidman in her ability to be both herself and someone else.

The Siege (1998) [Martial Law Edition] – DVD

June 22, 2007Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis, Tony Shaloub
screenplay by Lawrence Wright and Menno Meyjes & Edward Zwick
directed by Edward Zwick

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Hollywood liberal is a strange beast. It has been known to speak pieties about the evils of racism, the horrors of war, and the value of freedom with what looks like conviction, if not authority–but when our backs our turned, it builds monuments to military hardware, sings praise to the power of the badge and gun, and subordinates non-whites, non-straights, and non-males to positions of zero control within even the most progressive dramas. The Siege captures this particular genus of liberal at its most confused and self-righteous. Firing in all directions at topics it can't begin to comprehend, it is in any event too in love with the rules of aesthetic engagement to commit to its 'issues' with anything approaching honesty. One hand gives, the other takes away–, and the result is a seething mass of contradictions that's almost too painful to bear.

Shooter (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 19, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Ned Beatty
screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin, based on the novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter
directed by Antoine Fuqua

Shootercapby Walter Chaw Think of it as the latest in the proud tradition of Walking Tall hicksploitation: a redneck Bourne Identity with a bleeding heart tacked to its sleeve by barbed chicken wire. Or, better, think of Shooter as a noble attempt to win back the Kansan-Tennesseean-Montanan wingnut demographic from the arch-conservatives who've made men buggering one another of greater concern than their farms going under and their children fighting indefensible wars declared by an impossibly wealthy aristocracy-by-coup. Sound extreme? Shooter is all this and more: a nihilistic exercise in Old Testament revenge that has more in common with such cult classics as Next of Kin than with cult classics like the suddenly-reserved-seeming Sniper. It makes no bones about its politics, assembling talking heads in the form of a venerable Red State senator (Ned Beatty) and a too-old-for-this-shit Colonel (Danny Glover, too old for this shit almost twenty years ago) to spout on endlessly about the lack of WMDs, the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, and, for shits and giggles, the conspiracy behind the JFK assassination. No The Parallax View, the film mines the complex machinations of good guys being good and bad guys being bad: bad guys being politicians and military guys drunk on power and good guys being hillbilly guardsmen with access to the Internet and too many guns.

Breach (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 11, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Crime, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Thriller

***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert
screenplay by Adam Mazer & William Rotko and Billy Ray
directed by Billy Ray

Breachcapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Breach is so good, you want it to be better; it's a tense, relentless, Alan-Pakula-in-marble chiller that sketches the schizoid ways of its real-life subject so effectively that you're eager to know more than the genre trappings can accommodate. This would be of greater cause for concern were Breach not already, as it is, much better written and light-years better directed than most of its brethren in the Washington-intrigue sub-genre. Make no mistake: it has an iron grip on the spine, and its refreshingly quiet approach eschews rapid montage for unnerving negative space. You hear every line instead of noticing the pictures, even as the pictures work overtime–and the aggregate is sweetly enthralling, if somewhat incomplete.

The Bridesmaid (2004) – DVD

May 22, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Thriller

La Demoiselle d'honneur
***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A-
starring Benoît Magimel, Laura Smet, Aurore Clément, Bernard Le Coq
screenplay by Pierre Leccia and Claude Chabrol, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell
directed by Claude Chabrol

Bridesmaidcapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Comparisons of The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d'honneur) to Hitchcock are almost inevitable, not only because such assessments are the lazy default position of critics when referencing suspense yarns, but also because The Bridesmaid's director, Claude Chabrol, has carved out a career as the French heir apparent to the master's title. That said, the distinctions between the two filmmakers are probably more interesting than the similarities: Chabrol's overall style is considerably more relaxed than Hitchcock's, and his approach to character is finally less judgmental. Here, for instance, in lieu of assigning blame to the damaged femme fatale of the title, he notes the thrilling nature of her transgression and the unappetizing prospect of returning to normalcy after succumbing to her lethal charms. Chabrol has always put women in the driver's seat of perversity and sexual wilfulness–something Hitch never quite had either the guts or the sympathy to pull off.

Violette (1978) – DVD

May 21, 2007Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, France, Thriller

Violette Nozière
***/**** Image C- Sound C+
starring Isabelle Huppert, Stephane Audran, Jean Carmet, Jean-François Garreaud
screenplay by Odile Barski, Herve Bromberger, Frederic Grendel, based on the novel Presses de la Cité by Jean-Marie Fitere
directed by Claude Chabrol

Violettecapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Violette Nozière (or Violette, as inexplicably shortened by some cretinous American distributor) isn't highly ranked in the canon of Claude Chabrol. Reviews range from the mildly indulgent to Leonard Maltin's assertion that "Chabrol lacks his usual directorial flair"–a strange thing to say about a man whose style is famously relaxed. While I wouldn't place it in the company of Les bonnes femmes or La femme infidèle, I would say that Violette Nozière returns Chabrol to his preoccupations with women and class with lethal accuracy. Its tale of an amoral 14-year-old who robs, sleeps around, and attempts to murder both of her parents is perceptively half-in, half-out of her desire to escape the confines of a small world and a smaller bankroll. The protagonist is completely horrible, and yet we're just as completely trapped in her point-of-view. The film's total commitment to her awful behaviour subsequently makes the audience both judge of and accomplice to Violette's terrible, terrible misdeeds.

The Painted Veil (2006) – DVD; The Good Shepherd (2006); The Good German (2006) – DVD

May 21, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, China, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Mystery, Robert De Niro, Romance, Thriller, War

THE PAINTED VEIL
***/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Diana Rigg
screenplay by Ron Nyswaner, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham
directed by John Curran

THE GOOD SHEPHERD
**/****
starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro, Alec Baldwin
screenplay by Eric Roth
directed by Robert De Niro

THE GOOD GERMAN
*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, Jack Thompson
screenplay by Paul Attanasio, based on the novel by Joseph Kanon
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Walter Chaw PaintedgermanshepherdOne of seemingly dozens of pretentious, self-produced vanity pieces from the Edward Norton grist mill, The Painted Veil, John Curran's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's story of colonial malaise, is a pleasant surprise. Naomi Watts and Toby Jones are fabulous (and Norton is steady); it's not terribly paternalistically racist despite being another Western film in which white people exert their magical influence in foreign lands; and even though it's all about prestige and hedonism, it manages now and again to actually be about prestige and hedonism. But like the simultaneously-opening Soderbergh noir The Good German, it's mostly interesting in the meta. What keeps this updating of the old Greta Garbo weeper from being literally better is the lack of immediacy in its tale of emotionally distant scientists and their flapper wives, adrift in the boiler pot of 1920s Shanghai. Not timeless in its remove but instead ineffably dated by it, it's an Old Hollywood production in both epic scale and lack of subtext, making the picture a lovely trifle not unlike other well-done bits of instantly-forgotten prestige (see: Philip Noyce's The Quiet American).

To Catch a Thief (1955) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

May 8, 2007Posted in1950s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

Tocatchathief

**/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C
starring Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams
screenplay by John Michael Hayes, based on the book by David Dodge
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw If Rear Window is Hitchcock's "testament" movie to that point in 1954 (post-North by Northwest, the term no longer has much meaning), then To Catch a Thief, appearing just a year later, recovers the only element missing from Hitchcock's black chest in Rear Window's exhausting exhumation: homosexuality. Note the way that Cary Grant's cat burglar John Robie is greeted by a former accomplice in scenic Nice: as Grant descends a staircase to an outdoor café run by all the reformed dregs of society once involved with Robie and now resentful that Robie appears to be back on the prowl, the head waiter pops a champagne cork in the first of several ejaculatory similes. I do wonder whether the entire film could in fact be read as a gay "reclamation"–its most famous sequence, the juxtaposition of the central seduction sequence with fireworks over Cannes, begins with Robie being teased for his asexuality, recalling an earlier flirtation with rival Danielle (Brigitte Auber) that ends with Robie asking her to cover her legs. More blatantly, Robie is approached by a muscle stud on the beach as Grace Kelly lounges in the background; and when offered on a picnic the choice between a "breast or a leg," Robie demurs, "You make the choice." Clever double entendres, no question, but what exactly is the second "understanding" that we come to in this series of innuendos? Moreover, what to make of the mother figure, reappearing at key erotic moments in body or direct reference (indeed, Kelly's Frances accuses Robie of thinking of her mother during their first kiss) and comprising the punchline of the picture as Frances threatens to make them a household of three (a literal "ménage a trios"–particularly given the film's setting). That kind of mother-love doesn't reach its apotheosis until Psycho five years hence, but there's something along the way to Hitch's complex Oedipal materphobia that suggests here a certain Freudian gay arrest.

Pulp (1972) – DVD

May 3, 2007Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott
written and directed by Mike Hodges

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Pulp is so determined to not work on any level that you almost admire it in light of the effort. It's neither a parody of nor a tribute to the pulp genre, neither comedy-thriller nor thrilling comedy–it's just a freak that repeatedly falls flat on its face, leaving you with no choice but to grasp it close like an idiot child. The first time I saw this film, I was mostly annoyed by its determination to short-circuit the fun that might have come from genre trappings, not to mention its refusal to offer genuine alternatives. With a second viewing, it looks a little better, and though not a success, it earned my admiration for being so far out of its depth that a bit of pleasure at its expense was unavoidable. It may have earned an extra half-star were it not also sexist and homophobic in dated ways that have risen to the surface like yeast.

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.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Princess

April 19, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Film Festivals, Germany, Thriller
***½/****screenplay by Anders Morgenthaler & Mette Heenodirected by Anders Morgenthaler by Ian Pugh Existing in a disturbing crevice between live-action and animation, children's and adult entertainment, pop and exploitation, Anders Morgenthaler's animated opus Princess understands the darkest impulses that drive holier-than-thou crusades. With his porn-queen sister (Stine Fischer Christensen) dead and her sexually-abused daughter Mia (Mira Hilli Møller Hallund) now in his care, missionary priest August (Thure Lindhardt) goes on a one-man war against the sex industry, starting things off by beating the shit out of a random john and planning a firebombing campaign against video-rental joints. It all reeks…

Notes on a Scandal (2006) – DVD

April 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson
screenplay by Patrick Marber, based on the novel by Zoë Heller
directed by Richard Eyre

by Walter Chaw When Judi Dench's brittle enunciation breathes life into the prologue of Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal, there's a hope, however fleeting, that the film will deserve the performance. Her tweedy, support-hosed teacher Barbara Covett is set up as a distaff Richard III, looking to subvert the beautifuls acting as the royals in her school's social strata–the newest member of which, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), attracts the greatest amount of envy and desire. The characters' names are embarrassing (why not call them "Barbara Lust" and "Sheba Love"?), and it's not long before the picture follows suit, becoming as obvious and stillborn as its first half hour is scabrous and dangerous. Adapted from the Zoë Heller novel, it reminds of screenwriter Patrick Marber's Closer and how Mike Nichols's film adaptation similarly suffered from a gradual slackening of shock with the realization that its umbrella of misanthropy doesn't cast a dark shadow on all of us so much as it provides a vicarious thrill, like watching a cockfight, say, or a mantis eating its mate: though foul, its pungency is isolatable.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Sisters

April 12, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Crime, Film Festivals, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK
**/****starring Chloë Sevigny, Dallas Roberts, Lou Doillon, Stephen Reascreenplay by Douglas Buck & John Freitas, based on an earlier screenplay by Brian De Palma & Louisa Rosedirected by Douglas Buck by Ian Pugh Perhaps a little too earnest for its own good, Douglas Buck's Sisters takes one of Brian De Palma's most transparent tributes to Hitchcock and almost completely abandons its homage-laden aesthetic, convinced that saddling everyone with even more psychological baggage would somehow expand on the previous film's chilling ideas about identity panic. The basic structure remains the same: attempting to escape the grasp of her controlling psychiatrist ex-husband…

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.

Saw III (2006) [Unrated Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

March 30, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Crime, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Dina Meyer, Shawnee Smith, Bahar Soomekh, Tobin Bell
screenplay by Leigh Whannell & James Wan
directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If nothing else, the Saw saga can be said to defy the law of diminishing returns that normally governs sequels. Both the first and second instalments were equally dumb movies, combining an ambition to be more plot-driven than the average slasher opus while not having the intellectual chops to actually pull it off. Borrowing heavily from Se7en's premise of a moralistic serial killer, the films try to pass off a sub-Rod Serling guilt complex as something resembling theme and subtext; the filmmakers think they're doing more than killing folks in baroque ways, and the combination of brutal violence and twinky piety effectively blunts the former and disqualifies the latter. Which is what makes Saw III a semi-pleasant surprise: for the most part, it's far less pretentious than its predecessors, leaving us in the dark without much exposition and deferring the cheesy explanations until the predictably disappointing finale.

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.