Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) – DVD|[Special Collector’s Edition] DVD

October 14, 2003Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, DVD, Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Thriller

**½/****
1999 DVD – Image B Sound A-
SCE DVD – Image A Sound A Extras A
starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan, Laurence Luckinbill
screenplay by David Loughery
directed by William Shatner

by Vincent Suarez On the heels of the wildly successful (and equally overrated) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Trek franchise seemed poised to become, of all things, a crossover phenomenon. That changed with the release of the financially disappointing and generally reviled (by critics and Trek fans alike) fifth installment, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which nearly killed the film series. Wisely, Paramount and producer Harve Bennett asked Nicholas Meyer, director of the magnificent Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, to helm Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, putting the series back on warp drive.

DIFF ’03: I’m Not Scared

October 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK
Io non ho paura***/****written by Niccolò Ammaniti, Niccolò Ammaniti, Francesca Marcianodirected by Gabriele Salvatores by Walter Chaw An Italian version of Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter in many respects, Gabriele Salvatores' I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura) is admirable in its ability to evoke the dreamy disconnection of childhood--the startling realization at some point along the way that your parents may not be merely flawed, but occasionally malicious. A young boy, Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano), finds a child imprisoned in a hole next to an abandoned house in the middle of an impossibly beautiful fall Tuscan landscape, all yellow…

28 Days Later (2002) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

September 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Zombie

28 Days Later…
**½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras A
starring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Christopher Eccleston
screenplay by Alex Garland
directed by Danny Boyle

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover 28 Days Later… is a film that shoots for resonance but is too shortsighted to hit the target. Its tale of an England beset by rage-crazed zombies is clearly a metaphor for something–but what? Timing rules out certain international disasters (9/11 happened as the film was shooting), and a certain opacity of intent clouds the entire film, making you reach out for something that you're never sure is really there. There are compensatory pleasures (a general creepiness, one smashing performance), but the film lacks something beyond its grasp, leaving you with an adequate, reasonably entertaining picture, and nothing more.

Enigma (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

September 23, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Germany, Mystery, Netherlands, Romance, Thriller, UK, War

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Saffron Burrows
screenplay by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel by Robert Harris
directed by Michael Apted

by Walter Chaw The easy thing to say is that the Mick Jagger-produced Enigma is enigmatic–it's more difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons why. Stars Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, and Jeremy Northam are fine, Tom Stoppard's screenplay would on the surface surely seem fine, and Michael Apted's polished, if unremarkable, direction is the very definition of just fine. So the onus must fall on the material adapted, Robert Harris's follow-up to his much-lauded Fatherland, which promised a Ken Follett romantic espionage page-burner while delivering a staid and occasionally incomprehensible period bodice-ripper crushed under the dual gorgons of the sophomore jinx and the Tom Clancy "guess I'm not very good at dialogue" bogey. Enigma's problems begin and end with its inability to overcome the essential faults of its inherited plot, its most interesting aspect–WWII cryptologists at London's Bletchley Park–subsumed by a run-of-the-mill mystery and a never-in-doubt love story. It appears the curse of many historical fictions that attempt to familiarize the "long ago" with a "universal" romantic story arc dooms Enigma's period and historical detail to function as mere decorative flourish.

Underworld (2003)

September 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Germany, Horror, Hungary, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, Vampire, Werewolf

*½/****
starring Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Shane Brolly, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Danny McBride
directed by Len Wiseman

Underworldby Walter Chaw Appearing to be based on two White Wolf role-playing games–"Vampire: The Masquerade" and "Werewolf: The Apocalypse"–introduced a while back (and indeed, the games company is suing Sony, Screen Gems, and Lakeshore for copyright infringement, citing no fewer than sixty points of unique similarity), Len Wiseman's Underworld may prove to be less "Romeo and Juliet" than much ado about nothing. The picture looks fantastic, Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman look fantastic, and that's pretty much all there is recommend about the piece, which is so boring, lifeless, and humourless that White Wolf would do well to distance itself from the thing toot sweet. This is gravid filmmaking at its worst, indulging in its twin cults' puerile wish-fulfillment fantasies with a sexless lust: the life of an immortal rock star in period garb thirsting for the blood of bullies for the one, of a raging man-beast thirsting for the blood of bullies for the other. In between are tons of rip-offs of everything from The Crow to The Matrix to the leather fetish and arms of Blade to the sweaty bodice-ripping of Anne Rice to the Alien3 wall-crawling monster views of David Fincher. Wiseman, in his hyphenate debut (he co-concocted the story), has scored big with a real-life engagement to the ethereally beautiful–and undernourished and anaemic–Kate Beckinsale, enough to take the sting out of the blah of Underworld, I'd surmise. And why not? Many would fail worse for less, but as a writer and director he proves himself to be a pretty good set designer.

Dreamcatcher (2003) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

September 16, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Stephen King, Thriller

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis
screenplay by William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan, based on the novel by Stephen King
directed by Lawrence Kasdan

by Walter Chaw As stupid as stupid can be, Lawrence Kasdan’s splashy comeback on the backs of two writers who haven’t really been any good for about 40 years between them (Stephen King and William Goldman) is riddled with knee-slapping plot inconsistencies and the sort of dunderheaded conveniences that reek equally of desperation and a lack of respect for the audience. Based on the first King novel written after the author was smeared across a Maine highway by a man who would later kill himself in a trailer, the book is a fine short story trapped in the body of a 600-page book. Hopelessly protracted, after the first 200 pages, the novel becomes a pathetic exercise in chronic self-reference: the malady of a successful author who’s begun to lose the line between reality and his cult of personality. King has become a writer interested in writing love letters to his fanbase and smug gruel for everyone else.

TIFF ’03: Gozu

September 10, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF
Yakuza Horror Theater: Gozu***½/****starring Hideki Sone, Sho Aikawa, Kimika Yoshino, Keiko Tomitascreenplay by Sakichi Sotodirected by Takashi Miike by Bill Chambers I've sat here staring at a flashing cursor, wondering what to write about Takashi Miike's Gozu--a picture whose spirit harks back to the David Lynch of Eraserhead--that could persuade you to see it: Though Gozu begs a viewing, any description likely to pique one's interest would force you to pre-emptively pass moral judgment on a film that a) explicitly requests to be taken as a joke, and b) is too fecund to truly offend. Gozu begins with the over-the-top…

TIFF ’03: Bon Voyage

September 7, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, TIFF, War
*½/****starring Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Virginie Ledoyen, Yvan Attalwritten and directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau by Bill Chambers "And I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll boorrre the hell out of you." Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage labours harder than any film in recent memory to entertain, but the result is so draining I don't remember grooving with it once. In the opening scene, the latest vehicle for champagne starlet Viviane Denverts (Isabelle Adjani, who at 48 should be too old to play an ingénue, but looks at least half her age--it's quite miraculous, really) leaves rapt the attendees of a French…

The Experiment (2001) – DVD

September 6, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

Das Experiment
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel, Oliver Stokowski, Wotan Wilke
screenplay by Don Bohlinger, Christoph Darnstädt, Mario Giordano, based on the novel by Black Box by Giordano
directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

by Walter Chaw Midnight Express with pretensions, Oliver Hirschbiegel's The Experiment is based loosely on Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, and Jaffe's "Stanford Prison Experiment," conducted in 1971 to test the reactions of twenty-four ordinary college students–some cast as prison guards, others incarcerated in a mock prison–paid fifteen dollars a day for their participation in the study. Having to end the experiment after only six days because of pathological prisoner reactions and sadistic guard reactions, the "Stanford Prison Experiment" remains one of the more ethically shaky mindfucks in Stanford's proud tradition of such things (my favourite of them being the one where experimenters tested men's "performance anxiety" while urinating in public restrooms)–a topic dramatic enough to merit a cinematic treatment, without question, but a treatment served poorly by the formula embellishments favoured by The Experiment.

TIFF ’03: Elephant

September 6, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: Gus Van Sant, Drama, Film Festivals, Palme d'Or Winner, Teen, Thriller, TIFF
***½/****starring Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnellwritten and directed by Gus Van Sant by Bill Chambers Though it ultimately garnered Gus Van Sant the Best Director prize (in addition to the Palme d'or), Elephant's lukewarm reception among ink-slingers at last May's Cannes Film Festival confirms the dulled senses of the critical establishment--that a contemporary masterwork can practically blind with its colour scheme and still go unrecognized as such by cinema's ambassadors is more terrifying than anything in Van Sant's searing interpretation of the Columbine atrocity. The first film intended for theatrical exhibition to be screened in Academy ratio…

Burnt Offerings (1976) – DVD

September 3, 2003Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image C+ Sound D+ Extras C
starring Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Burgess Meredith, Eileen Heckart
screenplay by William F. Nolan and Dan Curtis, based on the novel by Robert Marasco
directed by Dan Curtis

by Walter Chaw Plodding, ugly, moribund, Burnt Offerings is bolstered by a few great campy turns from a game cast that includes Oliver Reed, Karen Black, and Bette Davis in a performance that runs counter to the self-loathing roles of her Baby Jane/Sweet Charlotte days. Finding its way to the DVD format just a couple of weeks before another haunted house flick (Cold Creek Manor) debuts on the big screen, veteran television director Dan Curtis's horror quickie is one of those comfortable relics that doesn't scare so much as mildly chill, offering countless opportunities to shout at the screen without any sort of discernible payoff–until the end, that is, but even that shocker of a conclusion has been telegraphed since at least the midway point of the first act, muffling its surprise.

Confidence (2003) – DVD

September 1, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman
screenplay by Doug Jung
directed by James Foley

by Walter Chaw The urban surfaces of Americana are lent the sheen of Edward Hopper's neon isolationism by cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchía in the appropriately named Confidence, which finds director James Foley back on noir ground, where his footing is firmest. It's the same effect generated by Foley/Anchía's Glengarry Glen Ross, here in Confidence used to mellifluous affect rather than staccato at the service of a caper flick if not the equal to Jules Dassin's seminal contributions to the genre, at least several times better than the slickified nonsense (The Score, the Ocean's Eleven remake) and sinkholes of talky illogic (Heist) of recent fare. A successful heist film as rare as a film that uses Edward Burns correctly in a sentence, Confidence is proof positive–if proof were needed–that James Foley, when he's at the top of his game, is at the top of the game.

Out for a Kill (2003) – DVD

August 30, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Aruba, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, DVD, Martial Arts, Thriller

*/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Steven Seagal, Michelle Goh, Corey Johnson, Kata Dobó
screenplay by Dennis Dimster
directed by Michael Oblowitz

by Bill Chambers The other day, my friend and I were at the CNE, Toronto's annual expo of overpriced amusements, when we got a hankering for the raw sewage peddled inside its flea-market-sized food court. Where we wound up eating was at Kentucky Style Chicken, one of the many transient take-outs named for maximum copyright infringement and serving a synthetic mock-up of the already-inedible. Out for a Kill exists in the same spirit: Steven Seagal's first direct-to-video production in weeks, its designation combines the titles of his early pictures Hard to Kill and Out for Justice while mixing and matching nearly every trend, past and present, of the martial arts genre, on whose outskirts Seagal has toiled throughout his film career. Here, imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery, it's a cloaking device–"Doesn't this remind you of something?" vs. "Boy, does this stink." You know something? Sometimes I get a hankering for movies I know I'll regret, too.

Four Faces West (1948) + Blood on the Sun (1945) – DVDs

August 26, 2003Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller, War, Western

FOUR FACES WEST
*/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Charles Bickford, Joseph Calleia
screenplay by C. Graham Baker, Teddi Sherman; adaptation: William Brent and Milarde Brent, based on the novel by Eugene Manlove Rhodes
directed by Alfred E. Green

BLOOD ON THE SUN
**½/**** Image F Sound B+
starring James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney, Porter Hall, John Emery
screenplay by Lester Cole, with additional scenes by Nathaniel Curtis
directed by Frank Lloyd

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Auteurism giveth, auteurism taketh away. It’s generally assumed that if we gravitate to the director with the greatest skill and the most obvious “personal” style, we will be doing ourselves a big cultural favour and putting ourselves on the side of the angels. And indeed, we generally strive for the power and aesthetic purity of those “originals,” as they give us the most pleasure. But if we declare–regardless of whether that personality has anything to say or says anything halfway coherent–that the only criterion of value in a film is a director’s personality, we will be shutting ourselves off from the other thing that artists do, which is interpreting the world for us. And sometimes lesser filmmakers take on subjects that great artists ignore–creating, if not brilliant analyses, something to stand for or against.

The Medallion (2003)

August 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Jackie Chan, Lee Evans, Claire Forlani, Julian Sands
screenplay by Bey Logan, Gordon Chan, Alfred Cheung, Bennett Joshua Davlin, Paul Wheeler
directed by Gordon Chan

Medallionby Walter Chaw I think it's fair at this point to say that I'm no longer so much a Jackie Chan fan as I really like a few Jackie Chan movies. His career has taken a rather conspicuous downturn since he reintroduced himself to Hollywood almost a decade ago, just after his last great film Drunken Master 2, scraping and bowing and remixing a few of his Hong Kong hits with English-dubs (and why is it that Asian films are the only ones consistently re-voiced for North American release?) and consenting to play ethnic Kato caricature to a string of Yank comedians for inexperienced directors and that screaming idiot Brett Ratner.

Dirty Pretty Things (2003); Shanghai Ghetto (2003); Camp (2003)

August 20, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Musical, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS
***/****
starring Audrey Tautou, Sergi López, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo
screenplay by Steve Knight
directed by Stephen Frears

SHANGHAI GHETTO
**/****
directed by Dana Janklowicz-Mann & Amir Mann

CAMP
*½/****
starring Daniel Letterle, Joanna Chilcoat, Robin de Jesus, Steven Cutts
written and directed by Todd Graff

by Walter Chaw Stephen Frears, like antipodean director Phillip Noyce before him, found the Hollywood waters to be a touch turgid and so in 2000 went back to the small country where he first rose to prominence. For Frears, who made his first resonant mark with a fantastic quartet of films–My Beautiful Laundrette, Walter and June, Prick Up Your Ears, and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid–in the mid-’80s, the return to his homeland presaged a return to his interest in England’s bottom caste and immigrant class, first with the grim, slight Liam and now with the trancelike, nightmarish Dirty Pretty Things. Its title both a reference to smarmy hotel manager Juan’s (Sergi López) philosophy of hotel management (“Our guests are strangers–they leave dirty things, we make them pretty things”) and the idea that the “pretty things” might be the film’s pretty heroes, Nigerian refugee Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Turkish illegal Senay (Audrey Tautou), dirtied by the realities of blue-collar London. The struggle between the pragmatism of Juan’s outlook and the idea of sullied purity of Okwe and Senay is really all you need know about the picture–it’s a piece composed of equal parts social realism and fairytale martyrdom, with either part watered down by the other.

The Hunted (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD + William Friedkin: Films of Aberration, Obsession and Reality – Books

August 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Books About Movies, Crime, Directors: William Friedkin, Drama, DVD, Thriller

THE HUNTED
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio Del Toro, Connie Nielsen, Jenna Boyd
screenplay by David Griffiths & Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli
directed by William Friedkin

WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: FILMS OF ABERRATION, OBSESSION AND REALITY
FFC rating: 9/10
written by Thomas D. Clagett

by Walter Chaw Hot on the heels of Bruce Willis’s bwana wish-fulfillment fantasy Tears of the Sun comes William Friedkin’s The Hunted, a film that introduces its titular fugitive in a flashback to Kosovo at the height of the Albanian genocide. The parsing of historical atrocity functioning as shorthand for backstory to what is essentially a pretentious action movie is distasteful, the insertion into that history of elite American soldiers righting wrongs un-righted to this day a kind of unspeakable arrogance late unique of Yankee cloth. That being said, The Hunted is a cheerfully ridiculous movie that manages over the course of its running time to entertain with a series of action set-pieces that recall Friedkin’s work in The French Connection. Though riddled with plot impossibilities and stunning coincidences, the picture, courtesy, perhaps, of Caleb Deschanel’s magnificent cinematography, reminds of the nearness of nature and violence of John Boorman’s Deliverance; of the kineticism of Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity; and of the premise and execution of a little-read Rex Miller novel called S.L.O.B.. If it also reminds of the creaky Abraham/Oedipus by way of Robert Bly wilderness dynamic of Mamet’s appalling The Edge, so be it: the fun parts outweigh the infuriating ones.

Identity (2003) [Special Edition] – DVD

August 11, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina
screenplay by Michael Cooney
directed by James Mangold

by Walter Chaw Although by the end it isn’t nearly as interesting as it is clever, James Mangold’s take on the slasher genre Identity is a tricky little beast that fits in peculiarly well with the recent trend of deconstructive horror films (such as The Ring and Soft for Digging). Its use of Hughes Mearns’s haunting “Antigonish” (1899, “I was going up the stair/I met a man who wasn’t there!/He wasn’t there again today!/I wish, I wish he’d stay away!”) reminds of Dario Argento’s nursery dirge in Deep Red, while the film’s telescoping storytelling style evokes, of all things, the caper genre. With its title suggesting a certain high-mindedness, when a character glances for a swollen moment at Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, it tells too much of what the film will be about: the philosopher’s existential definition of consciousness projected onto reality and the dangers of mauvaise foi (bad faith), the process by which people, within themselves, elude responsibility for what they do. Still, the film is such a professional exercise on every level that its obviousness–better, its literalness–can be forgiven.

Mondays in the Sun (2002); Freaky Friday (2003); The Eye (2002)

August 1, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Hong Kong, Horror, Italy, Singapore, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

Los Lunes al sol
**/****
starring Javier Bardem, Luis Tosar, José Ángel Egido, Nieve de Medina
screenplay by Fernando León de Aranda, Ignacio del Moral
directed by Fernando León de Aranda

FREAKY FRIDAY
**/****
starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Harold Gould, Mark Harmon
screenplay by Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon, based on the novel by Mary Rodgers
directed by Mark S. Waters

Jian gui
*½/****
starring Angelica Lee, Lawrence Chou, Chutcha Rujinanon, Yut Lai So
screenplay by Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui, Oxide Pang & Danny Pang
directed by Oxide Pang & Danny Pang

Mondaysfreakyeyeby Walter Chaw Fernando León de Aranda's Mondays in the Sun is probably best described as a Spanish version of Fred Schepisi's Last Orders: a journal of a depressed nation's aging gentry, ferrying one of their own on to the great symbolic hereafter. It aspires to the sort of myth of Vittorio Di Sica's neo-realism, portraying the plight of the dispossessed working class in its unadorned splendour, succeeding by the end only to be a repetitive tattoo around the threadbare theme of men defined by work and destroyed by obsolescence. A castration melodrama in several anecdotal horizontal movements, Mondays in the Sun loses steam and tests patience by making its one point to exhaustion. A scene where the great Javier Bardem rails at the fable of the grasshopper and the ants ("This is bunk! It has no sympathy for someone who is born a grasshopper instead of an ant!") says almost all there is to say about the film, while a lingering close-up of Bardem's battered mug in all its injured brute eloquence is, by itself again, enough.

Final Destination 2 (2003) [infinifilm] – DVD

July 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Horror, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Ali Larter, A.J. Cook, Michael Landes, Terrence ‘T.C.’ Carson
screenplay by J. Mackye Gruber & Eric Bress
directed by David Richard Ellis 

by Walter Chaw Earning some marks for a gratuitous tit shot and a few graphic kills, the mystical gorefest Final Destination 2 is an unusually mordant excuse to knock off a few good-looking caricatures. Philosophically speaking, it develops its mythology with a series of rules so Byzantine that rather than spend a surplus of time trying to unravel what’s going on, it’s best just to settle comfortably into the realization that the ones we’ve marked for death are, in fact, marked by Death in the film. The most interesting thing about the picture, in fact, is that it is self-reflexive for genre fans, who’ve made it something of a matter of course to pick out the heroine and the meat bags from the rest of the cattle. In our way, we become the avatars of the Grim Reaper, laying our bony fingers on each inevitable victim in turn. The audience, in a very direct way, becomes that invisible cold wind that announces the arrival of doom–Final Destination 2 is almost interactive.