House of Sand and Fog (2003)

December 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Ron Eldard, Frances Fisher
screenplay by Vadim Perelman and Shawn Lawrence Otto
directed by Vadim Perelman

Houseofsandandfogby Walter Chaw Based on an award-winning novel by Andres Dubus III, son of Canadian novelist and short-story writer Andre Dubus, Vadim Perelman's hyphenate debut House of Sand and Fog is difficult to gauge on its own merits, given that the typically invasive grandiosity of another abominable James Horner score sinks the picture almost by itself. With no moment uncommented-upon by Horner's bank of weeping violins and no lovely Roger Deakins tableau unmarred by Horner's insatiable taste for schmaltz, the picture is a prime example of two things: the prestige picture/Oscar grab; and the film of grand emotions that decides to trust its composer over its cast and screenplay. The similarities between House of Sand and Fog and In the Bedroom (a film based on Dubus Sr.'s short story "Killings") are obvious, but where the latter allows its cast to breathe, House of Sand and Fog smothers Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly in a fatal dose of Horner's saccharine ministrations. In Horner's defense, however, the extended climax during which a vein-popping Kingsley is allowed too much rein is awful without help.

City of Ghosts (2003) – DVD

November 28, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Matt Dillon, James Caan, Natascha McElhone, Gérard Depardieu
screenplay by Matt Dillon & Barry Gifford
directed by Matt Dillon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It pains me to have to pan something as accomplished as Matt Dillon's directorial debut City of Ghosts. On a technical level, the film is unimpeachable, moving at a comfortable click and remarkably seamless in its creation and assembly; it's not genius, perhaps, but it's certainly capable and, considering that it's a first feature, surprisingly at ease with the mechanics of image-making. Alas, image-making is not the only criteria by which we judge a movie, and so it must be regretfully said that the story that City of Ghosts has to tell is at best condescending and at worst casually racist, with a tourist's eye for the Phnom Penh setting viewing one more Marlow looking for his Kurtz.

X2: X-Men United (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

November 23, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Thriller

X2
**½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A-
starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry
screenplay by Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris
directed by Bryan Singer

X2dvdcap

by Walter Chaw Where the first film opened with a Holocaust backstory, the second instalment begins in the White House with a quote from Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address and a cool doubling of Aaron Shikler's pensive portrait of John F. Kennedy. X-Men is setting itself up as a high-minded comic book franchise, one unusually committed to relating its empowerment panel soap-opera with solid performances, decent scripting, and direction from a filmmaker, Bryan Singer, interested in the sanctity of narrative. The problems with X2's (a.k.a. X-Men 2 and X2: X-Men United) premise and its wrangling of so large an ensemble are fairly obvious: there are no real limits placed on the powers of the "X-Men" mutants and there is little time afforded to the proper establishment of relational conflict.

The Missing (2003)

November 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Theatrical, Thriller, Western

*½/****
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Evan Rachel Wood, Jenna Boyd
screenplay by Ken Kaufman, based on the novel The Last Ride by Thomas Edison
directed by Ron Howard

Lookee what we have here--one-a them frontier elvesby Walter Chaw Probably best described as Ron Howard’s The Searchers, the really quite awful The Missing (the first clue is a James Horner score) and its tale of bad Indians vs. sacrificial Indians vs. white settlers unfolds during a frontier period that, the last time Howard dabbled, unleashed Far and Away. With Horner’s help, Howard proves with The Missing that there’s no source material too bleak (not schizophrenia, not reality television, not space mishaps) for him to shine his dimwitted, beatific smile upon. He transforms Thomas Eidson’s bleak frontier western (The Last Ride) into a curious sort of faux-feminist uplift melodrama (“Mildred Pierce, Medicine Woman”), demonstrating, along the way, that he has no idea what issues he’s raising, much less any idea how to honour them.

Mimic: Sentinel (2003) – DVD

November 12, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Karl Geary, Amanda Plummer, Alexis Dziena, Rebecca Mader
written and directed by J.T. Petty

by Walter Chaw Written and directed by wunderkind J.T. Petty, the second sequel to Guillermo Del Toro's underestimated and, admittedly, somewhat botched Mimic is a self-confessed "Rear Window with giant man-eating cockroaches" marked by a strong sense of camp and a visual style humming with a cohesive, kinetic logic that indicates, possibly, the emergence of a major genre talent. Between Mimic 3: Sentinel ("Mimic: Sentinel" on its title card and hereafter "Sentinel") and his remarkable feature debut, the mostly silent NYU student film Soft for Digging, Petty betrays a genuine gift for cinematic storytelling, stripping down dialogue to a skeletal structure and relying on the force of his images for the bulk of the exposition. Accordingly, the parts of Sentinel that bog down are the parts that rely too much on the cast to provide backstory and motivation when the best, most poetic bits of the picture are the first ten minutes (including its credit sequence) that tells all one needs to know without a word of dialogue.

The Christopher Lee Collection – DVD

November 10, 2003Posted in1960s, 1970s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blue Underground, Crime, DVD, Germany, Horror, Italy, Liechtenstein, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK

CIRCUS OF FEAR (1966)
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, Anthony Newlands, Heinz Drache
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by John Moxey

THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU (1968)
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Tsai Chin, Maria Rohm, Howard Marion Crawford
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU (1969)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Tsai Chin, Maria Perschy, Richard Greene
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

THE BLOODY JUDGE
Il trono di fuoco (1970)
**/**** Image A Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Maria Schell, Leo Genn, Maria Rohm
screenplay by Anthony Scott Veitch
directed by Jess Franco

by Walter Chaw The sort of box set that horror fans and film historians slaver over (though Sino-Western ambassadors probably aren't too pleased about), Blue Underground's exceptionally, reverently remastered four-disc "Christopher Lee Collection" gathers four obscure Lee pictures–The Blood of Fu Manchu, The Castle of Fu Manchu, Circus of Fear, and The Bloody Judge–in presentations so vibrant and beautiful that they're almost enough to distract from the uniform tediousness of the films themselves. A little like avant-garde cinema, these pictures–all but one (Circus of Fear) directed by the notoriously, appallingly untalented Jess Franco–function better as theory than fact, unfolding on staid soundstage environments with single camera set-ups, stock footage, and jump cuts, and squandering, for the most part, the magisterial presence and delivery of Lee. (For the record, a lethal drinking game could probably be devised around the number of times Franco zooms to different parts of the same shot to avoid the inconvenience of relighting or moving the camera around.)

Film Freak Central Does the 2003 New York City Horror Film Festival

November 5, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Horror, Short Films, Thriller, UK, Zombie

Nychorrorlogo November 5, 2003|Held at the Tribeca Theater for the second year in a row, the New York City Horror Film Festival (NYCHFF) is a collection of low-budget feature and short genre films that, like the San Francisco Film Society's lamented Dark Wave festival (after two amazing years, there is no third instalment pending), gives weight to a much-deserved critical re-evaluation of horror film as an important artistic, sociological, academic endeavour. With special awards this year honouring Troma's Lloyd Kaufman, underestimated horror director Stuart Gordon, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, my favourite independent horror director Larry Fessenden, and special effects legend Tom Savini, the 2nd NYCHFF is an emerging niche festival run by folks who care about the genre and, better, have an idea about how to present the material in a way as enthusiastic as it is savvy.

The Human Stain (2003)

October 31, 2003Posted inDrama, Germany, Ireland, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise
screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, based on the novel by Philip Roth
directed by Robert Benton

Humanstainby Walter Chaw A gravid piece of Oscar-baiting garbage, Robert Benton's dead-on-arrival The Human Stain plods along with the dedication of the dangerously bloated and the pathologically self-important. It's so woefully miscast that its awards-season intentions become transparent, honouring pedigree to mortify the material, and no matter how eternally topical issues of race in the United States might be, the whole production feels airless and badly dated–something like an Arthur Miller parable, lead balloons and rhetorical minefields and all. In fact, the picture is just on this side of camp classic as venerable whore Anthony Hopkins cuts a rug with Gary Sinise to a few Irving Berlin classics and game Nicole Kidman, going the Frankie and Johnny route with an entirely unsuccessful blue-collar turn indicated by a fake tattoo and cigarette, is outmatched by a Nicholas Meyer screenplay packed with head-slappers and incongruities. The sort of movie I tend to dismiss offhand, The Human Stain proves trickier to exorcise for its populist attack on the populist phenomena of political correctness. That doesn't mean the picture's interesting, it means that the picture's thumbing of a hot-button topic buys it a little analysis.

Watchers/Watchers II [Double Feature] – DVD

October 31, 2003Posted in1980s, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, ZERO STARS

WATCHERS (1988)
*/**** Image C- Sound C
starring Corey Haim, Barbara Williams, Michael Ironside
screenplay by Bill Freed and Damian Lee, based on Watchers by Dean R. Koontz
directed by Jon Hess

WATCHERS II (2002)
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C
starring Marc Singer, Tracy Scoggins, Jonathan Farwell, Irene Miracle
screenplay by Henry Dominic
directed by Thierry Notz

by Walter Chaw Lassie vs. Link in what amounts to one of the stupidest films ever made: an adaptation of a Dean Koontz (one of the stupidest novelists ever made) novel, Watchers looks cheap, plays cheap, and stars Corey Haim as a Lita Ford-looking, ambiguously gay teen who’s upstaged by a dog yet again (see: The Lost Boys and, in a way, Silver Bullet). At least he’s not upstaged by Corey Feldman this time around, which, frankly, can’t be good for anyone’s career or self-respect. A tale of a genetically engineered orangutan warring with a genetically engineered golden retriever in the upscale suburbs of Anywhere, America that looks like Vancouver and boasts of the entire Mayberry police force, Watchers is aided now and again by a trademark ridiculous performance from Michael Ironside, the poor man’s Jack Nicholson, but is generally an unredeemable tale of military paranoia and dog love. As the mutt gazes intently off-screen at the commands of his invisible handler (and Haim the same), the film has as its only vaguely interesting moment one where a fat kid named “Piggy” and Jason Priestly try to out-bike the killer monkey, restaging The Lord of the Flies as a BMX downhill derby. Oh, the humanity.

In the Cut (2003) + Sylvia (2003)

October 31, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

IN THE CUT
****/****
starring Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Damici
screenplay by Jane Campion & Susanna Moore, based on the novel by Moore
directed by Jane Campion

SYLVIA
*½/****
starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, Blythe Danner
screenplay by John Brownlow
directed by Christine Jeffs

"Come at last to this point
I look back on my passion
And realize that I
Have been like a blind man
Who is unafraid of the dark"
-Yosana Akiko

Inthecut

by Walter Chaw Frances Avery (Meg Ryan) is in love with words. She moves through life obscuring herself in a nimbus of them, passing through the world with poetry as her guiding principle. Director Jane Campion is no stranger to a life lived in thrall to poesy–her films An Angel at My Table and The Piano detailed the life of poet Janet Frame and the life of the mind, respectively, and In the Cut finds its meaning and rhythm in the words that Frannie collects, fragments of poems cut from books and collected from subway walls. The New York through which Frannie walks is festooned with ghosts of American flags, tattered and blown after two years of constant display, losing their meaning along with their colours fading up to the sky. Likewise, Frannie sees herself a phantom of unmentioned tragedies, haunting her own life, retreating to the comfort of words when a half-sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), pillories her chaste existence, or when Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) interrogates her about a string of serial murders he's investigating. A scholar of words, Frannie is involved as the film opens in a project analyzing inner-city slang: language as organic and in transition.

Halloween (1978) [25th Anniversary Divimax Edition] – DVD

October 30, 2003Posted in****/****, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: John Carpenter, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Thriller

****/**** Image B- Sound A Extras A
starring Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles
screenplay by John Carpenter & Debra Hill
directed by John Carpenter

by Walter Chaw As tempting as it is to write the umpteenth dissertation on the importance and brilliance of John Carpenter’s Halloween, it’s almost enough to say that there is very possibly no other seminal Seventies film–not The Godfather, not Star Wars, perhaps not even Jaws–that has had a greater influence on popular culture. It’s a movie about a fishbowl that exists now only in a fishbowl, a picture so examined that its sadistic ability to maintain an atmosphere of horrified anticipation is consumed by the intellectualization of its hedonism=death equation. A screening with fresh eyes reveals a picture and a filmmaker owing incalculable debts to Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks.

Bride of Re-Animator (1990) – DVD

October 30, 2003Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**½/**** Image C Sound C
starring Bruce Abbott, Claude Larl Jones, Fabiana Odento, David Gale
screenplay by Woody Keith and Rick Fry
directed by Brian Yuzna

by Walter Chaw Screaming Mad George is a genius. Make-up artist extraordinaire, his legacy is born of Stan Winston and Tom Savini, but his touch is more witty than the former and more perverse than the latter, resulting in a body of work that, by itself, makes the third Children of the Corn film a winner, the climax of Brian Yuzna’s Society unspeakably sticky, and this, Yuzna’s sequel to Stuart Gordon’s classic splatter flick Re-Animator, a gore flick of unusual visual wit and energy. A continuation of the sad events at H.P. Lovecraft’s doomed Miskatonic University, the tale of mad Herbert West (B-movie legend Jeffrey Combs) and his experiments in reanimating living tissue (undaunted, apparently, by his run-in with an over-eager intestinal tract in the first film) with hapless assistant Dan (Bruce Abbott), Bride of Re-Animator captures a lot of the gleeful lack of boundaries of the first film without, predictably, the attendant surprise and freshness. Still, what emerges is a genre picture that, for all of its lack of psychosexual subtext and subtlety, gains for its jubilant indulgence in the wetworks.

Party Monster (2003)

October 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Crime, Drama, Netherlands, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, Chloë Sevigny, Natasha Lyonne
screenplay by Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato, based on the book Disco Bloodbath by James St. James
directed by Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato

Partymonsterby Travis Mackenzie Hoover By all rights, Party Monster shouldn't work as well as it does. Not only is it flip about matters of grave seriousness (in this case, the murder of a Hispanic drug dealer by Club Kid impresario Michael Alig), but it hasn't got much on its mind beyond the endless debauchery afforded by its subject matter, and consequently gives all other matters the rhinestone-studded shaft. But despite all of this shallowness, the film is surprisingly engrossing; as Alig falls into his downward spiral, it becomes a harrowing reminder that, per the film's much-abused Blake quote, the road of excess can often lead to the path of destruction.

To Live and Die in LA (1985) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 23, 2003Posted in1980s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: William Friedkin, Drama, DVD, Thriller

To Live and Die in L.A.
***/**** Image B Sound A- Extras A
starring William L. Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow, Debra Feuer
screenplay by William Friedkin and Gerald Petievich, based on the novel by Petievich
directed by William Friedkin

by Bill Chambers William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. sprang from the director's mid-'80s preoccupation with music-video nihilism, and as such has peaks and valleys depending on the degree of montage a sequence calls for. The tin-ear that Friedkin contracted sometime after the Seventies, which drove him to fatally second-guess Paul Brickman's Swiftian screenplay for Deal of the Century, imbues many an exchange in To Live and Die in L.A. with authenticity (only real people flounder this much trying to sound hard-boiled), but the stylish visuals in turn butt heads with the dialogue, prompting us to wish for a slicker whole. The silliest repartee also throws the symbolic-to-the-point-of-corny names of central figures Chance (William L. Petersen) and Masters (Willem Dafoe) into tautological relief: Chance is a Secret Service agent who thrives on risk (fittingly, a found poker chip decides him in pursuit of the bad guy), while Masters, who's like Patrick Bateman without the civility, is a painter who has mastered the art of making funny-money, as is demonstrated for us in a breathtaking collection of how-to shots that single-handedly justifies Friedkin's dabble in the MTV aesthetic.

Willard (2003) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

October 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Horror, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Crispin Glover, Laura Elena Harring, Jackie Burroughs, R. Lee Ermey
screenplay by Glen Morgan, based on the screenplay by Gilbert Ralston and Ralston’s novel Ratman’s Notebook
directed by Glen Morgan

by Walter Chaw If you’re going to remake an Ernest Borgnine movie from the Seventies, I’d rather see a redux of The Devil’s Rain. But Willard it is; for the blissfully uninitiated, Willard concerns the travails of a lonesome weirdo who makes friends with a bunch of rats, Phenomena-style (Argento not Travolta, which brings us back to The Devil’s Rain, curiously), and sends them on a crusade against an evil boss who wants to buy Willard’s house. Bruce Davison as the original Willard has a nice moment in that film where he implores his rat-kinder to “tear it up” good, but the film is probably best remembered for the theme song of its sequel, Ben, penned by Michael Jackson v.0.2. The theme song, and Davison, have stupid cameos in the new Willard.

DIFF ’03: The Flower of Evil

October 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Thriller
*½/****screenplay by Caroline Eliacheff and Louise L. Lambrichs, adaptation by Claude Chabroldirected by Claude Chabrol by Walter Chaw Claude Chabrol, the master of the French thriller, is perhaps better described as the master of the French femme-fear film, making an art of women empowering themselves through the destruction of class and gender distinction. With The Flower of Evil (La Fleur du Mal) (no relation to the Baudelaire), Chabrol continues his slide into quaint, comfortable insignificance with his umpteenth treatment of a theme; he's become sort of a French Ozu, if you will, but with murder. This time around, the aging…

Veronica Guerin (2003)

October 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Drama, Ireland, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Cate Blanchett, Gerard McSorley, Ciarán Hinds, Brenda Fricker
screenplay by Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donoghue
directed by Joel Schumacher

Veronicaguerinby Walter Chaw By the end of the piece, the only thing missing is John Wayne in ill-fitting Centurion garb, drawling "I do believe she truly was the son of God" over the corpse of slain journalist Veronica Guerin (Cate Blanchett), so at pains is Joel Schumacher's tedious spectacle of a hagiography of Guerin to paint her as some sort of sainted martyr. Veronica Guerin is horrible, really, a passel of forced dramatic slow push-ins framing Blanchett's mannered performance (in a Princess Diana haircut, no less, to really ramp up that pathos) all of insouciantly arched eyebrows and saucy eyeballs and centred dead and soft-lit like a Giotto effigy. Much is made of Guerin's print peers looking down on her, then a closing title card offers a statistic on the number of journalists killed in the line of duty, the suggestion being that journalists are sniffy elitists who don't like someone who can't write, has no background or experience in journalism, and takes unnecessary risks with themselves and their families–and that journalists are heroes regularly martyred by their thirst for truth. You really can't have it both ways, and that lack of focus isn't ambiguity so much as confusion brought about by a mortal dose of self-righteousness.

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.