Equilibrium (2002)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Taye Diggs, Angus MacFadyen
written and directed by Kurt Wimmer

Equilibriumby Walter Chaw After cutting his teeth as a director on the Brian Bosworth vehicle One Tough Bastard, Kurt Wimmer proves himself grotesquely unprepared for his hyphenate debut: the futuristic stink-fest Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, and Taye Diggs. Set in the post-apocalypse via a series of tired title cards and voice-overs, the film is immediately recognizable as an ironically illiterate rip-off of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Lucas’s Aldous Huxley photocopy THX-1138. Pulling scenes entire from Blade Runner, Citizen Kane, and The Matrix while pulling philosophies entire from–yes, I was surprised, too–Gymkata, Equilibrium is another Dimension genre film made for no money that stinks a lot like Gary Fleder’s excrescent Impostor from earlier this year, though it somehow manages to be considerably funnier.

Unfaithful (2002) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Romance, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Diane Lane, Richard Gere, Erik Per Sullivan, Olivier Martinez
screenplay by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr., based on the screenplay for La Femme Infidele by Claude Chabrol
directed by Adrian Lyne

by Walter Chaw The designer’s eye and yen for the seedy of Adrian Lyne–sort of the Ridley Scott of soft-porn–manifest themselves in Unfaithful, the latest permutation of Lyne’s ongoing upper-middle-class angst cycle: blood-pounding eroticism into passionate bloodletting. The kind of Jacques Tati wind that carries off Kansas farm-girls sends Diane Lane’s Big Apple gal Connie into the brawny arms of book-dealing Frenchman Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez). Connie dabbles in adultery, though she is not exactly unhappily married to armoured car company owner Edward (Richard Gere); call it the milk-fed blues. She’s just bored enough to take an eleventh-year slackening of attention and a forgotten overcoat as an excuse to tryst in an impossible Soho loft.

The Quiet American (2002)

Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, France, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, Vietnam, War

***/****
starring Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen, Rade Sherbedgia
screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan, based on the novel by Graham Greene
directed by Phillip Noyce

Quietamericanby Walter Chaw Walking a fine line between nostalgia and regret, irony and earnestness, Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American, adapted from the novel by Graham Greene, is a lovely film that captures, like Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, the delicate balance between romance in the immediate foreground and the backdrop of war and politics. Evoking the colonial decay of Greene’s work while evincing one of the best performances of Michael Caine’s career, The Quiet American stars Caine as a British journalist in Vietnam who falls in a hopeless kind of love with a beautiful girl a third his age. His subsequent desperation and jealousy feel real; take note of an anguished scene in a bathroom stall–Caine suddenly seems to be getting better with every role.

Vulgar (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Brian Christopher O’Halloran, Jerry Lewkowitz, Matthew Maher, Ethan Suplee
written and directed by Bryan Johnson

by Walter Chaw Beginning as Shakes the Clown and segueing into I Spit on Your Grave before finally settling on Death to Smoochy, the discordant, hideously unpleasant Vulgar is the kind of puerile vanity piece that gives exploitation and egotism bad names. Produced by Kevin Smith and seeking to be a creation mythology for Smith’s View Askew mascot (just another example of Smith overestimating the inherent interest in his cult of personality), the picture is the hyphenate debut for Smith crony Bryan Johnson, making Smith, along the way, just the next nepotistic “Happy Madison” pinhead king of diminished returns.

Reign of Fire (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, Izabella Scorupco, Gerard Butler
screenplay by Gregg Chabot & Kevin Peterka and Matt Greenberg
directed by Rob Bowman

by Walter Chaw Opening concurrent to Sam Mendes’s Road to Perdition, it occurs to me that both it and Reign of Fire are grim, shadowy elegies to lost ages that rely upon gloomy landscapes to convey deeper resonances their stories basic fail to provide. The surprising difference is that Rob Bowman’s post-apocalyptic dragon opera actually has a cannier allegorical foundation. Where Road to Perdition is ultimately an empty broadside attempt at equating the semi-Rockwellian loss of innocence of a little boy to the semi-Rockwellian loss of innocence of the United States in the Twenties and Thirties, Reign of Fire appears to be a story of the Blitz and the first days of American involvement in WWII. The French even make a cameo to try to claim a little piece of “Berlin” during the otherwise incomprehensible epilogue.

Bad Company (2002)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Czech Republic, Directors: Joel Schumacher, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Anthony Hopkins, Chris Rock, Gabriel Macht, Garcelle Beauvais
screenplay by Jason Richman and Michael Browning
directed by Joel Schumacher

by Walter Chaw Apparently named after a dinosaur rock band for no other reason than that it is a logy, prehistoric stillbirth imbued with the corpulent stench of excess (and probably a scattershot popularity attributable to a feeble-minded few), Bad Company would be the worst film I have seen this year had I not attended Cameron Diaz’s The Sweetest Thing. It’s professional hack extraordinaire Joel Schumacher’s latest sloppy bucket of pyrotechnic tripe, and not coincidentally the umpteenth summer skinny dip in Jerry Bruckheimer’s putrid pond of retread action twaddle. The collaboration of Schumacher and Bruckheimer, incidentally, should be warning enough to most sentient beings–the addition of Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins, only overkill.

One Last Score (2002) + The Shipment (2002) – DVDs

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

If… Dog… Rabbit
*/**** Image C+ Sound C
starring Matthew Modine, John Hurt, Kevin O’Connor, David Keith
written and directed by Matthew Avery Modine

THE SHIPMENT
ZERO STARS/**** Image C Sound C-
starring Matthew Modine, Elizabeth Berkley, Nick Turturro, Paul Rodriguez
screenplay by Rich Steen
directed by Alex Wright

by Walter Chaw Matthew Modine has made a career of acting the idiosyncratic man of action–that scattershot chortle masking some unusual skill and the kind of laconic intelligence that Eric Stoltz has utilized to far different effect. Peaking early as Pvt. Joker in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (and scoring a couple times before that in the deceptively interesting Vision Quest and Alan Parker’s moody war idyll Birdy), Modine has treaded water ever since in stuff like Cutthroat Island and Bye Bye Love while actually appearing as himself in a couple of films (Notting Hill, Bamboozled)–an indulgence that’s never a good sign, with very few exceptions, for an actor still serious about his career.

I Spy (2002)

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Eddie Murphy, Hungary, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, Famke Janssen, Malcolm McDowell
screenplay by Marianne Sellek Wibberley & Cormac Wibberley and David Ronn & Jay Scherick
directed by Betty Thomas

Ispyby Walter Chaw The best bit of dialogue in Betty Thomas’s abysmal I Spy, a film saddled with a hack director and a too-many-cooks scenario that translates adroitly into the screenwriting process (the script is credited to Marianne Wibberley, Cormac Wibberley, Jay Scherick, and David Ronn), is a bit where Eddie Murphy “Cyranos” Owen Wilson to the tune of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” That out of a mercifully brief 90-minute film the best moment comes courtesy a cheap gag involving an R&B classic and a flash of panty is, really, statement enough about the wisdom and ingenuity of the entire enterprise. Proof positive, if more proof is needed of the fecklessness of this shipwreck, is the fact that Wilson, easily the most gifted screenwriter on set, was not among the many asked to put pen to paper for I Spy.

The Pool (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Swimming Pool – Der Tod feiert mit
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Kristen Miller, Elena Uhlig, Thorsten Grasshoff, Cordelia Bugeja
screenplay by Lorenz Stassen and Boris Von Sychowski
directed by Boris Von Sychowski

by Walter Chaw In an ineffable way, Boris von Sychowski’s The Pool reminds of those old Eighties television teensploitation summer camp movies starring the butch from “Facts of Life” and the fascist from “Family Ties”: poor production values enslaved to the straitjacket of rigid formula filmmaking, wrapped around G-rated titillation that at least in The Pool recognizes is the result in some part of submerged menace. Cabin date rape and teen pregnancy are represented here by the rude insertion of phallic blades through water slides.

Eight Legged Freaks (2002) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scarlett Johansson, Scott Terra
screenplay by Jesse Alexander & Ellory Elkayem
directed by Ellory Elkayem

by Walter Chaw Ellory Elkayem’s Eight Legged Freaks (sic) is less a throwback to the giant-bug howlers of Gordon Douglas and Jack Arnold than just another post-modern fright comedy long on ironic genre in-references and short on any real thrills. In tone, it reminds a great deal of Joe Dante’s Gremlins II–more jokey than scary, in other words, and, like Gremlins II, Eight Legged Freaks works better than it ought to because of some fairly nifty special effects (I’ve seen worse CGI) and better-than-average performances from its B-list cast.

Film Freak Central Does San Franciso’s 2002 Dark Wave Film Festival

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Spain, Thriller, UK, Werewolf

Darkwavelogoby Walter Chaw The question, and it's a question with currency, is why anyone in their right mind would subject themselves (and their long-suffering editors) to coverage of two concurrent film festivals. A pair of answers: the obvious is that I'm not in my right mind, but as obvious is the fact that San Francisco's Dark Wave, which ran from October 18-20, is one of the most exciting "small" film festivals in the United States. I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about it, in other words–ulcers be damned. Presented by the hale San Francisco Film Society evenings and midnights at the historic Roxie, last year's presentation included one of this year's best films (Larry Fessenden's superb Wendigo) as well as the finest example of retro euro-horror (Lionel Delplanque's Deep in the Woods) since Dario Argento lost his marbles.

Desert Saints (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Romance, Thriller

**/**** Image C Sound C
starring Kiefer Sutherland, Melora Walters, Jamey Sheridan, Leslie Stefanson
screenplay by Rich Greenberg and Wally Nicols
directed by Rich Greenberg

by Walter Chaw Closer to Flashback than to Freeway, the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Desert Saints is actually closer to Montana than either: a neo-Tarantino erstwhile buddy road trip that pairs Donald's son with a flighty dingbat channelling Rosanna Arquette. Kiefer is Banks, a hired killer who hatches a plan with woman-on-the-lam Bennie (Melora Walters) to play house, check into the same (!) hotel south of the border to do his wicked business, and evade the pair of feds, Scanlon and Marbury (Jamey Sheridan and Leslie Stefanson), hot on his trail. Soul-searching and gut-spilling lead to the kind of sudden reversals that shift power from Banks to Bennie and back before ending in what can only be described as a confusion of trick endings telegraphed from the start. It's less delightful than I make it seem.

Heaven (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***½/****
starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Remo Girone, Stefania Rocca
screenplay by Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz
directed by Tom Tykwer

Heavenby Walter Chaw There is something of the alchemical when two disparate talents discover that their collaboration is inspired. It is an inkling of the excitement at the promise of A.I. with Kubrick’s misanthropy and Spielberg’s cult of childhood–or the pop-cultural satisfaction embedded in the narrative genius of Stephen King mixing easily with the stiff overwriting of Peter Straub. Heaven is the product of a screenplay by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski (and writing partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz) and surprisingly sedate direction by previously hyperactive wunderkind director Tom Tykwer. The result is another of Tykwer’s unpredictable romances blending with another of Kieslowski’s carefully metered, studiously non-didactic discussions of morality and consequence. The result of their union is often amazing.

The Rats (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*/**** Image C Sound C Extras C+
starring Vincent Spano, Mädchen Amick, Shawn Michael Howard, Daveigh Chase
screenplay by Frank Deasy
directed by John J. Lafia

by Walter Chaw In a peculiar case of “how much do I cop to,” I admit that I felt a surge of excitement upon first beholding the cover for the DVD release of The Rats, largely because it resembles a great deal the artwork for an edition of English horror author James Herbert’s Rats from many moons ago. After searching the credits diligently (and futilely) for any mention of the hale Brit’s stamp of approval, it was with considerably less excitement that I beheld proper the latest from poor Vincent Spano and Mädchen “Didn’t you used to be on ‘Twin Peaks’?” Amick. The Rats is fairly typical monster-/Seventies disaster-movie fare, also following in the faded footsteps of Willard and Ray Milland’s perverse cult classic Frogs. The main difference being that in our post-modern amusement park (Entropy! Get your tickets now!), the picture isn’t so much about even something so banal as eco-paranoia, but about itself and the genre that it simultaneously lampoons and aspires to.

DIFF ’02: Dragonflies

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Norway, Sweden, Thriller
DragonflyØyenstikker***½/****starring Maria Bonnevie, Kim Bodnia, Mikael Persbrandt, Tintin Anderzonscreenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius, based on the short story "Natt Til Mørk Morgen" by Ingvar Ambjørnsendirected by Marius Holst by Walter Chaw Marius Holst's haunted Dragonflies is weighted like a Terrence Malick film (or like Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock) by the ominous, oppressive indifference of the Natural. Its drab Scandinavian landscapes as timeless and purposeless as the subterranean tides that govern human behaviour, it's a lovely, poetic thing then when we're introduced to Eddie (Kim Bodnia) floating on a lake and his lover Maria (Maria Bonnevie) wandering through high grass like Ruth…

Formula 51 (2001)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

The 51st State
*/****
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Nigel Whitmey, Robert Jezek, Emily Mortimer
screenplay by Stel Pavlou
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw Called The 51st State abroad, Formula 51‘s more redneck-friendly-sounding retitling can be read as an astonishing commentary on the Ronny Yu film itself. Astonishing because it implies not only that the picture is self-aware, but also that it has actually somehow identified which formula it adheres to by number–something that strikes me as terribly useful in a shorthand way.

Enough (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Revenge, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A
starring Jennifer Lopez, Bill Campbell, Tessa Allen, Juliette Lewis
screenplay by Nicholas Kazan
directed by Michael Apted

by Walter Chaw So try this one on for size: a woman wronged by a world of evil men recuperates, studiously fails to call the police (too many men on the police force–men=bad; we’ll be returning to this equation often), and finally tracks down her tormentors with the express purpose of murdering them. This not only describes Michael Apted’s Enough, but also Meir Zarchi’s infamous exploitation flick I Spit on Your Grave, the main difference between the two being that Enough tries very hard to hide the fact that it’s an ugly bit of repugnant vigilantism masquerading as a feminist uplift drama.

Knockaround Guys (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Andrew Davoli
written and directed by Brian Koppelman & David Levien

Knockaroundguysby Walter Chaw Counting on one’s desire to see a legendarily hammy actor–a pair of them in fact–unleashed without fetters onto the unsuspecting world with nary a warning, Knockaround Guys is a surprisingly likeable kitsch artifact that astounds for its casual pretension and dangerous level of cheese. The film has John Malkovich trying unsuccessfully to channel his Valmont through a Brooklyn-made Guido and Dennis Hopper still out of control in a role intended, I think, to be bookish. Gathering dust on the shelf for a year or so now, the picture is finding a release in the early-fall doldrums one presumes for the meteoric rise of Vin Diesel, but stealing the show, as he so often does, is veteran character actor Tom Noonan as a laconic, nowhere Montana sheriff.

DIFF ’02: The Weight of Water

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Thriller
*½/****starring Catherine McCormack, Sarah Polley, Sean Penn, Josh Lucasscreenplay by Alice Arlen and Christopher Kyle, based on the novel by Anita Shrevedirected by Kathryn Bigelow by Walter Chaw Sort of a "Crucible" of period repression and sexual hysteria tied uncomfortably to Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, Kathryn Bigelow's unreleased and maybe unreleasable The Weight of Water looks to parallel two distinct genres by mining the sexual tension in both. The problem with such a conceit is not its ambition--the picture's sort of admirable in a soggy, pretentious way--but rather the essential misunderstanding of the disparateness of the sources of that tension:…

The Mummy: Quest for the Lost Scrolls (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Television, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound B- Extras C-

by Walter Chaw Universal and Kids’ WB present the abominable and derivative The Mummy: Quest for the Lost Scrolls, the first three episodes of a tragically bad action-adventure cartoon based on characters from Stephen Sommers’s live-action blockbuster The Mummy Returns. After Aryan-izing Fraser’s Rick O’Connell and his irritating moppet Alex (who is, predictably, the star of the show), the animators proceed to rip-off sources as disconcertingly varied as The Evil Dead, Star Wars, and Sommers’s Mummy saga, natch, all while perpetuating myths of the wilting femme and the foppish Brit that, shockingly, its adult counterparts never did.