The Calling (2000) – DVD

November 1, 2001Posted inAuthors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Horror, Thriller

**/**** Image C Sound C
starring Laura Harris, Richard Lintern, Francis Magee, Alice Krige
screenplay by John Rice & Rudy Gaines
directed by Richard Caesar

by Walter Chaw A retelling of Polanski’s creep classic Rosemary’s Baby that plays more like its high-profile carbon copy The Astronaut’s Wife, Richard Caesar’s direct-to-video The Calling most recalls the good-bad Richard Donner movie The Omen. While that speaks to a small measure of gritty genre credibility, it still doesn’t forgive The Calling‘s many failings (including the lack of a dynamic villain figure and a distended second act) by a long shot. But at the least, The Calling doesn’t spend any time trying to be something other than an apocalyptic demon spawn flick, and that honesty of modest intention forgives a multitude of sins.

Opera (1987) – DVD

October 31, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Cristina Marsillach, Ian Charleson, Urbano Barberini, Daria Nicolodi
screenplay by Dario Argento, Franco Ferreni
directed by Dario Argento

by Walter Chaw The best of Dario Argento’s films rework themes and images from Alfred Hitchcock with a level of flamboyance and twisted creativity that transform would-be genre knock-offs into something truly rare and valuable. Argento utilizes the constructions of Hitchcock as a framework for lurid, colour-drenched images and wickedly inventive death sequences that are among the most shocking and agonizing in the history of cinema. Often called “The Italian Hitchcock,” I find the term “The Italian De Palma” to be closer to the mark, for their obsessions, for their mastery of highly technical mimicries, and, extra-textually, for both auteurs’ decades-long slides into mere imitation and schlock. (Despite their similarities, Argento and De Palma to this day hate each other with a white-hot passion.)

On the Waterfront (1954) [Special Edition] – DVD

October 29, 2001Posted in****/****, 1950s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD, Thriller

****/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B
starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger
screenplay by Budd Schulberg
directed by Elia Kazan

by Walter Chaw There is a moment in the middle of Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront that stands out for me as one of the defining in my love of movies. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) confesses to his girlfriend Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) that he was involved in the Union execution of her brother, but rather than listen to Terry rehash events with which we’re already familiar, a steam whistle drowns him out. The precise way that Terry moves his hands and the expression on Edie’s face, growing from a gentle concern to horror, is among the most cinematic moments in the history of the medium. It’s breathtaking in its simplicity and subtlety, revolutionary in its presentation and its eye, and exactly the right choice for the film at the right moment.

Along Came a Spider (2001) – DVD

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, Michael Wincott, Penelope Ann Miller
screenplay by Marc Moss, based on the novel by James Patterson
directed by Lee Tamahori

by Walter Chaw The sole line to strike with truth in Lee Tamahori’s Along Came a Spider comes when professional dim-bulb Penelope Ann Miller, as the mother of a kidnapped child, wrings her hands, furrows her brow, and whines, “I… I don’t understand.” Springing as it no doubt does from a lifetime of repetition, Ms. Miller’s quandary also serves as a handy critique of the labyrinthine contortions that the film’s plot makes on its way to being utterly senseless and unengaging; its blandness takes on a cast of bellicosity. You begin to feel like the butt of some absurd joke or embroiled in a wilfully obscure Buddhist koan: What is the sound of one movie sucking?

DIFF ’01: Novocaine

October 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Thriller

*/****
starring Steve Martin, Helena Bonham Carter, Laura Dern, Scott Caan
written and directed by David Atkins

Novocaineby Walter Chaw An ill-fated hybrid of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and the dentist portions of Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors, Novocaine lacks a cohesive tone. It vacillates from dark comedy to Forties-style melodrama, from light-hearted slapstick to medium-heavy gore and nudity, and in one particularly inexplicable sequence, Novocaine attempts to be a post-modernist Lacanian thing involving a character's heightened self-awareness as a fictional construct. It's neither funny nor the slightest bit suspenseful, too jumbled and arbitrary to ever sustain much in the way of tension or interest. Even its central conceit–a plot to steal pharmaceuticals and the resultant chaos when the victim catches on to the scheme–is so essentially flawed that the revelation of the guilty party, which occurs after we've spent two desperate hours suspending increasingly leaden disbelief, isn't so much a shocker as a "shrugger."

DIFF ’01: Mortal Transfer

October 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Thriller

Mortel Transfert
***/****
starring Jean-Hugues Anglade, Helene de Forgerolles, Denis Podalydes
screenplay by Jean-Jacques Beineix, from the novel by Jean-Pierre Gattengo
directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix

by Walter Chaw Returning to the "nouvelle noir" grotesquery that marked his 1981 debut Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix's Mortal Transfer is wickedly funny, visually stunning, and perverse in a malevolent way that, along with Bernard Rapp's Une affaire de gout, appears to be a Gallic specialty this festival season. Its highlight is a ghoulish, hilarious scene having to do with a corpse, an icy road to be crossed, and a rather unorthodox means of delivery; and though the film never quite seems at ease with its own black heart, its game cast is more than up to the task of the earnest deadpan that Stygian farces require.

The Last Castle (2001)

October 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Prison, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Steve Burton
screenplay by David Scarpa and Graham Yost
directed by Rod Lurie

by Walter Chaw As I walked out of the theatre after a screening of part infinity-plus-one of Robert Redford’s “I am an American Icon” film series (adding three-star general to his playboy, cowboy, investigative journalist, and baseball pitcher), a grey old lady exclaimed for our consideration: “Fantastic film. Just perfect for the time.” I assumed that by “the time” she meant “our post-September 11th, anthrax-paranoia time.” That much was clear. What bothers me is that while I was watching a film about a prison uprising resulting in multiple guard fatalities led by a megalomaniacal and disgraced army man (who proudly confesses his bad judgment in leading eight of his men to their demise), this woman was seeing a battle hymn “perfect for the time.” How does one address this difference in perception, and how do these two readings intersect in the idea of what is distinctly American?

Replicant (2001) – DVD

October 16, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Martial Arts, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Michael Rooker, Catherine Dent
screenplay by Lawrence David Higgins and Les Weldon
directed by Ringo Lam

by Bill Chambers Replicant is the best movie so far to feature Jean-Claude Van Damme in a dual role as identical twins. (That there's actually a choice in the matter is, however preposterous, secondary.) It transcends both Double Impact and Maximum Risk (from the same director as Replicant, Ringo Lam) by way of tight-ass Michael Rooker–who, like a human magnet, enters the story trailing pieces of his films Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The 6th Day behind–and an irresistibly dopey ending that seems sentimental until you dwell on the particulars. What am I saying? The whole trying affair is irresistibly dopey. Kinetic, too.

DIFF ’01: The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

October 11, 2001Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Scarlett Johansson, Thriller, UK

****/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

Manwhowasntthereby Walter Chaw The noir genre was born of discomfort with women in the workplace, the rise of cynicism, and a world polarized by international conflict (WWII). Its symbol, the hardboiled detective, became the projection of the collective paranoia about the ascent of globalism and the death of Pollyannaism. Women and foreigners are not to be trusted in the noir universe; information is slippery and expensive; and the solution of the puzzle more often than not points back to a rot at the heart of the detective. It is the Oedipus/identity trajectory, complete with a blasted plague land, a murder, its thinly veiled culprit (noir is typically invested in process, not mystery), the appearance of a femme fatale, and a solution involving mortal self-knowledge. The noir hero may save the day, but at the price of being betrayed by those he loves. He is impotent to avenge his fallen friends and lovers, and at the mercy of a larger corruption that is unalterable and serves only to further degrade individual confidence. Tellingly, a great many noir works in literature and film begin with the death of a best friend or a partner and end with the realization that any victory is a hollow one in light of society’s inexorable fall into chaos.

The Mummy Returns (2001) [Collector’s Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

September 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Fantasy, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo
written and directed by Stephen Sommers

by Bill Chambers The Mummy Returns reminds me of a little film called The Mummy. Actually, it made me think of Trail of the Pink Panther, which was assembled from outtakes of other Inspector Clouseau movies due to star Peter Sellers expiring before, it would seem, his contract did. The Mummy Returns is all but a patchwork quilt made up of, if not leftover scenes, then scrap ideas. In The Mummy, a looming face of swirling sand pursued our hero; in The Mummy Returns, it materializes from a waterfall. The kind of production for which the writing credit should probably read “cocktail napkin by,” The Mummy Returns fails to distinguish itself from the undistinguished original. Why are they both superhits?

Link (1986) – DVD

August 28, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound D+
starring Elisabeth Shue, Terence Stamp, Steven Pinner, Richard Garnett
screenplay by Everett De Roche
directed by Richard Franklin

by Walter Chaw A movie about a murderous orangutan and its bimbo prey being thrust together in a series of increasingly moronic scenarios, Richard Franklin’s excruciating Link is defined by a shot of a computer monitor testing the ability of chimpanzees–and Elisabeth Shue–to identify coloured shapes. (Shue wins, but barely.) The monitor reads: “IQ 43.” I’m afraid that of the three (Franklin, Shue, and the monkey), the only one to whom this number is not being generous is the chimp.

Memento (2001) – DVD

August 28, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Directors: Christopher Nolan, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
screenplay by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story by Jonathan Nolan
directed by Christopher Nolan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Initially, I thought I had died and gone to indie hell: the first forty minutes of the highly-touted Memento lulled me into a false sense of security about the nature of its hero's problem; there was the familiar revenge plot (he must avenge his wife's death!), and the predictably unpredictable barrier to his goal (he has no short-term memory!), both of which led me to conclude that this was going to be one more shallow off-Hollywood neo-noir with a superficial twist. As the film soldiered on, I was rolling my eyes at the hero's frantic need to re-assert his maleness. Wounded as he was by the loss of his largely decorative wife and destabilized by his confusing affliction, it seemed as though his ability to walk tall as a man was what was at stake. This led me to assume that the remainder of the film would wallow in the tragic poignancy of a once-proud man robbed of the things that made him a credit to the patriarchy, and not only was this ideologically suspect, it was boring as hell. As the blandly-photographed images washed over me, I prepared myself to endure the repetition of this masculine panic until the lights came up.

15 Minutes (2001) [Infinifilm] – DVD

August 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, Kelsey Grammer, Avery Brooks
written and directed by John Herzfeld

by Walter Chaw There’s a thing that happens about an hour into John Herzfeld’s 15 Minutes that is as bald and shameless a foreshadowing device as any in the tired pantheon of movie-groaners. It’s as bad as telling someone that you’ll marry them just as soon as you get back from this trip to Africa; as bad as showing the guys a picture of your corn-fed sweetie right before you charge that machine gun embankment. It is a moment of stunning conventionality in the middle of a film that is otherwise engaging and, for a moment or two, even shocking and provocative. 15 Minutes is defined by this scene in a great many ways: It’s a Hollywood film struggling with a controversial topic that finds a comfort zone in a script that tries to soften some images by obfuscation and others by a timidity that ultimately undermines its subject. The last time a big-budget picture tried to tackle a media culture involved in exploitation of the darkest crannies of the human heart was Joel Schumacher’s reprehensible and simpering 8MM. Sharing that film’s ignominious demise at the box office, it can be no real surprise that 15 Minutes is almost as repugnantly apple-polishing an experience.

The Last Warrior (2000) – DVD

August 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi, Thriller

The Last Patrol
½*/**** Image B Sound C-
starring Dolph Lundgren, Sherri Alexander, Joe Michael Burke, Rebecca Cross
screenplay by Stephen J. Brackely and Pamela K. Long
directed by Sheldon Lettich

by Walter Chaw I thought I was following along with The Last Warrior pretty well until star Dolph Lundgren met up with a school bus full of “Fat Albert” extras, led by the mystical shaman cum flower child, Rainbow (Brook Susan Parker). Set in a post-a-quake-alyptic California, where the Golden state is an island hemmed in by ocean and crawling with loonies and mutants, our story follows a small band of military types who have established some sort of refuge in the desert. When Captain Nick Preston (Lundgren) reminisces about the before-time, in the long, long ago when he befriended Rainbow the hippie and her cute-costumed tribe of Cosby-style moppets, The Last Warrior goes from being an incomprehensible and dull bit of cheap-o nonsense to an incomprehensible and dull bit of cheap-o new age psychobabble nonsense. I consoled myself with the supposition that the flashback is meant to provide a Lilies in the Field moment of uplift and an “in” to the inevitable pyrotechnics of the final act, but when Rainbow reappears from nowhere at the conclusion and makes it rain by gibbering incoherently and dancing in a circle, I sort of gave up.

Skeletons in the Closet (2001) – DVD

August 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Treat Williams, Linda Hamilton, Jonathan Jackson, Gordon Clapp
screenplay by Donna Powers & Wayne Powers
directed by Wayne Powers

by Walter Chaw An example of the sort of generational paranoia film that cropped up following the flower-power strangeness of the late-Sixties, Skeletons in the Closet is a definite product of the post-Columbine cinematic zeitgeist: it all but demands a re-examination of our relationships with our disenfranchised youth. In a very real way, it plays as an interesting companion piece to McGehee and Siegel’s arthouse thriller The Deep End. Both are interested in how single parents deal with criminal delinquency (real or imagined) in their confused children, and both are showcases for actors who are either relatively unknown (Tilda Swinton in The Deep End), or sadly marginalized (Treat Williams).

The Deep End (2001)

August 21, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker, Peter Donat
screenplay by Scott McGehee & David Siegel, based on the short story “The Blank Wall” by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
directed by McGehee & Siegel

by Walter Chaw There is a moment at the very beginning of Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Deep End wherein our maternal heroine Margaret Hall (Tilda Swinton) fills in a crossword puzzle line with “glacier.” It is an early clue to Margaret’s glacial temperament, the cool blue colour suffusions that dominate the film’s lighting schemes, and, unfortunately, the feeling of icy detachment one experiences during the course of the film. The Deep End is neither a noir nor a Hitchcockian thriller, but rather a somewhat conventional, vaguely derivative Mildred Pierce-ian estrogen melodrama that plays a lot like a Lifetime bodice-ripper written by David Mamet. It is essentially a lifeless version of Blood Simple, complete with misunderstandings, extortion, and a hide-the-corpse intrigue inspired by the urge to protect a loved one. Not to say The Deep End is a bad film, exactly, rather it’s a forgettable one that is remarkable only for its almost complete lack of distinction.

Hannibal (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

August 21, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A-
starring Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Frankie R. Faison
screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Harris
directed by Ridley Scott

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It is perhaps unfair to compare a sequel to its predecessor, especially one with as tenuous a connection to its predecessor as Hannibal has. With most of the original The Silence of the Lambs personnel having refused to sign on due to various creative differences, the sequel's total stylistic disconnection from its beloved 1991 precursor was probably inevitable. Couple that with the fact that the novel on which it draws can be charitably described as a desperate grasp for royalties and you have a no-win situation that would confound the most dedicated adaptor. Eager though he or she might be to remain faithful to the original's spirit, our hypothetical filmmakers would be forced to define something perfectly contrary to the parent film, something that would be its own picture–a rare enough commodity in the best of times.

Second Skin (2000) – DVD

August 13, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, DVD, Mystery, South Africa, Thriller, UK

**½/**** Image B+ Sound C
starring Natasha Henstridge, Angus MacFadyen, Liam Waite, Peter Fonda
screenplay by John Lau
directed by Darrell James Roodt

by Bill Chambers Second Skin is centred in and around a used bookshop where owner Sam Kane (Angus MacFadyen) cares more about indulging in the dog-eared pulp than making a living. Crystal (Natasha Henstridge) wanders in looking for a job, though, and while Sam doesn’t get enough customers to warrant an employee, he could use a tall blonde woman in his life, and tentatively hires her. Satisfied, she walks backwards out the door, bidding adieu, and is thwacked by a car in a hit-and-run. When Crystal comes to, in a hospital bed, she’s amnesiac. In what must be a rare act of altruism for him, Sam volunteers to assist Crystal in a rummage for her forgotten past.

The Others (2001)

August 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Elaine Cassidy, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan
written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar

by Walter Chaw The Others is an intricate character drama that takes turns shifting its suspicions on any number of scenarios and suspects. It subtly considers each of its small troupe of players as alternately worthy of mistrust, and its fantastic cast is more than equal to director Alejandro Amenábar’s quiet attributions of innocence and diabolical attributions of wickedness. Throughout, Amenábar maintains the unnerving possibility that, despite the spectre of a hoax or a plot ever-looming in the sometimes-inexplicable actions of one or more of its characters, something paranormal might, in fact, be at work.

Mimic 2 (2001) – DVD

August 8, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Alix Koromzay, Bruno Campos, Jon Polito, Edward Albert
screenplay by Joel Soisson
directed by Jean De Segonzac

by Walter Chaw The direct-to-video Mimic 2 abandons the B-movie brilliance of its predecessor in favour of such lacklustre slasher movie conventions as an inexorable monster and a cast of disposable victims. It introduces an inexplicable sexual punishment/revenge theme, a resourceful scream queen, the “surprise” ability of the villain to withstand bullets/beheading/burning for one last scare, and a closed environment consisting all of ill-lit halls and basements. Consequently, as Mimic 2 reveals itself to be more of a slasher flick than a monster movie, it honours repetition-honed slasher sequel conventions: the body count escalates, the gore and blood increases, the time the creatures spend on-screen mounts, and the characteristics of the bad guy/s evolve. Sadly, the only things this film really has in common with the original are similar creature effects and the return of the least memorable supporting character, now in the lead role.