TIFF ’06: Fay Grim

September 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Espionage, Film Festivals, France, Germany, TIFF
**/****starring Parker Posey, Jeff Goldblum, James Urbaniak, Saffron Burrowswritten and directed by Hal Hartley by Bill Chambers Those hoping this unexpected sequel to the terrific Henry Fool will be a Before Sunset should brace themselves for a Texasville. I think the problem is not that Parker Posey can't carry a picture (Posey's more of a movie star than she is a character actor, after all, so inflexible is her neurotic persona), but that her Fay Grim can't carry a picture. In that sense, Fay Grim is a little bit like a highbrow Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, with virtually…

TIFF ’06: The Last Winter

September 18, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, Horror, Iceland, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF
***/****starring Ron Perlman, James Le Gros, Connie Britton, Zachary Gilfordscreenplay by Larry Fessenden & Robert Leaverdirected by Larry Fessenden by Bill Chambers Larry Fessenden has always been an artist and a consummate professional, but there's a newfound commercial glaze to The Last Winter--however ironic its use of widescreen--that makes one feel somehow less inclined to coddle it. An ambiguous statement, I know; I guess what I'm saying is that if I have any reservations about the piece (and I had fewer about Wendigo and Habit), I don't really fear seeming anti-intellectual in voicing them. Fessenden's own private The Thing, The Last…

The TIFFing Point

September 14, 2006Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF

originally published September 14, 2006
Two more days until I turn back into a pumpkin (or something like that), probably for the good of not only my health, but also that of FILM FREAK CENTRAL. Anyway, some more stopgap coverage for you…

FAY GRIM (d. Hal Hartley)
As far as this unlikely sequel to the brilliant Henry Fool is concerned, those hoping for a Before Sunset should brace themselves for a Texasville. The movie feels like it came out of Hartley sideways (or, conversely, all too painlessly), and it never really catches fire until Thomas Jay Ryan makes his long-delayed cameo as Henry Fool. By then, it's too little too late. **/****

TIFF ’06: The Pleasure of Your Company

September 13, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Film Festivals, Romance, TIFF
½*/****starring Jason Biggs, Isla Fisher, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Weston, Edward Herrmannwritten and directed by Michael Ian Black by Bill Chambers To paraphrase comedian Andy Kindler talking about The Three Stooges, I finally figured out why I don't like sketch comic Michael Ian Black: he's not funny. Until The Pleasure of Your Company, Black's hyphenate debut, I thought maybe it was a/n natural/irrational aversion to his countenance--he looks bizarrely like a member of Our Gang, one who just keeps getting taller. But that ferret face is only the most appropriate avatar for Black's hipster snottiness. Around these parts, we often talk…

TIFF ’06: Citizen Duane

September 11, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Film Festivals, Teen, TIFF
*/****starring Douglas Smith, Donal Logue, Vivica A. Fox, Alberta Watsonscreenplay by Jonathan Sobol and Robert DeLeskiedirected by Michael Mabbott by Bill Chambers This Canuck Rushmore really got on my nerves. The movie makes a crucial miscalculation in the early going by introducing its puny teenaged hero, Duane Balfour (Douglas Smith), in revenge mode: Given that we already know Duane's girlfriend (Jane McGregor) is way out of his league, he would seem to have pre-emptively settled any scores he could possibly have with the Most Popular Kid in School (porcine Nicholas Carella, as miscast as Haylie Duff was as the distaff…

TIFF ’06: The Host

September 10, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi, South Korea, TIFF
Gue-mool***½/****starring Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doo-na, Ko Ah-sungscreenplay by Bong Joon-ho, Hah Joon-won, Baek Chul-hyundirected by Bong Joon-ho by Bill Chambers I knew I would love The Host as soon as I realized that the man in the surgical scrubs was none other than national treasure Scott Wilson, who, in his most heinous role since In Cold Blood (or maybe Shiloh), observes dust on the jars of formaldehyde in the morgue of a South Korean military base and bullies a reluctant attendant into disposing of them by dumping their contents down the sink. It's not merely that I…

My TIFF So Far

September 9, 2006Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF

originally published September 9, 2006
Seems we're all a little constipated right now but rest assured reviews are on the way; here's a quick rundown of TIFFpix screened thus far by yours truly.

BABEL (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
It coheres better than 21 Grams, but Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga are really spinning their wheels at this point. A few funny extratextual lessons are imparted: never take a Fanning to Mexico (Elle has almost as harrowing an adventure there as sister Dakota does in Man on Fire); and never trust a director who includes a post-script dedication to his children. As with 21 Grams, though, Babel doesn't make room for any intentional levity, eventually desensitizing you to all the calculated anguish. *½/****

TIFF ’06: Torn Apart

September 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
La Coupure½*/****starring Valérie Cantin, Marc Marans, Marie-Christine Perreault, Manon Brunellewritten and directed by Jean Châteauvert by Bill Chambers As much as I'd love to jump on the C.R.A.Z.Y. bandwagon, I found its characters repellent and its soundtrack selections laughably pedestrian. (The picture's recycling of FM staples like "Space Oddity" and "Sympathy for the Devil" doesn't achieve suture so much as it makes the director, an alleged vinylphile, look like a philistine with an awfully small record collection.) Still, I can't deny that it marks a sort of progress for Canadian film in that it at least gropes for joy, has…

TIFF ’06: The Page Turner

September 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Music, Thriller, TIFF
La Tourneuse de pages***/****starring Catherine Frot, Déborah François, Pascal Greggory, Julie Richaletscreenplay by Denis Dercourt, Jacques Sottydirected by Denis Dercourt by Bill Chambers I question whether Denis Dercourt's Chabrolian The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages)--which more than earns its presumptuous double entendre of a title--actually has anything of consequence to say, but I sure got a charge out of it. Mélanie, a butcher's daughter, blows her shot at getting into a music conservatory by becoming flustered when one of the entrance exam's administrators, famed concert pianist Mme. Fouchécourt (Catherine Frot), interrupts her audition to sign an autograph. Some years…

TIFF ’06: After the Wedding

September 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Norway, Sweden, TIFF, UK
Efter brylluppet**½/****starring Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgård, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Stine Fischer Christensenscreenplay by Susanne Bier & Anders Thomas Jensendirected by Susanne Bier by Bill Chambers Online critic N.P. Thompson recalls a colleague lamenting the absence of cell phones in Ingmar Bergman's recent swan song Saraband, and in many ways, Susanne Bier's overwrought but not ineffectual After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) is Bergman for these manic times. A fashionable strain of Western self-loathing courses through this tale of a fat cat, Jørgen (Rolf Lassgård), who summons Jacob (once and future Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen), the Danish head of a Bombay orphanage,…

TIFF ’05: Dear Wendy

September 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Romance, TIFF, UK
*½/****starring Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordonscreenplay by Lars von Trierdirected by Thomas Vinterberg by Bill Chambers It's a classic catch-22: Dear Wendy reveals that Jamie Bell was born to play Billy the Kid, but it probably also squanders his chances of doing so. As Dick, the orphaned son of a miner, Bell dons Michael J. Fox's effeminate cowboy duds from Back to the Future Part III and transforms the town's social lepers into a gang of gun fetishists known collectively as the Dandies; director Thomas Vinterberg and screenwriter Lars von Trier give us the gay burlesque version…

TIFF ’05: Heading South

September 24, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, France, TIFF
Vers le sud***½/****starring Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Louise Portal, Ménothy Cesarscreenplay by Laurent Cantet & Robin Campillo, based on short stories by Dany Laferrièredirected by Laurent Cantet by Bill Chambers Heading South (Vers le sud) represents such a departure from the milieu of Laurent Cantet's previous film (2001's brilliant psychological thriller Time Out (L'Emploi du temps)) that you can't really say it rounds out a trilogy he started with Human Resources. Nevertheless, it resumes his fascination with people in transience, people who've erected complex façades to avoid the repercussions of personal or professional failure; Cantet's pictures are screwball comedies played…

TIFF ’05: Wassup Rockers

September 23, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Teen, TIFF
**½/****starring Jonathan Velasquez, Francisco Pedrasa, Milton Velasquez, Usvaldo Panamenowritten and directed by Larry Clark by Bill Chambers These days, when I think of Larry Clark, I think of Stephen Wiltshire, the outsider artist profiled in Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars. Diagnosed with autism early in life, Wiltshire soon after began doing immaculately detailed sketches of animals before moving on to buses and eventually cityscapes. So advanced was Wiltshire's technique at such an early age that Sacks and co. were fascinated to learn that his talent came pre-evolved: as a child, he drew like a grown-up, but he drew like…

TIFF ’05: All the Invisible Children

September 20, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: John Woo, Directors: Ridley Scott, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Italy, TIFF

Fest2005children**½/****
directed by Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, Jordan Scott and Ridley Scott, Kátia Lund, Stefano Veruso, John Woo

by Bill Chambers Named after an initiative of the Italian Development Cooperation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that supports Unicef and other global charities, this omnibus project assembles seven short subjects about children from a handful of world-class directors, all of whom were instructed to locate their contributions in their home and native land. Poverty seems to be the unifying theme until Jordan and Ridley Scott's vaguely autobiographical segment, which sticks out like a sore thumb but subversively suggests that if All the Invisible Children proper has any lessons to impart, they revolve around the auteur theory. Having never seen a film by Mehdi Charef or Stefano Veneruso, I don't know how closely their episodes hew to their previous work, but I can tell you that Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, the Scotts, Kátia Lund, and John Woo tread familiar ground in a borderline egotistical fashion.

TIFF ’05: The Myth

September 18, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, China, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, TIFF
½*/****starring Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Kim Hee-seon, Mallika Sherawatscreenplay by Stanley Tong, Wang Hui-ling, Li Hai-shudirected by Stanley Tong by Bill Chambers The Myth, or: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Turdbath. Sabotaging a potential comeback by trying to catch a wave (not unlike the myriad has-beens in the music industry who jumped on the disco bandwagon), Jackie Chan dips a toe in the unfriendly, nay, hostile waters of the wu xia genre recently revitalized by the likes of Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou. Although The Myth is cruddy-looking (HD's fine for George Lucas excretions and Robert Rodriguez fantasias, but it has…

TIFF ’05: Romance & Cigarettes

September 16, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Musical, Romance, TIFF
*½/****starring James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemiwritten and directed by John Turturro by Bill Chambers Dennis Potter was a genre unto himself, and when he died, he took his recipe for what Heinz Antor called "humanist postmodernism" with him. It's painful to watch writer-director John Turturro, one of the great character actors of our time, invoke the writer in Romance & Cigarettes, as he reduces Potter's notion of pop music as existential catharsis to exactly what it wasn't: a gimmick--an alibi for air band. In the spellbinding film version of Potter's Pennies from Heaven, Christopher Walken comically menaces…

More Two-Second TIFF Reviews

September 15, 2005Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF
originally published September 15, 2005Wassup Rockers (d. Larry Clark) Somehow the most humanistic film of Clark's career is also his most nihilistic. Nice to see him acknowledge the "other," but they're still skater punks. *** (out of four)Romance & Cigarettes (d. John Turturro) A fugue. In the words of David Lynch, "Fugues make me crazy!" Actually eager to rant about this one. *½ (out of four)All the Invisible Children (ds. Various)As with any omnibus film, hit-or-miss. I think I liked Kátia Lund's segment best, but John Woo does his best work since heading West. Your mileage will vary. **½ (out of four)

TIFF ’05: Mary

September 14, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Esoterica, Thriller, TIFF
**/****starring Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Marion Cotillardscreenplay by Simone Lageoles, Abel Ferrara, Mario Isabelladirected by Abel Ferrara by Bill Chambers There are really three-tiers to Abel Ferrara's output, as indicated by his choice of avatar. Arguably the most commercial, at least until New Rose Hotel, his Christopher Walken movies have also been the director's most meticulously crafted, while his Harvey Keitel movies resonate as Ferrara's most personal, with Dangerous Game probably the closest he's ever come to a roman à clef. Then there is Matthew Modine, star of The Blackout and now Mary--relatively minor films seemingly motivated by…

TIFF ’05: Where the Truth Lies

September 13, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Directors: Atom Egoyan, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF, UK
*½/****starring Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, Rachel Blanchardscreenplay by Atom Egoyan, based on the novel by Rupert Holmesdirected by Atom Egoyan by Bill Chambers Canadian filmmakers tend to expose their limitations when they mimic American pop (see: the oeuvres of Jerry Ciccoritti and Mary Harron), and Atom Egoyan, who adapts his signature post-modernism to the Boogie Nights/Goodfellas paradigm in Where the Truth Lies, is no exception. Part of the problem is that it's almost impossible to empathize with journo Karen O'Connor's (Alison Lohman) attraction to the world of Lanny (Kevin Bacon, in what I'm tempted to call a career-best…

Two-Second TIFF Reviews

September 12, 2005Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF
originally published September 12, 2005Mary (d. Abel Ferrara)Third-tier Ferrara, as evidenced by his choice of star (Matthew Modine). ** (out of four)Heading South (Vers le sud) (d. Laurent Cantet)Cantet works in dread the way some work in oils. A much-needed antidote to the twee likes of Ladies in Lavender. *** (out of four)Takeshis' (d. Takeshi Kitano)A kind of career summary for Beat by way of Buñuel; heard outside the screening: "Was that a comedy?" Short answer: yes. ***½ (out of four)