Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)

June 30, 2009Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, UK

*/****
screenplay by Michael Berg, Peter Ackerman, Yoni Brenner
directed by Carlos Saldanha

Iceage3by Walter Chaw It's not entirely accurate to say that I've hated the Ice Age movies. They're not, after all, the Land Before Time series, the post-classic Disney output just prior to the Pixar revolution, or, heaven forefend, the Shrek trilogy. No, better to say that the Ice Age franchise is at worst merely the quintessence of inconsequence: they're films so bereft of wit and vigour that their biggest crime isn't the constant shit and hit routines, nor the predictable parade of unearned sentimentality, but rather that they're as inert as the right side of the Periodic Table. The message in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (hereafter Ice Age 3)–that no matter what our heroes look like on the outside (two mammoths, two opossums, a giant sloth, a sabre-toothed tiger), on the inside, they're members of one tribe–is the same as in the first two instalments, and by this time, its constant mantric recitation begins to take on the air of unaware self-parody. Of course, despite its incessant championing of a non-traditional family unit, like Shrek, it still has a mammoth (Manny (voiced by Ray Romano)) marry a mammoth (Ellie (Queen Latifah)), leaving cross-species miscegenation, unlike the otherwise execrable Madagascar sequel, to the actors voicing them. What I wouldn't give for the same premise in live-action with Romano married to Latifah, the latter morbidly knocked-up and royally pissed-off.

Easy Virtue (2008)

June 16, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, UK

***½/****
starring Jessica Biel, Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Barnes
screenplay by Stephan Elliott & Sheridan Jobbins, based on the play by Noël Coward
directed by Stephan Elliott

by Walter Chaw At first glance, it would seem that Stephan Elliott’s pictures follow no conventional line. Start with 1993’s Frauds, starring Hugo Weaving and (yes, that) Phil Collins, then proceed to Elliott’s landmark The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Then it’s on to that film’s tonal antidote (think an Outback Woman in the Dunes with Rogers & Hammerstein interludes), Welcome to Woop Woop; a Hollywood sojourn (the criminally-underestimated serial killer/FBI procedural Eye of the Beholder); and finally, one near-fatal ski accident later, an oddly appropriate return to form in the Noël Coward adaptation Easy Virtue. These movies are almost Billy Wilder-ian in their variety–literally, in that Elliott seems above all keenly attuned to the comic opportunity–the Lubitsch, if you will–in relational dynamics, but also in that he begins with something like a thriller, goes to camp, goes to camp thriller, returns to thriller, and now does something almost entirely genre-peculiar. It’s a vertiginous enough trajectory that for the first half-hour of Easy Virtue, I’d forgotten I was watching a Stephan Elliott film–that the fact that Elliott directed it was indeed the only reason I was interested in seeing Jessica Biel spar with Kristin Scott Thomas on a sprawling English estate in the 1920s.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) [Extended Version] – Blu-ray Disc + Waterworld (1995) [2-Disc Extended Edition] – DVD

June 15, 2009Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES
½*/**** Image C Sound B Extras B
starring Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
screenplay by Pen Densham & John Watson
directed by Kevin Reynolds

WATERWORLD
***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino
screenplay by Peter Rader and David Twohy
directed by Kevin Reynolds

by Walter Chaw In the “careful what you wish for” sweepstakes, here’s Kevin Costner, fresh off an Oscar victory for his naïve idyll Dances with Wolves, spending his hard-won Hollywood currency indulging best buddy Kevin Reynolds in a trilogy of pictures (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rapa Nui, Waterworld) he produced for the express purpose of giving Reynolds more than enough rope. If you’re in the sport of charting the positively Greek decline of the late-’80s box-office king, mark 1991 as Exhibit A, as his sad attempt at an English accent for Robin of Loxley was notoriously overdubbed in post-production after being deemed the stuff of legend in initial cuts. Aside from providing schadenfreudians endless fodder, it was the first real evidence that the Golden Boy’s tragic flaw was the belief that his charm was based on something other than Gary Cooper’s mantle of Everybody’s All-American Doofus.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Hachiko: A Dog’s Story

June 14, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Biopic, Drama, Family, Film Festivals, UK, ZERO STARS
Hachi: A Dog's TaleZERO STARS/****starring Richard Gere, Joan Allen, Sarah Roemer, Jason Alexanderscreenplay by Stephen P. Lindseydirected by Lasse Hallström by Jefferson Robbins SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. It's better than Marley & Me, but so's a Tasering. At least the title alerts you up front to the presence of a dog in this Lasse Hallström movie--the latest Japanaptation, after Shall We Dance, to star serial sentimentalist Richard Gere. As a lifelong mutt owner, I'm unimpressed by stories of fierce canine loyalty and homing instinct. The dog hears your train coming and runs to meet you? That's because he knows you're…

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)

June 12, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by John Godey
directed by Tony Scott

Takingofpelham09by Walter Chaw It's amazing that a film that takes place on a metal tube in a dank tunnel should have no trace of come in it. Less amazing when one considers that it's Tony Scott at the helm of this redux–the same Tony Scott who arguably reached the zenith of his potential with his vampire-erotica cult debut The Hunger, whose best film is the result of a superior screenplay by Quentin Tarantino (True Romance), and whose main claim to fame may be that he's behind one of the most homoerotic sequences ever captured on film in his gay amusement park Top Gun. Scott's The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (hereafter Pelham) is packed to the gills with meaningless, hyperactive visual gawping every bit as bad here as it is in his unwatchable Domino, so frantic that it has the opposite effect oPublishn the audience by rendering itself static and boring. (There's a lot going on in a screen full of snow, too, but all it does is put you to sleep.) The picture reunites Scott with his go-to leading man Denzel Washington, whose Garber, an MTA operator fallen under suspicion of taking a bribe, replaces Walter Matthau's weary, hangdog transit cop from the Joseph Sargent original. When ridiculous goon Ryder (John Travolta) hijacks the titular subway car with a pack of the usual suspects (including Luis Guzmán, of course), it's up to smooth-talking every-dude Garber to cover up the deficiencies of hostage negotiator Camonetti (John Turturro), the gasbag Mayor (James Gandolfini), and all the bumblefuck NYPD who manage to accidentally snipe one of the bad guys, crash a car racing through Manhattan, and decorate a couple of baddies with a good twenty clips of ammunition in the middle of Uptown. It also, as a way to give the film a contemporary slant against which the terminally un-hip Scott is well over-matched, demonizes Wall Street by having its chief baddie be a former securities trader who hatches a plan to fuck the stock market by making New Yorkers afraid that his plot is a terrorist attack. Pelham is, in other words, rather tasteless in addition to being awful.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Fifty Dead Men Walking

June 6, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Crime, Drama, Thriller, UK
**/****starring Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess, Kevin Zegers, Rose McGowanwritten and directed by Kari Skogland by Jefferson Robbins You're watching the wrong guy if you keep your eye on Martin McGartland (Jim Sturgess), a Special Branch mole in the Belfast IRA circa 1988. The one to mark in Fifty Dead Men Walking is his handler, codenamed "Fergus" and played by Ben Kingsley under a hairpiece that makes him look astonishingly like Ben Gazzara. As he transitions from mere manipulation of his charge to fatherly love, Fergus reveals himself to be the only character made valid by the script and fully fleshed…

Fargo (1996) – DVD|[Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 3, 2009Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Blu-ray Disc, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

***½/****
DVD – Image B Sound A-
SE DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell
screenplay by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Vincent Suarez The critics' knock against the Coen brothers has always admonished the filmmakers for seemingly valuing style over substance–their flamboyant camerawork frequently seemed the raison d'être for rather loosely-plotted films like Raising Arizona. It's fitting, then, that Fargo, their most celebrated work (but not their best–that distinction belongs to the severely underrated Miller's Crossing), champions the virtues of simplicity at nearly every level. Not only is Fargo the Coens' most straightforwardly-told film, lacking their typical stylistic flourishes, but its cautionary tale highlights the dangers of permitting life to become more complicated than necessary. Indeed, had the title not already been assigned to their debut film, Fargo would have been more aptly christened Blood Simple.

Revolutionary Road (2008) + Doubt (2008) – Blu-ray Discs

June 1, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Romance, UK

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates
screenplay by Justin Haythe, based on the novel by Richard Yates
directed by Sam Mendes

DOUBT
**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis
written and directed by John Patrick Shanley

by Walter Chaw Impeccably acted and playing out what seems to be a collective cultural fascination with the pre-Flower Power '60s (not quite Ward and June, not quite Jimi and Janis), Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road and John Patrick Shanley's Doubt help 2008 meet its quota of prestige-y actor's studio pieces. Both are based on well-regarded (renowned, in the case of the first) literary sources, both sport high-octane casts in the pursuit of that delicate balance in adaptations between literal and spiritual faithfulness, and both, ultimately, have considerably less to say than the surrounding hullabaloo would suggest. Revolutionary Road plots another point on the graph of Mendes's steeply-declining returns–he's a stage director whose greatest weakness is his desire for little epiphanies that play like Everest off the boards, and he's guilty of too much intoxication with the medium besides. Mendes spends so much time fiddling around with his camera to a noodling Thomas Newman score that you feel like giving him some privacy.

Yes Man (2008) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

May 21, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Romance, UK

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras D
starring Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, Terence Stamp
screenplay by Nicholas Stoller and Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel, based on the novel by Danny Wallace
directed by Peyton Reed

by Walter Chaw I look at Jim Carrey nowadays with a little bit of bittersweetness, in that his attempts to go "legit" in movies like Man on the Moon and especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were essentially swatted aside, dismissed as brief indulgences between talking-asshole gigs. I believe that Carrey is a serious guy, possibly a melancholy guy, certainly a smart guy–and I believe the closest anyone's come to finding the right vehicle for his elasticity is Charlie Kaufman. Maybe they'll work together again. Until then, Carrey's fate is to shoehorn into endlessly reducible slapstick romcoms like Peyton Reed's Yes Man–easy cash-grabs with an ephemeral shelf-life doomed to be referenced for its one or two scenes that make any impact before becoming ancient history. The formula for this shit is etched in tintype by now: the Lovesick Dork Protag is Carl (Carrey), the High Concept is that he pathologically rejects everything, and the object of his l'amour fou is avant-garde punk band frontwoman Allison (Zooey Deschanel™). Can this button-up, white-collar stiff (Carl's a loan officer) learn to embrace spontaneity and break free of the workaday while setting up his own quirky business and saving the world in the process? Yes, man.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: In the Loop

May 13, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Film Festivals, Satire, UK
***/****starring Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfiniscreenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Rochedirected by Armando Iannucci by Jefferson Robbins It's the Downing Street Memo actualized as comedy. Spun off from director Armando Iannucci's own 2005 BBC series "The Thick Of It", In the Loop broadens its scope from the backroom foibles of clueless, self-interested British MPs to encompass the American policy vultures, partisan hacks, and PTSD generals who devise, or are victimized by, war policy. Ported over wholesale from "The Thick Of It" is Peter Capaldi's bloodthirsty Malcolm Tucker, chief enforcer for the Prime Minister and…

Never Say Never Again (1983) – Blu-ray Disc

May 12, 2009Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Espionage, James Bond, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max Von Sydow, Edward Fox
screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr.
directed by Irvin Kershner

by Ian Pugh After decades of legal wrangling, producer Kevin McClory had finally won the right to make an autonomous James Bond flick out of Ian Fleming's Thunderball, and 1983 seemed like the perfect time to capitalize on it, what with resident Bond Roger Moore's age catching up with him and the original series running out of steam as a consequence. A household name, the character of Bond has enough cultural heft and influence that he warrants interpretations from independent sources besides, and given that Sean Connery was lured out of a twelve-year retirement from the character–hence the title, Never Say Never Again–as well as the room for improvement left by the original Thunderball, the film had the potential to be more than just a cynical cash-in.

The Soloist (2009)

April 23, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, France, Music, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Jaime Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander
screenplay by Susannah Grant
directed by Joe Wright

Soloistby Walter Chaw Black, crazy, homeless, and a prodigy–it’s A Beautiful Mind and Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Fisher King and The Green Mile all wrapped up in a tight little Oscar ball. And The Soloist is a true story, of course, from LA TIMES columnist Steve Lopez’s affecting series on homeless guy Nathaniel Ayers, which he turned into a book that’s been adapted into a movie scripted by seasoned middlebrow emotional rapist Susannah Grant and directed by rapidly-developing first-class hired-hack Joe Wright. A problem, you’ll agree, that it was pushed by its own studio out of the catbird seat late last year to make room for, of all things, that non-starter Revolutionary Road. The issue–arguably the only issue–of exploitation is raised, and well, in the film’s most honest scene: at an awards banquet feting Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) for his profile of Nathaniel (Jaime Foxx), the former’s editor/ex-wife Mary (Catherine Keener) excoriates Lopez for his reluctance to fully engage what had at that point become his near-total responsibility. If that central issue of the picture lies fallow until an ill-fated recital (set up by ill-used, slapstick laughing-stock Christian cellist Graham Claydon (Tom Hollander)) ends with a few wild swings of a nail-studded bat, at least it’s introduced as an elephant in a room full of people in that darkened theatre clucking at how adorable and somehow inspirational it is that a hobo is a world-class cellist.

Event Horizon (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

April 23, 2009Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson
screenplay by Philip Eisner
directed by Paul Anderson

by Walter Chaw Event Horizon approaches the science-fiction idea of a mysterium tremens, hints that it will be about the inscrutability of an alien intelligence–like Lem's and Tarkovsky's (and Soderbergh's) variations on the theme of Solaris, for instance, or that monolith in 2001. But with lowbrow hack Paul W.S. Anderson (then simply Paul Anderson) at the helm, Event Horizon washes out as just another assembly-line jump-scare factory. A particular shame, as with this project Anderson attracted an unusually competent cast, only to ask the likes of Laurence Fishburne, Joely Richardson, Sam Neill, Jason Isaacs, and Kathleen Quinlan to respond to cats-by-any-other-name jumping through allegorical windows. It goes beyond wearisome to actually being insulting. The first hour is spent establishing the brave crew of the Lewis & Clark, setting off to somewhere near Neptune on the rescue and salvage of experimental ship Event Horizon, which disappeared a few months prior. Outfitted with a new "gravity drive" suspiciously like the fold-space/grasshopper spice drive from Dune, the Event Horizon has not only managed to travel beyond our Universe–it has also succeeded in theologically blowing our minds! Weird visions ensue (bad dreams and worse), and then there's the captain's log that our heroes spend the bulk of the film "filtering" before finally discovering that the warnings contained therein are in Latin for a reason. Doesn't anyone in the future watch The Exorcist? Good thing medico D.J. (Isaacs) speaks Latin, or they'd never know what it wouldn't help them to know.

State of Play (2009)

April 16, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*½/****
starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren
screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray, based on the BBC television series created by Paul Abbott
directed by Kevin Macdonald

Stateofplayby Ian Pugh If it were smart, Kevin Macdonald's State of Play would stick to lamenting the ignominious death of newsprint at the hands of Internet sensationalism and all that that implies. As a veteran reporter and a U.S. Congressman–college roommates once known as rabblerousing muckrakers in their respective fields–turn to each other when their worlds collapse, you'd think that maybe the film had in mind a meditation on the dissolution of the Old Boys' clubs. Done in by our demystifying familiarity with the subjects under scrutiny (cops and politicians) and an unwillingness to inject new blood into their veins, right? Hell, even Watergate is brought up as an incidental location, as Macdonald sends a sweeping camera across the notorious hotel. You can't tell me there isn't something to be said here about how a reliance on outmoded tactics and an obsession with decades-old victories has only sped up their obsolescence.

American Gangster (2007); I’m Not There (2007); No Country for Old Men (2007) + No Country for Old Men [’08 BD + 2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

April 15, 2009Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Coen Brothers, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, France, Gangster, Germany, Music, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

AMERICAN GANGSTER
***/****
starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding, Jr.
screenplay by Steven Zaillian
directed by Ridley Scott

I'M NOT THERE
***½/****
starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere
screenplay by Todd Haynes & Oren Moverman
directed by Todd Haynes

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
****/****
'08 BD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
CE – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Americangangsterby Walter Chaw Consider the moment when an overly enthusiastic police search results in the demolition of a replica dresser commissioned by Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) for the Carolina plantation he's bought to house his extended family. In one canny instant, there's the suggestion that nothing ever changes: the things we lose in time we will always lose. The image Ridley Scott provides for us as he moves the Lucas clan into their new digs is loaded and dangerous, with a group of African-Americans walking up the lush green lawn of an antebellum plantation–usurpers of a corrupt American Dream that, American Gangster posits, is still corrupt and in essentially the same way. True, there's a cartoon bogey in a New York cop (Josh Brolin) erected as the straw man for all of New York's Finest who's profiting off French Connection junk (gasp, he shoots a dog, and probably also smokes)–but the real villainy in the picture is the idea that the path to true status and achievement in the United States is on the backs of not just others, but entire groups of others.

The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

March 26, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Virginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Martin Donovan, Elias Koteas
screenplay by Adam Simon & Tim Metcalfe
directed by Peter Cornwell

Hauntinginconnecticutby Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Never mind all of this "true story" malarkey–what really makes The Haunting in Connecticut stand out from the pack is the sociopathic obnoxiousness with which it's been marketed to moviegoers. The dark and depressing trailers are bad enough, but who can forget the giant ad that invaded YouTube's front page last week that showed a young boy ejecting a gravity-defying stream of vomit before inviting the user to "click to watch two dead boys"? Though "dead boys" is actually a reference to the famous folk poem (as in "back to back they faced each other"), it's still not exactly the smartest way to promote your wares outside the hopefully-miniscule sadist demographic–especially when the final product ends up being cookie-cutter ADD bullshit like The Haunting in Connecticut.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

March 23, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Espionage, James Bond, Thriller, UK

½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C
starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench
screenplay by Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade
directed by Marc Forster

by Walter Chaw Sex without foreplay, Marc Forster's limp dick of a James Bond flick Quantum of Solace takes the kinetic, angry ugliness of Casino Royale and, together with Paul Haggis's Dances with Wolves screenplay of affected naivety and wide-eyed, late-blooming outrage, fashions a most-unwelcome return to the hoary Bond franchise of old. As if aware that all that stuff about Bolivian peasants pining for water might be connected, and queasily, to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (a daring cargo-jet escape is similarly cribbed from that film), Quantum of Solace does its level best to strip entire set-pieces from the Bourne series (a knife fight, the close-quarters disarming of government agents, the roof-top flight), forgetting in the process to port over the coherence of Doug Liman or Paul Greengrass choreography. The picture's idea of an action sequence consists of extreme close-ups of two vehicles involved in some kind of ill-defined skirmish intercut with extreme close-ups of Bond and some bad guy who looks just like him intercut with flashes and body parts, ending in Bond walking away with a wry grimace on his face. What a real director could have done with the prologue on a winding mountain road in Italy that has a truck nudged off it by the baddies almost pancake 007 on the way down. And what a real screenwriter could have done with the concept of Bond as the remorseless liquid terminator from T2. Instead we get admittedly only the logical offspring of this ill-begotten union between the guy who directed The Kite Runner and Finding Neverland and the asshole who wrote Crash and a few episodes of "The Facts of Life". Whoever had the bright idea that this would be the magical, gritty duo to continue the resuscitation of Albert Broccoli's dusty old wet-dream of a crusading GOP avatar desperately needs to be shown the door.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) – DVD + Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

March 23, 2009Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Mexico, Romance, UK

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE
**/**** Image B- Sound A Extras B+
starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Danny Huston, Jeff Bridges
screenplay by Peter Straughan, based on the book by Toby Young
directed by Robert Weide

BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA
½*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Piper Perabo, Manolo Cardona, Jamie Lee Curtis, José María Yazpik
screenplay by Analisa LaBianco and Jeffrey Bushell
directed by Raja Gosnell

by Ian Pugh Tipping its hat to Godard through a poster on the wall of disillusioned magazine editor Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (hereafter How to Lose Friends) owes an enormous debt to the success of The Devil Wears Prada, but it may be more accurate to describe it as Contempt as told by Elizabethtown-era Cameron Crowe. Which is to say, it argues that the only way to beat the entertainment industry at its game of media-manipulation is to play by the rules. The idealistic writer has to sell out, temporarily at least; and when he loses the girl to some asshole "in the know," the audience can rest assured that they'll be reunited soon enough. Simon Pegg ostensibly plays boorish journo Sidney Young, a British transplant in New York City come to shake the foundations of a thinly-veiled VANITY FAIR clone only to endure several rude awakenings. Pegg really plays the part of the wacky Kirsten Dunst pixie from Elizabethtown, though, come from merry old England with a fistful of snark to teach strait-laced Kirsten Dunst (here essaying the Orlando Bloom role) about the fruitlessness of obsessing over ridiculous establishments beyond your control. Well, that and the joys of Con Air.

Gomorrah (2008) + Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

February 20, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Drama, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

Gomorra
***½/****
starring Salvatore Abruzzese, Simone Sacchettino, Salvatore Ruocco, Vincenzo Fabricino
screenplay by Maurizio Braucci & Ugo Chiti & Gianni Di Gregorio & Matteo Garrone & Massimo Gaudioso & Roberto Saviano, based on the book by Saviano
directed by Matteo Garrone

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
*/****
starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor
screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, based on the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup
directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan

by Walter Chaw Dropping us in the middle of Italian slum Scampia, itself smack dab in the middle of nothing, Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (Gomorra) is the Hud of gangster flicks, all deglamourized, harsh, expressionist stripping-away of illusions and idealism to reveal the gasping, grasping emptiness underneath. Like Hud, the source of that idealism is years of cinema supporting a romanticized iconography: the American western in Martin Ritt's film, the collected works of Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese in Garrone's peek inside the ways of this thing of ours. Unlike Hud, there's no intimation of a "happy" ending for the sociopaths of Gomorrah–no feeling that for whatever the cost to a normalized (idealized?) existence, the outcasts and opportunists living their lives in imitation of Tony Montana are doomed to their tough-guy surfaces and the anonymous deaths predicted for them during a brutal prologue. Non-narrative and populated by a non-professional cast of locals and unusual suspects, the picture, however steeped in naturalism, is finally a formalist piece about as free of structure as Sartre–and every bit as meticulous. This "No Exit" (and the French title of Sartre's play fascinatingly translates, when applied to a discussion of a film, as "In Camera") and its unlocked oubliette is Scampia: The players in organized crime are imprisoned there by choice, trapped by the validation they desire from one another.

The International (2009)

February 18, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Espionage, France, Germany, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Brian F. O’Byrne
screenplay by Eric Warren Singer
directed by Tom Tykwer

Internationalby Walter Chaw There’s a shootout at the Guggenheim in the late-middle of The International that is the only real clue director Tom Tykwer had anything to do with the film. The rest of it, despite its title reminding of that Christopher Walken SNL skit about velvet smoking jackets and attempted rape, is just more of the same musty prestige-y Topical Picture™ that usually stars people like Sean Penn or Kevin Costner instead of, as The International does, Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Bland and blander, as it turns out. A rumpled Owen is Salinger, some kind of ill-defined crusader for justice with a badge from Interpol and a dark past from Syd Field, while Watts, as ADA Elly, who spends her first scene with a Boston/Newark accent and the rest with her standard-issue Yank. They’re tepid on the trail of a big giant bank that has a nefarious plan to control debt, which I confess is what I thought banks do. With the picture more interested in mashing its thumb against the “Relevant” button than in creating characters of interest, villains who frighten, and situations that involve, Tykwer, for his part, seems at a loss as to how to employ his agile camera and so trusts a premise that’s already feeling a little mothballed for the collapse and bailout of our banking system. It doesn’t matter that The International doesn’t know what to be from one minute to the next–what matters is that it’s an exact replica of The Interpreter in every way that counts and is, therefore, completely, immanently, blessedly forgettable.