UK Archives - Page 16 of 33 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

The Love Guru (2008) + Get Smart (2008)

June 19, 20082000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Espionage, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

THE LOVE GURU
ZERO STARS/****
starring Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Ben Kingsley
screenplay by Mike Myers & Graham Gordy
directed by Marco Schnabel

GET SMART
***/****
starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, James Caan
screenplay by Tim J. Astle & Matt Ember
directed by Peter Segal

by Walter Chaw Dick this, cock that, penis penis penis–let me mention in the interest of full, ahem, disclosure that I don't think Mike Myers is funny; that Chris Farley's death was a great shame for a lot of reasons, among the worst that his passing opened the door for Myers to voice Shrek; and that it's not amusing in the slightest to make an endless stream of johnson jokes. The Love Guru has Myers sort of taking a wave at a cheap Indian accent in a redux of that Eddie Murphy triumph Holy Man–which means, essentially, that he proves himself not as committed as Will Ferrell and not as feral as Adam Sandler and not as neutered, as it happens, as Eddie Murphy. Myers, in other words, is less than his peers, doomed to be upstaged at every turn by anyone unfortunate enough to share a scene with him. (Doomed, too, to be constantly undermined by his inability to resist mugging for the camera.) Myers is Guru Pitka, a writer of Dr. Phil-cum-Deepak Chopra self-help volumes hired by the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jane (Jessica Alba), to cure star winger Roanoke (Romany Malco) of his sudden case of the shakes. Thus Myers marries his two passions (hockey and not being funny) into one noxious ball of shit and wiener jokes, in the process taking a colossal dump on an entire culture with puerile wordplays like "Guru Satchabigknoba" and "Guru Tugginmypudha" (Ben Kingsley, playing it cross-eyed). It was funny when Monty Python did it, yes, because Monty Python was made up of people who were funny.

V for Vendetta (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

May 29, 20082000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Germany, Revenge, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B-
starring Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, John Hurt
screenplay by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
directed by James McTeigue

by Walter Chaw As documents for the opposition go, V for Vendetta may be the ballsiest, angriest picture of the current administration, flashing without apology images of naked prisoners of the state, shackled in black hoods and held in clear acrylic boxes while a febrile talking head and his cloistered intimates (called "fingers") form a closed fist around them. It surmises a future where the government plants stories in centrally-owned media conglomerates, controlling groupthink by providing just one point of view. Woe be unto those with a critical mind because what, after all, is more dangerous to a dictatorial theocracy than a question? But more, the picture is an impassioned plea for alternative lifestyles, exposing the melodrama of Brokeback Mountain to be embarrassed, even polite, when the struggle for equal regard is something that should be undertaken with passion and brio–it's life and death, and V for Vendetta presents it as such. There are no half measures in a film that takes as its hero an eloquent monologist in a Guy Fawkes mask (Hugo Weaving), his erstwhile, reluctant sidekick a young woman, Evey (Natalie Portman), transformed through the government-sanctioned abduction of her parents and a period of torture and imprisonment into not an avenging angel, but a voice of reason. How fascinating that the reasonable solution in the picture is the destruction of Britain's Parliament on the Thames.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007) [Four-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

May 19, 2008****/****, 1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw The prototype for the modern science-fiction film, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, through its seemingly endless iterations, through its growing cult of personality and a production history that's become as familiar as a Herzog shooting mythology, retains its ability to astonish as–along with John Carpenter's contemporaneous The Thing–the last hurrah for the non-CGI, in-camera effects piece. Tron, The Last Starfighter, and Firefox were destined to be the rule of the day at the expense of matte painters and model-makers, here working out puzzles like how to make a futuristic, mechanized advertising blimp appear to be shooting strobes through the glassed ceiling of the Bradbury. Indeed, it's almost impossible to watch Blade Runner now without taking its technical brilliance for granted. It looks like it was made in 2007 (particularly in its newest, digitized incarnation); with its lack of the bluescreen artifacts that plague many of its contemporaries, it's easy to think of a mainframe as the movie's author.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

May 15, 20082000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Poland, Slovenia, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
starring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell
screenplay by Andrew Adamson & Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, based on the novel by C.S. Lewis
directed by Andrew Adamson

by Walter Chaw Let’s face it: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (hereafter Narnia 2) is by most objective measures a complete mess. It doesn’t do a particularly good job of shading in its backstory (you really need to have read the book or seen the first film very recently) and its narrative proper is truncated and spastic. The characters don’t demonstrate enough awe when they’re confronted with a minotaur for the first time, nor do they register the appropriate shock upon characters from their storybooks suddenly appearing in their midst. Though there’s a real problem with special-effects films that spend too much time gawping at their own illusions, it’s not much better when pictures like this give its characters good reason to be surprised and they’re not. It begins in the middle and ends with an exit tune so embarrassing that it threatens to completely deflate the goodwill the picture has, against all odds, built to that point–but damn it if it isn’t quite good for all that. Narnia 2 reminds of Stardust in that sense: it works because it works, because the connective tissue that’s there in the ephemera is made of sinew and spider silk–strong, fibrous, and sticky even when the actual plotting does the film no favours. Its themes are universal even though C.S. Lewis is unabashedly Christian; what’s laudable about the first instalment and now this sequel is the obvious pains taken to present themes of resurrection, redemption, and faith as archetype rather than dogma. Attaching something so specific as an idea of Satan, for instance, to a brief, remarkably affecting reappearance of The White Witch (Tilda Swinton) is a reach and missing the point besides. Narnia 2 is about believing in something so simple as a greater power–about humility and resisting temptation and the easy path. Yoda had something to say to my generation from atop a log in Dagobah, and it’s possible to see Narnia 2 as Luke’s invitation to meet his darker self in the roots of a gnarled old tree.

Then She Found Me (2008)

May 8, 20082000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth, Helen Hunt, Bette Midler
screenplay by Alice Arlen and Victor Levin & Helen Hunt and Helen Hunt (<–not a typo)
directed by Helen Hunt

by Walter Chaw Mamet-lite–which is to say "garbage-lite"–for the most part, the dialogue in Helen Hunt's hyphenate debut is repetitive and deeply irritating, especially as delivered by Hunt in that perpetually whinging, laconic fashion of hers. Marry it to a directing style that could gently be called "self-aggrandizing" and generally be called "static" and Then She Found Me thuds into place as one of the most atrocious things to collapse on the silver screen in months. Here Hunt is Barbra Streisand without the singing, optimistically cast as a woman "about to turn forty" while asking poor, mortgage-needing Colin Firth to twice opine that her increasingly cadaverous-looking self is "beautiful" and "gorgeous." To each his own, of course, but Hunt the director/prime mover (she co-wrote and produced the benighted thing) sticking herself in front of a conservative gross of close-ups and pushing others to compliment her appearance is so far beyond distasteful that it's boring. Adoption, artificial insemination, infertility, miscarriage, infidelity, lumpen milquetoast Matthew Broderick as the really, really obscure object of desire, and stereotypes about East Coast Jews pollute this godawful mess like Union Carbide in some unfortunate, populous third-world nation. Call said ghetto the "arthouse" (its citizens, what the hell, "festivalgoers") and point to it whenever the random, ossified, effete intellectuals offer that they prefer to watch "indies" in the "arthouse," eschewing "mainstream" cinema with a sniff, a wave of a hanky, and a puff of talcum.

Life of Brian (1979) [The Immaculate Edition] – DVD + The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) [20th Anniversary Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

April 8, 20081970s, 1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, UK, West Germany

LIFE OF BRIAN
***/**** Image B Sound C Extras A
starring Monty Python
screenplay by Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Terry Gilliam & Eric Idle & Terry Jones & Michael Palin
directed by Terry Jones

THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
**/****
DVD – Image B- Sound B+ Extras B+
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed
screenplay by Charles McKeown & Terry Gilliam
directed by Terry Gilliam

by Walter Chaw Call it a rite of passage, but I'm thinking that boys of my generation memorize the Monty Python repertoire as a buttress against the terror of losing their virginity. (No colder shower than a round of "ni"s, let's face it; reciting the entirety of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the antithesis of smooth and as such becomes the chit one trades for entry into the club of delayed experience.) Not until you get a little older do you appreciate that Monty Python earned their outsider status by being a satirical animal as opposed to a slapstick one–that the lengths to which they'd go for a joke has more to do with camouflage than with their stated goal of silliness. Owing to my knowing it almost subliminally at this point (let's just say the surprise is gone), I must confess I don't find Life of Brian that funny anymore–but I do find it to be a little amazing. This most recent viewing is the first time I've seen it with thousands of films packed dense into the rear-view, as well as the first time I've been able to appreciate that Life of Brian isn't one of dozens of films that take an irreverent run at fundamentalism, but rather one of the only ones. It's a revelation I greet with equal parts admiration for the picture and horror at the paucity of real conversation about skepticism in our Judeo-Christian culture. Always a lot of dust kicked up when another Dutch artist takes a run at Islam; the only difference in fundamentalist Christianity's response to Life of Brian is that the government didn't sanction the death threats it provoked.

Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains the Same (1976) – Blu-ray Disc

March 13, 20081970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Concert Doc, Documentary, Fantasy, Music, UK

The Song Remains the Same
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant
directed by Joe Massot and Peter Clifton

by Bill Chambers I was a closet Led Zeppelin fanboy throughout my teen years. It wasn’t because I thought their music reflected poor taste (no guilty pleasure, they–no need to sic Carl Wilson on me), but rather because there are connotations to liking them I felt misrepresented me and my affection for the band as facilitators of emotional catharsis. Affiliate yourself with The Cure and at the very least you’ll score points with hot goth chicks; affiliate yourself with Led Zeppelin and expect to spend your Friday nights rolling 20-sided dice and/or mingling with ersatz hippies. In retrospect, I had basically separated the Led Zeppelin discography from the iconographic baggage that came with it; and I think part of the reason I could never get through The Song Remains the Same (the movie, not the album, although the album is no great shakes) as a teenager–other than the fact that, no matter how you slice it, it simply isn’t very good–was because its goofy non sequiturs and psychedelic glaze endeavoured to undo all my hard work. I found its imagery psychically intrusive on the seven minutes a day I spent moping to “The Rain Song.”

In Bruges (2008)

February 8, 20082000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*½/****
starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy
written and directed by Martin McDonagh

by Walter Chaw An ugly piece of work, writer-director Martin McDonagh's feature debut In Bruges has about it an unshakeable air of unleavened unpleasantness. It starts with the framing conceit of little boys with their heads blown off: the first victim unlikely because, hey, you'd at least turn your head if shooting started in the next room, right?; the second unsavoury because it caps a running joke about little people that isn't funny in the least. (No small accomplishment for running jokes about midgets, I don't have to tell you.) Between, find Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hitmen Ray and Ken, respectively, exiled to Bruges, Belgium after a London hit goes bad and forced to excrete witticisms in one another's company like Juno-spawned Pez dispensers. McDonagh's idea of profound profanity consists of Ray being very amused by midgets, fat Americans, and effete Canadians and Ken being sucked in by the medieval, touristy charms of sleepy Bruges; both await some word from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes), himself busy doing a real convincing impersonation of Ben Kingsley's insane mobster from Sexy Beast. Funny how something can be both overwritten and underwritten, but there you have it. In Bruges posits the idea that our boys are in God's waiting room–not Florida, but some enchanted backwater, waiting for judgment on high for their sins while sightseeing ancient churches and contemplating Bosch. Ken takes the communion, Ray takes a piss, and Harry surfaces like a Cockney shark in a third act remarkable for its feckless cupidity.

Sundance ’08: The Wackness

February 1, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, Sundance, Teen, UK

**/****starring Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Famke Janssen, Olivia Thirlbywritten and directed by Jonathan Levine by Alex Jackson In the opening scene of The Wackness, teenager Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) is having a session with his psychiatrist, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley). Dr. Squires tells him that a "quarter bag" will buy him forty-five minutes. Luke produces the requested pot and goes on to discuss his problems as Dr. Squires fills and lights up a bong. In one of the film's closing scenes, Luke is having dinner with his family when an uncle asks him what he wants to be once he…

Sundance ’08: Be Kind Rewind

January 30, 20082000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Sundance, UK

***/****starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrowwritten and directed by Michel Gondry by Alex Jackson Michel Gondry has said he always wanted to make a film like Back to the Future (i.e., a quirky, funny, big-budget movie), and I guess this is his version of it. It has science-fiction, toilet humour, a lovable man-child (à la Adam Sandler or Jerry Lewis, here played by Jack Black), slapstick, romance, and a classic storyline involving evil developers with plans to pave over the community hangout unless the heroes can stop them in time. Gondry clearly wants to break the one-hundred…

Man on Fire (2004) – Blu-ray Disc

January 11, 20082000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, Mexico, Switzerland, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Marc Anthony, Radha Mitchell
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by A.J. Quinnell
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. What used to be the province of the Times Square grindhouse and drive-in movie theatres is now star-vehicle blockbuster fodder, making the revenge sub-genre's subversive qualities and carefully-cultivated atmosphere of frustrated rage suddenly a reflection of the demons plaguing mainstream culture. Though certainly more substantive than the hit-and-run remake of Walking Tall, Tony Scott's Man on Fire falls far below the redemptive qualities of Kill Bill, Vol. 2, offering the world the logical end result of a nation operating under the twin godheads of fear and Old Testament vengeance: a slickefied, iconographic, racist, sexist, huckster version of the grimy, low rent, pleasantly exploitative The Punisher.

Atonement (2007) + The Kite Runner (2007)

December 25, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Drama, France, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, UK, War

ATONEMENT
*½/****
starring James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave
screenplay by Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Ian McEwan
directed by Joe Wright

THE KITE RUNNER
½*/****
starring Khalid Abdalla, Homayoun Ershadi, Shaun Toub, Saïd Taghmaoui
screenplay by David Benioff, based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini
directed by Marc Forster

by Walter Chaw No end-of-year sweepstakes would be complete without the requisite bushel of awards-baiting pabulum, rich with a nice, thick vein of glossy pandering. They're movies you're supposed to love: can't-miss, sure-fire formula flicks that bank on their sparkly casts and borrowed prestige the way blockbuster action flicks rely on special effects and the promise of mayhem. Reduce it down enough and the dreg at the bottom of the stew pot is still just making money–you don't reinvent the wheel by following a recipe, and indeed, a good 99% of movies in any given year don't boast of anything new. To say that you like something like August Rush is to say that you hate to be challenged by a film–that escapism is the first and last reason you go to the movies. Where something like Transformers wants to inspire a car- or girl-related boner, something like Atonement wants to ennoble the cineplex arthouse crowd into paroxysms of self-congratulation. It's the same feeling that compels awards bodies to vote for this stuff: mainstream passing as estimable while the real deal flies for the most part under the radar. The more assembly line chunder like Atonement and The Kite Runner gets chosen for Academy recognition, the fewer slots there are available for big studio pics that actually deliver the goods, like No Country for Old Men, The Darjeeling Limited, There Will Be Blood, and Sweeney Todd (presuming, of course, that an impressive number of remarkable studio flicks released earlier this calendar year are already lost causes).

A Christmas Carol (1951) [Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – DVD

December 25, 20071930s, 1950s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, UK

Scrooge
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns
screenplay by Noel Langley, based on the book by Charles Dickens
directed by Brian Desmond Hurst

by Alex Jackson Would you believe that my enthusiasm towards Brian Desmond Hurst's A Christmas Carol is significantly tempered by my familiarity with Scrooged, the 1988 partial retelling of the classic novella? That Richard Donner film is a bit of a perennial favourite, having come out the perfect year (1988) for it to enter my consciousness. (For our third grade Christmas pageant, we even led the audience in a sing-along to Tina Turner's "Put a Little Love in Your Heart"!) While I never quite thought it good enough to add to my collection, I do feel genuinely disappointed that few cable stations appear to be re-running it. Scrooged does the obvious thing by putting Ebenezer Scrooge in charge of a television network, but the update actually works and the film feels particularly relevant to contemporary viewers.

Sunshine (2007) + The Simpsons Movie (2007)

December 17, 20072000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

SUNSHINE
***/****
starring Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity
screenplay by Alex Garland
directed by Danny Boyle

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
screenplay by James L. Brooks & Matt Groening & Al Jean & Ian Maxtone-Graham & George Meyer & David Mirkin & Mike Reiss & Mike Scully & Matt Selman & John Swartzwelder & Jon Vitti
directed by David Silverman

by Walter Chaw I had the great fortune to revisit Michael Almereyda's astounding Hamlet the other night with a smart, engaged audience, and more than once during Danny Boyle's Sunshine it occurred to me that Almereyda should've directed it. Almereyda, after all, would've made the movie beautiful and intelligent–wouldn't have leaned on genre conventions like a late picture boogeyman too much like Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty (and Blade Runner's just one of the dozens of pictures the film cribs from). He would've had sufficient faith in the premise to not muck it up with one metaphor for the fall of man too many. Sunshine is gorgeous for much of its run, however, good enough to merit comparison to Soderbergh's Solaris (though not Tarkovsky's, mind you–it's never that introspective) in its careful juxtaposition of human frailty against the awesome, insensate inscrutability of the universe. Set in a not-too-distant future where the sun is suffering from the need for a little jump-start, the picture opens seven years after the first expedition to save the world, the badly-/poignantly-named "Icarus I", has disappeared and a second expedition carrying the last of Earth's fissionable material ("Icarus II", natch) has been dispatched. Once they've encountered the rescue beacon of their predecessor, the ship's crew of seven–three of them Asian, which is really kind of amazing (a fourth is Maori)–gradually comes to realize that they're on a mission to touch the face of God.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

December 10, 2007****/****, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Family, Fantasy, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, UK

****/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter
screenplay by Michael Goldenberg, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by David Yates

by Walter Chaw It's a blasted earth, this green that holds Hogwarts now, and during a scene where our hero wizard is being tortured into forgetfulness for his own good, director David Yates cues a blanket of forgetful snow to fall. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (hereafter Harry Potter 5) is, likes its title suggests, a startling return to form for the series after Alfonso Cuarón's exceptional Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was followed by the insipid contribution of rom-com specialist Mike Newell. Gratifyingly complex and deliciously Freudian, a moment where Harry loses the last of his family–mirroring a moment in the third film where, on the banks of a lake, he almost loses himself–is preceded by an identical progression from the third film in which he's mistaken for his own father. Alas this time, Harry's not able to affect positive change in the guise of his dad; it's the boy becoming the man, frustrated and folded into a world of dread and doom. As drawn in the film, Potter's universe is like Potter's Field, a place where strangers and orphans are buried on the eve of war and a child's unavoidable matriculation into corruption. Harry Potter 5 is dark as pitch: unsettling, unsettled, unresolved, and utterly remarkable.

The Golden Compass (2007)

December 7, 20072000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliott, Eva Green, Daniel Craig
screenplay by Chris Weitz, based on the novel by Philip Pullman
directed by Chris Weitz

by Walter Chaw The newest entry in the "what the fuck" hall of fame is Chris Weitz's deplorable, dull, nonsensical, unwatchable The Golden Compass, which comes packed to the gills with meaningless terms, arcane concepts, stupid names, and a narrative patchwork that plays like a game of "make-up" improvised by a hyperactive child. Arriving on a wave of controversy as right-wing hard-ons decry its anti-Christian tendencies (where were they for Beowulf?), the picture's full-on attack on good taste and coherent filmmaking are what they really should be protesting. Adherents will thrill, I suppose, although I doubt that atheists are as natively stupid as born-agains–but without a good working knowledge of the Pullman books upon which the film is based, I can't imagine anyone having a chance with this stuff. Impenetrable ain't the least of it. Weitz is completely outmatched by the material, trying too hard to cram all the gobbledygook about daemons and dust and witches and armoured bears he possibly can into every crevice available between the CGI sequences while leaving out huge, gaping expanses of necessary exposition in the process. If this wasn't bad enough, consider the sequence that begins with a 900 lb. polar bear wisely suggesting that a thin ice shelf can't support both his weight and that of his 80 lb. rider (sage, indeed)–thus necessitating their splitting up–and ends with said 900 lb. bear materializing out of nowhere to somehow surprise a bad guy from the front. Even with full knowledge of the Pullman books, the way the movie's put together is plodding, non-sequitous, inept.

Beowulf (2007)

November 16, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
screenplay by Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary
directed by Robert Zemeckis

by Walter Chaw The Old English epic gets what feels like its twentieth adaptation in the last couple of years alone with Robert Zemeckis's Polar Express-ized–which is to say, digitally rotoscoped to distraction and peopled with pixel phantoms that look like dead-eyed Toussaud versions of the actors voicing them–Beowulf. Not that there aren't a few pretty cool moments (especially in IMAX 3D, the six-story screen doing wonders for the masturbatory shazam interludes), but the whole thing is decidedly unthrilling and so technologically interesting that it overwhelms any connection we might otherwise have with the story. I spent a lot of energy admiring the whiz-bang and almost none giving much of a shit about anything else. What won me over at the end is that it's completely ballsy in its anti-Christian tactic, suggesting a few weeks before The Golden Compass debuts that the general sea change against the evangelicals, if not predicted by the cinema, is at least reflected by it. A scene where a bishop played by John Malkovich is carried on a cross from his dragon-levelled church, hissing about "sins of the fathers," is almost as tricky as another where good king Beowulf (Ray Winstone) announces that the "Christ God" has done away with all heroes, replacing them with "fear and shame." I prefer my heresy in the subtler vintage minted by stuff like Matthew Robbins's Dragonslayer, but what the hell: if Hollywood's going to fire a shot across the Conservative bow, I'd rather they do it this way than with something like Lions for Lambs. Also cool is the casting of Crispin Glover as evil troll Grendel.

Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)

October 19, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro, David Duchovny, Omar Benson Miller
screenplay by Allan Loeb
directed by Susanne Bier

by Walter Chaw I love Danish director Susanne Bier's Open Hearts, the second Dogme95 picture by a woman and one of the most affecting tragic romances I've ever seen. (Much of its power is attributable to a scene where a man, newly paralyzed, dreams of reaching across a small space to touch his lover's hand.) I thought, even given the middling quality of her follow-ups Brothers and After the Wedding, that we'd found in Bier a distinct, exciting talent, an artist interested in charting the course of grief described in the coming-apart of complementary halves and doing so with minimal fanfare or melodrama. It usually would take more than one picture for me to lose the religion, but Bier's done it in brilliant fashion with her English-language debut, Things We Lost in the Fire. Blame her screenwriter Allan Loeb for a goodly portion of this glorious debacle, one that features an early exchange in which a father defines "fluorescent" for his six-year-old son as "lit from within," leading the boy, of course, to pipe up with, "Do you think that I'm lit from within?" Not that Bier escapes accountability: Refusing to let go of her Dogme flirtation, she shoots most of this gas-trap in total silence and extreme close-up, marking this boilerplate tearjerker as uniquely, unwatchably pretentious. It's also maudlin, mawkish, unintentionally hilarious, and utterly devoid of human emotion. The word I'm searching for, I guess, is "alien." After the extraordinary humanism of Open Hearts, to see Bier at the wheel of this infernal exercise in clearing off the mantle is nothing short of horrible.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

October 12, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, France, Germany, UK, War

½*/****
starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Samantha Morton
screenplay by William Nicholson and Michael Hirst
directed by Shekhar Kapur

by Walter Chaw I don't mind historical pictures that aren't historically accurate until that historical inaccuracy–like in U-571, for instance–becomes so fucking retarded that it lowers the temperature of the room. Elizabeth: The Golden Age is just that fucking stupid. Should being dumb not be reason enough to avoid this movie, know that it's also unintentionally hilarious, appears to have had its screenplay ghost-written by Bob Dylan, and casts Catholics and Spaniards as Skeksis in some perverse re-imagining of The Dark Crystal as a psychodrama about the cherry-busting beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton, dreadfully wasted) and penile conjugation-by-double-proxy of rapscallion Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) into the hallowed womb (and womb-like cathedral interiors of this England). Cate Blanchett reprises her role from director Shekhar Kapur's first Bollywoodization of British history (he made one other, The Four Feathers, in between) as the Virgin Queen born fully-formed from the school of Arch and Tic. (I wonder if soon there'll be any actresses left who haven't played one Elizabeth or another–seems the distaff "Hamlet" proving ground of our time.) There's a Nostradamus character for whatever goddamned reason, a candlelit bath scene only because it's mandated in sub-BBC pieces of shit like this, and a thinly-veiled CIA spook, Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), who acts as Elizabeth's chief intelligence officer.

28 Weeks Later (2007) – DVD

October 8, 2007****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Spain, Thriller, UK, Zombie

****/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras B
starring Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba
screenplay by Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, E.L. Lavigne, Jesús Olmo
directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Walter Chaw It’s phenomenal. Where 28 Days Later… was saddled with ambition that exceeded its reach and, in Danny Boyle, a director who not only disdained the genre but has otherwise proven himself a grade-A tool as well, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s sequel 28 Weeks Later is brutally graceful in its vision of a nuclear family’s dissolution as the metaphor for a broader, collective unrest. The triumph of the picture, though, is that it’s as succinct and eloquent as a heart attack; as a parable of the Iraq War (popularly called “The War in Iraq,” a subtle semantic distancing technique particularly trenchant to this discussion), it’s all about aftermath and occupation. It’s impossible not to compare it to the years and tens of thousands of fatalities since the declaration of “mission accomplished” when the picture begins with the reassurance that everything’s peachy in dead-as-a-doornail England. Repatriation and reconstruction have begun six months after the outbreak of the first film’s “rage virus,” reuniting two kids, Tammy (future superstar Imogen Poots) and Andy (Harry Potter-named Mackintosh Muggleton), with their tightly-wound da’, Don (Robert Carlyle). In an end-of-the-world opening in what only appears to be night (it’s the first of several brilliant reversals), we see how a fissure develops in Don’s marriage to wife Alice (Catherine McCormack), and of how that stress fracture becomes the foundation for the rest of the picture’s relationships and politics.