Lucky Number Slevin (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Lucky Number Slevin (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu
screenplay by Jason Smilovic
directed by Paul McGuigan

by Walter Chaw I wonder if it’s not ultimately a little too pat for its own good, but Paul McGuigan’s Lucky Number Slevin is another slick, Guy Ritchie crime-manqué to pair with the director’s breakthrough Gangster No. 1. It stars his muse Josh Hartnett (great in McGuigan’s underestimated Hitchcock shrine Wicker Park) as the handsome Roger O. Thornhill/Wrong Man archetype–and it finds for Lucy Liu the first role that didn’t make me sort of want to punch her mother. But the real star of a film that finds supporting roles for Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci, and Sir Ben Kingsley is McGuigan’s restless camerawork: an intricate lattice of matching shots and glittering surfaces that becomes almost an impressionistic projection of the mad, labyrinthine interiority of a mind bent on vengeance. Flashbacks and CGI-aided swoops and zooms are woven into the picture’s visual tapestry, so that Lucky Number Slevin is read best as a lurid, comic-book send-up of a genre–every scene is played with a good-natured nudge, and when it overstays its welcome with a round-up that verges on sickly, its only real crime is that it’s less a grotesque than a screwball romance. Hitchcock did it like that sometimes, too.

TIFF ’06: After the Wedding

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Norway, Sweden, TIFF, UK
Efter brylluppet **½/**** starring Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgård, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Stine Fischer Christensen screenplay by Susanne Bier & Anders Thomas Jensen directed 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…

Only Human (2004) + House of Sand (2005)

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Brazil, Comedy, Drama, Portugal, Romance, Spain, Theatrical, UK

Seres queridos
**/****
starring Guillermo Toledo, Marián Aguilera, María Botto, Fernando Ramallo
written and directed by Dominic Harari & Teresa Pelegri

Casa de Areia
***½/****
starring Fernanda Montenegro, Fernanda Torres, Ruy Guerra, Seu Jorge
screenplay by Elena Soárez
directed by Andrucha Waddington

by Walter Chaw Married hyphenates Dominic Harari and Teresi Pelegri craft a screwball comedy (which has the audacity to end with the final line of Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot) about what happens when good Jewish girl Leni (Marián Aguilera) brings Palestinian nebbish boyfriend Rafi (Guillermo Toledo) home to meet her My Big Fat Greek Wedding ethnic cartoon family. There’s the blind, rifle-toting old fossil fond of recounting his days of potting Arabs along the Gaza strip; the short, hysterical Jewish mother; the slutty older sister who only fucks anything with a dick because mama loved little sister more; the younger brother who’s newly fanatical about the Koran and the observance of the Jewish Sabbath; and the niece who’s a monster because, well, who wouldn’t be in that household? Discomfort turns into farce when Rafi drops a cube of frozen soup out a window, killing someone who might be Leni’s father (said father later mistaking a black prostitute for Leni’s mother)–this event also leading to the discovery that Leni’s mother has never had an orgasm and the tableaux homorte where grandpa is caught groping Rafi during a trip to the loo.

The Descent (2005)

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Theatrical, UK

***/****
starring Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder
written and directed by Neil Marshall

by Walter Chaw Beginning in the same way as countless other genre pictures (the city folks go to a cabin and have boring, perfunctory, character-defining chatter), Neil Marshall’s often-terrifying, often-brilliant The Descent subsequently manages to describe for long stretches a complicated, Jungian labyrinth of regret and shadow-projections and doubling through dank explorations of a vaginal, womb-like metaphor for the subconscious. There’s a moment where our avatar, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), emerges from a gore bath and stands reborn into the very avenging feminist totem of Carrie post-prom: it’s just one of three “births” Sarah endures (four if you count a dream sequence in a hospital early on), the last of which stands in tribute to the final sting of Carrie. It’s possible, in fact, to split the film into quarters according to its recurrent motifs of gestation-into-discharge following penetration.

Don’t Come Knocking (2005) – DVD

Don’t Come Knocking (2005) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Music, UK

**/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann
screenplay by Sam Shepard, based on his play
directed by Wim Wenders

by Walter Chaw Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a has-been western star knocked down a few pegs by alcohol, drugs, and groupies–and so like any good anti-hero, he takes off in the middle of shooting a film, on horseback, to reunite with his long-estranged mother (Eva Marie Saint) before heading off to Butte, Montana in search of a long-lost bastard son (Gabriel Mann). He has a few conversations with the barmaid (Jessica Lange) he knocked up once upon a time, while a sullen girl (Sarah Polley) carrying a blue urn stalks him around town, offering the occasional cryptic message before retreating again into the wallpaper. But what glorious wallpaper it is, with Wim Wenders and his cinematographer Franz Lustig finding in Butte a myth of the American West frozen in bright, primary, Edward Hopper amber. Twin painters of isolation and suspension, Wenders and Hopper–since long about The American Friend–have been on a mission to redraw the psychic divorce of one American from another in minor chords and long, drawn-out tremolos. Don’t Come Knocking, though, is only minor Wenders, and I do wonder if giving over too much faith in the flagging abilities of Shepard to write a script worth shooting has cost him his pitch this time around.

Scoop (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Woody Allen, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane
written and directed by Woody Allen

by Walter Chaw Woody Allen’s stock had been falling when the surprising restraint and structure of the frankly-just-decent Match Point temporarily staunched a hemorrhage of appalling failures. Call Scoop a return to form, then, with Allen doing Allen again to rapidly diminishing returns, spicing things up this time around with a teeny dose of post-modern self-deprecation that seems not so much thoughtful as pathetic. The Woodman plays a fast-talking, stammering, Catskills comedian calling himself “The Great Splendini” (for the “square haircuts,” he Rickles) who, as Allen is wont to do nowadays, acts as the pandering mentor for a hot young couple. What’s most shocking is that a puff of dust and cobwebs don’t erupt from his mouth every time it creaks open to deliver another pun about Trollope/trollop and Ruebens/Rueben (the corned beef and sauerkraut variety). Otherwise, it’s The More the Merrier ad infinitum: the old fart helping a couple of good-looking kids get their groove on–with the twist of a Jack the Ripper subplot woven awkwardly into the narrative. It’s far easier to identify the Victorian rake as Allen himself, what with his vaguely pedophilic sleights-of-hand lurking in every frame. That’s not necessarily bad if the film’s about a Tom Ripley sociopath (à la Match Point), of course, but it’s pretty bad when it’s a piece of fluff starring his favourite new obsession.

Nanny McPhee (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

Nanny McPhee (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, France, UK

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Kelly Macdonald, Angela Lansbury
screenplay by Emma Thompson, based on the “Nurse Matilda” books by Christianna Brand
directed by Kirk Jones

by Walter Chaw Often as garish and shrill as it is magical and enchanting, Kirk Jones’ Nanny McPhee throws into sharp relief the difficulty of describing the tightrope so artfully navigated by Babe: Pig in the City. In its favour, there are strong, fairytale-sinister undercurrents to it that feel authentic, where the darkness of the slick Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events felt, on the whole, manufactured and arch, and the film finds its surest footing in an idea essential to children’s entertainment: that every action has a consequence. The answer to the question of what, exactly, is Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson), or what generator produces these Mary Poppinses like sexless, befrocked clergy attending wayward British moppets, is that Nanny McPhee is stuffy consequence personified–the element of parents and/or society that, often with something like a supernatural hand in the eyes of a child, embeds itself in a growing moral conscience. There’s something grand and mysterious about these figures, and Jones allows Nanny the freedom to be as enigmatic, omniscient, and omnipotent as a superego on the wax.

Lifespan (1976) [Uncut Special Edition] – DVD

Lifespan (1976) [Uncut Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in1970s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Belgium, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Netherlands, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C-
starring Klaus Kinski, Hiram Keller, Tina Aumont, Fons Rademakers
screenplay by Judith Rascoe, Alva Ruben, Alexander Whitelaw
directed by Alexander Whitelaw

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Lifespan appears to be comprised of inserts from somebody else’s movie. It huffs and puffs in expositional voiceover largely because it hasn’t written any self-evident drama–we see loving shots of scenic Amsterdam and a lot of people walking in/out/through buildings, but nothing that might actually clue us in on what the hell is going on. You could (as the special features on the film’s DVD release do) insist that this is a Last Year at Marienbad-esque ploy, since there are other elements to support that thesis. Alas, Alexander Whitelaw is no Alain Resnais, and his rudimentary exploration of the meaning of eternal life sounds most like a biology student on the make. Aside from a bit of gratuitous skin, there’s almost nothing to watch–but all sorts of terrible, pretentious things you never need to hear.

Basic Instinct 2 (2006) [Unrated Extended Cut] – DVD

Basic Instinct 2 (2006) [Unrated Extended Cut] – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Germany, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sharon Stone, David Morrissey, Charlotte Rampling, David Thewlis
screenplay by Leora Barish & Henry Bean
directed by Michael Caton-Jones

by Walter Chaw Picture Chappaquiddick re-imagined as a Kylie Minogue video. Thus, auspiciously, begins Michael Caton-Jones’s will-breaking Basic Instinct 2, a picture so magnificently awful that it demonstrates a special, indefinable kind of genius en route to being just another of the worst films in history. Schlock writer Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), who publishes under the nom de plume of “Woolf” (because she is one, get it?), is behind the wheel of a sporty little number as a drugged-up soccer hero fingers her snatch, climaxing at the moment she runs her racer through a glass crash barrier (?!) into an icy drink. (Perhaps the Thames–we’re in Jolly Old England this time around.) Catherine then finds herself on the wrong side of the law again, ordered to undergo sessions with brilliant British shrink Michael Glass (David Morrissey, who has Liam Neeson’s face down pat) on behalf of Scotland Yard’s finest, Washburn (David Thewlis). Washburn calls Tramell a “cunt” and a “bitch” and accuses Glass at one point of being beguiled by the “smell of her pussy,” which is the sort of elderly banter the knitting cotillion might still find shocking–though it’s light years more appalling than Tramell’s pleased reference to Masters & Johnson and her constant litany of “cum” [sic] declarations. “He was alive, he was making me cum,” she says, and, “I think of you when I cum,” and so on and so forth, marking her vampy, thumb-on-the-turntable performance as the most hideous bit of creaky past-prime tarting-about since Mae West was dropping the same dusty come-ons in support hose and pancake makeup. All that’s missing are references to Kinsey and “bloomers.”

London (2006) – DVD

London (2006) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Chris Evans, Jason Statham, Jessica Biel, Joy Bryant
written and directed by Hunter Richards

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I’ll say this for Hunter Richards’s London: it’s compelling enough that you want its “hero” to get his. Whatever the (obnoxious, belligerent, self-absorbed) nature of main character Syd (Chris Evans), he’s a well-drawn example of a common macho type, meaning the more stupid things he does, the more you crave to see his comeuppance. But “payback” in this case would mean rejection by his ex-girlfriend London (Jessica Biel), whose going-away party he’s just crashed–and no matter how many flashbacks we get to him behaving like a jerk in her presence, the film’s total commitment to his point of view gives us the sinking feeling that he’s not going to receive the brush-off he deserves. And sure enough.

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Malta, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno
screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Dan Brown
directed by Ron Howard

by Walter Chaw The greatest threat that Dan Brown’s novel, and now Ron Howard’s film of the same, poses to spirituality is the same threat that any bad art presents the human soul. The Da Vinci Code is a pathetic attempt to summarize painstaking scholarship and liturgy into broadly digestible gruel. In the eyes of many, it’s what the Christian Bible is to centuries of pagan mythology and millennia of cultural anthropology: the greatest stories ever told, retold in a form that illiterates and the gullible can appreciate. It’s nothing more and nothing less than The Celestine Prophecy (itself adapted for the silver screen this annus mirabilus) for fallen Catholics and armchair intellectuals: books so poorly-written, so bereft of poetry and grace, that they cannot offend (or repel) the unschooled and the indiscriminate with their oblique-ness, each about poetry and grace so brusquely raped and “decoded” that the “conspiracy”–the great mystery of great art–is laid bare as bad thriller material. It’s skipping forward to read the last page of the book–and the wrong book at that. Is it really ironic that Ron Howard, who has never directed a graceful scene, has never had a film with a hint of a whiff or subtext (his version of “genius at work” is a holodeck (see: A Beautiful Mind and now The Da Vinci Code)) is the chosen one for the adaptation (along with partner in extreme, middlebrow-pleasing mendacity Akiva Goldsman) of an obscenely popular book (60-million copies sold and counting) that makes anyone with a half a brain crazy with grief for the plight of the sublime in our culture?

United 93 (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***½/****
starring Lewis Alsamari, JJ Johnson, Trish Gates, Polly Adams
written and directed by Paul Greengrass

by Walter Chaw I guess when you talk about a movie like Paul Greengrass’s United 93, you have to talk about the propriety of the project: Whether death, fear, and suffering at its most obscene is something we should try to know or gratefully shield ourselves from. Should 9/11 already be an Oprah special and a national holiday? It’s an essential question, a defining one–and on either side of the question’s divide, you’ll find one person who thinks we should see our soldiers’ caskets draped in American flags and another who feels that seeing war casualties is somehow bad for morale or, if our fearless leaders are to be believed, somehow unpatriotic. Ignorance is as blissful now as it ever was–it’s one aphorism the film honours. Another is that you reap what you sow: The belief that our civil liberties, for which we eagerly fight and die to protect on foreign soil, are the first things we seem to sacrifice in times of peril (including a vocal rabble wondering if we’re “ready” for a 9/11 film), is far stickier when the proposition before us is that Islamic extremists don’t like us because of that which defines us as Americans. (“They hate our freedom” is the party line.) So when our government begins to infringe on our personal freedom after a meticulously organized and coordinated terrorist attack took us completely unawares (I still recall with a shudder how then-Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice claimed that no one could have imagined it) more than four years ago, that means–more than over twenty-one hundred military dead (and counting) does–that we’ve already lost.

RV (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Germany, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Robin Williams, Jeff Daniels, Cheryl Hines, Kristin Chenowith
screenplay by Geoff Rodkey
directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

by Walter Chaw Shit, feral raccoons, hillbillies, tits, white-boy Ebonics, more shit, and oodles of forced sentimentality to propel the septic stew down our collective throat as we strain towards it, baby bird-like. Or so the theory goes. In the interest of complete disclosure, the reason Barry Sonnenfeld’s excrescent RV dodged a zero-star rating from me is that I actually laughed at a perversely perfect sewage geyser. It’s one thing when you’re all about the slapstick gross-out gag; another when, National Lampoon’s Vacation-style (the film that, structurally, RV, Johnson Family Vacation, Are We There Yet?, and so on most resemble), your trip across the middle of the United States yields insights into the caste and racial strata of our expansive country. Then you have a feckless relic like this that pulls its punches even in regards to the bigotry it directs at rednecks. There’s nothing to hold onto in RV, and it tries so hard to please that there’s not much joy in taking it down. It’s like kicking a puppy, with the puppy trying to lick your boot as you do it.

Derailed (2005) [Widescreen Edition (Unrated)] – DVD

Derailed (2005) [Widescreen Edition (Unrated)] – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassel, Melissa George
screenplay by Stuart Beattie
directed by Mikael Håfström

by Walter Chaw Okay, here’s the deal: if I tell you that Derailed has a big plot twist, you’re going to figure it out from the trailers; and if I don’t, you’re going to figure it out at around the ten-minute mark–it’s just that stupid. So I’m simply going to say that Jennifer Aniston is like an old studio starlet trying on her ill-fitting acting shoes in a thriller that wants to turn her into a bad girl done wrong but quails at every moment of truth. The ultimate effect of her “metamorphosis” from America’s sweetheart is the uncomfortable feeling that you just saw Donna Reed (or your best friend’s mom) in an S&M outfit. It makes the already-spoiled rape scene (unless ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY is an underground publication nowadays) a non-event because as you’re watching it, tickling at the back of your head is the knowledge that they’d never rape Rachel in a mainstream middlebrow thriller (even if professional creep Vincent Cassel is the rapist). More, because the whole thing unfolds from the point of view of a very groggy paramour Charles (Clive Owen), the rape becomes something that’s only very inconvenient for our married white male adulterer. It’s despicable, is what it is–compounded by a lie later on and ultimately invalidated by our tired twist, which finds at the end our Charles the spitting image of Travis Bickle but without any trace of irony.

Chariots of Fire (1981) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

Chariots of Fire (1981) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in1980s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Drama, DVD, Sports, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Cheryl Campbell
screenplay by Colin Welland
directed by Hugh Hudson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Crushed by the upset win at this year’s Oscars, a critic friend of mine bemoaned the fact that “until the Earth crashes into the sun, Crash will have won Best Picture.” I couldn’t help thinking of that while watching Chariots of Fire, a film that would have been forgotten long ago had it not copped its own surprise Oscar in 1981. I still can’t wrap my head around its slipping through the cracks: though there’s an awesome professionalism at work, it’s remote and inhuman enough to push you far outside the action, making it seem as if its rather primitive story is being viewed by astronauts looking in the opposite direction. The film is so obsessed with the dead surfaces of period detail that it winds up stifling its simple underdog narrative. Watching the virtuous come out on top isn’t much fun when the filmmakers appear to be thinking of anything other than that triumph over whatever.

Pride & Prejudice (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

Pride & Prejudice (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Romance, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland
screenplay by Deborah Moggach
directed by Joe Wright

by Walter Chaw There’s fat to be trimmed from Joe Wright’s noble go at Jane Austen’s adapted-to-death Pride and Prejudice, which clocks in at a flabby 127 minutes (yet still seems somehow rushed at its conclusion), but when it works, it does for Austen what Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Hamlet did for Shakespeare: it makes the trials of these iconic literary figures feel immediate and sensible–and it does so with a screenplay (by Deborah Moggach) that understands what parts of the text are timeless and what parts are not. This isn’t to say that this Pride & Prejudice is more post-modern than the source, but that Wright understands where to prompt top-billed Keira Knightley to laugh sardonically and thus crafts an illusion of an interior life for her Elizabeth Bennet beyond the usual impression of adolescent cattiness. Knightley may very well be headed for an Oscar nomination for what has become the chick-Hamlet (Austen being the crucible through which young British actors put themselves in preparation for, I guess, Domino and sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean), but I’m thinking if she gets one, she owes at least half of it to Wright for the amount of time he put into highlighting her script.

Jarhead (2005) – DVD

Jarhead (2005) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Germany, UK, War

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx
screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., based on the novel by Anthony Swofford
directed by Sam Mendes

by Walter Chaw I went to high school with a guy who fought in the first Gulf War. I remember him as a delicate, sensitive, beautiful boy who in retrospect looked a lot like Cillian Murphy. I directed him in a play–and though I haven’t spoken to him since, I heard that when he returned home, he was not quite the same. I remember chortling about the first Gulf War, too, thinking how funny it was that our military pounded fourth-generation Chinese armour with bombs left over from Vietnam in a withering blitz that left Saddam Hussein’s vaunted “million man army” of non-volunteer soldiers buried in their trenches and surrendering to the press. I’ve never been able to completely reconcile the two impressions of that war through the haze of my own youth–this introduction to modern warfare as complex and confusing to my adolescent mind as love and looming responsibility. War was either something frightening and mysterious that left you ineffably changed, or it was hilarious and chuff to a chest-pounding nationalistic ego. Whatever the case, you surmise that it involves the slaughter of hordes of faceless huns.

16 Blocks (2006)

Posted in2000s, 2006, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*½/****
starring Bruce Willis, Mos Def, David Morse, Cylk Cozart
screenplay by Richard Wenk
directed by Richard Donner

by Walter Chaw There’s a lot to like about Richard Donner’s ultimately simpering retread of the long-dormant corrupt-cop/asphalt-jungle genre 16 Blocks. Among the highlights is Bruce Willis’s drunken, crooked detective Jack, who–sporting a pot belly, a gimpy leg, bad facial hair, flop sweat, and breath you can practically smell through the screen–makes a decision early on to be the hero at odds with ex-partner Frank (David Morse) in transporting his charge Eddie (Mos Def) the titular sixteen city blocks so that Eddie can testify against New York’s finest. Standing in their way: an arbitrary time limit and a whole department of collectors for the widows and orphans club, looking to exact a little Giuliani on the suddenly-vigilante pair. Comparisons to Firewall, that other picture buried in the first quarter 2006 starring an over-the-hill tough guy, are inevitable–and revealing, too, in charting the extent to which ego allows Ford and Willis to age as action heroes (Ford: not at all; Willis: a good bit) and, consequently, how successful these films are in crafting their respective scenarios. The standard against which 16 Blocks will be held, however, is one established by the likes of Prince of the City and Serpico (or even a later Sidney Lumet like Q&A)–it’s they to which Donner clearly aspires, what with the picture’s setting, its admittedly spurious exposé of bad apples on the force, and at least the first hour of Willis’s performance, equal parts broken-down gunsel and brown-bagging wino.

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) + Domino (2005) [New Line Platinum Series|Widescreen] – DVD

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) + Domino (2005) [New Line Platinum Series|Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2006, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, DVD, France, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
**½/****
starring David Strathairn, Patricia Clarkson, George Clooney, Jeff Daniels
screenplay by George Clooney & Grant Heslov
directed by George Clooney

DOMINO
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo
screenplay by Richard Kelly
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw Rigorous and principled, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck. is a curiously slight film for more reasons than the fact that almost a third of it is comprised of archival footage integrated semi-successfully into the story. It’s a recreation of a very specific battle in a very specific war that resonates with our Patriot Act/Guantanamo Bay situation, and indeed, that’s the target Clooney seems most interested in striking. But without a larger context (the sort that would have weakened its allegorical usefulness), the picture sets itself up as something as obvious as it is minor and feather-light. It’s a professional, high-minded, and staid biopic is what I’m saying, a film that says what it says with the stark B&W cinematography of a Dr. Strangelove, but in its icy, humourless way, it’s the same stark B&W cinematography of a Fail-Safe, too. It’s close and under-populated–and even with so insular and finely-focused a spotlight, it contains at least two completely superfluous characters.

Ryan’s Daughter (1970) [Two-Disc Special Edition] + Dune (1984) [Extended Edition] – DVDs

Posted in1970s, 1980s, 2006, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: David Lynch, Disability, Drama, DVD, Mexico, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

RYAN’S DAUGHTER
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, Christopher Jones, Sarah Miles
screenplay by Robert Bolt
directed by David Lean

DUNE
***½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino, Brad Dourif, José Ferrer
screenplay by David Lynch, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by David Lynch

DUNE (Extended Edition)
*½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino, Brad Dourif, José Ferrer
screenplay by Judas Booth, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by Alan Smithee

by Bill Chambers The common charge levelled at Ryan’s Daughter when it was released in 1970 was that it seemed anachronistic within contemporary film culture. Indeed, what so infuriated the New York critics, in particular, was not just that Lean had strayed from his roots (thematically, Ryan’s Daughter in fact represents a throwback for the Brief Encounter director), but that he had lost all trace of humility in the bargain. One might say the English were finally getting a taste of their own medicine, as Lean had essentially become a Hollywood imperialist, intruding on cinema’s evolution towards minimalism by treating a rather insular love triangle–catnip to the infidelity-obsessed British realists–like a theme-park attraction, subjecting it to both hyperbole and an incongruous perfectionism.1 (“In general the only way for artists to work in the medium is frugality,” wrote Pauline Kael, thereby consigning Lean to the realm of not-artists.) This violation of an unspoken Prime Directive resonates in the current trend of giving A-list makeovers to grindhouse fare.