The Commitments (1991) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

March 15, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Ireland, Music, UK

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle Kennedy
screenplay by Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais and Roddy Doyle
directed by Alan Parker

by Walter Chaw Alan Parker likes to use his platform as a film director to preach about all manner of society's more obvious ails, reserving the bulk of his ham-fisted proselytizing for the problems he himself identifies as endemic to the United States: hedonism and drug abuse (The Wall, Midnight Express); the price of a culture of fame (The Wall, Fame); the price of Vietnam and our broken social services system (Birdy); the rampant Yankee tragedy of divorce (Shoot the Moon); racism (Mississippi Burning, Come See the Paradise); our love/hate/fear relationship with food (The Road to Wellville); and, most recently (and egregiously), the death penalty (The Life of David Gale). When Parker manages to shut his hole long enough to pack his ponderous, moronic disdain back across the pond, the films he produces there (Angela's Ashes, The Commitments) are weepy prole sagas highlighting the determination of grubby Dickensian urchins toiling in the underbelly of failed capitalism–which, in Parker's mind, is probably America's fault, too. Poor baby. I'm not sure what's made Parker an expert on fixing the United States (something to do with his background as a commercial director, I suspect), but I for one am just so grateful for his insight.

The Girl from Rio (1969) + Sadomania (1981) – DVDs

March 8, 2004Posted in1960s, 1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, DVD, Spain, Thriller, UK, West Germany, ZERO STARS

Die sieben Männer der Sumuru
*½/**** Image  A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Shirley Eaton, Richard Wyler, George Sanders, Maria Rohm
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

Sadomania – Hölle der Lust
Hellhole Women
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A-
starring Ajita Wilson, Ursula Fellner, Robert Foster, Gina Jansen
screenplay by Jess Franco and Günter Ebert
directed by Jess Franco

by Walter Chaw Theoretically, I'm not opposed to the idea of the exploitation film. In the right hands, its disreputable ingredients of sex, violence, and "shocking" behaviour (the girl and the gun of Godardian legend) could be a thrilling camera subject and a springboard for lush stylistic excess. But for every Russ Meyer, Dario Argento, or Suzuki Seijun who knows his way around a camera, there are scores of Lucio Fulcis, Ruggero Deodatos, and Jess Francos who have no clue as to how to make a movie that hangs together. The latter of that unholy trio is a case in point: the current DVD release of two of his films is an occasion for seeing how far the exploitation formula can go wrong. Running the gamut from ridiculous (The Girl from Rio) to repellent (Sadomania), they lack any real stylistic brio to enliven their rote excesses and cheap perversions, succeeding only as possible subjects for Mystery Science Theatre 3000-style mockery.

The Republic of Love (2004)

February 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

***/****
starring Bruce Greenwood, Emilia Fox, Edward Fox, Connor Price
screenplay by Deepa Mehta and Esta Spalding, based on the novel by Carol Shields
directed by Deepa Mehta

Republicofloveby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Not long ago in these pages, I gave Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed a thumbs-up for leading us out of Canadian master-shot hell with a bold use of montage. Little did I know that the master shots would deliver a riposte so soon afterwards, but lo and behold, here is The Republic of Love, a movie that finds a way to use Canada's compositional rhythm of choice to fairly spectacular effect. True, it has some narrative deficiencies, and it builds to a climax that never really arrives, but Deepa Mehta's slick and stately use of cinematography and colour redeems what could have been another leaden exercise in choice-free Canadian aesthetics.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) + Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002)|Once Upon a Time in Mexico – DVD

February 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Germany, Revenge, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Rubén Blades
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS
*/****
starring Robert Carlyle, Vanessa Feltz, Ricky Tomlinson, Kathy Burke
screenplay by Paul Fraser & Shane Meadows
directed by Shane Meadows

Onceuponatimeby Walter Chaw Ferociously patriotic but lacking in the epic scope suggested by its obvious debt to Sergio Leone's late masterpieces, pastiche-meister Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a magnification of John Woo in a lot of the same ways that Woo was a magnification of Leone–a post-post modern exercise bound together with a compelling sense of style but an alarming dearth of even the basics of sense. At the same time, if Leone understood the raucous humanism at the heart of Kurosawa, and Woo the insolent demystification of genre archetype of Leone, Rodriguez seems mainly to have ported the puerile macho fantasy of Woo while glancing off the deeper well of questions of honour and the mysterious bond between killers of men. I'm beginning to think that Rodriguez is a cheap filmmaker, interested in the mechanics of a piece more than the motivations of them. He can shoot a mean picture, he just can't set it up, pay it off, or explain it–and in replicating the best shoot-outs of Woo and Leone, he demonstrates that he's no Woo and most definitely no Leone.

Emile (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Ian McKellen, Deborah Kara Unger, Tygh Runyan, Theo Crane
written and directed by Carl Bessai

Emileby Travis Mackenzie Hoover In Survival, Margaret Atwood's seminal 1972 study of Canadian literature, she identifies Canadian writers' use of the family as "the trap you're caught in" and identifies a number of inescapable families that shut tight like a prison. Faced with this preponderance of smothering clans, she notes: "What one misses [from these books] is joy. After a few of these books, you start wanting someone, sometime, to find something worth celebrating." Flash forward 32 years and you will have the same complaint about Emile, a film in which the family is a tangled web from which there is no escape–and those who try to escape are doomed to guilt and destructiveness. Teamed with a somnambulistic pace and a painful, childlike politeness, the film so reeks of disappointment that it can't even find the courage to allow its most wronged character any kind of catharsis.

Touching the Void (2003) + Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)

January 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Romance, Sports, Theatrical, UK

TOUCHING THE VOID
**/****
starring Nicholas Aaron, Richard Hawking, Brendan Mackey, Joe Simpson
based on the book by Joe Simpson
directed by Kevin Macdonald

WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON!
*½/****
starring Kate Bosworth, Topher Grace, Josh Duhamel, Ginnifer Goodwin
screenplay by Victor Levin
directed by Robert Luketic

Touchingtadby Walter Chaw For those wondering what it would be like if one of those READER'S DIGEST "Drama in Real Life"s were ever made into a film, wonder no longer, for Touching the Void, packaged complete with suspense-shattering survivor testimonials and manageable tidbits of easily-digestible narrative, is a cunning simulacrum of the same. A feature-length dramatic re-creation in the television tabloid style, Touching the Void tells of a harrowing mountaineering cock-up that is, I guess, legendary in mountaineering circles for the same reason that dead NASCAR drivers are legendary in their sport. The problem though isn't with the ultimate banality of this account of one guy who crawls to safety down the bottom half a mountain he's already fallen down the top half of, but that the film of it mixes the victims of their own daredevil genes offering their perspective in front of a black backdrop with re-enactments featuring wheezy actors not entirely up to the task.

Swimming Pool (2003) – DVD

January 15, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle
screenplay by François Ozon and Emmanuele Bernheim
directed by François Ozon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On evidence of the four films of his released theatrically in North America, François Ozon has two modes: a hyper-real pastiche on someone else's work ( Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 8 Women) and a more conventionally realistic gloss on his own material (Under the Sand and now Swimming Pool). I must say that I prefer the former to the latter, as there's nothing particularly radical about the director's own ideas (which often veer off into cliché) and his style, unlike in his crazy adaptations, reads nothing into the material that might redeem it from its own limitations. Swimming Pool is a classic example of this, with a listless look barely propping up a standard-issue script fit for those who fancy themselves culturally aware but were born yesterday as far as the art of the cinema is concerned.

The Office: The Complete First Series (2001) – DVD

January 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Pseudo-Documentary, Television, UK

Image A- Sound A Extras B+
"Downsize", "Work Experience", "The Quiz", "Training", "New Girl", "Judgement"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I've had several e-mails complaining about a suggestion I made in this column that we should give cannabis to anorexics so they get the munchies. This was a satirical joke and was not meant to offend. I do not advocate the use of illegal drugs and I do not find any eating disorders amusing."
-David Brent, writing in the WERNHAM-HOGG NEWS

Johnny English (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, France, UK

*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
starring Rowan Atkinson, Natalie Imbruglia, Ben Miller, John Malkovich
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and William Davies
directed by Peter Howitt

by Bill Chambers The only thing mustier than James Bond movies are parodies of them, and as if we needed proof, along comes the excruciatingly predictable 007 send-up Johnny English, in which Rowan Atkinson soars to the lows of Leslie Nielsen at his most contemptibly greedy (see: Spy Hard). (I like both comedians, Atkinson and Nielsen, but only when they're leashed to masters Richard Curtis and David Zucker, respectively.) If it's true that Atkinson was recently motivated by the stateside failure of this very film to check himself into an Arizona rehab centre for depressed celebrities (and frankly, don't blame audiences–distributor Universal didn't exactly tax themselves advertising Johnny English to domestic moviegoers), I hope his caretakers remind him in haste that none of Monty Python's features grossed an enviable sum abroad, that the James Bond franchise has already satirized itself into the ground (it's no casual point that Johnny English was co-scripted by the same writing team behind The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day), and that his first problem is trying to please a country that opens rehab centres for depressed celebrities.

Peter Pan (2003)

December 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, New Zealand, Romance, Theatrical, UK

***½/****
starring Jason Isaacs, Jeremy Sumpter, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Lynn Redgrave
screenplay by P.J. Hogan and Michael Goldenberg, based on the play by James M. Barrie
directed by P.J. Hogan

by Walter Chaw A perverse lollapalooza of loaded images and disquieting implications, P.J. Hogan’s live-action Peter Pan is this year’s most intriguing Freudian shipwreck, resurrecting the darkness and poetic pessimism of J.M. Barrie’s play–and Peter and Wendy, Barrie’s own novelization–that has been all but forgotten since Disney’s well-regarded 1953 treatment. (While nowhere near as saccharine as something as mendacious as Brother Bear, that animated version is still of a Disney tradition that washes dangerous source material mostly clean of credible malice.) At its heart, consider that the Pan story is about child seduction/abduction in the Yeatsian “Stolen Child” tradition and a colony of “lost boys” that have forgotten their parents and, crucially, been forgotten in turn. The mirror of a parent’s love discarded in this way renders the film’s heart-warming conclusion a touch bitter, with the spectre of the question “But what about their parents?” hanging over it.

Cold Mountain (2003)

December 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Italy, Road Movie, Romance, Romania, Theatrical, UK, War

*½/****
starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Donald Sutherland
screenplay by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Charles Frazier
directed by Anthony Minghella

Coldmountainby Walter Chaw Existing in an awards-season netherworld where the ugliest girl is Renée Zellweger (or Jena Malone), dad is Donald Sutherland, and Odysseus is Jude Law, Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain is a tarted-up march to the awards-night podium starring Nicole Kidman, possibly the most over-exposed actor of the last five years. Everything about the film is careful artifice, from its casting to its grandiloquent direction to its half-baked dialogue ("Small moments like a bag of diamonds," indeed), with only Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the magnificent Brendan Gleeson emerging unscathed from the golden wreckage. What Minghella seems best at is recasting edged, emotionally tumultuous novels into sun-kissed temples to the cinematographer's craft, the more dappled sunlight in the eye with which to bedazzle awards-season voters. The strength of Charles Frazier's National Book Award-winning source material lies in its socio-political details of America's Civil War period, but Minghella has focused his picture unerringly on the overrated novel's weaknesses instead: its dialogue, its clumsy Homeric riff (for better country-fried Odyssey, stick to O Brother Where Art Thou?), and its sweeping gothic romance, which finds its characters, at one point, reading the real deal in Wuthering Heights. The result is, like Minghella's previous literary adaptations (The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient), lavish, lugubrious, and off-target.

Teknolust (2003); In July (2000); Taking Sides (2002); Monster (2003)

December 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Music, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War

TEKNOLUST
**/****
starring Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Davies, James Urbaniak, Karen Black
written and directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson

Im Juli.
***/****
starring Moritz Bleibtreu, Christiane Paul, Mehmet Kurtulus, Idil Üner
written and directed by Fatih Akin

TAKING SIDES
**/****
starring Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgård, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birgit Minichmayr
screenplay by Ronald Harwood
directed by István Szabó

MONSTER
**½/****
starring Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson
written and directed by Patty Jenkins

Teknoby Walter Chaw As the year winds down and distributors great and small try to cram their films into rotation for possible awards consideration, the truism that there are just as many mediocre foreign and independent films as mainstream ones proves sage for a quartet of minor releases. Lynn Hershman-Leeson chimes in with Teknolust, another of her riffs on Derek Jarman, this one obsessed with Tilda Swinton and eternity through technology. Fatih Akin’s second film In July (Im Juli.) is essentially a German The Sure Thing with elements of After Hours, obsessed with eternity through an immortal beloved lit by the nimbus of various suns. One-time Oscar-winner István Szabó offers Taking Sides, a morality tale plucked half-formed from the stage, questioning the eternity of art against the requirements of morality. And Patty Jenkins weighs in with Monster, this year’s Boys Don’t Cry; it’s vérité as lower-class urban ugly, with Charlize Theron seeking eternity through a performance that breaks her out of her starlet mold, Halle Berry-style. Only time will tell if any of it keeps.

Jet Lag (2002) – DVD

December 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, France, Romance, UK

Décalage horaire
½*/**** Image B Sound A Extras N/A
starring Juliette Binoche, Jean Reno, Sergi López, Scali Delpeyrat
screenplay by Christopher Thompson & Danièle Thompson
directed by Danièle Thompson

by Walter Chaw A beautician (Rose (Juliette Binoche)) fleeing an abusive relationship and a frozen-food magnate (Félix (Jean Reno)) on his way to the funeral for an ex-in-law meet when Charles de Gaulle Airport is shut down during some kind of labour strike. Bonding over a constantly ringing cell phone (ah, what's more romantic than a goddamned cell phone?), the unlikely twosome decides to share a hotel room, where Félix browbeats Rose into taking off some of her makeup, and Rose decides that she's already ready to settle down into another abusive relationship. With the airport forever threatening to open, Binoche and Reno move around various sets in exact two-shot medium compositions that find them spouting their deadening monologues at one another in a failed attempt to convince that they are actually occupying the same space, head or heart or otherwise.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) [Special Edition] – DVD

December 2, 2003Posted in1960s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, UK

*/**** Image A Sound B Extras B-
starring Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Gert Frobe
screenplay by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes
directed by Ken Hughes

by Walter Chaw Released the same year as the marginally less excrescent The Love Bug, Ken Hughes's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang helped mark 1968 as not only one of the most tumultuous years in American history, but also one of the most puzzling in regards to its mainstream kidsploitation fare. Why bad entertainment involving anthropomorphized automobiles erupts during corrupt regimes (see also: "My Mother the Car", from LBJ's term (1965), and Reagan's British Trans Am in "Knight Rider" (1982)) is one of those things someone should ponder someday.

Darling (1965) – DVD

November 21, 2003Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Julie Christie, Laurence Harvey, Dirk Bogarde
screenplay by Frederic Raphael
directed by John Schlesinger

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Marking the point where Britain's realist directors turned from the proletariat to Swinging London, Darling is determined to show you all the depravity the latter milieu entails–and then make you suffer for it. The film is stultifying in its old-bourgeois disapproval of what used to be condescendingly referred to as "the younger generation," and as it ticks off the sins of its titular protagonist, Darling only makes you hate the filmmakers for being so high and mighty. There's no real analysis of what motivates the picture's aimless and amoral heroine, and no appreciation of the complexity of her plight; there is only smug moral judgment and a curt dismissal. The film is so self-consciously "serious" that it counts out any and all pleasure as shallow and destructive, leaving a grimy austerity that is as taken with surfaces as the woman it's supposed to be indicting.

Eloise at the Plaza (2003) – DVD

November 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Julie Andrews, Jeffrey Tambor, Sofia Vassilieva, Christine Baranski
screenplay by Janet Brownell, based on the book written by Kay Thompson & illustrated by Hilary Knight
directed by Kevin Lima

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but Eloise at the Plaza is made with far greater skill and care than a Disney TV-movie would normally warrant. Derived from the much-loved children's books by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight, the film goes out of its way to reproduce their junior-NEW YORKER tone, only in a heavily formalist, hyper-real manner that thrives on perfect shape and well-timed movement. So accomplished is the look of the film that it makes one forget the mealy-mouthed sentiment of some of the dialogue–the clockwork archness of the production transforms its clichés into pure narrative form, so that they might give pleasure in their deployment and execution. In short, it's much better than it had to be and not half bad on its own terms, even by the standards of devoted cynics like me.

The Christopher Lee Collection – DVD

November 10, 2003Posted in1960s, 1970s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blue Underground, Crime, DVD, Germany, Horror, Italy, Liechtenstein, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, UK

CIRCUS OF FEAR (1966)
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, Anthony Newlands, Heinz Drache
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by John Moxey

THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU (1968)
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Tsai Chin, Maria Rohm, Howard Marion Crawford
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU (1969)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Tsai Chin, Maria Perschy, Richard Greene
screenplay by Peter Welbeck
directed by Jess Franco

THE BLOODY JUDGE
Il trono di fuoco (1970)
**/**** Image A Sound B Extras A
starring Christopher Lee, Maria Schell, Leo Genn, Maria Rohm
screenplay by Anthony Scott Veitch
directed by Jess Franco

by Walter Chaw The sort of box set that horror fans and film historians slaver over (though Sino-Western ambassadors probably aren't too pleased about), Blue Underground's exceptionally, reverently remastered four-disc "Christopher Lee Collection" gathers four obscure Lee pictures–The Blood of Fu Manchu, The Castle of Fu Manchu, Circus of Fear, and The Bloody Judge–in presentations so vibrant and beautiful that they're almost enough to distract from the uniform tediousness of the films themselves. A little like avant-garde cinema, these pictures–all but one (Circus of Fear) directed by the notoriously, appallingly untalented Jess Franco–function better as theory than fact, unfolding on staid soundstage environments with single camera set-ups, stock footage, and jump cuts, and squandering, for the most part, the magisterial presence and delivery of Lee. (For the record, a lethal drinking game could probably be devised around the number of times Franco zooms to different parts of the same shot to avoid the inconvenience of relighting or moving the camera around.)

Film Freak Central Does the 2003 New York City Horror Film Festival

November 5, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Horror, Short Films, Thriller, UK, Zombie

Nychorrorlogo November 5, 2003|Held at the Tribeca Theater for the second year in a row, the New York City Horror Film Festival (NYCHFF) is a collection of low-budget feature and short genre films that, like the San Francisco Film Society's lamented Dark Wave festival (after two amazing years, there is no third instalment pending), gives weight to a much-deserved critical re-evaluation of horror film as an important artistic, sociological, academic endeavour. With special awards this year honouring Troma's Lloyd Kaufman, underestimated horror director Stuart Gordon, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, my favourite independent horror director Larry Fessenden, and special effects legend Tom Savini, the 2nd NYCHFF is an emerging niche festival run by folks who care about the genre and, better, have an idea about how to present the material in a way as enthusiastic as it is savvy.

In the Cut (2003) + Sylvia (2003)

October 31, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

IN THE CUT
****/****
starring Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Damici
screenplay by Jane Campion & Susanna Moore, based on the novel by Moore
directed by Jane Campion

SYLVIA
*½/****
starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, Blythe Danner
screenplay by John Brownlow
directed by Christine Jeffs

"Come at last to this point
I look back on my passion
And realize that I
Have been like a blind man
Who is unafraid of the dark"
-Yosana Akiko

Inthecut

by Walter Chaw Frances Avery (Meg Ryan) is in love with words. She moves through life obscuring herself in a nimbus of them, passing through the world with poetry as her guiding principle. Director Jane Campion is no stranger to a life lived in thrall to poesy–her films An Angel at My Table and The Piano detailed the life of poet Janet Frame and the life of the mind, respectively, and In the Cut finds its meaning and rhythm in the words that Frannie collects, fragments of poems cut from books and collected from subway walls. The New York through which Frannie walks is festooned with ghosts of American flags, tattered and blown after two years of constant display, losing their meaning along with their colours fading up to the sky. Likewise, Frannie sees herself a phantom of unmentioned tragedies, haunting her own life, retreating to the comfort of words when a half-sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), pillories her chaste existence, or when Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) interrogates her about a string of serial murders he's investigating. A scholar of words, Frannie is involved as the film opens in a project analyzing inner-city slang: language as organic and in transition.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) [2-Disc Widescreen Edition] – DVD

October 29, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Germany, Schwarzenegger, Sci-Fi, UK

**½/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras B
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken
screenplay by John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris
directed by Jonathan Mostow

by Walter Chaw Where the first film banked on romantic melancholy, and the second on a literalization of both techno-paranoia and the Oedipal split, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (hereafter T3)–the first in the Terminator trilogy to be directed by someone other than James Cameron (U-571‘s Jonathan Mostow)–is essentially a mega-budgeted slasher flick rematted as a hero mythology, but without the sociological significance of the genre. What T3 is, at its core, is a post-modern picture with a few agreeable moments of self-knowing humour that devolve into a self-worshipping reverence. With Arnold Schwarzenegger threatening to jettison his foundering movie career (something of a disaster since the last Terminator film) to pursue a terrifying career in politics, the picture plays like an Academy highlight reel, with Arnie delivering three variations of his “I’ll be back” as well as a quick “I lied” for the dozen or so people who still remember Commando. T3 never gets more clever than that, really (though a moment where Arnie’s killer robot dons a pair of Elton John sunglasses is a classic image only missing a quick refrain of “The Bitch is Back”), and the picture resolves itself as derivative (I should say “slavishly, worshipfully derivative”) of the other films in the trilogy while adding a lot of loud “nothing new.”