War Archives - Page 4 of 9 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Miracle at St. Anna (2008) – DVD

January 20, 20092000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, DVD, Italy, War

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonzo, Omar Benson Miller
screenplay by James McBride, based on his novel
directed by Spike Lee

by Ian Pugh Beginning with a moment of vocalized contempt for the John Wayne-ification of World War II in popular culture, Miracle at St. Anna thoroughly establishes its primary aim to give credit where credit is due to the unsung black heroes of the era. Director Spike Lee brings a broader sense of humanism to the table as well, though, orchestrating innumerable moments of fear and sympathy across several languages to impress upon viewers that there were, indeed, honest-to-gosh people on each side of a conflict not typically remembered for its moral ambiguity. If it's been done before, considering that Valkyrie subtly co-opted righteous, intelligent rebellion as an exclusively Anglo-American invention just a few short months after St. Anna's release, it's something of a necessary evil. Yet the picture is finally done a near-fatal disservice by Lee's often-painful (and, some might say, trademark) didacticism, with plenty of telegraphed prophecies on hand to reiterate that faith is more important than religion and that the common link of humanity overrides any national divisions. Messages well worth repeating, no doubt, but the film feels the need to drive them home with talking heads spouting heavy-handed philosophical ruminations that subtly give the mind license to wander. Sure, whether or not God exists, we should all act like He does–what else ya got?

Che (2008) + Milk (2008)

January 9, 20092000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Directors: Gus Van Sant, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, France, Mexico, Spain, Theatrical, War

CHE
***½/****
starring Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Santiago Cabrera, Vladimir Cruz
screenplay by Peter Buchman, based on the memoir Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
directed by Steven Soderbergh

MILK
*½/****
starring Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna
screenplay by Dustin Lance Black
directed by Gus Van Sant

by Walter Chaw Steven Soderbergh's Che is the curative to the Hollywood biopic formula that insists on reducing interesting/important historical figures to their workshop elements. It sees Ernesto "Che" Guevara as a charismatic figure but no T-shirt deity, as a guerrilla fighter with blood on his hands but also a revolutionary almost holy in his single-minded conviction that things weren't fair in the world and that one man–or one small group of heavily-armed men–could affect change that mattered. It's not a political film in the sense that it takes sides, rendering it a political film by the fact of it having no agenda except to make it difficult to condemn or celebrate first the events leading up to the success of the Cuban Revolution, then the failure of the Bolivian Revolution (which ended in Che's death). Soderbergh goes from close and medium shots in the first half–known as Che Part One in its marathon "roadshow" incarnation and as The Argentine in parts of the country where it and Che Part Two (a.k.a. The Guerrilla) are being treated as unique films–to an increasing distance for the second, a subtle, evocative move away from Che's idealism.

Defiance (2008)

January 2, 2009Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Thriller, War

½*/****
starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos
screenplay by Edward Zwick & Clay Frohman
directed by Edward Zwick

by Walter Chaw It's finally happened: Red Dawn with Russian Jews. It's not so much unthinkable as inevitable after the fact. You could go your whole life without conjuring something so perverse; it's the kind of thing "South Park" might have done at a quarter the budget, with thrice the ingenuity, and without the star power of über-studs Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber making a pretty convincing play for inclusion in the bad accent hall of fame. When Craig, as heroic bandit Tuvia Bielski, delivers his St. Crispian's Day speech in half-pidgin/half-Queen's English ("Uff vee shut die? Tlyin to liff? At least we die like human beings!") as director Ed Zwick ladles on the Fiddler on the Roof score and we get reaction shots of a Dickensian urchin all dirt and eyes, what choice do we have but to harden our hearts and wonder how it is that every "true story" run through this prestige mill ends up exactly the same grain. The moment when Tuvia and his woodsman brother Zus (Schreiber) take on the responsibility of two fine young lasses at the behest of a set-upon farm family, however, is the moment that it clicks that this piece of macho bullroar is a direct blood descendant of John Milius's stupidest movie of 1984. There but for the grace of Swayze and Sheen goes Defiance–a film so bad that it's not only worse than Red Dawn, but worse because instead of positing an imaginary occupation of heartland America, it sets itself smack dab in the middle of the Nazi occupation of Belorussia circa 1941–suggesting in the process that while it's not true there was no Jewish resistance in WWII, it might be true that the reason so many were killed is because they weren't as macho as Tuvia and Zus. Kind of a sticky wicket, that.

Australia (2008)

November 26, 20082000s, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK, War, Western

*/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Bryan Brown
screenplay by Baz Luhrmann & Stuart Beattie & Ronald Harwood & Richard Flanagan
directed by Baz Luhrmann

by Walter Chaw Baz Luhrmann's Titanic begins–as you know that it must–with fusty, dusty-britches Mrs. Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) tumbling out of a plane into the wilds of WWII Australia and the brawny arms of fair dinkum frontiersman The Drover (Hugh Jackman). They hate each other–she his disgustingly rugged physique and brusque manner, he her high-falutin' snobbery and belief that all men want to shag her. How miraculous, then, that the two come to love one another before the one-hour mark of the longest two weeks you'll spend in a theatre this year. But first, in a nod to Australia's "Lost Generation," of course, but more directly in most viewers' minds to Rabbit-Proof Fence, introduce pint-sized product of settler/aboriginal miscegenation Nullah (Brandon Walters), who lives on Sarah's late husband's cattle farm. Nullah is the emotional glue of the film (besides more importantly being the one who brings the cast's collective age down from AARP levels), the character imperilled, monumentalized, sought after, lost, recovered, hugged over, longed over, kissed over, and, in a stupid film's deeply stupid end titles, patronized with trivia about how the POME government at last apologized to the Aborigine people for their policy of forced intermarriage. How this saccharine, torpid love saga ends as a bromide is one of those things only the genuinely gifted can achieve: set in Darwin, Australia earns a Darwin Award for its dedication to self-destruction.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) + Persepolis (2007)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

October 23, 2008****/****, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Tim Burton, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Musical, Thriller, War

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen
screenplay by John Logan, based on the musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler
directed by Tim Burton

PERSEPOLIS
***½/****
screenplay by Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, based on the novel by Satrapi
directed by Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET

by Walter Chaw Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is easily Tim Burton's best film. It's uncompromised, deceptively uncomplicated, perverse in the most delightful way, and, maybe most importantly, it represents at last the full potency of Burton's German Expressionist vision. No surprise that it's closest allayed to Burton's previous career-pinnacle, his self-contained fairytale Edward Scissorhands–sporting, like that film, a black-clad protagonist festooned with blades who achieves his adolescence (and purpose) in a slanted attic chamber. This is another gothic romance, no explanation for snow but instead demonstration of the frugal repast of revenge's dish served cold. It's best described as a diary of the unrequited, a journal of terminal, irresolvable frustration. A violent, giallo-lurid succession of leering throat-slashings with a soupçon of cannibalism (I'm kind of shocked, truth be told, that the picture was completed in this form), this adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's genius 1979 musical is a timely film, boasting the sort of contemporary topicality of which only eternal works like Sondheim's are capable. Whatever the circumstances of its creation, watching it in this way speaks explicitly to the dismal tide of 2007, the desire to recover the illusory past (its hero speaks of his younger self as "naïve")–the recognition at the last that things are only ever as terrible as they've ever been; and that the only refuge from despair is embracing the tiny moments of human connection that make life liveable.

Body of Lies (2008)

October 3, 20082000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War

**/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani
screenplay by William Monahan, based on the novel by David Ignatius
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw Perfectly workmanlike, unimpeachably prestige-y, achingly contemporary, and a near-complete failure as revelation, Ridley Scott's Body of Lies tells the tale of modern spook-dom complete with spy satellites, cell-phone eavesdropping, torture, and terrorists. A compelling stew, one would think, yet something that a decade ago would be seen as science-fiction and as recently as a few years ago as satire today offers no surprises–no discernible sharp edges, smooth as a river stone worn down by a few fast years of crippling cynicism. So the United States is a fingernail factory skating on the razored edge of impossible technologies and still, because of two-minutes-ago wisdom and dusty bureaucrats, unable to exterminate subjects and achieve minimal objectives in our ideological war. The film advises that we trust no one, that the issues are complex, that our enemies aren't stupid, and that there will always be a super-suave Sharif-ian Arab in pictures like this lest we forget how much we're capable of getting behind the Disneyfied Aladdin portrait of the Near East when push comes to shove. It reminds that Russell Crowe can get fat with the best of them even if, after The Insider, no one was wondering–and it reminds that Leonardo DiCaprio is pretty good at this intense young man shtick (although no one was wondering that, either). The problem with Body of Lies isn't its craft (indeed, it's one of the most handsomely-mounted, professionally-executed pictures of the year)–the problem is that it's got nothing to say in a media-rich environment awash with pundits, alive with YouTube, and actually awake for all the sleepiness in our mid-section. The irony of Body of Lies is that it's about intelligence but its own is at least a few months behind the curve.

The Sum of All Fears (2002) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

July 27, 20082000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Germany, Thriller, War

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B Extras A-
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber
screenplay by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, based on the novel by Tom Clancy
directed by Phil Alden Robinson

by Walter Chaw The Sum of All Fears is a well-made techno-horror film based on a reasonably well-written (by Tom Clancy standards) techno-horror novel. It's a studio marketing department's worst nightmare post-9/11 (the movie revolving around a pilfered nuclear weapon and a terrorist plot to destabilize the universe) and a critic's wet dream: finally, something meaty to write about in popular film. Or so it would seem, for alas, The Sum of All Fears is just a well-made techno-horror film–in theme and suggestion, it's as moldy and stately as a Le Carré master plot with little comment regarding the state of our world besides "Bad people do bad things despite the best efforts of good people." See, we know that already; while I'm the first to decry the pathological dedication of mainstream pictures to provide easy solutions for life's injustices, The Sum of All Fears is a remarkably ill-timed piece that plays essentially like the sharp twist of a buried knife.

The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection – DVD

July 22, 20081940s, Animation, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Musical, Romance, Sports, War

ON THE TOWN (1949)
**/**** Image C Sound B-
starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller
screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, based on the play
directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME (1949)
**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Betty Garrett
screenplay by Harry Tugeno and George Wells
directed by Busby Berkeley

ANCHORS AWEIGH (1945)
**/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras D
starring Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly, Dean Stockwell
screenplay by Isobel Lennart
directed by George Sidney

by Alex Jackson One of the cinema’s most startling moments in recent years was a close-up of Paul Dano early on in There Will Be Blood. Dano was never meant to get that friendly with the camera. I’m not sure I can properly convey this notion, but his close-up created a dissonant effect. It felt as though director Paul Thomas Anderson had broken some unstated rule of filmmaking. I think the reason it’s so jarring is that the Close-Up wasn’t designed for actors like Paul Dano. It was designed for somebody like his co-star, Daniel Day-Lewis. To put it as delicately as possible, Dano wasn’t blessed with a “movie star” face. He’s a bit strange-looking. In contrast, Daniel Day-Lewis is traditionally handsome and truly “belongs” on the silver screen. In and of himself, he’s as cinematic as anything you’re ever going to find in the movies.

Stop-Loss (2008) + 21 (2008)|21 – Blu-ray Disc

July 20, 20082000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, War

STOP-LOSS
*½/****
starring Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
screenplay by Mark Richard & Kimberly Peirce
directed by Kimberly Peirce

21
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Spacey
screenplay by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb
directed by Robert Luketic

by Walter Chaw The only thing really wrong with MTV–besides the fact that they don't show music videos anymore–is that its branding on some of the most vacuous, appalling celebrations of vanity, stupidity, and acting-out in the not-exactly-sterling history of the medium has spawned a rash of imitative programming. It's cheap to turn a few cameras on pretty idiots fucking each other figuratively and literally in resort locales, and so now there are Tiffany versions of this ("Survivor") on broadcast networks and sewer versions of this (those Flava Flav things, Anna Nicole's old show) on struggling basic-cable outlets. (Cartoon Network even has an animated send-up of "The Real World".) And if the genre momentarily appeared to be on the verge of extinction, it suddenly found new life with the recent writers' strike. Because a good many films nowadays are populated by pre-fabricated tween (and post-tween) stars, I have no idea who they are until they're shoved into my consciousness as "stars"; indeed, MTV's dread influence on popular culture has extended itself (hand-in-hand with Titanic's mammoth babysitter's-club popularity) into the multiplex. Too ephemeral for any nickname (no "brat pack" here, just a revolving door of fresh meat), the real legacy of MTV might be that it functions as a microcosm for the lost youth phenomenon in the United States: In every Britney Spears, I see a Virginia Tech. Promise the terminally untalented the moon and repay them with a goat's portion of disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration bound to simmer to a foul boil.

Crimson Tide (1995) [Unrated Extended Edition] + Enemy of the State (1998) [Special Edition] – DVDs|Crimson Tide – Blu-ray Disc

February 7, 20081990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Thriller, War

CRIMSON TIDE
***/****
DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, George Dzundza, Viggo Mortensen
screenplay by Michael Schiffer
directed by Tony Scott

ENEMY OF THE STATE
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Regina King
screenplay by David Marconi
directed by Tony Scott

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I had expected, on receipt of this pair of Tony Scott sagas, to be discussing a formally advanced director with nothing much going on upstairs. But the films' unfolding induced a melancholy sort of nostalgia I hoped I'd never live to feel, for Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State are Clinton-era end-of-history numbers that speak to a time of stasis, when it was believed that you had to trump up a crisis in order to have a movie. Their subtexts of total disbelief–that we'd ever be in war mode (Crimson Tide), that we'd ever have to worry about government surveillance (Enemy of the State)–seem whimsically complacent now that both premises have proved to be vaguely prescient and not much fun at all. And though the '90s were economically stagnant and loathed by most who lived through them, I can now sadly envision some American Graffiti clone in which this was the last thing glimpsed before everything fell apart.

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).

Lions for Lambs (2007)

November 9, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, War

½*/****
starring Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Derek Luke
screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan
directed by Robert Redford

by Walter Chaw Stilted, awkward, an Ayn Rand screed complete with straw men and pontiffs poised to burn them down, Robert Redford's smug, self-satisfied liberal weltschmerz anthem Lions for Lambs is tailor-made for festival-season standing ovations. It's the prime example of why a lot of Republicans get away with calling Hollywood–the single highest concentration of Big Business and corporate interest outside the Beltway–a lefty hotbed of pinko nonsense carried on a cloud of flatulent hot air. It's a prime example, too, of why it's so hard to vote for Democrats even when the alternative is the GOP. Put this one on the shelf between Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe and this year's deplorable Rendition–movies so earnest in their chest-pounding pontification that it's impossible to imagine on the one hand who could be converted by them and on the other who could resist changing their party affiliation out of sheer embarrassment. In this one, the call is for activism in whatever form said activism might take just for the sake of doing something, damnit. To quote a guy writing in the 1920s, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Iraq in Fragments (2006) – DVD

November 5, 20072000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, DVD, War

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
directed by James Longley

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Aesthetically speaking, Iraq in Fragments isn't all that fragmentary. Although director James Longley essentially divides the country into thirds (according to Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd), the film is really quite fluid and harmonious. This has its drawbacks: we're released from the take-a-step-back God's-eye approach familiar from countless documentaries and thrown into what appears to be the scrum of social life in Iraq, sink or swim. A little context would be useful, as it would be if we were in the middle of the war zone itself. Whatever the shortcomings of this approach, however, Iraq in Fragments takes a necessary swipe at the idea that the eponymous country was a mass of undifferentiated Oppressed yearning for a conquering hero to release it from bondage. It suggests that Iraq is at least as complex as that of its invading "liberators"; and if Longley's three snapshots can contradict each other, that's to be expected from any nation with more than one cultural faction.

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.

300 (2007) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

September 24, 20072000s, Action, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Bulgaria, Canada, Drama, DVD, War

*/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West
screenplay by Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller
directed by Zack Snyder

by Walter Chaw There's an idea in the ancient world about a "beautiful death," achievable for the warrior only in mortal, one-on-one wartime combat–an idea that may have contributed to the length of the Trojan siege, and an idea vocalized by one of the captains serving under Spartan King Leonides (Gerard Butler) in Zack Snyder's 300. Based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name, the film betrays a lot of the same macho aesthetic as Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of Miller's Sin City–but rather than content itself with the literally bestial terms of glory in the masculine psyche, it makes a play for allegory and equivocal morality (of all things) in the valorization of Sparta and the romanticization of a crushing military defeat. It's not that Leonides is seen martyred in the end in a tableau explicitly meant to evoke the passion of St. Sebastian, but that he goes out pining for his wife like a lovesick hamster, thus completing 300's devolution from remorseless Spartan militarism into gushy democratic idealism and all manner of liberal maladies. There's little profit in establishing the rules of this universe as uncompromising and brutal (it opens on a field of infant skulls–victims of a Spartan culling ritual of its own kind) if its intentions split time between justifying, in non-chest-beating terms, the decision to pit three-hundred against thousands while denying the Spartans their individual moments of "beautiful death" in favour of some collective date with pyrrhic immortality. History suggests that the Spartans, having exhausted their arms, died scratching and clawing with their bare hands; 300 suggests they died calling for their mothers and wives.

TIFF ’07: Lust, Caution

September 22, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, China, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, Taiwan, Thriller, TIFF, War

***/****starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Leehomscreenplay by Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus, based on a short story by Eileen Changdirected by Ang Lee by Bill Chambers Blessed with an achingly beautiful score by Alexandre Desplat, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is a more tasteful Blackbook, which is odd considering how much more graphic it is in its depiction of not just sexuality but, thanks to a darkly-comic homage to Torn Curtain, violence as well. Where Blackbook director Paul Verhoeven is a vulgarian, though, Lee projects civility and cultivation. That's how he so often manages to…

The Guns of Navarone (1961) [2-Disc DVD Set] – DVD

August 10, 20071960s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, UK, War

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, James Darren
screenplay by Carl Foreman, based on the novel by Alistair MacLean
directed by J. Lee Thompson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover My brother Oliver is fond of citing movies where you actually root for the Nazis. Not because you like what they stand for, of course, but because the cinematic alternative suddenly seems much worse: fact of the matter is those fucking Von Trapps will simply not shut up in The Sound of Music, while anyone who would voluntarily off Jon Bon Jovi, as the Nazis do in U-571, can't possibly be ALL bad. To this very short list we may add the inexplicably popular guy-movie staple The Guns of Navarone. Supposedly trading on the selfless heroism of a commando unit behind enemy lines, the film has such a hair up its ass about the virtue of grim determination that it manages to bore you into an early grave within the first five minutes. Nearly three hours of watching Gregory Peck and his group of he-men bicker over ethics and strategy would make any thinking adult pray for some kind of violent deliverance. Nazis, Italian Fascists, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir–I'm not choosy about who shoots these jerks dead, just as long as somebody does it.

The Caine Mutiny (1954) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

June 11, 20071950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, War

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray
screenplay by Stanley Roberts, based on the novel by Herman Wouk
directed by Edward Dmytryk

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Caine Mutiny is appallingly enjoyable. Stuffed full of two-bit psychology and capped by a hilarious pontificating monologue from José Ferrer, it shouldn't really hold you the way it does; the movie is pure bull, yet the more of it you watch, the more you want to see. Herman Wouk's Pulitzer-winning novel serves as the basis for a lovely exercise in self-righteous man-talk, and for those who can sate themselves on such things, it's a guaranteed good time. Although The Caine Mutiny is the Ur-text of the vastly inferior A Few Good Men, it's no contest: where that more recent film comes off as smug and conceited in its slam-dunk moralizing and courtroom grandstanding, this one seems rather humbly concerned with the fate of the crew of the Caine, doggedly buying into cheesy but gripping didacticism right down to the ludicrous "twist" near the finish line.

Overlord (1975) [The Criterion Collection] – DVD

June 7, 20071970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, The Criterion Collection, UK, War

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Brian Stirner, Davyd Harries, Nicholas Ball, Julie Neesam
written and directed by Stuart Cooper

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover If nothing else, Overlord has the distinction of inventing its own genre. A bold combination of fictional drama and found-footage assembly, it grimly blends the real and the imaginary to the point where you can't help but be a little affected by the actors' proximity to the real devastation of WWII. Long undistributed in North America and roundly-unseen on these shores except by those fortunate few who caught it on the late, lamented Z Channel, Overlord has acquired a cult mystique slightly disproportionate to its merit. Director Stuart Cooper and his co-scenarist Christopher Hudson only hint at the inner life of their hapless deer-in-the-headlights lead and don't quite sell the impending doom for which they so desperately reach. But make no mistake: this is a one-of-a-kind movie that should've opened new avenues for narrative filmmaking instead of dropping into the big black hole that it did.

The Painted Veil (2006) – DVD; The Good Shepherd (2006); The Good German (2006) – DVD

May 21, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, China, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Mystery, Robert De Niro, Romance, Thriller, War

THE PAINTED VEIL
***/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Diana Rigg
screenplay by Ron Nyswaner, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham
directed by John Curran

THE GOOD SHEPHERD
**/****
starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro, Alec Baldwin
screenplay by Eric Roth
directed by Robert De Niro

THE GOOD GERMAN
*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, Jack Thompson
screenplay by Paul Attanasio, based on the novel by Joseph Kanon
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Walter Chaw One of seemingly dozens of pretentious, self-produced vanity pieces from the Edward Norton grist mill, The Painted Veil, John Curran's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's story of colonial malaise, is a pleasant surprise. Naomi Watts and Toby Jones are fabulous (and Norton is steady); it's not terribly paternalistically racist despite being another Western film in which white people exert their magical influence in foreign lands; and even though it's all about prestige and hedonism, it manages now and again to actually be about prestige and hedonism. But like the simultaneously-opening Soderbergh noir The Good German, it's mostly interesting in the meta. What keeps this updating of the old Greta Garbo weeper from being literally better is the lack of immediacy in its tale of emotionally distant scientists and their flapper wives, adrift in the boiler pot of 1920s Shanghai. Not timeless in its remove but instead ineffably dated by it, it's an Old Hollywood production in both epic scale and lack of subtext, making the picture a lovely trifle not unlike other well-done bits of instantly-forgotten prestige (see: Philip Noyce's The Quiet American).