The Player (1992) – Blu-ray Disc

November 8, 2010Posted in1990s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg
screenplay by Michael Tolkin, based on his novel
directed by Robert Altman

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. In the opening scene of Robert Altman's The Player–an uninterrupted tracking shot lasting 7 minutes and 45 seconds–chief of studio security Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward) discusses long tracking shots with mailboy Jimmy (Paul Hewitt). Stuckel talks at length about Rope and Touch of Evil and says directors back then knew how to shoot a film. Jimmy mentions Bernardo Bertolucci's then-recent The Sheltering Sky and Julien Temple's Absolute Beginners as having terrific long shots, but Stuckel shrugs and mumbles that he hasn't seen them. It appears that Altman and screenwriter Michael Tolkin (adapting his novel of the same name) are illustrating a point about the insularity of the studio system and how the studios have no reference point outside their own past. Today, a complaint like that seems positively churlish. I honestly would not expect any of the newer executives to know or appreciate Rope or Touch of Evil, much less any current chiefs of security! In my view, anybody familiar with American cinema to that extent is already distinguished from your typical capitalist.

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)/House of Wax (2005) [Horror Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

November 4, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Horror, Thriller

THIR13EN GHOSTS
**/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras B
starring Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth
screenplay by Neal Stevens and Richard D'Ovidio, based on the screenplay by Robb White
directed by Steve Beck

by Walter Chaw A loving family man, Arthur (Tony Shalhoub) has lost his wife and home to a fire. We learn of his backstory in a remarkably cheesy though cinematically satisfying slow 360º pan that needs to be seen to be believed. His children, Kathy (a not-scantily-clad Shannon Elizabeth) and Bobby (Alec Roberts, easily the most irritating kid in a horror movie since Bob from House by the Cemetery), aren't really around for much longer than a moment of peril each before vanishing, and evil lawyer Ben Moss (JR Bourne), so pivotal in William Castle's 13 Ghosts, is now basically in town for a cup of coffee.

Breaking Bad: The Complete First Season (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

November 3, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Television, Thriller

Image B Sound B Extras B
"Pilot," "Cat's in the Bag…," "…And the Bag's in the River," "Cancer Man," "Gray Matter," "Crazy Handful of Nothin'," "A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal"

Breakingbads1cap

by Bryant Frazer Describing the ideal temperature for pan-roasting, Tom Colicchio advises budding chefs that the oil in the pan should sizzle, not sputter. That's an apt description of what Bryan Cranston does, with amazing physical control, through the entirety of the first season of "Breaking Bad". He resists going over the top, but still turns in a performance that could cook a steak.

Toy Story 3 (2010) [2-Disc] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 2, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Family, Pixar

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
screenplay by Michael Arndt
directed by Lee Unkrich

by Walter Chaw Woody (Tom Hanks) refuses to shake Buzz's (Tim Allen) hand in farewell at around the middle point of Pixar's Toy Story 3, marking a dark return of sorts to the petulant Woody of the first film and a harbinger of things to come as the picture closes with sights and sounds that are easily darker than anything dreamed of in its predecessors. Maybe it's the comfort that comes with being part of an established franchise–with the knowledge that the only watermark to exceed is that left by its own thorny, complex second chapter. Whatever the case, Toy Story 3 is more ambitious than Toy Story 2 yet less successful as well, mainly because the first half of it seems uncharacteristically uncertain of itself. It's a feeling of awkwardness that in retrospect coalesces into this idea that maybe it's dread that colours our reintroduction to these characters. Half of their number is gone without explanation, after all, including Woody's love interest, Bo. He grieves for her. We'll come back to this. Their owner, Andy, prepares to go to college, leaving the toys to limbo in his attic until some hoped-for, equivocal day when maybe Andy could have children of his own and thus reconnect in some pat, schmaltzy epilogue, we fear, through a closed circle of eternity via progeny. The picture resorts to nothing so simple as that, thankfully, wrapping up instead with a worthy extended post-script that returns the series to its origins, though not without irreplaceable losses and an absolute clarity of purpose that binds this trilogy into something like a definitive, modern existentialist philosophy. While it's not Dostoevsky, it's not that far off, either.

Poltergeist (1982) – [Digitally Restored and Remastered] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

October 29, 2010Posted in1980s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Tobe Hooper, DVD, Horror, Spielberg, Thriller

***/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras F
BD – Image A Sound A Extras F
starring JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Beatrice Straight, Heather O'Rourke
screenplay by Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais & Mark Victor
directed by Tobe Hooper

Poltergeistcap

by Walter Chaw Time has made it impossible to see Poltergeist as anything other than a Steven Spielberg-directed picture. The hallmarks are there, from the microscopic attention to the family dynamic to the ridiculous, set-piece bombast of the grand finale. The only moments that feel like a Tobe Hooper joint are tiny throwaways that lack the polish Spielberg's visual savant-ism demands, such as an artless shot of a killer clown doll, or a sequence where a guy rips his face off beneath an inexplicable sodium light over a likewise-inexplicable industrial wash basin. The rest of it is Spielberg clockwork: great suburbs, great special effects, great abuse of an expositive score (here Jerry Goldsmith fills in for John Williams), great overuse of the slow push-in, great hot mom, great irrelevant dad, great plucky little kids.

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD

October 27, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy

**/**** ImageA- Sound B- Extras C
screenplay by Joe Ansolabehere, Paul Germain, Bob Hilgenberg, Rob Muir
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Jefferson Robbins There's this thing in children's fiction I call the Curious George Effect. A character transgresses, and in the context of that character's world it's a big hairy deal, potentially life-threatening. But the repercussions are so nifty-neato that the initial sin is shrugged off, perhaps never mentioned again, perhaps not explicitly identified as an error in the first place. The consequences for the guilty character are as follows: anxiety, cool adventure, reset to status quo.

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD

October 26, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy

**/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras C
screenplay by Joe Ansolabehere, Paul Germain, Bob Hilgenberg, Rob Muir
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Jefferson Robbins There's this thing in children's fiction I call the Curious George effect. A character transgresses, and in the context of that character's world it's a big hairy deal, potentially life-threatening. But the repercussions are so nifty-neato that the initial sin is shrugged off, perhaps never mentioned again, perhaps not explicitly identified as an error in the first place. The consequences for the guilty character are as follows: anxiety, cool adventure, reset to status quo.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – Blu-ray + DVD

October 26, 2010Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum
screenplay by W.D. Richter, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
directed by Philip Kaufman

mustown-7816294by Walter Chaw I've come to believe that Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not only better than Don Siegel's honoured 1956 original but also one of the best films of the best era in filmmaking. Even in so deep a well as this New American Cinema of ours–one that has forgotten gems like Cockfighter, Fat City, Law and Disorder, Night Moves, and Electra Glide in Blue in there propping up films like Chinatown, The Godfather I/II, Apocalypse Now, Nashville, The Conversation, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and on and on, trailing into incandescent, brilliant eternity–this little work of absolute paranoid craftsmanship bears up under multiple viewings and close scrutiny and provides a succinct, prescient, terrifying précis of the decade before and the decade to come. What better analogy for the looming Reagan administration than pods stalking in lock-step, armed with arbitrary titles and senses of entitlement, steadfastly incapable of heeding the drumbeat of doom in the black jungles around us? It's a film about the absolute horror of complete conformity and non-engagement, as well as a reintroduction to the McCarthy-ian ideal that the only thing to get terribly exercised about is the ferreting out and excoriation of differing values. Arriving as it does in 1978, at the tail end of the most creative period in American film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers offers up a warning against complacency in the immediate wake of Jaws and Star Wars, which sounded the death knell for the artistry of this period arm-in-arm with the dawning of some unknown, mass- consumed and marketed ethic.

Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy – DVD|Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy – Blu-ray + Digital Copy

October 24, 2010Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Time Travel

Backtothefuturecap1BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)
****/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale
directed by Robert Zemeckis

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (1989)
**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson
screenplay by Bob Gale
directed by Robert Zemeckis

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990)
**½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson
screenplay by Bob Gale
directed by Robert Zemeckis

Mustownby Bill Chambers GREAT SCOT! SPOILERS AHEAD! It's finally here. As not only a mighty-big fan of Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future but also a completist (and therefore keen to collect Back to the Future's substandard sequels), I've anticipated the DVD release of Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy (henceforth BTTF) since the format itself became a reality. Alas, the 3-disc set–from its unsexy blue-and-white cover layout to the cheap menus to a slipshod three-part documentary–is problematic. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy as a clam that the films (remastered in effervescent 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers–pan-and-scan sold separately–supervised by co-creator Bob Gale with Dolby Digital 5.1 remixes that beef up the re-entry effects especially) look and sound as good as they do and that, for the first time in home video's history, each picture is now being seen as it appeared in theatres (more on that below). But as a BTTF enthusiast, almost every single piece of supplementary material had me arrogantly believing I could've done a better job.

King Kong (1933) (DigiBook) – Blu-ray Disc

October 21, 2010Posted in****/****, 1930s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, FFC Must-Own

Kingkong33cap****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot
screenplay by James Creelman and Ruth Rose, from a story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper
chief technician: Willis H. O’Brien

Mustownby Bryant Frazer Critics of a certain age point to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and George Lucas’s Star Wars as the two new-style blockbusters that changed the course of moviemaking. It’s meant as a backhanded compliment to those films, whose high-concept efficiency appealed to huge audiences worldwide–and to younger viewers, it comes off as a geriatric complaint from Grandpa Sarris: “Get off my lawn, you kids with your laser guns and your killer sharks.” In truth, while Spielberg and Lucas altered the economics of the industry, they didn’t invent the modern blockbuster. That legacy stretches back to 1933, when the release of King Kong defined the studio tentpole for decades to come.

THX 1138: The George Lucas Director’s Cut (1971/2004) – Blu-ray Disc

October 20, 2010Posted in1970s, 2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Esoterica, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie
screenplay by George Lucas and Walter Murch
directed by George Lucas

Thx1138dvdcapby Walter Chaw THX 1138 is the only film George Lucas ever wrote and directed that will and should be remembered as a mostly artistic triumph rather than a largely financial one (recalling that the best of his Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back, was neither written nor directed by Lucas). The fact that he's now tampered with it in much the same manner as he's tampered with his original Star Wars trilogy seems, then, an almost bigger crime against posterity, even if it makes a kind of ironic sense within the thematic framework of the film. THX 1138's preoccupations with dehumanization, an abhorrence of imperfection and humanity in favour of machine-tooled precision, and the corruption of human perception and emotions with mass-produced opiates find sympathy with this new stage of its own existence as a film that hasn't been just restored, but enhanced, too, by CGI that serves the same basic function for the audience as the drugged milk does for the protagonists of A Clockwork Orange. When Lucas made THX 1138, he was the prole toiling (stealing from Aldous Huxley and N.I. Kostomorov is toil, yes?) in obscurity; when he retooled the thing and went to Telluride with a streaming digital feed of it thirty-three years later, he completed his transformation into the faceless machine-priest of the film, sanctifying his zombified acolytes as good pods and ladling upon them the questionable bounty of blessings by the state.

Tombstone (1993) – Blu-ray Disc

October 14, 2010Posted in1990s, 2010, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Western

**/**** Image D+ Sound B- Extras B
starring Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston
screenplay by Kevin Jarre
directed by George P. Cosmatos

by Jefferson Robbins Achingly traditionalist, with an overstuffed cast, George P. Cosmatos's Tombstone is badly-served by its Old Hollywood instincts. Riding forth during one of those cyclical revivals the western seems to endure every decade, it had the bad fortune to eat the dust of Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood's dolorous drama, concerned to its core with the cost of bloodshed, was a case of an icon reminding us of what Anthony Mann did so well. In Tombstone, Cosmatos (he of Rambo: First Blood Part II fame, remember*) was handed essentially the same opportunity, but he decided he'd rather be Henry Hathaway.

Greenberg (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

October 5, 2010Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh
written and directed by Noah Baumbach 

Mustownby Walter Chaw The ideal follow-up to his Dorothy Parker-cum-Rohmer shrine Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach's Greenberg is a deepening of the filmmaker's examinations of the peculiar voids over which we stretch the niceties of interaction betwixt the miserable intellectual elite. It's the Algonquin Roundtable reconstituted as wits without an audience: all outrage without an outlet, there's even this sense of panic attached to Greenberg's little whorls of nervous intellectualism, as if Jonathan Edwards's penitents were literati at risk of being cast into the hell of everyone else. Just as ignorance is bliss, the opposite is most assuredly also true, and it's the product of that deep, consuming contemplation of the navel that is the foundation for Baumbach's films, from his post-grad Kicking and Screaming through to his portraits of agonizing relational disintegrations The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding. The anxiety that drives his work is the fear that the armour equipped to defend against the perception of ordinariness doesn't fit well, and that the discovery of the idiot driving the sage is not merely likely but inevitable. His are films, then, of a certain deep discomfort with the projection of the self–and Greenberg, ironically, is an examination of all of Baumbach's issues carried off with what seems like absolute confidence. If Baumbach suffers from the same self-doubt as his characters, he's no longer showing it in his films.

A Scanner Darkly (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

October 3, 2010Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

****/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder
screenplay by Richard Linklater, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick
directed by Richard Linklater

Mustownby Walter Chaw Our reality has almost outstripped Philip K. Dick's paranoid fantasies, and Richard Linklater's grim A Scanner Darkly is the slipperiest take yet on the war between perception vs. reality in a year that knows United 93. Keanu Reeves, so often woefully miscast, is wonderfully imagined here as a guy in a "scramble suit": his appearance constantly shifting in a kaleidoscope of mismatched parts–the uniform of future-narcs (seven years from now, announce the opening titles) sent undercover to ferret out the dopers and dealers of Substance D. It's a hallucinogen that eventually causes a rift in the individual consciousness (the left hemisphere atrophies and the right tries to compensate) and Reeves' Agent Fred is sent to find out where dealer Donna (Winona Ryder) is getting her shit. But the scramble suits seem mainly used to keep the vice squad's identities from one another instead of their quarry, meaning that Fred goes underground as himself, Robert Arctor, in full grunge, inhabiting his once-cozy suburban nook with tweaked conspiracy theorists Ernie (Woody Harrelson) and Barris (Robert Downey Jr.). Meaning, too, that Fred is asked to spy on Arctor, and that Barris, in a pair of hilarious scenes, informs on Arctor to Arctor. It's not the labyrinthine audacity of Dick's delusions that so enthrals, but rather the mendacity of them. What's complicated about A Scanner Darkly isn't the compression of identity or the various plots to which its characters imagine themselves hero and victim, but the idea that reality conforms itself to belief–that because life has stopped making sense to you, life has stopped making sense, period.

Sex and the City 2 (2010) + Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

October 3, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

SEX AND THE CITY 2
ZERO STARS/****
starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall
written and directed by Michael Patrick King

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina
screenplay by Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard
directed by Mike Newell

Sexandpersiaby Walter Chaw One may be a misguided liberal screed and the other a misguided conservative screed, but Sex and the City 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (hereafter Prince of Persia) are very much alike in that they're what a Tea Party meeting would look like with a budget. They're politically-confused hodgepodges of bad ideas and misplaced, incoherent outrage–most of it gleaned from the one or two times some idiot accidentally read the A-section of a newspaper, the rest gathered from Dummies primers on how to be cursorily informed in the Information Age. They're similarly infused with healthy doses of arrogance and cultural empiricism that speak directly to the reasons the United States is the target of fundamentalist whackos convinced we're all just like the randy quartet of aging bitches on a hedonism bender in the Middle East in Sex and the City 2. Hateful, vile, both films are also indicated by a distinct lack of artistry, representing a world post-Michael Bay in which a goodly portion of movies are dependent on not only other cultural touchstones (a TV series, a videogame) for the entirety of their alleged appeal, but on some of the most vapid cultural touchstones in the brief history of our popular culture, period.

Let Me In (2010)

October 1, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, Vampire

**/****
starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloë Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas
screenplay by Matt Reeves, based on the novel Låt den rätte komma in by John Ajvide Lindqvist
directed by Matt Reeves

Letmeinby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Matt Reeves’s redux of Swede Tomas Alfredson’s lovely, understated, doom-laden Let the Right One In finds magnification in the wrong places while betraying what seems to be its better nature in order to present something more “palatable” to a popular audience. Wrong to call it a “dumbing down”–better to say that elements left unspoken or at arm’s length in the original film are presented in Let Me In in as confrontational, uncontroversial a way as possible. More’s the pity, as the movie begins with Ronald Reagan quoting Alexis de Tocqueville in his “Evil Empire” speech (delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983) on a television in a snowed-in New Mexico E.R.: “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America… America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” It’s a thread of Christian fervour that weaves through much of the first twenty minutes of the picture, through the introduction of our hero, Owen (a tremendous Kodi Smit-McPhee), suffering an extended Grace delivered by a faceless mother (Cara Buono) and, later, an admonition by an also-faceless father over the telephone that Owen’s mother is unbalanced and should stow her Christian shit a bit more tightly. The lack of the father as a physical presence in the film becomes a poignant elision in this respect: in a film about good and evil, the divorce between Father and Son, as it were, is a pithy one.

Practical Magic/The Witches of Eastwick [Comedy Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

September 29, 2010Posted in1980s, 1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Jack Nicholson, Romance

PRACTICAL MAGIC (1998)
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Aidan Quinn
screenplay by Robin Swicord and Akiva Goldsman and Adam Brooks, based on the novel by Alice Hoffman
directed by Griffin Dunne

THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK (1987)
***/**** Image B+ Sound B-
starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer
screenplay by Michael Cristofer, based on the novel by John Updike
directed by George Miller

by Walter Chaw Some would say, and be correct in saying, that Griffin Dunne’s “women’s picture” Practical Magic is the perfect distillation of both George Cukor’s tradition of gynecological melodramas and Alice Hoffman’s assembly-line ladies’ relationship novels. Edgeless, in love with its own whimsy, shot through with the sort of autumnal glow more at home in instant-coffee commercials, it could, as sophomore directorial efforts go, be worse–credit for that going mostly to an amiably under-achieving cast of superstars and ace character actors. It’s the very model of the classic Studio picture in that sense: a quiet, contract-satisfying flick based on a safe property, set in a picaresque locale with vaguely populist supernatural undertones in which no one’s particularly invested. Call it The Bishop’s Wife for 1998–one of the oddest years in movies of the last twenty, among which crop this film maintains a comfortable medium-buoyancy. It’s possible to try to pull something like a feminist read out of its obsessive focus on women and their sexuality–what else is witchcraft about, after all, than a fear of the Other made manifest as girl parts? But not only is the picture too stupid to bear up under such scrutiny, such a read is also hopelessly complicated by an adaptation courtesy a triumvirate composed of snag Adam Brooks and genuine blights Akiva Goldsman and (not quite worse but somehow close) Robin Swicord. A bad sign when the only female in the creative process is Swicord, who, by working as a Mata Hari, as it were, as the woman behind The Jane Austen Book Club and Memoirs of a Geisha, has arguably done more harm to her gender than Michael Bay.

TIFF 2010: Wrap It Up

September 27, 2010Posted in2010, 2011, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Horror, Music, Mystery, South Korea, Superhero, Thriller, TIFF, TIFF 10, Time Travel

by Bill Chambers

  • The films are fading fast in the rearview for me (no reflection on them, necessarily), but before they become too vestigial I want to at least highlight the rest of what I saw at this year’s TIFF, starting with a movie called White Irish Drinkers (*/****). How I wound up catching this flick is fairly embarrassing: the director is “John Gray,” which I misread in my bleary, end-of-festival state as “James Gray.” I was severely late for the flick, so I don’t want to pummel it (or even officially rate it), but keen auteurist that I am, I figured out my mistake pretty quickly: James Gray just wouldn’t have a naked girl (the maddeningly familiar Leslie Murphy) run around a cemetery with “free spirit” music cued up on the soundtrack–he’s not a de facto film student anymore. Though it turns out that John Gray has an extensive TV-movie resume, having done everything from The Marla Hanson Story to the remake of Brian’s Song, this feels very much the work of a novice, not a little for its pretensions to be the next Mean Streets. Because Stephen Lang salvaged Public Enemies virtually single-handedly, I was hopeful when he turned up here, but his character may be even more one-note than the one he played in Avatar. As his put-upon wife, Karen Allen has seemingly recovered from the stupefying euphoria of getting to resurrect her iconic Marion in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Strangely, I missed said goofy grin, yet she makes the most of a thankless role that indirectly references her previous brush with this genre, Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers. The rest of the cast is made up of baby-faced thugs who have to be given black eyes at regular intervals in order to pass for tough. On a related note, I never could shake the feeling that this is exactly the sort of project Vinnie Chase would be hot for on “Entourage”.

The Karate Kid (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

September 26, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Family, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Sports, Will Smith

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, Taraji P. Henson, Wenwen Han
screenplay by Christopher Murphey
directed by Harald Zwart

by Walter Chaw So here's the thing: there's something really powerful about the archetype of a child losing his father and finding a mentor and, on the flipside, of a father losing a son and finding an apprentice. Easy to scoff, it's also the worn-through, threadbare foundation for stuff like the Dardennes' arthouse favourite The Son, Beat Takeshi's Kikujuro, and Pixar's Up–so why not another go-round with a remake of The Karate Kid? The only places it truly fails are in its deviations from formula: a little too much faithless razzle-dazzle here, a bit too much equivocal bullshit there, and a whole lot of nepotism as overmatched Jaden Smith (spawn of producers Will and Jada Pinkett) grimaces his way through a cipher of a character. It's high-concept fat that clogs the arteries of a lean, John G. Avildsen-sculpted framework, this inner-city-to-Forbidden-city crap that sees li'l Dre (Smith) jetting off to Beijing when mommy (Taraji P. Henson) gets a job at an auto plant. Should there be an undercurrent of irony here about moving from Detroit to Beijing to work on cars? Doesn't matter, as in the place of subtext, The Karate Kid quickly introduces a deeply uncomfortable love story between 12-year-old Dre and little Mei (Han Wenwen) that culminates in a stolen kiss and a sexy dance set to Lady Gaga that has blank Dre slacking his jaw in the very approximation of Forrest Gump finally fucking Jen-nay. Is there a racial element when bully Cheng (Wang Zhenwei) warns Dre to "stay away from all of us"? Doesn't matter, as in the place of all that stuff about internment camps that so beautifully complicated the 1984 flick is the drama of Mr. Han née Miyagi (Jackie Chan) losing control of his car on a dark and stormy night (because just as every chink knows kung fu, none of them can drive–Han totals a car in the film while it's parked in his living room), thus opening the door for a ragamuffin to come calling like some funked-up changeling.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) + Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2009)

September 24, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Family, Fantasy

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
**/****
starring Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella
screenplay by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff
directed by Oliver Stone

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE
*½/****
screenplay by John Orloff and Emil Stern, based on the novel Guardians of Ga'Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
directed by Zack Snyder

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Oliver Stone has a penchant for writing himself into living history, and normally, it's quite fascinating. By making movies about historical events whose ramifications have not yet fully materialized, he engages in a battle of wits with the unfamiliar. He tries to understand what's unfolding at this very moment, constantly on the lookout for something resembling closure. From that perspective, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (hereafter Wall Street 2) suffers from Stone's familiarity with the subject. Having already made a movie about the chaos of the free market, he knows exactly what he wants to say from the outset. Our boy Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) spent the Clinton years behind bars, leaving his personal life in shambles. Beloved son Rudy has died of a drug overdose, and hitherto-unmentioned daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan) is–irony of ironies!–a lefty blogger who won't have anything to do with him. Enter her fiancé, Jake Moore (professional protégé Shia LaBeouf, who's convincing enough; and the character's name is More, get it?), an ambitious green-energy investor who wants to learn a few moves from a living legend. As fate would have it, the two men share a mutual enemy in Bretton James (Josh Brolin), the slimy businessman who sent Gekko to the slammer and spread a few market rumours that prompted Jake's mentor/father figure (Frank Langella) to commit suicide. Gekko sees the chance to rekindle his relationship with Winnie, while Jake wants to make a mint founded on revenge. Alliances are forged, tricks are played, trust is abused, and, above all, greed continues to rule the day. When the bottom falls out, you'd best be prepared for a lot of hand-wringing in the executive boardroom–but hell, you know there are more important things floating around here, right? Winnie announces her pregnancy on the very same day that the 2008 economy does its final nosedive. Where do you think Wall Street 2 is going to end up?