Bored to Death: The Complete First Season (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

November 22, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Television, Thriller

Image B Sound B Extras C+
“Stockholm Syndrome,” “The Alanon Case,” “The Case of the Missing Screenplay,” “The Case of the Stolen Skateboard,” The Case of the Lonely White Dove,” “The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer,” “The Case of the Stolen Sperm,” “Take a Dive”

by Jefferson Robbins With its accomplished but psychologically malformed boy-men, the first season of novelist-screenwriter Jonathan Ames’s “Bored To Death” feels like a Judd Apatow joint transplanted to Tom Wolfe’s outer boroughs. Its characters all want to be Masters of their particular Universes, but they’re either hamstrung by their own neuroses or carting them along like luggage in spite of success. We know we’re watching an HBO comedy, though it’s often hard to discern where the comedy is supposed to be located. In Woody Allen nebbishism? In misdirection and error? In slapstick? In satirizing the hip, self-satisfied artistes of millennial New York’s most fashionable burg? Barring a few episodes that succeed on the other points, the latter feels most likely.

Red Riding (2009) [Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

November 15, 2010Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller, UK

RED RIDING
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1974
**½/****
starring Andrew Garfield, Sean Bean, Warren Clarke, Rebecca Hall
screenplay by Tony Grisoni, based on the novel Red Riding: Nineteen Seventy-Four David Peace
directed by Julian Jarrold

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1980
***/****
starring Paddy Considine, Jim Carter, Warren Clarke, Sean Harris
screenplay by Tony Grisoni, based on the novel Red Riding: Nineteen Eighty David Peace
directed by James Marsh

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1983
**/****
starring Mark Addy, David Morrissey, Jim Carter, Warren Clarke
screenplay by Tony Grisoni, based on the novel Red Riding: Nineteen Eighty-Three David Peace
directed by Anand Tucker

by Bryant Frazer Red Riding, adapted by screenwriter Tony Grisoni into three movies from four novels by David Peace, is an awfully downbeat thing that’s difficult to classify. It’s not really a mystery, because the central crimes are barely the point (at least in the first two films), and the question isn’t whodunit, but who among all those involved is not yet corrupt. It’s not a police procedural, because the only effective police work we see is of the thuggish, back-room variety. In its specificity of time and place–nine years in Yorkshire, a county in northern England–it recalls James Ellroy’s novels about Los Angeles cops in the 1940s and ’50s. But Ellroy’s stories were bracing because their point of view came from inside a department dominated by bigotry and machismo and tormented by its own failings. Each of the Red Riding stories comes at the situation mostly from an outsider’s perspective, elevating a principled crusader to the high ground, then having the corrupt institution take potshots at him, decimating his footing.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

November 15, 2010Posted in****/****, 1940s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Mexico, Thriller, Western

****/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras A+
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett
screenplay by John Huston, based on the novel by B. Traven
directed by John Huston

FFC Must-Ownby Walter Chaw John Ford isn’t America’s Akira Kurosawa, John Huston is, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, an intimate epic that unfolds against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, is Huston’s Throne of Blood. Huston also draws comparisons to Ernest Hemingway, not just for being a man’s man in life, but for his precision and economy in art. There isn’t any flab on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre–it’s as sleek as a dancer in its waltz between complex character drama on the one side and broad social commentary on the other. There haven’t been many better American films (it’s Huston’s best film next to Fat City and maybe The Misfits, and it boasts of Humphrey Bogart’s best performance without question), and when it’s spoken of, it’s spoken of in terms of one of those films that decided careers in the cinema for generations of filmmakers.

The Prowler (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

November 11, 2010Posted in1980s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

**½/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C-
starring Farley Granger, Vicky Dawson, Christopher Goutman, Cindy Weintraub
screenplay by Glenn Leopold and Neal E. Barbera
directed by Joseph Zito

by Jefferson Robbins Was it that the flicks got less suspenseful, or that I got savvier? Joseph Zito’s The Prowler boasts an intimidating slasher (although “stabber” or “puncturer” is more apt, since he tends to pitchfork and bayonet his victims to death), a complement of gore F/X from the estimable Tom Savini, a compelling backstory that touches on the legacy of war, and a Final Girl (Vicky Dawson) who’s fleet, smart, next-door pretty, and resourceful. Its closest equivalent is probably Friday the 13th Part 2, released just six months prior, which likewise coped with horror passed down through the generations. What it lacks, though, is tension and surprise–at least in retrospect. There are no real shocks to be had, beyond the graphic nature of the killings and the choice to open a scare flick with stock ’40s newsreel footage.

Dead Cert (2010) – DVD

November 10, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, DVD, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, UK, Vampire

*/**** Image B+ Sound D+ Extras C
starring Craig Fairbass, Dexter Fletcher, Lisa McAllister, Steven Berkoff
screenplay by Ben Shillito
directed by Steve Lawson

by Jefferson Robbins That single star is for the concept–London gangsters vs. vampires–which, apart from some very fine lensing and decent actors, is probably the only thing that got Dead Cert any kind of release. In a genre thickly dotted with piles of shit, this thing is shit stacked high but glazed with modest visual sugar and a great high-concept. It barely merits a single viewing, yet you keep hoping something will switch on and provide a reason to persevere.

The Peacemaker (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

November 10, 2010Posted in1990s, 2010, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Espionage, Thriller

*/**** Image C Sound B- Extras F
starring George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Marcel Iures
screenplay by Michael Schiffer
directed by Mimi Leder

by Walter Chaw With boring being the one thing from which an action movie can’t recover, studio supergroup DreamWorks SKG marking their debut by giving professional director of boring action movies Mimi Leder the bank suggests they were asking to make a terrible first impression. I guess, in their defense, Leder showed promise after a storied career helming boring television episodes–“ER” the place where executive producer John Wells spied her “potential” to one day direct motherfucking Pay It Forward. Wells’s own participation in The Peacemaker likewise explains the presence of George Clooney (still trying to pop the balloon of A-list opener) and, later, of Clooney’s “ER” replacement Goran Visnjic in an eye-blink cameo. But of all the things the curiously prescient The Peacemaker predicts*, the lasting one is Leder’s incandescent career as a truly awful filmmaker and DreamWorks as a particularly well-funded curiosity that has only confirmed everyone’s suspicions about the eponymous Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen. It takes the acceptance of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker over a decade later to restore the idea that an American woman is able to direct a smart, terse action film (which Bigelow had been doing since the mid-’80s)–to undo the damage of high-profile Leder-helmed disasterpieces like this and Deep Impact. No surprise that Leder soon retreated to the boob tube, where she, if not belongs, at least can do the same damage less spectacularly.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) [Blu-ray + DVD] + The Fourth Kind (2009)

November 9, 2010Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, Family, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Robert Zemeckis

THE FOURTH KIND
ZERO STARS/****
starring Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Corey Johnson, Elias Koteas
written and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

by Ian Pugh If Robert Zemeckis hasn’t quite left the Uncanny Valley behind, at the very least, the heart missing from his latest effort–what seems like the trillionth retelling of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and the billionth animated one–correlates directly to its absence of personality, rather than to an absence of humanity. A backhanded compliment, to be sure, but the character designs finally resemble something closer to artistic interpretation than to a failed attempt at replicating human beings exactly as they are, with Marley (Gary Oldman) and Scrooge (Jim Carrey), for example, rendered almost expressionistically to evoke rotten apples and hunched skeletons. From that standpoint, the actors’ sudden bursts of acrobatic grace, no longer so incongruous, capture some of computer-animated cinema’s wonder, the kind at which Zemeckis has grasped since The Polar Express–a true example of bringing the impossible to life. The only problem is that Zemeckis’s own script isn’t worth more than a shrug, and the film relies too much on its visuals to carry the extra weight.

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

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, 2008, 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”

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

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

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

**/**** 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

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

FFC Must-Own****/**** 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

by 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

FFC Must-OwnBACK 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

by 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

FFC Must-Ownby 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

by 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

FFC Must-Ownby 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

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

FFC Must-Ownby 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.