Animal Kingdom (2010) + Valhalla Rising (2010)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Fantasy, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

ANIMAL KINGDOM
***½/****
starring Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford, Guy Pearce
written and directed by David Michôd

VALHALLA RISING
****/****
starring Mads Mikkelsen, Maarten Stevenson, Gordon Brown, Andrew Flanagan
screenplay by Roy Jacobsen & Nicolas Winding Refn
directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

by Walter Chaw David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom respects its audience, a rare commodity during the best of times. The film flatters us by leaving exposition and backstory to our knowledge of anthropology–in fact, Animal Kingdom is best indicated by its unwavering reserve–a reluctance, almost–to say too much when slow, fluid tracking motions and static, medium-distance establishing shots may suffice. Consider a frankly gorgeous tableau late in the film as three people meet in Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria: framed against an open space, Michôd allows an extra beat, then another, before continuing with his family gothic. The story isn’t an afterthought, but the dialogue, however minimal, seems to be. The picture’s told through its actions and its images and, in that way, reminds of a Beat Takeshi film, of all things, what with its focus on criminality and its enthralling slowness. If there’s another indie demiurge to which Michôd pays obeisance, it’s Michael Mann–and the success of the picture (as shrine to masculinity, as introspective character study) suggests that cribbing from Kitano and Mann, if it’s as successful a larceny as this, can be successful in no other way.

Valentine’s Day (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper
screenplay by Katherine Fugate
directed by Garry Marshall

by Walter Chaw There are worse directors working today than Garry Marshall, but not many and then not much worse. I’ve vowed on a few occasions (like after Beaches, Pretty Woman, Exit to Eden, The Other Sister, Raising Helen, Georgia Rule) to never subject myself to another Marshall joint–certainly to never bother reviewing another one. What’s the point, really, of taking the piss out of this guy and his movies? They’re consistently, stridently tone deaf; unfailingly saccharine; morally suspect; visually uninteresting; casually racist/misogynist/classist/homophobic; and dangerously enervating to the point of meriting some kind of warning label. Marry Marshall’s adorable dog/kid reaction shots and wholesale white-rape of Motown standards to a bloated ensemble cast (everyone from Jamie Foxx to Kathy Bates–yes, it’s horrific) enacting a two-hour version of Marshall’s career-launching TV series “Love, American Style” and what you get is every bit the horror movie the title Valentine’s Day suggests.

Red Planet (2000) – Blu-ray Disc

Red Planet (2000) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras D
starring Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Terence Stamp
screenplay by Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin
directed by Antony Hoffman

by Walter Chaw Watching Val Kilmer pretend not to have enough oxygen is very much like watching Val Kilmer at any other time, but there’s something about him in a helmet that works for me. (Frankly, upon further consideration, the two states don’t seem all that unrelated.) South African director Antony Hoffman’s Red Planet, working from a clunky screenplay by Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin, is, despite its obvious shortcomings, an interesting contribution to the end-of-the-millennium sweepstakes. Counting most specifically among its contemporaries films like The Matrix and Dark City (and the same year’s Pitch Black), it’s an eco-terror flick at heart, positing that in 2056, with the Earth polluted beyond salvation, the last chance for mankind’s survival is terraforming Mars using a biologically-engineered algae that for some reason hasn’t taken, necessitating an investigative mission by Capt. (not Dave) Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss) and her small crew of scientists. It’s the set-up of course to everything from Aliens to Supernova, and originality isn’t the strong suit of what boils down to one of those emergency-beacon-is-really-a-trap movies. (At least until it suddenly becomes one of those walking-on-a-soundstage-I-mean-strange-planet-with-an-animal-sidekick movies.) What works about Red Planet–and works extremely well–is that it confronts its problems with a bracing, earnest, seemingly honest attempt at resolving those problems, even though the biggest one (“Hey, I thought you said there wasn’t life on this planet”) is resolved with, “Yeah, how ’bout that.”

Flaming Star (1961) – DVD

Posted in1960s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Western

Flamingstarcap

***½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Elvis Presley, Dolores Del Rio, John McIntire, Steve Forrest
screenplay by Clair Huffaker and Nunnally Johnson, based on the novel Flaming Lance by Huffaker
directed by Don Siegel

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. In his compulsively readable autobiography A Siegel Film, Flaming Star director Don Siegel recounts a conversation he had with the film’s producer, David Weisbart. Told that Elvis Presley has replaced Marlon Fucking Brando as the lead in their Nunnally Johnson-scripted western, a baffled Siegel observes, “He’s no Marlon Brando.”

“On the other hand, Brando’s no Presley,” Weisbart retorts, creating a kind of Lewis Carroll logic loop from which the only escape is to concur. Siegel is later ironically relieved to hear that the esteemed Johnson has bailed on the project in protest, as it confirms he’s not the only one not taking the recasting lightly.

Django (1966) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1960s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Italy, Western

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Franco Nero, Loredana Nusciak, José Bódalo, Eduardo Fajardo
screenplay by Sergio Corbucci & Bruno Corbucci and Franco Rossetti
directed by Sergio Corbucci

by Bryant Frazer When Django, the title character and hero of director Sergio Corbucci’s seminal spaghetti western, first appears on screen, he’s slogging on foot through mud, dragging a coffin behind him. The image is evocative and challenging. In classic American films, western heroes had generally been dignified cowboy types saddled up on strong horses. They were lawmen or simple ranchers with a code of honour. They rode into town in a cloud of dust and plainspoken righteousness backed up by a sharp eye and a six-shooter, and they stood for the endurance of traditional values on a wild frontier.

Django thinks those guys were pussies.

Daria: The Complete Animated Series (1997-2002) + Party Down: Season One (2009) – DVDs

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Teen

DARIA: THE COMPLETE ANIMATED SERIES
Image A- Sound B- Extras B+
“Esteemsters,” “The Invitation,” “College Bored,” “Café Disaffecto,” “Malled,” “This Year’s Model,” “The Lab Brat,” “Pinch Sitter,” “Too Cute,” “The Big House,” “Road Worrier,” “The Teachings of Don Jake,” “The Misery Chick,” “Arts ‘N’ Crass,” “The Daria Hunter,” “Quinn the Brain,” “I Don’t,” “That Was Then, This Is Dumb,” “Monster,” “The New Kid,” “Gifted,” “Ill,” “Fair Enough,” “See Jane Run,” “Pierce Me,” “Write Where it Hurts,” “Daria!,” “Through a Lens Darkly,” “The Old and the Beautiful,” “Depth Takes a Holiday,” “Daria Dance Party,” “The Lost Girls,” “It Happened One Nut,” “Lane Miserables,” “Jake of Hearts,” “Speedtrapped,” “The Lawndale File,” “Just Add Water,” “Jane’s Addition,” “Partner’s Complaint,” “Antisocial Climbers,” “A Tree Grows in Lawndale,” “Murder, She Snored,” “The F Word,” “I Loathe a Parade,” “Of Human Bonding,” “Psycho Therapy,” “Mart of Darkness,” “Legends of the Mall,” “Groped by an Angel,” “Fire!,” “Dye! Dye! My Darling,” “Fizz Ed,” “Sappy Anniversary,” “Fat Like Me,” “Camp Fear,” “The Story of D,” “Lucky Strike,” “Art Burn,” “One J at a Time,” “Life in the Past Lane,” “Aunt Nauseam,” “Prize Fighters,” “My Night at Daria’s,” “Boxing Daria”

PARTY DOWN: SEASON ONE
Image A- Sound A- Extras B
“Willow Canyon Homeowners Annual Party,” “California College Conservative Union Caucus,” “Pepper McMasters Singles Seminar,” “Investors Dinner,” “Sin Say Shun Awards Afterparty,” “Taylor Stiltskin Sweet Sixteen,” “Brandix Corporate Retreat,” “Celebrate Rick Sargulesh,” “James Rolf High School Twentieth Reunion,” “Stennheiser-Pong Wedding Reception”

by Jefferson Robbins If he hadn’t helped oversee the death of the music video, Abby Terkuhle’s tenure at MTV could be viewed as the network’s Silver Age. “The State”, “Liquid Television”, “Beavis and Butt-Head”–apogees or nadirs, depending on your perspective, they defined the channel in the ’90s, until “Road Rules” and “Cribs” redefined it into irrelevance. Terkuhle, the network’s director of animation and overall creative chief, left MTV in 2002, but when hipsters in the decade just passed whined that such-and-such MTV show wasn’t available on DVD, they were usually talking about something he’d incubated. His reign straddles the cultural shift from the Age of Irony (David Foster Wallace, “Daria”) to the Age of Schadenfreude (“Mad Men”, the shitty-childhood memoirs of Augusten Burroughs). We used to be able to contemplate human abasement and crack wise about it, like Daria Morgendorffer; now the abasement is our entertainment, and we sit slack-jawed before the awesome pathos of Snooki and The Situation.*

Get Low (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Germany, Mystery, Poland, Theatrical

**/****
starring Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black
screenplay by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell
directed by Aaron Schneider

by Walter Chaw Affable, warm, kinda boring, and decidedly minor, Aaron Schneider’s Get Low doesn’t really do anything wrong so much as it presents as an edgeless, inconsequential, protracted encounter with someone you feel you should be interested in but mostly want to politely usher out the door. It’s a conversation killer: a movie about a performance, a particular kind of calling card bespeaking comfort with name actors who might be capable of delivering an awards-season prestige picture for a splinter company interested in a medium-return on a small investment. That’s it. At the least, for what it’s worth, Get Low operates with a great deal of compassion for its small-town denizens, resisting the easy shot at their provinciality in favour of something more along the lines of a Sling Blade. On that note, this South is neither as ugly nor as impoverished as Billy Bob’s.

Insomnia (2002) – [Widescreen Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

Insomnia (2002) – [Widescreen Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Christopher Nolan, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Maura Tierney
screenplay by Hillary Seitz, based on the screenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg
directed by Christopher Nolan

by Walter Chaw Director Christopher Nolan follows up his justifiably hailed indie masterpiece Memento with Insomnia, a mainstream Hollywood remake of Erik Skjoldbjærg’s tremendous 1997 Norwegian film of the same name. Like the ill-fated American version of the French/Dutch Spoorloos (a.k.a. The Vanishing), what emerges from this studio remake is a frightened, sometimes patronizing, and ultimately ineffectual thriller that transforms all the controversy and introspection of the original into something rote and predictable. A close comparison between Skjoldbjærg and Nolan’s visions for the material brings to light the defective machinery of big-budget motion pictures in Hollywood. The sad irony of such a discussion is that Nolan’s Memento was so remarkable because it represented nearly everything that Insomnia is not.

Road to Perdition (2002) [Widescreen (Dolby Digital)] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Road to Perdition (2002) [Widescreen (Dolby Digital)] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Thriller

**½/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman, Jude Law
screenplay by David Self, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner
directed by Sam Mendes

by Walter Chaw A shot near the end of Road to Perdition, Sam Mendes’s follow-up to his honoured American Beauty, needs to be singled out. It’s of a hotel room divided by a wall: on one end sits a boy in bed, weeping; on the opposite side of the partition enters the boy’s father, wet from the rain with blood on his hands. With painterliness, Mendes and cinematographer Conrad Hall present this moody tableau in what is a continuation of the picture’s running homage to the images, themes, even favourite subjects of American painter Edward Hopper, such as an all-night diner in the middle of nowhere, an unevenly lit apartment, and silhouettes imprisoned in blocks of yellow light.

Salt (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski
screenplay by Kurt Wimmer
directed by Phillip Noyce

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The question that drives the marketing campaign for Phillip Noyce’s Salt–namely, “Who is Salt?”–is ultimately the very least of the picture’s mysteries, so there’s no point in trying to keep a lid on it. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is an assassin born and bred in the former Soviet Union, planted in the CIA as a sleeper agent until she’s activated and sent to kill the current President of Russia. Nothing too earth-shattering, right? That juicy tidbit pales in comparison to the movie’s other poorly-kept secret: Salt is, figuratively and more or less literally, the misbegotten offspring of From Russia With Love. Her father, as seen in flashback, bears a strong resemblance to Robert Shaw’s Red Grant; her boss (Daniel Olbrychski) carries a knife concealed in the sole of his shoe; and, get this, ex-Soviet radicals hoping to instigate a war with the West are masterminding the whole plot! Patched together from vintage materials, the entire movie is an attempt to merge the popular fears of the 20th century with the hyperactive action-flick sensibilities of the 21st. Caught in an uncomfortable wedge between Bourne and Bond, Salt ends up as a slightly higher-octane version of Knight and Day. An awful lot of stuff appears to be happening in the film, what with Salt repeatedly, breathlessly chased through various metropolitan areas by her CIA cronies Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Winter (Liev Schreiber)…but good luck trying to care.

Caddyshack (1980) + Funny Farm (1988)/Spies Like Us (1985) [Comedy Double Feature] – Blu-ray Discs

Caddyshack (1980) + Funny Farm (1988)/Spies Like Us (1985) [Comedy Double Feature] – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in1980s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Espionage, Sports

CADDYSHACK
½*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Bill Murray
screenplay by Brian Doyle-Murray & Harold Ramis & Doug Kenney
directed by Harold Ramis

SPIES LIKE US
*/**** Image D+ Sound C+
starring Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Forrest, Donna Dixon
screenplay by Dan Aykroyd and Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel
directed by John Landis

FUNNY FARM
**½/**** Image C+ Sound C+
starring Chevy Chase, Madolyn Smith, Joseph Maher, Jack Gilpin
screenplay by Jeffrey Boam, based on the book by Jay Cronley
directed by George Roy Hill

by Walter Chaw Mean-spirited and essentially ugly, the inexplicably revered Caddyshack can be handily summarized by two moments with Chevy Chase’s Ty Webb–the first when he waggles his tongue lasciviously at a random woman walking by, the next when he says to town pump Lacey Underall (Cindy Morgan), “I’ve got an idea, let’s pretend we’re real human beings.” One identifies the general tenor of the piece as angry and cynical, the other as comedy dependant almost entirely–when it’s not angry and cynical–on arrogance and smugness. (The epitome of the latter might be Bill Murray’s mush-mouthed Carl the groundskeeper staring right at Harold Ramis’s bland camera in the midst of a torrential rainstorm.) Largely, proudly improvised by a gang of hedonistic assholes at the peak of their insufferability, it’s the fallout of “Saturday Night Live”‘s drug-fuelled, experimental-verging-on-hallucinogenic early years, which had felt like the last bastion of the counterculture.

Predators (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Laurence Fishburne
screenplay by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch
directed by Nimród Antal

by Walter Chaw It opens with a grab-bag of heavily-armed genre clichés–the world-weary man of action (Adrien Brody), the tough-talking Latina (Alice Braga), the mad-dog orange jump-suited killer (Walton Goggins), the Yakuza enforcer (Louis Ozawa Changchien), the Soviet (Oleg Taktarov), the savage (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), the nebbish (Topher Grace), and the wrong Mexican (Danny Trejo)–free-falling through a jungle canopy into bush that doesn’t make Cambodia look like Kansas so much as it makes Predators look like Avatar. They’re the game, see–the most dangerous game! And they’ve been dropped on an alien wildlife preserve for the express purpose of being hunted by a trio of the titular Predators. As if that weren’t enough, the film’s weak-ass script takes pains to establish that our “heroes” are also, vocationally, “predators.” Get it? It’s what passes for clever in a film that takes too long to get where we want it to go, diverting itself with one of those dumb nick-of-time animal-shooting sequences that didn’t thrill in Dances with Wolves and doesn’t thrill here (so they do it twice, why not), as well as an extended monologue delivered by a fish-eyed, paunchy Laurence Fishburne that, for all its kitsch pleasure, grinds the movie to a standstill. If it’s not going to be smart, it could at least have the decency to not also be boring.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 XVII – DVD

Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Television

Image C+ Sound C+ Extras B-
2.1 “The Crawling Eye” (1989), 5.15 “The Beatniks” (1992), 10.10 “The Final Sacrifice” (1998), 11.5 “Blood Waters of Dr. Z” (1999)

by Alex Jackson I know it’s loony, but I watched “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (or “MST3K”) mostly for the movies. Oh, I liked the jokes. There were some episodes I laughed so hard at I had to turn off the television because I couldn’t breathe. But I saw the riffing as a bonus, a way to make a good thing better. I didn’t really watch the show just because it was funny, and its ironic appreciation of “bad movies” didn’t strike me as all that different from the sincere appreciation I had for the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space as a child. In fact, I don’t think it’s all that different from the deeper appreciation I have for those movies today. Mocking them doesn’t necessarily detract from them. Their sensually visceral aspect always shines through. You can easily tell if something is any good, regardless of who is talking over it. Besides, there’s something amiably homey and relaxed about the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” approach. If you like a film, you should be able to enjoy it on your sofa. You should be able to converse about it in the moment. And you should even be able to laugh at it. If you can only love something with reverence, I’m not sure that’s love.

Despicable Me (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Crime, Family, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

*½/****
screenplay by Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul
directed by Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud

by Ian Pugh It only takes a cursory glance at its cast of characters and the people embodying them to see the kind of trendy thinking that sank Despicable Me. The movie presents us with the headmistress of an orphanage clearly modeled after Edie McClurg–but rather than hire McClurg herself to voice the role, they got Kristen Wiig, who hits her one, monotonous note over and over again. The antagonist proper is a bespectacled, bowl-cut pervert in an orange jumpsuit–but rather than have Eddie Deezen play him in full-blown Mandark mode, they got Jason Segel to shout a couple of dick jokes to the rafters. Finally, in the centre ring is Steve Carell, performing with a bizarre accent lodged somewhere between Boris Badenov and Ivan Drago. While Carell does an admirable job for what he’s given, he’s a little too dry to be a successful voice actor–you can’t help but think that someone like Billy West or Tom Kenny would have done something truly great with the role.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) [Special Edition] + Deathdream (1972) + Uncle Sam (1997) – DVDs|Uncle Sam – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Canada, Comedy, Directors: John Frankenheimer, Drama, DVD, Espionage, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Zombie

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon
directed by John Frankenheimer

Dead of Night
***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
starring John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Richard Backus, Henderson Forsythe
screenplay by Alan Ormsby
directed by Bob Clark

UNCLE SAM
**½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
BD – Image B Sound A Extras A-
starring Isaac Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Timothy Bottoms, Robert Forster
screenplay by Larry Cohen
directed by William Lustig

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As the zeitgeist is one of those things we tend to discuss in the past tense, you have to wonder whether it’s a vacuum or a barometer. In other words, the point at which culture-mongers finally lunge at a craze is usually once it’s begun shrieking its death rattle, and yet a post-mortem of said craze invariably divulges a complex tapestry of art and politics, the ascription of happenstance to which seems preposterous. Our own Walter Chaw brilliantly observes in recent omnibus reviews pairing Love Me If You Dare with Valentin and Dodgeball with Napoleon Dynamite that leitmotifs are emerging at the box office free of predetermination, and I myself got a faint chill when I became cognizant of having consecutively watched the upcoming DVDs of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, Bob Clark’s 1972 Dead of Night (a.k.a. Deathdream), and William Lustig’s 1997 Uncle Sam. The Manchurian Candidate is getting reissued because MGM wants to piggyback the P&A for this summer’s star-studded remake, Dead of Night because it’s a perennial cult fave, and Uncle Sam because Lustig owns the company; three separate objectives, then, for putting out three different pictures all concerning shell-shocked war veterans bringing the violence home with them. Considering the length of time it must have taken to prepare these beautifully mastered, supplement-rich discs, that they coincide with not only each other but also the cooling of patriotic fervour (coupled with the spontaneous theatrical release of Michael Moore’s anti-Dubya Fahrenheit 9/11) is like getting the rare privilege to see the forest for the trees.

Predator (1987) [Ultimate Hunter Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Predator (1987) [Ultimate Hunter Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mexico, Schwarzenegger, Sci-Fi

****/**** Image C Sound A Extras B+
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, Bill Duke
screenplay by Jim Thomas & John Thomas
directed by John McTiernan

by Walter Chaw Appearing the same year as Stanley Kubrick’s great, enigmatic, dangerous Full Metal Jacket, the brilliant neo-noir of Alan Parker’s Angel Heart, John Hughes’s devastating Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and what many feel is the quintessential film of the 1980s, Wall Street, John McTiernan’s Predator is, in plain truth, one of the two real quintessential films of the decade, a distinction it shares with Back to the Future–pictures, both, that initially appear to toe the Reagan era’s line of worship at the altar of Eisenhower’s mythological Americana only to reveal that lost wars cannot, in fact, be re-fought and that the Good Old Days were always a little violent and randy. It’s a film, this Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle all of oiled musculature and technological fetishism, of unusual kinetic power and intelligence, one that sets out to sate the popular audience’s hunger for such entertainments in the age of the modern blockbuster before leaving its hero battered, broken, frightened, alone. Its kinship is to movies from the period like Aliens and, yes, Rambo: First Blood Part II–films that understand that when Shane rode away at the end, he was probably just looking for a place to die.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Romance, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller, Vampire

**/****
starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Dakota Fanning
screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer
directed by David Slade

by Walter Chaw The first and greatest surprise of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (hereafter Eclipse) is that it’s not awful; it’s actually almost good for its first forty-five minutes or so, until the burden of Stephenie Meyer’s genuinely, legendarily poor source material catches up to it. Until such time, there’s some interest blossoming despite itself in the love triangle between mopey Bella (Kristen Stewart), fruity Edward (Robert Pattinson), and swarthy Jacob (Taylor Lautner): a hint of racial discomfort, a soupçon of class struggle, a glimmer of insight given over to the difficulties of teen relationships at a moment in life when Nancy Drew plays like Richard Wagner. Never mind that of the three leads, only Pattinson delivers a (surprisingly, too) good performance–and then only fitfully; never mind that Meyer has taken a giant, steaming dump on centuries of folklore and tradition to construct thin cardboard monsters that serve as bad metaphors for Mormon libido (as told by Judy Blume’s less talented soul sister); never mind that the picture’s entire last two-thirds devolves into constant repetition of the will she/won’t she theme punctuated by its stupid mythology. Really, the way that new director David Slade’s flat-to-the-point-of-garish camera brings out the faintest suggestion of corruption beneath the pancake makeup and baggy eyes of the film’s immortal underwear models–who are, literally, ancient beasts–lends the series the dread that was buried in the first two films under volumes of camp and dreary incompetence. Not to say that Eclipse doesn’t ultimately end as the same old bullshit, but for the first time, if only briefly, the clouds part for a brief, tantalizing twinkle of what it was that all this could have been.

Golden Age Romance on DVD

Posted in****/****, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 2010, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Billy Wilder, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD, Romance, Teen

ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953)
[CENTENNIAL COLLECTION]
***½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C
starring Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Eddie Albert, Hartley Power
screenplay by Ian McLellan Hunter and John Dighton
directed by William Wyler

SABRINA (1954)
[CENTENNIAL COLLECTION]
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Walter Hampden
screenplay by Billy Wilder, Samuel Taylor and Ernest Lehman, based on Taylor’s play
directed by Billy Wilder

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (1957)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
½*/**** Image C Sound B
starring Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, John McGiver
screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, based on a novel by Claude Anet
directed by Billy Wilder

NOW, VOYAGER (1942)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
**½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras D
starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Gladys Cooper
screenplay by Casey Robinson, based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty
directed by Irving Rapper

MOGAMBO (1953)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
*/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardiner, Grace Kelly, Donald Sinden
screenplay by John Lee Mahin, based on a play by Wilson Collison
directed by John Ford

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961)
[TCM GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION: ROMANCE]
****/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Natalie Wood, Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie, Warren Beatty
screenplay by William Inge
directed by Elia Kazan

Loveintheaftcap2

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. It’s one of those seminal moments that movies provide the culture with now and again, like the swoop up a little rise to an impossibly fresh John Wayne in Stagecoach, or the intervention of a fortuitous steam vent in The Seven Year Itch, this introduction we have to Audrey Hepburn as she’s whirled around in a barber chair in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday to reveal the pixie-cut heard ’round the world. That she’s adorable is a given–the real issue is whether she’s an actress or just a bundle of inexplicable charisma, a ganglion of celluloid starlight that evaporates under the slightest critical scrutiny. I love Roman Holiday, but I vacillate between indifference and actual dislike of the rest of Hepburn’s films. I don’t find her winsome in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, am irritated by her in Charade, think she’s appallingly twee in Love in the Afternoon. She doesn’t hold her own against Sean Connery in Robin and Marian and gets blown off the screen by Albert Finney, Alan Arkin, and Rex Harrison in Two for the Road, Wait Until Dark, and My Fair Lady, respectively. If you ask me, Audrey isn’t an actress so much as someone you would like to have known and maybe had the opportunity to cuddle, which makes her mega-stardom in the Fifties and Sixties all the more testament to her ineffable appeal. Happening right when Method was rendering personalities like Hepburn déclassé, she was making a career of being terminally anachronistic. It’s Ozzie’s Harriet, sashaying while Rome burns. Instant nostalgia; even when she was introduced for the first time, it must have seemed like ages ago.

The White Ribbon (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Germany, Horror, Palme d'Or Winner

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Das weisse Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte
***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch, Ulrich Tukur, Ursina Lardi
written and directed by Michael Haneke

by Bryant Frazer The origins of evil–an alluring subject for writers and filmmakers, perhaps even more so than for psychologists and historians, who are limited by the facts of any given case. They become psychological archeologists, looking for the broken artifacts of a damaged mind that indicate why this person or that chose to inflict great pain and suffering by picking up a knife, a gun, or the blunt force of an entire nation’s army. Artists who imagine or investigate evil deeds, on the other hand, have the refuge of the poet. They may root in the filth of amorality and sociopathy, seeking dark messages there, but what they eventually create is the product of humanism–an effort to understand and shed light on tragedies in motion, on the present-day injustices that can lead to future wickedness and despair.

Knight and Day (2010) + Grown Ups (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Theatrical, Tom Cruise

KNIGHT AND DAY
**/****
starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard
screenplay by Patrick O’Neill
directed by James Mangold

GROWN UPS
½*/****
starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider
screenplay by Adam Sandler & Fred Wolf
directed by Dennis Dugan

by Ian Pugh Knight and Day isn’t really a movie so much as an amateur screenwriting exercise: the cardinal rule is maintaining momentum, and if that momentum should come at the ironic price of interest or excitement then so be it. It’s true that lots of things happen in this movie–lots of car chases and stunts and rapid-fire dialogue and whiplash changes in scenery–and director James Mangold even has the decency to sometimes hold a shot for more than five seconds. But despite this flurry of activity, you never actually watch or experience the picture–you observe it, like an ant farm or a goldfish bowl, looking for some magical insight that simply isn’t there. Knight and Day is cute, fluffy, feather-light, and utterly, instantly forgettable. Let’s just cut to the chase and say that, should Tom Cruise ever propel himself back into the public consciousness, this ain’t gonna be the way he does it.