Land of the Lost (2009) + The Hangover (2009)

June 5, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

LAND OF THE LOST
½*/****
starring Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, Jorma Taccone
screenplay by Chris Henchy & Dennis McNicholas, based on the television series by Sid & Marty Krofft
directed by Brad Silberling

THE HANGOVER
**/****
starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Jeffrey Tambor
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by Todd Phillips

by Ian Pugh I'd estimate there are around a hundred reasons why Brad Silberling's big-screen adaptation of Sid & Marty Krofft's "Land of the Lost" is awful, but none of them are more infuriating than the fact that it panders to its core hipster audience by being a great big nostalgic turd with an ironic bow on top. Have you watched the series recently and cracked self-satisfied jokes about how drugs were its primary influence? If so, then this film is for you. Do you like movies that try as hard as possible to resemble shitty episodic television from yesteryear? Then you've probably seen Land of the Lost twice already and rationalized it as something that won't win awards but at least manages to pass the time. That's certainly the mentality driving this unfortunate theme-park ride: the film would prefer that you look to the old series' theme song to fill in the necessary plot details, jamming the lyrics of same into its dialogue with a heavy-handed wink. Rick (Will Ferrell), Will (Danny McBride), and Holly (Anna Friel) are on "a routine expedition," and despite much ensuing sound and fury, that's all you need to know. But hey, dude, do you remember the Sleestaks? 'Cause this film totally remembers them, too–and while they've been injected with some CGI gloss, the costumes are just crappy enough to keep your childhood memories intact! It's worth noting that this is the second film in as many weeks to use an old-school Universal logo in its opening credits–but unlike Drag Me to Hell, Land of the Lost has nothing to distinguish it from what came before, no special insight into why the TV show that inspired it is a cultural touchstone. Frankly, it's impossible to see how any of it could be considered an improvement on renting the original series and jerking off.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Art & Copy

June 4, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Documentary, Film Festivals
**½/****directed by Doug Pray by Jefferson Robbins The metaphors that Doug Pray's subjects arrive at to describe their chosen medium--advertising, in all its forms--are atmospheric. "It's like air and water," says Jeff Goodby, creator of the "Got milk?" campaign. "It's around you. It's gonna happen to you." Art director and ad legend George Lois ("I want my MTV") is perhaps more honest: "I think advertising's a poison gas." Pray's documentary does a great job of illustrating where we are now in our relationship with our ads. Where it doesn't succeed is as a history lesson, save for opening nods to…

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Black Dynamite

June 3, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Film Festivals
***/****starring Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, Salli Richardson-Whitfieldscreenplay by Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, Scott Sandersdirected by Scott Sanders by Jefferson Robbins When last we saw Michael Jai White, it was in the biggest movie of 2008, getting a shiv in the uvula from Heath Ledger. The veteran action performer (Spawn, Universal Soldier) wants to shrug that one off with a joke of his own. The pre-credits scenes in Scott Sanders's Black Dynamite, a vehicle created specifically for White, make you fear another I'm Gonna Git You Sucka or Undercover Brother--a satire on '70s blaxploitation tropes that uses actual, professional camera setups, editing,…

Fargo (1996) – DVD|[Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 3, 2009Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Blu-ray Disc, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

***½/****
DVD – Image B Sound A-
SE DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell
screenplay by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Vincent Suarez The critics' knock against the Coen brothers has always admonished the filmmakers for seemingly valuing style over substance–their flamboyant camerawork frequently seemed the raison d'être for rather loosely-plotted films like Raising Arizona. It's fitting, then, that Fargo, their most celebrated work (but not their best–that distinction belongs to the severely underrated Miller's Crossing), champions the virtues of simplicity at nearly every level. Not only is Fargo the Coens' most straightforwardly-told film, lacking their typical stylistic flourishes, but its cautionary tale highlights the dangers of permitting life to become more complicated than necessary. Indeed, had the title not already been assigned to their debut film, Fargo would have been more aptly christened Blood Simple.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) – Blu-ray Disc

June 2, 2009Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

2010
*/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras F
starring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban
screenplay by Peter Hyams, based on the novel 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke
directed by Peter Hyams

by Walter Chaw As we slide ever closer to the reality of artificial intelligence, the question of functional equivalence becomes ever more pressing to our sense of ourselves. It's because of this, I think, that Peter Hyams's 2010 seems more pertinent now than it necessarily did in 1984. I watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time just a few months before I saw 2010 (this would be the summer of '84; I was twelve years old), and to that pre-teen me, 2010 gave the impression in most ways of being the better film. It appeals to the pragmatist instead of the philosopher, to the childish belief that there is nothing without an explanation under the sun and that should we encounter an alien intelligence, it will inevitably have the same desires and motivations we do. My first viewing of 2001 left me feeling angry and bored–the moments that tickled at something greater weren't moments I was able to isolate and examine (I wouldn't learn the term mysterium tremens until at least a decade later)–and in a sense 2010 allowed me to appreciate the Kubrick picture as a linear narrative. Which is, after all, not the point, and perhaps even ultimately destructive of 2001. It's easy to understand benevolence (whether it's from an alien "creator" to us, its possible creations, or from us to our machine creations), because benevolence is within the human capacity to comprehend. It's much harder to understand an astronaut waking up in a hotel room after a trip down the rabbit hole and then coming back to Earth as a glowing fetus.

Revolutionary Road (2008) + Doubt (2008) – Blu-ray Discs

June 1, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Romance, UK

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates
screenplay by Justin Haythe, based on the novel by Richard Yates
directed by Sam Mendes

DOUBT
**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis
written and directed by John Patrick Shanley

by Walter Chaw Impeccably acted and playing out what seems to be a collective cultural fascination with the pre-Flower Power '60s (not quite Ward and June, not quite Jimi and Janis), Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road and John Patrick Shanley's Doubt help 2008 meet its quota of prestige-y actor's studio pieces. Both are based on well-regarded (renowned, in the case of the first) literary sources, both sport high-octane casts in the pursuit of that delicate balance in adaptations between literal and spiritual faithfulness, and both, ultimately, have considerably less to say than the surrounding hullabaloo would suggest. Revolutionary Road plots another point on the graph of Mendes's steeply-declining returns–he's a stage director whose greatest weakness is his desire for little epiphanies that play like Everest off the boards, and he's guilty of too much intoxication with the medium besides. Mendes spends so much time fiddling around with his camera to a noodling Thomas Newman score that you feel like giving him some privacy.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: I Sell the Dead

June 1, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Film Festivals, Horror
**/****starring Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden, Angus Scrimm, Ron Perlmanwritten and directed by Glenn McQuaid by Jefferson Robbins I was genetically engineered to like this movie, a Hammer Films riff with dollops of Evil Dead slapstick and EC Comics creep-out--so I guess I have to blame the filmmakers for fumbling the experiment. It's rare that a gothic-Guignol seems to drag, but at 84 minutes Glenn McQuaid's graverobbing comedy I Sell the Dead could still be shorter, some bits of business dropped without harm. Then you've got a great hour of television with a fuckton of feature-film pedigree. Producer Larry Fessenden roleplays…

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Cold Souls

May 31, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Sci-Fi
**½/****starring Paul Giamatti, Dina Korzun, David Strathairn, Emily Watsonwritten and directed by Sophie Barthes by Jefferson Robbins We have much to praise and condemn Charlie Kaufman for, and popularizing science-fiction and meta-fictional elements to eyeball modern emotional displacement could count in both columns. In her first feature, writer-director Sophie Barthes deploys an amazing cast in an effort that will, for better or worse, be invariably compared to Kaufman's Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Paul Giamatti (Paul Giamatti) is in theatrical rehearsals for "Uncle Vanya", and all that Russian ennui is weighing on his soul. So…

Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

May 28, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Japan, Sci-Fi, Zombie

*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
animated; screenplay by Shotaro Suga
directed by Makoto Kamiya

by Bryant Frazer One of the more obnoxious trends in current filmmaking and distribution is the move towards cheapjack fansploitation movies. Masquerading as original, feature-film content, these low-budget theatrical and home-video releases are little more than expansive knock-offs of an existing, lucrative property that function as extended promos for yet another upcoming instalment of said franchise. In other words, they're commercials, bought and paid for by the very fanbase to which they're marketed. Not so long ago, we saw the theatrical bow of a decidedly sub-par feature animation, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, whose only reason for existence was its function as a come-on for the already-in-production Cartoon Network series. Then there's Resident Evil: Degeneration (henceforth Degeneration), an extended videogame cut-scene created to flog the upcoming release of AAA console title "Resident Evil 5". Taking place in the Capcom videogame's universe and filling in the narrative gap between "Resident Evil"s 4 and 5, it has nothing to do with the popular live-action film series starring Milla Jovovich.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) – Blu-ray Disc + Bedtime Stories (2008) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

May 26, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi, ZERO STARS

PAUL BLART: MALL COP
*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
starring Kevin James, Jayma Mays, Keir O'Donnell, Shirley Knight
screenplay by Kevin James & Nick Bakay
directed by Steve Carr

BEDTIME STORIES
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Guy Pearce, Russell Brand
screenplay by Matt Lopez and Tim Herlihy
directed by Adam Shankman

by Ian Pugh For Kevin James and his co-writer, the talking cat from "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", it's not enough that Paul Blart (James) is a fat moron prone to knocking things over with the sheer force of his girth–he must also be completely oblivious, fully convinced that he possesses more power and responsibilities as a mall cop than any reasonable person would believe. So what to do when Paul's newest trainee (Keir O'Donnell) turns out to be a Hans Gruber wannabe who takes over the mall with his hip young gang in a bid to clean it out? A feature-length parody of Die Hard has long stopped being an enticing prospect, given that Die Hard itself has been deconstructed to death by the fact of its enormous influence on the action genre (to the degree that the "Die Hard in an X" template actually became the dominant model for action movies in the 1990s), with the proverbial final nail driven in by a third sequel, Live Free or Die Hard, that concluded there was no point in still pretending our everyman hero was anything but invincible. As Paul Blart: Mall Cop sees it, the only way to endue the John McClane archetype with any tension is to make him fat and stupid. The first time we see Paul, he's shovelling food into his mouth, his sweater stained with perspiration from beneath his man-boobs, shortly before his hypoglycaemia kicks in and sidelines him from joining the police academy. But he's got a big heart or something, and that's what counts, right?

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Nurse.Fighter.Boy

May 25, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals
***/****starring Clark Johnson, Karen LeBlanc, Daniel J. Gordonscreenplay by Charles Officer and Ingrid Veningerdirected by Charles Officer by Jefferson Robbins It's broad-strokes storytelling set in Toronto's Jamaican expatriate community, in which each character and situation is understood immediately, almost subconsciously. Night-shift nurse Jude (Karen LeBlanc) is herself a patient, suffering from a potentially fatal sickle-cell disorder. It's her son Ciel (Daniel J. Gordon) who keeps her going, both figuratively and metaphysically--he's a magical thinker, reaching back to Caribbean incantation and rootwork, crafting charms to preserve his mother's life. Then washed-up boxer Silence (Clark Johnson), a closed book, drifts into their…

Anaconda (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

May 25, 2009Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Brazil, Horror, Peru, Thriller

**½/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz
screenplay by Hans Bauer and Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr.
directed by Luis Llosa

by Walter Chaw Almost worth it just for Jon Voight's post-regurgitation wink, Luis Llosa's B-movie creature-feature Anaconda is a deadpan riff on the nature-amuck flicks of the mid-Seventies in general and Steven Spielberg's Jaws in particular. (Cinematographer Bill Butler shot both films.) It borrows the Moby Dick conceit of a mad hunter forcing a hapless crew to take a personal vision quest against an aquatic foe and post-modernizes it with a passel of genre in-references, an unusually dry script, and a supporting cast of accomplished character actors. The only real failure of the film in respect to its modest aspirations, in fact, is the snake itself, a frankly awful CGI phantom that destroys the tension with its every appearance. It's hard to be afraid of a glorified screen-saver.

Yes Man (2008) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

May 21, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Romance, UK

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras D
starring Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, Terence Stamp
screenplay by Nicholas Stoller and Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel, based on the novel by Danny Wallace
directed by Peyton Reed

by Walter Chaw I look at Jim Carrey nowadays with a little bit of bittersweetness, in that his attempts to go "legit" in movies like Man on the Moon and especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were essentially swatted aside, dismissed as brief indulgences between talking-asshole gigs. I believe that Carrey is a serious guy, possibly a melancholy guy, certainly a smart guy–and I believe the closest anyone's come to finding the right vehicle for his elasticity is Charlie Kaufman. Maybe they'll work together again. Until then, Carrey's fate is to shoehorn into endlessly reducible slapstick romcoms like Peyton Reed's Yes Man–easy cash-grabs with an ephemeral shelf-life doomed to be referenced for its one or two scenes that make any impact before becoming ancient history. The formula for this shit is etched in tintype by now: the Lovesick Dork Protag is Carl (Carrey), the High Concept is that he pathologically rejects everything, and the object of his l'amour fou is avant-garde punk band frontwoman Allison (Zooey Deschanel™). Can this button-up, white-collar stiff (Carl's a loan officer) learn to embrace spontaneity and break free of the workaday while setting up his own quirky business and saving the world in the process? Yes, man.

Being There (1979) – Blu-ray Disc

May 18, 2009Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, West Germany

*/**** Image C+ Sound C+ Extras D
starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas
screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski, based on his novel
directed by Hal Ashby

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Arguably the last film of note for New American Cinema director Hal Ashby, Being There (adapted from the Jerzy Kosinski novel by Kosinski himself) is oft-cited as a withering satire of punditry when to me it appears to be more a rather winsome look at the relationship between the artist and the audience. It suggests, after all, that it's not the messenger but the message–that a piece of art is only as important as the degree to which it's raked over by historians and critics, and that if there's a fundamental emptiness, a senselessness, in the creation of that art, then so be it. So long as the conduit is a true vessel for a larger cultural movement (like that reflected by television, for instance), 'gives a shit about the vessel anyway? More, Being There implies that the only true vessels might be empty ones.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: The Hurt Locker

May 18, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, Film Festivals, Thriller, War
***½/****starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearcescreenplay by Mark Boaldirected by Kathryn Bigelow by Jefferson Robbins It's either a shame or a blessing for Kathryn Bigelow's tense Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker to emerge now rather than in 2004, the year of its setting. Back then, war fury was all the rage and might have doomed the movie--we had to believe that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, or why else had we buried 1,100 soldiers by the time George W. Bush won reelection? But just the same, we could have used this reminder of…

Changing Lanes (2002) [Widescreen] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

May 17, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B-
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Toni Collette, Amanda Peet
screenplay by Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin
directed by Roger Michell

by Walter Chaw If not for its target-audience ending, Changing Lanes is, in nearly every measure of quality, a Seventies movie about helpless protagonists adrift in the midst of an insurmountable system with which they are eternally at odds. It deals with consequences in a way that films just do not anymore and presents two actors who have perhaps never been better in roles indicated by nuance, ambiguity, and intelligence. The screenplay, by newcomer Chap Taylor and (brilliant) veteran Michael Tolkin, is wonderfully balanced and observant and matched step for step in tone and pace by Christopher Tellefson's superior editing and Roger Michell's surprisingly chill directorial eye.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Humpday

May 15, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance
***/****starring Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmorewritten and directed by Lynn Shelton by Jefferson Robbins SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The difference in intimacy between male friendship and married companionship gets laid bare in the opening minutes of Humpday. There's the comfortable, cuddled body contact shared by young Seattle office drone Ben (Mark Duplass) and his wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore). And then there's the bellowing, clenching reunion of Ben and free-spirited old buddy Andrew (Joshua Leonard), who, not seen in a decade, arrives unannounced on the redeye from Mexico. "I respect the FUCK outta you, man!" Andrew declares, and it's both…

Angels & Demons (2009)

May 14, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Italy, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Armin Mueller-Stahl
screenplay by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Dan Brown
directed by Ron Howard

Angelsdemonsby Ian Pugh The preferiti are the cardinals most likely to be elected Pope following the death of the previous one. So I learned from Ron Howard's Angels & Demons–twice. It's a point that is adequately explained in a news report serving as the film's prologue, then superfluously explained in one of hero-cum-tour guide Robert Langdon's information-dense lines of dialogue. From there, it appears as if Angels & Demons will take a willing leap off the same cliff The Da Vinci Code did, annotating each excruciating historical detail for no other reason than to play WIKIPEDIA while spelling everything out in the most condescending way possible. Yet a strange thing happens around the movie's halfway mark: everyone stops defining and redefining the arcana–indeed, exposition practically ceases altogether as the characters are dragged between libraries and churches, spirited from one set-piece to the next, arriving just in the nick of time to face off against the killers or help save some poor bastard from getting burned alive. The shift in tone is sudden and dramatic–you could probably draw a fat line through the middle of Angels & Demons to delineate where the hand-holding lectures end and the linear procession of action sequences begins. How did that happen? As Opie will always be his unsubtle middlebrow self and co-screenwriter Akiva Goldsman will always be the guy who wrote Batman & Robin, I have no choice but to assume that the responsibility for this schism lies with the man whose name appears for the first time on this franchise: David Koepp.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: In the Loop

May 13, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Film Festivals, Satire, UK
***/****starring Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfiniscreenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Rochedirected by Armando Iannucci by Jefferson Robbins It's the Downing Street Memo actualized as comedy. Spun off from director Armando Iannucci's own 2005 BBC series "The Thick Of It", In the Loop broadens its scope from the backroom foibles of clueless, self-interested British MPs to encompass the American policy vultures, partisan hacks, and PTSD generals who devise, or are victimized by, war policy. Ported over wholesale from "The Thick Of It" is Peter Capaldi's bloodthirsty Malcolm Tucker, chief enforcer for the Prime Minister and…

Never Say Never Again (1983) – Blu-ray Disc

May 12, 2009Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Espionage, James Bond, Thriller, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max Von Sydow, Edward Fox
screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr.
directed by Irvin Kershner

by Ian Pugh After decades of legal wrangling, producer Kevin McClory had finally won the right to make an autonomous James Bond flick out of Ian Fleming's Thunderball, and 1983 seemed like the perfect time to capitalize on it, what with resident Bond Roger Moore's age catching up with him and the original series running out of steam as a consequence. A household name, the character of Bond has enough cultural heft and influence that he warrants interpretations from independent sources besides, and given that Sean Connery was lured out of a twelve-year retirement from the character–hence the title, Never Say Never Again–as well as the room for improvement left by the original Thunderball, the film had the potential to be more than just a cynical cash-in.