FILM FREAK CENTRAL

The Prisoner: The Complete Series (1967-1968) – Blu-ray Disc

November 17, 20091960s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Esoterica, Mystery, Prison, Sci-Fi, Television, UK

Image A Sound A- Extras B
“Arrival,” “The Chimes of Big Ben,” “A, B, and C,” “Free for All,” “The Schizoid Man,” “The General,” “Many Happy Returns,” “Dance of the Dead,” “Checkmate,” “Hammer into Anvil,” “It’s Your Funeral,” “A Change of Mind,” “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,” “Living in Harmony,” “The Girl Who Was Death,” “Once Upon a Time,” “Fall Out”

by Walter Chaw The closest television came to true surrealism until the inception of “Twin Peaks”, Patrick McGoohan’s remarkable, landmark brainchild “The Prisoner” is the headwaters for a dizzying array of modern genre confections. It’s audacious in its ironclad refusal to provide the happy ending; in its determination to bugger expectation with every complex set-up and sadistic resolution, the show effectively honours the surrealist manifesto of defeating classification. The fact of it is the function of it–the delight of it being that the series functions as a tonal sequel to Antonioni’s Blowup, using the disappearance of that film’s photog protag as the launching point for its hero’s imprisonment in his Welsh oubliette. Colourfully, quintessentially mod, it even looks the part, after all, acting in 1967 as prescient post-modern (po-Mod?) commentary on the elasticity of this genre model (Bond films in particular, the lead in said franchise McGoohan was offered, er, once upon a time) as allegory for the plastic-fantastic of a progressively absurd world. In its setting of a small town, isolated and beset by what seems a common psychosis, find a connection to Robin Hardy and Anthony Schaffer’s claustrophobic The Wicker Man (1973), John Frankenheimer’s similar-feeling Seconds (1966), and, yes, Godard’s structuralist textbook Alphaville. Of all the ways to approach “The Prisoner”, in fact, the most fulsome–if also potentially the most obscure–is that, like Alphaville, it establishes itself as a structuralist (as in Claude Levi-Strauss) exercise while predicting through its execution the post-structuralism/deconstructionism (and eventually surrealism) of, say, a Jacques Derrida.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) + The Road (2009)

November 13, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Wes Anderson, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

FANTASTIC MR. FOX
**/****
animated; screenplay by Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach, based on the book by Roald Dahl
directed by Wes Anderson

THE ROAD
*½/****
starring Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron
screenplay by Joe Penhall, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
directed by John Hillcoat

by Walter Chaw There’s nothing much going on in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox–which is a terrible shock, because there’s generally so much going on in Anderson’s and Dahl’s respective canons. With Anderson’s every attempt to infuse this piffle with his brand of Salinger-esque autumnal, familial melancholy registering as ever-so-slightly desperate, it strikes particularly pale in such close proximity to Spike Jonze’s magnificent Where the Wild Things Are. Missing is the vein of emotionality that runs rich in Anderson’s best films, the idiosyncrasies of his misfit family groups somehow rendered ordinary transplanted into foxes and opossums. I wonder if it isn’t something to do with the idea that “cute” animation as a genre and not a medium has “quirk” as its bread and butter. More to the point, it probably has something to do with the fact that for all those charges of “pretentious” Anderson has collected over the course of a career, when you pile all of his pathos into a film that seems mainly interested in being adorable, they’re actually deserved.

North by Northwest (1959) – DVD|North by Northwest (1959) [50th Anniversary Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

November 11, 2009****/****, 1950s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Espionage, FFC Must-Own, Mystery

****/****
DVD – Image A Sound B Extras A
BD – Image A+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis
screenplay by Ernest Lehman
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is Alfred Hitchcock’s most mercurial anti-hero, the soup bone reduction of the Master’s wrong-man theme. An advertising executive so at ease with changing his identity at the fall of a hammer, he has, by film’s end, become/done all of the things he’s wrongfully accused of being/doing at the beginning of the film. Indeed, Hitchcock would never again mine the idea of the wrong man with this kind of heat–veering off as he did into a more metaphysical kind of guilt transference à la Vertigo with The Birds, Psycho, and Marnie. As North by Northwest opens, Thornhill gives his regards to a night porter’s wife (“We’re not talkin’!”), steals a cab from a Good Samaritan, and instructs his secretary to send a neglected lover a box of gold-wrapped candy because “she’ll think she’s eating money.” He’s a charmer–and he’s as oily, despicable, and fast-talking as almost every one of Grant’s romantic comedy heroes. Hitch undermines and exploits Grant for the fourth and final time here as a guy we love until we stop for a second to catch our breath and take stock of the myriad ways in which we’ve been bribed, glad-handed, misled, and led-on.

I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009) – DVD

November 10, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Canada, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Romance, Teen

*½/**** Image N/A Sound N/A Extras C
starring Hayden Panettiere, Paul Rust, Jack T. Carpenter, Lauren London
screenplay by Larry Doyle, based on his novel
directed by Chris Columbus

by Jefferson Robbins I believe this is what it looks like when a veteran director throws in the towel. Morosely paced, edited with no ear for slapstick, perfectly mediocre in its staging, timing, scripting, and performances, I Love You, Beth Cooper (hereafter Beth Cooper) betrays benign neglect on the part of producer-director Chris Columbus. It’s as if he tossed together all the ingredients for a thoughtful but teen-friendly confection–a recipe inherited from his late mentor John Hughes–and took it on faith that the cake would bake itself. There’s even a weird invocation of the dead god of teen comedies: Columbus casts Alan Ruck, a.k.a. Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, as the hero’s dad and supplies the sidekick with Cameron’s absent, oppressive shadow of a father. That’s not homage–that’s the desperate rubbing of a talisman, a prayer to recapture lightning that leaked out of the bottle long ago.

H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond (1986) [Unrated Director’s Cut] + Blood and Black Lace (1964) [Unslashed Collectors’ Edition] – DVDs

November 6, 2009****/****, 1960s, 1980s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, FFC Must-Own, France, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller, West Germany

From Beyond
**½/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras B
starring Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Ted Sorel
screenplay by Dennis Paoli
directed by Stuart Gordon

Sei donne per l’assassino
****/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A+
starring Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner, Mary Arden
screenplay by Giuseppe Barilla, Marcel Fonda, Marcello Fondato and Mario Bava
directed by Mario Bava

by Walter Chaw Stuart Gordon’s follow-up to his flat-awesome Re-Animator reunites that film’s Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton with source material by H.P. Lovecraft for From Beyond¹, a nominal splatter classic that lacks the energy and cohesiveness of Re-Animator, even as it establishes Gordon as a director with a recognizable, distinctive vision. A picture that arrived concurrently with Clive Barker’s “The Hellbound Heart” (the source material for Hellraiser), it’s useful as a means by which Lovecraft’s and Barker’s fiction can be paired against one another as complementary halves of a symbolist, grue-soaked whole. With the latter’s cenobites, his most enduring contribution to popular culture², consider that Barker’s vision of an alternate, infernal reality shimmering just beneath the surface of the mundane has its roots in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos–a dimension of Elder Gods lurking behind the doors of perception. Lovecraft and Barker give description to the indescribable, name to the nameless. They are in pursuit of the sublime, and their quest underscores the idea that any such chase is, at its heart, inevitably a spiritual one.

The Cell 2 (2009) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

November 3, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Tessie Santiago, Chris Bruno, Frank Whaley
screenplay by Lawrence Silverstein & Alex Barder and Erik Klein and Rob Rinow
directed by Tim Iacofano

by Walter Chaw Blaringly shot on digital video so that the whole of this shitstorm looks like someone’s bat mitzvah, The Cell 2‘s only reason for existing appears to be to clarify just how underestimated is Tarsem’s original The Cell. This dtv trainwreck substitutes Jennifer Lopez with another Latina, Tessie Santiago, seemingly because the producers thought it the best way to soften the blow of the realization that this is an otherwise-unfilmable script retrofitted to launch a franchise. Santiago, a kind of Eva Longoria/Sandra Bullock hybrid, is Maya, the requisite “seer” in another serial-killer intrigue full to bursting with macho exchanges between the men and hysterical exchanges between Maya and anyone else. Tortured by not having thwarted Jigsaw-like murderer The Cusp three years prior, she’s brought back on the case not merely because she’s a psychic or something, but also because she was The Cusp’s only fish that got away, thus giving her unique, erm, insight? Who knows? The Cusp’s MO, see, is to repeatedly kill and revive his victims, which actually explains both Frank Whaley’s appearance in this thing and what happens to his career by being in it. Irony. They should’ve called it “The Cell 2: Poor Frank Whaley.”

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

November 2, 20091970s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, DVD, Horror, Italy, Spain, Zombie

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
***/****
DVD – Image B Sound C+ Extras B
BD – Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Ray Lovelock, Christine Galbo, Arthur Kennedy
screenplay by Sandro Continenza & Marcello Coscia
directed by Jorge Grau

by Walter Chaw Without having to squint much, you could see the hero of Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, art-dealing Easy Rider hippie George (Ray Lovelock), trying to deliver the airplane propeller his spiritual brother, David Hemmings’ mod-photog from Blowup, buys in tribute to form over function midway through Antonioni’s counterculture classic. Instead, George is trying to deliver the sister of the fatal fertility juju from Arthur Penn’s Night Moves through titular Manchester into the green countryside on the back of his too-cool motorcycle. He’s thwarted initially by the bumper of maiden fair Edna (Cristina Galbo), then by the hungry undead stalking the countryside in search of meaty sociological metaphors, then by an ossified Scotland Yard dick (Arthur Kennedy). Luckily, there’s plenty of allegorical beef for everyone, as Grau paints a vivid picture of Mod Madness in steady, deteriorating orbit around the entropy and hedonism of the time–sprinkling it liberally with a disdain for dictatorships Grau no doubt nursed whilst working under the heel of Francisco Franco’s regime.

Night of the Creeps (1986) [Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

October 30, 20091980s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Zombie

*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow, Tom Atkins
written and directed by Fred Dekker

by Walter Chaw A childhood favourite, Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps generally underscores the danger of revisiting childhood favourites with a jaundiced eye; this and his sophomore feature, The Monster Squad, show that Dekker was rejected from the USC and UCLA film schools for a reason. I realize it’s all supposed to be a cozy, funny-scary homage to the terribleness of low-budget B-movies as a genre unto themselves, but the picture is terribly edited and disastrously paced–the very things that effectively kill both comedy and horror. Unconvinced? The first misstep might be its choice to leave a charming, 1950s-set black-and-white prologue in favour of a faux-Hughesian ’80s fandango that, like most of the era’s mainstream teen dramas not made by John Hughes, lacks an ear for how we actually talked, and insight into how we actually felt. In any case, it’s hopelessly incongruous to go from Ozzie & Harriet to leg-warmers and Wall of Voodoo, resulting in something that isn’t a spoof of bad filmmaking so much as an example of it. Night of the Creeps joins The Goonies for me as one of those cult classics I just can’t wrap my head around. I remember sort of loving it when I was twelve, meaning only that twelve-year-olds are idiots.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977) – DVD + Wrong Turn (2003) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

October 29, 20091970s, 2000s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, DVD, Germany, Horror, Thriller

THE HILLS HAVE EYES
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, Martin Speer, Dee Wallace-Stone
written and directed by Wes Craven

by Walter Chaw Released the same year as Star Wars, Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes boasts of its own Luke Skywalker in the character of a blue-eyed towhead named Bobby (Bobby Houston) who, at an unwelcome call to adventure, finds himself embarked against the forces of evil with a patchwork band of heroes out of their depth. Chewbacca subbed by a ridiculously Rin Tin Tin German Shepherd hermaphrodite (sometimes a girl, sometimes a boy, always a hero), The Hills Have Eyes is Craven’s zero-budget follow-up to his astonishingly unpleasant (and influential) exploitation version of The Virgin Spring, The Last House on the Left. A rough, raw, often amateurish take on the Sawney Beane cannibal family legend, the piece derives its power from the canny paralleling of its antagonistic families and its use of archetype and mythology in the telling of what is essentially a caste horror picture.

Trick ‘r Treat (2009) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 28, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Comedy, Horror

*½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B-
starring Dylan Baker, Rochelle Aytes, Anna Paquin, Brian Cox
written and directed by Michael Dougherty

by Walter Chaw Less a portmanteau than a Tarantino time-shift/overlap, Trick ‘r Treat is a handsomely-mounted bit of fluff that dribbles out like the Cat’s Eye redux for which no one was clamouring, with more than a few images borrowed from other Stephen King errata such as Creepshow and Pet Sematary. Michael Dougherty’s hyphenate debut, it, a lot like co-writer-on-X2 Dan Harris’s own first feature, Imaginary Heroes, has a pedigree and the benefit of the doubt in its corner but washes out as something that needed to marinate longer to reach the full flower of any potential. The buzz surrounding Trick ‘r Treat, though, in particular the Internet outrage over the studio’s alleged mishandling of it, is peculiarly deafening and–as with most buzz around most projects falsely promised theatrical distribution–in large part hysterical and unjustified.

The New York Ripper (1982) – Blu-ray Disc

October 27, 20091980s, 2009, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Jack Hedley, Almanta Keller, Howard Ross, Paolo Malco
screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti
directed by Lucio Fulci

by Bryant Frazer The box art for this Lucio Fulci sleazefest describes it as “The Most Controversial Horror Film Ever Made,” which is a stretch. “Notorious” would be a better word. The New York Ripper‘s main claim to fame is its reputation as a sadistic, gory, and generally misogynist giallo–the Italian term referring to a combination of the crime and horror genres (basically a whodunit with slasher elements) that became popular in the 1960s and endured through the 1970s. Released in 1982 and styled after the psychologically ambitious thrillers of Hitchcock, it bears roughly the same relationship to the gialli film cycle that, say, Touch of Evil does to film noir. If the Fulci film isn’t exactly as self-aware as the Welles one, it still functions as a capper, a fitting culmination of a particular form.

Drag Me to Hell (2009) [Unrated Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

October 26, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Sam Raimi, Horror

***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C+
starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao
screenplay by Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi
directed by Sam Raimi

by Ian Pugh The Evil Dead was one of the primary altars at which I prayed as a young student of the cinematic arts–a vital entry in that education for how it left me shocked, nay, stupefied that such a work could actually exist, with its twitching limbs and tree-rapes and fountains of oatmeal ichor. How did they get away with that stuff? So it goes, I think, with Sam Raimi’s best efforts, these four-colour horror comics put on film, blindsiding you with their towering insanity before you can understand just how deeply they’ll worm into your psyche with their sadness and panic. Sounds incredibly petty to say, but I have to admit that when he found mainstream success and acceptance with the Spider-Man franchise, a little piece of that anarchic spirit died for me. Raimi himself was transparently nostalgic for it in Spider-Man 3, a decidedly misguided attempt to hark back to the themes of his original superhero masterpiece, Darkman.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009)

October 23, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Fantasy, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller, Vampire

**/****
starring John C. Reilly, Ken Watanabe, Josh Hutcherson, Salma Hayek
screenplay by Paul Weitz and Brian Helgeland, based on the “Cirque du Freak” series of books by Darren Shan
directed by Paul Weitz

by Ian Pugh Maybe it’s a cop-out to dismiss Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (hereafter The Vampire’s Assistant) with that banal X-meets-Y idiom (“Twilight collides with The Golden Compass!”), but what other choice does one have? Three weeks before little brother Chris continues the Twilight saga, Paul Weitz gets the ball rolling on another vampire property based on another popular series of novels for young adults–and getting the ball rolling is more or less all he does. It’s a handy parallel to Chris’s own The Golden Compass in the sense that you’re expected to immerse yourself in a fantasy world where no one does anything of particular note and nothing is accomplished. People are bitten, people are transformed, and the fulfilment of legends is foretold–but when the credits roll, can you say you’ve actually seen anything? In its own laborious foundation-laying, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone still managed a dreaded brush with Voldemort; what does The Vampire’s Assistant have to offer? Willem Dafoe and Ken Watanabe under pounds of latex–made up to look like Vincent Price and Incredible Hulk nemesis The Leader, respectively–standing around, making bold pronouncements with the implied message that they’ll have more to do if the powers-that-be greenlight the next instalment.

The Val Lewton Horror Collection – DVD

October 22, 2009****/****, 1940s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Zombie

CAT PEOPLE (1943)
****/**** Image B Sound C+
starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph
screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen
directed by Jacques Tourneur

THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944)
****/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Ann Carter
screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen
directed by Gunther V. Fritsch and Robert Wise

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)
****/**** Image C Sound B-
starring James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway
screenplay by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray
directed by Jacques Tourneur

THE LEOPARD MAN (1943)
***½/**** Image C- Sound B-
starring Dennis O’Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell
screenplay by Ardel Wray, based on the novel Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich
directed by Jacques Tourneur

THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943)
****/**** Image C+ Sound C
starring Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Kim Hunter
screenplay by Charles O’Neal and DeWitt Bodeen
directed by Mark Robson

THE GHOST SHIP (1943)
***½/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Richard Dix, Russell Wade, Edith Barrett, Ben Bard
screenplay by Donald Henderson Clarke
directed by Mark Robson

THE BODY SNATCHER (1945)
***½/**** Image C- Sound C+
starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith Atwater
screenplay by Phillip MacDonald and Carlos Keith
directed by Robert Wise

ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945)
*/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer
screenplay by Ardel Wray & Josef Mischel
directed by Mark Robson

BEDLAM (1946)
*½/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, Billy House, Richard Fraser
screenplay by Carlos Keith and Mark Robson
directed by Mark Robson

VAL LEWTON: THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS (2007)
**½/**** Image N/A Sound N/A
directed by Mark Robson

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNINGS IN EFFECT. It’s not too much to speak of Val Lewton as the American Jean Cocteau. An enigmatic figure with his hand, like Cocteau, in more than one media (a novelist, he often did uncredited work on the screenplays for his films), the movies produced under his RKO watch are a repository of dream sleep, enough so that an overview of his key pictures–something made possible by Warner’s rapturous DVD collection of his horror fare–uncovers a treasure trove of indelible nightmare images. Where Cocteau affected a studiedly casual mien and came to film in his sixties, however, Lewton (who died at 47) seems the product of financial expediency and, perhaps more impressively, stamped the products of his hand despite roadblocks placed in his way. Yet the similarities are striking: Above and beyond the dreamscapes affected, there’s a common fascination with masks and false identities; an obsession with budding sexuality turned subtly aberrant; and a cycle of seduction tied to corruption in the move from innocence to experience. I see in these recurrent themes a man fascinated by the blinds that men throw before them to deny the unknowable tides governing their emotions and actions. It’s that illusion of civilization that informs Lewton’s pictures; the horror of them is in the ripping away to expose the insect underneath.

Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

October 21, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, Drama, Prison, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Bruce McGill, Colm Meaney
screenplay by Kurt Wimmer
directed by F. Gary Gray

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The most that can be said for Law Abiding Citizen is that it understands the dichotomy of Gerard Butler, the Scottish beefcake whose schizoid career has him playing a screaming grunt one month and a kindly, rough-around-the-edges dad/love interest the next. After murdering a notable percentage of Philadelphia’s legal system, Butler’s black-ops such-and-such Clyde Shelton warns that, if he is not immediately released with all charges against him dropped, he will “KILL. EVERYONE.” Coming from a character who is initially introduced to us as Joe Average, that priceless bit of leaden melodrama almost single-handedly consigns Law Abiding Citizen to the “camp” drawer–but, improbably, it’s also an uncomfortable moment that perfectly captures Butler’s nebulous, malleable status as a movie star. The dumb joke/terrifying conjecture being that, with 300 still lingering in the air, you have no idea how far he’ll go in “killing everyone.” Is it a coincidence that the film should give Clyde comic-book disguises with which to evade capture and lure his prey? Of course not, because Butler belongs in a comic book. It’s not just his cold stare or his steel jaw, it’s the fact that, at the mercy of practically any working writer, he can represent anything or anyone, villain or hero, with preposterous ease. This time, he’s concocting bloody, convoluted vengeance against the men who destroyed his family and the system that doled out questionable justice–and in so doing, he becomes an amalgam of the Joker, the Riddler, and the Abominable Dr. Phibes.

The Proposal (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

October 20, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Malin Akerman, Betty White
screenplay by Peter Chiarelli
directed by Anne Fletcher

by Bryant Frazer Reviewing a romantic comedy can feel a bit like criticizing a kitten. So what if the feline puked in your slippers? What cat lovers generally want is something that will curl up in their lap, purr like nobody’s business, and maybe give off a little heat on a cold winter’s night. Complaining that the hungry little fuzzball won’t fetch your slippers, can’t guard your house, and bears no singular distinguishing marks or characteristics comes across as a tad churlish.

Natural Born Killers (1994) – Blu-ray Disc (Digibook) + Natural Born Killers: The Director’s Cut [Original Uncut Version] – Blu-ray Disc

October 18, 2009****/****, 1990s, 2009, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance

****/****
R-RATED Image B+ Sound A Extras B+
FFC Must-Own NC-17 Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones
screenplay by David Veloz & Richard Rutowski & Oliver Stone
directed by Oliver Stone

by Walter Chaw Lodged in there like the apple in Gregor Samsa’s back next to the spine of the American character is this corrupt speck of frontier spirit, transmogrified in the heat of late-’50s cynicism and irony by heartland bogies Ed Gein and Charles Starkweather–the veneration of them in our collective heart of darkness stoked by a long tradition of outlaw worship from Jesse James to Bonnie and Clyde. The cinematic children of Gein and Starkweather, erupting from the Eisenhower Eden of rocket ships and Cadillacs, range from epoch-shaking pictures like Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to New American Cinema masterpieces like Badlands and Take the Money and Run. The heartbeat of the zeitgeist can be kenned in this finger to this pulse, in the individualism we celebrate and the establishment against which we secretly nurse these little serpentine malignancies. Enter Oliver Stone, not so much the provocateur as a perverse, self-indulgent chronicler of that American disease–and why not Stone, who’s only ever good when he’s talking about the United States and only ever talking about the United States when he’s talking about anything else. He takes the Starkweather case and fashions it, from a story by Quentin Tarantino, into a work of extreme, fanatical patriotism: Natural Born Killers.

Accept with Simplicity: FFC Interviews Michael Stuhlbarg

October 17, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Ian Pugh, Interviews

October 18, 2009|When you’re a stage actor who’s suddenly found himself the lead in the new Coen Brothers picture and playing Arnold Rothstein on “Boardwalk Empire”, Martin Scorsese’s upcoming HBO series, you’re more or less obliged to accept the mantle of Rising Star. There’s no doubting this guy is going places. Yet A Serious Man‘s Michael Stuhlbarg is exceedingly modest in describing his craft, dismissing his own contributions with a day-job casualness that seems to leave the fancy artistic crap for his directors to figure out. All things considered, his superficial distance from in-depth discussion might be a consequence of the endless variations on “What’s it like to work with the Coens?” or “What’s it like working with Scorsese?” he’d undoubtedly been asked dozens of times before we met at Boston’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Either that, or he’s reluctant to put too fine a point on a profession (and a film) noted for its slippery nature.

Stop Making Sense (1984) – Blu-ray Disc

October 13, 2009****/****, 1980s, 2009, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Concert Doc, Directors: Jonathan Demme, FFC Must-Own, Music

****/**** Image B Sound A Extras A-
directed by Jonathan Demme

FFC Must-Own by Bryant Frazer Stop Making Sense opens sparely, with a close-up of a man striding onto an empty stage. By “empty stage,” I don’t mean a bare stage, exactly. I mean a big empty theatre space–it’s basically a rectangular room behind a proscenium, illuminated by bare light bulbs dangling overhead–with furniture, ladders, scaffolding, and the like cluttered near the walls. It feels less like a performance is about to begin than like a rehearsal or, maybe more to the point, an audition. And by “close-up,” I don’t mean a tight shot on the man’s face. Rather, we are looking at his lower extremities–white shoes, white pants–in a Steadicam shot that follows him to a waiting microphone stand. He plops a boombox down beside him and announces, in a faux-naïf voice, “I have a tape I want to play.” If you know the Talking Heads, you’ll recognize this immediately as David Byrne’s shtick. But if this film is your introduction to the band–as it was for teenaged me–there may be something off-putting about the whole precious set-up. “What’s up with this fucking twerp,” I remember thinking, “and his art-damaged affectations?” I quickly learned the joke was on me.

St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) + About Last Night… (1986) – Blu-ray Discs

October 13, 20091980s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Joel Schumacher, Drama, Romance, ZERO STARS

ST. ELMO’S FIRE
ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound C+ Extras C
starring Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore
screenplay by Joel Schumacher & Carl Kurlander
directed by Joel Schumacher

ABOUT LAST NIGHT…
½*/**** Image C- Sound C Extras C
starring Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi, Elizabeth Perkins
screenplay by Tim Kazurinsky & Dennis DeClue, based on the play Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet
directed by Edward Zwick

by Walter Chaw The Brat Pack as a phenomenon is something that largely, blissfully escaped this child of the Eighties–just a touch too young, just a tad too disinterested. When Sixteen Candles came out, I was embarrassed by the Asian caricature enough to avoid talking about it (ditto The Goonies and Temple of Doom–though not, oddly enough, The Karate Kid); when St. Elmo’s Fire came out, I was busy sneaking into consecutive showings of Back to the Future. I remember a party where The Breakfast Club was playing in the background, and a girl I had a crush on exclaiming how much she loved it. Later, they played A Nightmare on Elm Street, and whoever’s mother it was at whoever’s house it was broke up the festivities not long after the bodybag in the hall. (I don’t know that I ever saw either movie in its entirety until I was well into my twenties.) Ferris Bueller was my connection to John Hughes, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Marty McFly were my thing–not a Molly Ringwald in sight. The closest I came to assimilation was Red Dawn, which, while awful, is also awesome in a deadening, testosterone-sick way. Looking back, the moment the ’80s matured for me was Near Dark, The Evil Dead, Predator, and David Cronenberg’s The Fly and not, as it was for many people in my peer group, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful. I remember hosting a sweltering screening of Broadcast News in my bedroom with a couple of dozen pals, a considerably less well-attended showing of Angel Heart a few weeks later, and a private viewing of Pump Up the Volume with a girl I really liked and to whom I crystallized my theory of how it was always better to watch a movie in the theatre…but not tonight. It was a hot evening. All my memories of movies in the ’80s are accompanied by suffocating heat. The decade in my memory is one long summer.

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