The French Connection (1971) [Five Star Collection] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

March 10, 2009Posted in1970s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: William Friedkin, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras A+
BD – Image D+ Sound B- Extras A+
starring Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco
screenplay by Ernest Tidyman
directed by William Friedkin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no denying the skill that went into The French Connection. It's the runner-up exciting film about people doing almost nothing, second only to All the President's Men–and I'm only half-joking when I say that. It takes a director with vision to make a couple of guys tailing a couple of other guys interesting, and William Friedkin definitely has the vision: he single-handedly creates the meaning that holds the sketchy script together and keeps us caring about whether our heroic flatfoots get their dubious man. That meaning, however, ought to give us pause, as it makes that same year's hit Dirty Harry look like Easy Rider by comparison.

Batbabe: The Dark Nightie (2009) + The Stewardesses (1971) [2-DVD Set] – DVDs

March 9, 2009Posted in1970s, 2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Satire, Scream/Shout! Factory, Superhero

BATBABE: THE DARK NIGHTIE
*½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C
starring Darian Caine, Molly Heartbreaker, Jackie Stevens, Smoke Williams
written and directed by John Bacchus

THE STEWARDESSES
*/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras A
starring Michael Garrett, Christina Hart, William Basil
written and directed by Al Silliman Jr.

by Ian Pugh It may seem ridiculous to call a softcore porno spoof of The Dark Knight a disappointment, but I've been aching to see any sort of comedic critical response to Christopher Nolan's masterpiece since it stole my heart last summer. We should always be willing to throw our sacred cows onto the fire to test their mettle, and we're woefully lacking in the right forums to do so: MAD MAGAZINE lost its currency a while back (or maybe I just turned 16) and Internet satire is too scattershot. Where else are we to turn for our defiant, independent parodies of the instant classics of modern culture? Porn, of course. Leave it to some clever guy in the adult industry to come up with the Jerker (Rob Mendara), a devious clown/agent of chaos/chronic masturbator out to prove that everyone is capable of descending to his level of depravity–by stealing all the precious pornography in Bacchum City! Meanwhile, strip-club owner/dancer Wendy Wane (Darian Caine) believes that Bacchum's new D.A. Henrietta Bent (Molly Heartbreaker) will afford her the opportunity to retire her Batbabe persona and settle down with old flame Rachel Balls (Jackie Stevens).

Pretty Woman (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

March 2, 2009Posted in1990s, 2016, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Prettywoman3

***½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Ralph Bellamy, Hector Elizondo
screenplay by J.F. Lawton
directed by Garry Marshall

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Well, I'm willing to admit this much: Pretty Woman has a ridiculous premise. Corporate raider Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) buys up struggling companies and liquidates their assets. While in Los Angeles planning the purchase of ship manufacturer Morse Industries, he gets lost on the way back to his Beverly Hills hotel and stops on Hollywood Blvd. to ask for directions. This is where he meets Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), a hooker desperate to pay off a few debts. She subsequently drives him to his hotel; as Edward recently broke up with his girlfriend in New York and feels bad about making Vivian take the bus home, he invites her to spend the night. They bargain over her price, arrive at the figure of three-hundred dollars, and sleep together. In the morning, Edward has a phone conversation with his lawyer, Philip Stuckey (Jason Alexander), who suggests he have dinner with James Morse, the owner and founder of Morse Industries, and that he bring a date to keep things social. Still on the phone, Edward walks in on Vivian singing along to Prince in the bathtub and offers to pay her for the entire week to be at his "beck-and-call."

Meet Dave (2008) – DVD

March 2, 2009Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Eddie Murphy, Family, Romance, Sci-Fi

*½/**** Image N/A Sound B- Extras F
starring Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Scott Caan
screenplay by Rob Greenberg & Bill Corbett
directed by Brian Robbins

by Walter Chaw I’m eternally grateful to the infernal chemistry alchemized betwixt Mephistophlean Eddie Murphy and chowderhead Faust Brian Robbins for sparking the second-funniest headline in THE ONION’s gallery of classic one-liners: “Eddie Murphy fucks self for $20M.” (The funniest, for the record, is Gene Siskel’s obit headline: “Ebert Victorious.”) Who knew that Robbins’ extraordinary inability to contribute anything of value to anything he’s ever turned his baleful attention towards would be the mendacity needed to allow a couple of the gags in the latest Mur-Bins collaboration Meet Dave to work to whatever extent they do? Also helping is that the rampant misogyny and racism that marked their previous film together, Norbit, is toned down to a family-friendly sizzle this time around. Of course black people dance to hip hop and love processed meat stuffs; of course women like to cry and hold hands; and of course gay men come out not long after witnessing their first Broadway revue. Nothing says Grand Old Family Values like merrily sanctioning divisive stereotypes.

High School Musical (2007) [Remix]; High School Musical 2 (2008) [Extended Edition]; High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2009) [Deluxe Extended Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

February 25, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Musical, Romance, Teen, Television

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL
**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel
written by Peter Barsocchini
directed by Kenny Ortega

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 2
½*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C-
starring Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel
written by Peter Barsocchini
directed by Kenny Ortega

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel
screenplay by Peter Barsocchini
directed by Kenny Ortega

by Ian Pugh Not exactly the cultural apocalypse its Disney Channel roots and preteen popularity would have you believe, High School Musical is no worse, really, than any other cookie-cutter musical in recent memory. A by-product of pandering to a young, young audience, its biggest sin is that it alleges a greater basis in reality than its more "adult" contemporaries: The movie endeavours to give credence to the familiar tropes of storybook romance and rags-to-riches by applying them to the politicized zoo known as high school. Troy (Zac Efron) is captain of the basketball team and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) is a brainiac, but all it takes is one happenstance karaoke duet for them to discover they both enjoy singing a whole lot, and their pursuit of that mutual interest throws the entire clique-driven society of East High into disarray. Although it's bolstered by a few genuine chuckles, the premise can't hide the fact that the high-school backdrop actively highlights how inconsequential the whole blasted thing truly is.

Nights in Rodanthe (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

February 24, 2009Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Romance

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Scott Glenn, Christopher Meloni
screenplay by Ann Peacock and John Romano, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
directed by George C. Wolfe

by Walter Chaw I will say this about Nights in Rodanthe: spoken Nicholas Sparks is preferable to written Nicholas Sparks, because when people speak, complete sentences and thoughts that go somewhere aren't necessarily at a premium. If there was ever an artist ill-suited for his chosen medium, it's Sparks; and if there was ever proof (as if proof were needed after the success of Robert James Waller, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Dean Koontz) that cuddling ignorance was a growth industry, well, there's Sparks again. And here, as further cause for divorce from the great nation of culturally-retarded people who have always comprised our metaphorical heartland, is the fourth adaptation of a bound stable of Sparks's saccharine logorrhoea (Gertrude Stein in practice in the unlikeliest of places), Nights in Rodanthe, which, in the great tradition of pieces of shit, is exactly like every other piece of shit in every other genre. (Be thankful, at least, that the picture, in a futile attempt to separate itself from The Notebook, jettisons the novel's framing device, that great staple of books by people like Sparks and Mitch Albom–in so doing depriving some dusty, geriatric, beloved television star one last paycheck.) Helpless before the towering majesty of the formula god it worships, the picture plays out like a slasher pic for girls, where the only sport is trying to figure out which of the heroes is going to die, how, when, and by what grievous hand. I'd argue that the catharsis parceled out by garbage like this is identical to the "happy ending" whored out by lower-aspiring slasher cinema: the curiosity about the hows is delicious–and perverse. If you think I've dropped a spoiler, by the way, you haven't seen Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, or The Notebook, and–more than likely–you're not going to see Nights in Rodanthe, either.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 23, 2009Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Horror, Mystery

L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo
***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Eva Renzi, Enrico Maria Salerno
written and directed by Dario Argento

by Walter Chaw Dario Argento’s uncredited adaptation of Fredric Brown’s The Screaming Mimi (brought to the screen once before in 1958 by Gerd Oswald), The Bird with the Crystal Plumage marks the “Italian Hitchcock”‘s directorial debut as well as the moment at which the Italian giallo genre gained international currency. Though the genre’s invention (named after the yellow/giallo covers of Italian penny dreadfuls) is credited to compatriot Mario Bava (see, especially, his astonishing Blood and Black Lace), Argento’s scary polish and cunning for film language bridged the cultural, mainstream/arthouse gap with agility and audacity. He’s not just borrowing from Hitchcock, he’s filtering the Master’s work through his own sensibilities. Argento did for the slasher genre with his “supernatural” pictures like Suspiria and Inferno what Sergio Leone did for the Western, making them dirtier, sexier, rhythmic, and more acceptable to the literati; and he does here for the police procedural/neo-noir a similar kind of post-modern hipster reinvention. But it’s not merely an intellectual exercise (in fact, the obscurity of the clues (its title at once revealing the identity of the killer and referring obliquely to the red herring of The Maltese Falcon) makes deciphering the procedural improbable at best)–rather, it’s the visceral nature of the exercise that delights. It’s Argento’s revelry in one part in the unrelieved nihilism and delicious confusion that would characterize the best of the ’70s’ paranoia cinema–and in the other part, in the joy of great genre filmmaking.

Gomorrah (2008) + Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

February 20, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Drama, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

Gomorra
***½/****
starring Salvatore Abruzzese, Simone Sacchettino, Salvatore Ruocco, Vincenzo Fabricino
screenplay by Maurizio Braucci & Ugo Chiti & Gianni Di Gregorio & Matteo Garrone & Massimo Gaudioso & Roberto Saviano, based on the book by Saviano
directed by Matteo Garrone

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
*/****
starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor
screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, based on the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup
directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan

by Walter Chaw Dropping us in the middle of Italian slum Scampia, itself smack dab in the middle of nothing, Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (Gomorra) is the Hud of gangster flicks, all deglamourized, harsh, expressionist stripping-away of illusions and idealism to reveal the gasping, grasping emptiness underneath. Like Hud, the source of that idealism is years of cinema supporting a romanticized iconography: the American western in Martin Ritt's film, the collected works of Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese in Garrone's peek inside the ways of this thing of ours. Unlike Hud, there's no intimation of a "happy" ending for the sociopaths of Gomorrah–no feeling that for whatever the cost to a normalized (idealized?) existence, the outcasts and opportunists living their lives in imitation of Tony Montana are doomed to their tough-guy surfaces and the anonymous deaths predicted for them during a brutal prologue. Non-narrative and populated by a non-professional cast of locals and unusual suspects, the picture, however steeped in naturalism, is finally a formalist piece about as free of structure as Sartre–and every bit as meticulous. This "No Exit" (and the French title of Sartre's play fascinatingly translates, when applied to a discussion of a film, as "In Camera") and its unlocked oubliette is Scampia: The players in organized crime are imprisoned there by choice, trapped by the validation they desire from one another.

Max Payne (2008) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 19, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image N/A Sound B Extras C
BD – Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Olga Kurylenko
screenplay by Beau Thorne
directed by John Moore

by Walter Chaw Valkyries: a staple of Norse mythology, right? Picking sides in fights, flying the fallen to Valhalla, and becoming winged waitstaff in that eternal beer hall in the sky. (Or fat women in Wagner.) First thing that comes to mind isn't a mind-blowing, Timothy Leary-esque freak out–unless you're John Moore's ridiculous Max Payne. That isn't the worst thing about Max Payne, but it's one of them. And while there's no crime in appropriating concepts you don't entirely understand, there probably should be. This is not a smart movie, and it doesn't know whether it should be a faithful adaptation of its videogame source material or a post-modern take on films noir, though it should be said that it looks beautiful anyway, a successful iteration of the Sin City aesthetic. The only thing really missing from its retinue of noir tropes is a stoic anti-hero at its centre; Max Payne badly miscalculates not in casting professional lump of meat Mark (Talks to Animals) Wahlberg, but in subsequently allowing him to attempt a fully fleshed-out performance when his usual monotone would've fit the pomo/homage portion of this film perfectly.

Quarantine (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

February 18, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror

**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B-
starring Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Columbus Short, Jonathon Schaech
screenplay by John Erick Dowdle & Drew Dowdle, based on the motion picture [REC] by Jamie Balageuro & Luis A. Berdejo & Paco Plaza
directed by John Erick Dowdle

by Bryant Frazer Blood and saliva flow freely in this faux-documentary mash-up of the 2004 Dawn of the Dead and The Blair Witch Project as a group of humans–residents, cops, firefighters, and TV journalists–are locked inside a quarantined L.A. apartment building where a strange, virulent infection is passing from person to person, turning them into powerful, frothing killing machines who'd just as soon take a bite out of your neck as look at you. The film begins as spunky soft-news reporter Angela (Jennifer Carpenter, best-known from Showtime's "Dexter") is shadowing a group of firefighters on the overnight shift. The first fifteen minutes or so comprise a getting-to-know-you collection of playful firehouse moments between Angela and two of the more handsome devils on duty (Jay Hernandez and Johnathon Schaech) before the movie segues smoothly into an extended, single-location horror show characterized by very long takes and an elaborate, almost theatrical blocking that makes Quarantine feel somewhat akin to a filmed stage play. It's the sort of premise John Carpenter could have nailed in the 1980s.

The International (2009)

February 18, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Espionage, France, Germany, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Brian F. O’Byrne
screenplay by Eric Warren Singer
directed by Tom Tykwer

Internationalby Walter Chaw There’s a shootout at the Guggenheim in the late-middle of The International that is the only real clue director Tom Tykwer had anything to do with the film. The rest of it, despite its title reminding of that Christopher Walken SNL skit about velvet smoking jackets and attempted rape, is just more of the same musty prestige-y Topical Picture™ that usually stars people like Sean Penn or Kevin Costner instead of, as The International does, Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Bland and blander, as it turns out. A rumpled Owen is Salinger, some kind of ill-defined crusader for justice with a badge from Interpol and a dark past from Syd Field, while Watts, as ADA Elly, who spends her first scene with a Boston/Newark accent and the rest with her standard-issue Yank. They’re tepid on the trail of a big giant bank that has a nefarious plan to control debt, which I confess is what I thought banks do. With the picture more interested in mashing its thumb against the “Relevant” button than in creating characters of interest, villains who frighten, and situations that involve, Tykwer, for his part, seems at a loss as to how to employ his agile camera and so trusts a premise that’s already feeling a little mothballed for the collapse and bailout of our banking system. It doesn’t matter that The International doesn’t know what to be from one minute to the next–what matters is that it’s an exact replica of The Interpreter in every way that counts and is, therefore, completely, immanently, blessedly forgettable.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) [2-Disc Deluxe Edition]; Wanted (2008) [2-Disc Special Edition]; Mamma Mia! [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVDs

February 17, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, China, Crime, DVD, Fantasy, Germany, Musical, Romance, Thriller, UK, War, ZERO STARS

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, Michelle Yeoh
screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar
directed by Rob Cohen

WANTED
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp, Angelina Jolie
screenplay by Michael Brandt & Derek Haas and Chris Morgan, based on the comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones
directed by Timur Bekmambetov

MAMMA MIA!
ZERO STARS Image B Sound A Extras C-
starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Stellan Skarsgård
screenplay by Catherine Johnson, based on the songs of ABBA
directed by Phyllida Lloyd

by Walter Chaw Fast becoming the post-Welles RKO without a commensurate Val Lewton to grease the transition from art to filthy lucre, today's Universal Pictures finds itself a long, long way from Psycho with a bumper crop of genuinely bad movies reverse-engineered from past box-office champions. Each of them–The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Wanted, and Mamma Mia!–broke the golden 100-million dollar mark, since they were made with just the Benjamins in mind; sadly, only the criticism of flaccid attendance was likely to curb an endless march of identical pictures this year. For the simpleminded, the success of these films despite the near-universal condemnation of them by anyone with a working prefrontal lobe is proof positive that critics are out of touch with the common man. On the contrary, I'd offer that, asked whether he thought the atrocious The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (hereafter The Mummy 3) would be financially successful, the average critic would have said he'd be surprised if it didn't do a hundred-mil in its first three weeks of release. Out of touch is believing that something is good because it makes a lot of money.

Mirrors (2008) [Unrated] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 16, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, France, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Romania

ZERO STARS/****
DVD – Image N/A Sound A Extras D+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Erica Gluck
screenplay by Alexandre Aja & Grégory Levasseur
directed by Alexandre Aja

by Ian Pugh You have to hand it to Alexandre Aja: Although he applies his marginal talent to different ends from within his genre of choice, he remains fairly consistent in his psychotic bursts of rage and complete obliviousness to the same. Whether he's making awful, sadistic horror flicks that pretend to be about nothing (his anti-lesbian screed High Tension) or–somehow worse–awful, sadistic horror flicks that pretend to be about something (his remake of The Hills Have Eyes and now Mirrors), his targets are clear. In his eyes, women and rural folk are by turns cowardly, evil, and idiotic, deserving of nothing but a horrific death. How anyone could lump his brand of bloodthirsty hatred in with Tarantino or Argento–both real artists who have grappled with their own desires and talents in the context of fiction and reality–is, frankly, beyond me. Hell, even Eli Roth, for all his puerile masturbation and inexplicable worship of the nasty Cannibal Holocaust, has questioned his own methods on occasion. When Aja rips off Amy Smart's mandible just seconds after she steps into a bathtub in Mirrors, there's no thrill, no shock, no sense of accountability–only the niggling, terrifying conjecture that this man would go out and hurt someone given half the chance.

Coraline (2009)

February 11, 2009Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical

***½/****
screenplay by Henry Selick, based on the book by Neil Gaiman
directed by Henry Selick

Coralineby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Best known for The Nightmare Before Christmas (although a lot of people still think that was directed by Tim Burton), Henry Selick returns to the realm of creepy stop-motion animation with an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's slim volume Coraline. Despite the addition of a character and an ending altered for, one suspects, purposes of padding, the book's sense of creepiness and agile grasp of the long blues of the pre-pubescent girl alone in a house with inattentive parents remain pristine. The picture's message retains the British-nanny scold of "be thankful for what you have," though Dakota Fanning's vocalization of the title character leans in and out of a Northwest American youbetcha. It suggests that of the many demons Coraline fights, the most treacherous is the grey beast Populism–the one that demands Teri Hatcher voice Mother (and Other Mother) and Ian McShane upstairs Russian circus performer neighbour Bobinsky. But credit Selick for in essence attempting a Charlie Kaufman film for children with Jan Svankmajer imagery–his invention almost making one forget that it would've worked better in an older, more mysterious, more fraught place than rain-swept Oregon. It is, after all, a picture that illustrates the horror of perfect domesticity in favour of perfect dysfunction: here, the threats of Stepford Wifery far outweigh the threats of a dual-income family, house poor and scrabbling to get by. Viewed as a movie about class, the three levels of Coraline's pink house–the top rented to Bolinsky and his dancing mice, the bottom to Spink & Forcible (Jennifer Saunders/Dawn French)–can be seen as some social stratification of which Coraline's Mother does not suffer well.

Push (2009)

February 11, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle, Djimon Hounsou
screenplay by David Bourla
directed by Paul McGuigan

Pushby Walter Chaw Here's the thing: I like Paul McGuigan's movies. They're facile, it's true, eye candy–if, on occasion (Wicker Park), brilliant eye candy–and slick genre pieces that aren't really about anything in the sense that they aren't at all resonant in any meaningful way. He's done a Hitchcock (Wicker Park again) and a gangster flick (Gangster No. 1) and a costume epic (The Reckoning) and a caper (Lucky Number Slevin), and now with Push he's done his superhero flick; and not a one of them has something to say outside itself. They're post-modern in that sense, pure genre pieces reliant entirely on our conversance with the medium to provide their form and function. They're feature-length music videos–and I mean this as a compliment–that hum along with a kick-ass soundtrack, sexy imagery, and the ghost of a narrative to string it all together. They go down easy and there's not much of an aftertaste. That being said, Push doesn't benefit from familiarity: the craft is excellent, there are moments in it that harbour tremendous potential, but at the end of the day it's just another superhero movie that suffers from not having Bryan Singer's alienation issues or Christopher Nolan's existential identity crisis. What works in McGuigan's other work as a nice corrective to genres burdened by too much close scholarship washes out in Push as either too late or, more likely, too soon. In any case, what plagues the film is that it lacks much in the way of difference.

Groundhog Day (1993) [Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 10, 2009Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Time Travel

***½/****
DVD – Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliot, Stephen Tobolowsky
screenplay by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis
directed by Harold Ramis

by Bill Chambers I've heard the argument that Groundhog Day fails because it proposes the redemption of world-class crank Bill Murray–but, boy, does redemption fight an uphill battle against him. I suspect the criticism is misdirected at the prolific cinéma du redemption in general. Maybe the finest film yet directed by Harold Ramis (who's unfortunately been stuck in a high-concept rut since–his own personal Groundhog Day), Groundhog Day turns the titular Americana celebration into an existential abyss for Phil Connors (Murray), a self-centred weatherman for a TV station he considers a pit stop on the way to bigger and better things.

He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)

February 5, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly
screenplay by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein, based on the book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
directed by Ken Kwapis

Hesjustnotthatintoyouby Ian Pugh It starts off as a puerile game of "Six Degrees of Separation" and just goes downhill from there: Janine (Jennifer Connelly) is married to Ben (Bradley Cooper), who's attracted to Anna (Scarlett Johansson), who has an awkward relationship with Conor (Kevin Connolly), who went on a date with Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who gets dating advice from Alex (Justin Long), who killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. There are about five more movie stars inhabiting He's Just Not That Into You, but one would be hard-pressed to recall their characters' names without consulting the IMDb, and that's pretty much all there is to them. (The combined talents of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston result in a force so monumentally bland that it's either not surprising or very surprising that no casting director ever thought of it before.) My colleague Walter Chaw once wrote that you'll never refer to the characters in Crash by anything other than their broadest generalities, which is exactly how this movie would have it, since it makes it that much easier to project yourself onto these pale stereotypes and reduce the gender divide to a showdown between insensitive assholes and hypersensitive maniacs. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and it's a small world after all. Too easy–too tempting–to call He's Just Not That Into You the romcom equivalent of Paul Haggis's Oscar-winning disaster, but it doesn't give you a reason to think otherwise.

Sundance ’09: Earth Days

February 3, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance
***/****directed by Robert Stone by Alex Jackson I'm not quite sure how I feel about the environmental movement--the subject of Robert Stone's documentary Earth Days. There are two inarguable, somewhat contradictory truths at work here: mankind has been destroying and continues to destroy the planet he is inhabiting; and various doomsday scenarios predicted by the environmental and population-control movements have not come to pass. Stone shows us environmental leaders from three decades ago predicting that the sky will fall in 30 years. I sort of wish he had found room for a clip from Richard Fleischer's great 1973 film Soylent…

Ghost Town (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

February 3, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni, Greg Kinnear, Billy Campbell
screenplay by David Koepp & John Kamps
directed by David Koepp

by Walter Chaw It's appropriate that at the end of these cycles of films portraying New York as a convalescence ward (25th Hour, In the Cut, Synecdoche, New York, Hellboy II), we have a movie like David Koepp's Ghost Town that literalizes our wounded Metropolis as a graveyard. The picture joins Hancock among the year's more pleasant surprises, both loaded as they are with small payloads packed with little, unexpected explosions of pathos and intimate observation. Koepp's hyphenate stints (Stir of Echoes, Secret Window) have tended towards the supernatural by way of private dislocations, his spooks the manifestation of things left too long in the underneath. No less so Ghost Town, wherein asshole dentist Pincus (Ricky Gervais) survives a near-death colonoscopy only to find himself capable of conversing with the dearly departed–at least, those still tied to loved ones incapable of letting them go. Groundwork for a clumsy bit of pretentious tripe, no question, but Koepp lightens his avowed affection for overreaching by striving no farther than romantic-comedy rewards, balancing them with an admirable amount of leash turned over to Gervais's acerbic improvisations. It's interesting that the traditionally charming characters are cast as irritants or cads, their social facility viewed as defense mechanisms. Suddenly, the dental X-rays that unspool beneath the opening credits make perfect sense; Ghost Town is partly about a suspicion of surfaces.

Sundance ’09: Moon

February 2, 2009Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Sundance, UK
****/****starring Sam Rockwellscreenplay by Nathan Parkerdirected by Duncan Jones by Alex Jackson Lunar miner Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the end of a three-year contract with Lunar Industries when an accident lands him in his spaceship's sickbay. Upon regaining consciousness, he meets a facsimile of himself and begins to suspect that his employer and his robot companion Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) have been keeping something from him. While Moon has some kind of basic dramatic conflict and is centred around an actual story instead of impressive visuals (though Sam Rockwell playing table tennis with himself is a hella…