Angels & Demons (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, 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

by 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

Posted in2000s, 2009, 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) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Never Say Never Again (1983) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Bahamas, Blu-ray Disc, Espionage, France, James Bond, Thriller, UK, West Germany

*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.

A Bug’s Life (1998) – [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

A Bug’s Life (1998) – [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Family, Pixar

**/****
DVD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
BD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Donald McEnery & Bob Shaw
directed by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton

by Walter Chaw The Seven Samurai by way of ¡Three Amigos!, Pixar’s A Bug’s Life stands as the company’s sole artistic disappointment, suffering from a weightlessness that is particularly troubling given that it is also the only Pixar production whose characters don’t interact with the human world. The revelation embedded in its relative failure is that the animation studio is better at satire than it is at fantasy–not a terrible thing, for sure (after all, anime legend Hayao Miyazaki has never made a film independent of the human realm), the picture still points to the damning difficulty of creating a fantasy unto itself and based on alien quirk that is more than an exercise in Flintstones-era visual punning wrapped around a familiar underdog-uplift narrative.

On His Own Terms: FFC Interviews James Toback

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Ian Pugh, Documentary, Interviews, Theatrical

Jtobackinterviewtitle

TYSON
**½/****
directed by James Toback
Mike Tyson isn’t a difficult guy to figure out–or, at least, he doesn’t think he is anymore. Given the opportunity to wax nostalgic for the entirety of James Toback’s documentary Tyson, the former champ indulges in a series of anecdotes taking us through his training under Cus D’Amato, his rape conviction, and the infamous “Bite Fight,” concluding that it could all be traced back to his bullied childhood. From there, it becomes easier to understand that everything in his life–from his demeanour in the ring to his hunger for sexual conquest–was dictated by a desire to push himself to the edge, something he did for the better part of twenty-five years until inevitably losing the eye of the tiger. (“Old too soon, smart too late,” Tyson states in a chillingly matter-of-fact manner.) But for all his exorcised demons, he carries with him a great deal of bitterness and obliviousness. Regarding the “ten or twenty million” he won in a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against Don King as “some small amount,” Tyson clearly maintains the perhaps-unavoidable, unshakeable detachment from reality attendant to living a superstar’s lifestyle. As obvious as Tyson may seem, there’s a fascinating conundrum to be found in its subject’s recitation of the most famous lines from “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” which invites questions as to how and when he was hit by the epiphanies repeated herein–and what, precisely, he’s still missing to complete that sense of self-awareness.

Because this man fits so comfortably within Toback’s autobiographical pantheon of poetic brutes leading double lives, one gets the distinct feeling that the filmmaker has attempted to fill in any thematic gaps with expressions of his own auteurism. Backed by a cacophony of conflicting, overlapping voices (Tyson’s own), the shifting-split-screen aesthetic occasionally draws insight into how the boxer’s whirlwind existence has affected his mind, yet as a drum beaten relentlessly, it more often suggests a conscious link back to Black and White (Toback’s first narrative film to feature Tyson) than a visual representation Tyson’s duplicitous or schizophrenic tendencies. As such, Tyson‘s number one problem is that it fancies itself as not so much a genuine portrait of its subject as a general dissertation on the follies of life. Make no mistake that the hour-and-a-half we spend with this man is an engaging one–particularly considering that the most stinging indictments of character come from Tyson himself, whether he realizes it or not. Ultimately, Tyson is just a little too comfortable with leaving us the simple platitude that choices are made and every decision has a consequence.–IP

May 10, 2009|I was largely oblivious of this man, who had somehow slipped beneath my radar until editor Bill kindly offered me a comprehensive crash course in preparation for Tyson. But my reactions to the films of James Toback were perhaps easy to predict. His wonderful hyphenate debut, 1978’s Fingers, knocked me on my ass with astonishing ease, and I quickly recognized the familiar tropes that have been dissected by countless critics over the course of Toback’s storied career: mothers, black culture, double lives, three-way orgies… When we finally met at Boston’s Liberty Hotel, Mr. Toback answered my questions in lengthy, lecturing paragraphs about how his second documentary in twenty years in some sense deals with how much of himself he sees in the ex-heavyweight champ–a point made clear long before he ever vocalized it outright. I suppose the same could be said for the rest of his work: an overwhelming percentage of what he has to say in Tyson can be traced back to the major themes of his first credited screenplay, The Gambler. From the way the conversation shifted in tone when I started talking about Tyson through the prism of his other films, I think Toback was pulling rank as a self-conscious auteur. Recognizing me as a young turk who had done his homework (and a stringent believer in the auteur theory to boot), he switched from his standardized patter to general philosophizing that, in its pre-emptive critical deflection, effectively rendered any real conversation moot. (Three-ways sadly went undiscussed.) As such, there’s a palpable familiarity to the whole thing: his responses weren’t canned, exactly, but they’re definitely reflections of philosophies already laid bare on the silver screen for all to see.

FILM FREAK CENTRAL: So how are you doing?
JAMES TOBACK: Other than no cartilage in my knees, the movie’s going great. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by this almost unanimously great reaction. Usually my movies have separated people. There are a lot of devotees who gets excited and people who sort of can’t wait for a movie of mine to come out so they can shoot arrows in my neck. And then in between a lot of people in who kind of feel ambivalent. And this movie, of all movies, I was sure would have that kind of split, and so far it’s been almost like Shrek in the way it’s come across. Which I can’t explain, except that I think the surprise of the way Tyson comes across wins over most of the people in that group of potential antagonists, where they go expecting to feel anger and rage towards him, and they end up being, in a way, disarmed.

Star Trek (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Theatrical

***½/****
starring John Cho, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw My long-held suspicion of J.J. Abrams as a no-trick pony has thawed completely now that after producing the exceptional Cloverfield, he has directed a reboot of Gene Roddenberry’s beloved “Star Trek” that walks the fine line between absolute seriousness and absolute cheese and does so in about the exact same, smart, swashbuckling way as the ’60s TV show, to which this movie serves not as a prequel, but as a delicious alternate possibility. Abrams’s Star Trek is faithful to Roddenberry’s vision in every way, including a restoration of the sexiness and spunk that’s been largely lost to decades of syndication. It’s easy to forget that the first interracial kiss on television belongs to the original series–not to mention all those ripped-shirt fights, tumbles with green girls, and “Bizarro-version” facial hair. The picture is faithful simultaneously to the spirit of this time, joining what looks to be a spate of films with apocalyptic visions of entire planets destroyed by unimaginable calamity. Spry and well-written, Star Trek plays up the idea of individual heroism for the collective good in high Trek fashion and, fascinatingly, works in the clay of deep-set parental issues to give its young characters the psychological framework for evolution in this new reality. If this James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is more of a brawler and a rake than Shatner’s rakish brawler, blame it on the premature loss of daddy; if this Spock (Zachary Quinto) has his humanity closer to the skin than the other Spock (Leonard Nimoy, who has a sizeable role), blame it on mommy (Winona Ryder). Yet for all its weighted subtext, it avoids the self-seriousness of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, finding in its material the spirit of discovery and bonhomie that made the franchise in its heyday one of the most affecting bits of popular relational drama on television.

Sin City (2005) [Theatrical & Recut/Extended/Unrated Versions] – Blu-ray Disc

Sin City (2005) [Theatrical & Recut/Extended/Unrated Versions] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Quentin Tarantino, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Thriller

Frank Miller’s Sin City
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen
screenplay by Robert Rodriguez, based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller
directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez

by Walter Chaw Until Frank Miller’s Sin City (hereafter Sin City), maverick Mexican director Robert Rodriguez frustrated the hell out of me: here’s this guy with all the talent in the world–an eye, an ear, an internal metronome as unerring as a clock tick–making incoherent movies literally without finished screenplays. Falling off high wires without nets and trying to look cool doing it–it ain’t smooth, man, it’s arrogance and it’s misplaced. I thought he’d spent himself on flotsam like the last two Spy Kids flicks, thought he’d really screwed the pooch on a fiasco like Once Upon a Time In Mexico, on which he mistook Sergio Leone’s formalist genre Diaspora for a mess of ideas trailing camera flourishes. But here, right before he unleashes some 3-D thing about a shark boy, Rodriguez slides in a movie for which he resigned from the Directors’ Guild of America just so he could credit comic book legend Frank Miller as his co-director. Here, in Sin City, is what Robert Rodriguez can do with brutal, draconian structure (what’s harsher than the cell of a comic-book panel?); here, finally, is productive fruit from his reputation as a rebel without a crew. Here’s Sin City down low, on the QT, and very, hush hush: the most anti-Hollywood Hollywood picture since Kill Bill, and a film that, likewise, feels like some kind of miracle it was ever produced, much less released.

Nanking (2007) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2009, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, DVD, War

**½/**** Image A Sound A
directed by Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman

by Alex Jackson Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman’s 90-minute documentary on the 1937 Nanking Massacre isn’t so much reductive or simplistic as it is overachieving. The film suggests several promising avenues of discussion but stops there, at the level of overview, leaving you frustrated and hungry. As I felt similarly unsatisfied by the Ken Burns mini-series The Civil War, it occurs to me that the problem is one not of brevity but of excess ambition. With several hours at his disposal, Burns tried and failed to meet the likely futile goal of creating the definitive document of the American Civil War. Even allowing for the decrease in scale, Guttentag and Sturman shouldn’t have expected to sum up the entirety of the Nanking Massacre in a scant hour-and-a-half. By trying to tell us everything about the Nanking Massacre, Nanking ultimately tells us very little.

WarGames (1983) [25th Anniversary Edition] + Saturday Night Fever (1977)/Staying Alive (1983) [Double Feature] – DVDs|Saturday Night Fever [30th Anniversary Special Collector’s Edition]- Blu-ray Disc

WarGames (1983) [25th Anniversary Edition] + Saturday Night Fever (1977)/Staying Alive (1983) [Double Feature] – DVDs|Saturday Night Fever [30th Anniversary Special Collector’s Edition]- Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1970s, 1980s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Drama, Espionage, FFC Must-Own, Music, Sci-Fi, Stallone, Teen, Thriller, ZERO STARS

War Games
***½/**** Image B Sound C Extras A
starring Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, Ally Sheedy
screenplay by Lawrence Lasker & Walter F. Parkes
directed by John Badham

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
****/****
DVD – Image B Sound B+ Extras C
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring John Travolta, Karen Gorney, Barry Miller, Joseph Cali
screenplay by Norman Wexler
directed by John Badham

STAYING ALIVE
ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring John Travolta, Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes, Steve Inwood
screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and Norman Wexler
directed by Sylvester Stallone

by Walter Chaw I hadn’t realized until I watched the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD of it how intimately WarGames is embedded in my psyche. I saw it in the theatre as a ten-year-old in 1983 and, for the rest of that decade (the prime of my excited filmgoing experience), I didn’t know that movies were ever different. The first time, in fact, that I recognized that movies were human was the first time they revealed themselves as something that could fail to inspire any kind of response at all–and I wonder if that initial moment of disappointment had more to do with the development of my cynicism than any one picture’s deficiency. Film is a progressive addiction, says one theory: the more sophisticated you get as a viewer, the harder it is to find the fix. WarGames presented me with the idea of eroticism through mild scatological exhibitionism. It had a young man in his room, alone with a young woman, excusing himself to urinate in the next room–an act unthinkable to me as a ten-year-old and holding with it the thrill of taboo. The next time they meet, the world starts to explode and, better yet, the girl traps the boy between her legs when he tries to edge by.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Breckin Meyer, Michael Douglas
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by Mark Waters

by Walter Chaw Watching Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a musty relic of Eisner’s reign at Disney that first dreamed Ben Affleck as its star and a decade later settled on Matthew McConaughey (opposite, in some weird nepotistic recompense, Mrs. Affleck, Jennifer Garner), is excellent justification for the crib death of cynical, Eisner-hijacked, RKO-minted philosophies like Commerce over Genius. It’s a retelling, I’m embarrassed to need to articulate, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that substitutes Scrooge with serial womanizer Connor Mead (McConaughey) and Marley with old philanderer Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas, doing a broad lounge-lizard caricature the spitting image of a mummified hybrid of Robert Evans and Howard Hefner). On the eve of brother Paul’s (Breckin Meyer) marriage to shrill harridan Sandra (Lacey Chabert), Connor is visited by Wayne and the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past/Present/Future to show him that true love exists in the world beyond one-night-stands with supermodels–that it in fact exists between oily Connor and first love Jenny (Garner). What this means for the audience gaping in slack-jawed awe at this thing is a good thirty minutes of unearned sentiment tacked onto the end of a noxious payload of open misogyny, fag jokes, and gags that fall square on their face. Very simply, it’s the most appalling, hateful, reptilian, inept film I’ve seen since Love Actually, and I wish I could say that I’m surprised that it was directed by Mark Waters and written by the braintrust behind Four Christmases.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schrieber, Danny Huston, Ryan Reynolds
screenplay by David Benioff and Skip Woods
directed by Gavin Hood

by Walter Chaw The action sequences are bad, the plot is bad… Hugh Jackman? He’s fine. Everything you might expect, in other words, from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, wherein that most popular of muties (although I always preferred Gambit, marking me as about 42% gay) receives his first official vehicle with shaky Gavin Hood at the wheel. Was it the deadening piece of shit Tsotsi or the gravid piece of shit Rendition that convinced them Hood was the right person for this gravid, deadening piece of shit? True to form, the movie is laden with misplaced gravitas, magic-hour tableaux, and awkward drivel that makes me think that of the film’s two credited writers, it’s Hitman/Swordfish scribe Skip Woods and not 25th Hour scribe David Benioff who took the final run at the screenplay. (“Now I know why the moon is lonely,” says our macho man of action Wolvie (Jackman) at one point–and the audience howls.) It has a Watchmen opening montage following Wolvie and brother Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) through history’s most picturesque battles (Trenches! Beaches! Paddies!) before they’re finally enlisted by mysterious government stooge Stryker (Danny Huston), who has a plan for these and other genetic misfits. Think of it as “X-Men: Episode One”, as dorks are encouraged to trainspot famous mutants in the background while the foreground gets cluttered with lots of bad dialogue, grammar-school sentimentality, and oodles of special effects.

The Uninvited (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

The Uninvited (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Drama, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

***½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Emily Browning, Elizabeth Banks, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn
screenplay by Craig Rosenberg and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard, based on the motion picture Janghwa, Hongryeon written by Ji-woon Kim
directed by The Guard Brothers

by Ian Pugh The title The Uninvited doesn’t refer to the diabolical nanny/usurper driving the plot or to the undead spirits that torture our heroine, but rather to the damning intrusiveness of memory: inadequate, incomplete, and weighting down its victims with the guilt of bad decisions and lives ill-spent. It begins with a dream, as unassuming teenager Anna (Emily Browning) expresses her concern that she can’t remember the night her bedridden mother died in a freak explosion. “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to forget,” a well-meaning psychologist tells her, and from this innocent bit of wisdom springs all the misery and death that follows. Not exactly a tale of two sisters, the picture demonstrates how the black holes of misanthropy and insanity come not from our harrowing experiences, but from the fact that we try so hard to bottle them up.

…and spice: FFC Interviews Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

April 26, 2009|So here’s the deal: I don’t care about casting, I don’t care about locations, and I don’t really even care about how or why an idea came into being. Inspirations are interesting sometimes, sometimes not; you ask the inspirations question, and you usually get either apathy or irritation. Very seldom do you get something revelatory. Do any kind of research before most any kind of movie-related interview and you’ll find that if the questions weren’t already asked, the what-was-it-like-to-work-with?s and how-did-so-and-so-get-involved?s and what-did-it-feel-like-when?s, then the answers were already spoken without provocation. It would be a particular shame to burn a promo-tour/DVD supplement-type inquiry on filmmakers like Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who, between the surprising Half Nelson and the even more surprising Sugar, actually seem interested in having a dialogue with their audience. Sugar essays a good dozen hot-button issues without giving a one of them soapbox or short shrift; it treats its characters with the same respect with which it treats its audience. I came away from meeting Ms. Boden and Mr. Fleck in the “Tokyo Room” of Denver’s Hotel Monaco with a gratifying reminder that, on occasion, it’s still possible to divine the wellspring of the art through conversation with the artists.

The Soloist (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, France, Music, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Jaime Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander
screenplay by Susannah Grant
directed by Joe Wright

by Walter Chaw Black, crazy, homeless, and a prodigy–it’s A Beautiful Mind and Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Fisher King and The Green Mile all wrapped up in a tight little Oscar ball. And The Soloist is a true story, of course, from LA TIMES columnist Steve Lopez’s affecting series on homeless guy Nathaniel Ayers, which he turned into a book that’s been adapted into a movie scripted by seasoned middlebrow emotional rapist Susannah Grant and directed by rapidly-developing first-class hired-hack Joe Wright. A problem, you’ll agree, that it was pushed by its own studio out of the catbird seat late last year to make room for, of all things, that non-starter Revolutionary Road. The issue–arguably the only issue–of exploitation is raised, and well, in the film’s most honest scene: at an awards banquet feting Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) for his profile of Nathaniel (Jaime Foxx), the former’s editor/ex-wife Mary (Catherine Keener) excoriates Lopez for his reluctance to fully engage what had at that point become his near-total responsibility. If that central issue of the picture lies fallow until an ill-fated recital (set up by ill-used, slapstick laughing-stock Christian cellist Graham Claydon (Tom Hollander)) ends with a few wild swings of a nail-studded bat, at least it’s introduced as an elephant in a room full of people in that darkened theatre clucking at how adorable and somehow inspirational it is that a hobo is a world-class cellist.

Event Horizon (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

Event Horizon (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson
screenplay by Philip Eisner
directed by Paul Anderson

by Walter Chaw Event Horizon approaches the science-fiction idea of a mysterium tremens, hints that it will be about the inscrutability of an alien intelligence–like Lem’s and Tarkovsky’s (and Soderbergh’s) variations on the theme of Solaris, for instance, or that monolith in 2001. But with lowbrow hack Paul W.S. Anderson (then simply Paul Anderson) at the helm, Event Horizon washes out as just another assembly-line jump-scare factory. A particular shame, as with this project Anderson attracted an unusually competent cast, only to ask the likes of Laurence Fishburne, Joely Richardson, Sam Neill, Jason Isaacs, and Kathleen Quinlan to respond to cats-by-any-other-name jumping through allegorical windows. It goes beyond wearisome to actually being insulting. The first hour is spent establishing the brave crew of the Lewis & Clark, setting off to somewhere near Neptune on the rescue and salvage of experimental ship Event Horizon, which disappeared a few months prior. Outfitted with a new “gravity drive” suspiciously like the fold-space/grasshopper spice drive from Dune, the Event Horizon has not only managed to travel beyond our Universe–it has also succeeded in theologically blowing our minds! Weird visions ensue (bad dreams and worse), and then there’s the captain’s log that our heroes spend the bulk of the film “filtering” before finally discovering that the warnings contained therein are in Latin for a reason. Doesn’t anyone in the future watch The Exorcist? Good thing medico D.J. (Isaacs) speaks Latin, or they’d never know what it wouldn’t help them to know.

Gigi (1958) – Blu-ray Disc

Gigi (1958) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1950s, 2009, Authors: Alex Jackson, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Musical, Romance

GIGI (1958)
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A-
starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold
screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, based on the novel by Colette
directed by Vincente Minnelli

GIGI (1949)
**/**** Image C+ Sound C
starring Gaby Morlay, Danièle Delorme, Jean Tissier, Yvonne de Bray
scteenplay by Pierre Laroche, based on the novel by Colette
directed by Jacqueline Audry

by Alex Jackson How weird is it that Vincente Minnelli’s Gigi won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1958, when four years later Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Lolita barely got the seal of approval? I suppose we shouldn’t underestimate the power of sex to scandalize when it isn’t disguised as love. In Gigi, wealthy Parisian playboy Gaston Lachaille (Louis Jourdan) is fixated on 15-year-old Gigi (27-year-old Leslie Caron), the granddaughter of family friend Madame Alvarez (Hermione Gingold). He likes her precisely because she is still a child. Most of the women Gaston goes with are accustomed and entitled to a certain standard of living. By contrast, Gigi can appreciate being spoiled. Gaston also admires her irreverence–how she can cheat at cards and tease him about it, or how she can effortlessly tell him off after he insults her dress. She hasn’t learned how to be a lady yet; her rough edges haven’t been smoothed out and she’s capable of challenging him. There’s a life to her that’s drained out of most of the other women he meets long before he gets there.

State of Play (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*½/****
starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren
screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray, based on the BBC television series created by Paul Abbott
directed by Kevin Macdonald

by Ian Pugh If it were smart, Kevin Macdonald’s State of Play would stick to lamenting the ignominious death of newsprint at the hands of Internet sensationalism and all that that implies. As a veteran reporter and a U.S. Congressman–college roommates once known as rabblerousing muckrakers in their respective fields–turn to each other when their worlds collapse, you’d think that maybe the film had in mind a meditation on the dissolution of the Old Boys’ clubs. Done in by our demystifying familiarity with the subjects under scrutiny (cops and politicians) and an unwillingness to inject new blood into their veins, right? Hell, even Watergate is brought up as an incidental location, as Macdonald sends a sweeping camera across the notorious hotel. You can’t tell me there isn’t something to be said here about how a reliance on outmoded tactics and an obsession with decades-old victories has only sped up their obsolescence.

American Gangster (2007); I’m Not There (2007); No Country for Old Men (2007) + No Country for Old Men [’08 BD + 2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

American Gangster (2007); I’m Not There (2007); No Country for Old Men (2007) + No Country for Old Men [’08 BD + 2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2007, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Coen Brothers, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, France, Gangster, Germany, Music, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

AMERICAN GANGSTER
***/****
starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding, Jr.
screenplay by Steven Zaillian
directed by Ridley Scott

I’M NOT THERE
***½/****
starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere
screenplay by Todd Haynes & Oren Moverman
directed by Todd Haynes

FFC Must-OwnNO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
****/****
’08 BD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
CE – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

by Walter Chaw Consider the moment when an overly enthusiastic police search results in the demolition of a replica dresser commissioned by Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) for the Carolina plantation he’s bought to house his extended family. In one canny instant, there’s the suggestion that nothing ever changes: the things we lose in time we will always lose. The image Ridley Scott provides for us as he moves the Lucas clan into their new digs is loaded and dangerous, with a group of African-Americans walking up the lush green lawn of an antebellum plantation–usurpers of a corrupt American Dream that, American Gangster posits, is still corrupt and in essentially the same way. True, there’s a cartoon bogey in a New York cop (Josh Brolin) erected as the straw man for all of New York’s Finest who’s profiting off French Connection junk (gasp, he shoots a dog, and probably also smokes)–but the real villainy in the picture is the idea that the path to true status and achievement in the United States is on the backs of not just others, but entire groups of others.

Dead Like Me: The Complete Collection + Dead Like Me: Life After Death (2009) – DVDs + Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Television

DEAD LIKE ME (2003-2004)
Image B+ Sound B Extras D
“Pilot,” “Dead Girl Walking,” “Curious George,” “Reapercussions,” “Reaping Havoc,” “My Room,” “Reaper Madness,” “A Cook,” “Sunday Mornings,” “Business Unfinished,” “The Bicycle Thief,” “Nighthawks,” “Vacation,” “Rest in Peace,” “Send in the Clown,” “The Ledger,” “Ghost Story,” “The Shallow End,” “Hurry,” “In Escrow,” “Rites of Passage,” “The Escape Artist,” “Be Still My Heart,” “Death Defying,” “Ashes to Ashes,” “Forget Me Not,” “Last Call,” “Always,” “Haunted”

DEAD LIKE ME: LIFE AFTER DEATH
½*/**** Image C+ Sound C+ Extras D
starring Ellen Muth, Callum Blue, Sarah Wynter, Henry Ian Cusick
screenplay by John Masius and Stephen Godchaux
directed by Stephen Herek

PUSHING DAISIES: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image A Sound B Extras D
“Pie-lette,” “Dummy,” “The Fun in Funeral,” “Pigeon,” “Girth,” “Bitches,” “Smell of Success,” “Bitter Sweets,” “Corpsicle”

by Walter Chaw Diagnosing the ills of Showtime original productions is a tricky deal, but whatever’s wrong with them seems consistent across the board. Compared against HBO’s output, there’s nothing that can hold a candle to “The Sopranos” or “Six Feet Under” or “Big Love”; there aren’t any masterpieces like “Deadwood”, much less fascinating failures like “Carnivàle” or “Rome”. To be brutally honest, it doesn’t matter if we lower the bar, since not a single Showtime series could be called good on network TV terms, either. Flagships “Dexter” and “Weeds” are both overwritten and under-thought, jumping sharks regularly beginning somewhere around the middle of their first seasons and betraying their unsustainability faster than “Heroes”. It’s not for lack of star power or high concept that Showtime shows suck–not a surfeit of budgets or production values, no. I’d argue that the reason they’re awful is because Showtime is incapable of hiring writers who aren’t twee asswipes molding themselves to pop morality and rote, conventional character sketches and plot outcomes. Those hailing “Dexter” as an antiheroic crime thriller need to consider the storyline about the tough-talking Latina cop who has her heart softened by an Elian Gonzalez clone, or the revelation that Dexter might not be a serial killer after all, but a teddy bear with issues. And just as “Dexter” wastes the wonderful Michael C. Hall in its title role (ditto “Weeds”/Mary-Louise Parker), so, too, does another bit of Showtime dreck, “Dead Like Me”, boast the excellent Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin in the pursuit of decidedly modest returns.

Sugar (2009) + Tokyo Sonata (2008)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2008, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Dominican Republic, Drama, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Sports, Theatrical

SUGAR
***½/****
starring Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Andre Holland, Ann Whitney
written and directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

TOKYO SONATA
****/****
starring Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Yû Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki
screenplay by Max Mannix, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sachiko Tanaka
directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

by Walter Chaw In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a cinematic trend afoot that looks to the fringes for stories of survival in a world where it’s suddenly chic to shop at the thrift store. I credit Harmony Korine and David Gordon Green with first finding the poetry in destitution in this new American cycle, with maybe Gus Van Sant (with his Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho) acting as the accidental primogenitor. If it’s not Frozen River‘s trailer-park heroine and her dalliance with human trafficking, it’s Wendy & Lucy‘s despair from the bottom of the capitalist food chain. In the mainstream, there’s Sean Penn’s fantastic Into the Wild and the reboot of 3:10 to Yuma, which at its heart is a drama about the toll of being the breadwinner. Even Hancock, a movie that keeps improving in the rearview, can be read with profit as a document of how tough it is for the everyday Joe to eke out a living in a culture designed for the affluent, the physically gifted, the innately well-spoken. Like any social movement in film, however, a lot of the stuff is minimally affecting, message-oriented garbage that seems very pleased with itself as it, like the exec pushing a broken cart through Goodwill, wears its limitations as if dragging a cross uphill. There appears to be a race to the bottom: the first to total, Warholian inertia wins the booby prize. Most of it’s destined to be remembered as symptoms of the affliction and not as the illness itself; the runny nose, not the Plague.