The Love Guru (2008) + Get Smart (2008)

June 19, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Espionage, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

THE LOVE GURU
ZERO STARS/****
starring Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Ben Kingsley
screenplay by Mike Myers & Graham Gordy
directed by Marco Schnabel

GET SMART
***/****
starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, James Caan
screenplay by Tim J. Astle & Matt Ember
directed by Peter Segal

Loveguruby Walter Chaw Dick this, cock that, penis penis penis–let me mention in the interest of full, ahem, disclosure that I don't think Mike Myers is funny; that Chris Farley's death was a great shame for a lot of reasons, among the worst that his passing opened the door for Myers to voice Shrek; and that it's not amusing in the slightest to make an endless stream of johnson jokes. The Love Guru has Myers sort of taking a wave at a cheap Indian accent in a redux of that Eddie Murphy triumph Holy Man–which means, essentially, that he proves himself not as committed as Will Ferrell and not as feral as Adam Sandler and not as neutered, as it happens, as Eddie Murphy. Myers, in other words, is less than his peers, doomed to be upstaged at every turn by anyone unfortunate enough to share a scene with him. (Doomed, too, to be constantly undermined by his inability to resist mugging for the camera.) Myers is Guru Pitka, a writer of Dr. Phil-cum-Deepak Chopra self-help volumes hired by the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jane (Jessica Alba), to cure star winger Roanoke (Romany Malco) of his sudden case of the shakes. Thus Myers marries his two passions (hockey and not being funny) into one noxious ball of shit and wiener jokes, in the process taking a colossal dump on an entire culture with puerile wordplays like "Guru Satchabigknoba" and "Guru Tugginmypudha" (Ben Kingsley, playing it cross-eyed). It was funny when Monty Python did it, yes, because Monty Python was made up of people who were funny.

Mandingo (1975) – DVD

June 18, 2008Posted in1970s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring James Mason, Susan George, Perry King, Ken Norton
screenplay by Norman Wexler, based on the novel by Kyle Onstott
directed by Richard Fleischer

Mandingocap

by Alex Jackson I was just about to say that I wish Mandingo were better than it is, but then I realized it wouldn't be nearly as good as it is if it weren't also "flawed." Some snarky hipster (Mitch Lovell of the LiveJournal blog (?!) THE VIDEO VACUUM, if you must know) rather brilliantly and concisely summarized the problem of the film in saying, "If you ever wanted to see Mr. Bentley from 'The Jeffersons' check a muscle-bound slave for hemorrhoids, this is the flick for you." Indeed, we get this image in the first ten minutes of the film. The checking of the muscle-bound slave for hemorrhoids, well, that I guess I can…appreciate, for lack of a better word. We all understand that slavery was "evil" on a purely intellectual level, but I don't think we have a terribly substantial visual database of the horrors and humiliations of it–and so I feel there's a real need for a disgusting and sensationalistic exploitation film about the subject. On those terms, let it be said that Mandingo does not disappoint. This has to be the most emotionally ugly film I've seen since Brian Robbins's Norbit.

Square Pegs: The Like, Totally Complete Series… Totally (1982-1983) + Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) – DVDs

June 16, 2008Posted in1980s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Music, Romance, Teen, Television, ZERO STARS

SQUARE PEGS
Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
"Square Pegs (Pilot)," "A Cafeteria Line," Pac-Man Fever," "Square Pigskins," "Halloween XII," "A Simple Attachment," "Weemaweegate," "Open 24 Hours," "Muffy's Bat Mitzvah," "Hardly Working," "A Child's Christmas in Weemawee," "It's All How You See Things," "Merry Pranksters," "It's Academical!," "The Stepanowicz Papers," "To Serve Weemawee All My Days," "No Substitutions," "No Joy in Weemawee," "The Arrangement"

GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN
ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, Shannen Doherty, Lee Montgomery
screenplay by Amy Spies
directed by Alan Metter

by Ian Pugh The "square pegs" of the title are brainiac Patty (Sarah Jessica Parker, already having settled into a halting conversational style that never left her) and "fat girl" Lauren (Amy Linker), newly-initiated freshmen at Weemawee High School who pledge during the opening narration of each episode that this year, this year, they're going to be popular. Unfortunately, their never-ending–maybe even Wile E. Coyote-esque–bid to break into Weemawee's social elite always results in half-baked schemes and humiliating compromises. (Upon being ousted from a table in a crowded diner by the popular crowd, Lauren rationalizes that "having them sit where we were just sitting is almost as good as sitting with them.") While "Square Pegs" never fails to empathize with the folks who are young and foolish enough to believe in such a ridiculous enterprise–because it's all they know at this stage of their lives–what really makes the series special is how it forces older viewers to contemplate the people they were in high school and who they are now.

There Will Be Blood (2007) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 15, 2008Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own

****/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds
screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel OIL! by Upton Sinclair
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Mustownby Walter Chaw The jarring, discordant first notes of Jonny Greenwood's score announce that Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood will realize the promise shown by the auteur's closest analog, Punch-Drunk Love. Almost experimental in its marriage of noise and vision, it's reminiscent in that regard of a Sergio Leone epic about the foundation of a specific aspect of the American character. Pithy that such a thing plays like watching an insect under glass: There Will Be Blood is accurately described as a piece of existential entomology–Kafka somehow married to Upton Sinclair (on whose OIL! the film is formally based). It's a modern, and modernist, take on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring an actor who may be the best of his generation turning in a performance destined for legend, though I'd offer that when Daniel Day-Lewis actually does go off the rails in making a mad catchphrase out of "I drink your milkshake!", it's proof that the rest of his work here is really rather restrained. The best movie of the year if not for No Country For Old Men, it shares with that masterpiece this idea that money corrupts absolutely, its venom catalyzing on contact. Choosing to open with a silent 16-minute introduction that sees Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis)–digging for riches by himself in what could be an outtake from Sierra Madre–discovering his share of silver and parlaying it into an oil empire that will eventually leave him alone, misanthropic, and finally insane, Anderson is clearly implying that material pursuits mine the humanity from mortal loam. While he has disdained political reads of the picture, the philosophical ramifications of Anderson's barren exteriors held up against Plainview's barren interiors–the both of them with endless potential, it would appear, for bottomless wells of bubbling black–are subtext enough, if not, of course, inextricable from politics.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

June 12, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt
screenplay by Zak Penn and Edward Harrison
directed by Louis Leterrier

Incrediblehulkby Walter Chaw Pretty much the unmitigated disaster its trailers predicted it to be, Louis Leterrier's noisome The Incredible Hulk is a cacophony of bad CGI, bad acting, and gravid serio-melodramatics that leaves only the disturbing image of Liv Tyler's acres of bangs standing in the aftermath of its absurd wreckage. It's a vanity piece for Edward Norton (as if Norton is ever in anything else these days) that washes out as one of the more puzzling examples of such, in that the only thing anyone's there to see is Hulk smash. Maybe not so puzzling upon further reflection; I heard someone describe Jim Carrey at a certain point in his career as the six-hundred pound gorilla–find Norton at the apogee of his own ego bloat in The Incredible Hulk. Rumoured to have rewritten wide patches of Zak Penn's script (and credited here as, tee hee, Edward Harrison), Norton strikes me as a player/coach in the mold of Sylvester Stallone but unburdened with Stallone's sense of temporal place and popular self-awareness. Norton's acts of persona-construction are involved with painting himself as more romantic and smarter (The Illusionist), more romantic and moral (The Painted Veil), or more romantic and mysterious (Down in the Valley) than the average bear (tragic Monsieur Curie Bruce Banner the amalgam of all three, of course), with little room in his Nietzschian self-regard for human frailty or much complexity. He's an actor capable of astonishing nuance, making it doubly frustrating that he seems to resent that in the Fight Club food chain, he's Edward Norton and not Brad Pitt. The Incredible Hulk is the hundred-pound weakling flexing in the mirror and answering the ad on the back of the comic book.

The Happening (2008)

June 12, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, Horror, India, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Happeningby Walter Chaw The number one, indisputable, biggest surprise of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening is that it doesn't entirely suck–followed fast by the stunner that the director-writer-producer-demiurge doesn't appear anywhere in the film as Christ on a chariot. After his self-aggrandizing cameos in Signs (as catalyst to the story's existence and outcome), The Village (as star of the "twist" in the film's most complicated lighting/camera set-up), and Lady in the Water (as author of the Bible), it seemed that was the next logical step. Instead, The Happening is a Larry Cohen-esque thriller along the lines of God Told Me To, delivered with a heavy hand, to be sure, but full of some of the most delicious misanthropy to hit screens since Julia Roberts was making romantic comedies. Shyamalan, if we follow the auteur theory as closely as he claims to, hates his fellow man enough so that a coda revealing a blessed pregnancy is framed in such a way as to suggest that mankind is spelling its own doom with this urge to procreate. By extension, it's tempting to see it as a criticism of pictures that end in Spielberg town, with marriages and babies and a cabin in the woods for the precogs. If Shyamalan is to the point where he's actively flipping the bird to audiences and expectations, eschewing his life-support systems for twists and protracted takes in favour of ugly, flat, uninspired action sequences and blighted implications, then I might actually at this point be looking forward to his next one. Meaning, at the end of the day, that's the biggest surprise of The Happening.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

June 12, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Scarlett Johansson

**/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Kristin Scott Thomas
screenplay by Peter Morgan, based on the novel by Philippa Gregory
directed by Justin Chadwick

by Bryant Frazer Pop culture works in mysterious ways. I suppose the Tudor dynasty never really goes out of style, but it's interesting to see two completely different takes on the tale of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, reach audiences more or less simultaneously. The second season of Showtime's lavish series "The Tudors" just concluded with the (spoiler?!) beheading of Boleyn, followed by a close-up of a beautiful little girl who would become Queen Elizabeth I. The Other Boleyn Girl, produced in part by BBC Films, ends much the same way, with that same act of reprisal followed by a beaming young face representing that same incipient monarch.

Youth Without Youth (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

June 9, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Romania, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André M. Hennicke
screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella by Mircea Eliade
directed by Francis Ford Coppola

by Walter Chaw Set in just-antebellum Europe, Francis Ford Coppola’s Golden Age superhero fantasy Youth Without Youth finds mild-mannered ancients professor Dominic (Tim Roth) transmogrified by a bolt of lightning into a being who appears to not only have regained his youthful appearance, but also developed the ability to alter physical objects with his mind. Dominic is in 1938 Romania when 1.21 gigawatts of electricity send him back to the future, able to absorb entire volumes with a single touch, learn dead languages in his sleep, and have contentious conversations with himself reflected in mirrors literal and figurative. It’s a superhero movie in the same sense as Kasi Lemmons’s sorely underestimated The Caveman’s Valentine: based on a literary source, it’s itself intensely literate, sprinkling Mandarin and Sanskrit in with, late in the game, a language of our hero’s own devising to which he devotes reels of obsessive notes. All that’s missing is a purpose for our hero–something remedied as the picture moves forward past WWII and Dominic encounters Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara) en route to her own collision with cosmic destiny.

Jumper (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

June 8, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Sci-Fi, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Diane Lane
screenplay by David S. Goyer and Jim Uhls and Simon Kinberg, based on the novel by Steven Gould
directed by Doug Liman

by Walter Chaw Jumper is the first movie director Doug Liman hasn't been able to save with his amazing way with action sequences. Blame its glaring inconsistencies, the overuse of one nifty special effect that renders the picture's centrepiece an anticlimax, and a passel of squeezed-off performances as truncated–as brief–as the rest of the picture feels. It's over before it begins, wasn't much while it lasted, and is so brazen in its abuse of internal logic that the only audience that would see it will be irritated by it. Based on a Steven Gould cult novel I read years ago (but not long ago enough to love it), its high concept is that there are genetic anomalies among us who are capable of teleporting anywhere they've been before; the catch is that a group of witch hunters is eager to kill them because they're abominations before God. It's Highlander, essentially, or any vampire movie, a skylark about rock-star bandits that swaps immortality for the ability to zip around at will–with only some party-pooping senior citizen (it's snow-on-the-roof Samuel L. Jackson this time around, playing Illuminati-cum-Homeland Security bogie Roland) around to spoil the fun. The obligatory hot chick is dead-eyed Rachel Bilson as Millie, trading not so much up from Zach Braff in The Last Kiss as sideways to Hayden Christensen's protag "jumper" David. Millie and David have loved one another since high school, a misleadingly fun prologue tells us: what follows is about an hour of deadening, repetitive, useless nonsense that fails, completely, to provide a universe in which this stuff makes any kind of impact, even as escapism.

The Recruit (2003) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 1, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Al Pacino, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Switzerland, Thriller

*½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B-
BD – Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan, Gabriel Macht
screenplay by Roger Towne and Kurt Wimmer and Mitch Glazer
directed by Roger Donaldson

by Walter Chaw Aussie director Roger Donaldson's No Way Out is one of the better Cold War paranoia films: sexy, tricky, and packed with the sort of performances (from Kevin Costner, Sean Young, Gene Hackman, and Will Patton) that spin gold from proverbial straw. Donaldson's The Recruit is another derivative post-Cold War knockoff: boring, predictable, and laden with the sort of hackneyed turns that are not only immanently forgettable, but also doomed to eventually be left off the resumé during those Academy clip retrospectives. What a difference sixteen years makes.

V for Vendetta (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

May 29, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Germany, Revenge, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B-
starring Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, John Hurt
screenplay by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
directed by James McTeigue

by Walter Chaw As documents for the opposition go, V for Vendetta may be the ballsiest, angriest picture of the current administration, flashing without apology images of naked prisoners of the state, shackled in black hoods and held in clear acrylic boxes while a febrile talking head and his cloistered intimates (called "fingers") form a closed fist around them. It surmises a future where the government plants stories in centrally-owned media conglomerates, controlling groupthink by providing just one point of view. Woe be unto those with a critical mind because what, after all, is more dangerous to a dictatorial theocracy than a question? But more, the picture is an impassioned plea for alternative lifestyles, exposing the melodrama of Brokeback Mountain to be embarrassed, even polite, when the struggle for equal regard is something that should be undertaken with passion and brio–it's life and death, and V for Vendetta presents it as such. There are no half measures in a film that takes as its hero an eloquent monologist in a Guy Fawkes mask (Hugo Weaving), his erstwhile, reluctant sidekick a young woman, Evey (Natalie Portman), transformed through the government-sanctioned abduction of her parents and a period of torture and imprisonment into not an avenging angel, but a voice of reason. How fascinating that the reasonable solution in the picture is the destruction of Britain's Parliament on the Thames.

Signs (2002) [VISTA Series] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

May 25, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

by Walter Chaw M. Night Shyamalan makes very specific films about very specific concerns in a very specific manner: long master shots; an unusual trust in silence; remarkably few edits for a modern picture; joy in the choice of garish topics; and a thing for failed fathers and their lost little boys. He reminds of Hitchcock in his elevation of pulp art into high art, but differs in that his concerns aren't so much about abnormal psychology, the nervy manipulation of the audience, and the voyeuristic implication of movie-watching as they are about personal demons and Shyamalan's increasingly obvious desire to be considered in the same breath as his idol.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007) [Four-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

May 19, 2008Posted in****/****, 1980s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
directed by Ridley Scott

Bladerunnertfccap

Mustownby Walter Chaw The prototype for the modern science-fiction film, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, through its seemingly endless iterations, through its growing cult of personality and a production history that's become as familiar as a Herzog shooting mythology, retains its ability to astonish as–along with John Carpenter's contemporaneous The Thing–the last hurrah for the non-CGI, in-camera effects piece. Tron, The Last Starfighter, and Firefox were destined to be the rule of the day at the expense of matte painters and model-makers, here working out puzzles like how to make a futuristic, mechanized advertising blimp appear to be shooting strobes through the glassed ceiling of the Bradbury. Indeed, it's almost impossible to watch Blade Runner now without taking its technical brilliance for granted. It looks like it was made in 2007 (particularly in its newest, digitized incarnation); with its lack of the bluescreen artifacts that plague many of its contemporaries, it's easy to think of a mainframe as the movie's author.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

May 15, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Poland, Slovenia, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
starring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell
screenplay by Andrew Adamson & Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, based on the novel by C.S. Lewis
directed by Andrew Adamson

Narnia2by Walter Chaw Let’s face it: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (hereafter Narnia 2) is by most objective measures a complete mess. It doesn’t do a particularly good job of shading in its backstory (you really need to have read the book or seen the first film very recently) and its narrative proper is truncated and spastic. The characters don’t demonstrate enough awe when they’re confronted with a minotaur for the first time, nor do they register the appropriate shock upon characters from their storybooks suddenly appearing in their midst. Though there’s a real problem with special-effects films that spend too much time gawping at their own illusions, it’s not much better when pictures like this give its characters good reason to be surprised and they’re not. It begins in the middle and ends with an exit tune so embarrassing that it threatens to completely deflate the goodwill the picture has, against all odds, built to that point–but damn it if it isn’t quite good for all that. Narnia 2 reminds of Stardust in that sense: it works because it works, because the connective tissue that’s there in the ephemera is made of sinew and spider silk–strong, fibrous, and sticky even when the actual plotting does the film no favours. Its themes are universal even though C.S. Lewis is unabashedly Christian; what’s laudable about the first instalment and now this sequel is the obvious pains taken to present themes of resurrection, redemption, and faith as archetype rather than dogma. Attaching something so specific as an idea of Satan, for instance, to a brief, remarkably affecting reappearance of The White Witch (Tilda Swinton) is a reach and missing the point besides. Narnia 2 is about believing in something so simple as a greater power–about humility and resisting temptation and the easy path. Yoda had something to say to my generation from atop a log in Dagobah, and it’s possible to see Narnia 2 as Luke’s invitation to meet his darker self in the roots of a gnarled old tree.

I Was a Teenage Strangler (1998) + Vampire Strangler (1999) – DVDs

May 14, 2008Posted in1990s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Esoterica, Horror, Vampire

I WAS A TEENAGE STRANGLER
*/**** Image D Sound D
starring Josh Miller, David Alan Interior, Daisy DeWright, Lil' Erin DeWright
written and directed by The People of Severed Lips

VAMPIRE STRANGLER
*½/**** Image D Sound D Extras C-
starring Misty Mundae, William Hellfire, Ben the Stain
written and directed by William Hellfire

by Ian Pugh Some ten years after the fact, the filmmakers behind the ultra-cheap Factory 2000 brand refer to their super-VHS fetish videos I Was a Teenage Strangler and Vampire Strangler as amateur tributes to Andy Warhol, John Waters, and Dario Argento, though in actuality these are best described as generic paeans to depraved cinema as a whole. Operating in the vein of Gary P. Cohen's do-it-yourself VHS snuff series Video Violence, the F2K crew have a preternatural understanding for how these kinds of movies work and furthermore how they're marketed–and they aren't about to let a complete lack of talent or sophisticated editing equipment discourage them. It's far, far removed from the amateur passion and promise offered by a film like The Equinox …A Journey into the Supernatural, but realize that even pornography shot in scummy basements without the aid of a script can make a bid for cinematic legitimacy and soon you're forced to look at these films with a serious critical eye and maybe a little diseased admiration. Don't misunderstand: they're unforgivably terrible, too often forgetting their own reasoning halfway through. But the circumstances of their genesis should at least count for something.

Twister (1996) – Blu-ray Disc

May 13, 2008Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Spielberg

**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes
screenplay by Michael Crichton & Anne-Marie Martin
directed by Jan De Bont

by Bill Chambers Jan De Bont’s Twister has a host of problems that mocking its physics–a common pastime among smartasses the summer of its release–doesn’t begin to address, though if the film were even one degree more earnest than it is, moments like the bit where a tornado powerful enough to hoist a tractor leaves two people clinging tenaciously to a wooden support beam under a rickety bridge unscathed would make for prime “MST3K” fodder. (That’s the thing about notorious pedant Michael Crichton, who co-wrote Twister with then-wife Anne-Marie Martin: he figures getting the technobabble right buys him more poetic license than it really does.) For starters, Helen Hunt doesn’t belong in this milieu–and by that I mean the film’s, not that of the blockbuster. (I actually thought she acquitted herself fine in What Women Want and Cast Away.) Blame the contemporary compulsion to spell everything out: The picture saddles her character, Dr. Jo Harding, with a Tragic Past™ so that she’ll have a psychological motivation for chasing twisters, something that is not only completely gratuitous but also forces us to consider her provenance in a way that would never be an issue had the film stuck to the present tense. It’s impossible to imagine the immutably bicoastal Hunt as the Midwest offspring of the rednecks who leave an indelible impression in the opening flashback, and as a result, she wanders through Twister a virtual impostor.

National Treasure (2004) [Widescreen] + Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) [Director’s Cut – Unrated, New Extended Version] – DVDs|National Treasure [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD

May 11, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Mystery, Nicolas Cage, Thriller

NATIONAL TREASURE
½*/****
DVD – Image B Sound A Extras C+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Diane Kruger
screenplay by Jim Kouf and Cormac Wibberley & Marianne Wibberley
directed by Jon Turteltaub

Nationaltreasurecapby Walter Chaw How's this for a barometer of the national cinematic weather? National Treasure is going to get more praise than condemnation from me because it isn't homophobic, misogynistic, or blatantly misanthropic. All it is, really, is astonishingly boring, terribly stupid, and, it bears repeating, boring. It's boring. (Also stupid.) Essentially the film is a Hardy Boys adventure where cryptic clues have our intrepid boy scouts traversing America's historic landmarks on a scavenger hunt for two hours and change. Where the hero is a misunderstood scholar, his sidekick is a computer nerd, and his girlfriend's hobby is history because history is cool. (The sequel will probably touch on spelling, maybe arithmetic–be still my beating heart.) And where inspiration runs out a little over half-an-hour into the runtime, causing National Treasure to resort to recycling the same rising and falling in action over and over into–and our film's history buffs will appreciate this–what seems an eternity.

Then She Found Me (2008)

May 8, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth, Helen Hunt, Bette Midler
screenplay by Alice Arlen and Victor Levin & Helen Hunt and Helen Hunt (<–not a typo)
directed by Helen Hunt

Thenshefoundmeby Walter Chaw Mamet-lite–which is to say "garbage-lite"–for the most part, the dialogue in Helen Hunt's hyphenate debut is repetitive and deeply irritating, especially as delivered by Hunt in that perpetually whinging, laconic fashion of hers. Marry it to a directing style that could gently be called "self-aggrandizing" and generally be called "static" and Then She Found Me thuds into place as one of the most atrocious things to collapse on the silver screen in months. Here Hunt is Barbra Streisand without the singing, optimistically cast as a woman "about to turn forty" while asking poor, mortgage-needing Colin Firth to twice opine that her increasingly cadaverous-looking self is "beautiful" and "gorgeous." To each his own, of course, but Hunt the director/prime mover (she co-wrote and produced the benighted thing) sticking herself in front of a conservative gross of close-ups and pushing others to compliment her appearance is so far beyond distasteful that it's boring. Adoption, artificial insemination, infertility, miscarriage, infidelity, lumpen milquetoast Matthew Broderick as the really, really obscure object of desire, and stereotypes about East Coast Jews pollute this godawful mess like Union Carbide in some unfortunate, populous third-world nation. Call said ghetto the "arthouse" (its citizens, what the hell, "festivalgoers") and point to it whenever the random, ossified, effete intellectuals offer that they prefer to watch "indies" in the "arthouse," eschewing "mainstream" cinema with a sniff, a wave of a hanky, and a puff of talcum.

Speed Racer (2008)

May 8, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Family, Germany, Japan, Sci-Fi, Sports, Theatrical

*/****
starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Matthew Fox
written and directed by The Wachowski Brothers

by Walter Chaw This generation’s Tron lands with unsurprisingly little fanfare early in the 2008 blockbuster sweepstakes, the victim of niche nostalgia and bottomless kitsch as well as the theory that total indulgence from all involved will prevent The Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer from turning out to be their Spruce Goose. I’ve seen just enough “Speed Racer” cartoons to recognize when people like John Goodman are impersonating badly-drawn ’60s television anime (as opposed to Goodman impersonating badly-drawn ’60s Hanna-Barbera)–and just enough, too, to futilely hope against hope that there wouldn’t be a chimp and a chubby tyke who stow away in a racecar’s trunk now and again. But I haven’t seen nearly enough of the TV series to want to see more of it, and after enduring the Cool World live-action version of “Speed Racer”, I confess I’ve sort of lost the will to live. In other words, I was never a fan of the cartoon and was mainly interested in this trainwreck on the strength of Bound and The Matrix. Still, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t take a moment to laud the brothers on their audacity–the very quality I appreciated in the two Matrix sequels, which were, by most analysis, disasters. It seems like sour grapes to knock the picture besides–or at least it seems futile, because the Wachowskis don’t appear to care what people think of them along their road to wearing Kleenex boxes on their feet and saving their pee in mason jars. Speed Racer is exhibit one in the case that the Wachowskis aren’t in it for praise (they’re not going to get any credible praise here) or money (they’re already loaded), but rather to luxuriate in the contents of their den’s shelves: first Alan Moore comics with V for Vendetta, now this excruciatingly faithful reproduction of an inexplicable camp artifact. Perhaps we should count our blessings that they weren’t huge fans of “Voltron.”

Iron Man (2008)

May 7, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

**/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow
screenplay by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
directed by Jon Favreau

Ironmanby Walter Chaw Iron Man is garden-variety pop heroism/wish-fulfillment that, marinated in Robert Downey Jr.'s effortless insouciant sauce, speaks volumes about the psychology of our nation at this disgusted, exhausted moment in our history. The plot's only casualties save its grand fiend are nameless Afghanis: terrorists on the one side, collateral damage on the other–few of them receiving the nobility of an individual death. Even the chief Al-Qaeda baddie is blown-up discreetly in the wings after a white guy first dazzles him with technology, then paralyzes him with the same. (Call it awe and shock.) The film's politics are easy and its racism similarly cavalier: Better dead than red (er, brown); when historians look back at this era in popular culture, it won't be terribly difficult to pick out that which forms the backbone of contemporary "Why We Fight" propaganda. What recommends the picture are sterling performances by Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow as Iron Man's Girl Friday, Jeff Bridges as the mentor-cum-baddie, and wonderful, reserved, dignified Shaun Toub in a too-brief cameo as the sole voice of moral "otherness." What's unfortunate about the flick is that it takes an awful long time to get to the good stuff, and that good stuff–almost entirely CGI-rendered–falls curiously flat. Not quite boring, Iron Man just seems sprung. There's no forward momentum, no impetus, no real gravity. With all that firepower at its fingertips, it has no idea where to point itself.