I Am Legend (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

March 17, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Will Smith

*/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B
starring Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok, Willow Smith
screenplay by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Richard Matheson
directed by Francis Lawrence

by Walter Chaw I, Robot with CGI versions of the rage zombies from the 28 movies, Will Smith's latest action joint (he alternates them with his family™ films) pummels another revered genre masterpiece, Richard Matheson's novella I Am Legend, into your typical, mainstream action chum. At least the fourth post-apocalyptic action picture this year (following Resident Evil: Extinction, 28 Weeks Later, and The Mist), this I Am Legend opens nonsensically, if awesomely, in an empty, overgrown Manhattan, as lone survivor Robert Neville (Smith) hunts gazelle with a tricked-out GT, a trained German Shepherd, and a high-powered rifle. Devotees of the source material will note immediate, stark differences from Matheson's amazingly affecting yarn–not the least of which the dog's change in role from tragic mendicant to action hero. (Rest assured that the canine's populist transformation mirrors Neville's own.) This Neville is a brilliant research scientist and stud alpha male at "Ground Zero" of a deadly plague brought on by a virus introduced by well-meaning scientists trying to cure cancer. Why said virus would result in legions of hairless, angry, incoherent acrobats is anyone's guess, but Neville dedicates himself post-Fall to endless conversations with his dog, working out, and discovering The Cure. Political allegory flies thick and furious, from calling NYC "Ground Zero" to the central suggestion that biological weapons could cause a lot of damage in a population centre; but I Am Legend is really just a dimwit's idea of science-fiction (see again I, Robot, another Akiva Goldsman-adapted piece of shit) that takes its high concept and uses it as an excuse for a lot of cool, expensive special effects.

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

March 14, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Theatrical

***/****
screenplay by Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul, based on the book by Dr. Seuss
directed by Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino

by Walter Chaw Surprised as anyone to be saying it, but Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! is actually pretty good. It's a climate-change kind of flick, as you might imagine, or at least that's the prism du jour through which one must view a world afflicted by weird weather patterns on the brink of complete annihilation. Likewise, when the residents of microbial Whoville are enlisted to participate in their own salvation (despite a feckless, flat-earther ruling party urging them to fiddle while Rome melts), it points a rather stern, Seussian finger at the fringe holdouts who still feel that evolution and global warming are theories in dispute. (I personally like the argument that because things are getting colder, it proves that global warming isn't happening–which is, let's face it, almost as ignorant as the idea that someone buried dinosaur bones to fool us into thinking there was a world before Man.) Not so much in dispute is this idea that films–especially genre films like this–are often the first indicators in popular culture of the things that infect us, that make us worried for ourselves and for our children. Heartening to find entertainment directed at kids that applies the cautionary warning of "The Emperor's New Clothes" to our heritage of instantly Oprah-fying atrocity–and that provides a CGI context for Dr. Seuss's sometimes-terrifyingly surreal imagery to spend no time gawping at its own invention.

Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains the Same (1976) – Blu-ray Disc

March 13, 2008Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Concert Doc, Documentary, Fantasy, Music, UK

The Song Remains the Same
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant
directed by Joe Massot and Peter Clifton

by Bill Chambers I was a closet Led Zeppelin fanboy throughout my teen years. It wasn’t because I thought their music reflected poor taste (no guilty pleasure, they–no need to sic Carl Wilson on me), but rather because there are connotations to liking them I felt misrepresented me and my affection for the band as facilitators of emotional catharsis. Affiliate yourself with The Cure and at the very least you’ll score points with hot goth chicks; affiliate yourself with Led Zeppelin and expect to spend your Friday nights rolling 20-sided dice and/or mingling with ersatz hippies. In retrospect, I had basically separated the Led Zeppelin discography from the iconographic baggage that came with it; and I think part of the reason I could never get through The Song Remains the Same (the movie, not the album, although the album is no great shakes) as a teenager–other than the fact that, no matter how you slice it, it simply isn’t very good–was because its goofy non sequiturs and psychedelic glaze endeavoured to undo all my hard work. I found its imagery psychically intrusive on the seven minutes a day I spent moping to “The Rain Song.”

I Know Who Killed Me (2007) + Captivity (2007) [Uncut] – DVDs

March 11, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Thriller

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME
**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras D
starring Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty
screenplay by Jeffrey Hammond
directed by Chris Sivertson

CAPTIVITY
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gilles, Michael Harney, Pruitt Taylor Vince
screenplay by Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura
directed by Roland Joffe

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I wasn’t that upset about the bad reputation I Know Who Killed Me had acquired until I saw Roland Joffe’s Captivity. I Know Who Killed Me recently took home Worst Actress and Worst Picture Razzie awards and was at one point listed on WIKIPEDIA as “one of the worst films ever made.” Captivity, meanwhile, despite the not-insignificant controversy surrounding a disastrous billboard campaign and a scathing editorial by Joss Whedon condemning it sight-unseen, has all but vanished into obscurity. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense. Poor Lindsay Lohan (I’m sorry, but her pathetic Marilyn Monroe spread in the current issue of NEW YORK gets my sympathy sensors buzzing) is a staple of the tabloid industry and an easy target for hipster schadenfreude. I Know Who Killed Me has the trappings of a serious thriller and requires Lohan to do a little bit of stretching while playing off her off-screen persona. Captivity, on the other hand, is considerably less ambitious and considerably more exploitive, and as such, actress Elisha Cuthbert’s participation can be dismissed as just another former TV star paying her dues in the horror genre.

Nancy Drew (2007) – DVD

March 9, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Family, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras D+
starring Emma Roberts, Josh Flitter, Max Thieriot, Tate Donovan
screenplay by Andrew Fleming and Tiffany Paulsen
directed by Andrew Fleming

by Walter Chaw Andrew Fleming's Nancy Drew isn't just bad, it's fascinatingly bad. From minute one, it's an example of what happens when nobody knows what the hell is going on and doesn't have the wit to hide it. It suffers from the same malady as Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in that it's only confusing if you walk into it believing there's something to figure out–but unlike that picture, this one has so little in the way of internal coherence that it's almost a work of surrealism. When teen sleuth Nancy (a fetching yet robotic Emma Roberts) awakens to find herself abducted in an old projection booth, she doesn't panic and search for exits, she stands up, collects her compass (why does anyone need a compass in the middle of Los Angeles? Dunno), and heads straight for a little window that she promptly opens onto a scaffolding, thus enabling her snickersnack escape. It mirrors an earlier scene in which Nancy discovers a letter pivotal to the picture's central mystery stuck in an old book that, as executed, has all the weight and import of every other indecipherable, non-linear, dada scene in the piece. I'm not suggesting, even, that there's no tension in the film, as there's tension galore in trying to follow, much less predict, its astonishing leaps of baffling, shit-headed incongruity. There are no impulses that make sense, no characters with either a toehold in our reality or a justification for their existence (and the only people who might give a damn about Nancy Drew as an institution are too old to see the film on their own and unlikely to take their baffled children, anyway). As a mystery, in the most literal sense, it's possibly the most mysterious film of the year.

Honeydripper (2008) + Married Life (2008)

March 7, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical

HONEYDRIPPER
*/****
starring Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Stacy Keach
written and directed by John Sayles

MARRIED LIFE
***/****
starring Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel McAdams
screenplay by Ira Sachs & Oren Moverman, based on the novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven by John Bingham
directed by Ira Sachs

by Walter Chaw As a huge admirer of John Sayles's middle-period body of work–a period marked by such pictures as Matewan, Eight Men Out, and Lone Star (still my pick for the best American film of the Nineties)–it pains me to look at something like Honeydripper and recognize in it everything I like about Sayles side-by-side with everything that's fast making him irrelevant. He's got a common touch, no question, something forged in the time he spent rolling up his sleeves, joining labour unions, hitchhiking across the country, and writing vital, committed novels about it all. Was a time his gift for how ordinary people talked and thought translated into definitive statements about the United States; now it seems that all he uses it for is passing, fleeting music in otherwise earthbound productions. Passion Fish is extraordinary in its effortlessness; Honeydripper is likewise effortless, but it lacks brio, and, more so than any of Sayles's films before it, it doesn't have one single reason for existing. Even flat, incontestable disasters like Silver City had going for it that Sayles-ian liberal dementia, and it boasted a performance in which long-time collaborator Chris Cooper hilariously channelled George W.'s reptilian, dangerous/dull political vacuum. Hold up Honeydripper to the least of Sayles's pictures and discover that what he's learned about craft remains while that indigent fire has apparently guttered to wax and ash. Pointedly, at a period in our country where it seems that some of the activism Sayles has spent much of his art trying to drum up has finally begun to manifest itself in voter-turnout among the young, Sayles has produced his most flaccid, middling film. Maybe this is the contented corncob pipe after a hard day in the fields.

The Butcher Boy (1998) + The Brave One (2007) – DVDs

March 6, 2008Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2000s, 2008, Action, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Crime, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Ireland, Revenge, Thriller

THE BUTCHER BOY
****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Eammon Owens, Alan Boyle
screenplay by Neil Jordan and Patrick McCabe, based on the novel by McCabe
directed by Neil Jordan

THE BRAVE ONE
***½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt
screenplay by Roderick Taylor & Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort
directed by Neil Jordan

Butcherboycap

Mustown

THE BUTCHER BOY

by Walter Chaw Opening with a series of panels from Golden Age comics produced circa the era in which the film is set (i.e., 1962), The Butcher Boy identifies Neil Jordan as a director with a secret yen for superhero fantasies. It certainly jibes with the filmmaker's affection for protagonists who, for whatever reason, live in private worlds, in fairytale dreamscapes populated by emblems of good and emissaries of evil–worlds where the most colourful places are the interiors of churches, where the characters' fears and failings alike are assets. Jordan's films are unfailingly about transformation (though sometimes they're about the failure to transform adequately, or quickly enough) and heavy with the illness of existential introspection–the Judas strain with which the modern superhero pantheon is sick. His heroes are rendered simple by their duality, confronted by the idea that for as hollow as it is to change to fit the demands of a particular time and place, it's equally useless to try to stay the same as the world falls down. Jordan makes the movies Terry Gilliam never quite made until Tideland; far from the compassionate fare many label it, his oeuvre is comprised of harsh little ditties about the voraciousness of the social organism and the bites it takes out of individuals living perpendicular to the absolute mean. For me, all of his films, from The Crying Game to Mona Lisa, from The End of the Affair to Interview with the Vampire, are pointedly concerned with the futility of compensatory measures in the lives of deviants.

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) [Two Disc Special Edition] + The Adventures of Aquaman: The Complete Collection (1967-1970) – DVDs|Justice League: The New Frontier – Blu-ray Disc

February 28, 2008Posted in1960s, 1970s, 2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Animation, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Television

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER
*½/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
BD – Image A+ Sound A- Extras B-
written by Stan Berkowitz with additional material by Darwyn Cooke, based on the graphic novel DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
directed by David Bullock

THE ADVENTURES OF AQUAMAN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
Image C- Sound C Extras D+
"Menace of the Black Manta/The Rampaging Reptile Men," "The Return of Nepto/The Fiery Invaders," "Sea Raiders/War of the Water Worlds," "The Volcanic Monster/The Crimson Monster from the Pink Pool," "The Ice Dragon/The Deadly Drillers," "Vassa, Queen of the Mermen/The Microscopic Monsters," "The Onslaugh of the Octomen/Treacherous is the Torpedoman," "The Satanic Saturnians/The Brain, the Brave and the Bold," "Where Lurks the Fisherman!/Mephisto's Marine Marauders," "Trio of Terror/The Torp, the Magneto and the Claw," "Goliaths of the Deep-Sea Gorge/The Sinister Sea Scamp," "The Devil Fish/The Sea Scavengers," "In Captain Cuda's Clutches/The Mirror-Man from Planet Imago," "The Sea Sorcerer/The Sea-Snares of Captain Sly," "The Undersea Trojan Horse/The Vicious Villainy of Vassa," "Programmed for Destruction/The War of the Quatix and the Bimphars," "The Stickmen of Stygia/Three Wishes to Trouble," "The Silver Sphere/To Catch a Fisherman"

by Ian Pugh Utterly incomprehensible thanks to a deadly combination of rigid adherence to its source material and a discernible lack of vision, the DC Animated Universe's latest stab at the direct-to-video market can only be described as a complete embarrassment for everyone involved. Adapting a graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke that isn't that great to begin with (it's basically a portable art gallery of Fifties-era superheroes, too long by half and tied together by a belaboured treatise on why the decade wasn't all it's cracked up to be), Justice League: The New Frontier doesn't attempt to build on the kernel of an idea therein. Instead, apparently weighing time constraints against the most exploitable elements, it pays lip service to the plot and reduces everything else to a series of biff!pow! pin-ups. I've been a steadfast defender of comic books for years now, but sometimes I wonder if artists and fans really know what has to be done to make them viable as an adult medium. Their long-suffering quest for legitimacy has seen a pronounced downturn since the introspective melancholy of Superman Returns suffered wholesale rejection for not featuring enough people punching each other in the face–and it appears that Bruce Timm and his crew won't be the ones to try to change minds. There's an awful moment in their last animated opus, Superman: Doomsday, in which the Man of Steel laments that he has saved the world a hundred times over but still hasn't cured cancer–shortly before the film pounds its audience with nearly a full hour of mind-numbing violence. The New Frontier contains a similar moment, except that it replaces social issues with political analogies so simplistic and heavy-handed they would make Emilio Estevez cringe. When Lois Lane (Kyra Sedgwick) says, circa 1954, that "whatever party, whatever administration, there'll always be bogeymen like [Joe McCarthy]" in summarizing that "we need a leader"–and then stares directly at the viewer–it's difficult not to see this entire enterprise as just a bunch of kids playing dress-up.

The Wiz (1978) [30th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

February 27, 2008Posted in1970s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Directors: Sidney Lumet, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical

*/**** Image B Sound B+ (DTS) B- (DD) Extras C-
starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Richard Pryor
screenplay by Joel Schumacher
directed by Sidney Lumet

by Alex Jackson The Wizard of Oz is a quintessentially American work that could not possibly have been produced by any other culture. Doing a “blaxploitation” version of the story, then, seems considerably less tacky than doing one of Dracula or Frankenstein. Dorothy is a farm girl from Kansas living with extended family in something beyond the traditional nuclear-family structure. There’s a strong sense of community in the film as well: in addition to Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, and the hired hands, Professor Marvel, the inspiration for the Wizard of Oz, is there at Dorothy’s bedside when she wakes up. Dealing with themes of solidarity among the working class, The Wizard of Oz isn’t a film about the black experience, but with just a little tinkering, it easily could be.

The Best of the Colbert Report (2005-2007)

February 19, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Satire, Television

Image B Sound B

by Ian Pugh Speaking strictly as a casual observer of the event, one of the lessons the recent WGA strike taught us was that talk-show scripts are pretty carefully tailored to their hosts' personalities. Consequently, one could finally determine, once and for all, why "The Colbert Report" is superior to its progenitor, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart": When you boil everything down to the bare essentials, it's easier to see that Stewart's treatment of world events, unlike Stephen Colbert's, is primarily composed of sharp chuckles and incredulous reactions. It's a belaboured but valid point that Comedy Central's hour of "fake news" has casually drifted closer to relevance as mainstream news sources continue their downward trend towards pop infotainment and outrageous bias, and by taking on the persona of an ill-informed, blowhard pundit, Colbert merely brings media politics to their logical extreme, presenting news items precisely as they matter to his infallible worldview. His mock inability to detect irony is a sharp, timely condemnation–sharp enough, at least, to send the White House Press Corps retreating to the fossilized, altogether toothless material of Rich Little after Colbert did his thing at their annual Correspondents Dinner. But one of the most important facets of Colbert's act–indeed, one that greatly extends the shelf-life of his shtick–is how he takes the accolades he receives as a satirist and effortlessly folds them to fit the monstrous ego of his onscreen character.

We Own the Night (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

February 15, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Robert Duvall
written and directed by James Gray

by Walter Chaw A cop is gunned down on the street in front of his own house, prompting his brother to don a uniform and hunt down the dirty foreign dog who did it in a field of smoke and grass. To accomplish this, he has to betray one father for the legacy of another and take sides in a war with no possible resolution. If American Gangster is the finest American New Wave cop procedural since The French Connection/Prince of the City/Serpico, James Gray's We Own the Night is a revenge flick mired in Reagan-era morality (even the baddies are Russian) that assumes Dirty Harry's squinty-eyed psychopathic zeal, setting itself explicitly in 1988 New York while consoling itself with a cozy middlebrow outcome. What's doleful about the picture to me is that, philosophically, it suggests a certain reductive fatalism about masculinity-as-destiny in all this Sturm und Drang concerning vengeance, honour, and the thickness of blood. Yet it's not about ripping up social contracts to better heed the insect-like call to violent response, or restructuring society along bestial lines–rather, it's about sucking succour from the vein of traditional ideas of justice and law. At another time, perhaps, this State of Grace brand of serio-mythic gravitas would ring with a clearer tone (like, say, during the Eighties in which it's set)–but as a 2007 release, We Own the Night is dangerously, pretentiously, wilfully naïve. The pitfall of using weathered genre conventions as a springboard is that although it will occasionally lead to things like Jules Dassin's Night and the City and the French New Wave, it more often leads to things that don't understand they're only good when they're reinventing the wheel and not just peddling around it pathetically (à la Romeo Is Bleeding or We Own the Night) like some leashed circus bear.

Shirley Temple: America’s Sweetheart Collection, Volume 4 – DVD

February 12, 2008Posted in1930s, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Family, Musical

CAPTAIN JANUARY (1936)
**/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Shirley Temple, Guy Kibbee, Slim Summerville, Buddy Ebsen
screenplay by Sam Hellman, Gladys Lehman, Harry Tugend, based on the novel by Laura E. Richard
directed by David Butler

JUST AROUND THE CORNER (1938)
**/**** Image B- Sound C+
starring Shirley Temple, Joan Davis, Charles Farrell, Amanda Duff
screenplay by Ethel Hill and J.P. McEvoy and Darrell Ware
directed by Irving Cummings

SUSANNAH OF THE MOUNTIES (1939)
*/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Shirley Temple, Randolph Scott, Margaret Lockwood, Martin Good Rider
story by Robert Ellis, Helen Logan, based on the novel by Muriel Dennison
directed by Walter Lang and William A. Seiter

by Alex Jackson I’m thinking the common thread connecting Captain January, Just Around the Corner, and Susannah of the Mounties, the three films that comprise the fourth volume of Fox’s Shirley Temple “America’s Sweetheart Collection,” is the sexualizing of child superstar Temple. There’s progress: in Captain January, she’s a sexual object; in Susannah of the Mounties, she’s a sexual actor; and in Just Around the Corner, she’s in transition between the two roles. I promise you, this isn’t me projecting onto these blandly innocent children’s movies with my filthy little mind, it’s right there on the surface. In fact, even when you reflect that they are essentially dealing with child sexuality, all three films remain blandly innocent. They never get at anything that might be genuinely subversive. The Temple persona is so plastic and anesthetic that adding sex to the mix seems merely a logical extension of her brand.

Gone Baby Gone (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

February 11, 2008Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris
screenplay by Ben Affleck & Aaron Stockard, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane
directed by Ben Affleck

Mustownby Walter Chaw It hurts a little to watch Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone, making the experience tricky because so much of it is so pleasurable. There's a moment in particular when amateur gumshoes Patrick (Casey Affleck) and Angie (Michelle Monaghan) are flanked by veteran homicide dicks Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) at the beginning of an interrogation sequence that made my heart leap with joy. 2007 is shaping up to be the year that saw the best of the early New American Cinema genres resurrected through the prism of our national nightmare of paranoia and discontent; Gone Baby Gone slots in as the doppelgänger-in-spirit to that period's empty films noir: hard-boiled detectives left knowing less at journey's end than they did at the start. (Compare the way this picture uses genre as a launching pad instead of as a straitjacket.) The final image is an enduring one–in the days since I've seen Gone Baby Gone, it's hardly left my mind–and where bits of jingoistic garbage like Rendition are rattling bleeding heart sabres with patronizing, simpleminded zeal, here's a movie that takes the sobering, mature stance that even things that are black-and-white are never black-and-white. Light years ahead of the last adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel (Mystic River), Gone Baby Gone is about the insanity of agreeing to be absolutely in love in a temporary, capricious universe. It's about parenthood and, a recurring theme in Lehane's books, the cult of manhood, too: what defines loyalty and how those tenets are the tenterhooks to which we're attached to each other in the bedlam of everything else. It's hollow comfort to discover that once the dust settles, the only thing that makes us men is the handshake agreement to perceive ourselves as something other than animals–if nothing more than animals.

Chappelle’s Show: The Series Collection (2003-2006) – DVD

February 11, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Music, Satire, Television

Image B|B|B+ Sound B+|B+|B+ Extras C|B|B-
episodes 101-112
episodes 201-213
episodes 301-303

by Ian Pugh Dave Chappelle's greatest asset and greatest liability both lie in his desire to be underestimated, which handily encapsulates the brilliance of Comedy Central's "Chappelle's Show" and why it lasted a scant two seasons. The series' wraparound segments consist of stand-up from Chappelle that's almost painful in its modesty–so much so that you never fail to be ambushed by his boisterous impersonations and trenchant observations. The same joke of "A Moment in the Life of Lil' Jon" (2.6) improbably works every time it's subsequently recycled, while Charlie Murphy's "true Hollywood stories" about Rick James add up to one of the greatest half-hours to have ever aired on television thanks to Murphy's dynamic storytelling and Chappelle's volcanic impression of James. But however unintentional it may have been, Chappelle's infectious enthusiasm, his ability to subtly burrow into your brain, also tends to manifest itself as a collection of catchphrases, ultimately distracting from the deceptive simplicity of his social commentary.

Eran’s Visit: FFC Interviews Eran Kolirin

February 10, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews, Israel

EkolirininterviewtitleFebruary 10, 2008|Eran Kolirin strikes a modest figure. Maybe it was the illness: exhausted from a cross-country junket to promote the stateside release of his ebullient and in many ways extraordinary feature debut The Band's Visit (and sick besides), Mr. Kolirin met with me at Cherry Creek's Zaidy's Restaurant–home to the best matzo ball soup in Denver–over a bowl of what he referred to as a little Jewish remedy for the bug he'd been fighting on his tour. As we ate, I realized that what preparatory notes I'd made were all but useless. Though The Band's Visit is almost the definition of a political film (Israelis and Egyptians, oh my), Mr. Kolirin steadfastly avoided a discussion of his new role as focal point for the Middle East conversation–and when I asked him who he was rooting for in the upcoming American election (this was the day after Super Tuesday in the U.S. and I was fresh from listening to an NPR report on how Israel and Egypt were viewing the festivities), he said, "I don't have any idea." I began to wonder if this reticence wasn't more reluctance than indifference: as an aside, almost, at one pointed he volunteered that "Bush, yes, is quite fucked up."

The Band’s Visit (2007)

February 8, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Israel, Music, Romance, Theatrical

Bikur Ha-Tizmoret
***½/****
starring Shlomi Avraham, Saleh Bakri, Ronit Elkabetz, Sasson Gabai
written and directed by Eran Kolirin

by Walter Chaw I've been reading a lot of Thomas Friedman lately, mostly because I have glaring, embarrassing gaps in my education and popular, contemporary scholarship about our Middle East imbroglio is chief among them. I've read a good bit on The Crusades and on the wars we've waged during the two Bush administrations; what I haven't read is any extensive insight into the psyche of the Arab Street. Where better to start than through the erudition of a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner? I approached Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit in a different way, I realize, than I would have prior to my dip into Friedman's headspace–and was gratified, as I seldom have been, by how a juncture in my interests resulted in what could only be a richer film experience. The Band's Visit is already remarkable for its sensitivity and patience, but knowing a little of the tragic intractability of Israeli/Arab relations lends it an implacable weight of sorrow. I'm convinced that there's already a latent melancholy in the picture, but armed with just a gloss of Camp David, the Israeli/Egyptian conflict, suddenly all of the picture's travails–being shut out of the Cairo film festival and, at the last minute, the Abu Dhabi fest as well–take on this terrible weight of irony and hopelessness. Without showing anybody coming over to "the other side," as it were, The Band's Visit is about communication, understanding, and acceptance, its characters united in their difference in the quest for the indefinable sublime. It's the best kind of political film in that it's a work, without pretension, of essential humanity–and the best kind of sentimental film in that it earns its sentiment.

In Bruges (2008)

February 8, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*½/****
starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy
written and directed by Martin McDonagh

Inbrugesby Walter Chaw An ugly piece of work, writer-director Martin McDonagh's feature debut In Bruges has about it an unshakeable air of unleavened unpleasantness. It starts with the framing conceit of little boys with their heads blown off: the first victim unlikely because, hey, you'd at least turn your head if shooting started in the next room, right?; the second unsavoury because it caps a running joke about little people that isn't funny in the least. (No small accomplishment for running jokes about midgets, I don't have to tell you.) Between, find Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hitmen Ray and Ken, respectively, exiled to Bruges, Belgium after a London hit goes bad and forced to excrete witticisms in one another's company like Juno-spawned Pez dispensers. McDonagh's idea of profound profanity consists of Ray being very amused by midgets, fat Americans, and effete Canadians and Ken being sucked in by the medieval, touristy charms of sleepy Bruges; both await some word from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes), himself busy doing a real convincing impersonation of Ben Kingsley's insane mobster from Sexy Beast. Funny how something can be both overwritten and underwritten, but there you have it. In Bruges posits the idea that our boys are in God's waiting room–not Florida, but some enchanted backwater, waiting for judgment on high for their sins while sightseeing ancient churches and contemplating Bosch. Ken takes the communion, Ray takes a piss, and Harry surfaces like a Cockney shark in a third act remarkable for its feckless cupidity.

Crimson Tide (1995) [Unrated Extended Edition] + Enemy of the State (1998) [Special Edition] – DVDs|Crimson Tide – Blu-ray Disc

February 7, 2008Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Tony Scott, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Thriller, War

CRIMSON TIDE
***/****
DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, George Dzundza, Viggo Mortensen
screenplay by Michael Schiffer
directed by Tony Scott

ENEMY OF THE STATE
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Regina King
screenplay by David Marconi
directed by Tony Scott

Tonyscottcrimsoncapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I had expected, on receipt of this pair of Tony Scott sagas, to be discussing a formally advanced director with nothing much going on upstairs. But the films' unfolding induced a melancholy sort of nostalgia I hoped I'd never live to feel, for Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State are Clinton-era end-of-history numbers that speak to a time of stasis, when it was believed that you had to trump up a crisis in order to have a movie. Their subtexts of total disbelief–that we'd ever be in war mode (Crimson Tide), that we'd ever have to worry about government surveillance (Enemy of the State)–seem whimsically complacent now that both premises have proved to be vaguely prescient and not much fun at all. And though the '90s were economically stagnant and loathed by most who lived through them, I can now sadly envision some American Graffiti clone in which this was the last thing glimpsed before everything fell apart.

The Invasion (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

February 5, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Sci-Fi, Thriller

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jeffrey Wright
screenplay by David Kajganich
directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

Invasioncapby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Jack Finney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers has proven itself to be of durable stock. Over the course of its first three official adaptations, it's managed to tap the cultural vein–to distil the zeitgeist–in its tale of soulless pod-people replacing loved ones and figures of authority. Something about this specific fear has been an Aeolian harp, essaying the Red Menace of the Fifties (Don Siegel's original Invasion of the Body Snatchers), the new-age cultism and air of paranoia of the Seventies (Philip Kaufman's 1978 masterpiece), the modern military-industrial complex (Abel Ferrara's underestimated 1993 revamp), and now the over-medicated upper-middle classes in German director Oliver Hirschbiegel's The Invasion. If it weren't for the inherent elasticity of the source material, in truth, there wouldn't be anything to recommend the new picture, what with its ridiculous screenplay (by first-timer David Kajganich), deadening proselytizing, and mawkish performances from an assembled cast of luminaries. The Invasion is hopelessly fucked-up in the only way you can fuck this story up: by having a bunch of halfwits impose themselves on it in the vain belief they can reinvent the wheel. It isn't the worst film of the year so far, just by far the most disappointing, and while I really admire Nicole Kidman in some of her independent film choices, her track record of picking real, bona fide stinkers in the mainstream continues with this, her widely-publicized entrée into the $17M/picture club. The irony being–and letting Kidman off the hook a little–that a well-publicized 17-day reshoot with none other than The Wachowski Brothers and their protégé James McTeigue at the rudder transformed what was reputedly a poor-testing, "documentary-like," low-key political thriller into this bullshit.

30 Days of Night (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

February 4, 2008Posted in2000s, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, New Zealand, Thriller, Vampire

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster
screenplay by Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
directed by David Slade

by Walter Chaw The dialogue is woeful and the scenario is stretched at feature-length, but there's a lot to like about David Slade's graphic-novel adaptation 30 Days of Night. As high concepts go, it's a pretty good one: What if a band of vampires was enterprising enough to head north to Alaska–where some towns experience the titular month-long blackout–to live it up in luxurious dark? It makes so much sense that it's a wonder it hasn't been done before, really, and a few glacial, arctic moments in the film gave me a thrill of anticipation as to what might be possible should Dan Simmons's The Terror ever receive a proper, big-budget treatment. The gore is good and plentiful–not explicit to the point of exploitative, but packed thick with unequivocal suggestions of child murder, cruelty, and the wholesome goodness of a satisfying, old-fashioned decapitation-by-hatchet. And in a fall that sees the flicker of resurrection of the early-Seventies/late-Sixties western, it's easy to place 30 Days of Night in the context of another revision of that hoary American genre, complete with exit music suggesting that the way to salvation lies in the assumption of the enemy's tactics and identity. Explanation at last of what our government is thinking when it tears up our Constitution to fight people wanting to tear up our Constitution.