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

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

Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2008, 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

by 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)

Posted in2000s, 2008, 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

by 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

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

Posted in1990s, 2008, 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 of 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

Twister (1996) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2008, 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

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

Posted in2000s, 2008, 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

by 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)

Posted in2000s, 2008, 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

by 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)

Posted in2000s, 2008, 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)

Posted in2000s, 2008, 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

by 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 Afghans: 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.

Jack Ketchum’s The Lost (2008) – DVD

Jack Ketchum’s The Lost (2008) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD, Horror, Teen

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Marc Senter, Shay Astar, Alex Frost, Ed Lauter
screenplay by Chris Sivertson, based on the novel by Jack Ketchum
directed by Chris Sivertson

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The Lost is simultaneously polished and crude. For all intents and purposes, it’s a direct-to-video release*, and it has a “direct-to-video” vibe to it. There’s a broadness to the acting, to put it delicately. It’s not that these are bad actors, exactly, it’s just that their performances are superficial. I want to say that they lack the nuance of what you’d get in a theatrical feature, but I’m beginning to wonder if there is something about the very nature of the “theatrical film” that is more accommodating of excess. That perhaps the very size of a theatrically-released film can dwarf an over-actor and make the severity of his or her offense somewhat less significant, whereas if a film goes straight-to-DVD, it becomes more performance-oriented. It seems that it’s really hard to find camp in a theatrical release and really hard to avoid it in dtv product. I don’t know whether this is me the viewer projecting something from outside the film–I guess it must be, as I wouldn’t imagine that most filmmakers actually intend their movies to bypass the big screen altogether. But wherever it comes from, it’s there.

Lake of Fire (2007) – DVD

Lake of Fire (2007) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A-
directed by Tony Kaye

by Alex Jackson I’m all over the map on Tony Kaye’s epic abortion documentary Lake of Fire. I suppose the first thing that bothers me is that the film purports to be about a controversial issue, as I don’t perceive any controversy on the issue of abortion: anybody trying to take away women’s access to safe and legal abortions is a moron. It’s not that the pro-life movement is immoral, and it’s not that they merely have values that differ from my own. It’s that they are idiots. There is only one right answer, and if you can’t see it, it’s because you are a moron and haven’t really thought the situation through.

The Devil’s Own (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

The Devil’s Own (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Margaret Colin, Ruben Blades
screenplay by David Aaron Cohen & Vincent Patrick and Kevin Jarre
directed by Alan J. Pakula

by Bill Chambers One of the intriguing consequences of a new home-video medium is that, whether due to a paucity of selection or, in my case, professional obligation, you wind up revisiting some marginal titles you never thought you’d have cause to watch again. Case in point: the final film from the mercurial Alan J. Pakula, 1997’s The Devil’s Own, which docks on Blu-ray as part of Sony’s suddenly aggressive catalogue rollout. The kind of topical widescreen melodrama Hollywood trotted out pretty regularly in the CinemaScope era, as well as the kind of glib commentary on another nation’s failures you’d expect from Edward Zwick or Sydney Pollack before Pakula, the picture began life as a typically-contentious Kevin Jarre script about a vicious, coke-snorting IRA terrorist who crosses paths with a “hair-bag”–i.e., a cop still walking the beat long past his prime–while on the lam in New York.

12 Angry Men (1957) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

12 Angry Men (1957) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

Posted in1950s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B
starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G. Marshall
screenplay by Reginald Rose
directed by Sidney Lumet

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men is centred around the notion that the guilt of an accused man must be established beyond a reasonable doubt if he is to be punished through the legal system. It’s a notion that most educated adults in this country have already accepted as a basic moral principle, yet 12 Angry Men manages to come off as surprisingly edgy for arguing sincerely in favour of it. The film never answers the fundamental question of whether or not the accused is indeed guilty. (We as an audience are never shown what actually happened on that fateful night, nor do we ever meet another potential suspect.) The possibility that he could have committed the murder and gotten away with it is left smugly unaddressed. Because it could not be proven in court, it simply doesn’t matter.

Hiya, Kids!!: A ’50s Saturday Morning – DVD

Hiya, Kids!!: A ’50s Saturday Morning – DVD

Posted in1950s, 2000s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, DVD, Esoterica, Family, Scream/Shout! Factory, Television

by Ian Pugh Take a gander at the stuff you used to watch as a kid and you’ll more than likely come to two realizations: 1) that a lot of stupefying crap wormed its way into your living room; and 2) that the shows that were actually pretty good tended to throw out a lot of jokes that flew right over your preteen head. Dedicating each of its four discs to a different block of children’s programming from some indeterminate period of the Golden Decade*, Shout! Factory’s Hiya, Kids!!: A ’50s Saturday Morning DVD collection strongly suggests that this would prove true of every generation from the boomers on. Entire plotlines ripped from the pages of LIFE magazine, a bobbing camera briefly acting the part of the audience collectively nodding its head in agreement, “Hamlet” characterized as a comedy–watching television from fifty years ago is an interesting venture, though “interesting” may be as far as a greenhorn like me can go in examining this set. Although it appears to have deliberately avoided iconic moments from the shows in question in order to maintain the illusion of simply stumbling on them with a flip of the dial, Hiya, Kids!! is somewhat self-defeating as the re-creation of an experience. It’s easy to get the gist of the show in question (the “dramas” are especially easy to pin down), but it’s extremely difficult to form a substantial opinion about anything in this line-up. True that you often decide whether or not to dedicate yourself to a TV series on the basis of one episode, but with the sheer number of interactive concepts on display–most notably in all-inclusive “clubs”–you realize that the phenomenon that surrounded many of these programs contributed immeasurably to their purpose and appeal. Alas, without much context, the brilliant concept behind Hiya, Kids!! tends to feel a little arbitrary.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)

Posted in2000s, 2008, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Theatrical

½*/****
starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry, Neil Patrick Harris
written & directed by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg

by Walter Chaw The first film was a pleasant surprise for its light-hearted puerility and surprising smarts, and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (hereafter Harold & Kumar 2) misunderstands this to the extent that all that’s left are the shit and dick jokes and the dispiriting carrying of the new torch that male full-frontal nudity is the ne plus ultra of comedy. When it works, credit John Cho and Kal Penn (and Neil Patrick Harris, reprising his role as the filthiest Neil Patrick Harris on the face of the planet) for their comfort in their roles–and when it doesn’t (which is most of the time), blame a lacklustre screenplay that strives for edgy but, like the Judd Apatow school of moral/filth passion plays, is exceptionally conservative, even timid, in its message. All that stuff about smoking pot and saying “vagina” is a smokescreen for monogamous relationships, upholding traditional family values, and a studious avoidance of offending anyone politically in a movie that revolves around an Asian and an Indian getting sent to Guantanamo Bay because the one is mistaken for an Arab terrorist. The contortions the picture goes through to remain innocuous are so awkward (take, for example, the attempts to humanize W. and Muslims) that, in just a few short months, it could become this archaic artifact of the political correctness that’s killed the current era in scatology. The flick’s only sure target is homosexuality–because, let’s face it, the only thing safe to talk about in this context is how much we hate fags. Am I right?

Coyote Ugly (2000) [The Unrated Extended Cut] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Coyote Ugly (2000) [The Unrated Extended Cut] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

*½/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras C
BD – Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, Maria Bello, Melanie Lynskey
screenplay by Gina Wendkos
directed by David McNally

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover J. Hoberman once nailed the work of ’80s trash director Adrian Lyne by calling it “the spectacle of female self-actualization (as enacted for a male viewer).” This shrewd playing of both sides of the gender fence figures heavily into Coyote Ugly, which combines a cheesy uplift story with bounce-and-jiggle eye candy to maximize the number of potential ticket buyers. But though it was produced by former Lyne benefactor Jerry Bruckheimer and practically channels the director’s empty-calorie flash, the his ‘n’ hers formula doesn’t work this time around: whatever else could be said against the dissipated Brit, there was a hysterical urgency to Lyne that his substitute, David McNally, can’t match. You see the flesh, you hear the pain, but aside from some very obvious body-double skin added to the film for DVD, none of it adds up to anything you can’t get from Moses Znaimer on a Sunday night.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in****/****, 1960s, 2008, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, UK

****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke & Stanley Kubrick, based on Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”
directed by Stanley Kubrick

FFC Must-Own

by Alex Jackson Seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey as a film about evolution is natural but ultimately inaccurate, I think. The Darwinist views evolution as an external response to the world–a survival mechanism–while the Nietzschian views it as an internal, ethical one. Both are touched on in 2001, and both are misleading in that they fail to acknowledge that Man’s evolution in this film is born out of destiny. Out of fate. More appropriate to view evolution here in terms of the lifespan of the butterfly or moth. Guided by a supreme alien intelligence, the species of 2001 evolves from the larva (ape) to the pupa (human) to the butterfly (star child).

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) [2-Disc Unrated Widescreen Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) [2-Disc Unrated Widescreen Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Music, Satire

WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY
AMERICAN COX: THE UNBEARABLY LONG, SELF-INDULGENT DIRECTOR’S CUT
**½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Tim Meadows, Kristen Wiig
screenplay by Judd Apatow & Jake Kasdan
directed by Jake Kasdan

by Bill Chambers In a recent magazine profile, Judd Apatow blamed the box-office failure of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (hereafter Walk Hard) on its opening-weekend competition, National Treasure: Book of Secrets and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I could definitely see the combination of those movies hoarding the demographic spectrum, but I’d like to propose a different theory: I think that Walk Hard bombed because the laser precision with which it mercilessly dissects singer-songwriter biopics ultimately shamed audiences for falling for their literalminded epiphanies (see: Reese Witherspoon’s June Carter telling Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash that he’s unable to “walk the line”), Freudian claptrap, and whitewashed characterizations in the first place. The picture drips with contempt–not for the individuals who inspire these celluloid monuments (as I had initially feared), but for the institutionalized paradigm into which the lives of artists as disparate as Cash, Ray Charles, and Bobby Darin could each be comfortably slotted. For the middlebrow establishment, Walk Hard is the equivalent of getting teased for complimenting the emperor on his new wardrobe.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance

½*/****
starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand
screenplay by Jason Segel
directed by Nicholas Stoller

by Walter Chaw Listen, I have a family. There are so many places I’d rather be than in a theatre watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall, listening to the reaction elicited by three fleeting full-frontal shots of male nudity and trying for the life of me to understand how a comedy that clocks in at nearly two hours could elicit only one real laugh, maybe two. There’s a potentially interesting discussion about the exploitation of the male form in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and how, in general, the reaction to male nudity is a hell of a lot different than the reaction to female nudity (there’s a good reason that Colin Farrell’s penis was excised from the already-unintentionally-funny A Home at the End of the World: male nudity is a threat you respond to with laughter; female nudity is an invitation you respond to with various levels of sexual discomfort)–but you can still have that discussion without actually enduring the picture. You could try to figure out how it is that Judd Apatow has parlayed his newfound hitmaker status into a cottage industry of filthy family-values flicks that fall lock-step behind one another while increasingly raising suspicions that what they’re really preaching is ultra-conservative (chastity, pro-life, anti-fag) all the way down the line. If Forgetting Sarah Marshall doesn’t end in a wedding, it’s only because it ends before the hero and his prize get the chance. It’s a romcom pretending to be a guy flick, and I hope that’s the kind of garbage we can all agree is garbage.

Bionic Woman: Volume One (2007) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, DVD, Sci-Fi, Television, Thriller

Image A- Sound A Extras C
“Pilot,” “Paradise Lost,” “Sisterhood,” “Faceoff,” “The Education of Jaime Sommers,” “The List,” “Trust Issues,” “Do Not Disturb”

by Ian Pugh David Eick’s remake of the old Lindsay Wagner series “The Bionic Woman” is a near-literal relic straight out of 1976 so thoroughly convinced of its premise’s timelessness that it merely tosses the same old shit together with popular concerns of the 21st century–terrorism, the Iraq War, North Korea, the omnipresence of computer technology–in the vague hope that it will all alchemize into something that can stand on its own two feet. Call it the oblivious antithesis to an astonishing meta property like Live Free or Die Hard: it carries the expectation for tension within a battle of seemingly-incalculable odds when the outcome was long ago decided in the little guy’s favour–I mean, like, decades ago. Interestingly enough, amid its largely indifferent applications of wire-fu, the new “Bionic Woman” offers the best auto-critical metaphor with its mustiest holdover from its precursor: the super-futuristic “action” sound effect that originated in “The Six Million Dollar Man” has been replaced by something that sounds like a computerized approximation of a stalled car.

The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) – DVD

The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B- Extras D
starring Kathy Baker, Maria Bello, Marc Blucas, Lynn Redgrave
screenplay by Robin Swicord, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler
directed by Robin Swicord

by Walter Chaw I hate smug little pieces of masturbatory treacle like Robin Swicord’s The Jane Austen Book Club, bits of piffle strutting around like peacocks on a parade ground, secure in the knowledge that it’s pretentious in just the right way for the only demographic that it cares about at all. What kills me is that the idiots thronging to shit like this are the same ones who criticize “mainstream” Hollywood for its propensity to squeeze out cookie-cutter nuggets of worthless effluvium for the slavering approval of teenage boys. I wonder if young men and middle-aged women (the kind who watch “The View” and join Oprah’s Book Club) aren’t, in fact, natural ideological enemies: the former unaware of the evil stereotypes perpetrated by their favoured entertainment, the latter, you know, likewise. In our age of missing information, it makes perfect sense that mouth-breathing pundits find favourable spawning conditions. And in any age, it makes perfect sense that the stupid ones seek them out.