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

Posted in1930s, 2008, 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

Gone Baby Gone (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2007, 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

by 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

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

Posted 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

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

February 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 point he volunteered that “Bush, yes, is quite fucked up.”

The Band’s Visit (2007)

Posted in2000s, 2007, 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)

Posted 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

by 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

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

Posted in1990s, 2008, 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

by 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

The Invasion (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2007, 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

by 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 distill 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

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

Posted in2000s, 2007, 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.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007) – DVD

Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Television

*/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras C+
written by Alec Sulkin
directed by Dominic Polcino

by Ian Pugh Born the year after Return of the Jedi came out, I was left in limbo as far as the behemoth of popular culture that is Star Wars was concerned: too young to have seen the films when they exploded into the public consciousness, I was also a little too old to experience a religious awakening with their “Special Edition” revivals in the late-Nineties. I bore witness to a hundred “I am your father” jokes before any formal viewing of The Empire Strikes Back, and so, like other movie references I was not yet intellectually mature enough to piece together on my own (Rosebud is a sled, the Planet of the Apes is really Earth), I was more apt to laugh because the television kept telling me to laugh. It’s a poisonous mentality, this vicarious sense of entertainment, and its infiltration of my generation is manifested in our exaltation of “Family Guy”. Though the show brilliantly attacked social mores and narrative conventions, we were more impressed by its far-reaching knowledge of pop culture–mostly the kind of stuff we had only seen on Nick at Nite and the Internet–than by any of the subversive material therein. Ergo, once the fanbase had successfully rescued the series from premature cancellation, Seth MacFarlane and his crew became lazy, too often resorting to facile name-dropping.

Sundance ’08: The Wackness

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, Sundance, Teen, UK

**/****
starring Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Famke Janssen, Olivia Thirlby
written and directed by Jonathan Levine

by Alex Jackson In the opening scene of The Wackness, teenager Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) is having a session with his psychiatrist, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley). Dr. Squires tells him that a “quarter bag” will buy him forty-five minutes. Luke produces the requested pot and goes on to discuss his problems as Dr. Squires fills and lights up a bong. In one of the film’s closing scenes, Luke is having dinner with his family when an uncle asks him what he wants to be once he finishes college. He responds that he’s thinking he’d like to be a “shrink”–after all, he should be an expert, having been surrounded by so many fucked-up people. These two scenes go far in illustrating both the film’s sickly sentimentality and its muddled perspective towards adolescence. Not to get moralistic on you, but Luke is essentially being exploited by his psychiatrist: instead of trading sex for a sympathetic ear, he’s trading drugs. It isn’t that great a leap. But rather than growing to realize that Dr. Squires is a user and a loser (the humour of seeing Sir Ben Kingsley toke up is rooted in the incongruence of such a prestigious actor behaving so immaturely, right?), he ultimately views him as a figure to emulate in a sea of unworthy adult role models. I’m not saying that The Wackness is morally bankrupt, exactly, just that its values are confused. Luke at times comes off as an omniscient demigod who sees through the corruption and hypocrisy of the adult world, and at other times comes off as a complete fucking idiot who overuses “mad” in its colloquial form. Dr. Squires is sometimes a wise and loving mentor and sometimes a total mess who needs Luke to rescue him.

Sundance ’08: What Just Happened

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Robert De Niro, Sundance
**½/**** starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener screenplay by Art Linson, based on his book directed by Barry Levinson by Alex Jackson Already pegged as another legendary fiasco for Man of the Year helmer Barry Levinson, What Just Happened strongly suggests that Levinson is trying to Peter Bogdanovich himself into unemployment. Ben (Robert De Niro) is a fading Hollywood producer torn between two projects in need of salvaging. One is an action film starring Sean Penn that the director, Jeremy (Michael Wincott), has ended by having the villains shoot Penn's dog point-blank in the head, spraying…

Sundance ’08: Red

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Revenge, Sundance, Thriller
*/**** starring Brian Cox, Tom Sizemore, Kim Dickens, Amanda Plummer screenplay by Stephen Susco, based on the novel by Jack Ketchum directed by Trygve Allister Diesen and Lucky McKee by Alex Jackson Hilariously bad. See it with somebody you love just so you have it in your mutual lexicon. The titular Red, a 14-year-old dog, belongs to Avery (Brian Cox), a small-town store owner. Avery and Red are fishing one lazy afternoon when they are approached by a trio of delinquent teens, who rob them at gunpoint. When Avery is unable to produce a satisfactory amount of money, the leader…

Sundance ’08: Be Kind Rewind

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Sundance, UK

***/****
starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow
written and directed by Michel Gondry

by Alex Jackson Michel Gondry has said he always wanted to make a film like Back to the Future (i.e., a quirky, funny, big-budget movie), and I guess this is his version of it. It has science-fiction, toilet humour, a lovable man-child (à la Adam Sandler or Jerry Lewis, here played by Jack Black), slapstick, romance, and a classic storyline involving evil developers with plans to pave over the community hangout unless the heroes can stop them in time. Gondry clearly wants to break the one-hundred-million-dollar mark with Be Kind Rewind–and who knows, he just might do it. Much worse films have made the cut. There’s something wonderful and crazy about Gondry’s utter lack of cynicism. He treats crowd-pleasing blockbuster filmmaking like a genre on which he’ll put his personal stamp. I mean this lovingly, but you might need to be French to be this wacky. Be Kind Rewind is a thrift shop and video store in urban New Jersey that has yet to transition from VHS to DVD. It’s owned and operated by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), who, having learned that his building will be demolished and his business relocated to the projects, takes off to figure out how to save the store, leaving Mike (Mos Def) in charge. After Mike’s best friend Jerry (Black) becomes magnetized and erases every tape on the shelf, the two decide to replace them with their own homemade recreations.

Sundance ’08: Good Morning Heartache

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Italy, Sundance
Riprendimi **/**** starring Alba Rohrwacher, Marco Foschi, Valentina Lodovini, Stefano Fresi screenplay by Anna Negri and Giovanna Mori directed by Anna Negri by Alex Jackson Broadly speaking, bad movies come in two distinct flavours: boring and obnoxious. I'm always conflicted as to which is worse, but as of this moment, I feel like it would be faint praise to say that Riprendimi (the preferred English title is Good Morning Heartache) is just plain boring. Small-time actor Giovanni (Marco Foschi) and television editor Lucia (Alba Caterina Rohrwacher) are a young Roman couple who have agreed to appear in a documentary about…

Sundance ’08: Choke

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance

*½/****
starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, Brad Henke
screenplay by Clark Gregg, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
directed by Clark Gregg

by Alex Jackson Choke lost me in the very first scene. The hero, Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell), is at a support group for sex addicts and describing all the regulars for us. There’s the housewife who put mayonnaise on her crotch for her dog to lick off. There’s the guy who had to have a gerbil removed from his anus. And then there’s the cheerleader who needed a stomach pump after swallowing too much semen. I want to talk about the cheerleader. I think Victor said that doctors pumped two quarts out of her stomach. Considering the amount of semen in a typical human ejaculation is about 1.5 to 5 millilitres, that’s a lot of blowjobs! Two quarts is around two litres, right? So she would’ve had to service at least 400 men. Assuming this would take about three minutes apiece, she’d have to have been at it for twenty hours straight, without vomiting up or digesting any of the semen–which, by the way, is completely non-toxic and would not require the use of a stomach pump–in the meantime. What kind of dipshit expects me to buy this? I admit I haven’t read Chuck Palahniuk’s source novel. I might very well be alone on this–the critics at my press screening were buzzing with anticipation, and the gang over at my message board instantly recognized the title.

The Assassination of Jesse James (2007) + Johnny Suede (1991) – DVDs

The Assassination of Jesse James (2007) + Johnny Suede (1991) – DVDs

Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Music, Romance, UK, Western

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
****/**** Image A Sound A
starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Sam Rockwell
screenplay by Andrew Dominik, based on the novel by Ron Hansen
directed by Andrew Dominik

by Walter Chaw Kiwi director Andrew Dominick’s heroically pretentious The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (hereafter Jesse James) is a deflated anti-western in the tradition of Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand and Terrence Malick’s Badlands. Broadly, it’s a magnification of the Nixonian malaise that infected the early-Seventies, its suggestion that things aren’t much worse now than they were then complicated by three decades of cynicism. As a piece, it’s almost completely sapped of energy, though it isn’t deadpan like Jarmusch’s Dead Man. No, think of it as more of a dirge: not ironic, but post-modern; not a death march, but mournful. It’s how J. Hoberman once (derisively) described Body Heat, a “remake without an original”–Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid corrupted by McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the whole of it shot through with an autumnal soft focus that looks exactly like the reunion sequence that pushes the third act of Bonnie and Clyde. It vaguely resembles an insect caught in an amber sepulchre. Yet despite its obvious pedigree, it is all of itself, infused with the spirit of the now, suffused with author Ron Hansen’s transcendental prettiness (the film is based on his novel), and, as framed by DP Roger Deakins’s painterly eye, overwhelmingly beautiful. Deakins is given the keys to the kingdom here and every moment of Jesse James looks like mythology pulled through a cinematic loom, often leaving the edges of the frame lanolin-indistinct as they trail off into history. I hadn’t thought it possible to see our current crises of faith cast as romantic, but there it is.

Sundance ’08: Reversion

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance

***/****
starring Leslie Silva, Jason Olive, Tom Maden, Jennifer Jalene
written and directed by Mia Trachinger

by Alex Jackson The key image of Mia Trachinger’s Reversion, her follow-up to the eight-year-old, still-undistributed Bunny, is star Leslie Silva’s outrageously unkempt Afro and supermodel physique. Trachinger betrays nostalgia for the early-’90s nostalgia for the 1970s. Her cool is a grungy slacker cool, all heroin-chic and deadpan nihilism. She’s delightfully fifteen years behind the loop, making a hipster film for an audience that no longer exists. Almost everybody in Reversion looks and acts fashionably homeless. In an early scene, Silva’s character Eva even goes into a supermarket with her peers and eats the food right off the shelves! It turns out these people are mutants born without the “time gene.” The past, present, and future all co-exist for them in a nonlinear fashion. So you would think them philosophically deterministic like the space aliens in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, right? Well, sort of, but not quite. Trachinger focuses instead on their amorality. Having never learned to associate a cause with its resulting effect, they steal cars at gunpoint and of course eat out of grocery stores without paying.

Sundance ’08: American Teen

Posted in2000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance, Teen

*/****
directed by Nanette Burstein

by Alex Jackson Real life is just like the movies, according to Nanette Burstein’s American Teen. The film follows the adventures of The Brain, The Athlete, The Princess, and The Basket Case as they finish their last year of high school. By the end, we learn that each one of them is a brain, an athlete, a princess, and a basket case. In other words, they’re all individuals while being pretty much the same. Burstein seems to have turned complete control of the film over to her subjects and resisted refining anything through her own perspective. The results are predictably excruciating to watch. Via the resources of the cinema (slick photography and editing, animated sequences), the teens are transformed into gods, a needlessly flattering notion to the adolescent ego. You’re worried about getting into college? Your boyfriend broke up with you, and you’re depressed? These problems really are as monumental as they seem; it’s substance enough for a feature-length film! Some reviews have complained that the fantasies that inspired the animated sequences are tired clichés: the jock dreams of winning the big game, the geeky kid dreams of getting a girlfriend, etc.. If the fantasy sequences don’t have a whole lot of depth, that’s because their originators don’t have a whole lot of depth, either. What do you expect? They’re only 17.

The Game Plan (2007) – Blu-ray + DVD

The Game Plan (2007) – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Sports

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kyra Sedgwick, Morris Chestnut, Roselyn Sanchez
screenplay by Nichole Millard & Kathryn Price
directed by Andy Fickman

by Bill Chambers Maudlin trash, The Game Plan makes The Pacifier–one of the prototypes for this slop–look like No Country for Old Men. Again we have a beefcake bachelor (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) in a macho profession (football) learning to stop worrying and love the Devil’s spawn. The Rock plays star quarterback Joe “The King” Kingman, whose cushy, Elvis-accessorized lifestyle is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a little girl claiming to be his long-lost daughter. Named Peyton (not after Peyton Manning or Walter Payton, as a leatherhead would hope, but Nobel Prize-winning M.D. Peyton Rous–an early herald of her precocious pretentiousness), she invites herself to stay for a month while her mother ostensibly does philanthropic work in Africa. In the meantime, Mother or some facsimile is fed the lie that Peyton is away at ballet camp (in January?! The film opens on New Year’s Eve), and Joe becomes a pawn in maintaining this illusion by striking a Faustian bargain with Mater Suspiriorium, er, Monique Vasquez (Roselyn Sanchez), the compulsory love interest and gatekeeper of the local prestigious dance academy. (The Game Plan takes place in a Boston so generic it may as well be Metropolis.) Ingratiating herself with Joe’s clownish team-mates (no “Playmakers”-style conflicts for these guys), if not his pragmatic–and flatulent!–agent (Kyra Sedgwick, of all people), Peyton ultimately, predictably, succeeds in her kamikaze campaign to be crowned “the best thing that ever happened” to Joe.