Notes on a Scandal (2006) – DVD

April 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson
screenplay by Patrick Marber, based on the novel by Zoë Heller
directed by Richard Eyre

by Walter Chaw When Judi Dench's brittle enunciation breathes life into the prologue of Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal, there's a hope, however fleeting, that the film will deserve the performance. Her tweedy, support-hosed teacher Barbara Covett is set up as a distaff Richard III, looking to subvert the beautifuls acting as the royals in her school's social strata–the newest member of which, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), attracts the greatest amount of envy and desire. The characters' names are embarrassing (why not call them "Barbara Lust" and "Sheba Love"?), and it's not long before the picture follows suit, becoming as obvious and stillborn as its first half hour is scabrous and dangerous. Adapted from the Zoë Heller novel, it reminds of screenwriter Patrick Marber's Closer and how Mike Nichols's film adaptation similarly suffered from a gradual slackening of shock with the realization that its umbrella of misanthropy doesn't cast a dark shadow on all of us so much as it provides a vicarious thrill, like watching a cockfight, say, or a mantis eating its mate: though foul, its pungency is isolatable.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: The King of Kong

April 13, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Biopic, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sports
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters**/****directed by Seth Gordon by Ian Pugh Sarcastically described as Rocky for video games, The King of Kong is superficially about how human beings will latch on to any opportunity to acquire fame and admiration--but really it's about how easy it is to laugh at nerds. The documentary follows the subculture of obsessive retro gaming, because there's a shake-up in the works: junior-high science teacher and family man Steve Wiebe is closing the gap on the (world-record) high score for "Donkey Kong" held by pretentious hot-sauce mogul Billy Mitchell. These middle-aged oddballs are…

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Sisters

April 12, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Crime, Film Festivals, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK
**/****starring Chloë Sevigny, Dallas Roberts, Lou Doillon, Stephen Reascreenplay by Douglas Buck & John Freitas, based on an earlier screenplay by Brian De Palma & Louisa Rosedirected by Douglas Buck by Ian Pugh Perhaps a little too earnest for its own good, Douglas Buck's Sisters takes one of Brian De Palma's most transparent tributes to Hitchcock and almost completely abandons its homage-laden aesthetic, convinced that saddling everyone with even more psychological baggage would somehow expand on the previous film's chilling ideas about identity panic. The basic structure remains the same: attempting to escape the grasp of her controlling psychiatrist ex-husband…

Color Me Kubrick (2006) + The Hoax (2007)

April 10, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Drama, France, Isle of Man, Theatrical, UK

Colour Me Kubrick: A True…ish Story
½*/****
starring John Malkovich, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant, Luke Mably
screenplay by Anthony Frewin
directed by Brian W. Cook

THE HOAX
**½/****
starring Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Marcia Gay Harden, Stanley Tucci
screenplay by William Wheeler
directed by Lasse Hallström

Colormehoaxby Walter Chaw Suffice it to say that any picture featuring a sped-up version of the "William Tell Overture" is so drunk on its own whimsy that it most likely sucks with a dedicated vigour. Case in point: Brian W. Cook's twee Color Me Kubrick, which chronicles, sort of, the life and times of impostor Alan Conway (John Malkovich) as he sashays through days of getting free drinks and the occasional hummer by telling people he's the eponymous director. Never mind that Conway doesn't appear to know the difference between Stanleys Kubrick and Kramer, or that Malkovich's portrayal of him is so offensively fey that it could be used as a fright vid at "Focus on the Family" scare revivals–Color Me Kubrick is a grand drag revue without a rudder, and because it's not particularly entertaining, it harbours no purpose great or small. Malkovich is only ever Malkovich in all his alien glory, neatly eclipsing his supporting cast, any momentum in the script or direction, and, ultimately, any pathos in Conway's sad need to be someone else. (More egregiously unexamined is everyone else's sadder need to be in the orbit of celebrity.) Unimaginatively shot and, it can't be reiterated enough, abominably written (one scene has Conway suggesting he's cast John Malkovich in 3001: A Space Odyssey, to which his dinner mate asks, "John who?"–droll, no?), the picture is mainly interesting because, after having sat on the shelf for a while, it's finally surfaced in tandem with Lasse Hallström's similarly-mothballed film about another fabulist, Clifford Irving.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: The Boss of It All

April 10, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Denmark, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Sweden
Direktøren for det hele***/****starring Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Iben Hjejle, Fridrik Thor Fridriksonwritten and directed by Lars von Trier by Ian Pugh Presenting himself to us as an image reflected in a window, Lars von Trier literally begins The Boss of It All with an assurance that the following hundred minutes will be nothing more than a light comedy not worth "a moment's reflection." He then introduces us to pretentious, untalented actor Kristoffer (Jens Albinus), who has been hired by office worker Ravn (Peter Gantzler) to pose as the company's absentee president in delicate negotiations to merge with an Icelandic…

Blume in Love (1973) – DVD

April 10, 2007Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A Sound A
starring George Segal, Susan Anspach, Kris Kristofferson, Shelley Winters
written and directed by Paul Mazursky

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Paul Mazursky is at once clear-eyed and fogged-up in his hot-button relationship movies. His best film, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, dips its toe into the waters of swingerism then rushes back to the beach–Mazursky immerses himself in the California psychobabble about with-it relationships only to return to standard heterosexual coupling. Similarly, Blume in Love wants very badly to be about cheating, divorce, and the attendant emotional fallout of both, but unfortunately, Mazursky the observer of mores keeps getting tangled up with Mazursky the traditional romantic, meaning he broaches subjects with which he ultimately refuses to deal. Blume in Love is watchable and often compelling when it's doing nothing at all, but it mistakenly turns a blind eye to the astounding solipsism of its protagonist for the sake of love conquering all.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: The Ten

April 8, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Film Festivals, Mexico, Romance
½*/****starring Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Jessica Albascreenplay by Ken Marino & David Waindirected by David Wain by Ian Pugh Along with ninjas and pirates, Jesus is a popular target of hipster irony because the idea of throwing such a deadly-serious figurehead into a light of silliness, informality, and kitsch seems automatically hilarious--and it may have been, once upon a time, before Jesus bobbleheads, Jesus magic eight-balls, and Dogma's Buddy Christ drove it right into the ground. The joke is so easy, in fact, that I wouldn't be surprised if the notion of Jesus as a prosthetic-leg salesman occurred…

Grindhouse (2007)

April 5, 2007Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Esoterica, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
Planet Terror (**/****): starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez
Death Proof (****/****): starring Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoe Bell
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Grindhouseby Walter Chaw Robert Rodriguez is better at making an old exploitation movie and Quentin Tarantino is better at capturing the joy of watching old exploitation movies, meaning that the Rodriguez half of Grindhouse is exuberant, post-modern camp and the Tarantino half is, as Tarantino's films usually are, pure delight. Rodriguez winks and tries maybe too hard; Tarantino, being the sui generis of a very specific kind of film, proceeds to create something that resembles Vanishing Point and Two-Lane Blacktop while steering clear of irony, self-indulgence, and post-modernism in its reverence. The mistake is in seeing some of Tarantino's casting choices as ironic: what's wrong with the careers of the world's Travoltas and Pam Griers and even De Niros is that they started cashing in on the ironic value of their brand. No, what Tarantino does is remember why they became a brand in the first place. A moment where Kurt Russell, as Tarantino's bogey Stuntman Mike, flashes a giant, shit-eating grin right through the fourth wall doesn't come off as self-congratulatory so much as it shows an old genre vet excited to be back in the saddle. While Rodriguez's Planet Terror is fun in a back-clapping way, Tarantino's Death Proof is a profound insight into the sort of dick-raising entertainments that made Tarantino who he is as fanboy artist. Rodriguez likes to show off–Tarantino can only make the movies he makes: it's not the pulpiness of the subject matter that feels like the true faith in Tarantino's films, it's the sense that for all the artificiality of his aesthetic, there's not an ounce of pretense in his decisions. In short, Rodriguez is the Salieri to Tarantino's Mozart.

Infamous (2006) – DVD

April 5, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Crime, Drama, DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Commentary B-
starring Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Peter Bogdanovich
screenplay by Douglas McGrath, based on Truman Capote by George Plimpton
directed by Douglas McGrath

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Just as Milos Forman's Valmont was doomed to live in the shadow of Dangerous Liaisons, so, too, will Douglas McGrath's Infamous always be the poor relation to the Oscar-winning Capote. This is no mean feat: while Dangerous Liaisons was a very tough act to follow, Capote is an average-to-decent TV movie with a mugging central performance. Toby Jones manages to best Philip Seymour Hoffmann in seeming like someone named Truman Capote, but aside from a couple of peripheral turns, the film fails completely to suggest real life: whatever your feelings on Capote, it managed to give a sense of the psychology behind the bon vivant while being far more damning of his handling of the case that became In Cold Blood. Capote may have been a little square, but Infamous pretty much amounts to starfucking–and unconvincing starfucking at that.

Extras: The Complete First Season (2005) – DVD

April 3, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Satire, Television, UK

Image A- Sound A Extras B
"Kate Winslet," "Ben Stiller," "Ross Kemp," "Samuel L. Jackson," "Les Dennis," "Patrick Stewart"

Extrass1cap

by Ian Pugh The oft-invoked reason as to why we indulge in "entertainment journalism" is because it demystifies the culture of celebrity. Proof of star public outbursts and make-up-free faces, in other words, forces them to "our" level of humanity. At first glance, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's BBC sitcom "Extras" feeds into that fascination through parody: Proposed as unreachable titans via eponymous episode titles, the guest stars who tower over "background artists" Andy Millman (Gervais) and Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen) are invariably revealed to be windbags and/or perverts. It's possible to see this as an attempt to deter us from rumour-mongering: Kate Winslet becomes a bitter Oscar bridesmaid ("You are guaranteed an Oscar if you play a mental," she says upon seeing a woman with cerebral palsy), for instance, and Ben Stiller–improbably directing a film about the Yugoslav Wars–presents himself as precisely the kind of loser he plays in the movies but with twice the ego.

Saw III (2006) [Unrated Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

March 30, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Crime, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Dina Meyer, Shawnee Smith, Bahar Soomekh, Tobin Bell
screenplay by Leigh Whannell & James Wan
directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If nothing else, the Saw saga can be said to defy the law of diminishing returns that normally governs sequels. Both the first and second instalments were equally dumb movies, combining an ambition to be more plot-driven than the average slasher opus while not having the intellectual chops to actually pull it off. Borrowing heavily from Se7en's premise of a moralistic serial killer, the films try to pass off a sub-Rod Serling guilt complex as something resembling theme and subtext; the filmmakers think they're doing more than killing folks in baroque ways, and the combination of brutal violence and twinky piety effectively blunts the former and disqualifies the latter. Which is what makes Saw III a semi-pleasant surprise: for the most part, it's far less pretentious than its predecessors, leaving us in the dark without much exposition and deferring the cheesy explanations until the predictably disappointing finale.

Blades of Glory (2007)

March 29, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Sports, Theatrical

*/****
starring Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Craig T. Nelson
screenplay by Jeff Cox & Craig Cox and John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky
directed by Will Speck & Josh Gordon

Bladesofgloryby Walter Chaw A goodly portion of Will Ferrell's fame has to do with his complete comfort with his body and sexuality. No surprise, then, that Blades of Glory's one-trick pony is straight men doing gay things in what is widely regarded as the gayest sport at the Winter Olympics. Not necessarily that figure skating is dominated by gay men (aside: isn't it?), but that the sight of men in spandex and codpieces pretending to be swans is uncomfortable for great swaths of middle-America and thus subject to ridicule and hatred. The first shot of the film suggests the divide as little Jimmy MacElroy (Zachary Ferrin as a child, the untalented Jon Heder as an adult) joyfully Salchows on an ice rink segregated from the "normals" playing hockey below. Recognized for his nascent useless talent, he's adopted by a megalomaniacal millionaire (William Fichtner in too small a role) who grooms little Jimmy into an Olympic champion whose only rival on the ice is portly sex machine Chazz (Will Ferrell). When the two get into a fistfight on the awards stanchion, they're banned from competing in their division–leading, of course, to their decision to return to glory in the pairs division. I'm not suggesting that Blades of Glory is hateful, really, so much as facile and easy. If you think Ferrell not wearing much as one half of the first man-man figure skating team is hysterical, and if you consider the gag of straight men touching each other's groins for the sake of a spectacle that's already beyond parody to be comedy gold, then have I got a movie for you.

The Lookout (2007)

March 29, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher
written and directed by Scott Frank

Lookoutby Walter Chaw Perfectly workmanlike in execution, Scott Frank's hyphenate debut The Lookout is a mash of admirable capers (A Simple Plan, Memento, and Fargo are high in its pantheon of giants' shoulders), but it lacks suture in its crime arc, making one wish that its small character moments–highlighted by a superlative cast–were allowed to anchor its climax and epilogue. As Chris Pratt, a brain-damaged youth suffering after an act of high school chutzpah that resulted in the annihilation of his golden life, Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to cement his claim as the best young actor of his generation, delivering a performance revolving around the life and death of the mind that is heartbreaking in its observation and subtlety. I think a lot about a moment near the end of the film where he makes change for an old acquaintance and lament that the twenty minutes or so that precede its conclusion–twenty minutes that drag The Lookout into convention and cheap formula–even happened. Until then, the picture drags some seriously dark shit out from under the psychic bed, such as how being a sports hero in high school can hide the fact that you're maybe an asshole setting yourself up for a fall, and how robbing anyone of virility and self-esteem (not to mention Everybody's All-American) can lead to dangerous explosions involving women and long firearms. Once exposed to this genre's sputtering arc light, however, all that darkness in The Lookout is suddenly at the mercy of a lot of travel-worn underdog revenge bullshit. The tightrope of genre pictures is that the first time I can predict what's going to happen is usually when it loses me for good.

Thunder in the Pines (1948)/Jungle Goddess (1948) [George Reeves Double Feature] – DVD

March 19, 2007Posted in1940s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD

THUNDER IN THE PINES
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring George Reeves, Ralph Byrd, Greg McClure, Michael Whalen
screenplay by Maurice Tombragel
directed by Robert Edwards

JUNGLE GODDESS
*/**** Image C- Sound B Extras C
starring George Reeves, Ralph Byrd, Wanda McKay, Armida
screenplay by Jo Pagano
directed by Lewis D. Collins

by Alex Jackson Was George Reeves a talented or interesting enough actor to merit VCI digging up a couple of his 1948 demi-features and releasing them on DVD? Without the novelty of him later becoming television’s Superman and the rumours of conspiracy surrounding his suicide, there’s nothing particularly engaging about the actor. In Thunder in the Pines, it looks like Reeves might be the poor man’s Kirk Douglas (whose star was rising at around the same time). The Douglas persona is jovial and heroic, sensitive but manly–essentially, for me at least, he’s an idealized father figure. This seems to be what Reeves is going for, but he’s only operating at half the wattage. He isn’t a star and hasn’t the confidence of Douglas, that audacity to dominate the picture whenever he’s on-screen. He’s just a small fry.

Decoys 2: The Second Seduction (2007) – DVD

March 19, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Decoys 2: Alien Seduction
½*/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Corey Sevier, Tobin Bell, Dina Meyer, Kim Poirier
screenplay by Miguel Tejada-Flores
directed by Jeffry Lando

Decoys2capby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Sometimes a symptomatic reading is the only thing keeping a critic from hurling himself out a window in the contemplation of drivel. Frustrating when it's not simply banal (and often both at once), Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (promotional title: Decoys: The Second Seduction) is one of those times. As with the first Decoys, it's loaded with revelations about the Canadian fear of sex and the national stereotype of the snivelling, eternally-discouraged male. Good thing, too, because it's almost completely intolerable in every other particular. I defy even the most devoted B-fancier to sit through its tiresome sophomore humour and lame attempts to get the girls' kits off. That it embodies Canuck cynicism towards male-female relationships is pretty much its only point of interest.

Happy Feet (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

March 18, 2007Posted inAdventure, Animation, Antarctica, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, New Zealand, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
screenplay by George Miller, John Collee, Judy Morris, Warren Coleman
directed by George Miller

Happyfeetcapby Walter Chaw For no other purpose, really, than that I loved its unabashed perversity and darkness, I used to make an annual ritual of watching George Miller’s Babe: Pig in the City. The image of Mickey Rooney in full clown regalia, sopping at an ice cream cone, is the stuff of nightmares, as well as a marvellous example of how much Aussie director George Miller got away with halfway around the world from his financiers. As a kid’s show, Babe II‘s success has a lot to do with it recognizing how familiar is fear and isolation in the life of a youngster, and providing solutions to things that alarm instead of denying their existence. Watching the director’s latest, Happy Feet, the moment Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood, danced by Savion Glover) woke up in a zoo after an odyssey in pursuit of a commercial fishing vessel and was told by his inmate, a HAL-voiced fellow penguin, “Try the water, Dave. The water’s real, Dave,” I realized that we were down the same rabbit hole with Miller, seeing zoo animals as insane at best, made so by the drudgery of routine and the inability to communicate with their jailers. It’s a fertile image amidst Happy Feet‘s most fertile passage (and its connection to the Starchild sequence in 2001 is the second such allusion in a film this month (see also: The Fountain)), one that ends with Mumble tying the secret of interspecies understanding to that old minstrel trick of tap-dancing for a very particular audience of otherwise disinterested aliens.

Premonition (2007)

March 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Nia Long, Peter Stormare
screenplay by Bill Kelly
directed by Mennan Yapo

Premonitionby Walter Chaw There's a scene in the middle of Mennan Yapo's thunderously bad Premonition where two little moppets do a little "Who Killed Cock Robin?" hopscotch that is meant, I think, to mirror their mother's tripping back and forth through time to before and after her husband's timely/untimely death. See? I get it. Premonition, with its faux-spiritual, quasi-pretentious, Hallmark Hall of Fame-enshrined machinations, not only thinks pretty highly of itself in its Lake House fashion, but also corroborates a whole new genre behind the ample wake generated by newly-solemn Sandra Bullock involving fractured narratives (see also: Crash), often time travel (The Lake House), and pat morals having to do–like the ironic moral to another time travel fable–with being excellent to one another. Not even the sight of a severed head rolling around at a funeral or Peter Stormare as the voice of reason lends the picture the slightest flicker of life. It's less damning than Bullock's primary career as the poor man's Julia Roberts in vaguely misogynistic romantic comedies, I suppose, though the best that could be said about Bullock's dreary new path is that while the films are still appallingly bad, at least they're not especially popular. This predilection for knocking off Nicholas Sparks master plots should be a short-lived one.

The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume One – DVD

March 15, 2007Posted in1940s, 1950s, 1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Horror, Short Films

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover J. Hoberman once stated that the critic who forgoes the avant-garde "has as much claim to serious attention as a historian who never heard of the Civil War." If that's the case, Kenneth Anger is the avant-garde's Ulysses S. Grant. Lurking in the boho wilderness long before awareness of the New American Cinema spread, he's an influential figure not only in the underground but also in the mainstream. A young Martin Scorsese watched Anger's leather-boy opus Scorpio Rising, gasped at its radical use of popular music, and promptly swiped it for his Mean Streets, thus setting off a chain of events that would end up–somewhat unpleasantly–at the films of Tarantino. That director's incorporation of pop-cult detritus likewise has its roots in the camp underground of which Anger is a part–though our avant-gardist chose to pilfer from Crowley and Kabbalah in addition to the leftovers of pop.

Fuck (2006) – DVD

March 13, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, DVD

F*ck
½*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C-
directed by Steve Anderson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I have no doubt that a first-rate documentarian could make a smart, provocative film about the sources and uses of the word "fuck." But the thing about first-rate documentarians is, they usually have better things to do. Thus it has been left to one Steve Anderson to do the legwork, resulting in a film that flaunts something far more obscene than the Seven Dirty Words: the self-righteous piety of comedians. Though I have been a lifelong user of the famous four-letter word, I found Anderson's Fuck almost completely unbearable, as it brings out a variety of non-experts left and right to get hot-and-bothered about something that almost certainly needs to be appended to a larger issue. Between comics who are all too happy to attack us with their hostile fuck-talk and right-wingers who counter with vicious, repressive hate, it would require a stronger man than I to sit through Fuck without feeling completely battered down.