Dallas (1950) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] – DVD

December 12, 2006Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Western

***/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey
screenplay by John Twist
directed by Stuart Heisler

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I hate to be a stuck record, but this is the third consecutive Cooper title I've seen that is at once without serious subtext and possessed of reasonable entertainment value. I suppose historians could make something out of Coop's Southern rebel hero Blayde Hollister and his upward journey from post-Civil War guerrilla to Union lawman–I'm not qualified to judge the nuances of such a transference, though I can guarantee you that good times result. Plopping our man into the maelstrom of boomtown Dallas, the script does its best to bolster his uncomplicated man-of-the-west mystique and even hands him the girl of actual Marshal Martin Weatherby (Leif Erickson) as a going-away present. Nothing in the film is especially brilliant or resonant, but director Stuart Heisler manages the traffic to such a point that it moves in a steady stream without slowing down.

Porky’s Collection 1 2 3 [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

December 11, 2006Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Teen

PORKY'S (1982)
**½/**** Image D Sound C-
starring Kim Cattrall, Scott Colomby, Kaki Hunter, Nancy Parsons
written and directed by Bob Clark

PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY (1983)
**½/**** Image D+ Sound C
starring Dan Monahan, Wyatt Knight, Mark Herrier, Roger Wilson
screenplay by Roger E. Swaybill & Alan Ormsby & Bob Clark
directed by Bob Clark

PORKY'S REVENGE (1985)
**/**** Image D- Sound D+
starring Dan Monahan, Wyatt Knight, Tony Ganios, Mark Herrier
screenplay by Ziggy Steinberg
directed by James Komack

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's nothing more obnoxious than someone being pointlessly revisionist and declaring some bit of cultural detritus a lost masterpiece. Still, I can't help but be guardedly pleased to discover several inches of depth charted in the legendarily foul waters of the Porky's franchise. By far the most notorious of the big-name '80s teen comedies, it was widely attacked for its misogyny–a charge I can't exactly support yet can't entirely dispel, either. But as a critic friend pointed out, they're the only movies that retroactively take place in the Eisenhower era to suggest that all was not well in the American Republic. In fact, the first two films insist on a pervasive racism in their small-town Florida setting, Porky's finding a character casting off his anti-Semite father and Porky's II: The Next Day baiting the Klan upon stupidly wading into a censorship fight. Coupled with Bob Clark's blunt-witted realism, it makes for intriguing viewing–which is not to say there wasn't room for improvement.

Blood Diamond (2006) + Apocalypto (2006)

December 8, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Germany, Mexico, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

BLOOD DIAMOND
*/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Charles Leavitt
directed by Edward Zwick

APOCALYPTO
***/****
starring Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead
screenplay by Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia
directed by Mel Gibson

Bloodapocalyptoby Walter Chaw After sending Matthew Broderick to head a Negro battalion in the Civil War and Tom Cruise to witness–and survive–the end of Feudal Japan, director Edward Zwick dispatches Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly to Sierra Leone and its own diamond-fuelled Civil War to moralize endlessly from the superior ethical vantage afforded by time and privilege. (That they also lend a much-needed nougat centre to Blood Diamond's thin chocolate coating goes without saying.) The Denzel Washington/Ken Watanabe token this time around is the oft-similarly-abused Djimon Hounsou: as the DC Comics-sounding Solomon Vandy, Hounsou seeks to trade a rare pink diamond for the life of his son, who's been molded by the evil Sierra Leonians into a soulless murdering/raping machine.

DIFF ’06: The Aura

December 6, 2006Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Spain, Thriller
El aura***½/****starring Ricardo Darín, Dolores Fonzi, Pablo Cedrón, Nahuel Pérez Biscayartwritten and directed by Fabián Bielinsky by Walter Chaw The late Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky's swan song, The Aura (El Aura) is a throwback in spirit and execution to the grim, inward-gazing paranoia dramas of the 1970s. Hero Esteban (Ricardo Darin) is an epileptic taxidermist who wakes up, as the film opens, in a bank vestibule; we proceed to follow him into a credits sequence that sees him resurrecting, in his meticulous craft, a fox for a museum panorama. The title The Aura might refer to that illusion of life…

Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster (1965) – DVD

December 6, 2006Posted in****/****, 1960s, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

****/**** Image B- Sound C+
starring Marilyn Hanold, Jim Karen, Lou Cutell, Nancy Marshall
screenplay by R.H.W. Dillard, George Garrett and John Rodenbeck
directed by Robert Gaffney

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Now, I think we're allowed to define these terms for ourselves (fans of exploitation movies being a friendly and decidedly unpretentious bunch), but the way I see it, there's a sharp difference in style between B-movies and Z-movies. B-movies are your creature features. Their narratives are actually quite strongly defined and they tend to produce a rather primitive but potent and genuine emotional reaction from the audience. You can picture yourself seeing these films at a drive-in double feature or maybe a Saturday matinee. In contrast, Z-movies are all jumbled noise. The audience does not exactly have an emotional reaction to Z-movies, they just watch them in a sort of dissociated daze. You could never imagine seeing Z-movies at an actual movie theatre or drive-in. The only place where they could possibly play is on a local unaffiliated television station at three in the morning.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] – DVD

December 5, 2006Posted in1950s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams
screenplay by Eric Ambler, based on the novel by Hammond Innes
directed by Michael Anderson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Here's another Coop-travaganza whose pleasures lie naked on the surface. Like Springfield Rifle, Michael Anderson's The Wreck of the Mary Deare is largely uninterested in subtextual undertow or other fodder for term papers, announcing its true intentions by casting strong, silent Cooper opposite hard man-of-action Charlton Heston–the two movie stars least likely to quietly brood or have an Achilles heel to render them even a little unsympathetic. Though Coop has a shady past to overcome, it's largely in the aid of martyring him to a system that refuses to listen; Heston, meanwhile, is possessed of the old I-have-a-hunch-to-trust-the-underdog brotherhood instinct that keeps us trusting despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Students of gender politics (assuming there are any left) might want to put it through the symptomatic wringer, but mostly it's a couple of cool dudes laying down the law and fighting insurmountable odds.

The Ant Bully (2006) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by John A. Davis, based on the book by John Nickle
directed by John A. Davis

Antbullycapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover If you read reviews with any degree of seriousness, you're probably not seeing that many animated kidpix anyway, and so remarking that The Ant Bully is several cuts below the genre's low standards will fall on deaf ears. Still, I can't imagine an audience undemanding enough to not see through the film's cashing in on both the cachet of its source material (a storybook by John Nickle) and the CGI animation gold rush itself. The film is so unenthusiastic about doing its job that it's completely transparent, exposing its worship of the dollar at every turn of the screw. Even the creators of Shrek and their ilk seem to want to make the movie: there's no evidence of that with John A. Davis and his team of unmoved movers of pixels.

DIFF ’06: Starfish Hotel

December 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Japan
*½/****starring Kôichi Satô, Kiki, Tae Kimura, Akira Emotowritten and directed by John Williams by Walter Chaw Stylishly shot, enough so that the neophyte might mistake it for a sparkling example of J-horror, Starfish Hotel addresses that old saw of a character wondering if he's a "character" as mysterious events unfold around him. Handled with more care and intelligence by the first 4/5ths of Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction, Starfish Hotel acts as a survey of other pictures (most notably the mascot motifs of Donnie Darko and Kontroll) as it goes on its merry non-horror, In the Mouth of Madness way.…

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

December 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna, based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger
directed by David Frankel

Devilwearspradacapby Walter Chaw "Sex and the City" fashion porn married to The Princess Diaries 'tween ugly-duckling uplift, David Frankel's facile sitcom The Devil Wears Prada allows Meryl Streep free reign to craft the titular, nattily-attired hellspawn. Her presence here gives the film the kind of starfuck quotient tied to Jack Nicholson genre vehicles once upon a time; without much effort, one can imagine a carnival barker pulling the wide-eyed bumpkins into the freak tent with the promise of blue-chip capering. Alas, Streep disappoints by turning in a human performance as an Anna Wintour manqué, drifting about as "Miranda Priestly" in Cruella DeVil mane and couture, operating a publishing empire (fictional RUNWAY MAGAZINE substituting for VOGUE, though Madonna's "Vogue" features prominently in the soundtrack for the terminally dim) with a soft voice and a sibilant brittleness.

DIFF ’06: The Architect

December 2, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, ZERO STARS
ZERO STARS/****starring Anthony LaPaglia, Viola Davis, Isabella Rossellini, Hayden Panettierewritten and directed by Matt Tauber by Walter Chaw I am sick to death of pieces of shit like Matt Tauber's The Architect--sick of the White Guilt Trip, which here finds architect Leo (Anthony LaPaglia) the boogeyman behind all the cultural evils housed in the Cabrini-Green tenement he designed. When he protests to neo-Alfre Woodard Neely (Viola Davis) that he's just the mastermind behind the building's outline and thus unaccountable for the collapse of urban civilization housed therein, the effect is one of outrage not at the arrogance of The Man,…

The Nativity Story (2006) + 3 Needles (2006)

December 1, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Family, Theatrical

THE NATIVITY STORY
*/****
starring Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, Hiam Abbass, Shaun Toub
screenplay by Mike Rich
directed by Catherine Hardwicke

3 NEEDLES
½*/****
starring Shaun Ashmore, Stockard Channing, Olympa Dukakis, Lucy Liu
written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald

Nativityby Walter Chaw The nativity, consigned primarily in my imagination to bad children's pageants and gaudy lawn displays, gets a third image in my own private trinity with Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story: a thunderously boring film so circumscribed in scope and crippled in execution that it's destined to be a minor hit fuelled by the line of buses stretching from your local bible chapel. It's another teen melodrama from Hardwicke, complete with disapproving adults and pregnant little girls batting doe-eyes at rough-and-tumble shepherds; you see Hardwicke occasionally attempting an anachronistic Fast Times at Golan Heights à la Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, but Coppola, for all her dips into self-pity, is a filmmaker of note, while Hardwicke is just beating someone else's drum on someone else's dime. (Proof positive is that despite the uniformity of Hardwicke's output across three identically-non-descript flicks, there is still no sense that decisions are being made, or that anything more than a sickly colony from a thin scrape across the John Hughes petri dish has been born.) Mary is played by young Maori actress Keisha Castle-Hughes–her race of note because if there's something important about the instantly forgotten pic, it's that its cast is comprised of people who look like people might have looked in Nazareth around two thousand years ago and not like Andy Gibb. A shame that Castle-Hughes is dreadful (and not helped a bit by another dreadful, pop-eyed screenplay courtesy Mike Rich of Radio and Finding Forrester fame) and that Oscar Isaac (as Joseph)–who is not dreadful–is trapped in this prosaic sinkhole. Tempting to use terms like "sanctimonious" and "smug," but The Nativity Story is more accurately dissected with the observation that it's a faithful telling of a story that has as its only purpose the drumming up of ecstatic anticipation for a foregone conclusion.

DIFF ’06: Breaking and Entering

November 30, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, UK
*½/****starring Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Ray Winstonewritten and directed by Anthony Minghella by Walter Chaw Carefully modulated for maximum inoffensiveness and awards-season consideration, Anthony Minghella's King's Cross diary Breaking and Entering plays less like a London native's Crash than like Woody Allen's solipsistic version of the same. Find the Aryan faction led by architect Will (Jude Law) and girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and the foreigners by Croatian single-mom Amira (the increasingly one-note Juliette Binoche) and, in another star-making turn by Vera Farmiga, a Polish hooker named Oana. A weary detective (Ray Winstone) verbalizes the social schism…

Springfield Rifle (1952) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] – DVD

November 28, 2006Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Thriller, War, Western

***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Gary Cooper, Phyllis Thaxter, David Brian, Paul Kelly
screenplay by Charles Marquis Warren & Frank Davis
directed by André De Toth

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Springfield Rifle is a fat-free, plot-centric Gary Cooper western with a difference. While its counter-intelligence plot bears a passing resemblance to that of Henry Hathaway's docu-noir The House on 92nd Street, it's mostly about brisk movement through rough terrain as we wait for a climax in which the newly-minted Springfield rifle will prove its worth on the battlefield. There's absolutely no serious need to look for subtexts (director André De Toth keeps everything (moving quickly) on the surface), but it's a reasonably entertaining time-killer that's never exactly smart yet never exactly boring. Coming as it did on the heels of the star's High Noon, it could perhaps be considered counter-programming.

Wild at Heart (1990) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 28, 2006Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Directors: David Lynch, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Palme d'Or Winner, Road Movie, Thriller

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover
screenplay by David Lynch, based on the novel by Barry Gifford
directed by David Lynch

Wildatheartcapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Back when I ran my website DAYS OF THUNDER, I identified the problem with David Lynch in general (and with Mulholland Drive in specific) as that of a man who didn't want to know: his films tend to revolve around bland milquetoast heroes and heroines who open Pandora's Box and then either become destroyed or must stuff horrible people back inside. But when I wrote that, I had repressed the memory of Wild at Heart, which chucks Velveeta America entirely and imagines a world run by Frank Booth and his ilk. Indeed, Wild at Heart wallows in the kinds of kinky horrors that are viewed in Lynch's other films from a distance, and it's not a pretty sight. Here is the fallen Eden, Lynch-style, where everyone has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been cast out of paradise to fuck, shoot, and act unnaturally before meeting untimely, gory ends.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (1981/2006) – DVD

November 27, 2006Posted in1980s, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Romance, Sci-Fi, Superhero, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper
screenplay by Mario Puzo, David Newman and Leslie Newman
directed by Richard Lester

Supermaniicapby Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. A would-be victim of its own London After Midnight-esque mystique, the "Richard Donner Cut" of Superman II is marginally superior to Richard Lester's mutilation, but mitigating circumstances prevent it from being a totally viable alternative. Reconstructed from suppressed outtakes with due diligence (if a journeyman sensibility) according to pre-Lester drafts of the screenplay, the film follows the same basic storyline, though it's a little more efficiently plotted. (While a few Lester bits remain, there is almost certainly less Lester-generated footage here than there is Donner-generated footage in the theatrical version.) Gone is the Eiffel Tower set-piece, replaced by a charming sequence better allied–aesthetically speaking–with the previous Superman in which Lois tries to call Clark's bluff by jumping out a window of THE DAILY PLANET's headquarters; now the weapon of mass destruction responsible for freeing the three supervillains from the Phantom Zone is an errant missile from the climax of the original, which is clever but probably made more sense before they transposed the dopey turning-back-time conceit from the second film onto the first. (More on that later.)

DIFF ’06: The Lives of Others

November 24, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Mystery, Thriller
Das Leben der Anderen***/****starring Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukurwritten and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck by Walter Chaw Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes his hyphenate debut with The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), a picture revolving around the days leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall as experienced by prominent playwright Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), his actress girlfriend Christa (Martina Gedeck), and the Stasi investigator Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) assigned to listen in on their conversations for evidence of dissent. The premise--monster grows a soul in the presence of humanity--is tired,…

DIFF ’06: Americanese

November 24, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance
**½/****starring Chris Tashima, Allison Sie, Sab Shimono, Munda Razookiscreenplay by Eric Byler, based on the novel by Shawn Wongdirected by Eric Byler by Walter Chaw Eric Byler's follow-up to his haunted, blue Charlotte Sometimes is this adaptation of Shawn Wong's American Knees, which, like Charlotte Sometimes, follows the day-to-day of Asian-Americans--though unlike that film, it fails to find that buried thrum to tie together the little glimpses comprising the whole. It's not for lack of trying, as Byler (over)uses the dissolve as his primary editing tactic in what tracks as an attempt to poeticize the essentially mundane and to literalize what, in the novel,…

A Slight Case of Murder (1938) – DVD

November 22, 2006Posted in1930s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Gangster

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Edward G. Robinson, Jane Bryan, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly
screenplay by Earl Baldwin and Joseph Schrank, based on the play by Damon Runyon and Howard Lindsay
directed by Lloyd Bacon

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's nothing much that can be said about the creamy goodness of A Slight Case of Murder. Debuting at the tail end of the gangster cycle, the film spoofs Edward G. Robinson's Little Caesar persona as Remy Marko, a limitlessly vulgar bootlegger who's gone legit with the end of Prohibition, though his beer still tastes of the bathtub and isn't selling well. Marko thus finds himself in several binds: how to fend off creditors while being $500k in the hole; how to reconcile the fact that his daughter (Jane Bryan) is engaged to a state trooper (Willard Parker); and how to deal with his country house having just played host to five armoured-car robbers–four of whom were plugged by the most sociopathic of the bunch. All good fun, to be sure, but it's not a film for the sussing out of complexities: everything here is blunt, on the surface, and immediately gratifying without the necessity of comment.

DIFF ’06: Rescue Dawn

November 22, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, DIFF/SDFF, Directors: Werner Herzog, Drama, Film Festivals, Luxembourg, Thriller, War
**½/****starring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, Marshall Bellwritten and directed by Werner Herzog by Walter Chaw Though a perfectly serviceable actioner, one that avoids almost every pitfall and cliché of the POW genre while supporting a singularly eccentric performance, Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, sadly, could have been directed by any one of a dozen directors. Gripping but not especially memorable, it lacks the mad Bavarian's insanity: his belief that nature is obscene, as well as his ability to make a trance from the mendacity of routine. (Because Herzog is a rare talent, his films butt up against greater expectations.) The…

Déjà Vu (2006)

November 22, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**½/****
starring Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Paula Patton, Jim Caviezel
screenplay by Bill Marsilii & Terry Rossio
directed by Tony Scott

Dejavuby Walter Chaw Who woulda thunk that crap-meister Tony Scott could be so in tune with the spirit of the times? Scott follows up Man on Fire–a vile piece of revenge-on-foreign-soil wish-fulfillment schlock–and Domino (another slice of the vigilante kind) with Déjà Vu, a time-travel fantasy complete with a horrifying act of domestic terrorism that noble ATF agent Carlin (Denzel Washington) is offered the chance, through the providence of limited time travel, to prevent. It’s one of those questions, right? Would you smother infant Hitler in his cradle to prevent the tears that will follow–and, if you did, would it change the course of history or just substitute that Adolf for another? Alas, Scott ultimately degrades this fun cocktail party conundrum into an action-movie finale involving heartbreakingly beautiful love interest Claire (Paula Patton), clean-Marine grassroots sicko Carroll (Jim Caviezel, doing High Crimes all over again), and a ferryboat full of people crossing over from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. Working in the picture’s favour is that it’s thick with national calamity, making one wonder if Scott would even get a movie made anymore were he not so quick to jab a needle into the collective jugular. The pall of our recent history hangs over the proceedings like a borrowed mourning veil, but Scott muse Washington is so good–and the film’s premise so loopy–that en route to touching the steadily more tiresome post-9/11 bases of illegal/omniscient surveillance and sour regret, Déjà Vu actually breathes a little. It’s the best Tony Scott film since the underestimated, unofficial The Conversation sequel Enemy of the State, which ran over on the same technophobic ground. Call it another science-fiction romance to join this season’s already-bursting slate of Children of Men, Stranger Than Fiction, and The Fountain.