The Lake House (2006)

June 16, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical, Time Travel

*/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dylan Walsh, Christopher Plummer
screenplay by David Auburn
directed by Alejandro Agresti

Lakehouseby Walter Chaw I couldn't help but conjecture, while watching the trailer for Alejandro Agresti's inexplicable The Lake House, that when Keanu Reeves's character is poring over a letter, a little thought bubble above his head would say, "Dude, I totally can't read." Continuing to think that is the only thing providing much of a distraction during the laggardly-paced, sloppily-scripted, hilariously-acted proceedings, which, as that same preview gives away, concern the romance of two people separated by two years, exchanging letters through the providence of a magic mailbox. Argentinean director Agresti's visual compositions are meticulous and his eye for architecture is almost as good as that of his protagonist, Alex Wyler (Reeves), but it's cold comfort against the raging inferno of illogic attending this scenic, stupid, Nicholas Sparks-ian shipwreck. Not helping things is Agresti's lamentable penchant for cornpone, exhibiting itself most stridently in the piano-tinkle, magical-elf-opening-a-treasure-chest score and a series of whimsical wipe-edits and dog reaction shots. Among its dedicated sub-genre of time-warp kiss-face (Somewhere in Time, Happy Accidents), The Lake House is a dud, too, frustrating first because its big gushy epiphany is solved by everyone with a working pre-frontal within a second of it happening, and second because Wyler, lagging two years behind his beloved Kate (Sandra Bullock), never once thinks to ask for a lotto number or a World Series winner.

Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams (1981) – DVD

June 13, 2006Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

Nice Dreams
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Stacy Keach, Evelyn Guerrero
screenplay by Thomas Chong & Richard "Cheech" Marin
directed by Thomas Chong

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover To say that Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams is not a critic's picture would be putting it mildly. Its thick, aimless cloud of pot smoke clearly targets a demographic that is determined (or chemically primed) to laugh at the most formless of gags and sketchily-designed comic situations. Still, I found myself admiring Cheech and Chong's balls in crafting a film that would cause Syd Field and his devotees some serious hemorrhaging. A wafer-thin plot is contrived as the means of our pair indulging in what used to be disparagingly called "drug humour": nothing is about the completion of the narrative task except in the crudest sense of the term. Instead, the film is dogged in its recreation of nonsense talk on a night spent passing around a joint or two, where nobody reaches a conclusion and everybody laughs themselves silly.

Three Extremes II (2002) – DVD

June 12, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Hong Kong, Horror, Mystery, South Korea, Thailand

3 Extremes II
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
Memories ***½/****
starring Kim Hye-Soo, Chung Bo-Seok
written and directed by Kim Jee-woon
The Wheel **/****
starring Suwinit Panjamawat, Komgichi Yuttiyong, Pongsanart Vinsiri
screenplay by Nitas Singhamat
directed by Nonzee Nimibutr
Going Home **½/****
starring Leon Lai, Eric Tsang, Eugenia Yuan
screenplay by Jojo Hui/Matt Chow
directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The vogue for Asian pop culture is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we have irrefutable proof that, aside from maybe that of France, Asian cinema has eclipsed the West's in terms of consistency, potency, and sheer aesthetic brio. And yet, the fact that so much of Asia's more subdued product is often shunted aside for the nasty, brutish, and weird has certain negative consequences. Trolling the shelves of my local indie video store, I was a bit distressed to discover a second-tier Japanese "extreme" title insultingly promoted as being from "The Most Perverted Country on Earth"–a conclusion to which you might not jump if you peppered your Takashi Miike viewings with some Naomi Kawase or Hirokazu Kore-eda. Would you judge American culture entirely through the prism of Larry Flynt and Hostel? Does Italian film begin and end with Cannibal Holocaust and Strip Nude for Your Killer?

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic (2005) – DVD

June 11, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Concert Doc, DVD, Music

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
directed by Liam Lynch

Jesusismagiccap

by Walter Chaw It starts off on the wrong foot and never recovers, this first showcase for the brilliant Sarah Silverman to strut her aggressively, pointedly offensive stuff. Something about the deadpan seriousness of her delivery sells jokes about being raped by her doctor ("A very bittersweet experience for a Jewish girl"), about the "alleged" Holocaust, about how the best time to have a baby is "when you're a black teenager," or about how she'll always remember 9/11 as the day she discovered how many calories were in a soy chai latte. And that you're never meant to know with absolute certainty if she's aware exactly how horrible are the things she's saying could be part of the schtick.

Cars (2006)

June 9, 2006Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Pixar, Sports

*½/****
screenplay by John Lasseter & Philip Loren & Kiel Murray
directed by John Lasseter

Carsby Walter Chaw Soulless and anchorless, Pixar's Cars is the company's first all-around failure. It's got something to do with the lack of a human grounding: the only other time Pixar stumbled was with its similarly bleak A Bug's Life (that picture resorting, like Cars, to racial caricature as its primary tentpole), which is also the only other time the company has neglected to ground its story with homo sapien ballast. It's telling that a company pioneering machine-tooled animation so relies on that hint of humanity for its effectiveness; in its place, Cars resorts to cheap name-games (all the cities are car-parts except, dubiously, Los Angeles) as its primary gag and relies on a string of racing in-jokes (Darrell Cartrip, get it? Yeah, me neither) to lubricate its worn-down gears. It's the product of the "Larry the Cable Guy" school of redneck effacement tacked onto a tired redemption romantic comedy, even more tired fish-out-of-water malarkey, and finally an inexplicable blanket criticism of all things urban. Sub-vaudeville gags with weak payoffs and rudderless execution are the things one would rightly expect from a DreamWorks flick–pity that their strain of high-concept lack of inspiration seems to respect no host.

Dumbo (1941) [60th Anniversary] – DVD + Dumbo [Big Top Edition] – DVD

June 8, 2006Posted in1940s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Disability, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical

***/****
60TH ANNIVERSARY DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B
BTE DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras B
screenplay by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer, based on the book by Helen Aberson & Harold Perl
directed by Ben Sharpsteen

Dumbocapby Bill Chambers With Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney had established two story prototypes between which he would all but vacillate over the next couple of decades. In 1937's Snow White, the eponymous heroine trusts that Prince Charming will one day steal her away from life's ills; in 1940's Pinocchio, a misfit innocent is navigated by his surrogate conscience (Jiminy Cricket) through an unkind world back to the parental figure he left behind. Disney didn't really return to the Prince Charming myth until the Fifties, when he began a run that includes Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan (a movie about a swashbuckler's repeated rescue of the damsel in distress who fancies him)–Pinocchio's template just seemed to have more resonance during the war years.

Riddick Trilogy: The Franchise Collection – DVD

June 7, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Thriller

PITCH BLACK – UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT (2000)
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David
screenplay by Jim & Ken Wheat and David Twohy
directed by David Twohy

DARK FURY (2004)
The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
screenplay by Brett Matthews
directed by Peter Chung

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK – UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT (2004)
***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C
starring Vin Diesel, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Judi Dench
written and directed by David Twohy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover At the dawn of the century came a little movie called Pitch Black that didn't seem like an opportunity for blockbuster inflation. Produced for a mere $20 million, it turned out to be only moderately successful yet built up a cult following on video and cable. In the interim, its star Vin Diesel did smash business in The Fast and the Furious and xXx, positioning him as the next bankable action hero and generating a hunt for properties with which to exploit his appeal. Thus did the chamber piece Pitch Black beget the big-budget extravaganza The Chronicles of Riddick, a sequel nobody was particularly salivating for but which showed up anyway to widespread confusion and audience indifference. The two films couldn't be more disparate: where the former is a guilt-ridden ensemble piece in which the ensemble rapidly dwindles, the latter is an over-designed star spectacular with a glut of supporting supplicants and plenty of action set-pieces.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972) [Special Edition]; The Towering Inferno (1974) [Special Edition]; Earthquake (1974) – DVDs

June 5, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Disaster Movie, DVD

THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
**/**** Image A Sound B+ Extrss B+
starring Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley
screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes, based on the novel by Paul Gallico
directed by Ronald Neame

THE TOWERING INFERNO
**½/**** Image A Sound A Extrss A
starring Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway
screenplay by Stirling Silliphant, based on the novels The Tower by Richard Martin Stern and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson
directed by John Guillermin

EARTHQUAKE
**½/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene
screenplay by George Fox and Mario Puzo
directed by Mark Robson

Earthquakecap

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. It’s the politically sensitive early-’70s. Action movies are now Balkanized along ideological lines. Bona fide westerns have become completely hippified (Little Big Man, McCabe and Mrs. Miller), while the values of the traditional western have been transplanted whole into a new genre of gritty law-and-order cop movies (Death Wish, Dirty Harry). The question facing Hollywood is: how do you make an action movie with across-the-board appeal? Irwin Allen hit on a temporary solution with his series of disaster flicks. In 1977, George Lucas stumbled upon a permanent one. I’m not sure it really sank in until I watched Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno back-to-back just how deeply Lucas’ little space opera changed the face of popular entertainment. The broadly allegorical Star Wars films were not only a collective experience, they were a powerful collective experience, too. They placed serious religious issues in a palatable context and provoked a deeply spiritual response from the masses.

Firewall (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

June 4, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen, Mary Lynn Rajskub
screenplay by Joe Forte
directed by Richard Loncraine

Firewallcapby Walter Chaw Because 63-year-old Harrison Ford is pushing mandatory retirement age in most industries, his new movie Firewall is aimed squarely at an older, more affluent, less savvy demographic. Casting the aging demigod as a greying bank executive extorted by the usual band of eurotrash techno-terrorists holding his perfect family hostage, it's a fable of paranoia that finds evil in not only the modern cell phone bogey, but other mysterious beasts like iPods, phone cameras, GPS devices, fax machines, and online banking, too. Its never-explained title, in fact, refers to a technology that protects against malignant computer codes floating around the World Wide Web–but rather than try to define this for an audience that's ideally long-resistant to such cogent explanations, it makes the "firewall" a literal thing by devolving into another homeland security allegory, with the craggy paterfamilias meting out sweet vengeance against a gaggle of interlopers. Better to have called it "Antivirus"–but Michael Bay's probably reserved that title for his kick-ass foreign terrorist/avian flu metaphor.

The Break-Up (2006)

June 2, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

**/****
starring Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Joey Lauren Adams, Ann-Margret
screenplay by Jeremy Garelick & Jay Lavender
directed by Peyton Reed

by Walter Chaw Vince Vaughn can never seem sincere, only dazed and slack, making his proto-slob Gary in Peyton Reed’s infernal The Break-Up an odd object of desire for art gallery receptionist Brooke–or he would be if Brooke weren’t played by vanilla pudding Jennifer Aniston. The problem with the picture is that it’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (or the more-often-invoked Scenes from a Marriage)–with healthy doses of Swingers and The 40 Year Old Virgin to confuse the rancour–played by one-note actors who demonstrate not a soupçon of chemistry, thereby engendering zero rooting interest in their counterparts’ reunion. (The fact that the two stars appear to have found love off camera regardless suggests the Proof of Life Effect for the anti-romcom set.) You have to respect a picture that sports at least three or four scenes straight out of Hell and has the good sense at one point to mention it in so many words, like when Brooke comes home to find Gary engaged in some weird bacchanal, the two exchanging a long wordless look across the wasteland as the world comes to an end. But there’s so little presence demonstrated by either of the principals that the movie finally feels disconnected and inconsequential.

London (2006) – DVD

June 1, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Chris Evans, Jason Statham, Jessica Biel, Joy Bryant
written and directed by Hunter Richards

Londoncapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I'll say this for Hunter Richards's London: it's compelling enough that you want its "hero" to get his. Whatever the (obnoxious, belligerent, self-absorbed) nature of main character Syd (Chris Evans), he's a well-drawn example of a common macho type, meaning the more stupid things he does the more you crave to see his comeuppance. But "payback" in this case would mean rejection by his ex-girlfriend London (Jessica Biel), whose going-away party he's just crashed–and no matter how many flashbacks we get to him behaving like a jerk in her presence, the film's total commitment to his point-of-view gives us the sinking feeling that he's not going to receive the brush-off he deserves. And sure enough.

Darwin’s Nightmare (2005) – DVD

May 31, 2006Posted in2000s, Austria, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Documentary, DVD, France, Germany

***/**** Image C+ Sound C+
directed by Hubert Sauper

by Walter Chaw Told almost completely in extended wordless sequences, Darwin's Nightmare covers how the introduction of feral perch to Tanzania's Lake Victoria to sate a ravenous European market has spelled doom for locals enlisted ("enslaved," director Hubert Sauper would insist) to harvest it at subsistence levels, forcing them to scavenge among the discards for sustenance. Even worse, Sauper suggests that arms traffickers use the incoming cargo planes–the very ones entrusted with the export of the perch–to smuggle their own illicit wares and thus further exploit stricken Africa. We learn that the perch were introduced into the lake as a means of supplementing an over-fished native supply to ironically-fantastic results–a perch boom that on-message factory owners and government officials proclaim as an economic miracle.

Tennessee Williams Film Collection – DVD

May 30, 2006Posted in****/****, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Elia Kazan, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Romance

MustownA STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden
screenplay by Tennessee Williams, based on his play
directed by Elia Kazan

BABY DOLL (1956)
****/**** Image B Sound A Extras B+
starring Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock
screenplay by Tennessee Williams
directed by Elia Kazan

MustownCAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958)
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Jack Carson
screenplay by Richard Brooks and James Poe, based on the play by Tennessee Williams
directed by Richard Brooks

THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE (1961)
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, Lotte Lenya, Jill St. John
screenplay by Gavin Lambert, based on the novel by Tennessee Williams
directed by José Quintero

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (1962)
***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A
starring Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Ed Begley
screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the play by Tennessee Williams
directed by Richard Brooks

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964)
****/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras A
starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon
screenplay by Anthony Veiller and John Huston, based on the play by Tennessee Williams
directed by John Huston

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ SOUTH (1973)
**½*/**** Image C Sound D
directed by Harry Rasky

Tennesseestreetcarcapby Walter Chaw Marlon Brando is liquid sex in A Streetcar Named Desire, molten and mercurial. He’s said that he modeled his Stanley Kowalski after a gorilla, and the manner in which Stanley eats, wrist bent at an almost fey angle, picking at fruit and leftovers in the sweltering heat of Elia Kazan’s flophouse New Orleans, you can really see the primate in him. (Imagine a gorilla smelling a flower.) Brando’s Stanley is cunning, too: he sees through the careful artifice of his sister-in-law Blanche (Vivien Leigh, Old Hollywood), and every second he’s on screen, everything else wilts in the face of him. It’s said that Tennessee Williams used to buy front-row seats to his plays and then laugh like a loon at his rural atrocities; he’s something like the Shakespeare of sexual politics, the poet laureate of repression, and in his eyes, he’s only ever written comedies. In Kazan’s and Brando’s too, I’d hazard, as A Streetcar Named Desire elicits volumes of delighted laughter. The way that Stanley’s “acquaintances” are lined up in his mind to appraise the contents of Blanche’s suitcase. The way he invokes “Napoleonic Law” with beady-eyed fervour. And the way, finally, that he’s right about Blanche and all her hysterical machinations. The moment Stanley introduces himself to Blanche is of the shivers-causing variety (like the moment John Ford zooms up to John Wayne in Stagecoach), but my favourite parts of the film–aside from his torn-shirt “STELLA!”–are when Stanley screeches like a cat, and when he threatens violence on the jabbering Blanche by screaming, “Hey, why don’t you cut the re-bop!”

Mommie Dearest (1981) [Hollywood Royalty Edition] – DVD

May 29, 2006Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Drama, DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Faye Dunaway, Steve Forrest, Diana Scarwid, Mara Hobel
screenplay by Frank Yablans & Frank Perry and Tracy Hotchner and Robert Getchell, based on the book by Christina Crawford
directed by Frank Perry

Mommiedearestcapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover How sad to think the only popular remnant of Christina Crawford's debunking of her abusive mother is a bad movie famous for its overacting. Many have thrilled to the awesome camp spectacle of Faye Dunaway chewing scenery as Joan Crawford in all her alcoholic clean-freak glory, yet I somehow can't join the party: as ridiculous as the "Biggest Mother of Them All" may be, there was a victim of her unknowing self-parody–and seeing that sufferer get a thorough shellacking is just a little hard to take. It's like watching some halfwit drunk try to pick up an unwilling woman at a bar: his feeble come-ons might amuse if only they didn't result in the horrible discomfort of the second party. In any other context, Dunaway's fare-thee-well performance would guarantee instant hilarity, but the horrible things the titular Mommie Dearest does to her helpless prey kind of squelch the drag-queen pleasures to be had.

The Producers (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

May 29, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Musical, Satire, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell
screenplay by Mel Brooks & Thomas Meehan
directed by Susan Stroman

Producers2005capby Walter Chaw Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) is responsible for exactly the kind of garbage that runs for years on the Great White Way, except that for the purposes of The Producers, his plays close in a couple of days, leaving Bialystock constantly on the verge of bankruptcy and at the mercy of a long, horny line of elderly widows and rich spinsters. I don't think old women in pillbox hats renting Nathan Lane by the hour for a few dry humps is particularly funny (or realistic)–but some people, especially those reared on vaudeville, think it's hysterical. When auditor Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick) casually mentions that it might actually be more profitable to stage a very expensive flop, Max hatches a plan in which the two will mount the worst stage production in history, thus bilking their investors out of a coupla million. After finding the worst playwright (Will Ferrell), the worst director (Gary Beach), and the worst actress (Ulla (Uma Thurman)), they proceed to stage a musical that celebrates the Third Reich called "Springtime for Hitler". Lo and behold, it's taken as tongue-in-cheek and becomes the talk of the town. You'd call it "irony" except that this eventuality is not at all unexpected–and wasn't even when it happened the first time, in 1968.

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) [Rock On Edition] – DVD

May 25, 2006Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Music, Teen

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A-
starring P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten, Clint Howard, Dey Young
screenplay by Richard Whitley & Russ Dvonich and Joseph McBride
directed by Allan Arkush

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I could be fastidious and tell you of Rock 'N' Roll High School's faults–that it's cheesy, for instance, with cheap jokes and a relentlessly peppy mindset that somehow contradicts the presence of punk pioneers The Ramones. Yet the film's various demerits add up to a plus, as the exuberance of the whole thing renders it absurdly enjoyable. Much like punk itself (though not like punk at all), the inappropriateness of juxtaposed elements creates sparks that make you wanna dance. This is the big latter-day musical John Landis was gunning for with The Blues Brothers but had too much money and too little sense to achieve: a film that resurrects the innocent, let's-put-on-a-show mentality of old musicals and mates it to the burning-schoolhouse mentality of rock-and-roll. Most people can see that The Ramones have no place in a bouncy teen comedy, but that's almost the best joke in the movie's arsenal.

The Ringer (2005) – DVD

May 23, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Sports

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Johnny Knoxville, Brian Cox, Katherine Heigl, Jed Rees
screenplay by Ricky Blitt
directed by Barry W. Blaustein

by Walter Chaw There are a couple of fascinating things embedded in the premise and execution of Barry W. Blaustein’s Farrelly Brothers-produced The Ringer, the story of Steve Barker, a broke cubicle monkey who tries to do the right thing and ends up trying to rig the Special Olympics by impersonating a mentally-challenged athlete. One is the notion that it’s easier to feign retardation to the non-challenged than it is to the challenged; and the other is that, in taking Barker’s “Jeffy” at face value, there’s actually less offense in this broad play for sentimental, slapstick chuckles than in the Oscar-winning/aspiring pieces (Forrest Gump, I Am Sam, Rain Man) Steve uses as research. “There’s the secret,” a habit-clad Kate Winslet confides to Ricky Gervais in the brilliant debut of his new show, “Extras”. “If you want an Oscar you have to play a mental.”

American Dad – Volume One (2005) – DVD

May 19, 2006Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C
"American Dad (Pilot)," "Threat Levels," "Stan Knows Best," "Francine's Flashback," "Roger Codger," "Homeland Insecurity," "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man," "Bullocks to Stan," "A Smith in the Hand," "All About Steve," "Con Heir," "Stan of Arabia (Part One)," "Stan of Arabia (Part Two)"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover "American Dad" is not without merit: though nowhere near as funny as Seth MacFarlane's flagship series "Family Guy" (or as pithy as that show's model, "The Simpsons"), it's surprisingly watchable once you get into the groove of its initial 13-episode run. Still, its send-up of American chauvinism flips over rather easily into a celebration of same whenever it verges on damaging critique. "American Dad" is like that college radical who turns conservative upon realizing he has to bring home the bacon–in fact, it shores up the double-edged sword of all Dumb Father comedies like "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons", which walk the knife-edge between mockery and glorification of the male imperative to be a thoughtless, self-indulgent jerk.

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

May 18, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Malta, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno
screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Dan Brown
directed by Ron Howard

Davincicodeby Walter Chaw The greatest threat that Dan Brown's novel, and now Ron Howard's film of the same, poses to spirituality is the same threat that any bad art presents the human soul. The Da Vinci Code is a retarded attempt to summarize painstaking scholarship and liturgy into broadly digestible gruel. In the eyes of many, it's what the Christian Bible is to centuries of pagan mythology and millennia of cultural anthropology: the greatest stories ever told, retold in a form that illiterates and the gullible can appreciate. It's nothing more and nothing less than The Celestine Prophecy (itself adapted for the silver screen this annus mirabilus) for fallen Catholics and armchair intellectuals: books so poorly-written, so bereft of poetry and grace, that they cannot offend (or repel) the unschooled and the indiscriminate with their oblique-ness, each about poetry and grace so brusquely raped and "decoded" that the "conspiracy"–the great mystery of great art–is laid bare as bad thriller material. It's skipping forward to read the last page of the book–and the wrong book at that. Is it really ironic that Ron Howard, who has never directed a graceful scene, has never had a film with a hint of a whiff or subtext (his version of "genius at work" is a holodeck (see: A Beautiful Mind and now The Da Vinci Code)) is the chosen one for the adaptation (along with partner in extreme, middlebrow-pleasing mendacity Akiva Goldsman) of an obscenely popular book (60-million copies sold and counting) that makes anyone with a half a brain crazy with grief for the plight of the sublime in our culture?

Laura (1944) [Fox Film Noir] + Pinky (1949) [Cinema Classics Collection] – DVDs

May 16, 2006Posted in1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Elia Kazan, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance

LAURA
***/**** Image B Sound B- Extras B
starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson
screenplay by Jay Dratler and Samuel Hoffenstein and Betty Reinhardt, based on the novel by Vera Caspary
directed by Otto Preminger

PINKY
*/**** Image C Sound B- Extras A+
starring Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, William Lundigan
screenplay by Philip Dunne and Dudley Nichols, from a novel by Cid Ricketts Sumner
directed by Elia Kazan

by Walter Chaw A camp classic of a very particular variety, Otto Preminger’s stylish, pedigreed Laura might best be read as a satire of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, reuniting that film’s Judith Anderson with another late, lamented mistress and acres more scenery to chew. It replaces George Sanders with Vincent Price, Laurence Olivier with stiff-as-a-board Boy Scout Dana Andrews, and a never-present heroine with Gene Tierney, she of the unspeakably gorgeous cheekbones. Laura easily laps most films for narrative complexity, the sheer number of audacious hairpins it negotiates on the road of logic dizzying for their arbitrary contortions. The character of a fey, fifty-ish critic, Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who introduces himself to a detective investigating the murder of the titular Laura (Tierney) by stepping out of a bath like some hybrid of Smithers and Mr. Burns, acts as the piece’s unreliable narrator, stalking through his scenes like a dandy in honorary high collar and spats while providing the strangest contention in a strange film: that this aging, fey, homosexual lothario was passionately in love with his ward, Laura. The picture might be the most overt iteration of film noir as a genre about emasculation ever put to celluloid, and trying to puzzle out whether Waldo’s for real and chief gumshoe McPherson (Andrews) buys any of his honeyed hooey constitutes a good portion of what’s fun and maddening in equal measure about it. That tension between what’s ridiculous and what the characters take seriously makes Laura a mystery, for sure, but not for the obvious reasons.