Noah’s Arc: FFC Interviews Noah Baumbach
The War Within (2005) + Paradise Now (2005)
THE WAR WITHIN
**/****
starring Ayad Akhtar, Firdous Bamji, Nandana Sen, Sarita Choudhury
screenplay by Ayad Akhtar, Joseph Castelo, Tom Glynn
directed by Joseph Castelo
PARADISE NOW
***/****
starring Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel
screenplay by Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, Pierre Hodgson
directed by Hany Abu-Assad
by Walter Chaw Two films, one by New Jersey filmmaker Joseph Castelo, the other by Palestinian lenser Hany Abu-Assad, begin to make inroads into what is perhaps the most inscrutable phenomenon of the so-called War on Terror: suicide bombing. They’re important films, I think, mostly because suicide bombers, like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots of WWII, make it easier to generalize and dehumanize/demonize the enemy as faceless zealots. Every manned car-bomb, every explosives-strapped martyr, creates ideological schisms on either side–more so and deeper, I’d offer, than conventional missiles or rifle shells do, because here we’re striking at the very heart of the way we perceive life and the afterlife: holiness and sin, valour and cowardice. If there’s ever to be some sort of olive branch in this millennia-old conflict, it has to start with an agreement not only to recognize the humanity beneath the atrocities committed by both sides in the name of defending home and hearth, but also to admit that centuries-old texts about the supernatural are piss-poor signposts pointing the light of right reason.
Save the Green Planet! (2003) – DVD
Jigureul jikyeora!
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Shin Ha-gyun, Baik Yun-shik, Hwang Jung-min
written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan
by Walter Chaw The first third of hyphenate Jeong Joon-hwan's cinematic debut Save the Green Planet! (Jigureul jikyeora!) is sort of like Fargo if David Fincher had directed it, the second third like Sleuth if Terry Gilliam had directed it, and the final third like a mescaline hallucination, complete with a portly/heroic high-wire artist (Sooni (Hwang Jeong-min) and a swarm of murderous bees thrown into action by a jar of royal jelly. There's a crucifixion, entirely unspeakable and lawless references to 2001 and Blade Runner, and, without warning, a flashback to the unhappy childhood of our hero, Lee (Shin Ha-Kyun), composed with a lyrical sadness that brings a wholly-unexpected tear to the eye. Save the Green Planet! has been shot with scary confidence in a style long on provocative evocation and clarity and short on pyrotechnics for their own sake–something astonishing given that the plot revolves around alien invasion, gruesome torture, serial murder, corporate malfeasance, and Korea's tumultuous recent history. It's indescribable, is what I'm trying to say, but I do know that I was rapt through two screenings, seduced by its sprung logic and affected during its wordless epilogue of a child at play with his parents in a past unrecoverable full of light and love.
The Candy Snatchers (1973) – DVD
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Tiffany Bolling, Susan Sennet, Ben Piazza, Vince Martorano
screenplay by Bryan Gindoff
directed by Guerdon Trueblood
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Hypocrisy and bet-hedging are exploitation hallmarks. Cecil B. DeMille is the patron saint of this cinematic subset, where the money shots are often placed between moralistic quotation marks in order to give outs to the voyeuristic viewer. When The Candy Snatchers tries to convince itself it's about more than the rape and grunting for which it's clearly been designed to showcase, it's entertainment enough. This is a film where dollarbook Marx rubs shoulders with the sub-Sirkian moral inversion of bad people good/good people bad–a film whose attempts at social commentary and "drama" are so strained as to run the gamut from puzzling to hilarious. And though it eventually has to follow up on the leering and brutality that is its stock-and-trade, its delusional contortions are elaborate enough to dazzle and amaze when its mission statement falls to pieces.
The Cabinet of Caligari (1962) – DVD
**/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Glynis Johns, Dan O'Herlihy, Dick Davalos, Lawrence Dobkin
screenplay by Robert Bloch
directed by Roger Kay
by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The first thing we gotta do is get past the title. Contrary to popular belief (as exhibited in Pauline Kael's tome 5001 Nights at the Movies), The Cabinet of Caligari does not share its title with the classic 1920 Robert Wiene film. You're thinking of The Cabinet of DR. Caligari–emphasis my own. That being said, I have no right to be a prick about this, as every time I've typed "The Cabinet of Caligari" I've found myself instinctively inserting "Dr.".
Millions (2005) – DVD
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan, Alex Etel, Lewis McGibbon
screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce, based on his novel
directed by Danny Boyle
by Walter Chaw Unbelievably sentimental and, finally, corrupt with a hideous paternalism (how a flick like this ends first at a child’s Nativity pageant à la Love Actually, then in Africa, where a well is being dug for dying Africans, is one of those all-timers), Millions finds director Danny Boyle, after last year’s brief return to some semblance of Shallow Grave/Trainspotting form with 28 Days Later…, returning to his A Life Less Ordinary/The Beach form in all its excrescent glory. It’s the tale of two adorable, buck-toothed British urchins (the rage after Finding Neverland) who stumble upon pilfered millions in the form of the soon-to-be-Euros British Pounds Sterling and, Shallow Grave-like, ultimately hide the money in an attic with cunningly-placed slats in the floorboards for panicked eyeballs. It’s Pay It Forward, with younger Damien (Alex Etel) obsessed with the lives and messy deaths of saints and dedicated to giving the wealth to the poor (even Mormons, whom the film portrays as evil little twats), and it’s Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana in the poor’s reaction to getting rich, sporting its own version of the beggar’s banquet Last Supper from Buñuel’s picture in a scene set in a pizza parlour. And it’s Pay It Forward again in its subversion of that film’s “teach the world to sing” finale: a genuinely disturbing mob scene starring the superstars of organizations asking for your money to save the world from itself. But finally, it’s just another Danny Boyle film–a little meat and a lot of showing off with CGI pyrotechnics and confused editing.
Into the Blue: FFC Interviews Ira Sachs
October 30, 2005|He has the potential to sound pretentious and he's nervous about it–but there is wrapped up in this self-awareness the Catch-22, as they say, that if he knows he sounds a certain way, he probably isn't that way. It's a hard thing and you see it a lot these days, that if you're qualified, you downplay it–if you're knowledgeable, you pretend not to be–because there is no bigger social crime in these United States than to know more than the next guy. I had a chance to talk to Ira Sachs, co-writer and director of the fantastic Forty Shades of Blue, about cracking the hard skin that's formed over the pudding of the indie dysfunctional-family genre. Set in his hometown Memphis, where Mr. Sachs grew up "gay and Jewish," the picture–like Sachs himself, he's quick to affirm–is about compressing multiple lives into one journey.
Forty Shades of Blue (2005)
****/****
starring Rip Torn, Dina Korzun, Darren Burrows, Paprika Steen
screenplay by Michael Rohatyn and Ira Sachs
directed by Ira Sachs
by Walter Chaw Muscovite Laura (Dina Korzun) lives with her boyfriend, legendary music producer Alan James (Rip Torn), in Memphis. He's twice her age, they have a young son together, and when Alan's grown son Michael (Darren E. Burrows) comes home to visit, Laura begins to realize that although she's living her dream of prosperity, she's a stranger in a strange land, divorced from her ambitions and beginning to cramp from the positions her little deceptions demand of her. She's defined almost entirely by her sometime- lover and keeper–at restaurants, people ask her if Mr. James will be showing up later, and when an impulse has her shopping for Michael, she's asked if she's picking something up for Mr. James. Most films that share a set-up with Forty Shades of Blue are about how it is that the Alans of the world can have everything but be incapable of maintaining a marriage, muddying the relationships with their children with the same brusque inconsiderateness. Just as likely is the film about the vagabond son trying to build a bridge back to his larger-than-life father–the chiseller trophy wife as background decoration and occasional plot lubricant.
Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season (2004-2005) – DVD
Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
"Pilot," "Ah, But Underneath," "Pretty Little Picture," "Who's That Woman?," "Running to Stand Still," "Anything You Can Do," "Guilty," "Suspicious Minds," "Come Back to Me," "Move On," "Every Day a Little Death," "Your Fault," "Love Is in the Air," "Impossible," "If It's Brown, Flush It Down," "There Won't Be Trumpets," "Children Will Listen," "Live Alone and Like It," "Fear No More," "Sunday in the Park with George," "Goodbye for Now," "One Wonderful Day"
by Walter Chaw The writing on Marc Cherry's "Desperate Housewives" is astringent and bright for the first dozen episodes or so. For more than half the first season, the show works as an effervescent satire of evening potboilers like "Dallas" or "Falcon Crest": It understands the attraction/repulsion dynamic of venerable bodice-ripping soapers and boils them down to their base elements of women, houses, relationships, and desperation. Eventually, though, the series falls off the tightrope all satires walk between commentary and indulgence–it starts having too good a time pretending to be that which it disdains and, in so doing, reveals its true colours as a drag revue played by women, ultimately freeing it of irony. Just look to the reports of on-set strife and photo-shoot jealousy to see that the tabloid has overtaken the snark, with intelligence and purpose quick to follow.
Capote (2005)
**/****
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper
screenplay by Dan Futterman, based on the novel by Gerald Clarke
directed by Bennett Miller
by Walter Chaw You hear him before you see him: Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), raconteur, socialite, showman, standing at the centre of the kind of swinging party immortalized in the glossy, offensive film version of his Breakfast at Tiffany's. He's telling a story in a claustrophobic storm of admirers, his reedy, almost-falsetto voice broken now and again by his wheezing, self-conscious laugh. He's flirting with his own persona, I think (Hoffman, not Capote), and the tiny moments I'm able to see through the barrage of misdirection thrown up by screenwriter Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller (all three old friends–the film plays smug like an exclusive reunion) to strike at the heart of Hoffman's own situation as a sensitive soul trapped in the body of a second fiddle (Kevin Smith syndrome–or, more flatteringly, Charles Laughton), are the moments Capote means something to me beyond another exhumation of the Clutter Family murders already chronicled (and exploited twice already by Capote's In Cold Blood and Richard Brooks's magnificent film treatment of the same) and mythologized. It's as Americana as Grant Wood, marking this tiny Kansas landscape with the same brush as Ed Gein's Wisconsin–and making Capote sexy in a ghoulish way when it fails to be sexy in a revelatory way.
North Country (2005)
*/****
starring Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Sissy Spacek, Woody Harrelson
screenplay by Michael Seitzman
directed by Niki Caro
by Walter Chaw North Country is a sensationalistic, pandering film that crafts from a landmark legal case a cinematic martyrdom the equivalent of Christ’s and Joan of Arc’s rolled up into the noble, trembling lips of Charlize Theron (who once had the temerity to chastise the press for focusing on her appearance in Monster whilst wearing a see-through, painted-on size-4 gold dress). I’m not decrying the stunt-casting of a statuesque blond in the role of the tiny Minnesotan mine worker the life upon which this film is ever-so-loosely based, nor am I begrudging, per se, the natural instinct of Roger Ebert and the Academy to foam over turns like this from starlets undergoing extreme make-unders. No, what I really don’t like are movies like North Country that fudge humanity in all its ugliness and imperfection so tragically that the real issues of the picture end up looking like one of those glossy fashion mag covers Theron will grace as she embarks on her promotional turn. According to the world of North Country, it’s not terrible enough that awful things happen to a real live person–no, awful things have to happen to Mother-freakin’-Teresa.
Doom (2005) + Stay (2005)
DOOM
½*/****
starring The Rock, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, DeObia Oparei
screenplay by David Callaham and Wesley Strick
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
STAY
*½/****
starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Janeane Garofalo
screenplay by David Benioff
directed by Marc Forster
by Walter Chaw For a split second, the clouds part and I think I’ve kenned a glimmer of an idea in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s video game adaptation Doom that doesn’t involve homoerotic gun worship or ripping off everything from Aliens save its humanity. Semper Fi, gung ho, muscle-bound jarhead Sarge (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) takes it upon himself to order his own mini-Mai Lai because he’s a stickler for details, and his stock marines balk to varying degrees of morality-inspired mutiny. Suddenly, and just for that split second, Doom of all things becomes Casualties of War (and, in fact, literalizes that film’s tagline of “In war, innocence is the first casualty”), and although what’s leading up to the moment isn’t that great, I was ready to roll with this totally unexpected, thought-provoking tickle. Alas–it flees like hope so often does, leaving fifteen minutes of semi-gory first-person perspective to simulate the first-person perspective of the video game (marking this as the first–and probably last–time someone thought that ripping off Uwe Boll was a good idea), ending with the sort of mano-a-mano showdown between its warring alpha males that everyone’s seen enough of by now.
Mallrats (1995) [10th Anniversary Extended Edition] – DVD
*½/**** (Theatrical)
*/**** (Extended)
Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Shannen Doherty, Jason London, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani
written and directed by Kevin Smith
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Some people think Tarantino epitomized the '90s, but really that (dis)honour goes to Kevin Smith. Single-handedly affirming everything our elders said was wrong with our generation, Smith has continually built shrines to his ignorance, his insularity, and his total lack of interest in the nature of his problems. And his problems, as demonstrated by Mallrats, are impossible to ignore, as they take a group of hateful or tedious boors and treat them with such kid gloves as to defeat the whole purpose of drama, cinema, or just plain good times. Saying that Smith was never a terror with the camera will only lead to a dead end, but returning to the slacker decade's constant pop-cult referencing and "witty" misogynist invective makes one glad that the millennium did, in fact, turn into a new and better-dressed century.
Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005); The Boogeyman (1980)/Return of the Boogeyman (1984); The Fallen Ones (2005) – DVDs
HELLRAISER: HELLWORLD
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Lance Henriksen, Katheryn Winnick, Christopher Jacot, Doug Bradley
screenplay by Carl Dupre
directed by Rick Bota
The Boogey Man
½*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Suzanna Love, Ron James, John Carradine
written and directed by Ulli Lommel
RETURN OF THE BOOGEYMAN
ZERO STARS Image D Sound D
starring Suzanna Love, Kelly Galinda, Richard Quick
directed by Deland Nuse
THE FALLEN ONES
** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Casper Van Dien, Kristen Miller, Geoffrey Lewis, Navid Negahban
written and directed by Kevin VanHook
by Walter Chaw The only genre that boasts more direct-to-video fare than horror is porn, and since we haven't quite reached the point of quiet desperation needed to begin reviewing porn, find here a smelted cheddar of four dtv horror features (actually, The Boogeyman got a theatrical release in 1980, though I can't understand why): the eighth film in Clive Barker's venerable horror octology, Hellraiser: Hellworld; The Boogeyman and its second sequel, the legitimately straight-to-video Return of the Boogeyman; and Kevin VanHook's The Fallen Ones. The only thing that binds them together, of course, is the general disrepute of their genre, doubled by their status as never having secured "legitimate" distribution–but, what with us teetering on the eve of the major studios embarking on a grand experiment in franchising their licenses for direct-to-video treatment, now seems as good a time as any to give these films a look. First we had a couple of Wild Things sequels, then The Sandlot 2 and a Carlito's Way prequel, and soon Single White Female will follow in the Disney footsteps of producing DVD cheap product for fast returns and an eternity gathering dust and puzzled glances in drugstore dollar bins. It's the equivalent of turning Idahoan runaways into crack whores before discarding them for the next small-town beauty led astray.
Oliver! (1968) [Special DVD & CD Gift Set!] – DVD
***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Harry Secombe, Mark Lester
screenplay by Vernon Harris, based on the novel by Charles Dickens and the play by Lionel Bart
directed by Carol Reed
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s an exception to every rule, and Oliver! bucks one of the most depressing: that every bloated, twilight-of-old-Hollywood musical is crass and overblown. To be sure, Carol Reed was far from his The Third Man/Outcast of the Islands heyday when he directed this Oscar-winning roadshow, and one can sense a sigh of resignation as he puts on the mega-musical feedbag. But unlike the once-great craftsmen who started turning in horrors like Hello, Dolly!, the movie has style and credibility–Reed is genuinely interested in the narrative and the mood, as opposed to what other declining directors would highlight: the production design and the money. Oliver! is still sealed in an expensive cocoon, but what’s inside is a world worth watching and enjoying.
Trauma (1993) + The Card Player (2004) – DVDs
Dario Argento's Trauma
**/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Christopher Rydell, Asia Argento, Laura Johnson, Piper Laurie
screenplay by Dario Argento & T.E.D. Klein
directed by Dario Argento
Il cartaio
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Stefania Rocca, Liam Cunningham, Silvio Muccino, Claudio Santamaria
screenplay by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini
directed by Dario Argento
by Walter Chaw Listening to Dario Argento himself call Trauma "classic Argento" shakes the validity of author intentionality. The man's a legend, but he has no idea about the qualities that used to shine in his own work, and what comes clear for a fan of the "Italian Hitchcock" after a screening of Trauma is that the thrill is gone. It's one of those George Lucas situations where if it were anyone else shitting all over the legacy, there'd be a violent hue and cry instead of this collective embarrassed averting of gaze–a cheap ripper that steals scenes whole from better Argento flicks without a commensurate level of understanding of how to use them. Was a time that Argento redefined the slasher flick in the same way that countryman Sergio Leone redefined the Western; that Argento (like American rival and doppelgänger Brian DePalma) was appropriating bits and pieces from Alfred Hitchcock and rejuvenating them in films exhilarating for their willingness to do absolutely anything to anyone at any moment. Once lawless, Argento's pictures feel inconsequential now. Light and aimless.
Cold Blood (2005) – DVD
Freez'er
**½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B
starring Barnes Walker III, Carrie Walrond, John L. Altom
written and directed by Brian Avenet-Bradley
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Cold Blood is a movie that's almost there–that exhibits a surplus of ingenuity even when its artistry falters. Its rather obvious starting point is a man named J.M. (Barnes Walker III) who's just killed his cheating wife with a baseball bat; the predictable apparitions and paranoia follow suit as he flees to the countryside to hide the body. But though the film never finds the metaphor to fit the conceit (and suffers from some amateurish acting), it does have a couple of clever twists and interesting beats up its "Telltale Heart"-redux sleeve.
Crash (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD
*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito
screenplay by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
directed by Paul Haggis
by Walter Chaw In peeking under the satin-slick bedclothes of the latest crop of high-falutin' liberal diatribes tarted-up with matinee idols and compromised ideals, one finds that whatever the trappings of sophistication, we're still making Stanley Kramer movies, all of grand speeches and peachy endings. Seems to me the common denominator among the Interpreters and Constant Gardeners and Lord of Wars is a good unhealthy dollop of white man's guilt, that could-be beneficial malady that afflicts the affluent and socially well-established once in a while so they'll pay lip service to Africa, and race, and class. (Just as long as it has nothing to do with actual activism.) They're issues considered phantom offices at which to give and then leave with a sense of closure at best or, at the least, a feeling that all the tempests in the world are fit for a teacup you can put away somewhere in a mental cupboard. Race as a fable, Africa as a fantasy–and the last reel interested in beautiful, rich white people falling in love; I think about Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels and a couple of challenges presented therein to white, privileged, "morbid rich" filmmaker Sully, played by Joel McCrea: "What do you know about trouble?" and, later, "I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir." To which Sully responds: "Who's caricaturing?"
It’s All in the Thumbs: FFC Interviews Mike Mills & Lou Taylor Pucci
October 9, 2005|With wistful "it" boy Lou Pucci turning cartwheels on the berber carpet and his Thumbsucker director Mike Mills horsing around in a way more fraternal than paternal, I suddenly found myself in a conference room with a couple of guys who have no use for "cool." What I vetted from these unaffected souls not caring in the slightest what I thought of their rumpus room acrobatics was this sense, undeniable, that they couldn't care less that I was even there–and less still what species of banal question I had ratting around in my proverbial pet carrier. But it wasn't arrogance (I've been around that a lot–been the arrogant one, too, if tales told out of school are to be heeded): it was something more like fatigue driven to the grist of blithe indifference–that feeling you get during finals week when you realize that after a semester's worth of fear and tension, you just don't give a good crap anymore.
The Legend of Zorro (2005)
½*/****
starring Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rufus Sewell, Nick Chinlund
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by Martin Campbell
by Walter Chaw It's Amblin Entertainment's version of Once Upon a Time in the West, which only serves as a reminder that it's been too long since the last time you saw Once Upon a Time in the West. Martin Campbell's dedicatedly underwhelming The Legend of Zorro goes through the motions of knock-off action sequels like this with a tired fidelity and–until a semi-sadistic conclusion–a squeamishness about enemy casualties that smacks of that peculiar morality for which there's ever an acceptable way to portray mindless carnage to the kiddie set. I'm not saying your moppets should be shielded from the ugliness of the world, I'm saying that should they witness someone getting pushed off a thirty-foot tower into a cactus patch with the tip of a sword, they ought not be shielded from the consequences. By the umpteenth time Campbell uses the classic "A-Team" tactic of showing the bad guys crawling away from a scene of mayhem in a slow-motion, "Hey, no harm done" shot, you don't feel comforted by the innocuousness of the thing so much as coddled for being a ninny who doesn't understand that more harm's done in assuring your kids that frenetic swordplay never results in somebody getting hurt.