Transporter 2 (2005)

September 2, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, France, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Kate Nauta
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Louis Leterrier

by Walter Chaw After the unqualified triumph of Unleashed, the other Luc Besson/Louis Leterrier flick from 2005, my expectations were sky high for Transporter 2, the sequel to Cory Yuen's fitfully-entertaining, unapologetically puerile throwback to the delirious Hong Kong cinema of John Woo and Ringo Lam. (Yuen returns as choreographer.) What a disappointment, then, that this picture's even weaker than its predecessor in terms of character development and plotting, content as it is to be a Jackie Chan ripper with Man on Fire's plot. What so intoxicated about Jackie Chan was this gathering cult of personality born of the man's reckless disregard for his own well-being in the pursuit of fashioning a body of work (individual scenes, not films–the films mostly suck) that for a while resurrected Buster Keaton in every movie theatre outside American soil. Without that sense of Chan's legacy (no one is "collecting" Jason Statham's groovy but inorganic fight scenes), all that's left is a vacuous, utterly-disposable chop-socky flick that pervs on girls with the same kind of childishness with which it pervs on cars. Telling that the MacGuffin of the piece is a hyper-phallic syringe and that the chief henchman is Lola (Katie Nauta), an Aryan Grace Jones with a fondness for lingerie and submachine guns.

Nick Frost’s Danger! 50,000 Volts! (2002) – DVD

September 1, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, DVD, Television, UK

Danger! 50,000 Volts!
Image C Sound C Extras A
"Alligator Attack!", "Thugs with Baseball Bats!", "High Speed Chases!", "Minefields!", "Fires!", "Being Impaled!", "Lightning Strikes!", "Tidal Waves!", "Hostage Situations!"

by Walter Chaw Locating itself somewhere between "Jackass", "Insomniac with Dave Attell", and "MythBusters", "Danger! 50000 Volts!" is a series of semi-improvisational interviews with people in bad jobs, interspersed with the jocular, rotund Frost putting himself in situations of peril for the bemusement of a bemused audience. More British than terrible, "Danger! 50000 Volts!" reminds of a "World's Greatest Chases" hidden-camera show where Scotland Yard chased down a felon at speeds approaching upwards of ten, eleven miles an hour. So the pacing isn't exactly pulse-pounding, but there's an affability to Frost and his willingness to insert himself into dangerous situations that makes the show an agreeable time-passer. Its apocalyptic tone (shades of "Worst Case Scenario")–the idea that you'll eventually find yourself in a minefield after having fallen through ice and been impaled on a pole the very same day you were attacked by a gorilla and hooligans with baseball bats–is ludicrous, of course (in fact, there's very little about the show that's real-world applicable), but watching a chubby comedic actor endure indignity has sort of an archetypal feel to it. It's the Oliver Hardy school of vaudeville, I think.

Starstruck (1982) – DVD

August 31, 2005Posted in1980s, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Musical

***/**** Image A Sound A (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B
starring Jo Kennedy, Ross O'Donovan, Margo Lee, Max Cullen
screenplay by Stephen MacLean
directed by Gillian Armstrong

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover By all rights, Starstruck shouldn't be as much fun as it turns out to be. Chief amongst the film's faults is its insistence on laying a '70s template over an '80s milieu: the harsh straight lines of new wave get rounded off, making for a completely incongruous let-it-all-hang-out attitude. Things are not improved by the tentative approach of director Gillian Armstrong, not known for extroverted behaviour in the past and seemingly unsure of herself here. Yet although it's rather like watching Meat Loaf belt out Gary Numan's "Cars" at the top of his lungs, the combination of bright happy colours and an aw-shucks demeanour is undeniably infectious. You wind up grinning uncontrollably despite Starstruck's decidedly uncool approach to being cool.

Lilo & Stitch (2002); Stitch! The Movie (2003); Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005) – DVDs

August 29, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

LILO & STITCH
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
written and directed by Chris Sanders & Dean DeBlois

by Bill Chambers Lilo (exceptionally well-voiced by Daveigh Chase) enjoys arts and crafts–she's in her "Blue Period"–and resents her vain classmates. Her homelife is less than ideal, since she has yet to become accustomed to thinking of her sister, Nani (Tia Carrere), as her dead mother's replacement. The dissent is mutual, and put in a pressure-cooker by child protective services, under whose watchful eye the siblings have fallen. Like a couple on the brink, Lilo and Nani try to patch things up by finding a use for their pet door, but what they bring home from the pound is not common and definitely not housebroken. Bent on destruction, Stitch (Chris Sanders, channelling Howie Mandel's Bobby), a six-limbed Miyazaki koala known on his planet as Experiment 626, escaped intergalactic incarceration and fell to Earth, only to be run over by a big-rig and placed in an animal shelter. The lenience and affection Lilo shows him deprograms Stitch, which in turn stuns his mad-scientist creator.

The Greatest American Hero: Season Three (1982-1983) – DVD

August 29, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Superhero, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C
"The Price is Right," "30 Seconds Over Little Tokyo," "Divorce Venusian Style," "Live at Eleven," "The Resurrection of Carlini," "Wizards and Warlocks," "Heaven is in Your Genes," "This is the One the Suit Was Meant For," "The Newlywed Game," "Desperado," "Space Ranger," "It's Only Rock 'n Roll," "Vanity, Says the Preacher"

by Walter Chaw Aliens come to earth in a giant metal calamari ring and give a nebbish schoolteacher a red superhero outfit with the Chinese symbol for "centre" on the centre of its chest. They also give him an instruction booklet he promptly loses, leading to a couple of seasons of Ralph (William Katt) trying his best to figure out how to use his special jammies with the help of his attorney girlfriend Pam (Connie Selleca) and rogue FBI agent Bill (Robert Culp). It's on-the-job training, though, as the reluctant crime-fighting trio find themselves, weekly, pitted against a Saturday morning cartoon's rogue's gallery of two-bit hoodlums that reek, somehow simultaneously, of desperate invention and formula contrivance. (How else to explain the second-season search for a sea monster in the Caribbean?) But there's something that remains effective–sticky, even–about a show more at home in the Shazam! posture than in the prime time slot it was asked to fill. (Indeed, I discovered the show in syndication, seeing as I was too busy during its regular run watching "Knight Rider" and "The A-Team" on a rival network.) It's wish-fulfillment of the flavour towards which most superhero creations tend, sure, but it also speaks to what is essential in the American ethos: that the least of us believes we can be heroes under the right circumstances.

The Blues Brothers (1980) [25th Anniversary Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

August 29, 2005Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Music, Musical, Road Movie

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway
screenplay by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis
directed by John Landis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Long before Quentin Tarantino would run a tear across the super soul sounds of the '70s, there was the strange case of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in the deadly "Blues Brothers" affair. Sitting somewhere at the low end of White Negro trickle-down, the Blues Brothers were two conspicuously white soul singers who made up for in enthusiasm what they lacked in talent–though their "Saturday Night Live" clowning conveniently omitted this bit of information, half-expecting us to take them seriously as they tumbled and caterwauled their way through various musical numbers. Where a true hipster would have meticulously re-created their favoured forms, Joliet Jake Blues (Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Aykroyd) had nothing but "heart" and "sincerity"–a nice way of saying they were rank amateurs doing primitive karaoke. They were compellingly frantic performers, but they weren't the blues and never would be.

The Brothers Grimm (2005)

August 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Czech Republic, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Peter Stormare, Lena Headey
screenplay by Ehren Kruger
directed by Terry Gilliam

Brothersgrimmby Walter Chaw A film with all the drama and flair of a Tuesday Morning tchotchke shop, The Brothers Grimm is the only Terry Gilliam film since Jabberwocky that I've actively disliked. It's the star-crossed director's most conventional, most compromised work, the first to betray the behind-the-scenes strife–the desperation that has defined Gilliam's career to this point. Already pre-emptively disowning the finished product (citing various impasses with the Brothers Weinstein), Gilliam doesn't, this time around, have the aegis of a subversive finished product to hide behind. There may be a lot of people responsible for what's wrong with The Brothers Grimm, but the bulk of the responsibility for its failure is parked square at Gilliam's doorstep–and the rest of it belongs to nitwit screenwriter Ehren Kruger, whose flavour-of-the-month status might finally be souring. It's perhaps unfair to expect the director to constantly pull his Waterloos out of the woods, but The Brothers Grimm is finally the film that his detractors have always accused him of making: busy, unfocused, obnoxious, and lousy.

The Cave (2005)

August 25, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Mexico, Romania, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Cole Hauser, Morris Chestnut, Lena Headey, Piper Perabo
screenplay by Michael Steinberg & Tegan West
directed by Bruce Hunt

Caveby Walter Chaw The comparisons are inevitable, but that's mostly because The Cave is about 80% identical to Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid: the same throat-talking white hero (Jack (Cole Hauser this time)), complementary women (Lena Headey as the smart one and Piper Perabo as the bikini), black guy (Morris Chestnut in both films), Asian (Daniel Dae Kim), and egghead (Marcel Iures); the same fall from a giant waterfall; and the same various other good-looking male-model types who serve as chum for the same blurrily-shot CGI beast. There's even a cave in Anacondas, if you recall. But the 20% of The Cave that's different (no fraidy-cat Stepin Fetchit in this one), most notably the major plot twist (already spoiled in a doctored image in the film's trailers), make it the superior film. Not a good film, let's not go crazy, but not a terrible one, either–and if you can get into the idea that what the picture's really doing is rewriting the vampire mythos in biological/parasitical terms, you might even have a good time of the Reign of Fire variety.

The Constant Gardener (2005)

August 25, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Germany, Kenya, Mystery, Romance, Switzerland, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
starring Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy
screenplay by Jeffrey Caine, based on the novel by John Le Carré
directed by Fernando Meirelles

Constantgardnerby Walter Chaw An interesting companion piece to both Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American and Andrew Niccol’s upcoming Lord of War, non-antipodean Fernando Meirelles’s follow-up to City of God, the John Le Carré adaptation The Constant Gardener, is beautifully shot in the murky style of David Fincher or high-fashion photography. Not a bad thing–indeed, The Constant Gardener is one of the most technically proficient pictures of the year–but not a great thing, either, when talking about children killing children in Brazil’s favelas or, as is the case here, a British diplomat confronting his culture’s pathological politeness in the plague-fields of Kenya. What recommends The Constant Gardener is the uniform tonal perfection of the performances, and even if the film itself seems to glamorize (and condescend to) the plight of starving and exploited African nations, it at least demonstrates, along with its cinematic brethren (add The Interpreter and Stephen Gaghan’s forthcoming Syriana to that list), cinema’s willingness to take a more global stance. A paternalistic one, for the most part, but a global one just the same.

Asylum (2005)

August 24, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Ireland, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***/****
starring Natasha Richardson, Ian McKellen, Hugh Bonneville, Gus Lewis
screenplay by Patrick Marber and Chrysanthy Balis, based on the novel by Patrick McGrath
directed by David Mackenzie

by Walter Chaw Director David Mackenzie's follow-up to his stygian Young Adam is the stygian Asylum, based on a Patrick McGrath (Spider) novel that draws, again, upon a young McGrath's experiences as the son of the medical superintendent for Britain's Broadmoor Prison for the Criminally Insane during the late-1950s, when Freudian analysis was the rule and sway. ("Axe murderers and schizophrenics were my pram pushers," McGrath says.) Moments of sun in the picture–shot all in greens and shadow–are illusions within the walls of the asylum to which new administrator Max Raphael (Hugh Bonneville) and his wife Stella (Natasha Richardson) have arrived, a pale yellow glow indicating a path to right reason and an unnatural dusk leading down a hall to madness and bedlam. It is what the provocatively-named head shrink Dr. Cleave (Ian McKellen) would refer to as a "problem with passion," and as part of their first, vaguely flirtatious meeting, Stella will ask Cleave if he's so afflicted. Pinched silence is the answer–and by the end, once Dr. Cleave has shown how a lack of passion has twisted his interiors, it becomes clear that silence is perhaps the best answer to questions of the heart.

Illegally Yours (1988) – DVD

August 23, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Rob Lowe, Colleen Camp, Kenneth Mars, Kim Myers
screenplay by M.A. Stewart & Max Dickens
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The '80s drove a lot of talented filmmakers to desperate lengths, but few sank to the levels of depravity that Peter Bogdanovich did with Illegally Yours. Like so many before him, the once-unstoppable cineaste was forced to rethink his auteurism along cheesy romantic-comedy lines; unlike so many before him, he chose to ignore the ugly implications of a disturbingly infantile screenplay, instead committing to a literal interpretation as tedious as it is unpleasant. Watching Rob Lowe pester a suffering woman on the flimsiest of pretexts isn't at all funny (it's like watching a stalker get rewarded for his predations), and as he's surrounded by some of the most irritating "hilarious" types ever to grace the screen, the only variation is in the switch from creepiness to frustrated annoyance.

The Transporter (2002) [Special Edition] – DVD|[Special Delivery Edition] – DVD

August 22, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, France, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras C
SDE DVD – Image B- Sound A+ Extras C
starring Jason Statham, Shu Qi, Francois Berleand, Matt Schulze
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Cory Yuen

by Walter Chaw That Cory Yuen's The Transporter is unapologetically misogynistic, badly plotted, and poorly acted isn't so much a criticism as a recognition that one of Jet Li's favourite Chinese directors has made a French film in many ways identical to the chop-socky/gun-fu flicks China was churning out throughout the eighties and into the nineties. Where the film fails is in its resemblance, ironically, to Yuen's own work on The Bodyguard from Beijing (and even the awful Women on the Run), and in its uncomfortable similarity to John Woo's Hong Kong output–a cribbing owed as much to Yuen as producer Luc Besson, who has made it something of a closet industry in his action films to borrow liberally from The Killer and Hard-Boiled (and, in this particular instance, A Better Tomorrow II). The Transporter is too slick and winking, then–a post-modern take on the "heroic bloodshed" genre that already had one foot in self-satire, with the other dancing in operatic melodrama. The foot shouldn't be keeping time with a techno beat; it should be tapping to a lonesome harmonica.

The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)

August 19, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Romance, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco
screenplay by Judd Apatow & Steve Carell
directed by Judd Apatow

40yearoldvirginby Walter Chaw You should go just for the spectacle of Elizabeth Banks masturbating in a bathtub, but the real surprise of the piece is the disarming understanding that the usual Greek Chorus of man-friends giving bad advice seem to spring this time from a piquant desire to recapture something of their own lost youth. With a title like The 40 Year Old Virgin (and with a marketing campaign that borders on genius), you know that, as with other “losin’ it” pictures (Losin’ It, Revenge of the Nerds, Hardbodies, The Last American Virgin, and on and on), the hero’s going to get laid–most often to a fireworks accompaniment (or selections from Hair, as the case may be). The only question is if he will get there via the respectable, wife/long-term girlfriend method or bust his cherry against some kind of Tara Reid-esque trollop. But what elevates The 40 Year Old Virgin beyond the same old musty sex-quest flick is the feeling that at its heart it believes there is actually something precious about chastity–even when its preservation has slipped past pathetic. The film is essentially sweet-natured and occasionally insightful about the ways that men never really grow up; small wonder it was co-written and directed by one of the co-creators of “Freaks and Geeks”.

Dracula III: Legacy (2005); Hellraiser: Deader (2005); The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005) – DVDs

August 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Revenge, Romania, Thriller, Vampire, Wes Craven

DRACULA III: LEGACY
**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Jason Scott Lee, Jason London, Alexandra Westcourt, Rutger Hauer
screenplay by Joel Soisson & Patrick Lussier
directed by Patrick Lussier

HELLRAISER: DEADER
*/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras B
starring Kari Wuhrer, Paul Rhys, Simon Kunz, Doug Bradley
screenplay by Neal Marshall Stevens and Tim Day
directed by Rick Bota

THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER
½*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B
starring Edward Furlong, Tara Reid, David Boreanaz, Emmanuelle Chriqui
screenplay by Lance Mungia & Jeff Most and Sean Hood
directed by Lance Mungia

by Walter Chaw This is the game plan if you’re in the business of producing direct-to-video schlock for Dimension: go to Romania (the poor man’s Czech Republic, itself the poor man’s Toronto–itself the poor man’s New York), show some tits, throw buckets of blood against the wall, and scrimp, wherever possible, on niceties like script and direction. It’s sure-fire–particularly if you can skim a month or two off the shooting schedule and lure a few has-beens in serious decline. But the question with urgency is, “Sure-fire what?” Not good art–because they seldom have anything to say about the society that spawned them (and because the directors of these messes are generally assclowns)–and not good travelogues, either, these little straight-to-home penny dreadfuls tend to be tired variations on the same quasi-Christian mythos, tarted up with surprisingly good production values and the kind of cheap thrills that kept EC Comics, then Hammer Films, then Italian giallos, in business.

Weekend at Bernie’s (1989) – DVD

August 16, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kiser
screenplay by Robert Klane
directed by Ted Kotcheff

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Film comedy ceased to be the realm of the inventive and the stylish some time ago–about 30 years ago, to be precise, after wit and flair gave way to the Brightly-Lit Comedy (BLC). In order to domesticate the laffer, the architects of the BLC invented a lighting style that a) ensured that every stick of poorly-chosen furniture was impossible to miss, and b) destroyed the possibility of shadow play or other flourishes that might call attention to themselves. The BLC flooded the set with white light, banishing nuance and paving the way for stuff like Weekend at Bernie's–a black hole from which not even humour itself can escape.

Now, Voyager (1942) – DVD

August 15, 2005Posted in1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD

**/**** Image A Sound B Extras D
starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Gladys Cooper
screenplay by Casey Robinson, based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty
directed by Irving Rapper

by Alex Jackson I'll admit to being rather tickled by Now, Voyager, but I frankly believe that the movies should have higher aspirations than to tickle. Though getting tickled is sort of fun for a short while, in any long duration it simply becomes obnoxious. Now, Voyager is trash, but it's not particularly great trash. There is nothing in its straight-faced inanity that successfully works as critical commentary on the material. This is camp at its most superficial; scratch off the simple surface pleasures and you're left with one black void.

Possessed (1947) – DVD

August 14, 2005Posted in1940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks
screenplay by Silvia Richards and Ranald MacDougall, based on a story by Rita Weiman
directed by Curtis Bernhardt

by Alex Jackson Although it’s both talky and obvious (problems, I think, that have always threatened the noir genre), Possessed is propelled by a brilliant prologue and achieves momentum through an abundance of positively electric individual moments. Possessed is not strong enough to initiate any new addictions or produce any new highs, but it’s enough to qualify as a fix for the existing addict of cinema. After watching it, I felt that I could go on and face another day.

Ice Princess (2005) [Widescreen] + Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) – DVDs

August 12, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, Drama, Family, Sports

ICE PRINCESS
***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Michelle Trachtenberg, Joan Cusack, Kim Cattrall, Hayden Panettiere
screenplay by Hadley Davis
directed by Tim Fywell

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE
*½/**** Image N/A Sound B+ Extras C+
starring AnnaSophia Robb, Jeff Daniels, Cicely Tyson, Dave Matthews
screenplay by Joan Singleton, based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo
directed by Wayne Wang

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Sort of a distaff Friday Night Lights, Tim Fywell’s Ice Princess transcends its myriad stigmas–not the least of which that babyish title–with a candour I dare say is unsolicited. In fact, the lesson of the picture is that despite that it wasn’t strained of conflict by some sensation-fearing executive, no riots broke out, no claims were filed, and no bills were passed. It’s not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is it a sustenance-free afternoon at the Ice Capades.

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005); Murderball (2005); The Aristocrats (2005)

August 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, Sports, Theatrical

DEUCE BIGALOW: EUROPEAN GIGOLO
*/****
starring Rob Schneider, Eddie Griffin, Til Schweiger, Jeroen Krabbé
screenplay by Rob Schneider and David Garrett & Jason Ward
directed by Mike Bigelow

MURDERBALL
**½/****
directed by Henry Alex Rubin & Dana Adam Shapiro

THE ARISTOCATS
**/****
directed by Paul Provenza & Penn Jillette

by Walter Chaw Oftentimes, as if in a freaky mescaline dream, I find myself defending in polite company Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, this story of an astonishingly ugly, balding little troll enlisted into the man-whore trade by myopic pimp T.J. (Eddie Griffin). Homophobic in a chiding, self-deprecating way, the picture has going for it a surprising tenderness that sees Deuce (Rob Schneider) demonstrating real humanity towards his disabled clients–finding him, for instance, taking a Tourette's Syndrome-stricken young lady to a ballgame, where her outbursts are cause for celebration. It also found Griffin, with his astonishing arsenal of insane euphemisms (twat-sicle, mangina, she-nis, he-pussy, and so on) delivered rat-a-tat with his manic, immaculate comic timing, crafting in frenetic T.J. a character with a penchant for savouring water-logged food and capped teeth that predict Hilary Duff's recent funhouse makeover. But most importantly, it had the benefit of Kate (Arija Bareikis) as Deuce's love interest: a beautiful, feminine, smart, funny woman who happens to be missing a leg. Disability is rarely, if ever, proudly on display in American cinema–funny to find it in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.

Nightmare Alley (1947) – DVD

August 11, 2005Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker
screenplay by Jules Furthman, based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham
directed by Edmund Goulding

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The great thing about Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley is its refusal to show you The Way. Its noir-sap hero is all about The Way, you see (in his case, an amalgam of grifting and a genuine psychic ability), but when he places his total faith in it, he inevitably loses everything. Of course, he's not the only sap looking for an absolute answer: his victims are all too willing to ditch intellectual self-defense in favour of a god/shaman/big know-it-all to relieve them of the burden of making their own choices. The film is smart enough to lay waste to not just the traditional target of spiritualists, but also the modern voodoo science of psychology–both in their own way valid, but with powers blown so far out of proportion that they become vivid media for drawing the long con.