The Battle of Algiers (1966)

July 2, 2004Posted in1960s, Algeria, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, Italy, Theatrical, War

La battaglia di Algeri
***/****
starring Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Samia Kerbash
screenplay by Gillo Pontecorvo & Franco Solinas
directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Questions abound during a screening of The Battle of Algiers, first and foremost: what the hell is it? It’s not exactly agitprop, not quite a thriller, not really a historical epic–it’s a strange bird that combines each of these forms into a one-off genre all its own. The film has a reputation as high as the ceiling (as the multiple screenings in my film-school days can attest), and given its singularity, it’s not hard to see why: this is not some dowdy history lesson or humourless political screed, but a swift, shapely love letter to those who fought and died in the name of Algerian independence. As a love letter, it’s so typically wrapped up in its own feelings that it can’t relate the struggle to something outside of its own borders–but there’s no denying the writers’ commitment and depth of feeling, as well as the significant impact of The Battle of Algiers‘ bullet to the heart of empire.

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

June 29, 2004Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Sam Raimi, Spider-Man, Superhero, Theatrical

****/****
starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina
screenplay by Alvin Sargent
directed by Sam Raimi 

Spider-man2by Walter Chaw Just as the best parts of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies evoked the lo-fi ingenuity of Jackson’s splatter flicks (Braindead, Bad Taste), a surgery scene in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 reminds a lot of Raimi’s Evil Dead days–probably something to do with the chainsaw. Still, it’s uncomfortable, inappropriate, violent, the Three Stooges gone really, really wrong, and it’s stuck right smack dab in the middle of what is arguably the most anticipated film of the summer. Raimi’s tutelage in the school of zero-budget exploitation has taught him the importance of narrative and subtext, of internal logic and thematic coherence. You can buy limitless razzle-dazzle; you can’t buy a strong foundation in fun and at least a rudiment of sense. And as Raimi’s budget has soared from the rumoured twenty grand for The Evil Dead to somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ireland’s GNP for Spider-Man 2, his foundation in economical thrills anchors his blockbusters in humanity.

Faithful (1996) – DVD

June 29, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Cher, Chazz Palminteri, Ryan O'Neal
screenplay by Chazz Palminteri, based on his play
directed by Paul Mazursky

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Back when I lived in arts residence at York University, I decided I had a pretty good way of gauging who was serious about their vocation and who was not: the (pitifully small) former group spoke of things outside of themselves, and the (vast, limitless) latter group spoke about "relationships." But though I was pretty contemptuous of the relationships crowd, I had to admit it's very easy to read earth-shattering significance into one's romantic woes, containing as they do the confusing DNA of gender roles, as well as those roles' implied responsibilities and the unnecessary pain that they cause. Understanding this to a point, Faithful proves to be an unusually cogent relationship movie, rich with male/female cross-examination and genuine anguish over the gulf between the two genders. Still, it's just as narcissistic as anything my old student colleagues would cook up, and so the good bits must compete for attention with grandstanding and breast-beating that would be better off in another movie.

The Dreamers (2004); Rhinoceros Eyes (2003); Stealing Beauty (1996) – DVD|The Dreamers (2004) [Original Uncut NC-17 Version] – DVD

June 26, 2004Posted in1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, UK

THE DREAMERS
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green, Robin Renucci
screenplay by Gilbert Adair
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

RHINOCEROS EYES
***½/****
starring Michael Pitt, Paige Turco, Gale Harold, Matt Servitto
written and directed by Aaron Woodley

Dreamerscapby Walter Chaw The danger is getting lost in fantasy, of being consumed by the lunar flame of lamplight filtered through celluloid. And the irony is that directors, the good ones, are already lost and have been for years. There have been pictures about an all-devouring cinephilia before (Cinema Paradiso, say, or 8½), and now a pair of films by two directors at opposite ends of their careers–Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers and Aaron Woodley's 2003 TIFF Discovery Award-winner Rhinoceros Eyes–strive to blur the line between movies and reality in twin tales of sexual maturation, of coming of age in a movie house–of, to parse The Judybats, learning how to kiss watching James Dean movies. Fascinatingly, the two films share Michael Pitt, forging a path for himself as the archon for the modern dreamer raised on lethal doses of popular culture, and weaning himself from that luxuriant udder only with great difficulty.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) + Control Room (2004)

June 24, 2004Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Palme d'Or Winner, Theatrical, War

FAHRENHEIT 9/11
*½/****
directed by Michael Moore

CONTROL ROOM
****/*****
directed by Jehane Noujaim

Fahrenheitcontrol
by Walter Chaw Shame on Michael Moore for the sloppy, sprawling Fahrenheit 9/11, and shame on President George W. Bush for being such a reprehensible dimwit target that the existence of such a film is possible. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a long, strident preach to the choir full of misleading juxtapositions and sarcastic asides that weaken what should be die-cast condemnations. A better film would have been two hours of just letting W. talk: drivelling his unique drivel that not only makes him sound stupid, for sure (and that's no crime), but is also dangerous and offensive to the 90% of the world (including 52% of the United States) who think he's a Gatsby with a great big sword. Bush describes going into the Middle East as a "crusade," he talks about leaving decisions to a higher power (something that Ron Reagan chose to address in the eulogy for his father), he rationalizes war by saying, "Hey, they tried to kill my daddy."

Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See – Books

June 24, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Books About Movies

written by Jonathan Rosenbaum
FFC rating: 7/10

by Walter Chaw When it concerns my failure to speak for the popular taste is really the only chance I get to engage in conversation about film criticism anymore. The damnable conundrum of it all is that even when I do speak for the popular taste, I don't do it in a popular way. It's a topic I'm weary of, and as I confront the first serious writer's block of my professional career, this seems as good a time as any to take existential stock in what it is that's become of my chosen vocation. Or, better yet, to let a better critic do it for me. Jonathan Rosenbaum's Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See is all over the place, scattering its ripostes hither and yon over the idea that modern popular criticism is a bankrupt profession in bed with the interests of a few very powerful movie distributors (Miramax's Weinstein brothers in particular) that have become our guardians of "independent" taste.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973) – DVD

June 23, 2004Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Italy, UK, War

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Graham Faulkner, Judi Bowker, Alec Guinness, Leigh Lawson
screenplay by Susio Cecchi D'Amico, Kenneth Ross, Lina Wertmüller, Franco Zeffirell
directed by Franco Zeffirelli

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover So: how do you get the young people back into church when they'd rather be out running wild and getting it on? If you're Mel Gibson, you break out the whips and chains and pour on the gore (an effective approach, to be sure), but if you're Franco Zeffirelli, you choose another path. You'll recall that Zeffirelli was the chap who brought kids back to Shakespeare by turning Romeo and Juliet into a make-out movie, scoring a few Oscar nominations in the bargain–but you can make certain sexy allowances for Shakespeare that you can't with the word of God. Against all odds, the man managed to make a religious tract in tune with the hormonal post-hippie youth of 1973 called Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which cleverly addresses the tender feelings of burgeoning bodies while glorifying a chaste life in the service of the Lord. Like Romeo and Juliet, though it's ludicrous in the extreme, its combination of low cunning and gawky earnestness makes it fascinating as a curio, if not as a fully functioning film on its own.

Bandolero! (1968); Myra Breckinridge (1970); Mother, Jugs & Speed (1975); One Million Years B.C. (1966) – DVDs

June 20, 2004Posted in1960s, 1970s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Romance, UK, Western

BANDOLERO!
**/**** Image A Sound B
starring James Stewart, Dean Martin, Raquel Welch, George Kennedy
screenplay by James Lee Barrett
directed by Andrew V. Mc Laglen

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE
**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A+
starring Mae West, John Huston, Raquel Welch, Rex Reed
screenplay by Michael Sarne and David Giler
directed by Michael Sarne

MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED
***/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch, Harvey Keitel, Allen Garfield
screenplay by Tom Mankiewicz
directed by Peter Yates

by Walter Chaw Very much the product of its time, Andrew V. McLaglen's Bandolero!, the last of the three westerns the director made with Jimmy Stewart, appeared in 1968, the same year as the end of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western cycle (Once Upon a Time in the West) and alongside such seminal generational discomfort flicks as Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead. And while it's not nearly so good as McLaglen/Stewart's devastating Civil War idyll Shenandoah, Bandolero! is still better than it probably should be, saved by its above-the-line talent. With Raquel Welch as a freshly widowed Mexican woman ("I was a whore when I was 12–my family never went hungry"–and so it went in Welch's career) and a good, if woefully miscast Dean Martin as Stewart's no-account, bank-robbin' outlaw brother, the picture is a border film, the basis in many ways for Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove and one that contents itself with tepid character melodrama unfolding at a snail's pace along the road to Ensenada.

The Artful Dodgeballer: FFC Interviews Rawson Marshall Thurber

June 20, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

RawsonthurberinterviewtitleJune 20, 2004|It happens this way sometimes: I'm surprised by a film, I write the review, and then I seek out an interview with the director to, in essence, commiserate on how surprising it all is–the liking, the desire to know more about the creation… Such was the case with Zack Snyder and his Dawn of the Dead remake, and I've done it again for Rawson Marshall Thurber because of his smart, incisive Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. It's funny where you find the shards to shore against your ruins, and it's exhilarating to feel like the first member of a cult. The desire to be a critic is tied at least in part, I think, to the desire to be the first fan in the club, as well as its most active recruiter. I spoke with Mr. Thurber on the telephone from Los Angeles the morning that his movie was released to surprisingly strong reviews; sounding a little tired, a little worried about how his debut will do ("I've got a few applications out to Starbucks, just in case"), Mr. Thurber proved himself to be as articulate and well-spoken as his film implies. A self-described "comedy snob," his desire to make films that don't cater to the slowest student in the class seems genuine and borne out by not only his feature, but also his classic short Terry Tate: Office Linebacker. With the imminent success of Dodgeball, the hope is that he'll continue to be allowed to make as many obscure references to Sappho and Lewis Carroll as he pleases.

The Clay Bird (2002)

June 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Bangladesh, Drama, Theatrical

***/****
starring Nurul Islam Bablu, Russell Farazi, Jayanto Chattopadhyay, Rokeya Prachy
screenplay by Catherine Masud & Tareque Masud
directed by Tareque Masud

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no sense in overestimating the virtues of Tareque Masud's The Clay Bird, a gentle–sometimes too gentle–look back at a Muslim education on the eve of Bangladesh's separation from Pakistan. The film has its share of problems: expository dialogue, sketchily drawn characters, and a determination to underplay some potentially charged material whether it serves the narrative or not. And yet, The Clay Bird's remaining pluses more than make up for its failings, serving as they do a humane sensibility and a keen visual sense that refuses, for better and for worse, to play into sensationalism or spite. Masud may have toned things down a little far for dramatic purposes, but he's still a sensitive man uninterested in rigid dogma of any sort–and as he's counteracting the heated polarization that led to violent repression in his country, he can be forgiven for erring in the opposite extreme.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) + Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

June 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Esoterica, Sports, Theatrical

DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY
***½/****
starring Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Ben Stiller, Rip Torn
written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
**/****
starring Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell
screenplay by Jared Hess & Jerusha Hess
directed by Jared Hess

Dodgeballnapoleonby Walter Chaw Maybe the only thing American Splendor really got right was the importance of the first Revenge of the Nerds as buoy (along with Martha Coolidge's Real Genius of the following year), marking that unquenchable spark of hope nurtured by the freakishly unapologetic intellectuals nestled in there among the Reagan-era "über-normals." Curious that the idea of "blessed are the meek" and "blessed are the merciful" in Christ's Beatitudes are so often subsumed by the scolding Old Testament Commandments (Moses, anyway, as Kurt Vonnegut Jr. points out) in right-wing platforms and Southern courthouses. Curious enough so that the premise of Revenge of the Nerds washes out as a contest between the liberals on the one side (smart, well-read, poor, black, gay, horny–recalling that the nerds of the film are "adopted" by a black fraternity)–and the conservatives on the other (white, privileged, stupid, shallow, religious), while the premise of Real Genius is that same liberal pool arrayed against that same conservative pool but summarized by our military-industrial complex–curious because in both films, the liberals are clearly the meek and the merciful while the white-collar conservatives are the manifest oppressors. I always wanted to think of Christ as a studied socialist hippie: at the least, His Barry Gibb look in the Western canon would finally make sense.

The Terminal (2004)

June 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Spielberg, Theatrical

**/****
starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride
screenplay by Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson
directed by Steven Spielberg

Terminalby Walter Chaw Early in the latest Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks collaboration The Terminal, Russian splinter exile Viktor Navorski (Hanks) runs up a staircase, throwing his suitcase onto the "up" escalator as he goes so that his baggage, in essence, is left to finish its journey on its own. It's a lovely, complicated visual metaphor for abandonment or freedom, for Spielberg the scenarist's twin obsessions with the idea of little boys lost and of little boys escaping and for Spielberg the director's inability to take responsibility for his subtext so that he might finally make that mature film he's so desperately wanted to since The Color Purple. But The Terminal is film-festival offensive, encouraging its audience to coo over the adorable antics of its madcap cast of society's blue-collar "invisibles" (playing in this respect like the slick, imminently forgettable version of Stephen Frears's working class morality play Dirty Pretty Things) in a way that isn't sympathetic so much as paternalistic. Foreigners and minorities are resourceful children, operating eternally at the mercy of the dominant majority, and Neverland is the big cities of the United States, where grown-ups have families and problems.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) – DVD

June 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Biopic, Drama, DVD, France, Luxembourg, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A Extras B-
starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt
screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier
directed by Peter Webber

by Bill Chambers It's a tad perverse to shoot a film about the world of Johannes Vermeer in 'scope, considering the artist's own cramped reflection of that world on portable canvasses. A shut-in, if we interpret his life through his surviving pictures, Vermeer didn't just paint in a lambent room on the upper level of his mother-in-law's house in Delft, he painted the room itself–the begrimed walls, the half-stained furniture, the Gingerbread-house windows that caught his human subjects (often, it appears, members of the servant class) in a tractor beam of light.

Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Complete Collection (1987) – DVD

June 16, 2004Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Muppets, Television, UK

Image C Sound B
“The Soldier and Death,” “Fearnot,” “The Luck Child,” “A Story Short,” “Hans My Hedgehog,” “The Three Ravens,” “Sapsorrow,” “The Heartless Giant,” “The True Bride”

by Walter Chaw For the span of nine delirious, enchanted episodes, “The Storyteller”, Jim Henson’s too-brief foray into mature anthology fantasy television, is gorgeous for its faithfulness to its mythic source material. Although the show’s longevity was certainly not helped by Henson’s hard-to-shake reputation as the benevolent primogenitor of “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show”, looking closer at Henson’s twin, sterling blue masterpieces The Muppet Movie (which he didn’t direct but definitely spearheaded) and The Dark Crystal reveals an artist steeped in a tradition of stung, existential melancholy. It’s easy to laugh at Kermit’s swamp lament or to dismiss, albeit less easily, the heroism of a soon-to-be-extinct species desperate to save a dying world that has all but snuffed them out, but from a perspective of legacy, it’s unwise to file Henson under “kid’s stuff” and leave well enough alone.

Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

June 15, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Family, Germany, Ireland, Jackie Chan, Schwarzenegger, Theatrical, UK, Western

½*/****
starring Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Robert Fyfe, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by David Titcher and David Benullo & David Andrew Goldstein, based on the novel by Jules Verne
directed by Frank Coraci

Aroundtheworldin80days2004by Walter Chaw I've spent all the bile and disappointment I'm going to spend on Jackie Chan and what's become of possibly the biggest star on the planet since his relocation to Hollywood. The rumour that this iteration of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days is to be Chan's American swan song fuels the suspicion that even folks unfamiliar with the stuff that once earned Chan comparisons to Buster Keaton have begun to wish, like any majority culture member towards any outcast in any community, that they would stop taking the abuse and just go home. There must be a breaking point for Centurion scourers when pity (revulsion?) overtakes zeal for punishment, and the lengths to which Chan has voluntarily subjugated himself in the role of sidekick, comic relief, and yellow Stepin Fetchit have progressed beyond paternalistic bemusement into the raw area of salt into an open wound. The old Jackie Chan would have done this film and taken the role of Phileas Fogg–new Jackie Chan is content to be Kato. (Burt Kwouk's, not Bruce Lee's.) I was one of three Asians in a large high school in the middle of one of the whitest, most conservative states in the Union, where Chan bootlegs provided by one of South Federal's Vietnamese groceries were among my few lifelines to a positive Chinese media role model amidst all the Long Duck Dongs, Short Rounds, and Ancient Chinese Secret launderers. For me now to feel more apathy than outrage at Chan selling out–dancing, singing, and acting the fool for the charity of the dominant culture–represents a death of a lot of things essential about me. It happens this way: the tide of ignorance wins out not with a bang but with a whimper.

50 First Dates (2004) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

June 14, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider, Sean Astin
screenplay by George Wing
directed by Peter Segal

by Walter Chaw The stupid version of Groundhog Day, or, more to the point, the capering warm-up act for Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest Adam Sandler vehicle 50 First Dates is just like almost every other alleged comedy released in the first quarter of any year in that lacks pace and energy. I don't know when it got so hard to make a movie with forward momentum, but I can tell you that the point in the film where you start to count the "dates" to figure out when the damned thing is going to end comes early. Still, there's a moment in the picture involving a brain-damaged young woman making a decision to erase the love of her life from her memory that caught me off guard, causing me to realize how much I hold out hope that Sandler will do another film like Punch-Drunk Love. Sad fact is, though, that it may never happen.

Common Ground (2002) – DVD

June 14, 2004Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Spain

Lugares comunes
*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Federico Luppi, Mercedes Sampietro, Arturo Puig, Carlos Santamaria
screenplay by Adolfo Aristarain and Kathy Saavedra, based on the novel by Lorenzo F. Aristarain
directed by Adolfo Aristarain

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching the paralytically subdued spectacle of Common Ground, I had to wonder: what would my old Latin American Cinema prof make of this film? As he generally had us watching agitprop rip-snorters like The Hour of the Furnaces, my first guess is that he'd probably want to punch director Adolfo Aristarain square in the jaw for broaching the subject of the Argentine economic collapse in such flabby, bourgeois terms. True, Aristarain shows exactly what the middle class had to face once the World Bank shellacked the local economy, but he depicts it in such an insular and anesthetized fashion that Common Ground doesn't register very loudly as a protest. In fact, the film's only major distinction is its ability to make enormous economic upheaval seem like a cramp in the style of its formerly comfortable leads, and to block out the rest of the country in its slow crawl to its central character's final destination.

Garfield (2004)

June 11, 2004Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Stephen Tobolowsky, Bill Murray
screenplay by Joel Cohen & Alec Sokolow, based on the Jim Davis comic strip
directed by Peter Hewitt

by Walter Chaw The sell-by date on a big-screen version of Jim Davis's flyblown syndicated comic strip-cum-merchandising empire "Garfield" expired at least twenty years ago, explaining in part why this Bill Murray-voiced abomination looks and acts so much like a giant hunk of rotten meat. It's corpse-soft, shambling along without much direction from its jellied brain, instantly alienating children with its snarky in-jokes about the cat's once-ubiquitous advertising appeal and pissing off adults with its die-cast dedication to being as worthless as possible. Parcelled off in little segments that approximate the rat-a-tat texture and length of the Sunday funnies but without the colour and for about seventeen times the price and potential headache, Garfield is trying so hard that it transfers its strain to anyone unfortunate enough to have gotten to the theatre after their first three choices were already sold-out.

The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)

June 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Vin Diesel, Colm Feore, Thandie Newton, Judi Dench
written and directed by David Twohy

Chroniclesofriddickby Walter Chaw David Twohy constructs films from ideas and images borrowed from the well of archetype–Shakespeare ("Julius Caesar" and "Macbeth" in particular), Greek theatre and mythology, Joseph Campbell by way of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg–and he sometimes does so at the expense of transitional scenes or traditional narrative sense. There's a gestalt to his work, if not much linearity, sparing no time for niceties like how a character arms himself, or how such nifty details as the hero's ability to navigate like a biological sextant comes into play, but in the case of Twohy and, in particular, The Chronicles of Riddick, the gestalt is enough. The picture is a survey of George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy, of all four Alien films, of dashes of Jeunet and Caro's French phantasms, and of David Lynch's Dune, with–and I mean this in a good way–just a smidge of Flash Gordon factored in: a parade of black leather-clad grotesqueries inhabit a lushly imagined future (breaking records for lumber usage in its Vancouver construction) in a film that attempts to tell old stories in a new way and, for the most part, succeeds with an agreeable level of whiz-bang. Occasionally it succeeds brilliantly, as in a late shot of its anti-hero Riddick (Vin Diesel) slumped on a Giger throne before throngs of rubber jack-suited storm troopers, which stimulates not just for the audacity of its scale, but also for the comparisons it summons to the "Orestiea" and "Titus Andronicus."

The Stepford Wives (2004)

June 10, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken
screenplay by Paul Rudnick, based on the novel by Ira Levin
directed by Frank Oz

Stepfordwives2004by Walter Chaw At one time Jim Henson's right hand, Frank Oz is the index finger that you close your book around when you get up to answer the door. An afterthought of a place-holder of a director, his cameo as the evidence officer in The Blues Brothers ("One prophylactic…one soiled") is as succinct a statement as any of the man's non-Muppet contributions to the films he directs. His visual style flat, his rapport with non-plush actors non-existent, Oz instinctively arranges everything as he would puppets on a soundstage: sightlines clear, movement in straight lines, and coverage that establishes the marvel of place but no sense that living things exist there. He's not a bad choice at first glance, then, for the second adaptation of Ira Levin's paranoia classic The Stepford Wives (already a mediocre camp classic 1975 movie starring Katharine Ross), the saga of a lovely young woman who discovers, Rosemary's Baby-like (another Levin source), that her husband is kind of a pig and her exclusive suburban neighbourhood is populated by vacuous femme-bots imagined as ideal wife-replacements by their pigs of husbands. Like the first film, an impossibly lovely woman is cast as the empowered lead to lend the premise a little more ironic horror, but Nicole Kidman, unlike Ross, is already an automaton and has been cast as such in films like To Die For and Eyes Wide Shut. The greatest special effect in Kidman's career is her sometime ability to simulate warmth–something that's not required in The Stepford Wives, and so again it would seem as though her involvement in this project makes a great deal of sense. Because of this, it's sort of amazing how genuinely bad are the results.