FILM FREAK CENTRAL

SlipStreams Vol. 6

July 13, 2022Patreon, SlipStreams

Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL's Walter Chaw for the week of July 15, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKSamurai Marathon (2019, d. Bernard Rose (U.S.: Hoopla, Tubi, Pluto TV, Hi-Yah!; Canada: Hoopla, Tubi))Retaining most of the same production team from Takashi Miike's propulsive 13 Assassins, ace producer Jeremy Thomas decided to go with a foreign director for his next jidaigeki and chose, of all people, iconoclastic Bernard Rose. Best known for the original Candyman, Rose is a man of refined tastes, having directed a series of Tolstoy adaptations and engaged in an ongoing project covering the lives of great…

12 Monkeys (1995) – Blu-ray Disc|4K Ultra HD

July 12, 20221990s, 2019, 2022, 4K Ultra HD, Arrow Video, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Drama, Sci-Fi, Time Travel

Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

Twelve Monkeys
***½/****
BD – Image A Sound A- Extras B
4K – Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer
screenplay by David Webb Peoples & Janet Peoples, inspired by the film La Jetée written by Chris Marker
directed by Terry Gilliam

by Bryant Frazer Twelve Monkeys is a movie about a moment. Yes, sure, it’s a decades-spanning science-fiction tale about time travel, the illusion of free will, and a romance at the end of the world. Yet its defining facet is its repeated, soulful depiction of a few terrible minutes in the life of a young boy who witnesses an event that’s tragic in ways he can’t comprehend. That’s how the story starts and how it ends, the first thing we see and also the last–a child’s eyes, open wide, as he is exposed to the spectacle of death, probably for the first time. Although Twelve Monkeys deals with the destruction of human civilization by a lethal contagion, and the plague’s aftermath, less of the action centres on the plague itself than on this little boy. Mostly, it’s concerned with a man named James Cole (Bruce Willis), who believes he’s a time-travelling agent sent back from the 2030s, after a small number of survivors retreat to the safety of underground caves. Liberated from a prison cell for the mission to contemporary Philadelphia (ground zero for the virus release), Cole is trying to discover information about its origins that can be used, decades hence, to help make the earth’s ruined surface safe for human habitation. Success means redemption, since Cole would return to his future world a hero. But in an ironic twist, Cole is almost immediately institutionalized; only psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), a specialist in “madness and apocalyptic visions,” and fellow patient Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), who may be a nascent environmental terrorist, suspect Cole’s references to upcoming cataclysmic events may be more than just delusional.

Life During Wartime #28: UNDER THE SKIN (Patreon exclusive)

July 7, 2022Patreon

by Walter ChawUnder the Skin (2014)U.S.: Fubo TV, Showtime, Kanopy, DirecTV, Spectrum On DemandCanada: Tubi, Shudder, AMC+The first thing my daughter said after the credits rolled on Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin was, "I can't believe Scarlett Johansson wanted to do this. It makes me think of her differently." I've argued for a long time now that ScarJo is among our very best actors. She takes chances. She chooses roles that play with her appearance and challenge how she's perceived--more than challenge it. My daughter said, "Her. She doesn't even appear and she's like the most beautiful woman in Hollywood right…

SlipStreams Vol. 5

July 5, 2022Patreon, SlipStreams

Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL editor Bill Chambers for the week of July 8, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKIntruder (1989, d. Scott Spiegel (U.S.: AMC+, Vudu, Tubi, Shudder, Pluto TV, Spectrum On Demand, Arrow; Canada: Tubi, Shudder, Arrow, AMC+))Evil Dead II co-writer Scott Spiegel made his feature debut with this semi-autobiographical (very semi) slasher flick set within the quaint confines of the Walnut Lake grocery store. Owners Bill (Dan Hicks) and Danny (Eugene Robert Glazer) have just sold the place and tasked the night crew with staying after hours to mark down the prices for clearance--and wouldn't you…

Masks: FFC Interviews Scott Derrickson

July 3, 20222022, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Interviews

Walter Chaw interviews Scott Derrickson,
director of THE BLACK PHONE

I’ve known Scott Derrickson a long time–indeed, an eternity in Internet years. He grew up in Westminster, Colorado, just down the road from where I live now, in a “cone of death” where the plutonium from the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear plant–through a series of fires, meltdowns, and misadventures–was lost into the air in particles a magnitude smaller than pollen. The site is among the most contaminated places on Earth still, though judged to be clean enough to house a “wildlife preserve” and way too much new housing, the residents of which are not informed of the level of radioactivity they’re sitting on. To this day, dogs aren’t allowed at Standley Lake because dogs…dig. We grew up making jokes about the glow coming from the plant at night. Whenever I drove past it as a kid, I would hold my breath with the thought that maybe this would insulate me from irradiation and cancer. Maybe it did.

SlipStreams Vol. 4

June 29, 2022Patreon, SlipStreams, Werewolf

Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL's Walter Chaw for the week of July 1, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKBright Lights, Big City (1988, d. James Bridges (U.S.: Roku, Tubi, Redbox, Pluto TV; Canada: Tubi))I loved Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerny's preternaturally cocksure, first-person pomo updating of The Great Gatsby, when I read it in the months before the release of this big-screen adaptation starring Michael J. Fox. The diminutive sitcom megastar spent the years between the first two Back to the Futures mostly eschewing big-money grabs in favour of working on interesting projects with interesting directors, jumping full-body…

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

June 27, 20222022, 4K Ultra HD, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Nicolas Cage, Thriller

*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Tiffany Haddish
written by Tom Gormican & Kevin Etten
directed by Tom Gormican

by Bill Chambers There’s a lot I don’t understand about Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent that has nothing to do with its alleged postmodernism. I don’t understand why Nicolas Cage, David Gordon Green, and Demi Moore play “themselves” while Neil Patrick Harris, who plays himself in everything, does not. I don’t understand the point of Green playing himself–that is to say, I don’t understand the point of the director character being David Gordon Green, since a) he’s just an avatar for clout one doesn’t necessarily associate with Green, b) his prior relationship with Cage is never excavated or exploited (they made the not-uninteresting Joe together in 2013), and c) it’s doubtful that enough viewers will know who Green is to justify the casting. I don’t understand Green’s reaction to Cage’s impromptu audition, either, whether his awed “Jesus” is because he’s blown away, appalled, or reacting to an actor–a star–of Cage’s calibre grovelling to the director of The Sitter and Halloween Kills. I don’t understand why the movie spells Nic Cage’s name “Nick Cage”: if it’s to separate onscreen “Nick” from offscreen “Nic,” then why has Nick appeared in all the same stuff as Nic? That “k,” like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent itself, ersatzes Cage. This movie isn’t meta or satire, it’s the Dollar Store version of an American original.

Lightyear (2022)

June 26, 20222022, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, Drama, Family, Pixar, Sci-Fi

**/****
screenplay by Jason Headley, Angus MacLane
directed by Angus MacLane

by Walter Chaw Angus MacLane’s handsome-looking Lightyear gets enough things right that it’s unfortunate it can’t quite shake how its best parts are borrowed from Joe Haldeman’s classic The Forever War. It has more problems than that, granted, mainly with how its thin supporting cast fails to give the film the humour and pathos it needs to honour the by-now-familiar “heartwarming tearjerker” Pixar formula. There’s not a lot of rewatch value here, alas, and that has everything to do with Lightyear‘s awkward dialogue and inability to stick the landing–maladies, both, that afflicted co-writer Jason Headley’s previous Pixar outing, the similarly disappointing and COVID-doomed Onward. The highlight of the piece is robot cat SOX (Peter Sohn), who provides the film its credulous audience surrogate as well as its adorable animal-sidekick comic relief. By himself, SOX saves Lightyear, though he can’t elevate it above the airless jokes and pained delivery. What a shame, considering the movie sets a new bar in terms of the complexity of its digital imagery and animation. With Taika Waititi in the cast, I gotta think they could’ve hit him up for a quick joke polish.

SlipStreams Vol. 3

June 24, 2022Patreon, SlipStreams

Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL editor Bill Chambers for the week of June 24, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKWhat Lies Beneath (2000 (U.S.: rental only; Canada: Tubi))A film that was something to occupy director Robert Zemeckis while he waited for Tom Hanks to shed pounds during the making of Cast Away, What Lies Beneath was unfairly dismissed as a coldly technical exercise when it opened to tepid reviews in July of 2000. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Claire, a recent empty-nester who's just moved to a picture-perfect house by the lake that husband Norman (Harrison Ford) inherited from his father.…

New on Our Patreon

June 22, 20222022, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog

by Bill Chambers Heads-up, current and future Patreons: We recently launched SlipStreams, a weekly column in which Walter Chaw and I take turns recommending four titles currently streaming in either the U.S., Canada, or both. In the current "volume" (#3), which went up this afternoon, I pay tribute to the late, great Ray Liotta in choosing three semi-forgotten films that are among his late-career highlights. Meanwhile, the latest edition (#27) of Walter's regular feature Life During Wartime finds him screening Don't Look Now with his daughter; it might be my personal favourite of this long-running series. These pieces are available to any and all subscribers of our Patreon. We don't do "tiers," since the primary purpose of our Patreon is to support this, the mothersite, but we did feel we owed a few bonus goodies to those generous souls keeping FILM FREAK CENTRAL afloat.

Elvis (2022)

June 20, 20222022, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Music, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Luke Bracey, Olivia DeJonge
screenplay by Baz Luhrmann & Sam Bromwell and Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce
directed by Baz Luhrmann

by Walter Chaw Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is part Perfume, part Immortal Beloved–which is to say, it’s horny as fuck and formulates music as mass delusion and mind control. Safe to say, the sordid story of the King of Rock-and-Roll is the perfect match for a maximalist director I have found to be excessive to the point of obnoxious, even on those rare occasions where I’ve liked the movie anyway (see: Moulin Rouge!). Before Elvis, there wasn’t an establishing shot Baz didn’t torpedo with gratuitous angles and “whooshing” sound effects; before Elvis, his films were not just childish but relentlessly, punishingly childish. The first half of Elvis is more frenetic than the last, though neither sports any affectations that don’t augment the story in positive ways. Dissolves, triple-split screens, restless camera movements–they all underscore the breathless headlong rush of Elvis’s rise from broke Tupelo hillbilly living in the “Black” part of town to the biggest-selling solo recording artist in history. When it comes time for his inevitable fall, Luhrmann places it in a sociopolitical context, toning down his trademark freneticism in favour of a, most shockingly of all perhaps, thoughtful analysis of several factors that may have played into Elvis’s decline into paranoia, drug abuse, isolation, and despair. A story this familiar in a genre as permanently scuttled by Walk Hard requires a certain wisdom to know what to recap versus what to excavate. Elvis walks that line more than it doesn’t.

Life During Wartime #27: DON’T LOOK NOW (Patreon exclusive)

June 19, 2022Patreon

by Walter Chaw Don't Look Now (1973) U.S.: Kanopy, Pluto TV Canada: rental only My daughter remembers seeing the first minute of this film years ago when she was a kid, walking by just as I was starting it. She remembers a little girl in a red rain slicker, and a white horse galloping past in the background. She remembers how this alone made her feel uneasy enough, after asking a couple of questions, to tap out. As I've said many times before, our philosophy with our kids was that they could watch anything they want, but there was a price:…

SlipStreams Vol. 2

June 15, 2022Patreon, SlipStreams

Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL's Walter Chaw for the week of June 17, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKThe Chocolate War (1988 (U.S.: Prime, Paramount+, Epix, Hoopla, Tubi, DirecTV; Canada: Hoopla, Tubi, MGM))An adaptation of Robert Cormier's YA classic from that pre-Harry Potter period when YA wasn't nearly so fulsome or populated, Keith Gordon's pitch-black The Chocolate War covers a fundraising drive at a private Catholic school that, more than a decade before Alexander Payne's Election, takes vicious satirical aim at the thin skin of civilization stretched over our animal natures. In meanness, the film falls somewhere between Williams…

The Trouble with Harry (1955) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code

June 13, 2022****/****, 1950s, 2022, 4K Ultra HD, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, FFC Must-Own, Mystery

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Edmund Gwenn, John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick, Shirley MacLaine
screenplay by John Michael Hayes, based on the novel by Jack Trevor Story
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Once I realized the person I’m supposed to suture with in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry is the title character, the middle of Hitchcock’s three dead protagonists (sandwiched between Rebecca‘s Rebecca de Winter and Psycho‘s Mother), the rest of the movie began to make sense to me. Not a literal sense where the characters’ behaviour is reasonable, thus making the narrative intelligible in a rational way, but an absurdist, Lewis Carroll nightmare sense, where language is revealed to be meaningless and unstable enough to destabilize perceptions of time and space as well. The Trouble with Harry casts Vermont in fall as Wonderland aswarm with madness and violence, lodged in a time-loop and peopled by a gallery of hatters and dormice (and even an Alice, completely over-the-rainbow insane) preserved in an autumnal, solipsistic amber of their own deconstructionist, semantic derangement. The closest analogues in movies are Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup and Michel Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore: the former echoing The Trouble with Harry‘s thesis that if reality is defined by language, then reality is as subject to slippage as language; the latter harking back to this film’s snow-globe meta-fiction, where life and death play out its meaningless permutations in a philosophical exercise inside an alien terrarium. The Trouble with Harry would play well in a double-feature with Scorsese’s existentially terrifying After Hours. Godard’s Alphaville, too–a noir about the prison of words where every room contains a “bible,” which, in reality, is a dictionary with telltale words removed (like “poetry” and “love”), thereby eradicating them from the minds of a citizenry enslaved by a machine god.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

June 9, 20222022, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Malta, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum
screenplay by Emily Carmichael & Colin Trevorrow
directed by Colin Trevorrow

by Walter Chaw About an hour into Jurassic World Dominion, a nondescript villain–really, the bad guys are all nondescript here, no matter their gender or race–with the admittedly ridiculous name Rainn Delacourt (Scott Haze) is pinned on his back by two dinosaurs eating his arms. Our Dollar Store action figure of a hero, Chad–er, Brad, er…Owen? Our Dollar Store action figure of a hero, Owen (Chris Pratt), screams at Rainn to give up vital information about the location of the emotionless British cyborg clone from the last film, Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who (that?) Owen and his girlfriend/wife/whatever, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), have since adopted. Rainn, before getting his head torn off tastefully offscreen, spills the beans. Here's my problem: why? Why the fuck would he bother to say anything at all? When this scenario plays out in other films, it's because the person being asked the question hopes they'll be freed once they do. But Owen doesn't control these dinosaurs with his magic dinosaur-controlling hand, and it's not framed as Rainn having a change of heart. It's just a blatant misunderstanding of scenes like this, either on purpose or out of cynical desperation, rigged to move a stalled plot along, damning the characters and all sense along the way. What troubles me the most about it is the presumption that no one will notice or that no one will care once they've noticed. J. A. Bayona loaded his Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom with a shocking amount of social subtext, appropriate outrage, fairytale scale and wonder, even doom. The only thing Colin Trevorrow manages to create with Jurassic World Dominion (hereafter Dominion) is an endurance test of unusual cruelty that, despite its conspicuous bloat, still leans heavily on an extended voiceover prologue and epilogue to try to inject an illusion of plot into aimless, sometimes-vicious, ugly-looking garbage.

SlipStreams Vol. 1

June 8, 2022Patreon, SlipStreams

Four random-ish streaming recommendations from FILM FREAK CENTRAL editor Bill Chambers for the week of June 10, 2022.PICK OF THE WEEKThe Clock (1945 (U.S., Canada: The Criterion Channel))For my money, the peak of Judy Garland's collaborations with Vincente Minnelli, not counting Liza. Replacing director Fred Zinnemann a few weeks into production (at Garland's behest), Minnelli scrapped most of Zinnemann's footage and started fresh with an eye towards shooting more of the picture on location in New York, making The Clock one of Minnelli's rare excursions into something resembling realism. The precursor to truncated romances like Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, The Clock's…

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code

June 6, 2022****/****, 1940s, 2022, 4K Ultra HD, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, FFC Must-Own, Thriller

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers
screenplay by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, Alma Reville, from an original story by Gordon McDonell
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Just by the fact of her, Charlie (Teresa Wright) is dangerous for her Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten), a violent rebuke of the caustic nihilism of his worldview. She’s too pure, too loving, too good; her existence is proof there’s something wrong with him. Very wrong. She’s so rare a thing, the only way to protect her and, by extension, what he believes about our debased, postlapsarian state is to corrupt her. Really, he’s doing her a favour. I think that Uncle Charlie knows he’s running out of time, that the dragnet around him is tightening at the neck. I think he wants to spend whatever freedom he has left turning his namesake to his way of thinking. Visiting for the first time in too long, he brings gifts for everyone in his sister Emmy’s (Patricia Collinge, her character named after Hitch’s mother) family: his brother-in-law Joe (Henry Travers), his little niece Ann (Edna May Wonacott), his nephew Roger (Charles Bates), and of course Charlie. But she rejects even the notion of receiving a present from her beloved uncle. His presence is good enough, she says.

Crimes of the Future (2022)

June 3, 2022****/****, 2022, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Canada, Directors: David Cronenberg, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, France, Greece, Horror, Sci-Fi, UK

****/****
starring Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Scott Speedman
written and directed by David Cronenberg

by Angelo Muredda “It’s not a completely bad feeling, at least not uninteresting,” muses performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) about his scratchy throat during a quiet moment in David Cronenberg’s career-capping Crimes of the Future, a tender affair about listening to and affirming one’s aging, sick, and mutable body–contrary to all the pre-hype about walkouts and the director’s supposed return to his grimy horror roots. Saul lives with a radical disease called Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, which causes him to rapidly spawn superfluous organs. Surgical and life partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) removes them on stage in underground live shows that fall somewhere between medical procedures you might gawk at on YouTube and ecstatic religious ceremonies. Saul is a full partner in these sensual spectacles, writhing in an open sarcophagus while Caprice mythologizes his new developments like a curator at a Francis Bacon show. Here, though, Saul is simply taking the opportunity to mind the sensations produced by his latest corporeal work of art, noting his symptoms with the observational humour and delicacy of previous Cronenberg protagonists who double as archivists of their changing forms. It’s a trait common not just to scientists spliced with houseflies but to most people living with chronic illnesses.

Mad God: An Interview with Phil Tippett

June 1, 20222022, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

Walter Chaw interviews VFX legend Phil Tippett, writer-director of MAD GOD

by Walter Chaw The heir apparent to stop-motion pioneers Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, Phil Tippett is one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. It's his hands animating the AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back. He designed creatures for the Cantina and the moving pieces on the Dejarik table. He animated the Rancor, and the bugs in Starship Troopers, and RoboCop's ED-209. He was the "dinosaur supervisor" on Jurassic Park, overseeing the industry-changing transition from stop-motion, Tippett's metier, to CGI. It could've been the end of his career, but his working methods adapted to the digital realm. The product of his hands is, for my generation, the clay of our imagination. I grew up playing with toys based on his designs and watching movies full of his animating spirit, everything from Piranha to The Golden Child. With his place in the pantheon long assured, he moved to the director's chair for the thirty-years-in-the-making Mad God, and the end result is something that looks and feels very much like madness. It's glorious. I spoke with Mr. Tippett over Zoom and was betrayed once or twice by overwhelming emotion; I thought I was done feeling like this about things, but speaking with the father of Vermithrax Pejorative was humbling and exhilarating. If you get the chance to tell your heroes how much their art has meant to you, do that.

25 Candles: Film Freak Central Turns the Quarter-Century Mark

May 31, 20222022, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog

The Screenplay Closet

by Bill Chambers It’s hard for me to remember the BW (Before Walter) times now, but this site was already four years old when Walter Chaw joined it in 2001. In 1997, I was writing reviews for one of my hometown newspapers and living in the only dorm on the campus of York University that offered free broadband in every suite. So I taught myself basic HTML and established a GeoCities page in order to “syndicate” my print reviews. My time at the paper ended pretty much when I graduated from film school; I kept the site going because I needed something to take my mind off the crickets that had suddenly replaced my social life. I convinced myself that FILM FREAK CENTRAL–known, in those first few months, as FILM GEEK CENTRAL, to my everlasting shame–was only temporary and that screenplays, which I’d been writing in my spare time for a decade, were how I was really going to unlock the door to fortune and glory.

The Bride! (2026)

Scream 7 (2026)

All the President’s Men (1976) – 4K Ultra HD + Digital Code