The Outer Limits: The Original Series – The Entire Second Season (1964-1965) – DVD

February 3, 2004Posted in****/****, 1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Television, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Outerlimitstuesdayby Walter Chaw After a tumultuous first season plagued by short-sighted censors, tight budgets, and ever-diminishing production schedules, embattled producer Leslie Stevens was replaced by “nuts and bolts” man Ben Brady while Joseph Stefano, in something of a show of solidarity (and that he had other projects to attend to), likewise stepped down to be replaced by Seeleg Lester. (DP Conrad Hall had already parted ways with the show towards the end of season one.) The benefits and pitfalls of such a traumatic upheaval are difficult to compartmentalize, but to me, the series went along for its last seventeen episodes with a pioneering spirit (something that most veterans of the production owe to Lester) similar to that of the first thirty-two. The too-brief second season run includes not only a couple of the best episodes of “The Outer Limits”, the origin of a future blockbuster lawsuit, and the canny recruitment of Harlan Ellison as sometime scribe, but also one episode that stands as arguably the best hour of television ever broadcast.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) + Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002)|Once Upon a Time in Mexico – DVD

February 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Germany, Revenge, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Rubén Blades
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS
*/****
starring Robert Carlyle, Vanessa Feltz, Ricky Tomlinson, Kathy Burke
screenplay by Paul Fraser & Shane Meadows
directed by Shane Meadows

Onceuponatimeby Walter Chaw Ferociously patriotic but lacking in the epic scope suggested by its obvious debt to Sergio Leone's late masterpieces, pastiche-meister Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a magnification of John Woo in a lot of the same ways that Woo was a magnification of Leone–a post-post modern exercise bound together with a compelling sense of style but an alarming dearth of even the basics of sense. At the same time, if Leone understood the raucous humanism at the heart of Kurosawa, and Woo the insolent demystification of genre archetype of Leone, Rodriguez seems mainly to have ported the puerile macho fantasy of Woo while glancing off the deeper well of questions of honour and the mysterious bond between killers of men. I'm beginning to think that Rodriguez is a cheap filmmaker, interested in the mechanics of a piece more than the motivations of them. He can shoot a mean picture, he just can't set it up, pay it off, or explain it–and in replicating the best shoot-outs of Woo and Leone, he demonstrates that he's no Woo and most definitely no Leone.

Overrated/Underrated: Thirteen (2003) + Intolerable Cruelty (2003) [Widescreen] – DVDs

February 2, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Coming of Age, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Teen

by Bill Chambers

OVERRATED
THIRTEEN
*½/**** Image B+, Sound A, Extras B-
starring Evan Rachel Wood, Holly Hunter, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Sisto
screenplay by Catherine Hardwicke & Nikki Reed
directed by Catherine Hardwicke

I wrote my first script at around the age that 16-year-old Nikki Reed was when she collaborated with her father's ex-girlfriend Catherine Hardwicke on the screenplay for Thirteen. In an attempt to shape a thesis about the almost-unwatchable film made from this memoir of Reed's pubescence, I browsed that script (something I haven't done in over a decade) looking for examples of didacticism; by page three, a character has died from smoking, with cigarettes themselves characterized outside passages of dialogue as "cancer sticks." This was of course written in tandem with my own misadventures in smoking, but do as I say, not as I do. (Call it Harmony Korine Syndrome.) Teenagers make exceptionally bad screenwriters because all teens are Catholic, in a sense–every rebellious action has an equal and opposite guilty reaction. Manifested in confessional writing, that hypocrisy can be deliriously egotistical.

Black Widow (1987) – DVD

February 2, 2004Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Sami Frey, Dennis Hopper
screenplay by Ronald Bass
directed by Bob Rafelson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I suppose there are worse fates than to be made to watch Black Widow. Scripted by '80s stalwart Ronald Bass and directed by fallen '70s wunderkind Bob Rafelson, it's a coldly professional piece of work that combines some clear (if obvious) Hitchcockian doubling with the director's patented sterile master shots. But if much of the mechanics of the thing are put to good, ominous effect, that effect wears off quickly. It's not for lack of potential: pitting a well-put-together ice-queen killer against a falling-apart-at-the-seams female federal agent, its insistence on symmetry between the two solicits a conscious feminist analysis. Alas, the film is so wrapped up in defining itself as a good-time thriller that any subtextual frisson it might have had gets buried, resulting in a not-unpleasant experience that unfortunately doesn't stick.

The Perfect Score (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Scarlett Johansson, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Scarlett Johansson, Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Darius Miles
screenplay by Mark Schwahn and Marc Hyman & Jon Zack
directed by Brian Robbins

Perfectscoreby Walter Chaw A remake in quality and spirit of the "what were they thinking" classic Hackers, Brian Robbins's The Perfect Score is one of those stunted adolescent teensploitation flicks that makes one pine for the suddenly-glory days of Fresh Horses and The Breakfast Club–which, as it happens, seems to serve as this flick's carbuncular muse. A band of five disparate high school washouts meet in detention–errr, during a PSAT test–and plot to steal the answers from SAT headquarters. The Jock is played by real-life jock Darius Miles; the basket case is Roy (Leonardo Nam); the princess is Anna (an even more zombie-like than usual Erika Christensen); the brain is Francesca (Scarlett Johansson); and the punk is Kyle (Chris Evans). It takes some doing, it goes without saying, to cause one to reassess the acting acumen of the Brat Pack.

Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Horror, Thriller

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
***/****
starring Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Tatiana Maslany, Janet Kidder
screenplay by Megan Martin
directed by Brett Sullivan

Gingersnapsiiby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Many times I have watched Canadian films, and many times I have wondered: do my countrymen not know about a thing called montage? Too many Canuck efforts park the camera outside of the action and refuse to cut in come hell or high water, creating a national cinema of cold, static films that move like molasses. So it was with shock that I witnessed Brett Sullivan's deft use of cutting in Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed–whatever shortcomings the film might have, it never ceases to remind you that you're watching a movie as opposed to a record of people talking. The result of Sullivan's grasp of editing is a film that jams its themes in your face, daring you to try and ignore them, making for an experience more bracing than that of the usual Canadian product.

Emile (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Drama, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Ian McKellen, Deborah Kara Unger, Tygh Runyan, Theo Crane
written and directed by Carl Bessai

Emileby Travis Mackenzie Hoover In Survival, Margaret Atwood's seminal 1972 study of Canadian literature, she identifies Canadian writers' use of the family as "the trap you're caught in" and identifies a number of inescapable families that shut tight like a prison. Faced with this preponderance of smothering clans, she notes: "What one misses [from these books] is joy. After a few of these books, you start wanting someone, sometime, to find something worth celebrating." Flash forward 32 years and you will have the same complaint about Emile, a film in which the family is a tangled web from which there is no escape–and those who try to escape are doomed to guilt and destructiveness. Teamed with a somnambulistic pace and a painful, childlike politeness, the film so reeks of disappointment that it can't even find the courage to allow its most wronged character any kind of catharsis.

The Big Bounce (2004)

January 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Romance, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, Sara Foster, Charlie Sheen
screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by George Armitage

Bigbounceby Walter Chaw By the end of The Big Bounce, I was mildly surprised that it was still the same day I sat down to watch it. The film is aspiring to give Owen Wilson the role of the breezy, insouciant rake popularized by authors like Gregory MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, and, more to the point, Elmore Leonard (who I guess wrote the source material, previously adapted into a vehicle for Ryan O'Neal), but succeeds mainly in making the likable Wilson tedious. More a mood piece than a heist flick, The Big Bounce also casts ex-MTV news anchorperson Sara Foster as some kind of femme fatale so vacuous, so bad an actress, that although she's stunning in a Nicolette Sheridan sort of way, she fails to convince that there's enough going on upstairs to be even vaguely dangerous. Foster's entire performance is a yellow bikini and a variety of lucky sheets used as impromptu wraps–an object who never convinces that she's an object on purpose.

Open Range (2003) + Northfork (2003)|Open Range – DVD

January 29, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance, Theatrical, Western

OPEN RANGE
**½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A-
starring Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon
screenplay by Craig Storper, based on the novel The Open Range Men by Lauran Paine
directed by Kevin Costner

NORTHFORK
**½/****
starring James Woods, Nick Nolte, Claire Forlani, Duel Farnes
screenplay by Mark Polish & Michael Polish
directed by Michael Polish

Openrangeby Walter Chaw A little like Neil Diamond, Kevin Costner is an anachronism whose earnestness has landed him in Squaresville when the tragedy is that with a little tweaking in perspective, his peculiar brand of old-school earnestness might have his contemporaries looking upon him with more admiration than mirth. Costner is also the great American Gary Cooper hero archetype: tall, good-looking, dim-witted, and dull as dishwater–working almost exclusively in the realm of the sort of guileless red-blooded manifest determinism that loves mom, apple pie, horses, dogs, and guns. And why not? Costner has never stricken me, at least with his own projects, as the slightest bit condescending, his gift the reality or illusion that America's favourite simpleton is learning things at the same pace as his screenplays. His films, from Waterworld to Dances with Wolves to The Postman, are lovable for their complete lack of irony and self-reflection.

Naked Killer (1992) – DVD

January 29, 2004Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, DVD, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, Romance, Thriller

*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
starring Chingmy Yau, Simon Yam, Carrie Ng, Kelly Yiu
screenplay by Wong Jing
directed by Fok Yiu Leung

by Walter Chaw Ah, 1992. What a year for Wong Jing, as no fewer than seven of his excrescent scripts were produced and Hong Kong's answer to Jess Franco found himself behind the camera on a staggering eight more pictures. It just can't come as any surprise that there's something like creative fatigue evidenced in the man's career, and though he didn't direct Naked Killer (that dishonour fell to Fok Yiu Leung, a.k.a. Clarence Fok), the picture is only marginally better than such Wong-helmed garbage as City Hunter and Royal Tramp–mainly because it's not quite as cartoonish. A case has been made for this film being an obliterating feminist picture along the lines of I Spit on Your Grave or Mother's Day, and indeed, a tale of a band of lesbian seductress assassins who practice their deadly arts on a basement-full of rapists has the potential to say smart things about an important topic. But the execution is so unwatchable and coy that it's hard to embrace Naked Killer as either political or tellingly exploitative.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

January 27, 2004Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Thriller

**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan
screenplay by Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn
directed by Nicholas Meyer

Trekvicapby Bill Chambers On the eve of a Klingon truce with the Federation, Spock (Leonard Nimoy), to Kirk's (William Shatner) dismay, has come out in support of said peace treaty, whose prevention would directly result in the extinction of the Klingon race. ("Let them die," Kirk, still mourning the loss of his son to the power-mad Klingons of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, barks at his Vulcan cohort.) Recruited to host an ice-breaking pre-conference dinner for Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner) and his Klingon crew aboard Enterprise-B, Kirk proves a shabby host, loading up on Romulan ale (illegal, don'tcha know) in some attempt to conceal, excuse, or liberate his prejudice. Later that evening, as Gorkon's vessel Kronos One is fired on by photon torpedoes sourced back to the Enterprise, two figures cloaked in Federation gear assassinate the chancellor; evil General Chang (Christopher Plummer, tarted up to resemble Fu Manchu*) wastes no time in pinning the coup on Kirk and Bones (DeForest Kelley), who are promptly exiled to the gulag of icy Rura Penthe.

The Fighting Fitzgerald: FFC Interviews Thom Fitzgerald

January 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Interviews

TfitzgeraldinterviewtitleJanuary 25, 2004|An unwritten policy says that before interviewing a new subject for the first time, you should see the film and log the review so that the review isn't flavoured by bias, by whether you love or hate the filmmaker. It's almost impossible, particularly for an inexperienced critic, to separate affection for a person with a more diplomatic look at the person's picture–and difficult as well to separate the persona that an artist presents to media with who the person actually is. Everybody's your friend on the junket and we need each other: I need to fill my column (and hopefully with a compelling face), they need to publicize their films, and we get famous together in our respective disciplines. The whole thing is a little parasitic.

Le Divorce (2003) – DVD

January 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

The Divorce
*/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Leslie Caron, Stockard Channing
screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala & James Ivory, based on the novel by Diane Johnson
directed by James Ivory

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Rejoice, America: now there's a movie that hates the French just as much as you do. Operating under the code name Le Divorce, it has infiltrated the ranks of the smelly Frogs, scrutinized their every failing and foible, and exposed them for the no-goodniks that recent events have proven them to be. Were the film only so good at keeping its own house in order; despite its ostentatious accusations of Gallic obtuseness, it fails to notice its own American brand of bourgeois superiority, which treats the continent and its culture as items to be collected when they're not being sold to the highest bidder. There's a lesson to be learned here, especially in these postwar times, about the nature of a certain country and its arrogance.

The Simple Life (2003) (Complete Season One) – DVD

January 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, DVD, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C

by Walter Chaw As sociology goes, "The Simple Life" is not without cleverness. I'm not referring to the predictable meltdown of sticking Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton in the middle of the Ozarks, but rather the way in which our own prejudices about the extremes of class are manipulated with calculated cruelty. Every episode is preceded by the kind of narration that opens "The Dukes of Hazzard"–the show hates Nicole and Paris on the one hand because they represent absolutely every single evil quality that humans are capable of, and it hates the fine people of Altus, AR on the other hand because they're "simple." It's not a true test as reality shows go: after all, there are no stakes for the retarded heiresses asked to spend five weeks living the titular life who don't treat the stunt as an opportunity to improve themselves but as one to mess around at the expense of people for whom there is something at stake–like livelihood. The series would be a lot better if Nicole and Paris were threatened with being cut off from their inheritances should they act like crass, directionless, shiftless morons.

Bring It On Again (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Sports

Bring It On: Again
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Anne Judson-Yager, Bree Turner, Kevin Cooney, Faune A. Chambers
screenplay by Claudia Grazioso and Mark Gunn & Brian Gunn
directed by Damon Santostefano

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I'll say this much for Bring It On Again: it isn't nearly as bad as you might expect. Against all odds, the straight-to-video production shows traces of wit and a surfeit of good basic ideas in its tale of rival cheerleading squads, but alas, it was not to be: its core concept withers on the vine in favour of slapped-together aesthetics and teen-sitcom repartee. Par for the dtv course, its creators only seem interested in squeezing a few bucks out of the target demographic; the results, though far from painful, cruelly tantalize us with a glimmer of the film that might have been.

Touching the Void (2003) + Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)

January 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Romance, Sports, Theatrical, UK

TOUCHING THE VOID
**/****
starring Nicholas Aaron, Richard Hawking, Brendan Mackey, Joe Simpson
based on the book by Joe Simpson
directed by Kevin Macdonald

WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON!
*½/****
starring Kate Bosworth, Topher Grace, Josh Duhamel, Ginnifer Goodwin
screenplay by Victor Levin
directed by Robert Luketic

Touchingtadby Walter Chaw For those wondering what it would be like if one of those READER'S DIGEST "Drama in Real Life"s were ever made into a film, wonder no longer, for Touching the Void, packaged complete with suspense-shattering survivor testimonials and manageable tidbits of easily-digestible narrative, is a cunning simulacrum of the same. A feature-length dramatic re-creation in the television tabloid style, Touching the Void tells of a harrowing mountaineering cock-up that is, I guess, legendary in mountaineering circles for the same reason that dead NASCAR drivers are legendary in their sport. The problem though isn't with the ultimate banality of this account of one guy who crawls to safety down the bottom half a mountain he's already fallen down the top half of, but that the film of it mixes the victims of their own daredevil genes offering their perspective in front of a black backdrop with re-enactments featuring wheezy actors not entirely up to the task.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

January 23, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, Time Travel

***/****
starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Kevin Schmidt, Melora Walters
written and directed by J. Mackye Gruber & Eric Bress

Butterflyeffectby Walter Chaw The Butterfly Effect is tidy, nifty even, a great little genre picture that wallows in ugliness, child abuse, animal abuse, classism, and misogyny but with a dirty polish that tends to distract a little from the nastiness. Evan (Ashton Kutcher) suffers from blackouts, has ever since he was a kid, and no wonder, as there seems to be some nasty bouts of molestation, baby murder, and dog immolation buried in there, desperately in need of some good old-fashioned repression. Now a psych student at State U (his research having something to do with memory, naturally), he discovers that he can "possess" himself at various stages of his youth after being triggered by the comp book journals he's been keeping ever since he started having his spells. His efforts at "fixing" the tragedies of his life all tend towards failure, however, as every little wrinkle he puts in the fabric of time results in catastrophic changes in the present. The Butterfly Effect owes a great debt, then, to Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," Brian Aldiss's "Poor Little Warrior," William Goldman's Control, and Clive Barker's "The Inhuman Condition"; that it manages to honour to some degree each one of its sources (if only with the precision lavished on the telling of its dank tale) identifies the picture as a most difficult beast to embrace–and just as difficult to dislike. The craft above reproach, it's the content that worries.

Eastern Condors (1987) – DVD

January 22, 2004Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, War

Dung fong tuk ying
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ (DD)/A- (DTS)
starring Sammo Hung, Yuen Woo Ping, Mina Joyce Godenzi, Yuen Wah
screenplay by Barry Wong
directed by Sammo Hung

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover "It's The Dirty Dozen meets Rambo meets Apocalypse Now!" screams the back cover of the Sammo Hung vehicle Eastern Condors, and that's true–the film caters to all of your war/Vietnam film needs, managing to be completely parasitic of the abovementioned pictures while throwing in scenes from The Deer Hunter at no extra charge. Unfortunately, Eastern Condors doesn't also manage to be as good as any of its sources. An incongruous pairing of heavy combat violence and chirpy innocent characters, it's completely divided against itself: the wafer-thin plot renders the often impressive action scenes null while the scale of these set-pieces wipes the piddling stick-figure characters straight off the screen. And though the resulting tinny irritant is too penny-ante to be painful, the film's petty annoyances far outweigh its limited and meagre virtues.

Beyond Re-Animator (2003) – DVD

January 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Spain

*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Jeffrey Combs, Jason Barry, Elsa Pataky, Enrique Arce
screenplay by Jose Manuel Gomez
directed by Brian Yuzna

by Walter Chaw Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) apparently exists now in an alternate comic book universe where, as the hero, he can have innumerable concurrent adventures that disregard developments in other instalments in the series. Interred in a maximum security dungeon in the H.P. Lovecraft multiverse (a multiverse still dabbled in recently by Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon and his underestimated Dagon), West has jettisoned schlub assistant Dan for schlub prison doctor Howard (Jason Barry) while doomed love interest duties are assumed by the comely Elsa Pataky as a spunky investigative reporter. During imprisonment, West continues his experiments in re-animating the dead, expanding his research to encompass the idea that the soul has weight (making this an unlikely companion piece to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams) and can be captured and replaced–echoes, of course, of “Dr. Frankenstein”‘s experiments at humanizing Bub in Day of the Dead.

Runaway Jury (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

January 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A-
starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz
screenplay by Brian Koppelman & David Levien and Rick Cleveland and Matthew Chapman, based on the novel by John Grisham
directed by Gary Fleder

by Walter Chaw Marked by strong performances, a liberal bias, and a few thriller conventions that work, Gary Fleder's slickefied Grisham flick Runaway Jury is slickefied Grisham flick all the same, and its cast is so huge as to threaten at every moment to be ponderous. Still, the good outweighs the bad, if only just–the picture finding a way to forget, in forgivable ways, dozens of admittedly inconsequential characters while delivering on the juicy promise of a showdown between its titans: Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. (In a courthouse outhouse, no less.) At bottom and at the least, it's a lefty screed–this one against gun manufacturers–that isn't witheringly embarrassing (thinking of such miscalculated stroke jobs as The Contender, John Q, and The Life of David Gale)–and as an Austrian bodybuilder finds himself the governor of La La Land on no other merit than that he married royalty and was cunning enough to make a fortune from playing hunks of metal and pre-Christian barbarians, a left-leaning movie not similarly dimwitted and exasperating is cause for minor celebration.