DIFF ’02: Awake on the Downhill Slide (Wrap-Up)

October 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals

Difftitle2002bby Walter Chaw I started getting screeners for the 25th Denver International Film Festival (hereafter DIFF) about three weeks before the festivities began. As I was exchanging some for a few others, Ron Henderson, the creative energy and inspiration behind the first quarter-century of the event, pulled me aside and asked if I’d pick and introduce a film for the annual “Critic’s Choice” selection. At the time, I had been in the Denver market for something like 13 months–the only Internet journalist invited to present in all the years of the festival, I found myself included among Robert Denerstein of the ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, Steve Rosen of the DENVER POST, Bill Gallo of WESTWORD, Howie Movshovitz of NPR, and Greg Moody of our local NBC affiliate.

Burger in a Restaurant: FFC Interviews Neil Burger

October 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

NburgerinterviewtitleOctober 26, 2002|The writer-director of the nifty Interview with the Assassin, a Blair Witch construct involving suburban bogeys and the hypothetical existence of a gunman on the grassy knoll, Neil Burger arrived for our interview at Panzano restaurant in the suddenly chic downtown Denver. Tall, thin, dapper, Mr. Burger lives just six blocks from the World Trade Center site; over the course of our lunch, he recalled how large pieces of debris fell just feet from his home–and how an atrocity of that magnitude puts everything else into sharp perspective. We spoke about the massacre at Columbine High School near my house and compared notes on the funereal, vaguely psychotic atmosphere that followed our respective intimate tumults.

Queen of Swords: FFC Interviews Cheng Pei-pei

October 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

CpeipeiinterviewtitleOctober 26, 2002|I confided in the amazingly beautiful Hong Kong action legend Cheng Pei-pei–recently seen as the villainous Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon–that a screening of her classic Shaw Brothers film Come Drink with Me on a grainy bootleg copy as a small child gifted me with both a lifelong love of martial arts films and my first crush. Still lovely and distinguished almost forty years later, Ms. Cheng met me at the Daily Grind coffee shop in the Old Tivoli Brewery, where the Denver Film Society was running the 25th Denver International Film Festival and featuring a new print of Come Drink with Me that was originally struck for this year's Venice Film Festival. She was soft-spoken, polite, and exceedingly gracious; I was stricken by her humility and friendliness–old crushes die hard, I guess. I began by asking Ms. Cheng about her training as a dancer.

Heaven (2002)

October 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***½/****
starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Remo Girone, Stefania Rocca
screenplay by Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz
directed by Tom Tykwer

Heavenby Walter Chaw There is something of the alchemical when two disparate talents discover that their collaboration is inspired. It is an inkling of the excitement at the promise of A.I. with Kubrick’s misanthropy and Spielberg’s cult of childhood–or the pop-cultural satisfaction embedded in the narrative genius of Stephen King mixing easily with the stiff overwriting of Peter Straub. Heaven is the product of a screenplay by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski (and writing partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz) and surprisingly sedate direction by previously hyperactive wunderkind director Tom Tykwer. The result is another of Tykwer’s unpredictable romances blending with another of Kieslowski’s carefully metered, studiously non-didactic discussions of morality and consequence. The result of their union is often amazing.

The Rats (2002) – DVD

October 24, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*/**** Image C Sound C Extras C+
starring Vincent Spano, Mädchen Amick, Shawn Michael Howard, Daveigh Chase
screenplay by Frank Deasy
directed by John J. Lafia

by Walter Chaw In a peculiar case of “how much do I cop to,” I admit that I felt a surge of excitement upon first beholding the cover for the DVD release of The Rats, largely because it resembles a great deal the artwork for an edition of English horror author James Herbert’s Rats from many moons ago. After searching the credits diligently (and futilely) for any mention of the hale Brit’s stamp of approval, it was with considerably less excitement that I beheld proper the latest from poor Vincent Spano and Mädchen “Didn’t you used to be on ‘Twin Peaks’?” Amick. The Rats is fairly typical monster-/Seventies disaster-movie fare, also following in the faded footsteps of Willard and Ray Milland’s perverse cult classic Frogs. The main difference being that in our post-modern amusement park (Entropy! Get your tickets now!), the picture isn’t so much about even something so banal as eco-paranoia, but about itself and the genre that it simultaneously lampoons and aspires to.

Finding the Giant Within: FFC Interviews A.J. Schnack

October 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews, Music

AjschnackinterviewtitleOctober 24, 2002|The kind of interview that They Might be Giants (hereafter TMBG) might appreciate, my chat with filmmaker A.J. Schnack was short, sweet, and to the point. In town for the 25th Denver International Film Festival with his film Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, a pop journalist-laden look at the phenomena of geek rockers TMBG, I shared a large sofa with the nebbishy Mr. Schnack and asked what moved him to make a feature-length documentary on his favourite band.

Noyce Guys Finish First: FFC Interviews Phillip Noyce

October 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

PnoyceinterviewtitleOctober 24, 2002|2002 is a banner year for director Phillip Noyce, who, after years toiling in the Hollywood dream factory, has returned home to his native Australia to helm a pair of spectacular and disparate films: The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence. Both played at the 25th Annual Denver International Film Festival, with Noyce also honoured as a tribute guest at a special screening of his marvellous "locked room" thriller Dead Calm (1989). I met Noyce at the historic Tivoli Brewery's hospitality suite on the coldest morning in Colorado since probably last March, resulting in the imposing Noyce (6'4", easy) bulking up even more in a down jacket.

DIFF ’02: Together

October 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Music, South Korea
Together with YouHe ni zai yi qi**/****starring Tang Yun, Chen Hong, Chen Kaige, Liu Peiqiscreenplay by Xue Lu Xiao, Chen Kaigedirected by Chen Kaige by Walter Chaw Sentimental and overlong if beautifully shot and carefully structured, Chen Kaige's latest film Together is, in most respects, very much like his other films despite a contemporary setting. Focusing on music as a metaphor for transcendence and release in a way that has become a recurring hallmark of his career (Life on a String, Farewell My Concubine), Together follows a gifted young violinist, Xiaochen (Tang Yun), who finds that music is his only…

DIFF ’02: Swing

October 23, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Japan, Music
***/****starring Oscar Copp, Lou Rech, Tchavolo Schmitt, Mandino Reinhardtwritten and directed by Tony Gatlif by Walter Chaw An infectiously good-natured and bittersweet film about the Manouche Gypsy culture in France, Tony Gatlif's musical history Swing wraps a story of first love around the story of passion for the creation of music. A dream of flight scored by a haunting Gypsy lullaby marks the centre point of the film and defines as well the feeling of eternity that marks the picture and its threads of love, music, and place. (A burial at sea consists of the axe of a guitar sent…

DIFF ’02: Far from Heaven (2002)

October 23, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, Theatrical

****/****
starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
written and directed by Todd Haynes

Farfromheavenby Walter Chaw Fascinating in its subversion of the conventions of the 1950s melodrama (Elmer Bernstein’s swooping score dead-solid in evoking that time and place), the halcyon euphoria of Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven first surprises with its simplicity, then fascinates with its effectiveness. It is essentially a version of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (a title that itself speaks wryly about the Hays Code) that brings all of Sirk’s seething sexual subtext embarrassed to the front and centre. Taking that further, consider that if the subtext and text are flipped in Far from Heaven, then the artificiality of the film’s surfaces becomes the subtext to the sexual dysfunction. Haynes evokes Greek tragedy in the debunking of the fantasy of the golden, Golden Age nuclear family. He has crafted a pitch-black and hopeless picture, a torturous psychosexual exercise as played out by the Cleavers or Ozzie & Harriet.

Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition (1991|2002) [Platinum Edition] – DVD

October 22, 2002Posted in1990s, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
screenplay by Linda Woolverton
directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise

This review was popular for its contrarianism, but to my current thinking it’s insubstantial and hurries through the movie to get to the DVD; I’d like to take another crack at it someday.-Ed. (6/14/17)

by Bill Chambers Disney solidified the comeback of 2-D animation after the success of The Little Mermaid with Beauty & the Beast, a throwback to the fairytale reimaginings that defined the studio in its heyday. Uncle Walt himself had, in fact, kicked around the idea of adapting the “song as old as rhyme” during his reign but threw in the towel when he couldn’t figure out a way to sustain kiddie interest in what is, in its classical tellings, the story of a monster and a hottie who dine together in the evenings.

DIFF ’02: Safe Conduct

October 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Spain, War
Laissez-passer***/****starring Jacques Gamblin, Denis Podalydès, Charlotte Kady, Marie Desgrangesscreenplay by Jean Cosmos, Bertrand Tavernier, based on the book by Jean Devaivredirected by Bertrand Tavernier by Walter Chaw The best didacticism is one carried by a strong sense of humanism, and Bertrand Tavernier's oft-brilliant Safe Conduct ("Laissez-passer") wears its heart on its sleeve--a few inches sometimes from where a yellow star would have been sewn in the occupied Paris where it sets its scene. There is a reason to Tavernier's rambling madness (the film clocks in at just about three hours), found in the care taken in establishing a sense of…

DIFF ’02: Hejar

October 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Greece, Hungary, Turkey
Big Man, Little LoveBüyük adam küçük ask*/****starring Dilan Erçetin, Sükran Güngörwritten and directed by Handan Ipekçi by Walter Chaw An unintentionally creepy, relentlessly political diatribe, Turkish director Handan Ipekçi's Hejar intends to tell the plight of the minority Kurdish--who aren't even allowed to speak their own language--in Turkey, through the deep-set eyes of a little girl orphaned by the majority's inhumanity to the Kurd downtrodden. Sort of like The Professional with an aging barrister in place of a highly-trained assassin, or The Omen and The Exorcist (complete with a bizarre semi-public carpet urination) in its startling musical stings and unmotivated…

DIFF ’02: Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns

October 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music
***/****directed by A.J. Schnack by Walter Chaw A.J. Schnack's Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns has a title perfect for a withering exposé on the seedy underworld of prostitution and pornography but is instead a breezily enjoyable documentary on quirk-rock pioneers they might be giants. Its title referring to the name of the band and its two frontmen (John Flansburgh and John Linell), the piece succeeds as an introduction for the neophyte and a detailed retrospective for the long-time fan (some of whom are featured to great comic effect), even as it slightly overstays its welcome for the former. With a…

DIFF ’02: The Safety of Objects

October 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, UK
**½/****starring Glenn Close, Dermot Mulroney, Joshua Jackson, Jessica Campbellwritten for the screen and directed by Rose Troche by Walter Chaw Deserving of notice if only for its loaded cast and some very fine editing work and cinematography (by Geraldine Peroni and Enrique Chediak, respectively) by turns revelatory and breathtaking, Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects is another take on American Beauty that, unfortunately, ends with the same broad shots at the same barn sides. Structured out-of-time around a car accident that left a teen (Joshua Jackson) in a coma, the picture marks the circular trajectories of a carousel of characters…

DIFF ’02: Streeters

October 22, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Mexico
De la calle****/****starring Luis Fernando Peña, Maya Zapata, Armando Hernández, Mario Zaragozascreenplay by Marina Stavenhagen, based on the play by Jesús González Dáviladirected by Gerardo Tort by Walter Chaw Gerardo Tort's primal scream of a debut, Streeters is a sepia-soaked DV exploration of the teeming underbelly of Mexico City's sprung metropolis, as well as another in an ever-evolving Mexican cinema that, film-by-film, takes on the spirit and ferocity of the French Nouvelle Vague. This more a Godard than, say, Alfonso Cuarón's Truffaut-ian Y Tu Mamá También, Streeters follows every-urchin Rufino (Luis Fernando Peña) as he rips off a corrupt cop…

DIFF ’02: The Damned

October 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, Netherlands, Thailand
Zatracení**½/****starring Jan Plouhar, Jan Révai, Isabela Bencová, Dana Vávrováwritten and directed by Dan Svátek by Walter Chaw The first drug-themed film to be shot in the Kingdom of Thailand, Czech director Dan Svátek's The Damned is a handheld, vérité version of Return to Paradise (or Brokedown Palace, or Midnight Express) as two Czech nationals find themselves adrift in an island nirvana before being spirited away to a third-world prison. A handful of gritty, genuinely affecting Blair Witch moments, aided immeasurably by a gorgeously vigorous performance from Czech star Jan Révai, lend the picture an H-tinted immediacy and, now and again,…

Big Fat Liar (2002) – DVD

October 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

**½/**** Image C Sound A- Extras C+
starring Frankie Muniz, Paul Giamatti, Amanda Bynes, Amanda Detmer
screenplay by Dan Schneider
directed by Shawn Levy

by Walter Chaw Although it closes with thirty minutes of pratfalls and screaming, Big Fat Liar begins its life as a fun revenge fantasy that makes the interesting choice of never being about greed, but rather truth. Marty Wolf (Paul Giamatti) is an evil Hollywood producer who steals the vaguely autobiographical writing assignment of pathological liar Jason (Frankie Muniz) and turns it into a big-budget blockbuster that shares its name with this film’s title. Saddened that his wolf-crying (like “Marty Wolf”–get it?) has resulted in a loss of trust between him and his parents, Jason takes off for California with his tart pal Kaylee (Amanda Bynes) in tow to convince Marty to cop to the theft. No mention of economic restitution is ever made.

The Lost Boys: FFC Interviews Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe

October 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Film Festivals, Interviews

LamanchainterviewtitleOctober 22, 2002|Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe–the team behind the Terry Gilliam documentaries The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys and this year's excellent Lost in La Mancha–define a collaboration of complementary parts. Meeting the pair in a below-street level conference room at Denver's chichi Hotel Monaco, I was stricken by the realization that the two themselves resemble a Gilliam dyad (the duct repairmen of Brazil, perhaps)–they're an exercise in interesting, opposing body types. Gilliam, one can only conclude, is infectious.

Wishmaster: The Prophecy Fulfilled (2002) – DVD

October 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Romance

**/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Michael Trucco, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Jason Thompson, John Novak
screenplay by John Benjamin Martin
directed by Chris Angel

by Bill Chambers You’ve got to love a movie (trust me, you do) that opens with a sex scene, brings up a title card to read “3 Years Later,” and mere moments after that flashes back to the opening sex scene. The dumbitude of Wishmaster: The Prophecy Fulfilled, frankly, excited me–this is not a dull bad film, but one chirpy and alive. Shot like an episode of “Red Shoe Diaries”, rendering the goblin-featured title genie an always-jarring sight (you keep expecting to see him in lingerie), the picture reveals itself to be on autopilot (the Airplane! kind that’s inflatable and winks) when it can’t even offer up a clever resurrection of the Djinn except to have some schlub hand our heroine a box capped by a fire opal and say, “Here, I bought this for you.” She peers into it, sees a creature screaming against a backdrop of flames, and suggests he have it appraised.