Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001)

July 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, India, Musical, Sports, UK

***/****
starring Aamir Khan, Gracy Singh, Rachel Shelley, Paul Blackthorne
screenplay by Kumar Dave, Sanjay Dayma, Ashutosh Gowariker
directed by Ashutosh Gowariker

by Walter Chaw With the subtitle “Once Upon a Time in India,” Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan holds a kinship to Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China in more than just appellation and an abiding dislike of the Colonial British. Other than substituting elaborate musical numbers–as is Bollywood’s wont–for Hong Kong’s martial arts features, Lagaan is in fact as interested in the sociology of enslavement before the rush of technology (embodied in cameras and firearms) as its farther-eastern brethren. The rather serious-minded attack of India’s own caste system and the ineffectualness of its Raj ruling structure lends additional layers to the picture’s surprising depths, yet all the politicized subtext in the world does little to suppress the essential exuberance of the gaudy visceral Bollywood experience.

The Films of John Sayles (1980-2002)

July 6, 2002Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Disability, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Ireland, Mexico, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sports, Thriller, Western

Filmsofjohnsayles

Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980)
**/****
Buy DVD at Amazon.com
John Sayles's directorial debut has taken on the aura of a folk tale, the details of its genesis are that well known: With a $40,000 budget raised largely from the quadruple-threat's (writer/editor/director/actor) work for the scripts for Roger Corman's Battle from Beyond the Stars, Piranha, and Alligator, Sayles shot a film at a rented lake house with friends possessed of neither experience nor know-how and redefined the American indie movie scene. Return of the Secaucus Seven had two separate New York runs, made appearances on several year-end lists, and became a cause célèbre for snobs "in the know" deriding Kasdan's The Big Chill as a Secaucus rip-off. Twenty-some years later and the bloom is off the rose, so to speak: Return of the Secaucus Seven reveals itself to be sloppily made, overwritten, and horrendously performed (with the exception of David Strathairn and Gordon Clapp). Still, there are moments of truth in the picture that are pure: an embarrassing interlude when two old friends pass on their way to an unfortunately placed bathroom, and another during a feverish pick-up basketball sequence that steadily develops a delicious subtext. Gathering for what might be an annual reunion, the titular seven reminisce about characters who never appear, discuss past indiscretions (legal and sexual), and locate themselves on the verge of their third decade unmoored from the virulent liberalism of their flower-powered youth. Stealing the show is nerdy "straight" man Chip (Clapp), demonstrating the kind of unaffected naturalism indicative of Sayles's later work but a naturalism buried for the most part here by oodles of hanging plots, mismanaged character moments, odd editing choices, and a peculiarly literate lack of focus indicative of a brilliant novelist moonlighting as a filmmaker. 104 minutes

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 7

July 5, 2002Posted in1980s, 2000s, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Czechoslovakia, Drama, France, Italy, Music, Theatrical

by Walter Chaw

PETER SHAFFER'S AMADEUS: DIRECTOR'S CUT (1984/2002)
***/****
starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow
screenplay by Peter Shaffer, based on his play
directed by Milos Forman

Bringing the highbrow to the status-hungry middle and lowbrow in the same way as those "Bach's Greatest Hits" collections and the awful faux-llies of Andrew Lloyd Weber, Milos Forman's bawdy, jittery adaptation of Peter Shaffer's fanciful play "Amadeus" is not so much about Mozart as it is about genius and its burden on the mediocre. Mozart (Tom Hulce) is an adolescent boor touched by the hand of God. Emperor Joseph's (Jeffrey Jones) court composer Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) becomes obsessed and desperately jealous of Mozart's gift, leading him to the madhouse and confessions of murder. Amadeus works because of Forman's gift for the seedy (and portraying asylums–he directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Abraham's deeply-felt performance.

Diamond Men (2001)

July 4, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Robert Forster, Donnie Wahlberg, Bess Armstrong, Jasmine Guy
written and directed by Dan Cohen

by Walter Chaw Much will be written about Robert Forster’s performance in Diamond Men, Dan Cohen’s sophomore hyphenate feature, and as Forster lands an executive producer credit (daughter Kate gets the “associate producer” tag), the veteran actor’s much-deserved critical buzz this time around is a product more of design than serendipity. That doesn’t lessen the picture as a nice vehicle for Forster’s hang-dog melancholia, the quality that Tarantino’s Jackie Brown used to magnificent effect (and the one with which David Lynch played in Forster’s tantalizing Mulholland Drive cameo), but what it does do is render Diamond Men unconvincing as a drama. It’s full of contrivances of the kind that cast a grimy patina over the rest of the film–a Things Change sort of deal where the line between positive senior characters and irritating grotesqueries makes the proceedings first unpleasant and then insufferable.

Men in Black II (2002)

July 4, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Theatrical, Will Smith

*/****
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Rip Torn, Rosario Dawson
screenplay by Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro
directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

by Walter Chaw Coming in at just shy of eighty-five minutes, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black II is that breed of value-free summer entertainment–call it the “lacklustre blockbuster”–that gives mainstream movies a bad name. It’s all first act and no second or third, meaning everything that happens in the film would function as the set-up in a real film (see also: all of ‘Episodes‘ 1 and 2), and that its primary purpose is to act the whorish shill for product placement–never does the silver screen so resemble a bulletin board as when this variety of film drags itself into the googolplex. Special effects are asked to behave like character, motivation, and narrative while the actors paid exorbitant amounts to caper by themselves before a blue screen do their best not to cackle like Snidely Whiplash making off with burlap bags that have dollar signs painted on them. The audience is the damsel in distress in this flickering melodrama, tied to the railroad tracks as a great lumbering behemoth barrels down, the engineer asleep at the rudder.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001) – DVD

July 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by John A. Davis and David N. Weiss & J. David Stem and Steve Oedekerk
directed by John A. Davis

by Jarrod Chambers There is a new innocence abroad. You can see it in movies such as Spider-Man and the Academy Award-nominated Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, which feel no need to undercut the goodness of their heroes or the morality of the story with black irony. They tell us, in effect, that it is okay to be a nice guy whose heart is in the right place, who uses his abilities in the service of good, who makes mistakes and pays for them without becoming bitter or psychotic. I, for one, think it’s a breath of fresh air after the dark, depressing visions of the Tim Burton Batman era.

The Powerpuff Girls Movie (2002)

July 2, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

The Powerpuff Girls
**/****
screenplay by Craig McCracken, Charlie Bean, Lauren Faust, Paul Rudish, Don Shank
directed by Craig McCracken

by Walter Chaw I remember this Nora Dunn skit on “Saturday Night Live” where she plays a French chanteuse draped over a piano singing “Send in the Clowns” translated into French and then back into English again. The result was incomprehensible and funny–for a while. Craig McCracken’s The Powerpuff Girls Movie (based on his Cartoon Network series “Powerpuff Girls”, natch) is American animation translated into Japanese animé back into American animation: similarly incomprehensible, not quite so funny, and it overstays its welcome, too. Because the humour of the piece is reliant on the slow burn and the extended take, when a joke doesn’t work there’s a lot of downtime (Men in Black II suffers a similar malady), and because most of the jokes don’t work, even for the bib-and-diaper set, at around seventy minutes The Powerpuff Girls Movie is powerfully boring stuff.

Pearl Harbor (2001) [60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition]|Pearl Harbor: The Director’s Cut [VISTA Series] – DVDs

June 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, War

*½/****
ACE DVD – Image A+ Sound A (DD) A+ (DTS) Extras C+
VISTA DVD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Tom Sizemore
screenplay by Randall Wallace
directed by Michael Bay

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I must shamefully admit that I greeted the approach of Pearl Harbor‘s release with a mixture of moral righteousness and secret anticipation. I knew that no good could come from the intersection of the WWII nostalgia wave and the craven instincts of producer Jerry Bruckheimer; anyone who had seen Top Gun, his earlier effort in military pornography, would have to surmise that his new film’s potential for right-wing jingoism was clearly off the scale. These suspicions were confirmed once I saw the trailer, its sickening combination of swelling music, explosions, dashing soldiers and the FDR “Day of Infamy” speech promising propaganda of Riefenstahlian proportions. Anyone who reads me would expect me to give it a good shellacking, and so I hoped for a total outrage to crucify without remorse–reaping me the happy side effect of securing me the moral high ground from which to preach.

Mr. Deeds (2002)

June 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Adam Sandler, Winona Ryder, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by Tim Herlihy
directed by Steven Brill

Mrdeedsby Walter Chaw It isn't that Mr. Deeds is unfunny that nettles the most, it's that Mr. Deeds is smug and lazy and unfunny. The film is Adam Sandler not trying very hard anymore, a guy with a puerile and boorish sense of humour getting together with all his buddies to drink beer and tell jokes about dumb people and Spaniards. Except for the three scenes it recreates from Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town shot for shot, it has almost nothing to do with its source material, choosing instead to try to cash in again on Sandler's peculiar, lisping, psychopathic man-child persona. Judging by the declining box-office of Sandler's films (even though I sort of liked Little Nicky), the alleged comedian would probably do well not to rely upon the good graces of his dimwitted frat fanbase and start looking for inspiration in places other than his own films.

Spider (2002)

June 28, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Directors: David Cronenberg, Drama, Esoterica, France, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***½/****
starring Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Bradley Hall
screenplay by Patrick McGrath and David Cronenberg, based on the novel by Patrick McGrath
directed by David Cronenberg

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover After a period of indifferent projects, declining audiences, and three years of disconcerting silence, the unthinkable has become reality: David Cronenberg is back on top. His new film Spider intensifies all of his past thematic concerns with a pictorial eloquence practically unheard of in his oeuvre–it’s like watching one of the sex slugs from Shivers turn into a beautiful, fragile butterfly. For once, the trials of his sexually confused lead resonate beyond the merely theoretical, and for once, you feel his pain instead of contemplating it from a distance. The antiseptic restraint of Crash and Naked Lunch has been replaced with a dread and sadness that overwhelm you with their emotionalism; Spider is easily the best film he’s made since Dead Ringers, possibly even since Videodrome. I hope that it marks a turning point in the career of Canada’s most conspicuous auteur.

Atanarjuat (2002)

June 28, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Theatrical

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
The Fast Runner
****/****
starring Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalu, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq, Lucy Tulugarjuk
screenplay by Paul Apak Angilirq
directed by Zacharias Kunuk

by Walter Chaw Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), the first motion picture presented entirely in the Inuit language Inutkikuk, is what it means to be transported by the cinema: taken to another place and another time on the flickering wings of film’s lunar art. It is the realization of the full possibility of the movies to present the alien as familiar while providing a vital anthropological connection through the naturalism and glorious universality of its characters and story. An Inuit legend passed through centuries of oral tradition that demonstrates a very particular peculiarity of world mythology, Atanarjuat, seen one way, is a classic banning fable–thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife and possessions, thou shalt not murder. Jung spoke of a common well of images and signifiers from which we draw our stories, and Atanarjuat, unfolding on a cold-blasted primeval arctic plain, has the quality of totem.

The Game of Wife: FFC Interviews Yvan Attal & Charlotte Gainsbourg

June 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Interviews

MywifeasanactressinterviewtitleJune 26, 2002|A hot and smoky day in downtown Denver (approximately thirty miles and apparently downwind from the Hayman forest fire that at the time we didn’t know was started, somehow appropriately, by a lovelorn forest ranger) found me meeting Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg at the café run by the Denver Art Museum. I was nervous about this interview, more so than most, mainly because I had nothing especially positive to say on the subject of My Wife is an Actress (Ma femme est une actrice), a seemingly autobiographical film–it’s Attal’s hyphenate debut–that is being praised for its romantic quirk but in which I could find neither joy nor connection. Its jokes too obvious, its characters unlikeable and shrill, and its conclusions too pat by far; I looked sadly over my unpromising notes on the ride over.

Fast Times: FFC Interviews Zacharias Kunuk & Norman Cohn

June 24, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Interviews

FastrunnerinterviewtitleJune 25, 2002|For all of George Lucas's frothing exhortations for exhibitors and filmmakers to wean themselves off celluloid, the most compelling argument for digital video exists in independent cinema–smaller productions have thus far benefited the greatest from DV's affordability, flexibility, and intimacy. Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's Atanarjuat (more commonly, The Fast Runner) (Kunuk is listed as director and Cohn as DP, but the reality is closer to their responsibilities being equal and the same), shot entirely on DV and then transferred to 35mm (much like Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), is the kind of unique indie project that gives hope and reason to the format; without DV, The Fast Runner would have been too expensive and cumbersome to shoot. A stark and beautiful telling of an ancient Inuit banning fable, The Fast Runner is also the first major cinema product from the Inuit people, the first picture shot entirely in the Inutkikuk language, and the first picture to present Inuit people to a western audience free of Nanook of the North stereotypes. Besides being entertaining, The Fast Runner is an important film.

Gosford Park (2001) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

June 24, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, Italy, Mystery, UK

***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Stephen Fry, Emily Watson, Ryan Phillippe
screenplay by Julian Fellowes
directed by Robert Altman

by Walter Chaw A thematic continuation of The Player‘s violent iconoclasm, Robert Altman takes on the very British “Upstairs, Downstairs” class struggle in Gosford Park, a film that resolves itself as another full-frontal assault on the Hollywood studio system. Misanthropic, smug, and pessimistic, it behaves like an Agatha Christie chamber mystery, complete with secretive service staff, bumbling policemen, and the usual upper-crust suspects, but it’s ultimately little more than an unavoidable homage to Renoir’s The Rules of the Game and a dig at a system outside of which Altman eternally finds himself. Thankfully, Gosford Park more resembles the genre-bending Altman of Kansas City than the truculently proselytizing Altman of Dr. T & the Women.

Black Hawk Down (2001) – DVD

June 22, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, UK, War

****/**** Image A- Sound A+
starring Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana
screenplay by Ken Nolan, based on the book by Mark Bowden
directed by Ridley Scott

Mustownby Walter Chaw Black Hawk Down is a living, seething animal, full of courage and heroism, stinking of blood and gunpowder. It lacks the paternalistic moralizing of Saving Private Ryan as well as much of the poetry of The Thin Red Line, but it captures the best images of both while discarding the chaff of the former. One scene towards the end of the film, as exhausted U.S. Rangers are led to safety by a group of Somali children, is a fine example of that brute synergy. Ridley Scott’s film is the only big budget spectacle film of the last several years (Pearl Harbor, The Perfect Storm, all the way back to Titanic) that actually has the nerve to honour the event it seeks to recreate. The characters aren’t stock movie stereotypes–in fact, they’re so minimally portrayed that the general homogeny of its soldiers in battle serves to highlight mainly a minimalist “us against them” mentality. Black Hawk Down trusts its audience; it is perhaps the first and only time that this will be said of a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) [The Two-Disc Awards Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

June 21, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Disability, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany
screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar
directed by Ron Howard

by Walter Chaw Mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. gained his reputation in theoretical economics and/by discerning patterns in impossibly complicated numerical models. A Beautiful Mind, a film based very loosely upon his life, likewise deals with theoretical economics (in regards to Christmas box office), but offers bland predictable patterns in place of complexity. For example, because this is DreamWorks’/Universal’s Oscar tentpole, the running time falls safely in the “adult contemporary holiday respectable” range of 130-145 minutes, and it features a big name actor in a role that requires him to be some combination of mentally disabled (I Am Sam, Forrest Gump, Rain Man), insane (As Good As It Gets), or that delicate combination of the two: a genius (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester).

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)

June 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Kieran Culkin, Jena Malone, Emile Hirsch, Vincent D’Onofrio
screenplay by Jeff Stockwell and Michael Petroni, based on the book by Chris Fuhrman
directed by Peter Care

Dangerouslivesofaltarboysby Walter Chaw The paradox of William Blake is that while extolling the virtues of action, he was engaged in contemplation–a paradox nettling enough that near the end of his life, he left art in favour of walking the world. During his creative period, however, Blake had few equals in terms of ideology and technical proficiency; he was an employer of what he called “the infernal method,” creating etchings through the corrosive landscaping quality of acid. Each of Blake’s original works, art or poetry, were printed by the artist’s hand and etched by this infernal method. It was his way–the artist’s way–of introducing the idea of “action” into creation.

Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows (2000)

June 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Clint Eastwood, Documentary, DVD, Television

***/**** Image B Sound A
directed by Bruce Ricker

by Walter Chaw Directed by Bruce Ricker, Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows is a particularly good biographical account featuring clips from dozens of the titular subject’s work, interviews with former Eastwood co-stars as diverse as Meryl Streep and Richard Burton, and a smooth narration read by Morgan Freeman that links the periods of the actor’s professional life with grace and alacrity. Of particular interest are the moments in which such admirers as French director Bertrand Tavernier discuss Eastwood’s reception overseas. Blissfully lacking scrutiny into the actor’s personal life, the picture is more A&E than E!, choosing the road less travelled in tracing the actor’s evolution from studio stable hand to one of the most powerful directors in the United States.

Frank Herbert’s Dune (2000) – DVD|Frank Herbert’s Dune [Special Edition: Director’s Cut] – DVD

June 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi, Television

***/****
DVD – Image C+ Sound C+ Extras C+
DVD (SEDC) – Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring William Hurt, Alec Newman, Saskia Reeves, James Watson
screenplay by John S. Harrison, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by John Harrison

by Jarrod Chambers On the whole, I enjoyed the 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert’s Dune, which was adapted and directed by John Harrison. It has a sustained mood, it conveys some of the spirit of its source material, and it is entertaining, especially the last episode. The plot, stated baldly: Paul Atreides (Alec Newman), the young son of Duke Leto Atreides (William Hurt) comes to a desert planet called Arrakis, notable as the only source in the universe of the mysterious substance “spice.” The spice unleashes psychic powers in young Paul, who, along with his mother, Jessica (Saskia Reeves), is driven from his home and must join the Fremen, a group of desert nomads. He grows up with the tribe and eventually leads a rebellion against House Harkonnen, who now rule Arrakis, finally brokering peace with Emperor Shaddam IV (Giancarlo Giannini) and the mysterious Spacing Guild, which owns all the spaceships.

The Tall T (1957)

June 19, 2002Posted in1950s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, Western

***/****
starring Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O’Sullivan, Arthur Hunnicutt
screenplay by Burt Kennedy
directed by Budd Boetticher

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Tall T is, on the surface, a fairly unassuming western from the ’50s: individualistic loner fights bad guys while standing up for the pioneer spirit. Why, then, did it leave me with such an awful sadness? The reason is that the filmmakers have thought about what loner individuals and bad guys and the pioneer spirit represent, and the conclusions they reach are quietly devastating. Instead of displaying knee-jerk expressions of stock responses, director Budd Boetticher and writer Burt Kennedy truly meditate on why someone would want to embody the cowboy ideal–and realize it’s an alienation so great that social life becomes all but unbearable. It’s not even a critique of the American dream, but a lament for an alternative that might lead someone out of isolation; The Tall T ultimately finds that a life of productive solitude is better than becoming gnarled in the risks of the outside world.