The Next Big Thing (2002)

June 13, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Chris Eigeman, Jamie Harris, Connie Britton, Mike Starr
screenplay by Joel Posner & P.J. Posner
directed by P.J. Posner

by Walter Chaw A film that curiously reminds of Eric Schaeffer’s smug, unfunny If Lucy Fell, P.J. Posner’s badly-scored, clumsily-written, expansively-performed, and stodgily-paced The Next Big Thing is an exercise in elitism that sketches out its tedious premise in broad strokes. It takes broadsides at the snooty New York art world (an exercise akin to complaining about the media or engaging in a discussion on the ethics of politicians)–the ground for excoriation, in other words, isn’t so much fertile as it is in dire need of crop rotation. And like a hack artist before his hack art, The Next Big Thing lays on its easel in the benighted hope that it can be appreciated for a work of insight rather than the umpteenth riff on a strip-mined theme.

I Am Sam (2001) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD

June 12, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disability, Drama, DVD

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Doug Hutchison
screenplay by Kristine Johnson & Jessie Nelson
directed by Jessie Nelson

by Walter Chaw I Am Sam‘s premise is a strange one: a mentally retarded* man (titular Sam, played by Sean Penn) impregnates a homeless woman he has invited to stay with him. After giving birth to the impossibly precocious Lucy (Dakota Fanning), the vagrant mom vamooses (“I never wanted this! I just wanted a place to sleep!”), leaving Sam solely responsible for the raising of the child. With the help of eccentric piano-playing recluse Dianne Wiest (perhaps fulfilling a bizarre ambition to play Madame Sousatzka), Sam learns an infant’s feeding schedule (by timing it to late-night Nickelodeon programming), shops for diapers, and realizes that he needs to find daycare if he wants to keep his job tidying sugar cozies at the local Starbucks. (Feel-good, politically-correct bullshit being a saltlick for corporate sponsors, Starbucks, International House of Pancakes, Target, and Pizza Hut all helped fund I Am Sam.) When Child Services finally collects Lucy into protective custody on her seventh birthday, Sam gets frosty type-A lawyer Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer) to take on his cause pro bono. In the process, of course, Sam’s infectious goodness teaches Rita, and us, a little about what’s really important in life.

On the Phone with Jena Malone…: FFC Interviews Jena Malone

June 11, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Interviews, Teen

JminterviewtitleJune 12, 2002|In the six years since she played the Jodie Foster character as a young ham radio enthusiast in Contact and Jennifer Jason Leigh's troubled daughter in Anjelica Huston's acclaimed Bastard Out of Carolina, Jena Malone has cornered the market on damaged adolescent goods. Maybe you remember her giving Julia Roberts lip in Stepmom, or asking Kevin Costner if he slept with Kelly Preston in For Love of the Game, or committing infanticide and pinning it on her dim boyfriend in a two-parter of TV's "Homicide". Perhaps, like me, you're a big fan of Donnie Darko, to which she brings the balance of calm–she is the film's earthy centre.

Shallow Hal (2001) – DVD

June 8, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander, Jimmy Badstibner
screenplay by Sean Moynihan & Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly
directed by Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly

by Walter Chaw Sadness saturates every frame of Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s Shallow Hal like a melancholy tune. It seeps into the corners of a scene–into the wounded eyes of a young woman who has never been asked for her phone number and the wary acceptance of a compliment by someone accustomed to casual abuse. The premise of the film is deceptively simple: an extremely shallow man, the titular Hal (Jack Black), is given the ability by self-help guru Tony Robbins to see the “inner beauty” of people. This means that suddenly for Hal, many beautiful people appear ugly and many physically unattractive people gorgeous. Some folks remain unchanged. In the case of the guarded and acerbic 300 lb Rosemary, she resembles Gwyneth Paltrow in Hal’s eyes.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 6

June 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Revenge, Theatrical, Thriller

BAISE-MOI (2000)
Rape Me
Fuck Me
*½/****
starring Raffaëla Anderson, Karen Bach
written and directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, based on the novel by Despentes

by Walter Chaw Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s Baise-moi (translated as “Rape Me” in the U.S., “Fuck Me” internationally) is a wallow in the murk of exploitation cinema not-cleverly disguised as a commentary on the evils of pornography and the violent objectification of women. Maybe it’s not disguised at all: Baise-moi subverts porn conventions with graphic (phallic) gun violence overlaying explicit, unsimulated penetration–the clumsy juxtaposition clearly intended to forward the idea that penetration and money shots in porn are the equivalent of getting shot and welters of gore. (The late Linda Lovelace described her legendary turn in seminal porno Deep Throat as a document of her rape.) Blood and semen, guns and dicks–the rationale behind the French phrase for orgasm meaning “a little death” is suddenly stripped of its more romantic lilt.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)

June 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Fionnula Flanagan, James Garner
screenplay by Callie Khouri (with Mark Andrus), based on the novel by Rebecca Wells
directed by Callie Khouri

by Walter Chaw Tennessee Williams by way of Oprah’s Book Club, the only thing more intolerable than reading the hideously popular Rebecca Wells novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is watching Callie Khouri’s equally shrill and unpleasant film of it. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood makes assumptions about the stupidity (and cupidity) of women that are unjust and hateful while painting men as paternalistically indulgent, a roll of the eyes and a pat on the hand apparently the best and only way to deal with women when they’re being insane and abusive. It doesn’t even need to be said that in films of this type women are always being insane and abusive–that is when they aren’t being insipid and cutesy. It’s bad in the book; after the shorthand and the compressions, it’s infinitely worse in the film. It is, after all, now pure and unfiltered.

Fidel (2002) – DVD

June 4, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Television

*½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Victor Huggo Martin, Gael Garcia Bernal, Patricia Velasquez, Cecilia Suarez
screenplay by Stephen Tolkin, based on the books Guerrilla Prince by Georgie Anne Geyer and Fidel Castro by Robert E. Quirk
directed by David Attwood

by Walter Chaw Fidel is a very long, frustrating, exculpatory biopic of Cuba’s dictator that, in its near-fanatical dedication to even-handedness, provides a piece devoid of a moral compass. In certain instances, pacifism implies an endorsement of one side and director David Attwood is certainly guilty of not taking a stand on one of the most controversial, inflammatory, murderous, megalomaniacal, and charismatic figures in modern history. Beginning, intriguingly, in 1949 with a young Castro (Victor Huggo Martin) as a clean-shaven lawyer incensed by certain acts of vandalism perpetrated by the American Navy in Havana, the film promises to draw an interesting connection to Gandhi’s legal background and, most fascinatingly, the starkly different ways these two revolutionary leaders conduct their rebellions (and to what eventual purposes).

The Pagemaster (1994) – DVD

June 4, 2002Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance

*½/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras B-
starring Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, Ed Begley, Jr., Mel Harris
screenplay by David Casci, David Kirschner, Ernie Contreras
live-action director Joe Johnston, animation director Maurice Hunt

by Walter Chaw Tailor-made as a public service announcement for going to the library and reading the classics, The Pagemaster makes up for what it lacks in grace with an admirable and perhaps misplaced faith in its audience. Clearly intended as an introduction to discussion rather than a particularly entertaining animated film, it becomes the role of the parents with The Pagemaster to point out the references it makes along the way: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Melville’s Moby Dick, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Verne’s 20,000 Leagues, Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The extent to which a parent is able to fulfill this obligation is the extent to which The Pagemaster is worthwhile; using this film as an eighty-minute babysitter-cum-opiate negates any possible positive effect conferred by the picture–raising the question, clearly, of how best to approach criticism of the piece.

Out Cold (2001) – DVD

June 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Sports

½*/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C
starring Jason London, Willie Garson, Lee Majors, Zach Galifianakis
screenplay by Jon Zack
directed by The Malloys

by Walter Chaw The Malloy Brothers’ ode to the “makin’ it” comedies of the mid-’80s (which reached their apex at the genre’s nascence with Bob Clark’s coming-of-age smut-fest Porky’s) is the flaccid snowboard epic Out Cold. Looking back at Porky’s (not that I would look back at Porky’s) reveals that its thrills are decidedly modest–but not nearly so modest as those in the disingenuously chaste Out Cold. The film is so much just a collection of puerile (and unfunny) pranks interspersed with extended cock-teases that the effect is akin to watching a Britney Spears concert with a fraternity.

Hombre (1967) – DVD

June 3, 2002Posted in1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone, Diane Cilento
screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by Martin Ritt

by Walter Chaw Paul Newman’s Hombre is his fourth and final “H” film of that decade–a quartet that includes The Hustler, Harper, and another of his six collaborations with Martin Ritt, the fantastic Hud. Each (and feel free to lump Cool Hand Luke and Paris Blues in with this esteemed crowd) features Newman as an outsider influence, a catalyst for change and a hero testing the boundaries of acceptable social mores (as was much of the cinema of the ’60s), made all the more shocking for his matinee idol good looks and all-American cool. Newman, arguably the biggest and best star of the Sixties, was the quintessential anti-hero for a dissenting cinematic age, and he brought that brooding outcast sensibility to what was perhaps the quintessential outsider role: a half-breed in a western in Ritt’s 1967 film Hombre.

The Wash (2001) – DVD

June 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, George Wallace
written and directed by D.J. Pooh

by Walter Chaw A bit of free advice: if you undertake a drinking game in which the trigger word is “n***a” while watching D.J. Pooh’s The Wash, you’re probably going to die. Another word to the wise: if you don’t imbibe lethal doses of some variety of libation while watching The Wash, you’re probably going to die regardless. The only sensible way to approach The Wash is, apparently, with rubber gloves and one of those plastic bags dispensed at public walking trails.

Marlo’s America: FFC Interviews Marlo Poras

June 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews

MporasinterviewtitleJune 2, 2002|After working as an apprentice under Martin Scorsese's brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Marlo Poras decided that she needed a change of pace from the stress of mainstream film production and followed a friend to North Vietnam to make educational AIDS videos for national distribution there. Immersed in a foreign country, one that still holds their victory in "The American War" as a source of great pride, Ms. Poras became interested in a quartet of high-school exchange students preparing to spend their senior year in the United States, a place idealized and demonized in equal measure by the North Vietnamese. Armed with a Sony VX 1000 Mini-DV camera and nothing else in the way of crew or experience, Ms. Poras narrowed her focus to one subject, Mai, and to Mai's often-peculiar experiences in rural Meridian, Mississippi.

Platform (2000)

June 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, China, Drama, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Theatrical

***/****
starring Hong Wei Wang, Tao Zhao, Jing Dong Liang, Tian Yi Yang
written and directed by Jia Zhang-Ke

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover To recommend or not to recommend Jia Zhang-ke’s Platform? The question depends on who you are. For those with even a passing interest in Chinese cinema and culture, it’s virtually mandatory viewing: the film is one of the most dense and nuanced portraits of a society in transition from any nation I can think of, and for Westerners, it puts a face to events that we normally hear mentioned only in passing. Those seeking narrative thrills, however, had better look elsewhere, because Platform‘s glacial pace and oppressive mise-en-scène are calculated to test the patience of even the most sympathetic viewer. But even though the film is tough slogging at times (a circumstance I attribute to its having been re-edited for export), those with intellectual priorities are advised to get on this Platform and ride the train to the last stop.

Undercover Brother (2002)

May 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Eddie Griffin, James Brown, Chris Kattan, Denise Richards
screenplay by John Ridley and Michael McCullers
directed by Malcolm D. Lee

Undercoverbrotherby Walter Chaw A comedy with ideas, courage, and intelligence, Malcolm D. Lee’s follow-up to his surprisingly good The Best Man is the blaxploitation riff Undercover Brother–and man, when it’s right, it’s really right. Unfortunately, it’s only right about half of the time. Its digs at racial stereotypes and dedication to honouring the images and conceits of black cinema from the Seventies are dead on-target for the most part, while its attempts to marry it all into some sort of spy plot are subject to the same extended dull spots suffered by any dinosaur Bond flick. All is forgiven, though, when Eddie Griffin, as the titular afro-super-agent, splashes through a window like Dolemite, does a “white man’s” dance while singing a karaoke version of “Ebony and Ivory” (with über-bimbo Denise Richards, not in on the joke), and navigates his caddy through a tailspin without spilling a drop of his orange soda.

The Mystic Masseur (2002)

May 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, India, Trinidad and Tobago, UK

**/****
starring Om Puri, James Fox, Aasif Mandvi, Sanjeev Bhaskar
screenplay by Caryl Phillips, based on the novel by V.S. Naipaul
directed by Ismail Merchant

Mysticmasseurby Travis Mackenzie Hoover While I haven’t read The Mystic Masseur, the V.S. Naipaul novel on which Ismail Merchant’s latest directorial effort is based, I think I’m fairly safe in assuming that the movie does little to exalt the oeuvre of its Nobel prize-winning author. Aggressive only in its mediocrity, humorous only in its technical clumsiness, the film manages to belittle the very people it intends to uplift with the patronizing head-patting of country-folk it finds adorable but inconsequential. At times, The Mystic Masseur is like an Ealing comedy stood on its head: instead of showing the resilience of the British through their dogged pursuit of absurdity, it undercuts Trinidadian Indians on much the same grounds–so that when Merchant finally tries to make a post-colonial statement, it cuts across the grain of the rest of his adaptation. In the end, he lavishes far less care on his narrative than Merchant’s business partner James Ivory does in his own films, resulting in a tepid soup lacking in flavour and presentation.

Film Freak Central does the Fifth Aurora Asian Film Festival

May 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Japan, Music, UK, Vietnam

AurorafestpagelogoMay 31, 2002|by Walter Chaw Now in its fifth incarnation, Denver’s Aurora Asian Film Festival has grown year by year to become one of the region’s most interesting cinematic events. Under the guidance of Denver Film Society program director Brit Withey, the decidedly small festival (twelve films are being screened over the course of four days) will feature eleven Denver-area debuts–including the much-lauded The Turandot Project and Tony Bui’s Green Dragon–as well as a restored 35mm print of Conrad Rooks’s 1972 film Siddhartha. It is a rare opportunity to see a largely-unknown film projected (an adaptation of Hermann Hesse’s novel of the same name, the picture features the cinematography of the great Sven Nykvist), and an example of the kind of value a festival this intimate can provide.

“Dragon” Tales: FFC Interviews Timothy Bui

May 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

TimbuiinterviewtitleMay 31, 2002|With brother Tony at the helm, Timothy Linh Bui debuted in 1999 as co-writer of the beautiful, if slightly meandering, Three Seasons, the first American film to be shot entirely in Vietnam and a rare film about Vietnam to portray the beauty of the country and the people rather than the ugliness of what is known there as the “American War.” Highly acclaimed, Three Seasons was also the first film to score the hat trick of Grand Jury, Audience, and Cinematography prizes at the Sundance Festival. The Bui brothers’ follow-up picture is Green Dragon, this time with Tim directing (from a screenplay that he and Tony wrote). Set in Camp Pendleton at the end of the war, Green Dragon details in anthology-fashion the travails of thousands of South Vietnamese refugees awaiting sponsorship to enter the United States. Unfortunately, the film succumbs to the kind of maudlin predictability and manufactured “big” moments that Three Seasons largely avoided. Green Dragon is, however, beautiful to look at, featuring a performance from veteran Vietnamese actor Don Duong extremely naturalistic and effective and another from Hiep Thi Le that bristles with feral sensuality.

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

May 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, UK

**/****
starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Judi Dench
screenplay by Oliver Parker, based on the play by Oscar Wilde
directed by Oliver Parker

Importanceofbeingearnestby Walter Chaw In the always-risky practice of adaptating theatre for the silver screen, the first instinct usually has something to do with “expanding” a play by providing the characters backstory, followed fast by moving some of the dialogue into a different environment and/or pulling the source out of time to “modernize” it or to provide new resonance for a politicized piece. Richard Loncraine’s Richard III and Julie Taymor’s Titus are examples of affected adaptations that work; Michael Cacoyannis’s The Cherry Orchard and Oliver Parker’s The Importance of Being Earnest are examples that do not.

Dark Blue World (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

May 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Denmark, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, UK, War

Tmavomodrý svet
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Ondrej Vetchý, Krystof Hádek, Tara Fitzgerald, Charles Dance
screenplay by Zdenek Sverák
directed by Jan Sverák

by Walter Chaw Taking its name from a song sung during the course of the film, Oscar-winner (for 1996’s Best Foreign Language Film Kolya) Jan Sverák’s Dark Blue World is a historical melodrama set mostly in WWII-era Britain that’s notable because its elaborate battle sequences appear to have been carried off without the aid of CGI. The film is lacklustre and puzzlingly-paced–apologists would call it leisurely, I call it lugubrious–and though the story at its core is indeed compelling and rich for exploration, Sverák’s instinct towards sentimentality leads to one too many shots of sad-eyed dogs, exhausted under the weight of their status as beleaguered metaphors for loyalty and friendship. The picture could only have been salvaged by Dark Blue World focusing on the macrocosm of the plight of Czech pilots for which its tale of a doomed love triangle is the microcosm. As it is, Dark Blue World plays a good deal like Gregory Nava’s brooding A Time of Destiny: they mutually explore the bonds of friendship forged under war and tested by the crucible of love.

The Rambo DVD Trilogy [Special Edition] – DVD

May 28, 2002Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Stallone

FIRST BLOOD (1981)
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
starring Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy, Bill McKinney
screenplay by Michael Kozoll & William Sackheim and Sylvester Stallone, based on the novel by David Morrell
directed by Ted Kotcheff

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985)
*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff
screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron
directed by George P. Cosmatos

RAMBO III (1988)
**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Marc de Jonge, Kurtwood Smith
screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and Sheldon Lettich
directed by Peter MacDonald

by Bill Chambers Ted Kotcheff’s melancholy First Blood opens with Vietnam vet John Rambo looking up a fellow soldier and discovering that the man has died. Sullen, he hits the road, only to be harassed by the town sheriff (Brian Dennehy), who sees long-haired drifters wearing surplus jackets and thinks: Troublemaker. Possessed of a disposition similar to that of Bill Bixby’s David Banner, Rambo ‘Hulks out’ after being stripped of his dignity in the bowels of the police station, escaping his jailers’ clutches and squealing off into a mountainous region of the Pacific Northwest on a stolen motorcycle. His mission is one of self-preservation; Rambo doesn’t start committing premeditated murder until the sequel. (Unlike in the David Morrell source novel, where Rambo is a veritable serial killer, however justified his rage.)