Which Way Is Up? (1977) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD

*½/**** Image B- Sound B–
starring Richard Pryor, Lonette McKee, Margaret Avery, Dolph Sweet
screenplay by Carl Gottlieb and Cecil Brown
directed by Michael Schultz

by Walter Chaw An embarrassing Being There conceit married to blaxploitation and unionization, the Richard Pryor vehicle Which Way Is Up? strikes a lot of notes but without much rhyme or reason. It is offensive without being funny (save a bondage scene that pays off flat but has a hilarious use of sound) and excessive seemingly just for the sake of it. Pryor becomes a predecessor with this picture to Eddie Murphy’s penchant for playing a bunch of loud-mouthed characters in different beards in stupid gross-out bits of celluloid rubbish…without the production values Murphy warrants. Director Michael Schultz’s follow-up to such amusing counter-cultural flicks as Cooley High and Car Wash (recently re-imagined with Snoop Dogg’s The Wash), Which Way Is Up? tracks the exploits of Leroy (Pryor), a fruit-picker who accidentally falls in with a Unionization movement that earns him a job in the city and some fine women. Can a wearying morality thread questioning the corrupting nature of power be far behind?

Sidewalks of New York (2001) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image A- Sound C+ Extras B+
starring Edward Burns, Rosario Dawson, Heather Graham, Dennis Farina
written and directed by Edward Burns

by Walter Chaw Sort of a Neil LaBute film without the misanthropic conviction or a Woody Allen film without the self-loathing wit (more precisely, Allen’s Husbands and Wives without its self-loathing wit), Sidewalks of New York is the latest instalment in Edward Burns’s ongoing mission to promote himself as a sensitive new age guy deserving of your trust. It’s probably most efficient to just call Sidewalks of New York the second time (after She’s the One) that writer-director-star Burns has tried to remake his 1995 micro-budgeted Sundance cause célèbre, The Brothers McMullen. (His third film, No Looking Back, was a detour into Cassavetes territory.)

Reckless + Wild (2000) – DVD

May 20, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

Desperate But Not Serious
½*/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Christine Taylor, Paget Brewster, Claudia Schiffer, John Corbett
screenplay by Nicole Coady, Halle Eaton & Abbe Wool
directed by Bill Fishman

by Walter Chaw The indie version of The Sweetest Thing, Bill Fishman’s second strike after his interesting debut Tapeheads is the horrendous Reckless + Wild (originally titled Desperate But Not Serious), and while it wins some indulgence for Joey Lawrence’s small role as himself (failed teen idol, narcissist, and nitwit), that indulgence is promptly squandered by a performance from supermodel Claudia Schiffer (as a magnificently untalented punk rocker) that suggests Christopher Lambert in leather and falsetto.

Vanilla Sky (2001) – DVD

May 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Spain, Thriller, Tom Cruise

*/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell, Cameron Diaz
screenplay by Cameron Crowe, based on the screenplay for Abre Los Ojos by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil
directed by Cameron Crowe

by Walter Chaw Vanilla Sky is an unpleasant, incompetent, and laborious amalgam of Jacob’s Ladder and The Game, Joe Eszterhas doing Frank Herbert, if you will. It is profane to no good end, forcing Cameron Diaz to define her sexuality through roughly a dozen variations on “I swallowed your come,” and is otherwise so sloppily assembled that even the generally arresting Jason Lee is made irritating and superfluous. Cameron Crowe is rapidly becoming a self-indulgent, disingenuous disaster–his films grow more pretentious as his subjects shrink in consequence. After tackling a rose-coloured breed of aggrandizing nostalgia in the overlong Almost Famous, he’s decided to remake the mediocre Spanish film Open Your Eyes (“Abre Los Ojos”)by flavour of the month Alejandro Amenábar, paying alleged “homage” to about a dozen other directors, movies, and album covers while displaying exactly the same breed of star-deifying that he ostensibly deflated in Almost Famous. Crowe fans should prepare to be disheartened by the realization that the crown prince of weakling uplift has actually fallen down on the altar of the ultimate Kafkaesque Hollywood godhead: Tom Cruise.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 5

May 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Drama, New Zealand, Romance, Theatrical

by Walter Chaw

RAIN (2001)
***/****
starring Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki, Sarah Peirse, Marton Csokas, Alistair Browning
screenplay by Christine Jeffs, based on the novel by Kirsty Gunn
directed by Christine Jeffs

Based on a Kirsty Gunn novel, Christine Jeffs's hyphenate debut Rain is a dulcet, haunting evocation of that moment of crisis in a young woman's life as she's poised on the precipice of sexual maturity. The film is golden and beautiful, edged in its understanding that a desire for sex almost always precedes an emotional or intellectual ability to cope with the fallout of the act itself. In honouring that concept, Rain makes no distinction between adults playing as children and children playing the grown-ups in scenes juxtaposed in ways whimsical and poignant. As much as it is a coming of age for a young woman, Rain is very much about the broader issue of power in gender politics as it defines family and relational dynamics.

“Sum” Kind of Wonderful: FFC Interviews Phil Alden Robinson

May 17, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

Parobinsoninterviewtitle

May 17, 2002|With a background in broadcast journalism and corporate and educational films segueing into a short stint writing teleplays for “Trapper John M.D.”, Phil Alden Robinson broke into feature films in 1984 with the screenplays for All Of Me and Rhinestone. The two experiences (the former with Carl Reiner, the latter with Sylvester Stallone) represented disparate filmmaking philosophies, one collaborative, the other in which an egotistical star decides everything. Wisely taking a page from Reiner’s book, Robinson has endeavoured in each of his films as director (beginning with the little-seen In the Mood and continuing through Field of Dreams, Sneakers, Freedom Song, and now The Sum of All Fears) to recreate that feeling of conviviality and bonhomie with his extended ensembles.

Good Advice (2001) – DVD

May 16, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Charlie Sheen, Angie Harmon, Denise Richards, Rosanna Arquette
screenplay by Daniel Margosis & Robert Horn
directed by Steve Rash

by Walter Chaw In the proud tradition of Straight Talk and Dr. Detroit (and Spellbound, I guess), Charlie Sheen digs at his own apex role in Wall Street before pretending to be an abusive advice columnist at a failing paper run by the lovely Angie Harmon in Good Advice. More Hot Shots! than The Front Page, the film–buoyed by a consistently light screwball tone unfortunately only occasionally matched by neo-screwball dialogue–nonetheless has a few unexpectedly funny moments. Denise Richards is suitably reptilian when typecast as an airhead bitch princess, and Sheen demonstrates the kind of comedic timing and Shatner-esque gift for self-effacement (he gets an enema bath at one point) that might extend his career despite being a boondoggle magnet, e.g., the Heidi Fleiss thing and, of course, the “I married Denise Richards” thing.

“Attack of the Drones” – Reader Mail: May 16, 2002

May 16, 2002Posted inAuthors: Walter Chaw, Blog, Star Wars

PREFACE

There are common themes in hate mail–a fact no doubt nettling to those benighted souls putting hardscrabble pen to paper for perhaps the first non-"doomed community college application" purpose of their artless lives. They are as wanting for imagination and grace as the films they choose to defend. Without logic and without information, they respond kneejerk-like, rising in defence of films that, for the most part, they haven't seen with points that are indefensible and harangues impotent, ignorant, and occasionally disturbing.

Bear in the Big Blue House: Tidy Time with Bear! + Bear in the Big Blue House: Everybody’s Special – DVDs

May 14, 2002Posted in1990s, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, DVD, Family, Musical

Image A Sound A
Tidy Time With Bear!: “Working Like A Bear,” “Woodland House Wonderful,” “We Did It Our Way”
Everybody’s Special: “As Different As Day and Night,” “Bats Are People Too,” “The Yard Sale”

by Jarrod Chambers For those of you who have never seen it, “Bear in the Big Blue House” is a children’s show about a bunch of animals (two bears, two otters, a mouse, and a lemur) who live in a big blue house and get along famously, thanks to the gentle leadership of the bigger of the two bears, named simply Bear. They are produced by Jim Henson Television, who, with Columbia TriStar Home Video, have put together two fabulous DVD packages, “Tidy Time with Bear!” and “Everybody’s Special!”, each with three loosely related episodes of the show from 1997 on plus a few extras.

Corky Romano (2001) – DVD

May 14, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Chris Kattan, Peter Falk, Peter Berg, Roger Fan
screenplay by David Garrett & Jason Ward
directed by Rob Pritts

by Walter Chaw There’s an apocryphal tale from the set of John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven concerning Steve McQueen consistently upstaging Yul Brynner until the bald-pated thespian, fresh off his Oscar for The King and I, threatened to take off his hat during McQueen’s scenes. An amusing anecdote about Hollywood egos and the urge to steal the limelight, it enters into a discussion of the abominable Corky Romano because a very curious thing happens in the film to its star, Chris Kattan.

On the Edge (2001) – DVD

May 13, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Ireland

**½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Cillian Murphy, Tricia Vessey, Stephen Rea, Jonathan Jackson
screenplay by Daniel James and John Carney
directed by John Carney

by Walter Chaw John Carney’s On The Edge is sort of a Gaelic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: an irreverent teen Murphy (“Cillian Murphy” as it happens, playing a character named Jonathan Breech) inspires a batch of ruined adolescents in a County Dublin asylum to restore themselves through the healing power of petty rebellion. It’s formulaic and derivative at the least, but the soundtrack, performances, and smooth look of the piece elevate its stagnant material into something–at least fitfully–emotionally engaging, if not intellectually involving.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)

May 13, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Star Wars, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid
screenplay by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales
directed by George Lucas

Episodeiiby Walter Chaw George Lucas and Jonathan Hales's screenplay for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is very close to the most inept piece of hubristic garbage I've ever had the alarming misfortune to see realized. The resultant film is 140 minutes of pure treacle: such words as "awkward swill" or "excrescence" do not begin to suggest the stink of it. While Lucas has always been a poor filmmaker (though THX 1138 at least displays directorial competence), his army of yes-men and his years of hermitage have led him to believe that his are the hands best-suited to guide the last three films of his Star Wars franchise–and that miscalculation will sadly only cost him the last lingering vestiges of his already miniscule credibility. In a way, though, I'm grateful to Lucas for making my job easier: Episode II is so atrocious that its screenplay–with lines like, "This is a nightmare! I want to go home!" and "You obviously have a great deal to learn about human behaviour"–serves as auto-critique, and its clumsiness as its own most damning censure.

How High (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

May 10, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Method Man, Redman, Obba Babatundé, Mike Epps
screenplay by Dustin Lee Abraham
directed by Jesse Dylan

by Walter Chaw A surprisingly smart and wacky weed opus that gives the Messrs. Chong and Cheech a run for their money, How High is a crafty subversion of the endlessly offensive Soul Man collegiate race comedy. Its dis-contest mentality carried off with a lively disregard for the demagogues of political correctness, the film reaches a pinnacle of sorts with Spalding Gray’s bit as an unflappable Harvard professor of Black History. I don’t know that I’ve laughed that long or hard in ages–at least since the last episode of Robert Smigel’s “TV Funhouse”.

The Temp (1993) – DVD

May 10, 2002Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound B
starring Timothy Hutton, Lara Flynn Boyle, Dwight Schultz, Oliver Platt
screenplay by Kevin Falls
directed by Tom Holland

by Walter Chaw The Temp borders on brilliant. A thriller from director Tom Holland, he of the “better than they ought to be” Fright Night and Child’s Play, the picture plays with corporate and gender politics in a fashion similar to the first half of Mike Nichols’s Wolf. Similarly, neither can The Temp hold its centre through to the end, resorting to cheap genre tactics and fright gags where a more faithful treatment of its workplace paranoia would far better serve the rapier instincts and execution of the rest of the piece.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 4

May 10, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Cyprus, Drama, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, UK

by Walter Chaw

THE CHERRY ORCHARD (2000)
*/****
starring Tushka Bergen, Frances de la Tour, Charlotte Rampling, Gerard Butler
screenplay by Michael Cacoyannis, based on the play by Anton Chekhov
directed by Michael Cacoyannis

Written at the end of his life in 1904, "The Cherry Orchard" is the last of Anton Chekhov's great masterpieces, so ethereal it verges on the surreal and so circular it approaches the ineffable and the serene. The work is as balanced between its condemnation as it is winsome in its distillation of a lifetime spent in observation. By turns, it is also humanistic and mordantly funny, capturing a period of time (just prior to the Russian Revolution of 1905) in a way that perhaps no other play ever has any other period. Produced under some duress from Moscow Art Theater co-founders Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Chekhov began work on "The Cherry Orchard" in 1903–putting off the MAT pair with vague promises of a new farce or vaudeville. What he finally presented was what Stanislavsky feared: "…Instead of a farce again we shall have a great big tragedy."

The New Guy (2002)

May 9, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring DJ Qualls, Lyle Lovett, Eddie Griffin, Eliza Dushku
screenplay by David Kendall
directed by Ed Decter

by Walter Chaw What begins as a potentially subversive take on the inner-city school problem becomes the unlikely film that would be better with more Eddie Griffin. It’s a precipitous fall facilitated by the requisite defecation gag, by too many cameos from has-beens (Henry Rollins, Gene Simmons) and never-weres (Vanilla Ice, Tommy Lee, David Hasselhoff), and by the criminal misuse of Lyle Lovett and Illeana Douglas.

The Gambler (1974) – DVD

May 8, 2002Posted in1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton
screenplay by James Toback
directed by Karel Reisz

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Somewhere near the beginning of The Gambler, we see Axel Freed (James Caan) teaching a college course in literature. Taking his cues from Dostoevsky, he announces that any idiot can say that two plus two equals four, but the man who says that they equal five is riding on sheer will. Whether he knows that the declaration is false or not is irrelevant–he is transcending truth to make his own rules. This deliciously summarizes not only The Gambler itself, but also the whole shaky decade of art-pop that was the Seventies. This was the era in which cartoon heroes jousted improbably with literature and politics and when a torrent of homages created whole films piece by appropriated piece. The Gambler‘s Freed is all too typical of the type, with its literary pretensions mixed in with a helping of macho declarations that could only come from a lifetime of hero-worship at the movies.

Watership Down (1978) – DVD

May 8, 2002Posted in1970s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image B Sound B
screenplay by Martin Rosen, based on the novel by Richard Adams
directed by Martin Rosen

by Walter Chaw Unsentimental and terrifying and set against lovely, John Constable-esque watercolour backgrounds, Martin Rosen’s adaptation of the Richard Adams novel Watership Down arose in that extended lull between Disney’s heyday and its late-Eighties resurrection. (This period also saw, in addition to Rosen’s film of Adams’s The Plague Dogs, Rankin & Bass’s The Last Unicorn and Ralph Bakshi’s most productive period, which included 1978’s The Lord of the Rings.) Watership Down points to the dwindled potential for American animation to evolve into what anime has become: a mature medium for artistic expression of serious issues. A shame that this flawed piece is possibly the pinnacle of animation’s ambition on these shores, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life notwithstanding.

High Heels and Low Lifes (2001) – DVD

May 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, UK

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Minnie Driver, Mary McCormack, Kevin McNally, Mark Williams
screenplay by Kim Fuller
directed by Mel Smith

by Walter Chaw Mel Smith’s feminist crime farce High Heels and Low Lifes blares Aretha Franklin and the Eurythmics‘ “Sisters are Doin’ It For Themselves” over its closing credits, always a bad sign. Trying desperately to combine the only two types of British films that have seen commercial success in the last decade (the gangster farce and the Jane Austen empowerment fable), this product from the director of Bean and the screenwriter of Spice World is so rote that its frantic attempts at good natured quirk come off as grotesque and uncomfortable.

Waking Life (2001) – DVD

May 6, 2002Posted in****/****, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring “Wiley Wiggins and an ensemble of 74 other actors”
written and directed by Richard Linklater

Mustownby Walter Chaw It begins with a child’s game that ends with the chilling premonition “Dream is destiny” and closes with what appears to be the fulfillment of that statement. Richard Linklater’s Waking Life is an anti-narrative with no discernible story arc: The film’s conflict arises between its characters’ varying cosmologies and the challenge that presents to the viewer’s own existential verities, such as Descartes’s dictum cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). Waking Life is one of the most interesting and engaging films of a year that sports its fair share of complex, fascinating fare (Mulholland Drive, Va Savoir).