Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

February 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
screenplay by Tab Murphy
directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise

by Walter Chaw Clearly trying to gain some anime credibility by aping the mystical mumbo jumbo of Akira in an unfathomable third act, jettisoning the musical romantic comedy format, and inserting a few subtitles, Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire (henceforth Atlantis) has moments of true grandeur, though it has a good many more of pure Disney. It gets hip genre credibility from the story contributions of “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola and “Buffy” scribe Joss Whedon, but the best of intentions often lead to the worst of eventualities, and Atlantis is ultimately less “wow” than “oh, boy” and, eventually, “huh?”

Bubble Boy (2001) – DVD

February 5, 2002Posted inAdventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie, Romance, Sci-Fi

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Swoosie Kurtz, Marley Shelton, Danny Trejo
screenplay by Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio
directed by Blair Hayes

by Walter Chaw At its giant heart, Bubble Boy attempts the Herculean task of convincing us that the best parts of America died with the forced naiveté of “Land of the Lost”. Single-handedly, the film tries to resurrect the cheesiness of that awful Kroft Brothers’ show that held my generation transfixed after Saturday morning cartoons, allowing its titular protagonist to play a mean electric guitar version of its theme song (provided by Dweezil Zappa) while featuring a dream sequence cobbled together from outtakes from that late, lamented prehistoric Neverland. If this strikes you as a strange thing for a movie to try, consider that Bubble Boy is also the finest Todd Solondz film that Solondz never made.

The Smokers (2001) – DVD

February 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Teen, Thriller

*½/**** Image B- Sound C
starring Dominique Swain, Busy Philipps, Keri Lynn Pratt, Nicholas M. Loeb
screenplay by Christina Peters and Kenny Golde
directed by Christina Peters

Smokersdvdcapby Bill Chambers Thora Birch turns around in the closing shot of The Smokers and sticks her tongue out at the camera. Short of adding a raspberry sound, we couldn't ask for a more pithy review of the film, even if Birch's gesture wasn't intended as such. (Whatever the case, it's a bit of fourth-wall breaking that ultimately feels cathartic.) The Smokers is aimless, feckless, and finally bad, an indie made with an absence not only of cash but also vision, though the fact that it doesn't have any major-studio obligations leaves the filmmakers free to present complex female characters. Too bad they are that way in large part because their actions are so damn inexplicable.

The Testimony of Taliesin Jones (2002)

February 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, UK

Small Miracles
Taliesin Jones
*½/****
starring Jonathan Pryce, Ian Bannen, Griff Rhys Jones, Geraldine James
screenplay by Maureen Tilyou, based on the book The Testimony of Taliesin Jones by Rhidian Brook
directed by Martin Duffy

“Excessive sorrow gains nothing,
Nor will doubting God‘s miracles.
Although I am small, I am skilful”
—6th century, Taliesin

by Walter Chaw Chief Bard of Britain and a Celtic shaman, the historical Taliesin lived in Wales in the sixth century, his poems the direct precursor to the Arthur legend as well as his own as a druidic shape-shifter and spiritual healer. (He’s thought to be the inspiration for the Merlin character.) Rhidian Brook’s well-regarded children’s tome The Testimony of Taliesin Jones concerns a quiet child who, stricken by the divorce of his parents, turns to faith-healing to deal with the arbitrary turmoil of his life. With its heart so clearly in the right place, it’s hard to come down too hard on Martin Duffy’s same-named cinematic adaptation of Brook’s text, but the film is so intent on capturing the spiritual aspects of its title character and its namesake that it gives short shrift to the tragedy of its familial disintegration, discarding subtlety, too, in its proselytizing wake.

Slackers (2002)

February 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

**/****
starring Devon Sawa, Jason Schwartzman, James King, Michael C. Maronna
screenplay by David H. Steinberg
directed by Dewey Nicks

by Walter Chaw A film that does for masturbation what Freddy Got Fingered did for manually pleasuring large land mammals, Slackers is a teen revenge/romance film (a bellicose cross between Real Genius and Three o’Clock High) that surprises for its random Conan O’Brien-esque spark of perverse invention. There are at least two sequences that belong in a better film, and they’re tied together by a gross-out comedy that vacillates between the typical (a vibrator gag) and the surreal (a talking penis-powered sock puppet). It’s an amalgam of Farrelly Brothers archetypes (i.e., the flawless inamorata: gorgeous, kind, candy striper) and Jason Schwartzman’s Rushmore-brand of aggressive outcast, and though it spends long minutes flirting with “potential cult favourite,” Slackers ends up as just another ugly also-ran.

A Rumor of Angels (2002)

February 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Vanessa Redgrave, Ray Liotta, Catherine McCormack, Trevor Morgan
screenplay by James Eric & Jamie Horton & Peter O’Fallon, based on the book Thy Son Liveth: Messages From A Soldier To His Mother by Grace Duffie
directed by Peter O’Fallon

Rumorofangelsby Walter Chaw A Rumor of Angels is a maudlin tearjerker in the rarely interesting “gimp on the hill” tradition (The Man Without a Face, Finding Forrester, Heidi): a child befriends the town outcast to teach us all a little about acceptance through a series of rote vignettes. Peter O’Fallon’s belated follow-up to his claustrophobic neo-Tarantino gangster flick Suicide Kings is long on twinkly-eyed close-ups and short on shame. A young boy (Trevor Morgan) trespasses on a wizened hag’s property (Vanessa Redgrave), gets shot at, suffers a post-traumatic stress fit at a bridge (the source of which is not ever a mystery, considering the boy’s mother has recently died), and gets picked up by his weird uncle (Ron Livingston, overacting). There is never a question that the boy and the old lady will become dear pals, never a doubt that they will fill a void in one another’s life, and never an uncertainty that the kid’s skeptical parents (Ray Liotta as his dad and Catherine McCormack as his stepmother) will eventually come around.

An American Rhapsody (2001) – DVD

January 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Scarlett Johansson

**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Commentary B
starring Nastassja Kinski, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Goldwyn, Mae Whitman
written and directed by Éva Gardos

Americanrhapsodycapby Walter Chaw Editor Éva Gardos’s An American Rhapsody, her first film as writer-director, is riddled with inconsistencies, lacklustre performances, and convenient platitudes that are perhaps not terribly surprising for a debut screenwriter and director, but disheartening from a veteran cutter who gained experience with the likes of Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich. The problem with an autobiography, after its inherent onanistic self-absorption, is that it will too often hide behind the aegis of truth to excuse a multitude of narrative sins. An American Rhapsody is deeply felt, no question, but it jerks and lurches along without much regard for secondary characters, continuity, motivation, and coherence. It is ultimately little more than an episodic patchwork of over-burdened vignettes that among them share only a desire to manufacture unearned pathos and manipulate events towards the most expedient solution.

My Bodyguard (1980) – DVD

January 30, 2002Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Family, Teen

**½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Chris Makepeace, Matt Dillon, John Houseman, Adam Baldwin
screenplay by Alan Ormsby
directed by Tony Bill

by Bill Chambers My Bodyguard, not to be confused with the sudsy Costner-Huston thriller The Bodyguard, has been described to me as “the ultimate bully movie.” I won’t even toy with the idea that this feature-length Afterschool Special is the best at anything, but the film does have some merit as a teen revenge fantasy. Making his low-key directorial debut, Academy Award-winning producer Tony Bill brings visual grace sans style to this tale of the new kid in school and how he masterminds one bully’s downfall through another’s redemption.

Amy’s O (2002) – DVD

January 29, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

Amy’s O…
Amy’s Orgasm
½*/**** Image C+ Sound C+ Extras C+
starring Julie Davis, Nick Chinlund, Caroline Aaron, Mitchell Whitfield
written and directed by Julie Davis

by Walter Chaw It’s one thing to make a film about a person who’s terminally self-indulgent and stricken with delusions of grandeur, another altogether to make a film that endorses its insufferable main character’s unrepentant egotism. Julie Davis’s abrasively cute Amy’s O… is ninety minutes of watching someone masturbate while fantasizing about herself–there are enough lines of dialogue here about our heroine’s overpowering beauty and great tits that it starts to resemble There’s Something About Mary without the attendant sense of self-awareness and irony.

A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) + Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) – DVDs

January 27, 2002Posted inAuthors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Musical, Romance, Western

A LADY TAKES A CHANCE
**/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Jean Arthur, John Wayne, Charles Winninger, Phil Silvers
screenplay by Robert Ardrey
directed by William A. Seiter

FLAME OF BARBARY COAST
**½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring John Wayne, Ann Dvorak, Joseph Schildkraut, William Frawley
screenplay by Borden Chase
directed by Joseph Kane

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Such is the enduring celebrity of John Wayne that there exists a market for even his most humdrum and lacklustre vehicles–a rule which the current DVD releases of A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) and Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) proves to perfection. Here is a pair of the Duke's least iconic roles, both of which hinge on their incongruity with their star's western legend: using the actor as a found object to be installed in some alien landscape, they force him to struggle with a fish-out-of-water intrigue before coming to the conclusion that his place remains at home on the range. As such, they're of importance only to superfans and tangentially interested buffs–they're interesting as trials-by-fire for Wayne iconography but only marginally tolerable when taken on their own terms.

U.S. Seals 2 (2001) – DVD

January 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD

U.S. Seals II: The Ultimate Force
*/**** Image B- Sound C
starring Michael Worth, Damian Chapa, Karen Kim, Marshall R. Teague
screenplay by Michael D. Weiss
directed by Isaac Florentine

by Walter Chaw The only things you really want to know about U.S. Seals 2 are whether or not it has nudity (yes) and martial arts (also yes). The more sophisticated filmgoer will be curious if the film is unintentionally funny (yes), if a paintball gun that shoots acid balls figures into the proceedings (yes), and if there’s a final showdown that incorporates the nudity, martial arts, and paintballs (alas, no). Unless you’re in the lower 10% of human intelligence, you don’t need me to tell you that U.S. Seals 2 is a cheap-o direct-to-video action knock-off that happens to be a sequel to a film that no one in their right mind saw in the first place.

The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

January 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Ireland, Romance, Switzerland, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
starring Guy Pearce, Jim Caviezel, JB Blanc, Henry Cavill
screenplay by Jay Wolpert, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas
directed by Kevin Reynolds

Countofmontecristoby Walter Chaw Preserving the main events of the bombastic blunderbuss novel on which it is based, Kevin Reynolds’s adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père’s The Count of Monte Cristo also jettisons what meagre subtlety there was in the source material. The film, an attractive swashbuckling spectacle, is pleasantly campy for its first hour and a plodding endurance test for its final eighty minutes, an initially agreeable, if ridiculous, escapist (literally) flick that bloats to the dimensions of standard Hollywood offal.

A Walk to Remember (2002)

January 25, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Romance, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Mandy Moore, Shane West, Peter Coyote, Al Thompson
screenplay by Karen Janszen, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
directed by Adam Shankman

Walktorememberby Walter Chaw An interminable trudge through afterschool-special hell, Adam Shankman’s A Walk to Remember stars teen pop starlet Mandy Moore and is based on a novel by best-selling schmaltz-meister Nicholas Sparks–a combination sure to warn away most reasonably intelligent folks. After a kinetic opening sequence that recalls a nearly identical scene from The Lost Boys while giving false hope that A Walk to Remember will be an agreeably nostalgic diversion, the film becomes a vaguely surreal morality play scripted along the straitjacket genre conventions that indicate each of Sparks’s novels. A Walk to Remember is hopelessly unrealistic and often uncomfortable to watch, far more interested in presenting Moore with showcase opportunities to peddle her cavity-causing music; it threatens to do for her what Glitter did for Mariah Carey. Worse, if you don’t know every single plot point and twist after the first twenty minutes, you’ve done the sensible thing and left after the first ten.

The War of the Roses (1989) [Special Edition] – DVD

January 24, 2002Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***½/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras A
starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Marianne Sägebrecht
screenplay by Michael Leeson, based on the novel by Warren Adler
directed by Danny DeVito

by Walter Chaw Oliver and Barbara Rose (Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner) have it all: a beautiful house, two children, a dog, a cat, and a burning hatred for one another nursed through years of disintegrating familiarity. The first irony of The War of the Roses is that a film structured around a divorce is named after a historical conflict that ended in marriage–an indication that in addition to being brutally funny, the film is whip-smart and dangerous. Framed by sleazy divorce lawyer Gavin D’Amato (Danny DeVito) as a cautionary tale to a prospective client (Dan Castellaneta), The War of the Roses charts the disintegration of the Roses’ marriage from sylvan bliss to Stygian night. In no uncertain terms, the film details why dog people should not marry cat people; just how irritating eating a steak can be to your spouse; and the reason that angry sex is the only sex for some couples. A brilliant screenplay (Michael Leeson adapted Warren Adler’s novel) and a trio of performances that honour the sharpness and difficulty of said script justifies watching this alternately just-bearable and agonizing comedy.

Rock Star (2001) – DVD

January 24, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Mark Wahlberg, Jennifer Aniston, Dominic West, Timothy Spall
screenplay by John Stockwell
directed by Stephen Herek

by Walter Chaw Stephen Herek’s return to the realm of dope-head fantasy (his second and perhaps most remembered film is Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) gets off to a smashing start. For a brief, exhilarating time, he captures all the dim-witted exuberance, all the pathological pride, all the explosive machismo of long-haired, tight-leathered cock-rock bands and the symbiotic relationship they have with fans, who revere them as greasy, gyrating lizard kings. Once it becomes another tired cautionary tale of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, however, Rock Star turns off the amps and coasts home like a rusted-out DeSoto running on fumes.

Suspiria (1977) – DVD

January 19, 2002Posted in****/****, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Italy

****/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras D+
starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé
screenplay by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi
directed by Dario Argento

Mustownby Walter Chaw At their best, Dario Argento’s films are lurid splashes of Hitchcockian reinvention that bristle with audacity and a pornographer’s sensibility. He deconstructs the male gaze in the mutilation of beautiful women, taking a moment (as he does in Tenebre, Opera, and Suspiria) to make guerrilla art of their extravagant suffering. Argento’s films are generally split between two sub-genres of the slasher flick, each defined to a large extent by his contributions. The first is the giallo, films indicated by their impossibly convoluted mystery plots and elaborate set-piece murders; the second, of which Suspiria is one, is the “supernatural,” distinguished by their surreality and lack of a traditional narrative. Known as “The Italian Hitchcock,” Argento, as I’ve said before, is more accurately “The Italian DePalma,” in that Argento’s imitating reads as homage. And though he occasionally selects sources to ape badly (i.e. attempting to adapt Jeunet and Caro to “Phantom of the Opera”), when he finds the perfect source material to serve as foundation for his redux perversions (Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, and Rebecca for Suspiria), the end result can be as original as it is discomfiting.

Kandahar (2001)

January 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Iran, Theatrical, War
Safar e Ghandehar
**/****
starring Niloufar Pazira, Hassan Tantai, Sadou Teymouri
written and directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

by Walter Chaw Kandahar is a science-fiction film about a terrifying and unknowable alien culture and the human anthropologist who must disguise herself to gain entry into its Byzantine infrastructure (thus often reminding me of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow), and it is the recipient of perhaps the most serendipitous release in film history. Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar is either a stunningly incompetent film or an amazingly evocative one. Perhaps best described as both, the piece alternates between sledgehammer images and awful didactic exposition. An argument can be made, and a good one, that the plight of Afghani women under the medieval rule of The Taliban deserves to be treated as a medieval passion play, with all the implied attendant allegorical characters (the pilgrim, the fallen child, the doctor, the thief) and mannered execution.

Snow Dogs (2002)

January 18, 2002Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disney, Family, Sports, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Cuba Gooding Jr., James Coburn, Randy Birch, Joanna Bacalso
screenplay by Jim Kouf and Tommy Swerdlow & Michael Goldberg and Mark Gibson & Philip Halprin, based on the book Winterdance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen
directed by Brian Levant

Snowdogsby Walter Chaw Brian Levant’s Snow Dogs counts on adult audiences rationalizing that although it was terrible, at least their kids liked it. Why is it that the standards we hold for our children are substantially lower when it comes to the movies? (And if kids will probably like anything, why not expose them to something a little less offensive than Snow Dogs?) It isn’t so much that Snow Dogs finds its humour in a black man getting humiliated by a pack of dogs who are smarter than him, nor that it also mines for yuks by placing a black man in mortal peril because of his suicidal stupidity. No, the moment that Snow Dogs crossed a line for me was when Cuba Gooding Jr., an Oscar-winning African-American actor (one of, what, six?), gets comically treed by a ferocious dog.

Zebra Lounge (2001) – DVD

January 14, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Kristy Swanson, Brandy Ledford, Cameron Daddo, Stephen Baldwin
screenplay by Claire Montgomery & Monte Montgomery
directed by Kari Skogland

by Bill Chambers

"He is the straightest and most law-abiding citizen…in the world!"
-Wendy Barnet (Brandy Ledford), assessing her husband's degree of innocence to a police detective

Zebra Lounge zippers shut the body bag around Stephen Baldwin's career and confirms that Canadian filmmakers are no longer capable of good trash (director Kari Skogland is a veteran of the Saltine-dry Canuck TV show "Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy"), but most of all, it's suffocatingly dull. This film should have a "do not operate heavy machinery" warning-label superimposed on it at all times. The made-for-cable movie marks not only the first time I have fallen asleep during a sex scene but also the first time I have fallen asleep during two consecutive sex scenes, neither of which takes place in the rarely-mentioned titular night spot. Zebra Lounge could've been called anything, so phenomenally generic are its subject matter, dialogue, and execution. Even the score, by someone named John McCarthy, sounds like it came out of a can.

West is Best: FFC Interviews Shane West

January 11, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

WestisbesttitleJanuary 11, 2002|Shane West loves horror movies–explanation, perhaps, for his participation in the Wes Craven-produced Dracula 2000. And he has a knowledge of them that belies his relatively tender age of twenty-three. It’s an undercurrent of the slightly wicked (with his horror jones and his punk band Average Jo) that fuels his persona across various heartthrob fansites dedicated to celebrating the young, the pretty, the slightly dangerous. Mr. West’s knowledge of film, his respect for his craft, and his politeness and obvious decency are qualities each that seem all too rare in any walk much less Tinsel Town. It’s early yet in Mr. West’s career, the upcoming adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’s A Walk to Remember is only his second leading role, but it’s his performance as the soulful Eli Sammler on ABC’s well-regarded drama “Once and Again” that has been the key to his rising popularity and critical recognition.