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

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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)

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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)

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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

Posted 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).

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – May 5

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

BOLLYWOOD BOUND
***/****
directed by Nisha Pahuja

Bollywood Bound is a perfectly decent film about aspiring actors working in Bombay that would be even better without the cutesy editorializing of director Nisha Pahuja. There's a wealth of interesting information in this examination of Canadian expatriates trying to make it in Hindi filmmaking; Pointing out that Bollywood provides a place for East Indian descendants that Hollywood won't provide, it shows the various cultural distortions that several actors faced regarding India, Indian culture, and themselves. Previously known to their white schoolmates as "the Indian kids," they suddenly find themselves equally marginalized as "the Canadian actors," and discover that the pure "Indianness" they fought to protect in Canada is largely non-existent.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – The Innovators: Frederick Wiseman

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blog, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

The Revival, Toronto|After being lulled into a stupor by the sins and shortcomings of this week's panellists, today's Frederick Wiseman talk was like being slapped back into full consciousness. There was no "drama" and "truth" spouted by this man, there were no sweeping generalizations about the places and people he films. There was simply a desire to explore the things that interest him and widen the scope of institutional life. And with a refreshing blunt humour and low tolerance for bull, Wiseman cut through the pretensions and got to the point of how and why he works as he does.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – Filmmaker Discussion: History and Innovation

Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blog, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

The Revival, Toronto|The more I listen to documentarians, the less I trust the documentary. The line that separates fact from fiction and reportage from drama is so fine that it frequently disappears altogether; even the best-intentioned filmmaker is under pressure to give shape to something that is essentially formless, and in so doing leaves out much essential information. The directors on today's panel, which deals with the vagaries of representing the past for the present, did their best to downplay the dangers of such a situation, but their words kept raising more questions than they answered, and I walked out of Revival even more leery of the form than I was going in.

Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – May 4

Posted in1960s, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Documentary, Film Festivals, Germany, Hot Docs

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

ABSOLUT WARHOLA (2001)
*½/****
directed by Stanislaw Mucha

There is, believe it or not, an Andy Warhol museum in the remote Slovenian town of Medzilaborce; sadly, director Stanislaw Mucha can't scare up much of a reason to know about it. Essentially a stomp-the-hicks number, his film takes great pains to mock the residents of Warhol's ancestral home, who, though not quite sure why these paintings are supposed to be important, are nevertheless pleased to have such a famous relative and native son. But as Absolut Warhola heavy-handedly contrasts the guileless and homey Warholas–who prattle on about everything from the television and the relative merits of Lenin and Stalin–with the ultra-urbane art objects enshrined in the leaky museum, the film backfires on itself: it makes Warhol seem less interesting by showing how little he matters to people who live outside an urban cultural elite.

Brewster’s Millions (1985) [Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD

*½/**** Image B+ Sound D+
starring Richard Pryor, John Candy, Lonette McKee, Stephen Collins
screenplay by Herschel Weingrod & Timothy Harris, based on the book by George Barr McCutcheon
directed by Walter Hill

by Bill Chambers The 1985 remake of Brewster’s Millions is a failed high-concept fable not for its dearth of laughs (which is disappointing, what with Richard Pryor and John Candy headlining) or its overfamiliarity (it will remind you of not only Brewster’s Millions past, but also every underdog comedy ever made), but because you wouldn’t really want to wear the shoes of the eponymous Monty Brewster, a millionaire whose inheritance is shackled by so many caveats as to deny Monty–when we know him, anyway–a sense of wish-fulfillment.

Hollywood Ending (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Satire, Theatrical

**/****
starring Woody Allen, George Hamilton, Téa Leoni, Debra Messing
written and directed by Woody Allen

Hollywoodendingby Walter Chaw Woody Allen’s pictures are exhausting things about absolutely nothing save Manhattan and Woody Allen–Allen’s fascination with the cinema and younger women, Allen’s disingenuous fear of writer’s block, and more recently, Allen’s desire to reconcile with his children. Sometimes any one of those is enough.

Deuces Wild (2002)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Stephen Dorff, Brad Renfro, Fairuza Balk, Norman Reedus
screenplay by Paul Kimatian & Christopher Gambale
directed by Scott Kalvert

by Walter Chaw During the course of Deuces Wild, a bit of schizophrenic juvenilia (half nostalgic, half belittling) from director Scott Kalvert (The Basketball Diaries), there arises the uncomfortable realization that we are in the company of a “West Side Story” with trick-shots and graphic violence subbing for the Bernstein/Robbins book and staging. As mannered and artificial as the Neverland boroughs and lost-boy antagonists of Robert Wise’s film version of West Side Story, what Deuces Wild doesn’t have is the benefit of the traditional musical format to excuse its more gut-busting howlers. Kalvert’s film is of the sort that makes one wonder which version of history includes Debbie Harry as a zoned-out shut-in singing Christmas carols year-round while daughter Fairuza Balk laments, “Of course Santa exists, mommy, he just don’t come to Brooklyn no more.” Moreover, if such a history ever existed, it begs the question of why anyone would ever wish to revisit it, in art or otherwise.