Evolution (2001) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 16, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott
screenplay by David Diamond & David Weissman and Don Jakoby
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Walter Chaw Ira Kane (David Duchovny) is a science teacher at a community college in Arizona. Not biology, not chemistry, not physics, but “science.” Uh-huh. His friend at the college is Harry Block (Orlando Jones), an honorary member of the United States Geological Society (not to be confused with the United States Geological Survey). When a meteorite smashes into Earth, totalling the vintage ’73 Riviera of complete moron Wayne (complete moron specialist Seann William Scott, late of Dude, Where’s My Car?), of course Harry and Ira are called in to collect “scientific” samples in the name of…um…”science.”

Osmosis Jones (2001) – DVD

December 13, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Family

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Bill Murray, Molly Shannon, Elena Franklin, Chris Elliott
screenplay by Marc Hyman
directed by Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, Piet Kroon and Tom Sito

by Walter Chaw If the devil is in the details, so, in Osmosis Jones, is most of the humour. It is one part Farrelly Brothers biological comedy and one part Piet Kroon and Tom Sito (late of The Iron Giant) animated genius; that the balance of the film is heavily in favour of the latter speaks to rare good thinkin’ from the Hollywood brain trust. The live-action part stars Bill Murray as the slovenly Frank–Murray out-repulses co-star Chris Elliot, which means that he is very possibly the most disgusting human ever captured on film. The animation side features the voice of Chris Rock as the titular Osmosis Jones, a white blood cell cop who, after a controversial stomach evacuation, is busted down to mouth duty. If you’re not sure what “mouth duty” entails–it’s bad. When Frank is invaded by an evil virus named Thrax (Laurence Fishburne), Osmosis gets one last chance to make good, paired with a blustering blunderbuss of a timed flu capsule named Drix (David Hyde Pierce).

Intimacy (2001)

December 7, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Germany, Romance, Spain, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
starring Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, Susannah Harker, Timothy Spall
screenplay by Patrice Chéreau, Hanif Kureishi, Anne-Louise Trividic
directed by Patrice Chéreau

Intimacyby Walter Chaw Jay (Mark Rylance) is a sour bar manager who, six years previous, walked out on his wife and two young boys. Claire (Kerry Fox) is a dour acting teacher and mother of one married to an oafish Cockney cabbie (Andy, played by Timothy Spall like the refugee from a Mike Leigh film he is). Every Wednesday at two in the afternoon, Jay and Claire couple in Jay’s austere, unfurnished flat. As a homosexual French bartender–the too-awkward representation of uninhibited sagacity–helpfully supplies, “It’s rare that two people meet one another who have the same needs.” But Jay appears to have needs different from Claire’s: Trailing her after they rendezvous, he watches her as she drops off her dry-cleaning, takes public transportation, and finally ends up at a hole-in-the-wall drama company to perform badly in a Tennessee Williams revival. Striking up a mine-strewn conversation with his lover’s husband over pints of bitter and a game of billiards, Intimacy seismically shifts from one powerful cinematic symbol (sex) to another (theatre), and in so doing demonstrates a remarkable courage in its nakedness; and an exasperating lack of focus in its thrust.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

December 6, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Peter Jackson

Fellowshipoftheringby Walter Chaw At the heart of Peter Jackson’s brilliant The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring–the first of three cinematic adaptations of Tolkien’s beloved fantasy, shot simultaneously for release in consecutive years–is a favourable melancholy, a despair born of two things: the crucial feeling of desperation that infests a small band of heroes striving against an invincible evil; and the knowledge that this film will soon end, its sequel twelve months away. Jackson has translated nearly every element of Tolkien’s universe, from a vast, sprawling history implied in the language and the actions of its multi-specied characters, to a completely immersive fantasy realm with nary a seam to spoil the illusion, to a quest that’s worthy of epic attention. He’s captured the sadness and moral weight of Tolkien with the kind of deep reality that seems effortless but is born of a meticulous preparation and all-consuming vision. It takes a certain skill to make things look good; it takes genius to keep the pretty pictures from overwhelming the narrative of what is, in this case, a universally familiar story. Ridley Scott never quite got the hang of it.

Moulin Rouge (2001) – DVD

December 4, 2001Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Musical, Romance

Moulin Rouge!
***/**** Image A Sound A- (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras A
starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce
directed by Baz Luhrmann

Moulinrougecap1by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's been a long time since I've seen a mainstream film that tried to place its heart in the audience's hands. Nothing in recent memory is as direct and open in its pleasures as the classic Hollywood musicals were, having been replaced by the sideways glance of the ironist and all of the false snobbery that pretends nothing is as it appears. While this is supposed to be a bellwether of our superior sophistication, it really just means that we strike a different pose: we must be superior to the events on screen and stop up our emotions with an arched eyebrow and a swift kick to the object of our gaze. The fact is that any evidence of true feeling–or, more to the point, true yearning for release–is treated as ridiculous and something to be lamented, but one must admit the current climate makes an affirmation of what we want seem very vulnerable and the efforts of those who decide to work without the net of condescension seem daring, if not suicidal.

Almost Famous (2000) – DVD|Almost Famous: Untitled, The Bootleg Cut [Director’s Edition] – DVD

December 1, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Music

ALMOST FAMOUS
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
UNTITLED
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, Kate Hudson
written and directed by Cameron Crowe

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Almost Famous is an odd bird. It wants to be about rock and roll but isn't, seeking every opportunity to hide from the spirit of the music that is its ostensible starting point. It strains for important insights it doesn't have, mostly centred on a teenage boy's predictable loss of innocence at the hands of a rock band. Worst of all is that it subsumes its massive subject into the flowering of a ROLLING STONE journalist, crushing both the purity of the music and the excess of its players beneath a career move for a media player. But as the film lurches from issue to dodged issue, the reasoning behind its omissions is as intriguing as the omissions themselves; as it accidentally uncovers the spaces between what gets done and how it gets done, it manages to be a revealing document of how much chicanery goes into the creation of celebrity–entirely in spite of itself.

Backyard Dogs (2000) – DVD

November 28, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Sports, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound C
starring Scott Hamm, Bree Turner, Walter Emanuel Jones, Roger Fan
written and directed by Robert Boris

by Walter Chaw A painfully amateurish reworking of Play It to the Bone set against the turgid, redneck world of backyard wrestling, Robert Boris’s Backyard Dogs is the kind of head-scratcher that makes filmmakers of folks who never realized that making a movie was this easy. See, using the template provided, all you need is a digital camera, a bimbo who doesn’t mind flashing the groceries a couple of times, and a rent-a-script that shows how an already terrible mainstream film might actually be made worse with a little effort. Backyard Dogs is so hideous that with only a little imagination it begins to function as something of a satire of both Kickboxer-type death sports movies and gay pornography. You know you’re in trouble when the highlight of your film is an opening montage comprising real footage of idiots trying to kill one another in their backyards; you know you’re in bigger trouble when the title of your movie comes from an early moment in which a character steps on a pile of dog excrement.

Made (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 27, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Sean Combs, Famke Janssen
written and directed by Jon Favreau

by Bill Chambers Even if Swingers were terrible, one would have to admire writer-star Jon Favreau for making a film about waiting around to be discovered instead of actually waiting around to be discovered. Made, his official follow-up effort (this time as full-on auteur), is not such a noble affair. A vanity project in the tradition of Under the Cherry Moon, Prince’s pretentious encore to his star-making Purple Rain, the film boasts of a more distinguished supporting cast, stronger tech credits, and a budget 20x that of its predecessor. And yet almost every scene lands with a resounding thud, due in large part to Made‘s alleged raison d’être: the anticipated reunion of Swinger Vince Vaughn with Favreau–who turns into a morose do-gooder whenever he’s in Vaughn’s radar. It’s like watching “The Odd Couple” starring a tooth and a root canal.

Children of the Living Dead (2001) – DVD

November 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, ZERO STARS, Zombie

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound C-
starring Tom Savini, Martin Schiff, Damien Luvara, Jamie McCoy
screenplay by Karen Lee Wolf
directed by Tor A. Ramsey

by Walter Chaw With the appearance of having been shot over a long weekend in someone’s backyard, Children of the Living Dead is a cynical attempt to cash in on George Romero’s zombie trilogy (and The Blair Witch Project) so stale and amateurish that it qualifies as a barely-releasable embarrassment to everyone involved, including gore-legend Tom Savini, who seems to have hit rock bottom in his extended cameo. The film starts just outside of the old house from Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead, with rednecks potting zombies in a field–a scene already familiar to fans of Dawn of the Dead, but robbed of all pathos and dread–and continues on through a series of disconnected vignettes that neglect genre imperatives like gore, nudity, and fear plus narrative film prerequisites like story, acting, directing, and script. Children of the Living Dead doesn’t even offer any puerile thrills.

Along for the Ride (2001) – DVD

November 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Romance, ZERO STARS

Forever Lulu
ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Melanie Griffith, Patrick Swayze, Penelope Ann Miller, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt
written and directed by John Kaye

by Walter Chaw For as bad an actress as Melanie Griffith is (Night Moves and Another Day in Paradise notwithstanding), it’s not entirely her fault that John Kaye’s Forever Lulu (inexplicably renamed Along for the Ride for its DVD release) is unspeakably awful. True, her Betsy-Wetsy kewpie doll elocution and its attendant dead eyes–which wore out their welcome almost the second she trotted them out for an incredulous audience about twenty-six years ago–are in full-bore here, but what makes Along for the Ride, in which she plays the title role, so abominable are such exchanges as this one:

LULU
Did you know that sometimes I ask my pillow late at night, “How much sadness do I have to feel?” And did you know that love is the greatest painkiller and that Marilyn Monroe wore a mask of tragedy over her pubic hair?

CLAIRE
You’re right, I should go talk to Ben.

Little Women (1933) – DVD

November 25, 2001Posted in1930s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, Romance, War

**/**** Image B Sound C-
starring Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas, Edna May Oliver
screenplay by Sarah Y. Mason & Victor Heerman, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott
directed by George Cukor

by Walter Chaw A scant six years after The Jazz Singer introduced talking to the motion picture, George Cukor’s Little Women came to the screen with the awkwardness of a foundling art form (silent-picture burlesque and stage melodrama) in tow. It’s extremely difficult to view the film unjaundiced by a modern opinion of performance, script, and direction: Although the adapted screenplay by Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman won an Oscar that year, Little Women is impossibly dated and difficult to swallow. Part of the problem is the casting of actresses (each one at least a decade too old for her role), whose performances are such sweeping caricatures that it takes some effort to remind oneself that they were once acceptable simulacrums of reality.

Jurassic Park III (2001) [Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] – DVD

November 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola
screenplay by Peter Buchman and Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
directed by Joe Johnston

by Walter Chaw Jurassic Park III is completely critic-proof, a smirking cash machine with its amplifiers turned up to “11.” That it happens to be an amazingly tight little film (every single element of its first half predicts a correlative in the second) doesn’t excuse its bratty attitude. If Jurassic Park III were the insolent snot-nosed little punk it most resembles, it’d be turning out its lower lip whilst jutting an insouciant chin at potential critics and naysayers: “Go ahead,” the pipsqueak would say, “hit me with your best shot.”

Okay, here goes.

Deep in the Woods (2000) – DVD

November 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, France, Horror, Thriller

Promenons-nous dans les bois
***½/**** Image A- Sound A (French) C (English) Extras D+
starring Francois Berleand, Denis Lavant, Michel Muller, Thibault Truffert
screenplay by Annabelle Perrichon
directed by Lionel Delplanque

by Walter Chaw The newest generation of young Gallic filmmakers is involved in reinvigorating many of the thriller’s forms: the hybrid, HK-influenced actioner (Brotherhood of the Wolf); the Cronenbergian investigation of parasitic identification (A Matter of Taste); and the Hitchcockian psychosexual wrong-man intrigue (Mortal Transfer). Perhaps inspired by countryman Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita, and Leon (a.k.a. The Professional), the abovementioned movies are bathed in frosty blues and greens, filmed and edited with a smooth professionalism–the latest wave to wash through the French cinema is all about a carefully calibrated cool.

Rush Hour 2 (2002) [infinifilm] – DVD

November 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras A-
starring Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, John Lone, Zhang Ziyi
screenplay by Jeff Nathanson
directed by Brett Ratner

by Walter Chaw For as long as Jackie Chan has been the logical heir to Buster Keaton’s crown, it becomes apparent during the course of Brett Ratner’s Rush Hour 2 that he may also be the heir to Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau/Pink Panther crown. Blithely mixing the broad racial humour with the broad slapstick theatrics that typify Sellers and Blake Edwards’s classic comedies of criminal bad taste, Rush Hour 2 even makes time for a couple of bombshell secret agents, a brief and largely inexplicable interlude involving breasts rendering a man amusingly mute, and a cheerfully inept sidekick who gets in the stray kick now and again. The tenor, then, is dedicatedly light, and the humour is predictably free of cleverness–mostly involving Asians eating dogs and killing chickens, and African-Americans preferring their chickens fried and their karaoke with a heaping helping of Jacko gesticulations. That Rush Hour 2 (and the Pink Panther saga, for that matter) is often so genial in its cheap humour and gratifying in its physical exertions speaks to an almost universal desire to see people get a pie in the face while inelegantly breaking societal taboos. Rush Hour 2 never once aspires to anything other than formula fluff and never once descends into the dangerous realm of superlative entertainment. It is the prototypical summer film: loud, cheap, exploitive, and forgotten almost as soon as it’s over.

Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001) – DVD

November 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras A-
starring Jason Connery, A.J. Cook, Tobias Mehler, John Novak
screenplay by Alex Wright
directed by Chris Angel

by Walter Chaw The most interesting thing about the train wreck Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell is that it’s actually bookended by two car wrecks. The first is a dream our heroine Diana (A. J. Cook) has of her parents being killed in a collision for which she feels responsible; the second involves the Archangel Michael (Tobias Mehler, who also plays Diana’s boyfriend, Greg–don’t ask), for some reason incapable of freeing his ethereal self from a shoulder restraint without the intervention of the redemption-seeking Diana. Knowing that Wishmaster is a series of films dealing with an evil wish-granting Djinn, I had hope from the first accident that Wishmaster 3 would be an updating of W.W. Jacobs’s marvellous short story “The Monkey’s Paw”, with poor, bereaved Diana foolhardily resurrecting her deceased parents. By the time the second (literally) rolled around, I had hope only that the extreme suckitude of the film didn’t somehow damage my DVD player. Wishmaster 3 is simply abominable–a horror film free of fear and the two things that made the series worthwhile in the first place: genre writer Peter Atkins, absent since the first instalment, and Andrew Divoff as the titular bogey.

Dark Victory: FFC Interviews Jan Sverák

November 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Interviews

DarkvictoryNovember 18, 2001|When the communists invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, it spelled the end for the Czech New Wave that had been led by such directors as Milos Forman, Ivan Passer, Věra Chytilová, and Jiří Menzel. The "great harvest" of Czech cinema peaked with The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze: Ján Kádár and Elmar Klos) (1965) and Closely Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky: Jiří Menzel) (1966), both of which received Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. Forman was nominated in this period for Loves of a Blonde (Lásky jedné plavovlásky) (1966) and Firemen's Ball (Hoří, má panenko) (1968), and would later be honoured by the Academy for his English language films One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. Ivan Passer's American-made Law and Disorder is one of the lost classics of the 1970s.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000) – DVD

November 17, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Sports

**½/**** Image B Sound B- Extras A-
directed by Aviva Kempner

by Walter Chaw Thirteen years in the making, Aviva Kempner’s The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg is an exhaustive and affectionate, if tunnel-visioned, documentary about “the Jewish Jackie Robinson”: Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg, who broke cultural barriers during the anti-Semitic Father Coughlin/Henry Ford years, just prior to the onset of WWII. Towering over his teammates at 6’4″ and 210lbs, Greenberg became a stereotype-busting role model for an entire generation of Jewish youngsters and, unlike many of his modern athletic counterparts, Greenberg didn’t take his responsibility for granted.

Jeepers Creepers (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

November 17, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Mystery

**½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck, Patricia Belcher
written and directed by Victor Salva

by Walter Chaw Set on the rural highways and dirt byways of Anywhere, America during a long, hot summer, Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers is a film of two distinct halves–the first astonishingly good, the second derivative–drawn together by a finale that is both fair and surprising. It could have been much better overall had it isolated its sympathetic heroes in the middle of a Texas Chain Saw Massacre nightmare, and indeed, the parts of it that work best are those that most recall Tobe Hooper’s rustic nightmare. (Particularly the suddenness of the initial attack and the subsequent discovery of the beast’s abattoir lair.) Once policemen and bumpkins are introduced in a series of repetitive “I don’t believe your story–hey, why did the lights go out” scenarios, however, Jeepers Creepers, while retaining Salva’s indisputably cinematic eye, becomes something a good deal more predictable and consequently safer. The creation of a comfort zone halfway through is a terrible shame, not because it’s horrible in and of itself, but because for almost an hour, Jeepers Creepers holds great promise.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

November 16, 2001Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
**/****
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, John Cleese
screenplay by Steven Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by Chris Columbus

Harrypottersorcererby Walter Chaw There is such a dedicated lack of controversy and tension in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that all of its benefit as a children’s fiction is lost to the machinery of Hollywood spectacle. Gone is the dread uncertainty, the persecution of a child because of parents or class, and any true appreciation of consequences in the various action scenarios that lockstep unfold to the strict dictates of the plot; it’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory without the candy. At a bloated 152 minutes, the film depends to a peculiar degree on our familiarity with J.K. Rowling’s outrageously popular series of books: it does little to establish the characters and has such a feeling of clockwork inevitability that it’s shocking when the finale comes and goes with almost nothing resembling purpose, much less resolution. Though it’s arguably faithful to the major movements of the book (thus satisfying a large population of its tyke fans until they begin to develop discretion), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone suffers from what I like to call the “Wizard of Oz” malady: no brain, no heart, no courage.

Kon Ichikawa – Books

November 15, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Books About Movies, Japan

FFC rating: 8/10
edited by James Quandt

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I've read that in America, they'll screen the finished film for ordinary fans in a movie theatre free of charge. Then they have the audience write what they think was good or bad about the film. Looking at the responses, the star or director will sometimes try to reshoot scenes the audience didn't like… That attitude toward filmmaking is really conscientious; I think it's a great way to make films."

Those, believe it or not, are the words of a world-class director, trusted by millions and still active at the age of 86. And such remarks go a long way towards explaining why, despite being one of the four best-known Japanese directors (along with Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu), he has never attracted the personality cult the other three have enjoyed. For unlike that trio's relentless vision, doggedly pursued in film after film, Kon Ichikawa refracted his through the distorted lens of studio insistence and assignments, which may explain why he has worked consistently throughout the Eighties and Nineties when younger directors like Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura have often had to struggle to get a film made.