Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

September 14, 2001Posted in1970s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical, UK

***/****
starring Monty Python
screenplay by Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Terry Gilliam & Eric Idle & Terry Jones & Michael Palin
directed by Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

by Walter Chaw Comprising Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Graham Chapman, the comedy troupe Monty Python had as their stock in trade the dialogue-dense, mildly absurdist short-form sketch. To that extent, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a series of comedic skits and improvisations bound loosely–very loosely–by the contention that this merry sextet of Britons is attempting to tell the Arthur myth without the aid of budget, plot, or accuracy. All of them are classically educated, and the film seems to be a giant flip of the nose at the pretension of the British literary tradition. In the act of being such, it nearly becomes the best telling of the Grail legend available. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a satire that instructs with its informed irreverence, a piece that knows the rules before it breaks them and has shown itself over the course of 26 years to be almost as immediate and hilarious as it was upon initial release.

The Goonies (1985) – DVD

September 13, 2001Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Spielberg

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green
screenplay by Chris Columbus
directed by Richard Donner

by Walter Chaw I went to see The Goonies at the age of twelve because I was a Cyndi Lauper fan. As co-star Ke Huy-Quan (now “Jonathan Ke Quan”) hammed it up, I glimpsed the torments of my upcoming sixth-grade year. See, Quan in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom doomed me to being called “Short Round” for several months, accompanied by Pidgin English recreations of choice line readings (“You caw heem Meesta Jones, Doll!”)–which was admittedly better than the “Wassa happenin’ hot stuff?” jibes inspired by Gedde Watanabe’s legendary act of race betrayal as Long Duk Dong in John Hughes’s execrable Sixteen Candles.

The Musketeer (2001)

September 7, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Luxembourg, Romance, Theatrical, UK

ZERO STARS/****
starring Justin Chambers, Catherine Deneuve, Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea
screenplay by Gene Quintano
directed by Peter Hyams

by Walter Chaw There is a moment in the trailer for Peter Hyams’s absolutely abominable The Musketeer where a series of scenes are edited in such a way as to suggest that Justin Chambers’s dashing D’Artagnan is promising stunned-looking waif Francesca (Mena Suvari) he will return for her. In the film, in truth, D’Artagnan makes the promise to his fallen horse (it’s an easy mistake to make). I mention this to right an injustice, for the great beast lying there frothing in all its exhausted equine glory turns in what is easily the best performance of the whole catastrophe. I felt a lot of sympathy for that poor steed, the only character in the film with which I had even a moment’s identification: we’d both been ridden hard and put away wet.

Two Can Play That Game (2001)

September 7, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Vivica A. Fox, Morris Chestnut, Anthony Anderson, Gabrielle Union
written and directed by Mark Brown

by Walter Chaw I suspect that the preponderance of advertising executive characters in romantic films nowadays (What Women Want, Sweet November) is a misguided attempt to justify excessive product placement. There can be no other explanation for the blatant shilling of Coca-Cola and Miller Genuine Draft in Mark Brown’s smarmy, derivative Two Can Play That Game, a film not otherwise about soft drinks and cheap American beer that is festooned with more conspicuous logos than a NASCAR driver. The impression that the movie is little more than a naughty-talking, 90-minute commercial for cool refreshments and prehistoric gender stereotypes is enhanced by characters who keep breaking the fourth wall to address the camera directly.

Halloween II (1981) [Widescreen] – DVD

September 5, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Horror

**/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Charles Cyphers, Jeffrey Kramer
screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
directed by Rick Rosenthal

by Bill Chambers Halloween II picks up exactly where Halloween left off, although a seam would show if you pasted the two films together, and that seam goes by the name of Rick Rosenthal. Director John Carpenter's handpicked replacement (Carpenter came on board as co-writer, co-producer, and co-composer), Rosenthal tries for the slow-burn intensity that the original had and achieves mere slowness. The film may feel even logier now because it helped consecrate the formula for the slasher movie, then in its infancy but now old hat. That's not exactly Halloween II's fault, but saying this doesn't make it any more palatable 20 years later.

Link (1986) – DVD

August 28, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound D+
starring Elisabeth Shue, Terence Stamp, Steven Pinner, Richard Garnett
screenplay by Everett De Roche
directed by Richard Franklin

by Walter Chaw A movie about a murderous orangutan and its bimbo prey being thrust together in a series of increasingly moronic scenarios, Richard Franklin’s excruciating Link is defined by a shot of a computer monitor testing the ability of chimpanzees–and Elisabeth Shue–to identify coloured shapes. (Shue wins, but barely.) The monitor reads: “IQ 43.” I’m afraid that of the three (Franklin, Shue, and the monkey), the only one to whom this number is not being generous is the chimp.

Memento (2001) – DVD

August 28, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Directors: Christopher Nolan, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
screenplay by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story by Jonathan Nolan
directed by Christopher Nolan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Initially, I thought I had died and gone to indie hell: the first forty minutes of the highly-touted Memento lulled me into a false sense of security about the nature of its hero's problem; there was the familiar revenge plot (he must avenge his wife's death!), and the predictably unpredictable barrier to his goal (he has no short-term memory!), both of which led me to conclude that this was going to be one more shallow off-Hollywood neo-noir with a superficial twist. As the film soldiered on, I was rolling my eyes at the hero's frantic need to re-assert his maleness. Wounded as he was by the loss of his largely decorative wife and destabilized by his confusing affliction, it seemed as though his ability to walk tall as a man was what was at stake. This led me to assume that the remainder of the film would wallow in the tragic poignancy of a once-proud man robbed of the things that made him a credit to the patriarchy, and not only was this ideologically suspect, it was boring as hell. As the blandly-photographed images washed over me, I prepared myself to endure the repetition of this masculine panic until the lights came up.

15 Minutes (2001) [Infinifilm] – DVD

August 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, Kelsey Grammer, Avery Brooks
written and directed by John Herzfeld

by Walter Chaw There’s a thing that happens about an hour into John Herzfeld’s 15 Minutes that is as bald and shameless a foreshadowing device as any in the tired pantheon of movie-groaners. It’s as bad as telling someone that you’ll marry them just as soon as you get back from this trip to Africa; as bad as showing the guys a picture of your corn-fed sweetie right before you charge that machine gun embankment. It is a moment of stunning conventionality in the middle of a film that is otherwise engaging and, for a moment or two, even shocking and provocative. 15 Minutes is defined by this scene in a great many ways: It’s a Hollywood film struggling with a controversial topic that finds a comfort zone in a script that tries to soften some images by obfuscation and others by a timidity that ultimately undermines its subject. The last time a big-budget picture tried to tackle a media culture involved in exploitation of the darkest crannies of the human heart was Joel Schumacher’s reprehensible and simpering 8MM. Sharing that film’s ignominious demise at the box office, it can be no real surprise that 15 Minutes is almost as repugnantly apple-polishing an experience.

The Last Warrior (2000) – DVD

August 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi, Thriller

The Last Patrol
½*/**** Image B Sound C-
starring Dolph Lundgren, Sherri Alexander, Joe Michael Burke, Rebecca Cross
screenplay by Stephen J. Brackely and Pamela K. Long
directed by Sheldon Lettich

by Walter Chaw I thought I was following along with The Last Warrior pretty well until star Dolph Lundgren met up with a school bus full of “Fat Albert” extras, led by the mystical shaman cum flower child, Rainbow (Brook Susan Parker). Set in a post-a-quake-alyptic California, where the Golden state is an island hemmed in by ocean and crawling with loonies and mutants, our story follows a small band of military types who have established some sort of refuge in the desert. When Captain Nick Preston (Lundgren) reminisces about the before-time, in the long, long ago when he befriended Rainbow the hippie and her cute-costumed tribe of Cosby-style moppets, The Last Warrior goes from being an incomprehensible and dull bit of cheap-o nonsense to an incomprehensible and dull bit of cheap-o new age psychobabble nonsense. I consoled myself with the supposition that the flashback is meant to provide a Lilies in the Field moment of uplift and an “in” to the inevitable pyrotechnics of the final act, but when Rainbow reappears from nowhere at the conclusion and makes it rain by gibbering incoherently and dancing in a circle, I sort of gave up.

Extreme Limits (2001) – DVD

August 26, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD

Crash Point Zero
½*/**** Image D Sound C Extras B
starring Treat Williams, Hannes Jaenicke, John Beck, Susan Blakely
screenplay by Steve Latshaw
directed by Jay Andrews

by Walter Chaw Beginning with stock footage of mountain climbing and a wholly unexpected (and unwelcome) reference to Hudson Hawk, Extreme Limits (formerly Crash Point Zero) is a micro-budgeted neo-Corman knock-off that boasts of an admirably irresponsible body count and a script so ludicrous that, once it’s deadened your senses (after about five minutes), it actually gets sort of funny. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I’ve laughed as long and as well as when a man gets mauled by a grizzly that is obviously some poor schmo in a bear suit, pinwheeling his arms when he gets struck by a flashlight.

Skeletons in the Closet (2001) – DVD

August 25, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Treat Williams, Linda Hamilton, Jonathan Jackson, Gordon Clapp
screenplay by Donna Powers & Wayne Powers
directed by Wayne Powers

by Walter Chaw An example of the sort of generational paranoia film that cropped up following the flower-power strangeness of the late-Sixties, Skeletons in the Closet is a definite product of the post-Columbine cinematic zeitgeist: it all but demands a re-examination of our relationships with our disenfranchised youth. In a very real way, it plays as an interesting companion piece to McGehee and Siegel’s arthouse thriller The Deep End. Both are interested in how single parents deal with criminal delinquency (real or imagined) in their confused children, and both are showcases for actors who are either relatively unknown (Tilda Swinton in The Deep End), or sadly marginalized (Treat Williams).

Get Over It! (2001) – DVD

August 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Teen

Get Over It
*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Kirsten Dunst, Ben Foster, Melissa Sagemiller, Sisqó
screenplay by R. Lee Fleming, Jr.
directed by Tommy O'Haver

by Bill Chambers One not-so-magic Christmas, I gave a girl on whom I had a crush a box of Frosted Flakes. I attached a lovey-dovey card that looked more suited to a wedding present and went all out with the tissue paper and ribbons. The girl's best friend was at the unveiling and later said something I'd never heard before but have quoted many times since: "Well-wrapped garbage is still garbage." Get Over It director Tommy O'Haver has embellished a dire teen-movie script with Broadway stylings and widescreen lensing–but well-wrapped garbage is still garbage. This isn't failed filmmaking so much as failed sleight-of-hand.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

August 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Road Movie, Satire, Theatrical

**/****
starring Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Jason Lee, Chris Rock
written and directed by Kevin Smith

by Walter Chaw Self-referential and self-satisfied, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is a continual stream of grotesque sexual references, leering at scantily clad, foul-mouthed women, and enough broad swipes at mainstream cinema (while featuring a parade of celebrity cameos) that it ends up being a cross between “Beavis and Butthead”, Cecil B. Demented, and a Bob Hope Christmas special, not to mention an endurance test. It is, in other words, exactly the kind of film that Jay and Silent Bob would make if they were real and given fifteen million dollars to hock their adventures in arrested development to fawning fans, as well as the other 99% of the world.

L.I.E. (2001)

August 24, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Crime, Drama, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Paul Franklin Dano, Billy Kay, Brian Cox, Bruce Altman
screenplay by Stephen M. Ryder and Michael Cuesta & Gerald Cuesta
directed by Michael Cuesta

by Walter Chaw A marriage of Harmony Korine and Larry Clark’s bleak suburban sensibilities and Michael Mann’s smooth visual sense, veteran commercial director Michael Cuesta’s debut film L.I.E. (“Long Island Expressway”) is a coming-of-age drama that includes a trio of knock-out performances, a gritty, wise screenplay, and directorial choices that are pitch perfect. It opens like Korine’s Gummo, with a child on an overpass and a voice-over providing brief backstory and mood. Like Gummo, L.I.E. betrays itself as a subversive literary piece: Korine’s work following the major tropes of John Keats’s Ode to a Grecian Urn and Cuesta’s film faithful to the philosophy and tone of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Further, L.I.E. sets itself up as one of the most technically accomplished (and restrained) members of the dissident teen social genre, lending a direct thematic explication to the generational paranoia subtexts of 1970s cinema paid visual tribute by Korine/Clark and Todd Solondz.

All Over the Guy (2001)

August 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

**/****
starring Dan Bucatinsky, Richard Ruccolo, Adam Goldberg, Sasha Alexander
screenplay by Dan Bucatinsky
directed by Julie Davis

Allovertheguyby Walter Chaw Produced by Don Roos, the man behind the intelligent interpersonal dynamics of Bounce and The Opposite of Sex, Julie Davis’s film All Over the Guy is based on a Dan Bucatinsky one-act stage play, and it never quite breaks free of its theatrical roots. All Over the Guy is a rapid-fire, talk-driven, inverted sitcom that promotes gay friends to the forefront and pushes their hetero pals into the background–a film that admirably attempts to demystify a homosexual relationship by taking parts originally written for a man and a woman and giving them to two men. Ironically, in attacking the stereotypes reserved for the homosexual community, it endorses the stereotypes of the light romantic comedy, making All Over the Guy the first gay-themed indie as predictable and unlikely as any soupy Nora Ephron fantasy.

When Dinosaurs Roamed America (2001) – DVD

August 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Television

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C-
narrated by John Goodman
written by Georgann Kane
directed by Pierre de Lespinois

by Walter Chaw A co-production of the Discovery Channel that originally aired there, When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a computer-generated simulation of dinosaurs in their habitat, interacting like lions and elephants on an African savannah. It is narrated with homey warmth by John Goodman and interrupted now and again by paleontologists, who present the most recent information available on the beasts portrayed. A hi-tech bit of necromancy, When Dinosaurs Roamed America is consistently fascinating; the fact that all of the information and images presented are highly theoretical and possibly already outdated only distracts a little from the overall impact of the piece.

The Deep End (2001)

August 21, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker, Peter Donat
screenplay by Scott McGehee & David Siegel, based on the short story “The Blank Wall” by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
directed by McGehee & Siegel

by Walter Chaw There is a moment at the very beginning of Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Deep End wherein our maternal heroine Margaret Hall (Tilda Swinton) fills in a crossword puzzle line with “glacier.” It is an early clue to Margaret’s glacial temperament, the cool blue colour suffusions that dominate the film’s lighting schemes, and, unfortunately, the feeling of icy detachment one experiences during the course of the film. The Deep End is neither a noir nor a Hitchcockian thriller, but rather a somewhat conventional, vaguely derivative Mildred Pierce-ian estrogen melodrama that plays a lot like a Lifetime bodice-ripper written by David Mamet. It is essentially a lifeless version of Blood Simple, complete with misunderstandings, extortion, and a hide-the-corpse intrigue inspired by the urge to protect a loved one. Not to say The Deep End is a bad film, exactly, rather it’s a forgettable one that is remarkable only for its almost complete lack of distinction.

Hannibal (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

August 21, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A-
starring Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Frankie R. Faison
screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Harris
directed by Ridley Scott

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It is perhaps unfair to compare a sequel to its predecessor, especially one with as tenuous a connection to its predecessor as Hannibal has. With most of the original The Silence of the Lambs personnel having refused to sign on due to various creative differences, the sequel's total stylistic disconnection from its beloved 1991 precursor was probably inevitable. Couple that with the fact that the novel on which it draws can be charitably described as a desperate grasp for royalties and you have a no-win situation that would confound the most dedicated adaptor. Eager though he or she might be to remain faithful to the original's spirit, our hypothetical filmmakers would be forced to define something perfectly contrary to the parent film, something that would be its own picture–a rare enough commodity in the best of times.

Dead Simple (2000) – DVD

August 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Music

Viva Las Nowhere
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Daniel Stern, Patricia Richardson, Lacey Kohl, Sherry Stringfield
screenplay by Richard Uhlig and Steven Seitz
directed by Jason Bloom

by Walter Chaw A bizarre cross between Psycho, Something Wild and Tender Mercies, Jason Bloom’s Dead Simple is one of those derivatively named direct-to-video productions that attempts the black comedy genre with a reasonable amount of aplomb and wide-eyed enthusiasm. It’s a Very Bad Things farce of escalating atrocities, and though Dead Simple never achieves the kind of sustained comic brilliance and continual nastiness of that movie, it does manage a few edged moments and keen performances from a cast that includes legendary bug-eyed hambones Daniel Stern and James Caan.

The Trumpet of the Swan (2001) – DVD

August 20, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, India, Musical, South Korea

½*/**** Image C Sound C Extras C
starring Jason Alexander, Mary Steenburgen, Reese Witherspoon, Seth Green
screenplay by Judy Rothman Rofe, based on the book by E.B. White
directed by Richard Rich, Terry L. Noss

by Walter Chaw Gracelessly-animated, unevenly voice-acted, and so carelessly told that it’s often unintentionally disturbing (our human hero fries eggs for breakfast when he meets our swan hero), Rich-Crest Animation’s The Trumpet of the Swan is an embarrassing cut-rate cartoon based on E.B. White’s melancholy 1970 novel. It strips White’s wonderful prose to its base essentials, inserts vulgar slapstick involving a skunk, a jive-turkey squirrel, and an aborted Graduate intrigue, and opens with an off-putting and borderline tasteless Lamaze egg-birthing prologue. Its catalogue of atrocity is so variegated and pungent that to list them all would be more effort than has in fact gone into the film’s production. Absolutely the only saving grace for this slack entertainment is its modest length–which, at a brisk 75 minutes, still plays like a film twice as long.