Akira (1988) – DVD (THX)

July 24, 2001Posted in1980s, Action, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound B (English)/A (Japanese)
screenplay by Katsuhiro Otomo & Izo Hashimoto
directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

by Walter Chaw What begins as a miracle of cinema ends as an obscure endurance test, but the visual landmarks that you pass along this strange animated journey’s way make the trip one of value. Akira is two hours and five minutes of philosophical soup, a surrealistic melding of Blade Runner, X-Men, Firestarter, and Frank Miller’s “Sin City” mixed with the melancholic sensibilities of the only culture that has experienced the Atomic bomb, with a healthy sampling of really fast motorcycles tossed in for visceral crunch.

Valentine (2001) – DVD

July 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound B Extras C+
starring David Boreanaz, Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Katherine Heigl
screenplay by Donna Powers & Wayne Powers and Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts, based on the novel by Tom Savage
directed by Jamie Blanks

by Bill Chambers There was a time in my life, not necessarily a proud one, when I based my video-rental selections on whether the box pictured some configuration of pointy knife, mask, and bug-eyed victim. Call it my 'boo' period; without it, I may never have seen Prom Night, and therefore not understood just how banal Valentine, its unofficial remake, really is. Prom Night is brain food by comparison, and it stars Leslie Nielsen! Still, I'd sooner watch Valentine again before much of today's quickie horror, if only to re-experience Denise Richards's eyebrow-raising performance. She suggests here an understudy for the understudy–the custodian who's been around long enough to pick up the lines but not necessarily the context in which they belong. In the words of Radiohead, she's like a detuned radio, but she's easily the most compelling thing in the film.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 19, 2001Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Christmas, DVD, Thriller

Die Hard 2
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Atherton, Reginald Vel Johnson
screenplay by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson, based on the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager
directed by Renny Harlin

“Man, I can’t believe this. Another basement. Another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

“We got a new SOP for DOAs from the FAA.” -John McClane, Die Hard 2

by Vincent Suarez Everything you need to know about Die Hard 2 can be gleaned from these two lines. In essentially replicating the formula perfected by its predecessor, Die Hard 2 doesn’t merely lapse into the self-parody that characterizes (and often weakens) most sequels–it embraces (and is frequently elevated) by it. With a higher body count, quicker pace, and slightly shorter running time than Die Hard, the entire exercise smacks of shorthand, resulting in a breezier, if less substantial and sophisticated, experience. Nonetheless, like John McClane himself, the film packs a smart-alecky wallop.

The Gift (2000) – DVD

July 19, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Directors: Sam Raimi, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes
screenplay by Billy Bob Thornton & Tom Epperson
directed by Sam Raimi

by Bill Chambers The Golden Razzies are the worst: Earlier this year, they (dis)honoured Keanu Reeves for one of the only decent performances he’s ever given, in Sam Raimi’s The Gift. With his horrendous turns in The Replacements and The Watcher also up for grabs, I can only say that these anti-Oscars would be more clever and thought-provoking if they quit aiming their guns at sitting hams (witness George C. Scott’s Raspberry for his outstanding work in The Exorcist III); they long ago became the spoof-awards equivalent of a male comedian cracking wise about his mother-in-law. But then, The Gift hasn’t garnered much respect at all, except from those who watched for the specific purpose of glimpsing “Dawson’s Creek”‘s Katie Holmes in the buff. She plays a society slut in this southern gothic, which failed to exceed genre expectations during its curiously staggered theatrical release last winter. Yet there are times when a film should be lauded for fulfilling a set of obligations, and this is one of them.

The Great Muppet Caper (1981) – DVD

July 17, 2001Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Family, Muppets, Musical

***½/**** Image B Sound B-
starring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo
screenplay by Tom Patchett & Jay Tarses and Jerry Juhl & Jack Rose
directed by Jim Henson

BUY @ AMAZON

by Bill Chambers Jim Henson said that The Great Muppet Caper was the Muppet movie nearest and dearest to his heart, and it’s little mystery why. For starters, it’s the only one of the original trilogy he officially directed. And it’s closer in execution to “The Muppet Show”, Henson’s surreal, Emmy-winning brainchild that ran on TV for five years, than either The Muppet Movie or The Muppets Take Manhattan in not only showcasing a wide variety of song styles and involving the human guest stars in the musical performances, but also framing itself as what it is: a movie. With tongue firmly in cheek, The Great Muppet Caper deconstructs itself all the while. The film taught me a lot about the cinema–conventions, techniques, genre–as a kid, for which I am grateful.

The Claim (2000) – DVD

July 14, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, France, Romance, UK, Western

***½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Wes Bentley, Milla Jovovich, Nastassia Kinski, Peter Mullan
screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce
directed by Michael Winterbottom

by Walter Chaw Cold and barren as the winter’s landscape it inhabits, Michael Winterbottom’s exceptional retelling of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge is the delicate and maddening The Claim. It’s told in undertones and sidelong glances, gathering its strength from the inexorable tides of fate and the offhand caprices of nature that reflect the essential chaos at the centre of every man’s character. Hardy stated about The Mayor of Casterbridge that “it is not improbabilities of incident but improbabilities of character that matter,” and the subtitle of the novel is, consequently, “A Man of Character.” Though it’s possible to take the subtitle as ironic seeing as the titular main character is guilty in the first chapter (an incident related in the film as a flashback) of an act that is at the very least heinous, both novel and film are earnest in exploring the sticky gradations of morality without value judgment.

The Magnificent Seven (1960) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 13, 2001Posted in1960s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Western

**/**** Image A Sound B Extras A+
starring Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson
screenplay by William Roberts
directed by John Sturges

by Walter Chaw Based loosely on Akira Kurosawa’s seminal The Seven Samurai, The Great Escape director John Sturges’s wildly uneven The Magnificent Seven vacillates from superbly choreographed (if stagy) action sequences to moments of sublime dialogue, and to extended character-enhancing business that grinds the film to a complete halt no fewer than five times. It has aged poorly in four decades, losing a great deal of modern appeal in a way that Sergio Leone’s adaptation (and extrapolation) of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the “Spaghetti Western,” A Fistful of Dollars, never has.

Monkeybone (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

July 11, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy

*/**** Image B- Sound B Extras B
starring Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Chris Kattan, Giancarlo Esposito
screenplay by Sam Hamm
directed by Henry Selick

by Walter Chaw At long last someone decided to crossbreed Cool World, Beetlejuice, and All of Me. Stu Miley (Brendan Fraser) is a cartoonist in the John Kricfalusi tradition on the cusp of semi-stardom, with his own animated half-hour series impending on Comedy Central. His creation, the titular “Monkeybone” (voiced by John Turturro), is a dangerously sexualized simian that, we learn, is born from the shame of a pre-adolescent’s erection and a disturbed man’s sublimated aggression. Seminal, indeed. Plunged into a coma, Stu is dropped into a Freudian stew of elaborate set-design and partially-successful live-action integration called Downtown, helpless as Monkeybone takes over his flesh body, bangs his angelic gal Julie (Bridget Fonda), and parlays Stu’s modest cartoon into a marketing monolith bent on pushing nightmare-inducing toys (ushering Monkeybone into the poorly-attended “Club Halloween III“). Making matters somehow more unbearable, in Downtown Stephen King is literally a character, Giancarlo Esposito is a satyr, and–as box-office watchers of her last ten films will attest–Whoopi Goldberg is Death.

Urbania (2000) – DVD

July 9, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A-
starring Dan Futterman, Alan Cumming, Matt Keeslar, Samuel Ball
screenplay by Daniel Reitz and Jon Shear
directed by Jon Shear

by Walter Chaw We are each of us an anthology of disparate tales, rumors, poems, and melodramatic novellas. Clive Barker once wryly observed that we are books of blood, “wherever we’re opened, we’re red,” and for as intentionally grotesque as that sounds, Barker has a metaphysical point. It is the same point that Jon Shear’s directorial debut Urbania makes again and again (and, unfortunately, again): that the stories we tell others become our reality through their manipulated perceptions. If we are what others see us as, then what we cause others to see us as becomes what we are–each of us is very literally an author of our own identity through the abuse of others’ faith in our stories. There are two areas that this kind of reality crafting/testing holds a specific currency: sexual identity, and urban legend–“don’t ask, don’t tell,” and “this really happened to a friend of mine,” invocations to a post-modernist muse and a deconstructed vocal tradition.

Proof of Life (2000) – DVD

July 8, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe, David Morse, Pamela Reed
screenplay by Tony Gilroy
directed by Taylor Hackford

by Walter Chaw Proof of Life is essentially a re-telling of Someone to Watch Over Me with some bits of Missing in Action, Papillon, Casablanca, and Bridge on the River Kwai tacked on witlessly and serving as a faint excuse for Russell Crowe to slap on fatigues and crank up the virility from “high” to “stud bull.” For all of Crowe’s smouldering presence and incendiary gaze, however, there is remarkably little chemistry between he and his infamous on-set flame, Meg Ryan. Whether this sterility is a result of a script that relies on cliché and unlikely “meet cute” scenarios, or a result of Meg Ryan’s overreliance on trick two of her two-trick bag, I’m not certain. I’m content to call it an unfortunate combination of both.

Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood – Books

July 8, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Books About Movies, UK

Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood
FFC rating: 2/10
by Andrew Yule

by Walter Chaw Andrew Yule’s anecdotal biography-as-memoir of David Puttnam’s rise as an independent movie producer and brief run as the head of Columbia Pictures, Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood is a poorly-written vanity piece that offers a minimum of analysis en route to being tediously repetitive and at least 30 pages too long. Packed to the gills with quotes from Puttnam, his wife Patsy, close friend/director Alan Parker, and an extended cast of British and Hollywood production glitterati, the book finds Yule interjecting occasionally in the tiresome reportage style of a relatively talentless journalist incapable of offering anything in the way of a trenchant critique. Chapter flows into chapter, bound only by chronology and Yule’s occasional stultifying transition, e.g.:

David probably did not realize it at the time, but The Mission marked the end of a major phase in his career. A very significant phase was about to begin.

Two Family House (2000) + Panic (2001) – DVDs

June 30, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance

TWO FAMILY HOUSE
***/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Michael Rispoli, Kelly Macdonald, Katherine Narducci, Kevin Conway
written and directed by Raymond De Felitta

PANIC
***½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring William H. Macy, Neve Campbell, Tracey Ullman, John Ritter
written and directed by Henry Bromell

by Bill Chambers Two Family House and Panic, a pair of overlooked films hopefully not destined to become overlooked DVDs, have more in common than a passing glance suggests, and their joint failure to earn even a pittance sounds the death knell for independent cinema as we knew it in the early-’90s. These days, only the import indies get a shot at the big time, which would be quite the statement on an improved national tolerance of foreign-language entertainment were such hits as Billy Elliot and Life is Beautiful not as warm and fuzzy as a Care Bear’s behind. The market’s unresponsiveness to the winsome New York story Two Family House, in particular, generates the following theory: American moviegoers now feel guilty for seeing The Mummy Returns twice instead of something less promoted once; they take the least painful route of cultural redemption by buying tickets to the most domestic thing with accents available, thus developing a distrust of or distaste for the genuine article.

Nightwatch (1994) – DVD

June 29, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Denmark, DVD, Horror, Thriller

Nattevagten
***/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C
starring Nikolaj Waldau, Sofie Graaboel, Kim Bodnia, Lotte Andersen
written and directed by Ole Bornedal

by Walter Chaw Dark and moody with a dash of post-modern relational philosophy, Ole Bornedal’s Nightwatch (Nattevagten) is a taut and unusual thriller that has been remade by the same director into the English-language Nightwatch, starring Ewan McGregor, Nick Nolte, and Patricia Arquette. In its original Dutch-language incarnation (seen by over 15% of the entire Dane population), Nattevagten is lent a good deal of weight by a satisfying subplot involving the nature of love and the rites of passage young men endure to become men in one another’s eyes. It sounds a little heady for what boils down to fairly typical serial-killer intrigue, but the uniformly fine performances, the uncompromising though tasteful direction, and the sharp screenplay (by Bornedal) combine to make the film something a little finer than what its barest plot synopsis would indicate. It reminds most of another foreign thriller largely ignored on American shores released in the same year, Anthony Waller’s Mute Witness.

The Boys Next Door (1986)

June 27, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

*½/**** Image B Sound C
starring Maxwell Caulfield, Charlie Sheen, Patti D’Arbanville
screenplay by Glen Morgan & James Wong
directed by Penelope Spheeris

by Walter Chaw Wearing the white undershirt and blue jeans popularized as the uniform of disenfranchised youth since James Dean, Charlie Sheen’s Bo Richards in The Boys Next Door dresses the dress, but doesn’t exactly walking the walk. The first thing that should spring to mind when Sheen the younger staggers in from stage right in a thriller-killer film is his father, Martin, playing the same role in Terence Malick’s middle-American masterpiece Badlands fourteen years previous. The key difference is that not only is there a decade in which Martin Sheen used to be able to act (not so, Charlie), but that where Martin’s Kit Carruthers is the proactive force behind his murderous rampage, Charlie plays more the wilting, Sissy Spacek tagalong.

Manhunter (1986) – DVD (THX)

June 26, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Michael Mann, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring William L. Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen, Brian Cox
screenplay by Michael Mann, based on the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon
directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw Director Michael Mann’s third film is the remarkable Manhunter, the second cinematic adaptation of a Thomas Harris novel (the first being 1977’s John Frankenheimer-helmed Black Sunday) and the first to feature Harris’s dark serial killer antihero, Hannibal Lecter (spelled “Lecktor” in Manhunter). It is visually lush and possessed of the attention to craft and detail that has become a hallmark of Mann’s work; to say that it’s superior in nearly every way to the much-lauded and wildly popular The Silence of the Lambs would be something of an understatement.

The Pledge (2001) – DVD

June 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, DVD, Jack Nicholson, Mystery, Thriller

***½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Jack Nicholson, Benicio Del Toro, Aaron Eckhart, Helen Mirren
screenplay by Jerzy Kromolowski & Mary Olson Kromolowski, based on the novel by Fredrich Durrenmatt
directed by Sean Penn

by Bill Chambers The Pledge implicates anyone and everyone, especially its viewers. There are critics who like to remain situated on a high horse looking down at the movies: that group loathed The Pledge, because it knocked the saddle out from under them. Their reviews are full of defensive posturing, refusing to deal with the film head-on, denouncing exploitation before deciding on whom or what is being exploited. It’s easy to call The Pledge “sick,” for instance, because of the moment where Jack Nicholson’s Jerry Black sifts through crime-scene photographs of slain children and, because the camera is over his shoulder, so do we.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 19, 2001Posted in1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Japan, War

***½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras A
starring Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, E.G. Marshall, Tatsuya Mihashi
screenplay by Larry Forrester, Ryuzo Kikushima, Hideo Oguni
directed by Richard Fleischer and Kinji Fukasuka & Toshio Masuda

by Walter Chaw A joint project between a Japanese film crew and veteran American director Richard Fleischer (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Tora! Tora! Tora! had Akira Kurosawa assigned as the lead Japanese director, poised to make his American debut with a mammoth script weighing in at well over four-hundred pages–and that just for the Japanese side of the story. Accustomed to complete autonomy in his projects, Kurosawa bowed out after several weeks following a series of run-ins with Fox executives over not only the unwieldiness of his vision, but also disagreements concerning the shade of white used in the interiors of the Japanese carrier ward rooms! Unfortunately, Kurosawa’s initial involvement with the picture resulted in his regular cohort Toshiro Mifune turning down the role of Admiral Yamamoto (a role he would play in Jack Smight’s 1976 Midway and in 1968’s Yamamoto biopic Rengo kantai shirei chôkan: Yamamoto Isoroku), as the two titans of Japanese cinema had lingering bad feelings over their last collaboration, the underseen Akahige.

Love Potion #9 (1992) – DVD

June 18, 2001Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D+ Sound C-
starring Tate Donovan, Sandra Bullock, Mary Mara, Dale Midkiff
written and directed by Dale Launer

by Walter Chaw Love Potion #9 is an indescribably bad film that elicits so many feelings of true hatred it should be classified as a post-expressionist nihilist experiment rather than a romantic comedy. It is a gimmick flick based on a novelty song that manages to be worse than the stillbirth of an idea that spawned it. I can only surmise that it's being resurrected now on the DVD format because of the inexplicable fame of Sandra Bullock–a realization that makes me not only want to sleep with the lights on, but also begin to dread the inevitable digital remastering of Religion, Inc..

Donovan’s Reef (1963) – DVD

June 16, 2001Posted in1960s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image A Sound B
starring John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Elizabeth Allen, Jack Warden
screenplay by James Edward Grant and Frank Nugent
directed by John Ford

by Walter Chaw One of legendary director John Ford’s last films, and his final collaboration with John Wayne, Donovan’s Reef is, like much of Ford’s later work, a derivative amalgam of his earlier successes. Curmudgeonly and vicious, it’s a lighter-than-air farce with a black heart that feels suspiciously like the mad rantings of an old soldier describing his vision of a bucolic Valhalla to which he one day hopes to return. Released in the same year (1963) that saw Sidney Poitier become the first black man to win an Oscar in a major category (for Lilies in the Field), Donovan’s Reef is a shockingly, unapologetically racist and misogynistic film about braggadocio, therapeutic rape, and belittling the natives. In other words, John Ford apologists need to work overtime to dig their favorite auteur out from under this surreal bilge.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

June 15, 2001Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Germany, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*½/****
starring Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig, Leslie Phillips, Mark Collie
screenplay by Simon West and Patrick Massett & John Zinman
directed by Simon West

by Walter Chaw To say that Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is completely incomprehensible is not entirely accurate, for the basic plot appears to be pretty straightforward. The British Lara Croft (played by the American Angelina Jolie) is a sort of jet-setting archaeologist in the Indiana Jones mold who is extremely well outfitted by a gadget man in the James Bond mold, and who boasts of a loyal, shotgun-packing butler in the Batman mold. Her task is to discover two pieces of a triangular artifact before the Illuminati do on the day that a rare syzygy coincides with a solar eclipse, allowing the triangle-bearer to control time.