Film Freak Central

Opera (1987) - DVD

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Cristina Marsillach, Ian Charleson, Urbano Barberini, Daria Nicolodi
screenplay by Dario Argento, Franco Ferreni
directed by Dario Argento

by Walter Chaw The best of Dario Argento's films rework themes and images from Alfred Hitchcock with a level of flamboyance and twisted creativity that transform would-be genre knock-offs into something truly rare and valuable. Argento utilizes the constructions of Hitchcock as a framework for lurid, colour-drenched images and wickedly inventive death sequences that are among the most shocking and agonizing in the history of cinema. Often called "The Italian Hitchcock," I find the term "The Italian De Palma" to be closer to the mark, for their obsessions, for their mastery of highly technical mimicries, and, extra-textually, for both auteurs' decades-long slides into mere imitation and schlock. (Despite their similarities, Argento and De Palma to this day hate each other with a white-hot passion.)

Jump Tomorrow (2001)

****/****
starring Tunde Adebimpe, Natalia Verbeke, Hippolyte Girardot, Patricia Mauceri
written and directed by Joel Hopkins

by Walter Chaw An unlikely romance, an unlikely road movie, and an unlikely buddy picture all in one that somehow works (and with a surplus of charm and sweetness), Joel Hopkins's debut feature Jump Tomorrow could be described as either Harold Lloyd by way of Jacques Tati or Jim Jarmusch by way of Thirties screwball. Or just simply "fantastic." It is hopelessly romantic and subversively funny, a Being There-esque collection of guileless characters left to interact in ways that are so nobly old-fashioned and innocent, it takes a good half-hour before we realize that Jump Tomorrow doesn't have a baseball bat clutched in the hand behind its back. It doesn't have a hand behind its back at all.

On the Waterfront (1954) [Special Edition] - DVD

****/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B
starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger
screenplay by Budd Schulberg
directed by Elia Kazan

by Walter Chaw There is a moment in the middle of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront that stands out for me as one of the defining in my love of movies. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) confesses to his girlfriend Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) that he was involved in the Union execution of her brother, but rather than listen to Terry rehash events with which we're already familiar, a steam whistle drowns him out. The precise way that Terry moves his hands and the expression on Edie's face, growing from a gentle concern to horror, is among the most cinematic moments in the history of the medium. It's breathtaking in its simplicity and subtlety, revolutionary in its presentation and its eye, and exactly the right choice for the film at the right moment.

The Hobbit (1978) + The Return of the King (1980) - DVDs

THE HOBBIT
**/**** Image B- Sound C
screenplay by Romeo Muller,
based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.

THE RETURN OF THE KING
**½/**** Image B- Sound C
screenplay by Romeo Muller,
based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.

by Walter Chaw There are a couple of ways to tackle screen adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel, The Hobbit. One is to do as Ralph Bakshi did with his 1978 animation The Lord of the Rings and present a sexualized and disturbing vision of Middle Earth; the other is to make a film for children that omits the more troubling elements of Tolkien (the racism, homoeroticism, religiosity), as with Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.'s two feature-length television specials: The Hobbit (1978) and The Return of the King (1979).

Kingdom Come (2001) - DVD

*½/**** Image B+ Sound C+ Extras B-
starring LL Cool J, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, Loretta Devine
screenplay by David Dean Bottrell & Jessie Jones, based on the play "Dearly Departed" by David Dean Bottrell
directed by Doug McHenry

by Walter Chaw A second-helping of Soul Food but seasoned this time around with a preponderance of syrupy good intentions and a hulking mess of stock burlesque caricatures, Kingdom Come vacillates between ridiculous and irritating: a far cry from the intended "heartwarming" and "funny." Though it's always nice to see a film with an all-African-American cast that doesn't rely on gangsters and gunplay (ignoring a gun that is drawn and forgotten early on), I'm not certain that the opposite of that genre is necessarily forced dramedy camaraderie, complete with a sitcom narrative's rise and fall, made popular by Waiting to Exhale. Still, for as simple-minded and shamelessly overacted as it is, the film is somewhat redeemed by an overall genial goodwill.

Recording 'The Producers': A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks (2001) - DVD

***/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
directed by Susan Froemke

by Walter Chaw Sort of a cross between a documentary and a musical concert DVD but without much in the way of either in-depth information or audience response, Recording 'The Producers': A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks is a look at the recording sessions leading to the creation of the cast album for the smash Broadway show The Producers, which was, of course, based on Mel Brooks's classic film. Well composited by director Susan Froemke, the straight-to-DVD production veers from Brooks reacting to in-studio performances by Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and company to a few rough patches that are overcome through coaching and a surprising degree of professionalism. Although I'm somewhat handicapped by not having seen the actual play, I was dutifully impressed by the prodigious talents of the stars (who knew that Ferris Bueller could croon?) and mostly charmed by the still-engaging personality of Brooks as the proud papa of the most-lauded play in Tony Award history (winning twelve).

Along Came a Spider (2001) - DVD

*½/**** Image A Sound A
starring Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, Michael Wincott, Penelope Ann Miller
screenplay by Marc Moss, based on the novel by James Patterson
directed by Lee Tamahori

by Walter Chaw The sole line to strike with truth in Lee Tamahori's Along Came a Spider comes when professional dim-bulb Penelope Ann Miller, as the mother of a kidnapped child, wrings her hands, furrows her brow, and whines, "I... I don't understand." Springing as it no doubt does from a lifetime of repetition, Ms. Miller's quandary also serves as a handy critique of the labyrinthine contortions that the film's plot makes on its way to being utterly senseless and unengaging; its blandness takes on a cast of bellicosity. You begin to feel like the butt of some absurd joke or embroiled in a wilfully obscure Buddhist koan: What is the sound of one movie sucking?

DIFF '01: Amélie (2001)

Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
Amélie Poulain
***/****
starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Yolande Moreau
screenplay by Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

by Walter Chaw Caught between an iceberg of a father (Rufus) and a nervous wreck of a mother (Lorella Cravotta), the very peculiar Amélie (Audrey Tautou) develops in her youth an active imagination to combat emotional starvation. When she's 22, on the night of Lady Di's death-by-paparazzi, Amélie accidentally discovers a tin of toys and photographs, a child's treasure cache hidden away in her apartment some forty years previous. Resolving to return the artifacts to their rightful owner, Amélie discovers that acts of altruism serve as voyeuristic surrogates to her life's social desolation. Taking its cue from the bare structure of Jane Austen's Emma and--ironically, considering the ultra-stylistic character of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's direction--the stark work of the Nouvelle Vague (Truffaut in particular), the strength of Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain) is in its imagery. Its weaknesses, alas, are a running time that is at least a half-an-hour too long and a resolution so predictable that the film's problems of pacing and length meet in something resembling frustration.

DIFF '01: Novocaine

*/****
starring Steve Martin, Helena Bonham Carter, Laura Dern, Scott Caan
written and directed by David Atkins

by Walter Chaw An ill-fated hybrid of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and the dentist portions of Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors, Novocaine lacks a cohesive tone. It vacillates from dark comedy to Forties-style melodrama, from light-hearted slapstick to medium-heavy gore and nudity, and in one particularly inexplicable sequence, Novocaine attempts to be a post-modernist Lacanian thing involving a character's heightened self-awareness as a fictional construct. It's neither funny nor the slightest bit suspenseful, too jumbled and arbitrary to ever sustain much in the way of tension or interest. Even its central conceit--a plot to steal pharmaceuticals and the resultant chaos when the victim catches on to the scheme--is so essentially flawed that the revelation of the guilty party, which occurs after we've spent two desperate hours suspending increasingly leaden disbelief, isn't so much a shocker as a "shrugger."

K-Pax (2001)

K-PAX
*/****
starring Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard
screenplay by Charles Leavitt, based on the novel by Gene Brewer
directed by Iain Softley

by Walter Chaw Madman Prot (Kevin Spacey) has been incarcerated for months at various state-run mental institutions. Because psychotropic drugs do not affect Prot, he's sent to Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges); presumably, Powell is the authority on madmen unaffected by psychotropic drugs. Prot, however, can also see ultra-violet light, map the orbits of undiscovered planets around undiscovered solar systems (begging a few questions), and talk to dogs by barking at them. Prot believes himself an alien from the distant planet K-Pax, and it's up to Dr. Powell to uncover the trauma that has unhinged this man. Along the way, Prot's unconventional (and wiseass) view of our foibles teaches us all a little about ourselves, leading to cuddly Patch Adams moments wherein this dangerous fruitbar repairs Dr. Powell's crumbling familial relationships and reverses insanity by urging his fellow inmates to look for bluebirds and attempt to kill one another. K-Pax is derivative, populist, feel-good trash of the first order--it's tailor-made for a populace gone daft from decades of insipid soup generally starring Robin Williams.

Heathers (1989) - DVD

****/**** Image A Sound B- Extras A-
starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk
screenplay by Daniel Waters
directed by Michael Lehmann

by Walter Chaw Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) is the only non-Heather "Heather," one of four girls in Westerberg High's most popular and fashionable clique. The conscience of a harridan quartet responsible for much of the insecurity and intimidation at their institution, Veronica confides to new kid J.D. (Christian Slater), "I don't really like my friends." Nor is there much to admire about Westerberg's other clusters, who spend their time destroying overweight students, tormenting the "geek squad," and placing themselves in humiliating situations for the sake of imagined boosts to their ill-gained status. J.D., a rebel with a cause, functions as the catalyst for Veronica's revenge fantasies: The two begin a killing spree of the beautiful people, getting away with it by playing on grown-ups' propensity to romanticize teenage suicide.

Startup.com (2001) + Down from the Mountain (2001) - DVDs

STARTUP.COM
***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
directed by Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN
***/**** Image A Sound A
directed by Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker

by Bill Chambers With the advent (moreover, the industry-wide acceptance) of digital video, married partners in documentary-making Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker are more prolific than ever before. Artisan just released their two latest projects, Down from the Mountain and Startup.com, on DVD, and though the former is a concert film and the latter takes an inside look at the Internet boom, they sit together comfortably in the directors' joint oeuvre. Consider that, between filming such music legends as Jerry Lee Lewis and Jerry Garcia, the pair has all but specialized in youthfully arrogant subjects--star Clinton campaigner George Stephanopoulos in The War Room, for example. There's even been some crossover: Without Hegedus, Pennebaker captured both Bob Dylan (Don't Look Back) and David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) on the cusp of fame, the former abandoning artificiality, the latter embracing it to essentially the same end.

Bones (2001)

*/****
starring Snoop Doggy Dogg, Pam Grier, Michael T. Weiss, Clifton Powell
screenplay by Adam Simon & Tim Metcalfe
directed by Ernest R. Dickerson

by Walter Chaw Bones, from Spike Lee's former cinematographer Ernest Dickerson (director of the underestimated horror-comedy Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight), is torpedoed first and foremost by rapper/felon Snoop Doggy Dogg's monstrous ego and lack of anything resembling a sense of humour about himself. The result is a film that merely rip-offs Hellraiser (down to the reconstituted corpse), A Nightmare on Elm Street (down to the floppy-hat-wearing vengeful ghoul), and, most peculiarly of all, Dario Argento's Inferno and Suspiria (burning hellmouth, rain of maggots, man-eating dog). Bones also borrows liberally from the blaxploitation flicks of the Seventies in Snoop's period pimp outfit and the presence of Pam Grier in her Foxy Brown attire, yet it lacks the camp appeal that excuses miniscule budgets and a lack of craft. The one thing that separates Bones from all the films it's trying to emulate is its noteworthy inability to muster either fear or fun.

DIFF '01: Haiku Tunnel

**½/****
starring Josh Kornbluth, Amy Resnick, June Lomena, Helen Shumaker
screenplay by Jacob Kornbluth & John Belluci & Josh Kornbluth
directed by Jacob & Joshua Kornbluth

by Walter Chaw Featuring the kind of humour made popular by those irritating sports improvisation dinner-theatre troupes, Haiku Tunnel opens inauspiciously: Josh Kornbluth (who co-directed with his brother and plays himself) stands in front of a chalkboard introducing the film as a made-up work set in the fictional town of...erm..."San Franclisco." His over-emoting and burlesque eye-rolling soon betray the fact that Haiku Tunnel began life as a series of stand-up monologues Kornbluth performed to small but appreciative venues in San Francisco. (Urban legends abound of entire secretarial pools going to his shows en masse and adopting catchphrases for inspirational memos.) Clearly a creature of the stage, Kornbluth's mugging and brother Jacob and John Bellucci's aside-laden script translate uneasily to the screen, aspiring to a kind of Woody Allen-esque fourth-wall breaking but only succeeding in being mildly embarrassing. Still, Josh Kornbluth's engaging warmth and egoless sense of humour portends a destiny for Haiku Tunnel as a cult classic and good things for the future of the fraternal auteurs behind it.

Tunnel Vision: FFC Interviews Jacob & Josh Kornbluth

October 24, 2001|Stricken with free-floating worry beneath a glowering sky, I was about fifteen minutes early for my interview with brothers Jacob and Josh Kornbluth at the swank Hotel Monaco in suddenly hip downtown Denver. I had spent most of the morning pounding espresso and dodging screaming fire trucks and ambulances chasing one another in a climate that made every peal of every siren an unpleasant reminder and a cause for concern. Walking up 17^th Avenue, I was skittish and disquieted--hardly the appropriate frame of mind for a conversation with the writing/directing team responsible for the feather-light Haiku Tunnel, their debut feature, which is based on the office inferno monologues of older brother Josh. As it turns out, Josh, such a charming nebbish as the star of his own film, appeared as nervous as I, experiencing the very human anxiety of putting his work up for public scrutiny on an exhausting festival press junket.

My First Mister (2001)

*/****
starring Albert Brooks, Leelee Sobieski, John Goodman, Michael McKean
screenplay by Jill Franklyn
directed by Christine Lahti

by Walter Chaw Something's fatally off about My First Mister, veteran character actor Christine Lahti's feature-length directorial debut. Awkward and atonal, it appears to be some strange cross between a reverse-gendered Harold and Maude and a mainstream Ghost World, and despite its desperation to appear so, it's neither as intelligent nor edgy as either. Jill Franklyn's screenplay (her first produced) just doesn't work. It's hollow to the ear and disagreeable to the taste, only ringing true occasionally through the Herculean intervention of Albert Brooks, here in his most restrained and affecting performance since Broadcast News. That noise you hear when Leelee Sobieski's weary (and wearying) voiceover confides, "My clothes are not all black. Some of them are blue. Sometimes I wear them together so I look like a bruise," is an audience's worth of eyeballs rolling skyward. The problems Franklyn's script presents to the rest of the cast, however, particularly the Helen Hunt-ishly smug (and similarly limited) Sobieski and Carol Kane as another gnomish manic eccentric, are insurmountable. They're crushed beneath the weight of convenience, contrivance, Lahti's unfortunate impulse towards the cutesy, and a score that is as insulting and invasive as any to be found in a Chris Columbus film or from the recently-flaccid baton of the once-great John Williams.

DIFF '01: Fat Girl

À ma soeur!
***/****
starring Anais Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo
written and directed by Catherine Breillat

by Walter Chaw

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
"Leda and the Swan" (1928)--William Butler Yeats

Yeats caused a minor stir in 1928 by suggesting that the rape of Leda was an empowerment for a sexually wise woman whose ultimate revenge against manhood was the spawning of Helen of Troy--who, of course, had a key role in the fall of an entire nation. The idea of ill-gotten knowledge as it's tied to a woman's evolving sexuality is not a new one--Biblical and older, in fact. Still, Catherine Breillat throws a new acerbic barb into the psychosexual brew by projecting Freud's classic developmental framework (anal, oral, genital) onto the progression of the uncomfortable seduction of the impossibly young Elena (Roxane Mesquida) by a smooth-talking Italian lothario (Libero de Rienzo). It is only one, though perhaps the most subtle, of Breillat's incendiary yawps against man's barbarism to woman. As Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), the titular fat girl, summarizes at one point: "All men are sick."

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) [Collector's Edition (Widescreen) + DVD Interactive Playset] - DVDs

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B- Playset A-
starring Jim Carrey, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Molly Shannon
screenplay by Jeffrey Price & Peter S. Seaman, based on the book by Dr. Seuss
directed by Ron Howard

by Bill Chambers Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas? More like Dr. Strangelove's. The Ron Howard film version of the children's perennial has horror-movie limbs that spring up independently of Seussian intent, the most extended of them going by the name of Jim Carrey, who wants to be the only Grinch remembered and marks his territory with piss and vinegar. Then there are the subversive asides, reckless stabs at hipping up a classic story that hadn't fallen out of fashion in the first place. So miscast as a director, Howard is guilty of trying too hard; so well-cast in the lead role, Carrey is also guilty of trying too hard--or maybe not hard enough. Improvising ten topical jokes to every five that succeed while smothered by a fuzzy-wuzzy bodysuit, Carrey suggests a green Robin Williams in maximum sellout mode.

DIFF '01: LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton

***½/****
directed by Albert Maysles

by Walter Chaw Following four generations of women from LaLee Wallace's destitute family in the heart of the Mississippi delta's cotton country, legendary documentarian Albert Maysles's LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton is full of the quiet tragedy of being human. Poetic and demanding, it very subtly changes you as you watch it, shaming us for our petty concerns in the face of what LaLee bears on a daily basis. Entire African-American generations are ruined in the cotton country of the fertile Mississippi delta crescent--a cycle of illiteracy and poverty unexpectedly precipitated by the transition of the cotton industry from hand to machine. The documentary follows one of LaLee's grandchildren ("Granny") and one of her great-grandchildren ("Main") as they struggle to conjure up the pennies needed to purchase the paper and pencils that will gain them entrance into school. It simultaneously details the trials of that school as it tries to raise its Iowa Aptitude Exam Scores to a minimum standard, thus preventing the government from perhaps imposing a system that is unsympathetic to the plight of the locals.

DIFF '01: Mortal Transfer

Mortel Transfert
***/****
starring Jean-Hugues Anglade, Helene de Forgerolles, Denis Podalydes
screenplay by Jean-Jacques Beineix, from the novel by Jean-Pierre Gattengo
directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix

by Walter Chaw Returning to the "nouvelle noir" grotesquery that marked his 1981 debut Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix's Mortal Transfer is wickedly funny, visually stunning, and perverse in a malevolent way that, along with Bernard Rapp's Une affaire de gout, appears to be a Gallic specialty this festival season. Its highlight is a ghoulish, hilarious scene having to do with a corpse, an icy road to be crossed, and a rather unorthodox means of delivery; and though the film never quite seems at ease with its own black heart, its game cast is more than up to the task of the earnest deadpan that Stygian farces require.

DIFF '01: Mutant Aliens

**/****
starring the voices of Dan McComas, Francine Lobis, Matthew Brown
written and directed by Bill Plympton

by Walter Chaw Oscar-winning animator Bill Plympton's full-length animated feature The Tune is among my all-time favourite films. It's perverse, hilarious--a whiff of brilliance, proving Einstein's contention that imagination is more powerful than science and the truism that the pen is sharper by far than the rapier wit. Detailing a jingle writer's search for the perfect commercial hymn, The Tune is 80 minutes of kinetic bliss sketched out in Plympton's distinctively rough style that nonetheless demonstrates the kind of pure artistry betrayed by, say, Bill Watterson. It is with great anticipation, then, that I entered Mr. Plympton's latest foray into squiggles for the cinema, Mutant Aliens--and it is with some disappointment that I left the auditorium 80-odd minutes later. Eighty very odd minutes, as it turns out, and more's to the benefit of the film and of no surprise to the illustrator's fans. What offsets Plympton's trademark lunacy this time around, however, is not a joy of creation, but rather a somewhat disturbing puerility that relies once too often on humping to further the plot or provide comic relief. Mutant Aliens plays a little like Harlan Ellison's short story "How's the Nightlife on Cissalda?": all xeno-erotica and bestiality. Except for a few moments involving how a man imagines his member (chainsaw, locomotive, erupting volcano, wild horses), the rampant sexuality of Mutant Aliens mostly falls embarrassingly flat.

DIFF '01: Tape

***/****
starring Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman
screenplay by Stephen Belber from his play
directed by Richard Linklater

by Walter Chaw Vincent (Ethan Hawke) is a volunteer fireman and sometime drug pusher who meets his best friend John (Robert Sean Leonard) at a seedy Michigan motor inn for a little beer, drugs, and conversation. Very quickly, what was a genial bout of male bonding devolves into hidden agendas, past hurts, and psychological manipulations, all geared towards resolving an event that may or may not have happened. When Amy (Uma Thurman), an old girlfriend of them both, shows up at the room, she functions as a catalyst to exploding the resentments that have bound them invisibly over the years.

The Jaws Log: 25th Anniversary Edition - Books

written by Carl Gottlieb
FFC rating: 9/10

by Bill Chambers The Jaws Log is not, in fact, laid out in the manner of a sea captain's journal, though it does offer a blow-by-blow account from a privileged vantage point of a voyage fraught with peril. Written by Carl Gottlieb, who was given a role in Jaws, piped up about its story problems, and soon found himself the latest in the film's line of screenwriters, The Jaws Log first hit shelves in 1976 but was recently reissued by Newmarket Press in a "25^th Anniversary Edition" appended with fifty-four annotations of the "Where are they now?" variety. Not much else has changed; Gottlieb has "left the original narrative intact, except for minor spelling changes and a few stylistic fixes." (Oops: he overlooked "Johnny Weismueller [sic].") One is so hard-pressed to find the equivalent of The Jaws Log--a nuts-and-bolts look behind-the-scenes told with plenty of humour and grace--these days that reprinting it is better than nothing.

DIFF '01: Go Tigers!

*½/****
directed by Kenneth A. Carlson

by Walter Chaw Although it starts out well enough and detours in the middle with a vaguely interesting, if too-brief, look at how it must be for intellectuals to live in a place like Massillon, OH, Kenneth A. Carlson's documentary Go Tigers! is a repetitive and unenlightening piece whose attitude alternates between sympathy and scorn. The small town of Massillon, it seems, is obsessed with football--glimpses of other Ohio towns suggest that Massillon's fanatical fervour is perhaps the small-town Ohio norm. (Apocryphal tales suggest that Texas and Nebraska might be worse.) The revelation that rubes like their blood sports served rare is more than a trifle unsurprising; Go Tigers! very gradually amends our rooting for the high-school gridiron heroes to succeed, and we start to wish that the team bus would crash and save the world from a couple dozen illiterate, ill-bred, spoiled animals who dangerously reached their peak at the tender age of seventeen--er, nineteen.

DIFF '01: Big Bad Love

½*/****
starring Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, Paul Le Mat, Rosanna Arquette
screenplay by James Howard & Arliss Howard, from stories by Larry Brown
directed by Arliss Howard

by Walter Chaw Arliss Howard's Big Bad Love (or, "Fear and Loathing in Appalachia") is both self-conscious and self-indulgent. It doesn't pass the sniff test in terms of truth and lack of pretense, malodorous with that peculiarly rank stink of hubris. Marking his auteur debut, veteran character actor Howard adapts a collection of Larry Brown short stories wearing three hats (star, director, and writer--co-writer, actually, with brother James), each of which fits uneasily if at all. As a director, Howard tosses so many gimmick shots and narrative tricks (dream sequences, fantasy sequences, magic realism, etc.) at the celluloid wall that it's almost a statistical impossibility for not a one of them to stick--but it happens. Gimmicks like fake voiceover news broadcasts are distracting and irritating at the best of times; when overused, as in Big Bad Love, they're screaming bores rather than endearing quirks. As an actor, Big Bad Love is evidently a vanity vehicle for Howard, and it's again something of a marvel that Howard is so consistently ineffective and emotionally flat. Onscreen for about 98% of the time, Howard's exercise in self-love backfires to the extent that every other performer he shares a scene with blows him off the screen. Finally, as screenwriters, the Brothers Howard prove themselves to lack a sense of grace in their symbolism and a sense of coherence in their narrative.

DIFF '01: Margarita Happy Hour

**½/****
starring Eleanor Hutchins, Larry Fessenden, Holly Ramos
written and directed by Ilya Chaiken

by Walter Chaw If a song by Maggie Estep, the original riot grrl, were ever made into a film, it would probably turn out like Ilya Chaiken's Margarita Happy Hour. Profane and invested in the underground scene of late-Eighties Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, the film carries on a certain gritty slice-of-street life storytelling tradition with an appropriately grim ethic, though its resolution is curiously upbeat. Margarita Happy Hour's tagline says a lot: "Hipsters, Single Moms, and the Cycles of Life." Essentially about being trapped in a miserable existence with few prospects for improvement, the film spends altogether too much time on extended metaphors concerning the ephemeral knot of existence and broken symbolism involving being isolated and adrift in a sea of sharks.

DIFF '01: Faat Kiné

***½/****
starring Venus Seye, Mame Ndumbe Diop, Ndiagne Dia
written and directed by Ousmane Sembene

by Walter Chaw Though John Dunne clarified that "no man is an island, entire of itself," for all cinematic intents and purposes, Ousmane Sembene is the whole of the Dark Continent. Now 73 years old, the African auteur presents Faat Kiné ("Aunt Kiné"), a wonderful film resplendent with Sembene's unaffected anti-style and even-handed approach to thorny issues of the ails--new (AIDS) and old (neo-colonialism, violent misogyny)--festering at the core of the modern African sensibility, stunting its growth as surely as the murderous European invasions of a century ago. Faat Kiné is Sembene's sunniest piece, defining a trend for 2001 when one considers the return of another legendary, septuagenarian filmmaker: Jacques Rivette's effervescent Va savoir. But although Va savoir and Faat Kiné share strong and opinionated female protagonists and sweet love story endings, Rivette (eternally) grapples with the absurdism of identity; Sembene's demons are rooted in the absurd notion of a people divided by damning traditions and crippling prejudice.

The Last Castle (2001)

*/****
starring Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Steve Burton
screenplay by David Scarpa and Graham Yost
directed by Rod Lurie

by Walter Chaw As I walked out of the theatre after a screening of part infinity-plus-one of Robert Redford's "I am an American Icon" film series (adding three-star general to his playboy, cowboy, investigative journalist, and baseball pitcher), a grey old lady exclaimed for our consideration: "Fantastic film. Just perfect for the time." I assumed that by "the time" she meant "our post-September 11^th, anthrax-paranoia time." That much was clear. What bothers me is that while I was watching a film about a prison uprising resulting in multiple guard fatalities led by a megalomaniacal and disgraced army man (who proudly confesses his bad judgment in leading eight of his men to their demise), this woman was seeing a battle hymn "perfect for the time." How does one address this difference in perception, and how do these two readings intersect in the idea of what is distinctly American?

DIFF '01: The Devil's Backbone

***/****
starring Federico Luppi, Marisa Paredes, Fernando Tielve
screenplay by Guillermo del Toro and Antonio Trashorros & David Munoz
directed by Guillermo del Toro

by Walter Chaw More of a sepia-stained Spanish fairy tale about the dehumanizing effects of war than a horror film, Guillermo del Toro's melancholy labour of love The Devil's Backbone (it's dedicated to his parents) is redolent with atmosphere and lacking in conventional fright payoffs, which aren't the point of the exercise, anyway. The Devil's Backbone centres around a colony of lost boys led by a stately Pan, Dr. Cásares (Argentine legend Federico Luppi). The head of a refuge for war orphans (we never know who's winning, and neither do the characters), Dr. Cásares and the one-legged matron Carmen (Marisa Paredes) share chaperone duties with the swarthy Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) and the comely Alma (Berta Ojea). Look to each of the adult character's infirmities, strengths, and vanities for clues as to what they represent in the Guernican tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, specifically of how the doomed republican rallying cry of "No pasaran!" ("You will not pass!") becomes the hollow promise of ghosts defending an abandoned orphanage.

The Business of Stettner: FFC Interviews Patrick Stettner

October 17, 2001|Quick with a smile and a self-deprecating laugh, Patrick Stettner is not the dour cynic his films--the 14-minute Flux (starring Allison Janney) and his feature debut, the wicked The Business of Strangers--lead one to expect. I sat down to talk with the polite and effusive Mr. Stettner, who is utterly passionate about and eager to discuss independent cinema, among many other topics.

Replicant (2001) - DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Michael Rooker, Catherine Dent
screenplay by Lawrence David Higgins and Les Weldon
directed by Ringo Lam

by Bill Chambers Replicant is the best movie so far to feature Jean-Claude Van Damme in a dual role as identical twins. (That there's actually a choice in the matter is, however preposterous, secondary.) It transcends both Double Impact and Maximum Risk (from the same director as Replicant, Ringo Lam) by way of tight-ass Michael Rooker--who, like a human magnet, enters the story trailing pieces of his films Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The 6^th Day behind--and an irresistibly dopey ending that seems sentimental until you dwell on the particulars. What am I saying? The whole trying affair is irresistibly dopey. Kinetic, too.

Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001) [Special Edition] - DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Eddie Murphy, Kristen Wilson, Jeffrey Jones, Kevin Pollak
screenplay by Larry Levin
directed by Steve Carr

by Bill Chambers There comes a day when you can no longer revile a bad movie with any urgency, because another one's going to come along regardless, sure as the sun sets. So it goes with Dr. Dolittle 2, a sequel to a movie I've never seen that is in and of itself a "reimagining" of another movie I've never seen, which in and of itself was based on a series of Hugh Lofting stories I've never read. And not a second of Dr. Dolittle 2 inspired me to retrace its steps (this is the story of Dolittle, not "do lots"), but to call Dr. Dolittle 2 uninspired because it does not inspire would be to tell a half-truth. Certainly the special effects, designed by the wizards at Rhythm and Hues, reach a new plateau of believability for talking-animal CGI, and, computer-animation aside, the 2001 film has a distinctive, endearing Eighties flavour that's unique to this era. I mean, it's about evil land developers!

Z-Boys Are Back in Town: FFC Interviews Stacy Peralta

October 14, 2001|Eloquent and passionate about his work, generous with his thoughts and fears, Stacy Peralta seems to be free of the burden of self-importance that stunts many who attain fame and fortune at an early age. Poised on the precipice of stardom again some twenty-six years after the Del Mar National Skateboard Championships put he and his seven Zephyr Skateboard Team teammates on the map and into underground subculture lore, the surprise success of Mr. Peralta's Dogtown & Z-Boys (the winner of the audience and director's prizes at this year's Sundance Film Festival), chronicling the exploits of the Z(ephyr)-Boys, has led to scripting duties on a new David Fincher project (called "Dogtown") and another directing gig produced by Sean Penn based on the Hunter Thompson-esque memoirs of surfer/photojournalist/author Allan Weisbecker's In Search of Captain Zero.

DIFF '01: Hybrid

****/****
directed by Monteith McCollum

by Walter Chaw Hybrid is an elegy for the passing of a man who fell in love early in his life and remained faithful until the day he died, two years past turning one-hundred. Presented in gritty blacks and whites, Monteith McCollum's six-year labour of love memorializing his grandfather Milford Beeghly is a stunning documentary that itself plays as a hybrid of something dreamed-up by Errol Morris and the Brothers Quay. Ostensibly about Beeghly's obsession with finding the perfect hybrid breed of corn as an industrial crop, the film somehow becomes a grand metaphor--for the rough grace of the American way of life, for the lingering death of the agrarian lifestyle, for the difficulties of balancing family with a calling, and even for the true meaning of happiness.

Iron Monkey (1993)

***½/****
starring Yu Rong Guang, Donnie Yen, Jean Wang, Tsang Sze Man
screenplay by Tsui Hark, Elsa Tang, Lau Tai Mok
directed by Yuen Wo Ping

by Walter Chaw I first saw Yuen Woo-ping's Iron Monkey on what must have been a third-generation bootleg: it was in unsubtitled Cantonese and fullscreen pan-and-scan, brought home unlabeled on a cheap Maxell videotape from a Vietnamese grocery down on South Federal. As a native Mandarin speaker, I didn't understand a word of it, and the quality of the tape was such that it was impossible to decipher any shadow detail, but it was clear to me even then that Iron Monkey was something extremely special. Long a cult favourite in the United States (although it didn't do particularly well when released theatrically in Asia), Iron Monkey received an extremely nice DVD transfer in 1998 from Media Asia; it is a disc that holds a place of honour in my personal collection. With the massive popularity of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (both choreographed by Woo-ping), as well as the surprising success of Americanized re-issues of Jackie Chan's old Hong Kong films, Iron Monkey has been cleaned up, freshly subtitled, and booked in American moviehouses in an attempt to capitalize on the sudden popularity of wire-fu in particular and the dizzying HK cinema in general.

DIFF '01: Lantana

***/****
starring Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong
screenplay by Andrew Bovell, based on his play
directed by Ray Lawrence

by Walter Chaw Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia) is a police officer suffering from low self-esteem and a dwindled passion in his marriage to Sonja (the incredible Kerry Armstrong). When we first meet Leon, in fact, we know him only as an adulterer, witness to the first of his two indiscretions with the newly-separated Jane (Rachael Blake). Suspecting that Leon may be straying, Sonja visits a therapist, Valerie (Barbara Hershey), confiding that, "It isn't that he's slept with another woman, it's that he's lied to me about it that's the betrayal." Lantana is obsessed with repression, of how one small secret kept for too long mutates and festers into insurmountable guilt and fear. Leon feels guilty about his adultery and is fearful of being discovered; later, Leon feels guilty for having been discovered, and is fearful that his wife no longer loves him. Sonja similarly worries that she doesn't love him anymore.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) [Special Edition] - DVD

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring the voices of Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Ming-Na
screenplay by Al Reinert and Hironobu Sakaguchi and Jeff Vintar
directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi

by Walter Chaw So the dialogue's not so bad (having seen Pearl Harbor), the story's not so obscure (having seen Akira), and the voice acting's pretty decent (having listened to Claire Danes do San in Princess Mononoke). It almost goes without saying that the film is hands-down the best ever based on a videogame, and that Squaresoft's 3-D captured animation is breathtaking and exciting, not just for the fact of itself but for what it portends of big-budget Stateside anime. What Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within reminded me of the most is Katsuhiro Ôtomo's seminal 1988 anime Akira, and the revolution Akira heralded for the popularity and scope of the anime genre in Japan.*

Va savoir (2001)

Who Knows?
****/****
starring Claude Berri, Catherine Rouvel, Hélène de Fougerolles, Jeanne Balibar
screenplay by Luigi Pirandello, Jacques Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent
directed by Jacques Rivette

by Walter Chaw

"I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory - a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth."
-Luigi Pirandello from Playwrights on Playwriting, ed. by Toby Cole, 1961

DIFF '01: The Son's Room (2001)

La stanza del figlio
**/****
starring Nanni Moretti, Laura Morante, Jasmine Trinca, Giuseppe Sanfelice
screenplay by Linda Ferri, Nanni Moretti, Heidrun Schleef
directed by Nanni Moretti

by Walter Chaw Teetering along the narrow line that separates "poignant" from "maudlin," the curiously detached The Son's Room (La Stanza del figlio) ultimately errs on the side of the latter through increasingly unsubtle and rote revelations about the process of grief. Written (with Linda Ferri and Heidrun Schleef), directed, and starring the "Italian Woody Allen," Nanni Moretti, the film is too clearly the product of a veteran comedian's mind: all seriocomic vignettes barely tied together by the loosest of narrative structures. It may be more appropriate to describe Moretti as the Italian version of America's own teary velvet clown: Robin Williams. (Unflattering, yes.) The winner of the prestigious Palme d'or at this year's Cannes Film Festival (beating out Mulholland Drive, In The Bedroom, and The Man Who Wasn't There, each this film's superior), La Stanza del figlio is well performed but unconvincing, aspiring to a sober emotional depth that is consistently undermined by high-decibel wailing, a tinkling, sappy soundtrack and score, and melodramatic trials and their telegraphed resolutions.

DIFF '01: The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

****/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw The noir genre was born of discomfort with women in the workplace, the rise of cynicism, and a world polarized by international conflict (WWII). Its symbol, the hardboiled detective, became the projection of the collective paranoia about the ascent of globalism and the death of Pollyannaism. Women and foreigners are not to be trusted in the noir universe; information is slippery and expensive; and the solution of the puzzle more often than not points back to a rot at the heart of the detective. It is the Oedipus/identity trajectory, complete with a blasted plague land, a murder, its thinly veiled culprit (noir is typically invested in process, not mystery), the appearance of a femme fatale, and a solution involving mortal self-knowledge. The noir hero may save the day, but at the price of being betrayed by those he loves. He is impotent to avenge his fallen friends and lovers, and at the mercy of a larger corruption that is unalterable and serves only to further degrade individual confidence. Tellingly, a great many noir works in literature and film begin with the death of a best friend or a partner and end with the realization that any victory is a hollow one in light of society's inexorable fall into chaos.

The Mists of Avalon (2001) - DVD

**/**** Image A Sound B-
starring Anjelica Huston, Julianna Margulies, Joan Allen, Samantha Mathis
teleplay by Gavin Scott, based on the novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley
directed by Uli Edel

by Walter Chaw A lavish television adaptation of Marion Zimmer Bradley's minor feminist classic, The Mists of Avalon is three hours of ripping bodices, slashing swords, ludicrous, DeMille-tinged fertility rites, and snarling, imperious heroines. It is a retelling of the Arthur myth through the eyes of Morgan le Fey (recast as "Morgaine" and played by the terrifying Julianna Margulies), diminishing Merlin's (Michael Byrne) role to that of doddering secondary foil and Arthur's (Edward Atterton) to a brooding cuckold cipher.

Citizen Kane (1941) - DVD

****/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Ray Collins
screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz Orson Welles
directed by Orson Welles

by Walter Chaw There are two shots of Rosebud in Citizen Kane, the first as it's covered by a blanket of forgetful snow outside the boarding-house of Kane's mother, the second as it's being consumed by flames in the basement of Kane's Florida estate. Ice and fire. Citizen Kane is a film about contrast and duality, and it expresses this through nearly every facet of the production. Kane has two friends, two wives, makes two trips to his palatial estate, and visits Susan Alexander twice. He is torn in half by his duelling personas: public magnate and private misanthrope--both sides coming together when he writes an excoriating review of his own wife's debut opera performance just prior to firing his best friend Jedediah (Joseph Cotten) from the newspaper they founded together.

DIFF '01: Life as a House

*/****
starring Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Hayden Christensen, Jena Malone
screenplay by Mark Andrus
directed by Irwin Winkler

by Walter Chaw Adrift in a turbid morass of such Forrest Gump-isms as, "Hindsight is like foresight without a future," and "I like how it feels not to feel," Irwin Winkler's rumpled hankie of a movie Life as a House is that tired breed of awkward, self-important entertainment wherein people are always tenderly asking one another for permission to steal a kiss. There is not a moment unaffected by syrupy manipulation and severe underestimation of the audience. Worse, every major plot point in Life as a House is stolen from American Beauty, the film it most wishes to emulate and, ironically, least resembles in terms of intelligence and observation. From the doomed father's voice-over to the Lolita love-kitten sexpot; from the wayward soccer moms to the attempts to facilitate a familial reconciliation through the discarding of a conventional 9-to-5 American dream; from the troubled young man who finds salvation in the arms of a chubby young woman to the last-minute denial of a conventional happy ending...the only thing that's really different about Life as a House (besides the fact that it stinks) is an epilogue that uncomfortably recalls the ethic of another Kevin Spacey film: Pay It Forward.

Ginger Snaps (2001) [Collector's Edition] - DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Kris Lemche, Mimi Rogers
screenplay by Karen Walton
directed by John Fawcett

by Bill Chambers Ginger Snaps is so eager to have its double meanings understood, like a kid with a secret, that the text upon its subtext becomes transparent--and when you can see through a film, it's just not as much fun. About a month ago, I watched John Landis's An American Werewolf in London for the first time in years and gradually came to understand how and why I'd identified with it as an adolescent: After being inflicted with the werewolf's curse, David, the hero, goes through a second adolescence. Ginger Snaps makes David into a literal teenager--and a girl, a Carrie White-esque late-bloomer named Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) who survives a werewolf attack only to misinterpret the next 30 days as a particularly harsh growth spurt.

DIFF '01: Wish You Were Here (Introduction)

by Walter Chaw Going to the movies for a living is an incalculable blessing.

Watching films and writing about them is the equivalent of a lovelorn voyeur's tear-stained journal. A failed relationship with the moronic and abusive Pearl Harbor shares column inches with blazing liaisons like the clever Memento and the acerbic Ghost World. Watching is a consummation, for me: sometimes I go back to a film multiple times; other times I regret having stayed all the way through even once. Doing it as a job means that you go for free, but you have to do it with every movie and stay to the bitter end. (Or at least you should.) I thought I was a voracious moviegoer before I started getting paid to do it. The revelation that I had actually been exercising an extraordinary amount of discretion in my viewing choices was hammered home when I watched both Glitter and The Musketeer in the same week, chewing the insides of my cheeks raw and eyeing the exits like a castaway eyes the cruel taunt of a ship's smoke on the horizon.

Serendipity (2001)

***/****
starring John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Molly Shannon, Jeremy Piven
screenplay by Marc Klein
directed by Peter Chelsom

by Walter Chaw Dense with the hip references and list-making that have become trademarks of John Cusack's films, Serendipity is a sweet confection just smart enough to be considered tasteful and just dumb enough to be forgotten. Set in the same New York as every bad Nora Ephron film (which is all of Nora Ephron's films), Serendipity is awash in a twinkling yuletide cheer and the kind of magical realism that South American authors have made their stock in trade. Perhaps not so peculiarly, then, it appears to be very loosely based on Gabriel García Márquez's star-crossed temporal love song Love in the Time of Cholera, a first edition of which plays a crucial role in the film. The book details a pair of young people who fall in love with each other over passionate letters and coded telegrams, but part when the woman falls ill upon their first meeting. Seeing it as an act of destiny, she marries a man within her own social caste, only coming back to her true love years after their initial opportunity was lost.

Liam (2001)

**½/****
starring Ian Hart, Claire Hackett, Anthony Borrows, David Hart
screenplay by Jimmy McGovern
directed by Stephen Frears

by Walter Chaw Liam is an Irish coming-of-age story that has more in common with John Boorman's The General and Hope and Glory than it does with Alan Parker's Angela's Ashes. It balances the deprivation and desperation of growing up with crippling unemployment, a peculiarly sadistic brand of Irish Catholicism, and rising anti-Semitism with a good sense of humour and a lively feeling for pace that better captures the seesawing emotion of childhood than unrelenting horror or unleavened bliss. The truth of childhood, after all, lies somewhere in the grey liminal spaces between William Blake's songs of innocence and songs of experience, though liberal time is spent in both extremes. In other words, the true power of Liam is not in the now-familiar images of scrounging for bread and cigarettes while enduring whippings at the hand of Sadeian priests, but in the shame of a little boy who walks in on his mother bathing and the embarrassment of a stuttering child unable to say his own name.

Our Lady of the Assassins (2000)

La virgen de los sicarios
**½/****
starring Germán Jaramillo, Anderson Ballesteros, Juan David Restrepo, Manuel Busquets
screenplay by Fernando Vallejo
directed by Barbet Schroeder

by Walter Chaw At his best (Barfly, Idi Amin Dada, Reversal of Fortune), Barbet Schroeder is mercilessly unblinking. He delves into the sundry with such a dedicated nihilism that it makes the horror of his situations palatable somehow. The same kind of thing Cronenberg does with grotesquery, Schroeder does with atrocity: we are led behind the curtain to where the real ugliness lies with a casual air that defuses sensationalism and murders prurience through protagonists--at least the best ones (Charles Bukowski, Idi Amin, Claus von Bulow)--drawn from the insipid impiety of real life. That's perhaps the source of my discomfort with the anti-hero of Our Lady of the Assassins (La virgen de los sicarios"), an only semi-autobiographical writer first brought to life in Fernando Vallejo's 1994 novel of the same name and now embodied in the lanky frame of Latin actor Germán Jaramillo. He is an existentialist philosopher torn by the eternal conflict between passion for life and passion for destruction, but he has no grounding in the mundane that would make the character something more than a wandering gadfly. If Vallejo, a jaded chronicler of a train-wreck who has no connection to the evolving horror, is the projection of a first-world consciousness observing the travails of a disintegrating third world, the greatest irony of the failure and success of the film is in its own triumphant disconnection.

Happy Accidents (2001)

**/****
starring Marisa Tomei, Vincent D'Onofrio, Nadia Dajani, Holland Taylor
written and directed by Brad Anderson

by Walter Chaw Too long by at least the length of an unwelcome framing device and an expert but superfluous performance by Holland Taylor as a therapist, Brad Anderson's Happy Accidents is invested in the 16^th-century ideal that Love is the abeyance of Entropy, in the idea that true romantic bliss is the key to staving off chaos in a world eternally falling into it. The phenomena of time flying when one's having fun is spoken of early in the film as a scientific verity rather than as a cozy homily, and Happy Accidents is likewise best defined as a familiar love story stretched to justify old Heinlein and Wells pulp. A series of still photograph interludes recalling Chris Marker's La Jetée are handled with skill and a surprising poignancy but give too much away as to the ultimate resolution of the film to those familiar with the experimental French short.