Film Freak Central

Pearl Harbor (2001) [60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition]|Pearl Harbor: The Director's Cut [VISTA Series] - DVDs

*½/****
ACE DVD - Image A+ Sound A (DD) A+ (DTS) Extras C+
VISTA DVD - Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Tom Sizemore
screenplay by Randall Wallace
directed by Michael Bay

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I must shamefully admit that I greeted the approach of Pearl Harbor's release with a mixture of moral righteousness and secret anticipation. I knew that no good could come from the intersection of the WWII nostalgia wave and the craven instincts of producer Jerry Bruckheimer; anyone who had seen Top Gun, his earlier effort in military pornography, would have to surmise that his new film's potential for right-wing jingoism was clearly off the scale. These suspicions were confirmed once I saw the trailer, its sickening combination of swelling music, explosions, dashing soldiers and the FDR "Day of Infamy" speech promising propaganda of Riefenstahlian proportions. Anyone who reads me would expect me to give it a good shellacking, and so I hoped for a total outrage to crucify without remorse--reaping me the happy side effect of securing me the moral high ground from which to preach.

Mr. Deeds (2002)

½*/****
starring Adam Sandler, Winona Ryder, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by Tim Herlihy
directed by Steven Brill

by Walter Chaw It isn't that Mr. Deeds is unfunny that nettles the most, it's that Mr. Deeds is smug and lazy and unfunny. The film is Adam Sandler not trying very hard anymore, a guy with a puerile and boorish sense of humour getting together with all his buddies to drink beer and tell jokes about dumb people and Spaniards. Except for the three scenes it recreates from Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town shot for shot, it has almost nothing to do with its source material, choosing instead to try to cash in again on Sandler's peculiar, lisping, psychopathic man-child persona. Judging by the declining box-office of Sandler's films (even though I sort of liked Little Nicky), the alleged comedian would probably do well not to rely upon the good graces of his dimwitted frat fanbase and start looking for inspiration in places other than his own films.

Spider (2002)

***½/****
starring Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Bradley Hall
screenplay by Patrick McGrath and David Cronenberg, based on the novel by Patrick McGrath
directed by David Cronenberg

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover After a period of indifferent projects, declining audiences, and three years of disconcerting silence, the unthinkable has become reality: David Cronenberg is back on top. His new film Spider intensifies all of his past thematic concerns with a pictorial eloquence practically unheard of in his oeuvre--it's like watching one of the sex-slugs from Shivers turn into a beautiful, fragile butterfly. For once, the trials of his sexually confused lead resonate beyond the merely theoretical, and for once, you feel his pain instead of contemplating it from a distance. The antiseptic restraint of Crash and Naked Lunch has been replaced with a dread and sadness that overwhelm you with their emotionalism; Spider is easily the best film he's made since Dead Ringers, possibly even since Videodrome. I hope that it marks a turning point in the career of Canada's most conspicuous auteur.

Atanarjuat (2002)

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
The Fast Runner
****/****
starring Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalu, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq, Lucy Tulugarjuk
screenplay by Paul Apak Angilirq
directed by Zacharias Kunuk

by Walter Chaw Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), the first motion picture presented entirely in the Inuit language Inutkikuk, is what it means to be transported by the cinema: taken to another place and another time on the flickering wings of film's lunar art. It is the realization of the full possibility of the movies to present the alien as familiar while providing a vital anthropological connection through the naturalism and glorious universality of its characters and story. An Inuit legend passed through centuries of oral tradition that demonstrates a very particular peculiarity of world mythology, Atanarjuat, seen one way, is a classic banning fable--thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife and possessions, thou shalt not murder. Jung spoke of a common well of images and signifiers from which we draw our stories and Atanarjuat, unfolding on a cold-blasted primeval arctic plain, has the quality of totem.

The Game of Wife: FFC Interviews Yvan Attal & Charlotte Gainsbourg

June 26, 2002|A hot and smoky day in downtown Denver (approximately thirty miles and apparently downwind from the Hayman forest fire that at the time we didn't know was started, somehow appropriately, by a lovelorn forest ranger) found me meeting Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg at the café run by the Denver Art Museum. I was nervous about this interview, more so than most, mainly because I had nothing especially positive to say on the subject of My Wife is an Actress (Ma femme est une actrice), a seemingly autobiographical film--it's Attal's hyphenate debut--that is being praised for its romantic quirk but in which I could find neither joy nor connection. Its jokes too obvious, its characters unlikeable and shrill, and its conclusions too pat by far; I looked sadly over my unpromising notes on the ride over.

Fast Times: FFC Interviews Zacharias Kunuk & Norman Cohn

June 25, 2002|For all of George Lucas's frothing exhortations for exhibitors and filmmakers to wean themselves off celluloid, the most compelling argument for digital video exists in independent cinema--smaller productions have thus far benefited the greatest from DV's affordability, flexibility, and intimacy. Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's Atanarjuat (more commonly, The Fast Runner) (Kunuk is listed as director and Cohn as DP, but the reality is closer to their responsibilities being equal and the same), shot entirely on DV and then transferred to 35mm (much like Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones), is the kind of unique indie project that gives hope and reason to the format; without DV, The Fast Runner would have been too expensive and cumbersome to shoot. A stark and beautiful telling of an ancient Inuit banning fable, The Fast Runner is also the first major cinema product from the Inuit people, the first picture shot entirely in the Inutkikuk language, and the first picture to present Inuit people to a western audience free of Nanook of the North stereotypes. Besides being entertaining, The Fast Runner is an important film.

Gosford Park (2001) [Collector's Edition] - DVD

***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Stephen Fry, Emily Watson, Ryan Phillippe
screenplay by Julian Fellowes
directed by Robert Altman

by Walter Chaw A thematic continuation of The Player's violent iconoclasm, Robert Altman takes on the very British "Upstairs, Downstairs" class struggle in Gosford Park, a film that resolves itself as another full-frontal assault on the Hollywood studio system. Misanthropic, smug, and pessimistic, it behaves like an Agatha Christie chamber mystery, complete with secretive service staff, bumbling policemen, and the usual upper-crust suspects, but it's ultimately little more than an unavoidable homage to Renoir's The Rules of the Game and a dig at a system outside of which Altman eternally finds himself. Thankfully, Gosford Park more resembles the genre-bending Altman of Kansas City than the truculently proselytizing Altman of Dr. T & the Women.

Black Hawk Down (2001) - DVD

****/**** Image A- Sound A+
starring Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana
screenplay by Ken Nolan, based on the book by Mark Bowden
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw Black Hawk Down is a living, seething animal, full of courage and heroism, stinking of blood and gunpowder. It lacks the paternalistic moralizing of Saving Private Ryan as well as much of the poetry of The Thin Red Line, but it captures the best images of both while discarding the chaff of the former. One scene towards the end of the film, as exhausted U.S. Rangers are led to safety by a group of Somali children, is a fine example of that brute synergy. Ridley Scott's film is the only big budget spectacle film of the last several years (Pearl Harbor, The Perfect Storm, all the way back to Titanic) that actually has the nerve to honour the event it seeks to recreate. The characters aren't stock movie stereotypes--in fact, they're so minimally portrayed that the general homogeny of its soldiers in battle serves to highlight mainly a minimalist "us against them" mentality. Black Hawk Down trusts its audience; it is perhaps the first and only time that this will be said of a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) [The Two-Disc Awards Edition (Widescreen)] - DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany
screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar
directed by Ron Howard

by Walter Chaw Mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. gained his reputation in theoretical economics and/by discerning patterns in impossibly complicated numerical models. A Beautiful Mind, a film based very loosely upon his life, likewise deals with theoretical economics (in regards to Christmas box office), but offers bland predictable patterns in place of complexity. For example, because this is DreamWorks'/Universal's Oscar tentpole, the running time falls safely in the "adult contemporary holiday respectable" range of 130-145 minutes, and it features a big name actor in a role that requires him to be some combination of mentally disabled (I Am Sam, Forrest Gump, Rain Man), insane (As Good As It Gets), or that delicate combination of the two: a genius (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester).

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)

**½/****
starring Kieran Culkin, Jena Malone, Emile Hirsch, Vincent D'Onofrio
screenplay by Jeff Stockwell and Michael Petroni, based on the book by Chris Fuhrman
directed by Peter Care

by Walter Chaw The paradox of William Blake is that while extolling the virtues of action, he was engaged in contemplation--a paradox nettling enough that near the end of his life, he left art in favour of walking the world. During his creative period, however, Blake had few equals in terms of ideology and technical proficiency; he was an employer of what he called "the infernal method," creating etchings through the corrosive landscaping quality of acid. Each of Blake's original works, art or poetry, were printed by the artist's hand and etched by this infernal method. It was his way--the artist's way--of introducing the idea of "action" into creation.

Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows (2000)

***/**** Image B Sound A
directed by Bruce Ricker

by Walter Chaw Directed by Bruce Ricker, Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows is a particularly good biographical account featuring clips from dozens of the titular subject's work, interviews with former Eastwood co-stars as diverse as Meryl Streep and Richard Burton, and a smooth narration read by Morgan Freeman that links the periods of the actor's professional life with grace and alacrity. Of particular interest are the moments in which such admirers as French director Bertrand Tavernier discuss Eastwood's reception overseas. Blissfully lacking scrutiny into the actor's personal life, the picture is more A&E than E!, choosing the road less travelled in tracing the actor's evolution from studio stable hand to one of the most powerful directors in the United States.

Frank Herbert's Dune (2000) - DVD|Frank Herbert's Dune [Special Edition: Director's Cut] - DVD

***/****
DVD - Image C+ Sound C+ Extras C+
DVD (SEDC) - Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring William Hurt, Alec Newman, Saskia Reeves, James Watson
screenplay by John S. Harrison, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by John Harrison

by Jarrod Chambers On the whole I enjoyed the 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune, which was adapted and directed by John Harrison. It has a sustained mood, it conveys some of the spirit of its source material, and it is entertaining, especially the last episode. The plot, stated baldly: Paul Atreides (Alec Newman), the young son of Duke Leto Atreides (William Hurt) comes to a desert planet called Arrakis, notable as the only source in the universe of the mysterious substance "spice." The spice unleashes psychic powers in young Paul, who, along with his mother, Jessica (Saskia Reeves), is driven from his home and must join the Fremen, a group of desert nomads. He grows up with the tribe and eventually leads a rebellion against House Harkonnen, who now rule Arrakis, finally brokering a peace with the Emperor Shaddam IV (Giancarlo Giannini) and the mysterious Spacing Guild, which owns all the spaceships.

The Tall T (1957)

***/****
starring Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Arthur Hunnicutt
screenplay by Burt Kennedy
directed by Budd Boetticher

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Tall T is, on the surface, a fairly unassuming western from the '50s: individualistic loner fights bad guys while standing up for the pioneer spirit. Why, then, did it leave me with such an awful sadness? The reason is that the filmmakers have thought about what loner individuals and bad guys and the pioneer spirit represent, and the conclusions they reach are quietly devastating. Instead of displaying knee-jerk expressions of stock responses, director Budd Boetticher and writer Burt Kennedy truly meditate on why someone would want to embody the cowboy ideal--and realize it's an alienation so great that social life becomes all but unbearable. It's not even a critique of the American dream, but a lament for an alternative that might lead someone out of isolation; The Tall T ultimately finds that a life of productive solitude is better than becoming gnarled in the risks of the outside world.

Vidocq (2001) [Signature Collection] - DVD

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras (see review)
starring Gérard Depardieu, Guillaume Canet, Ines Sastre, André Dussolier
screenplay by Jean-Claude Grange
directed by Pitof

by Bill Chambers Bona fide criminologist Eugene Francois Vidocq has been the subject of several films, including Douglas Sirk's little-known A Scandal in Paris. What makes him ripe for mythologizing is his pre-detective career as a thief: he'd learned the streets so well as one of their own that he knew which rocks to turn over in his police work. Among his achievements as a purported inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, master-of-disguise Vidocq pioneered the science of ballistics and founded the first detective agency. Little biographical detail finds its way into Francophone director Pitof's anti-biopic Vidocq, but a cursory knowledge of the gumshoe's legacy can't hurt. You may otherwise find yourself doubting the layout of Vidocq's office--which suggests Sam Spade's circa 1830--or his talent for slipping in and out of corners unnoticed, even though he's portrayed by the unmistakable Gérard Depardieu.

The Great American Songbook (2002) - DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
directed by Andrew J. Kuehn

by Walter Chaw Starting off fascinating and ending up feeling slightly overlong, the expansive musical travelogue The Great American Songbook traces the roots of "American" popular music from the War of 1812 through to the early Christy minstrel shows, Bessie Smith, Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, and beyond. If it's true that things go in cycles on a grand scheme, it's also true of an individual's life: Reviewing The Great American Songbook for me coincides with my first reading of Griel Marcus's brilliant Mystery Train; touches hands with my interview with Andrei Codrescu, who's working on a documentary about the Mississippi blues; and follows fast my exposure to the brilliant Sarah Vowell's brilliant piece on the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The piece found me, in other words, already on a journey into our heritage of American music, and if the picture is more travelogue than encyclopedia, its value is as timeline and supplement.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete First Season (1997) + Friends: The Complete First Season (1994-1995) - DVDs

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image B- Sound B Extras B
"Welcome to Hellmouth," "The Harvest," "The Witch," "Teacher's Pet," "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," "The Pack," "Angel," "I Robot - You Jane," "The Puppet Show," "Nightmares," "Out of Mind, Out of Sight," "Prophecy Girl"

FRIENDS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
"Pilot," "The One With the Sonogram at the End," "The One With the Thumb," "The One With George Stephanopoulos," "The One With the East German Laundry Detergent," "The One With the Butt," "The One With the Blackout," "The One Where Nana Dies Twice," "The One Where Underdog Gets Away," "The One With the Monkey," "The One With Mrs. Bing," "The One With the Dozen Lasagnas," "The One With the Boobies," "The One With the Candy Hearts," "The One With the Stoned Guy," "The One With Two Parts," "The One With All the Poker," "The One Where the Monkey Gets Away," "The One with the Evil Orthodontist," "The One with Fake Monica," "The One with the Ick Factor," "The One with the Birth," "The One Where Rachel Finds Out"

by Bill Chambers Like a child experiencing puberty, the first season of a television series hopes you don't notice that it hasn't settled into its voice yet, that it has no sense of style, that it's unprepared for the microscope of society. The pressures are great for a teenager, but the stakes for a TV show are similarly high: While going through its growing pains, it has a limited number of chances to catch ratings lightning in a bottle. Imagine saying to a gawky adolescent, "Impress me." With the near-simultaneous DVD releases of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete First Season" and "Friends: The Complete First Season", there's an occasion to reflect on how a series becomes popular (although the zeitgeist is always such a mystery we can't ever hope for a demonstrable hypothesis) and, for fun's sake, to retrace the evolution of these unique TV-watching experiences.

Rollerball (2002) [Special Edition] - DVD

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
screenplay by Larry Ferguson and John Pogue
directed by John McTiernan

by Walter Chaw When John McTiernan's Rollerball was scheduled for the summer 2001 movie season, it boasted of a full-frontal Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and some graphic violence. What it didn't have was the confidence of MGM, who pushed the release of the film into the doldrums of the new year and presided over the cutting of the only two possible reasons (the nudity and the gore) that anyone would have for seeing the film in the first place. Doubtless the rationale was to garner a PG-13 rating and the expanded pre-teen first weekend box-office it confers; they'd better hope for a whopper opening, because no one is seeing this turkey twice. It strikes me as telling that a major studio would have so little confidence in a film that it is deemed somehow too prurient and also not "good" enough for a summer audience. Rollerball proves the truism that a studio often doesn't know if it has a winner--but almost always knows when it has a stinker. Saying that Rollerball is better than the simultaneously released Collateral Damage is likely the only praise it will garner this weekend.

The Believer (2001)

*½/****
starring Ryan Gosling, Summer Phoenix, Theresa Russell, Billy Zane
written and directed by Henry Bean

by Walter Chaw It isn't that Henry Bean's provocative The Believer unintentionally glamorizes white supremacy, as has been written--it's that The Believer doesn't do enough to make a case for it. Based ("inspired by" the better term) on the 1965 story of Daniel Burros, a member of the American Nazi Party and the KKK who, after being "outed" as a Jew in a NEW YORK TIMES article, killed himself confessing equal parts loathing and self-loathing, The Believer is unabashedly philo-Semitic, presenting the case for Judaism in a way manipulative and simple-minded. It is an Ayn Rand argument, a fictional foil with serpent's eloquence outmatched in the end by the light of right reason--literally in this case. That it imagines the afterlife as a Sisyphusian debate is the closest it ever comes to poignancy; the rest of the picture's dedicated to Philip Roth-lite: most of the anger, one quarter the savage. I've no problem with a biased dishonesty--my problem is with disguising that dishonesty in evenhanded reportage.

Windtalkers (2002)

*½/****
starring Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich
screenplay by John Rice & Joe Batteer
directed by John Woo

by Walter Chaw A few minutes into John Woo's Windtalkers and the sad realization that Woo has become only the latest director ripping off the "John Woo Film" dawns on a long-time fan. Neophytes to Woo will probably think the director hasn't fallen all that far from Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II; fanboys who've seen Bullet in the Head and The Killer will wonder what the maestro was thinking this time around.

Bartleby (2002)

*/****
starring Crispin Glover, David Paymer, Glenne Headly, Maury Chaykin
screenplay by Jonathan Parker and Catherine DiNapoli, based on the novella Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
directed by Jonathan Parker

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Bartleby (Crispin Glover) is a former employee of the dead-letter office hired on by The Boss (David Paymer) to perform menial tasks in a nondescript public-works office. Joining a small crew of underpaid, rather dull people (mad Ernie (Maury Chaykin), belligerent Rocky (Matt Groening-sketched Joe Piscopo), and sexpot Vivian (Glenne Headly)), pallid and peculiar Bartleby makes waves when he begins to respond to any request outside the ordinary with a slightly apologetic, "I would prefer not to."

The Next Big Thing (2002)

*/****
starring Chris Eigeman, Jamie Harris, Connie Britton, Mike Starr
screenplay by Joel Posner & P.J. Posner
directed by P.J. Posner

by Walter Chaw A film that curiously reminds of Eric Schaeffer's smug, unfunny If Lucy Fell, P.J. Posner's badly-scored, clumsily-written, expansively-performed, and stodgily-paced The Next Big Thing is an exercise in elitism that sketches out its tedious premise in broad strokes. It takes broadsides at the snooty New York art world (an exercise akin to complaining about the media or engaging in a discussion on the ethics of politicians)--the ground for excoriation, in other words, isn't so much fertile as it is in dire need of crop rotation. And like a hack artist before his hack art, The Next Big Thing lays on its easel in the benighted hope that it can be appreciated for a work of insight rather than the umpteenth riff on a strip-mined theme.

I Am Sam (2001) [New Line Platinum Series] - DVD

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Doug Hutchison
screenplay by Kristine Johnson & Jessie Nelson
directed by Jessie Nelson

by Walter Chaw I Am Sam's premise is a strange one: a mentally retarded* man (titular Sam, played by Sean Penn) impregnates a homeless woman he has invited to stay with him. After giving birth to the impossibly precocious Lucy (Dakota Fanning), the vagrant mom vamooses ("I never wanted this! I just wanted a place to sleep!"), leaving Sam solely responsible for the raising of the child. With the help of eccentric piano-playing recluse Dianne Wiest (perhaps fulfilling a bizarre ambition to play Madame Sousatzka), Sam learns an infant's feeding schedule (by timing it to late-night Nickelodeon programming), shops for diapers, and realizes that he needs to find daycare if he wants to keep his job tidying sugar cosies at the local Starbucks. (Feel-good, politically-correct bullshit being a saltlick for corporate sponsors, Starbucks, International House of Pancakes, Target, and Pizza Hut all helped fund I Am Sam.) When Child Services finally collects Lucy into protective custody on her seventh birthday, Sam gets frosty type-A lawyer Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer) to take on his cause pro bono. In the process, of course, Sam's infectious goodness teaches Rita, and us, a little about what's really important in life.

On the Phone with Jena Malone...: FFC Interviews Jena Malone

June 12, 2002|In the six years since she played the Jodie Foster character as a young ham radio enthusiast in Contact and Jennifer Jason Leigh's troubled daughter in Anjelica Huston's acclaimed Bastard Out of Carolina, Jena Malone has cornered the market on damaged adolescent goods. Maybe you remember her giving Julia Roberts lip in Stepmom, or asking Kevin Costner if he slept with Kelly Preston in For Love of the Game, or committing infanticide and pinning it on her dim boyfriend in a two-parter of TV's "Homicide". Perhaps, like me, you're a big fan of Donnie Darko, to which she brings the balance of calm--she is the film's earthy centre.

Shallow Hal (2001) - DVD

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander, Jimmy Badstibner
screenplay by Sean Moynihan & Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly
directed by Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly

by Walter Chaw Sadness saturates every frame of Peter and Bobby Farrelly's Shallow Hal like a melancholy tune. It seeps into the corners of a scene--into the wounded eyes of a young woman who has never been asked for her phone number and the wary acceptance of a compliment by someone accustomed to casual abuse. The premise of the film is deceptively simple: an extremely shallow man, the titular Hal (Jack Black), is given the ability by self-help guru Tony Robbins to see the "inner beauty" of people. This means that suddenly for Hal, many beautiful people appear ugly and many physically-unattractive people gorgeous. Some folks remain unchanged. In the case of the guarded and acerbic 300 lb Rosemary, she resembles Gwyneth Paltrow in Hal's eyes.

The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 6

BAISE-MOI (2000)
Rape Me
Fuck Me
*½/****
starring Raffaëla Anderson, Karen Bach
written and directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, based on the novel by Despentes

by Walter Chaw Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi's Baise-moi (translated as "Rape Me" in the U.S., "Fuck Me" internationally) is a wallow in the murk of exploitation cinema not-cleverly disguised as a commentary on the evils of pornography and the violent objectification of women. Maybe it's not disguised at all: Baise-moi subverts porn conventions with graphic (phallic) gun violence overlaying explicit, unsimulated penetration--the clumsy juxtaposition clearly intended to forward the idea that penetration and money shots in porn are the equivalent of getting shot and welters of gore. (The late Linda Lovelace described her legendary turn in seminal porno Deep Throat as a document of her rape.) Blood and semen, guns and dicks--the rationale behind the French phrase for orgasm meaning "a little death" is suddenly stripped of its more romantic lilt.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)

*/****
starring Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Fionnula Flanagan, James Garner
screenplay by Callie Khouri (with Mark Andrus), based on the novel by Rebecca Wells
directed by Callie Khouri

by Walter Chaw Tennessee Williams by way of Oprah's Book Club, the only thing more intolerable than reading the hideously popular Rebecca Wells novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is watching Callie Khouri's equally shrill and unpleasant film of it. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood makes assumptions about the stupidity (and cupidity) of women that are unjust and hateful while painting men as paternalistically indulgent, a roll of the eyes and a pat on the hand apparently the best and only way to deal with women when they're being insane and abusive. It doesn't even need to be said that in films of this type women are always being insane and abusive--that is when they aren't being insipid and cutesy. It's bad in the book; after the shorthand and the compressions, it's infinitely worse in the film. It is, after all, now pure and unfiltered.

Fidel (2002) - DVD

*½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Victor Huggo Martin, Gael Garcia Bernal, Patricia Velasquez, Cecilia Suarez
screenplay by Stephen Tolkin, based on the books Guerrilla Prince by Georgie Anne Geyer and Fidel Castro by Robert E. Quirk
directed by David Attwood

by Walter Chaw Fidel is a very long, frustrating, exculpatory biopic of Cuba's dictator that, in its near-fanatical dedication to even-handedness, provides a piece devoid of a moral compass. In certain instances, pacifism implies an endorsement of one side and director David Attwood is certainly guilty of not taking a stand on one of the most controversial, inflammatory, murderous, megalomaniacal, and charismatic figures in modern history. Beginning, intriguingly, in 1949 with a young Castro (Victor Huggo Martin) as a clean-shaven lawyer incensed by certain acts of vandalism perpetrated by the American Navy in Havana, the film promises to draw an interesting connection to Gandhi's legal background and, most fascinatingly, the starkly different ways these two revolutionary leaders conduct their rebellions (and to what eventual purposes).

The Pagemaster (1994) - DVD

*½/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras B-
starring Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, Ed Begley, Jr., Mel Harris
screenplay by David Casci, David Kirschner, Ernie Contreras
live-action director Joe Johnston, animation director Maurice Hunt

by Walter Chaw Tailor-made as a public service announcement for going to the library and reading the classics, The Pagemaster makes up for what it lacks in grace with an admirable and perhaps misplaced faith in its audience. Clearly intended as an introduction to discussion rather than a particularly entertaining animated film, it becomes the role of the parents with The Pagemaster to point out the references it makes along the way: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Melville's Moby Dick, Shelley's Frankenstein, Verne's 20,000 Leagues, Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The extent to which a parent is able to fulfill this obligation is the extent to which The Pagemaster is worthwhile; using this film as an eighty-minute babysitter-cum-opiate negates any possible positive effect conferred by the picture--raising the question, clearly, of how best to approach criticism of the piece.

Out Cold (2001) - DVD

½*/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C
starring Jason London, Willie Garson, Lee Majors, Zach Galifianakis
screenplay by Jon Zack
directed by The Malloys

by Walter Chaw The Malloy Brothers' ode to the "makin' it" comedies of the mid-'80s (which reached their apex at the genre's nascence with Bob Clark's coming-of-age smut-fest Porky's) is the flaccid snowboard epic Out Cold. Looking back at Porky's (not that I would look back at Porky's) reveals that its thrills are decidedly modest--but not nearly so modest as those in the disingenuously chaste Out Cold. The film is so much just a collection of puerile (and unfunny) pranks interspersed with extended cock-teases that the effect is akin to watching a Britney Spears concert with a fraternity.

Hombre (1967) - DVD

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone, Diane Cilento
screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
directed by Martin Ritt

by Walter Chaw Paul Newman's Hombre is his fourth and final "H" film of that decade--a quartet that includes The Hustler, Harper, and another of his six collaborations with Martin Ritt, the fantastic Hud. Each (and feel free to lump Cool Hand Luke and Paris Blues in with this esteemed crowd) features Newman as an outsider influence, a catalyst for change and a hero testing the boundaries of acceptable social mores (as was much of the cinema of the '60s), made all the more shocking for his matinee idol good looks and all-American cool. Newman, arguably the biggest and best star of the Sixties, was the quintessential anti-hero for a dissenting cinematic age, and he brought that brooding outcast sensibility to what was perhaps the quintessential outsider role: a half-breed in a western in Ritt's 1967 film Hombre.

The Wash (2001) - DVD

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, George Wallace
written and directed by D.J. Pooh

by Walter Chaw A bit of free advice: if you undertake a drinking game in which the trigger word is "n***a" while watching D.J. Pooh's The Wash, you're probably going to die. Another word to the wise: if you don't imbibe lethal doses of some variety of libation while watching The Wash, you're probably going to die regardless. The only sensible way to approach The Wash is, apparently, with rubber gloves and one of those plastic bags dispensed at public walking trails.

Marlo's America: FFC Interviews Marlo Poras

June 2, 2002|After working as an apprentice under Martin Scorsese's brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Marlo Poras decided that she needed a change of pace from the stress of mainstream film production and followed a friend to North Vietnam to make educational AIDS videos for national distribution there. Immersed in a foreign country, one that still holds their victory in "The American War" as a source of great pride, Ms. Poras became interested in a quartet of high-school exchange students preparing to spend their senior year in the United States, a place idealized and demonized in equal measure by the North Vietnamese. Armed with a Sony VX 1000 Mini-DV camera and nothing else in the way of crew or experience, Ms. Poras narrowed her focus to one subject, Mai, and to Mai's often-peculiar experiences in rural Meridian, Mississippi.

Platform (2000)

***/****
starring Hong Wei Wang, Tao Zhao, Jing Dong Liang, Tian Yi Yang
written and directed by Jia Zhang-Ke

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover To recommend or not to recommend Jia Zhang-ke's Platform? The question depends on who you are. For those with even a passing interest in Chinese cinema and culture, it's virtually mandatory viewing: the film is one of the most dense and nuanced portraits of a society in transition from any nation I can think of, and for Westerners it puts a face to events that we normally hear mentioned only in passing. Those seeking narrative thrills, however, had better look elsewhere, because Platform's glacial pace and oppressive mise-en-scène are calculated to test the patience of even the most sympathetic viewer. But even though the film is tough slogging at times (a circumstance I attribute to its having been re-edited for export), those with intellectual priorities are advised to get on this Platform and ride the train to the last stop.