Film Freak Central

Moonstruck (1987) [Deluxe Edition] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

**/****
DVD - Image B Sound B+ Extras B+
BD - Image B- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis
screenplay by John Patrick Shanley
directed by Norman Jewison

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If you were to make a film about African-Americans in which everyone is shiftless, ignorant, and constantly eating watermelon or fried chicken and acting lascivious, you'd be rightly vilified for your inherent racism. But if you were to make a film about Italian-Americans in which everyone is loud, hilarious, and constantly eating pasta and acting lascivious, apparently you'd be rewarded with the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. That, at least, is the conclusion one draws from watching the stereotype cavalcade that is Moonstruck, which, however affectionate, creates a tedious minstrel show out of those wacky Eye-talians while minimizing their pain. There's plenty of talk about the chaos of love and the torment of attraction, but who are they kidding? That everything works out in the end for problems that would normally rip a family apart is par for the course in a Norman Jewison film, meaning baked ziti for all and true drama for none.

The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007) - DVD

Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon
**/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Andy Gillet, Stéphanie Crayencour, Cécile Cassel, Serge Renko
screenplay by Eric Rohmer, based on the novel L'Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé
directed by Eric Rohmer

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Of all the Cahiers du cinema New Wave heroes, Eric Rohmer is the one I've thought about the least. His subdued, tasteful chamber drama never had the grab of the other four: he wasn't compellingly over-intellectual like Godard, entertaining to a fault like Truffaut, pointedly genre-ready like Chabrol, or off-book bizarre like Rivette.  That's not necessarily a bad thing. To think about Truffaut and Godard is to think about a couple of grandstanders--one for "cinema," one for anti-cinema--who drew battle lines so intense and unreasonable that you felt dragged into a bloodbath. To think about Chabrol and Rivette--the popular artist and the intellectual--is to think of people working through their kinks without such alibis, and who are very good at the work.

Fire and Ice (1983) [2-Disc Limited Edition] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

FIRE AND ICE
**½/****
DVD - Image A+ Sound A (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B+
BD - Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway
directed by Ralph Bakshi

FRAZETTA: PAINTING WITH FIRE (2003)
*½/****
directed by Lance Laspina

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's something poignant about the barbarian fantasy that makes it hard to dismiss. Though I long ago abandoned the adolescent nerd's love of sword-handling macho men and their quivering female conquests, I still find the genre's tangled web of sexual denials endlessly fascinating--and highly incriminating to any boy who leafed through his "Dungeons & Dragons" manuals with less than pure thoughts on his mind. Very obviously, the whole thing revolves around sex--the sensual idea of standing nearly naked and pulsing with fury while the object of your desire writhes at your feet. But there's a sense in which it can't admit this--it has to drag in a mythological sturm-und-drang in order to justify itself as drama, when in fact it just wants to touch itself. And the sad phenomenon of talking about something without talking about it is strangely moving.

ZPG (1972) - DVD

Z.P.G.
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Oliver Reed, Geraldine Chaplin, Don Gordon, Diane Cilento
screenplay by Max Ehrlich and Frank De Felitta
directed by Michael Campus

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The plot of Z.P.G. (stands for "Zero Population Growth") inevitably recalls that other '70s overpopulation romp, Soylent Green. True to disaster-dystopian form, both films deal with the perils of social overmanagement in facing the food shortages and overcrowding of the then-topical population bomb. But where Soylent Green is acid, balls-out, and harmonious in its venting of incoherent grievances, Z.P.G. is too serious and lackadaisical to impress as anything other than a standard catalogue title. It seems aware of the conventions of social science-fiction but has no real use for them; stumbling through the plot like its anaesthetized heroine, it doesn't so much illustrate points as have points illustrated for it through genre memory. One doesn't expect lucid analysis from apocalyptic potboilers--I still have no idea what was achieved by Soylent Green's gleefully masochistic cynicism--but one does expect an interest in the fear that society is sliding off the rails and we're all gonna die. Alas, director Michael Campus is so incapable of wringing the slightest interest out of his premise that the way his world ends is not with a bang, but with a shrug.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) [2-Disc DVD Collector's Set - Special Edition] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Extended English-language Version)
***/****
DVD - Image A- Sound A- Extras A
BD - Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Aldo Giuffrè
screenplay by Age & Scarpelli & Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone
directed by Sergio Leone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Perhaps it had been too long between screenings, or perhaps my mind had been playing tricks on me, but my most recent viewing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly wasn't as good as the others. There was still much to admire: the wild structure, which doesn't properly introduce its MacGuffin until about half an hour in; the hilariously cavalier attitude towards human decency; the raw-meat attitude towards bodies and faces; and, of course, the idea of Eli Wallach playing a Mexican, which is always appealing. But all of this seems somehow only fitfully successful now, the film's conceptual high points surrounded by the same arid desert that nearly finishes off two out of three of the protagonists. Perhaps I should chalk it up to the distance of memory--even downgraded, the experience has something bizarre for just about everybody, whether their memories will be kind to it or not.

The French Connection (1971) [Five Star Collection] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

***/****
DVD - Image A Sound B+ Extras A+
BD - Image D+ Sound B- Extras A+
starring Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco
screenplay by Ernest Tidyman
directed by William Friedkin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no denying the skill that went into The French Connection. It's the runner-up exciting film about people doing almost nothing, second only to All the President's Men--and I'm only half-joking when I say that. It takes a director with vision to make a couple of guys tailing a couple of other guys interesting, and William Friedkin definitely has the vision: he single-handedly creates the meaning that holds the sketchy script together and keeps us caring about whether our heroic flatfoots get their dubious man. That meaning, however, ought to give us pause, as it makes that same year's hit Dirty Harry look like Easy Rider by comparison.

The Hand (1981) + Wall Street (1987) [20th Anniversary Edition] - DVDs

THE HAND
*/**** Image B+ Sound B Commentary B
starring Michael Caine, Andrea Marcovicci, Annie McEnroe, Bruce McGill
screenplay by Oliver Stone, based on the novel The Lizard's Tail by Marc Brandel
directed by Oliver Stone

WALL STREET
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, Terence Stamp
screenplay by Stanley Weiser & Oliver Stone
directed by Oliver Stone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Sometimes, our stated moral goals don't add up to who we are. It is said, with some justification, that the personal is political, but all too often this is taken to mean "there is no personal, there is only political": we pretend that the ideology to which we pledge allegiance is the sum total of our ethical standpoint, then use that to justify or paper over the contradictions and fissures in the way we live our lives. The ironic thing is that our refusal to acknowledge that which lies outside our ideology means we do that ideology a disservice--playing out our personal grudges on the political stage when we should be harmoniously integrating both sides into a whole life.

License to Wed (2007) - DVD

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras F
starring Robin Williams, Mandy Moore, John Krasinski, Christine Taylor
screenplay by Kim Barker and Tim Rasmussen & Vince De Meglio
directed by Ken Kwapis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover License to Wed is one more piece of roadkill on the path to Hell that Hollywood has mistaken for normalcy. The idea of a wildly intrusive minister manipulating the lives of two aspiring marrieds is bad enough, but what's worse is that one of the lovebirds in question is a suspicious jerk who doesn't use his brain while the other is an airhead who turns on her man with the slightest suggestion from a totalitarian cleric. Watching these people do their stuff isn't just unfunny, it's downright creepy--a freakshow of gruesome embarrassments and gender politics that will have you covering your eyes at regular intervals. The filmmakers think that hateful attitudes and grotesquely inappropriate behaviour are somehow going to be smoothed over by feigning good intentions and a boring, brightly-lit aesthetic that squeezes anything eccentric out of the frame. Although License to Wed comes across like your favourite boring uncle, rest assured there's something under its raincoat you don't want to know about.

Matthew Barney: No Restraint (2006) - DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
directed by Alison Chernick

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Full disclosure: my exposure to Matthew Barney extends solely to his whales/Björk/petroleum jelly extravaganza Drawing Restraint 9, and to say I didn't get it would be putting it mildly: it sailed so far over my head that it may still be in orbit somewhere over Mercury. Yet I was game for Alison Chernick's Matthew Barney: No Restraint, if for no reason other than that it might decode said production and provide a framework for appreciating Barney's other work. On this score, the film only does half the job. Running an abbreviated 71 minutes, it offers a rather rushed assessment of the artist's métier, with various critics and performers peppering the roughest outline of Barney's modus operandi with soundbites of approval. When all's said and done, it's a teasing, fitfully interesting suggestion of a mindset but far from key to understanding Barney's peculiar dream logic.

The Night of Truth (2005) - DVD

La nuit de la vérité
**½/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Naky Sy Savané, Commandant Moussa Cissé, Georgette Paré, Adama Ouédraogo
screenplay by Marc Gautron and Fanta Régina Nacro
directed by Fanta Régina Nacro

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching the thoroughly detestable Blood Diamond recently, I wondered what it would take to get something approaching the process of suffering in the Third World without the added distraction of stupid white people and their irrelevant angst. But it turns out there are other ways to water down the story, too: The Night of Truth (La nuit de la vérité) would apparently do away with Hollywood's fondness for outsiders looking in, yet in many ways, it has its own simplistic solutions and vague sentiments. Whatever the film's good intentions, its depiction of fictional warring peoples enjoying a shaky truce leaves out much of the important data needed to understand the original conflict. Though fitfully moving in terms of the breadth of atrocities on display, it doesn't say much more than "war bad"--which, though true, doesn't bring anyone any closer to good peace.

Cannibal Man (1972) - DVD

La semana del asesino
The Cannibal Man
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Vincente Parra, Emma Cohen, Eusebio Poncela, Vicky Lagos
screenplay by Eloy de la Iglesia and Anthony Fos
directed by Eloy de la Iglesia

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Despite some cheesily-gratuitous murders and an awkwardly-inserted sex scene, Cannibal Man clearly wants to be more than exploitation. Pity that for long stretches, the movie--a study of a man trying to hide a sin while committing many more to cover it up--doesn't have much else to go on besides the horrible irony that drives its gimmick: we're trapped with this guy repeating his brutal mistake over and over again to the point of irrationality and intimations of a Kids in the Hall parody. The working-class milieu and lack of leering stupidity soften the blow, but there's no denying that a certain dearth of invention keeps this from crawling all the way out of the grindhouse barrel. Still, it's a solid two-run hit and was clearly made by people with compassion; the film even earns remarkable points for its equation of a lonely gay voyeur with an unhappy man who can't cover up his escalating violence.

Iraq in Fragments (2006) - DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
directed by James Longley

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Aesthetically speaking, Iraq in Fragments isn't all that fragmentary. Although director James Longley essentially divides the country into thirds (according to Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd), the film is really quite fluid and harmonious. This has its drawbacks: we're released from the take-a-step-back God's-eye approach familiar from countless documentaries and thrown into what appears to be the scrum of social life in Iraq, sink or swim. A little context would be useful, as it would be if we were in the middle of the war zone itself. Whatever the shortcomings of this approach, however, Iraq in Fragments takes a necessary swipe at the idea that the eponymous country was a mass of undifferentiated Oppressed yearning for a conquering hero to release it from bondage. It suggests that Iraq is at least as complex as that of its invading "liberators"; and if Longley's three snapshots can contradict each other, that's to be expected from any nation with more than one cultural faction.

Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke (1978) [Special Collector's Edition] - DVD

Up in Smoke
***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Tom Skerritt, Stacy Keach
screenplay by Tommy Chong & Cheech Marin
directed by Lou Adler

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Two things are remarkable about Up in Smoke when considering it in retrospect. The first is that, unlike the attack-and-kill self-righteousness of most comedians, screenwriters/stars Cheech and Chong are quiet, gentle, and completely uninterested in anything except feeling good and doing next to nothing. The second is that despite its formless narrative, confused direction, and total refusal to acknowledge solid aesthetic principles, Up in Smoke is a real movie, albeit barely. Though I once begrudgingly admired the duo's Nice Dreams in these pages, that was because it struck me as a bizarrely compelling mess--not necessarily a roaring endorsement. By contrast, this thing--their fabled big-screen debut, and a summit they would sadly never surpass--is consistently funny, surprisingly well-timed, and possessed of a devastating performance by Stacy Keach, and it doesn't blow it all by tacking on a sickly moral or engaging in mean-spirited shenanigans. All of which is more than I can say for a lot of comedies with higher levels of self-importance.

Under the Cherry Moon (1986); Graffiti Bridge (1990); Purple Rain (1984) [Two-Disc Special Edition] - DVDs|Purple Rain - Blu-ray Disc

UNDER THE CHERRY MOON
***/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Prince, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jerome Benton, Steven Berkoff
screenplay by Becky Johnston
directed by Prince

GRAFFITI BRIDGE
*/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Prince, Morris Day, Jerome Benton & The Time, Jill Jones
written and directed by Prince

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's something cinematic about the artist known as Prince, and it's not just his effeminate charisma (though there's that) or his flair for theatre (though there's that, too): The whole sensual package that is his deliciously weird sensibility--a blend of satin-laced fetishism and self-loving exhibitionism--all but cries out to be photographed. The question is, was The Artist himself filmmaker enough to bring that to the screen? Making for a split decision are the two films that bear his directorial stamp, both of which have finally hit DVD. In one corner stands Under the Cherry Moon, a savagely-underrated romance that suggests that with someone else's script, he's got the right stuff; in the other corner sits Graffiti Bridge, a grotesque white elephant that suggests Prince left to his own devices turns from funk idol into sadly inebriated schoolgirl.

Private Fears in Public Places (2006) - DVD

Couers
***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Sabine Azéma, Isabelle Carré, Laura Morante, Claude Rich
screenplay by Jean-Michel Ribes, based on the play by Alan Ayckbourn
directed by Alain Resnais

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Some time ago, there was a contretemps in the pages of another writing venue of mine, REVERSE SHOT. The estimable Nick Pinkerton had written a rather tepid assessment of Alain Resnais's Private Fears in Public Places (Coeurs): he claimed that its inclusion in the New York Film Festival was an "obligatory slot-filling by one of the 'Old Masters of the Sixties' art-house." NYFF programmer Kent Jones shot back with a dryly-hilarious note confirming such selection criteria, which enthused that the film "had exactly the lack of urgency, the unexceptionable hominess, and the scanty charm we were looking for." The whole thing was pretty funny, but it illustrated the pitfalls of playing certain critical lines. While Pinkerton is mostly correct that Private Fears in Public Places is a disappointingly inconsequential film by someone who had previously defined styles and moved mountains, this is punishing Resnais unduly: just because you're not making a masterpiece doesn't mean you lack any point at all.

Cult Camp Classics, Vol. 3: Terrorized Travelers - DVD

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

SKYJACKED (1972)
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, James Brolin, Jeanne Crain
screenplay by Stanley R. Greenberg, based on the novel Hijacked by David Harper
directed by John Guillermin

Skyjacked is the inevitable result of people pretending to be casual and relaxed while actually being stiff and formal. The actors would desperately like you to believe that they just happened to be on a jumbo jet when it was, by sheer chance, hijacked by a crazed veteran--but who are they fooling? As everybody is cruelly slotted into a stereotypical role (and forced to spout inane pleasantries no thinking person would utter), the artificiality of the proceedings is about as plain as the nose on Chuck Heston's face. Pulse-pounding excitement--which would have required people in whom we could invest--is not on the menu. In fact, the whole thing seems remarkably tranquil as a bunch of slumming character actors cash easy paychecks.

Offside (2006) - DVD

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Sima Mobarak Shahi, Safar Samandar, Shayesteh Irani, M. Kheyrabadi
screenplay by Jafar Panahi and Shadmehr Rastin
directed by Jafar Panahi

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Offside finds Jafar Panahi in a light mood. At least, in a lighter mood than when he made The Circle, his previous dissertation on the depressing state of women's rights in Iran, which painted the nation as a Kafka-esque hell full of paranoia and punishment for any woman with the fatal courage to get out of line. That movie is a brilliant sucker-punch you don't easily forget, though its huis clos mentality leads one more to despair than to hope that something can be done. His latest film is the flipside to The Circle: a tribute to the resourcefulness of young women who will get their football fix any way they can while still pledging allegiance to the idea of their nationality--even when the reality is a hostile force bent on keeping them at home. It is, against all odds, funny, mischievous, and brazenly positive; and it'll send you out soaring, your faith in humanity restored under conditions you never thought possible.

Year of the Dog (2007) - DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, Regina King, Tom McCarthy
written and directed by Mike White

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A sea change has happened in cinematic irony. Where the well-dressed snarky bastard of the Eighties would scapegoat the consumer mentality of the expendable poor, the ironist of the new century knows the landscape is manufactured and that he or she is implicated in an artificiality nigh impossible to avoid. Thoughtful Wes Anderson occupies the high end of this movement, oblivious Jared Hess its nadir; Year of the Dog resides somewhere in the low-middle. It's intriguing to see Mike White--author of scripts for more naturalistic filmmakers Miguel Arteta and Richard Linklater--resort to this tactic for his directorial debut, and it certainly adds a layer of meaning that could've helped his screenplay for Arteta's The Good Girl. Though I fear the approach goes for instant recognition instead of entering deeper and pretty much says that resistance is futile, Year of the Dog still manages to wring a little moisture out of the damp rag of the style.

Disturbia (2007) [Widescreen] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

**/****
DVD - Image A- Sound A Extras C+
BD - Image B+ Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras C+
starring Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Sarah Roemer, Carrie-Anne Moss
screenplay by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth
directed by D.J. Caruso

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I'm not terribly upset that Disturbia directly steals from the infinitely superior Rear Window. If ever there was a time to resurrect the lesson in voyeurism that is Hitchcock's masterpiece, it's now, at the dawn of the closed-circuited twenty-first century. The problem with the newer film isn't that it's a rip-off, but that it fundamentally misunderstands its source. The terribly ambiguous stance on Jimmy Stewart's Peeping Tom tendencies has become 100% gung-ho support of illegal surveillance, a development problematic for reasons that go beyond ethical considerations and political ramifications. I get that nobody involved means for Disturbia to champion creep behaviour--they're merely fulfilling the hormonal wishes of the adolescents who made it a surprise hit last spring. It's just that, stripped of any theme beyond catching a killer, Rear Window's not that interesting to watch.

Summer School (1987) [Life's a Beach Edition] - DVD

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Mark Harmon, Kirstie Alley, Robin Thomas, Patrick Labyorteaux
screenplay by Jeff Franklin
directed by Carl Reiner

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover We at FFC ride ourselves on sussing out the subtleties in what is widely condemned as popular junk, and more power to us. But if you're expecting a review of Summer School that illuminates the film's hidden complexities, you've sadly come to the wrong place. Although there are certain thematic features that identify it as an atypical entry in the '80s teen-comedy genre, not the least of which a sort-of social conscience that suggests National Lampoon's Degrassi High, these anomalous credentials are largely wiped out by a thudding lack of wit and a functional ugliness of craft that makes the film barely tolerable at the best of times. While the actors generally convey personality beyond the limited means of the production, they're fighting an uphill battle against a pervasive laziness behind the camera.

Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) + The Awful Truth (1937) - DVDs

RALLY 'ROUND THE  FLAG, BOYS!
**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Joan Collins, Jack Carson
screenplay by Claude Binyon and Leo McCarey
directed by Leo McCarey

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I have conflicting feelings about Leo McCarey's Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!. Part of me thinks it's a professional, well-crafted comedy that happily stops just this side of vulgarity; another part of me wishes it had actually crossed into the land of the vulgar and settled in Frank Tashlin's hometown. To its advantage, it's an extremely polished film with a nice feeling for shape and colour that's very well acted in all the major roles. But I still wish that someone like Tashlin had directed it and turned it into the rowdy shambles it so desperately wants to be.

The Siege (1998) [Martial Law Edition] - DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis, Tony Shaloub
screenplay by Lawrence Wright and Menno Meyjes & Edward Zwick
directed by Edward Zwick

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Hollywood liberal is a strange beast. It has been known to speak pieties about the evils of racism, the horrors of war, and the value of freedom with what looks like conviction, if not authority--but when our backs our turned, it builds monuments to military hardware, sings praise to the power of the badge and gun, and subordinates non-whites, non-straights, and non-males to positions of zero control within even the most progressive dramas. The Siege captures this particular genus of liberal at its most confused and self-righteous. Firing in all directions at topics it can't begin to comprehend, it is in any event too in love with the rules of aesthetic engagement to commit to its 'issues' with anything approaching honesty. One hand gives, the other takes away--, and the result is a seething mass of contradictions that's almost too painful to bear.

Breach (2007) [Widescreen] - DVD

***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert
screenplay by Adam Mazer & William Rotko and Billy Ray
directed by Billy Ray

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Breach is so good, you want it to be better; it's a tense, relentless, Alan-Pakula-in-marble chiller that sketches the schizoid ways of its real-life subject so effectively that you're eager to know more than the genre trappings can accommodate. This would be of greater cause for concern were Breach not already, as it is, much better written and light-years better directed than most of its brethren in the Washington-intrigue sub-genre. Make no mistake: it has an iron grip on the spine, and its refreshingly quiet approach eschews rapid montage for unnerving negative space. You hear every line instead of noticing the pictures, even as the pictures work overtime--and the aggregate is sweetly enthralling, if somewhat incomplete.

Overlord (1975) [The Criterion Collection] - DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Brian Stirner, Davyd Harries, Nicholas Ball, Julie Neesam
written and directed by Stuart Cooper

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover If nothing else, Overlord has the distinction of inventing its own genre. A bold combination of fictional drama and found-footage assembly, it grimly blends the real and the imaginary to the point where you can't help but be a little affected by the actors' proximity to the real devastation of WWII. Long undistributed in North America and roundly-unseen on these shores except by those fortunate few who caught it on the late, lamented Z Channel, Overlord has acquired a cult mystique slightly disproportionate to its merit. Director Stuart Cooper and his co-scenarist Christopher Hudson only hint at the inner life of their hapless deer-in-the-headlights lead and don't quite sell the impending doom for which they so desperately reach. But make no mistake: this is a one-of-a-kind movie that should've opened new avenues for narrative filmmaking instead of dropping into the big black hole that it did.

Shortbus (2006) [Unrated] - DVD

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A-
starring Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, Justin Bond
written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I put John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus on my Top Ten for 2006. This was perhaps more for intent than for execution: '06 was a pretty lousy year for cinema, and I was just happy to see something from this continent that wasn't completely asleep at the switch. Still, I think it's too easy to write the movie off (as many commentators have) as pie-in-the-sky warm-fuzzies. What impressed me most about Shortbus was that its famous nudity and hardcore sex had not been severed from the rest of human experience. Mitchell may not be an aesthetic master, but he's onto something that few of the would-be indie rebels are: that there is no separating the person from the body, and that sex is as much a social and personal experience as it is a physical one. As the social/personal body is very likely to be a morass of guilt, doubt, confusion, and fatigue, the upbeat ending suggests a covering for a core of despair.

Violette (1978) - DVD

Violette Nozière
***/**** Image C- Sound C+
starring Isabelle Huppert, Stephane Audran, Jean Carmet, Jean-François Garreaud
screenplay by Odile Barski, Herve Bromberger, Frederic Grendel, based on the novel Presses de la Cité by Jean-Marie Fitere
directed by Claude Chabrol

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Violette Nozière (or Violette, as inexplicably shortened by some cretinous American distributor) isn't highly ranked in the canon of Claude Chabrol. Reviews range from the mildly indulgent to Leonard Maltin's assertion that "Chabrol lacks his usual directorial flair"--a strange thing to say about a man whose style is famously relaxed. While I wouldn't place it in the company of Les bonnes femmes or La femme infidèle, I would say that Violette Nozière returns Chabrol to his preoccupations with women and class with lethal accuracy. Its tale of an amoral 14-year-old who robs, sleeps around, and attempts to murder both of her parents is perceptively half-in, half-out of her desire to escape the confines of a small world and a smaller bankroll. The protagonist is completely horrible, and yet we're just as completely trapped in her point-of-view. The film's total commitment to her awful behaviour subsequently makes the audience both judge of and accomplice to Violette's terrible, terrible misdeeds.

The Messengers (2007) - DVD

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller, John Corbett
screenplay by Mark Wheaton
directed by Danny Pang & Oxide Pang

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Horror is not my area of expertise, but I'm fairly certain that The Messengers barely qualifies for the category. A two-bit riff on Ju-On and The Sixth Sense (themselves worth four bits at best), it's professionally shot and cleanly designed but fails completely to be at all scary or even marginally resonant. Those who recognize and revere the social relevance of genre entries from the '70s will be tearing their hair out at the film's hermetic sealing-away from anything beyond teen angst, with references to no less than the high foreclosure rate in farm country used purely as a plot convenience. (Inexcusable when you consider what sort of eldritch imagery might be wrung from a devastated agricultural wasteland.) What you get from The Messengers are some by-the-book jump-scares, "creepy" imagery that wouldn't damage the average eight-year-old, and a "surprise" ending that any thinking adult will see coming from miles away.

Major League (1989) [Wild Thing Edition] - DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, Bob Uecker
written and directed by David S. Ward

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Major League doesn't have clichés, it is clichés. The film is a collection of sports- and slob-comedy riffs designed for maximum familiarity and a minimum of creative fat. What you see is what you get--and if you don't like what you see, there are legions of sports fans behind you who will, and have, to the extent of justifying a "Wild Thing Edition" DVD covered in Astroturf. Of course, sometimes we don't want anything beyond obvious underdogs obviously set up to obvious victory, and if you're in the mood for such faits accomplis then you could do a lot worse than to suckle at this comforting cinematic teat. But for the most part, lovers of cinema are warned to not get their hopes too high, while fans of crackling dialogue are advised to seek their kicks elsewhere.

You Are Alone (2007) - DVD

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Jessica Bohl, Richard Brundage
written and directed by Gorman Bechard

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Sometimes skill doesn't count for much. Coming in the next issue of iViews is a review of Mike Reilly's Road to Victory, which by most technical standards qualifies as inept but still manages to get by on a raw rage that can't possibly be faked. Its commitment to its subject matter is so complete that it (sort of) makes up for a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium. You Are Alone is an altogether different beast: it's reasonably well-shot (by DV indie standards), has a decent understanding of structure and foreshadowing, is consciously plugged into its subject matter--and through sheer force of prurience turns all of those plusses into a big minus. I have no idea what brought writer-director Gorman Bechard to the subject of a teenage prostitute and her next-door neighbour, but the end product is less compassionate than creepy and certainly less insightful than risible by the time of its wannabe-shock climax.

Pulp (1972) - DVD

**/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott
written and directed by Mike Hodges

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Pulp is so determined to not work on any level that you almost admire it in light of the effort. It's neither a parody of nor a tribute to the pulp genre, neither comedy-thriller nor thrilling comedy--it's just a freak that repeatedly falls flat on its face, leaving you with no choice but to grasp it close like an idiot child. The first time I saw this film, I was mostly annoyed by its determination to short-circuit the fun that might have come from genre trappings, not to mention its refusal to offer genuine alternatives. With a second viewing, it looks a little better, and though not a success, it earned my admiration for being so far out of its depth that a bit of pleasure at its expense was unavoidable. It may have earned an extra half-star were it not also sexist and homophobic in dated ways that have risen to the surface like yeast.

Muriel (1963) - DVD

Muriel, or the Time of Return
Muriel ou le temps d'un retour
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée
screenplay by Jean Cayrol
directed by Alain Resnais

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Alain Resnais films are more interesting to me for their differences than for their similarities. Though you can find an oft-cited obsession with memory running through his oeuvre, the high-profile literary screenwriters with whom he chooses to collaborate tend to impose their own sensibilities. Thus Hiroshima, mon amour features Marguerite Duras' passive-aggressive desperation and Last Year at Marienbad is marked by Alain Robbe-Grillet's mathematical abstractions. Neither of those two canonical works--which are at least united by a conceptual monumentalism--looks very much like Muriel, or The Time of Return (Muriel ou le temps d'un retour) (hereafter Muriel, also its promotional title), which enlists Jean Cayrol to sketch a story of domestic dishonesty and historical trauma that's at once spatially smaller and more emotionally expansive. Here, if one isn't confronted with the ostentatious "artistry" of Resnais' more famous work (not that great artistry isn't evident), one is aware of a tangle of guilt and regret behind the brave faces. And whoever can be said to be in the driver's seat, it's an amazing film.

Blume in Love (1973) - DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A
starring George Segal, Susan Anspach, Kris Kristofferson, Shelley Winters
written and directed by Paul Mazursky

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Paul Mazursky is at once clear-eyed and fogged-up in his hot-button relationship movies. His best film, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, dips its toe into the waters of swingerism then rushes back to the beach--Mazursky immerses himself in the California psychobabble about with-it relationships only to return to standard heterosexual coupling. Similarly, Blume in Love wants very badly to be about cheating, divorce, and the attendant emotional fallout of both, but unfortunately, Mazursky the observer of mores keeps getting tangled up with Mazursky the traditional romantic, meaning he broaches subjects with which he ultimately refuses to deal. Blume in Love is watchable and often compelling when it's doing nothing at all, but it mistakenly turns a blind eye to the astounding solipsism of its protagonist for the sake of love conquering all.

Infamous (2006) - DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Commentary B-
starring Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Peter Bogdanovich
screenplay by Douglas McGrath, based on Truman Capote by George Plimpton
directed by Douglas McGrath

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Just as Milos Forman's Valmont was doomed to live in the shadow of Dangerous Liaisons, so, too, will Douglas McGrath's Infamous always be the poor relation to the Oscar-winning Capote. This is no mean feat: while Dangerous Liaisons was a very tough act to follow, Capote is an average-to-decent TV movie with a mugging central performance. Toby Jones manages to best Philip Seymour Hoffmann in seeming like someone named Truman Capote, but aside from a couple of peripheral turns, the film fails completely to suggest real life: whatever your feelings on Capote, it managed to give a sense of the psychology behind the bon vivant while being far more damning of his handling of the case that became In Cold Blood. Capote may have been a little square, but Infamous pretty much amounts to starfucking--and unconvincing starfucking at that.

Saw III (2006) [Unrated Edition (Widescreen)] - DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Dina Meyer, Shawnee Smith, Bahar Soomekh, Tobin Bell
screenplay by Leigh Whannell & James Wan
directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If nothing else, the Saw saga can be said to defy the law of diminishing returns that normally governs sequels. Both the first and second instalments were equally dumb movies, combining an ambition to be more plot-driven than the average slasher opus while not having the intellectual chops to actually pull it off. Borrowing heavily from Se7en's premise of a moralistic serial killer, the films try to pass off a sub-Rod Serling guilt complex as something resembling theme and subtext; the filmmakers think they're doing more than killing folks in baroque ways, and the combination of brutal violence and twinky piety effectively blunts the former and disqualifies the latter. Which is what makes Saw III a semi-pleasant surprise: for the most part, it's far less pretentious than its predecessors, leaving us in the dark without much exposition and deferring the cheesy explanations until the predictably disappointing finale.

Decoys 2: The Second Seduction (2007) - DVD

Decoys 2: Alien Seduction
½*/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Corey Sevier, Tobin Bell, Dina Meyer, Kim Poirier
screenplay by Miguel Tejada-Flores
directed by Jeffry Lando

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Sometimes a symptomatic reading is the only thing keeping a critic from hurling himself out a window in the contemplation of drivel. Frustrating when it's not simply banal (and often both at once), Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (promotional title: Decoys: The Second Seduction) is one of those times. As with the first Decoys, it's loaded with revelations about the Canadian fear of sex and the national stereotype of the snivelling, eternally-discouraged male. Good thing, too, because it's almost completely intolerable in every other particular. I defy even the most devoted B-fancier to sit through its tiresome sophomore humour and lame attempts to get the girls' kits off. That it embodies Canuck cynicism towards male-female relationships is pretty much its only point of interest.

Westerns with a Twist: Three Feature Films - DVD

THE SONS OF GREAT BEAR (1965)
Die Söhne der großen Bärin
*½/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Gojko Mitic, Jirí Vrstála, Rolf Römer, Hans Hardt-Hardtloff
screenplay by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, based on her novel
directed by Josef Mach

CHINGACHGOOK: THE GREAT SNAKE (1967)
Chingachgook, die grosse Schlange
**/**** Image C+ Sound B Extras B
starring Gojko Mitic, Rolf Römer, Lilo Grahn, Helmut Schreiber
screenplay by Wolfgang Ebeling and Richard Groschopp, based on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper
directed by Richard Groschopp

APACHES (1973)
Apachen
*½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Gojko Mitic, Milan Beli, Colea Rautu, Leon Niemczyk
screenplay by Gojko Mitic, Gottfried Kolditz
directed by Gottfried Kolditz

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On paper, it seems like a good idea: a series of westerns that not only adopt the Indian point-of-view but also paint the advancing white hordes as monstrous despoilers of the landscape and its peoples. From 1965 to 1982, that's exactly what East Germany's DEFA studios proposed: fifteen Native-centric westerns featuring chiselled Gojko Mitic as an Indian hero ready and willing to kick settler ass. But though these films took the most American of genres and used it against its homeland (a propaganda coup if ever there was one), that's where the fascination ends. Once you've dispensed with the hilarious Cold War contortions, you're left with education-film-quality productions that preach loud and long while boring the audience early and often.

A Man for All Seasons (1966) [Special Edition] - DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Robert Shaw, Paul Scofield
screenplay by Robert Bolt, based on his play
directed by Fred Zinnemann

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Assessing A Man for All Seasons is no easy task. In its favour is the fact that it's quite sensitively directed: Fred Zinnemann lays on a level of melancholy largely unheard-of in the costume-movie sweepstakes, making the film plenty more affecting than the twilight-of-Old-Hollywood clunker it could very well have become. Alas, Robert Bolt's screenplay (and presumably his stage play) is resolutely impervious to directorial manipulation--and also completely full of crap. Bolt's hilariously over-the-top deification of Thomas More (Paul Scofield) and More's opposition to the divorce of Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) is so emptied of contemporary meaning that you can project anything you like onto it. Such care has been taken to shift the discussion away from political matters and towards "personal ethics" that an atheist like me can groove to More's rigid refusal to indulge Henry's transgression over God's law.

Requiem (2006) - DVD

***½/**** Image B Sound A- (IFC) B+ (Mongrel)
starring Sandra Hüller, Burghart Klaussner, Imdgen Kogge, Anna Blomeier
screenplay by Bernd Lange
directed by Hans-Christian Schmid

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Like most pop epics, The Exorcism of Emily Rose was all about being sure. One had to throw down for the concept of the physical manifestation of Satan--any human considerations were swept aside in the affirmation of God's merciless will. And if certain college girls were crushed to pulp (a sentiment which extends to the general expendability of humankind), so be it. Thank goodness, then, that there's a movie like Requiem, based on the same case that inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose but comparatively merciful in its mission. It wants to salvage the blighted life of an epileptic tossed around from doctor to doctor--one who, once presented with the beginnings of psychosis, had only religion and a mistrust of medicinal practice to fall back on. She's a victim of other people's indecision rather than of the Devil himself.

The Illustrated Man (1969) - DVD

Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom, Robert Drivas, Don Dubbins
screenplay by Howard B. Kreitsek, based on the book by Ray Bradbury
directed by Jack Smight

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man (hereafter The Illustrated Man) lays its cards out on the table right from the start. There's not much going on, just a couple of drifters named Carl (Rod Steiger) and Willie (Robert Drivas) taking a dip in the river, unaware of each other's presence. It should have been fairly simple to communicate this, but director Jack Smight is no simpleton: he throws the cuts at you, struggling to achieve with sweeping helicopter shots and other ephemera an effect he ultimately can't articulate. This pretty much sums up the movie, a series of attempts to look like somebody's working when nobody has any idea why they bothered. Coupled with Steiger's obnoxious persona and Drivas' blankness, The Illustrated Man is largely a hole in the screen that turns Ray Bradbury's gripping anthology of the same name into something sluggish and unpleasant to behold.

Ginger & Fred (1986) - DVD

Ginger and Fred
Ginger e Fred
***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Marcello Mastroianni, Giulietta Masina, Franco Fabrizi, Friedrich von Ledebur
screenplay by Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra and Tullio Pinelli
directed by Federico Fellini

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The idea of Fellini criticizing television for its vulgarity--as he does in Ginger and Fred--is indeed a bit rich: Federico Fellini complaining of vulgarity is rather like Roberto Rossellini complaining of neo-realism. But beneath the surface of this admittedly shallow lament lies the movie's real theme, which is the displacement of artists once their chosen form is rendered obsolete. It's not too hard to see Fellini himself, high-modernist art director that he was, in his music-hall dancer protagonists, who by 1985 have been completely snowed under by seismic shifts in technology and, by extension, entertainment. Slight as the film may be, you can't help feeling a twinge of regret for not only its leads, but also the increasingly-forgotten filmmaker who pulls their strings.

Jesus Camp (2006) - DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
directed by Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's hard to not be moved by the horrors of Jesus Camp. A record of one Pastor Becky Fischer's far-right Christian summer camp, it's loaded with stuff any compassionate person would decry--usually the cruelty and intimidation of adults, who are often seen scaring children shitless. But even as we may despise these guileless sadists as they reveal themselves to the camera, at some point it all begins to ring hollow. The film has nothing beyond the image of children being bullied while their parents natter on about hateful fundamentalism; perhaps most regrettably, there's no discussion as to why, in the 21^st century, 80 million Americans willingly believe in such corrosive nonsense.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) - DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains, Evelyn Keyes, Rita Johnson
screenplay by Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller, from the play "Heaven Can Wait" by Harry Segall
directed by Alexander Hall

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Here Comes Mr. Jordan shakes your faith in the idea of Hollywood as Dream Factory. It's a film about a prizefighter (Robert Montgomery, playing Joe Pendleton) meeting an untimely end in a plane crash and having his consciousness transferred into the body of a murdered millionaire. (When his plane takes a nosedive via the magic of a camera off its axis, so, too, do the clouds in the sky.) There's a patrician, Mr. Roarke-ish afterlife overseer--the titular Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains)--and much switcheroo'ing involving bodies and identities and romance; it would take quite an effort for this to be less than light on its feet. But despite it all, the film hits the ground with a thud and sits there without a truly fanciful thought in its head. Not only is the script so impressed with itself that you can hear the writers crack up at every single feeble joke, but director Alexander Hall has also decided to shoot everything in cold, wide master shots that see everything and suggest nothing. It must be the least wondrous fantasy in Tinseltown history.

Fiddler on the Roof (1971) [2-Disc Collector's Edition] - DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Molly Picon
screenplay by Joseph Stein, based on his play
directed by Norman Jewison

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Fiddler on the Roof is sort of the transition point between the late-'60s Twilight of Old Hollywood and the American Renaissance of the '70s. In one sense, it's the very last of the king-sized Broadway adaptations the industry kept churning out to no avail before the advent of Easy Rider, and there's no denying that the film is over-scaled and over-orchestrated in that manner. Yet there's a genuine sensibility going on here beyond masonry and screeching violins: incredibly, director Norman Jewison has managed to infuse the expensive proceedings with a certain emotional honesty--enough to keep you rapt in fascination without sending your blood-sugar level through the roof, if not enough to make Fiddler on the Roof the masterpiece its status as a home-video perennial would suggest.

Running with Scissors (2006) - DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Annette Bening, Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Evan Rachel Wood
screenplay by Ryan Murphy, based on the novel by Augusten Burroughs
directed by Ryan Murphy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It would be hard to not be a little moved by the traumatic goings-on of Running with Scissors. The film is based on Augusten Burroughs's best-selling memoir, and the author has plenty to forget: not merely the failure of his real family, consisting of a distant alcoholic father and a self-righteous failed-poet mother, but also the nightmare of moving out of that home and into that of Mommy's quack psychiatrist. Yet as the horrors pile up, one wonders what's being learned in the midst of all this unburdening. I haven't read Burroughs's book, but Ryan Murphy's screen translation fails completely to draw conclusions from the facts--we're simply dropped in the midst of some seriously unhappy people and left to fend for ourselves. Perhaps the memoirist felt the same way, but without any generalizations drawn it seems rather like that money-grubbing head-shrinker, making hay with other people's depression.

7 Men from Now (1956) [Special Collector's Edition] - DVD

Seven Men from Now
***½/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Randolph Scott, Gail Russell, Lee Marvin, Walter Reed
screenplay by Burt Kennedy
directed by Budd Boetticher

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Like most Budd Boetticher movies, Seven Men from Now is supremely modest. Despite my high star rating, I fear overselling its virtues--it's not a searing, world-shattering masterpiece that leaves you devastated. But for a sort of chamber western, it's lovely and uncommonly sensitive. The film doesn't dig on the adventure and violence that are the major selling points of the genre: it's about an ex-lawman's guilty torment; a failed husband's obliviousness to the trials of his wife; and a kind-of outlaw who's sort of a friend but also sort of not. There is of course a revenge plot and the occasional incursion of marauding Indians, but you barely notice them over the nuances of the characters and their various sadnesses. It's less than genius but somehow more than the action oater you know the studio wanted.

A Star is Born (1976) - DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Barbra Streisand, Kris Kristofferson, Gary Busey, Oliver Clark
screenplay by John Gregory Dunne & Joan Didion and Frank Pierson
directed by Frank Pierson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It was no doubt celestially preordained that Barbra Streisand would unleash herself on some cherished Old Hollywood warhorse. But while the Janet Gaynor/Judy Garland hand-me-downs that ultimately felt her musical wrath were nobody's idea of untouchable masterpieces, they at least played their cards right in terms of credulity towards celebrity and damaged spouses. The Streisand/Kristofferson A Star is Born lacks genuine investment in its central relationship between alcoholic rock star John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson) and his protégé/lover Esther Hoffmann (Streisand). We're supposed to take their epic love on faith, to say nothing of the burned-out cynicism of the descendant rocker; there's a lot of talk about disaffection and anguish, but Frank Pierson's camera never catches it and the actors never quite express it.

Film Freak Central's Top 10 of 2006

I think the start of 2006 held so much promise mainly because it heralded the end of 2005. Not a doomsayer by any stretch, I find myself, at least in my own head, defending the state of film against facile diagnoses. "Books are always better than the movies based on them" and "They don't make good movies anymore" are the common phrases trotted out to simulate critical thought--better yet is the carrying around of the cross of "You just don't like anything." The truth is that books are only superior to the movies made from them about half the time (consider that almost all of Hitchcock's films are based on shitty literature); that good movies are no rarer than usual; and that disliking Blood Diamond, Dreamgirls, and The Holiday doesn't mean I don't like anything. Still, I admit to taking short rides with those facile phrases over the years, trying them on for size, seeing if and how far they will fly.

Sergeant York (1941) [Two-Disc Special Edition] - DVD

***½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, George Tobias
screenplay by Abem Finkel & Harry Chandlee and Howard Koch & John Huston
directed by Howard Hawks

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Before it settles into the martial flag-waver it clearly wants to be, Sergeant York is a terrific movie. Its story of Tennessee-born WWI hero Alvin York, heavily supervised by the man himself, is one of not just a military coup, but an evolving conscience as well--and if that conscience eventually cons itself into supporting that most pointless of international conflicts, the film is nevertheless a moving story of personal growth. Though it barely betrays the hand of Howard Hawks (it lacks the team spirit that courses through his oeuvre), the director tells the tale with the kind of conviction and nuance a lesser director couldn't provide. The movie feels York's progress from alcoholic ne'er-do-well to industrious would-be farmer and prospective husband, and instead of taking his emotions for granted, it expresses them with a noted lack of condescension.

1900 (1976) [Two-Disc Collector's Edition] + La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000) - DVDs

1900
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini
screenplay by Franco Arcalli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871)
****/**** Image B- Sound C+ Extras C+
directed by Peter Watkins

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In this corner, Bernardo Bertolucci, weighing in with a massive budget courtesy of Alberto Grimaldi and a cast that includes De Niro, Depardieu, Sutherland, Lancaster, Hayden, and Sanda. Over here we have Peter Watkins, working for peanuts on a single soundstage with a cast of nobodies recruited from Paris and its environs. The fight, as it turns out, is more than one over who can make the longest movie (5hrs15mins for Bertolucci, 5hrs45mins for Watkins) or grab the most attention. The issue is: what are the conditions necessary for a revolutionary epic--moreover, what conditions get in the way? This is the real purpose of comparing 1900 and La Commune (Paris, 1871) (hereafter La Commune), for each film throws down for the Communist cause but only one is conscious of the nuances. Where Watkins and his troupe constantly reframe the idea of what it means to foment revolution, Bertolucci thinks he's got the idea--and proves, through mindless repetition, that he really doesn't.

Dallas (1950) [Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection] - DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey
screenplay by John Twist
directed by Stuart Heisler

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I hate to be a stuck record, but this is the third consecutive Cooper title I've seen that is at once without serious subtext and possessed of reasonable entertainment value. I suppose historians could make something out of Coop's Southern rebel hero Blayde Hollister and his upward journey from post-Civil War guerrilla to Union lawman--I'm not qualified to judge the nuances of such a transference, though I can guarantee you that good times result. Plopping our man into the maelstrom of boomtown Dallas, the script does its best to bolster his uncomplicated man-of-the-west mystique and even hands him the girl of actual Marshal Martin Weatherby (Leif Erickson) as a going-away present. Nothing in the film is especially brilliant or resonant, but director Stuart Heisler manages the traffic to such a point that it moves in a steady stream without slowing down.