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.

Blue Thunder (1983) [Special Edition] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

**/****
DVD - Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
BD - Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern
screenplay by Dan O'Bannon & Don Jakoby
directed by John Badham

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover When I was in university, the off-campus students always had a cast-off '80s couch in their shared houses and apartments--you would go to a party and without fail encounter something upholstered in what looked like tan burlap with a collection of thick and thin brown or rust stripes close to the centre. I honestly couldn't remember seeing anything so horrid in anyone's house I knew during the '80s, but now that it was there in front of me, it brought back all the uncool childhood memories that the decade's official style story lives to deny. Blue Thunder is exactly like that couch: it's a ridiculous farrago of clichés intended to turn the cop movie into Star Wars (and The Parallax View into both) that winds up roping in a variety of cheesy tropes most people would rather forget they once responded to--though I dare say anyone of a certain generation will grin at least a little at what once passed for entertainment.

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.

Coyote Ugly (2000) [The Unrated Extended Cut] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

*½/****
DVD - Image A Sound B+ (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras C
BD - Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, Maria Bello, Melanie Lynskey
screenplay by Gina Wendkos
directed by David McNally

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover J. Hoberman once nailed the work of '80s trash director Adrian Lyne by calling it "the spectacle of female self-actualization (as enacted for a male viewer)." This shrewd playing of both sides of the gender fence figures heavily into Coyote Ugly, which combines a cheesy uplift story with bounce-and-jiggle eye candy to maximize the number of potential ticket buyers. But though it was produced by former Lyne benefactor Jerry Bruckheimer and practically channels the director's empty-calorie flash, the his 'n' hers formula doesn't work this time around: whatever else could be said against the dissipated Brit, there was a hysterical urgency to Lyne that his substitute, David McNally, can't match. You see the flesh, you hear the pain, but aside from some very obvious body-double skin added to the film for DVD, none of it adds up to anything you can't get from Moses Znaimer on a Sunday night.

Crimson Tide (1995) [Unrated Extended Edition] + Enemy of the State (1998) [Special Edition] - DVDs|Crimson Tide - Blu-ray Disc

CRIMSON TIDE
***/****
DVD - Image A Sound A- Extras B+
BD - Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, George Dzundza, Viggo Mortensen
screenplay by Michael Schiffer
directed by Tony Scott

ENEMY OF THE STATE
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Regina King
screenplay by David Marconi
directed by Tony Scott

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I had expected, on receipt of this pair of Tony Scott sagas, to be discussing a formally advanced director with nothing much going on upstairs. But the films' unfolding induced a melancholy sort of nostalgia I hoped I'd never live to feel, for Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State are Clinton-era end-of-history numbers that speak to a time of stasis, when it was believed that you had to trump up a crisis in order to have a movie. Their subtexts of total disbelief--that we'd ever be in war mode (Crimson Tide), that we'd ever have to worry about government surveillance (Enemy of the State)--seem whimsically complacent now that both premises have proved to be vaguely prescient and not much fun at all. And though the '90s were economically stagnant and loathed by most who lived through them, I can now sadly envision some American Graffiti clone in which this was the last thing glimpsed before everything fell apart.

The Jazz Singer (1927) [Three-Disc Deluxe Edition] - DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Cantor Joseff Rosenblatt
screenplay by Alfred A. Cohn, based on the play by Samson Raphaelson
directed by Alan Crosland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I'm going to dispense with standard practice for this review, because the enormity of The Jazz Singer's Three-Disc Deluxe Edition demands it. Not in terms of size (although one movie, one feature-length documentary, and about five hours of short films make for a pretty large package), but because the issues it raises are more than the main attraction itself can contain. What this DVD proposes is a glimpse into the shining moment when talkies were a novelty rather than a foregone conclusion and a whole range of culture teemed around them, unaware of its imminent demise. The Jazz Singer is no great shakes on its own; by all accounts, it's an antique of limited cinematic range and blindingly crude melodrama. Yet in placing it against the vast array of shorts that both preceded and led directly from it, one gets a sense of how truly seismic the coming of sound was. Watching the parade of performers adapt their bits to some very functional filmmaking is devastating--not only because the traditions that nourished them were wiped out, but also because a relationship with culture, with the accessibility of the performer and the non-suppression of the audience, was snuffed out for a piece of technology that liberated our dreams but left us alone in the dark.

My Best Friend (2006) - DVD

Mon meilleur ami
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet, Julie Durand
screenplay by Patrice Leconte & Jérôme Tonnerre
directed by Patrice Leconte

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover François (Daniel Auteuil) is an obnoxious antiques dealer without a friend in the world. This rather extreme fact lets you know that he's about to get his comeuppance, a life lesson in the form of an opposite number who will set him straight. Enter Bruno (Dany Boon), a far-too-nice cabbie who strangely volunteers to teach François sociability. That the plot hinges on a boring odd-couple helping each other is all you need to know about My Best Friend (Mon meilleur ami), the kind of thing Rob Reiner would make if he were French. Although it gamely suppresses the more bathetic elements of the story, they're there just the same: we're supposed to feel the warm good feeling of a jerk redeemed, and to that end, the film deploys every heart-tugging mechanism in the feel-good manual. That it doesn't milk them visually is less a tribute to the restraint of director Patrice Leconte than to his skill at playing a shell game with the audience.

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.

Meet the Robinsons (2007) - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
screenplay by Michelle Spitz, Stephen J. Anderson, Jon Bernstein, Nathan Greno, Don Hall, Joe Mateo, Aurian Redson, based on the book A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce
directed by Stephen J. Anderson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover You can't really get angry at a movie like Meet the Robinsons. Unlike most of the painfully credulous product that rolls off the Disney assembly line, it isn't interested in killing you with its dubious moral or bullying you into some dreadfully conformist position. But if it isn't ridiculously invested in all of the things that make kidpix horrible, those elements remain present and accounted for--just held at bay long enough to stop you from lobbing a brick through your monitor. Even the film's attempts at ironic wit come off as forced, as though the filmmakers could think of no other way to leaven the schmaltz. (This despite lacking the sensibility needed to pull it off.) The best you can say about Meet the Robinsons is that it appears to have been made with good intentions--but we all know about the road that's paved with those.

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.

Man Push Cart (2006) - DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval, Ali Reza
written and directed by Ramin Bahrani

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover As far as subject matter goes, Man Push Cart couldn't be more needed. A movie about an immigrant Pakistani coffee-stand operator is just what the doctor ordered in an American film culture devoted to the bourgeois angst of Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (when it's not padding Tom Cruise's wallet, that is), and it could have been a real antidote to the same's anti-political "Crisis? What Crisis?" mentality. Unfortunately, writer-director Ramin Bahrani's feature debut falls into the most obvious pitfall of social realism by treating its central character, Ahmad (Ahmad Razmi), like a lost puppy. There's no real dimension to Ahmad beyond his social-pariah status and the many indignities he suffers--and things only get worse when he gets a sort-of girlfriend named Noemi (Leticia Dolera), who makes him seem more a bashful teenager than a grown man stripped of his dignity. Though Bahrani doubtless understands the invisibility that Ahmad and co. endure, his idea of a credible hero is a protagonist treading water.

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.

The Invisible (2007) - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

*½/****
DVD - Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
BD - Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, Chris Marquette, Marcia Gay Harden
screenplay by Mick Davis and Christine Roum, based on the novel Den Osynlige by Mats Wahl
directed by David S. Goyer

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I never thought I'd find myself comparing a movie unfavourably to Disturbia, but the technical success of that hormonal-teenagers-in-peril flick bears directly on the failure of The Invisible, which aspires to the same kind of hooky teen angst without really understanding it. Say what you like about Disturbia (and I frequently do), it both completely understood and refused to condescend to the power fantasies and frustrated desires of its adolescent audience. The Invisible doesn't get that constituency--it's just cynically and transparently aimed at it. It goes through the motions of depicting the agonies of adolescence without ever seeming credible, as if the filmmakers knew they wanted to grab the teen market but had no desire to learn what that demographic actually cared about. When it throws in its supernatural device, it registers as exactly that: there's no metaphor, just a high concept in search of a purpose. The disparity between the two movies, Disturbia and The Invisible, shows why one was a surprise hit while the other sank without a trace.

Cujo (1983) [25th Anniversary Edition] - DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh-Kelly, Danny Pintauro, Ed Lauter
screenplay by Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier, based on the novel by Stephen King
directed by Lewis Teague

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It takes more than Lewis Teague to make a St. Bernard scary. His awkward, lifeless adaptation of one of Stephen King's less celebrated high-period novels is so thoroughly incapable of rendering its central "monster" even slightly disturbing that the end result is more hilarious than horrifying. What's worse is that Teague isn't good for much else in this movie, either: the extended set-up to Cujo's rabies rampage is completely lacking in style or subtext, leaving the occasional titter to be had during the climax as hollow compensation. The director is clearly treating this as a bread job, what with every story beat pursued apathetically and the loaded (if banal) violation of middle-class home and hearth left unexamined. King has peddled some pretty awful ideas in his day, but at least he can be said to have conviction.

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.

Funny Face (1957) [50th Anniversary Edition] - DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, Michael Auclair
screenplay by Leonard Gershe
directed by Stanley Donen

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There was a time, long, long ago, when we all thought we could get away with saying that pop movies were subversive. Not "could be" subversive, but were subversive: full stop, end sentence, new paragraph. To a certain extent, the penetration of pop culture into the academy was a necessary step to level the playing field and make every avenue of culture viable for discussion. The thing is, the playing field didn't stay level for long: instead of an environment that could handle Jacques Rivette and Judy Garland, the former got chucked aside as students and teachers raided their TV/movie/music greatest hits collections and wilfully misread their cheesy favourites as deep and complex texts. This was based less on a populist impulse than on a desire to not challenge oneself; it's way easier to deal with the pleasures in front of your face than it is to hunt in the dark for new things and grapple with their potentially difficult forms and subjects. While I wouldn't trade Douglas Sirk or Anthony Mann or Nicolas Ray for anything, one has to be honest about the situation. Sometimes Hollywood can disturb the status quo, but it can also use its professionalism, wit, and artfulness to pull off something as entertainingly retrograde as Stanley Donen's Funny Face.

Day Night Day Night (2007) - DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Commentary B+
starring Luisa Williams, Josh P. Weinstein, Gareth Saxe, Nyambi Nyambi
written and directed by Julia Loktev

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Somehow, Day Night Day Night proposes the logical impossibility of content-free terrorists. Normally such persons come armed to the teeth with ideological baggage (to say nothing of emotional baggage), yet writer-director Julia Loktev has decided to take one suicide bomber (Luisa Williams, billed as "The Girl"), drain her of any sort of political objective or personal motive, and just sort of follow her as she confirms everything with her superiors in a motel and moves on to her Times Square site of terror. The idea, I think, is to watch her do all sorts of mundane, quotidian things, then marvel at how they coincide with that ultimate act of violence. Perhaps inevitably, by about twenty minutes in you start to crave a little more than Williams playing with her cell phone--to yearn for a fuller understanding of her as a person. No such luck: Loktev is so committed to her minuscule hook that she empties her film of interest beyond crisp visuals, streamlined action, and tedious emptiness.

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.

Eat My Dust (1976) [Roger Corman: Supercharged Edition] - DVD

***½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Ron Howard, Christopher Norris, Brad David, Kathy O'Dare
written and directed by Charles B. Griffith

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In one sense, Eat My Dust fails completely at its stated goal--that is, to be a raucous car-chase comedy with squares goosed at every turn. Not that cops don't crash their rides and girls don't swoon at reckless drivers, but the movie isn't really interested in setting up the very obvious payoffs required by the genre. Director Charles B. Griffith, a long-time writer for the Roger Corman factory, is more interested in the ambiance of a racetrack, the genial nature of teenagers, and an easygoing feeling of freedom quite opposed to the hyped-up version in which these things usually traffic. True, Griffith fumbles for his vision more often than he nails it, and he fluffs every joke and action scene from his own, hopelessly-standard screenplay. But for a teen flick starring Ron Howard, Eat My Dust has plenty to keep you diverted and even mildly surprised--if not enough that it sticks to your bones.

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.

The Guns of Navarone (1961) [2-Disc DVD Set] - DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, James Darren
screenplay by Carl Foreman, based on the novel by Alistair MacLean
directed by J. Lee Thompson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover My brother Oliver is fond of citing movies where you actually root for the Nazis. Not because you like what they stand for, of course, but because the cinematic alternative suddenly seems much worse: fact of the matter is those fucking Von Trapps will simply not shut up in The Sound of Music, while anyone who would voluntarily off Jon Bon Jovi, as the Nazis do in U-571, can't possibly be ALL bad. To this very short list we may add the inexplicably popular guy-movie staple The Guns of Navarone. Supposedly trading on the selfless heroism of a commando unit behind enemy lines, the film has such a hair up its ass about the virtue of grim determination that it manages to bore you into an early grave within the first five minutes. Nearly three hours of watching Gregory Peck and his group of he-men bicker over ethics and strategy would make any thinking adult pray for some kind of violent deliverance. Nazis, Italian Fascists, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir--I'm not choosy about who shoots these jerks dead, just as long as somebody does it.

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.

Ghost Rider (2007) [Widescreen Edition] - DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras B-
starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Peter Fonda
written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Never let it be said that I have my finger on the pulse of the public. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me into a theatre showing Ghost Rider when it opened in the first quarter of this year, but that didn't stop it from ringing the box-office bell more times than it ever deserved. As it turns out, my aversion to the film proved largely justified: Though one can savour Ghost Rider's campier elements (i.e., the toploading of Nicolas Cage with nutty things to do), it's otherwise a pretty pallid affair, with professional but uninspired direction and a ludicrous screenplay both courtesy Daredevil perpetrator Mark Steven Johnson. The film cries out for the gonzo treatment of a Joe Dante, whereas Johnson acts like nothing untoward is happening as his characters say and do absurd things. Even the centrepiece action sequences have no flavour because he hasn't invested anything other than budget in the proceedings.

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.

The Caine Mutiny (1954) [Collector's Edition] - DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray
screenplay by Stanley Roberts, based on the novel by Herman Wouk
directed by Edward Dmytryk

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Caine Mutiny is appallingly enjoyable. Stuffed full of two-bit psychology and capped by a hilarious pontificating monologue from José Ferrer, it shouldn't really hold you the way it does; the movie is pure bull, yet the more of it you watch, the more you want to see. Herman Wouk's Pulitzer-winning novel serves as the basis for a lovely exercise in self-righteous man-talk, and for those who can sate themselves on such things, it's a guaranteed good time. Although The Caine Mutiny is the Ur-text of the vastly inferior A Few Good Men, it's no contest: where that more recent film comes off as smug and conceited in its slam-dunk moralizing and courtroom grandstanding, this one seems rather humbly concerned with the fate of the crew of the Caine, doggedly buying into cheesy but gripping didacticism right down to the ludicrous "twist" near the finish line.

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.

Comedy of Power (2006) - DVD

L'Ivresse du pouvoir
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Isabelle Huppert, François Berléand, Patrick Bruel, Robin Renucci
screenplay by Odile Barski and Claude Chabrol
directed by Claude Chabrol

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Things were going great. Two Claude Chabrols (The Bridesmaid and Violette Nozière) had made their way into my FFC goodie bag, both of them entirely worthy entries in his oeuvre. Maybe they aren't masterpieces, but they're nonetheless solid pieces of filmmaking that don't disappoint. So when Comedy of Power (L'Ivresse du pouvoir) arrived on my doorstep, I clasped it to my chest just knowing that the third time's a charm. Alas, no. Turns out the movie is the most routine Chabrol I can remember: smug, lacking in ambiguity, and possessed of some of the feeblest writing in the director's career. It's an obvious movie by the master of misdirection, a blunt knee to the groin by someone you can usually count on to go for the throat. Even as satire, it's nothing you couldn't get any day from Jon Stewart (with twice the panache and funny to boot).

The Bridesmaid (2004) - DVD

La Demoiselle d'honneur
***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A-
starring Benoît Magimel, Laura Smet, Aurore Clément, Bernard Le Coq
screenplay by Pierre Leccia and Claude Chabrol, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell
directed by Claude Chabrol

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Comparisons of The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d'honneur) to Hitchcock are almost inevitable, not only because such assessments are the lazy default position of critics when referencing suspense yarns, but also because The Bridesmaid's director, Claude Chabrol, has carved out a career as the French heir apparent to the master's title. That said, the distinctions between the two filmmakers are probably more interesting than the similarities: Chabrol's overall style is considerably more relaxed than Hitchcock's, and his approach to character is finally less judgmental. Here, for instance, in lieu of assigning blame to the damaged femme fatale of the title, he notes the thrilling nature of her transgression and the unappetizing prospect of returning to normalcy after succumbing to her lethal charms. Chabrol has always put women in the driver's seat of perversity and sexual wilfulness--something Hitch never quite had either the guts or the sympathy to pull off.

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.

Black Christmas (2006) - DVD

*/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C+
starring Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Andrea Martin
screenplay by Glen Morgan, based on the screenplay by Roy Moore
directed by Glen Morgan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The worst thing about Glen Morgan's Black Christmas is that there's too much of it. The original, by the tragically late Bob Clark, was a small masterpiece of economy, relying on little more than its one major set (a dormitory), an unseen killer, and some sorority sisters. But that was 1974, when nobody was paying any attention: by 2006, Hollywood had exchanged the cheap and the grungy for the overwritten and over-produced. The industry now demands rounded character arcs, and for this reason alone we're given a backstory for the film's slasher that nobody needed in addition to a padding-out of the action with forced cynicism and phoney characterizations. It's an overstuffed mess that fails miserably to evoke the fear and melancholy of a spectacularly defiled Christmas.

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.