Film Freak Central

I Know Who Killed Me (2007) + Captivity (2007) [Uncut] - DVDs

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME
**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras D
starring Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty
screenplay by Jeffrey Hammond
directed by Chris Sivertson

CAPTIVITY
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gilles, Michael Harney, Pruitt Taylor Vince
screenplay by Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura
directed by Roland Joffe

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I wasn't that upset about the bad reputation I Know Who Killed Me had acquired until I saw Roland Joffe's Captivity. I Know Who Killed Me recently took home Worst Actress and Worst Picture Razzie awards and at one point was listed on WIKIPEDIA as "one of the worst films ever made." Captivity, meanwhile, despite the not-insignificant controversy surrounding a disastrous billboard campaign and a scathing editorial by Joss Whedon condemning it sight-unseen, has all but vanished into obscurity. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense. Poor Lindsay Lohan (I'm sorry, but her pathetic Marilyn Monroe spread in the current issue of NEW YORK gets my sympathy sensors buzzing) is a staple of the tabloid industry and an easy target for hipster schadenfreude. I Know Who Killed Me has the trappings of a serious thriller and requires Lohan to do a little bit of stretching while playing off her off-screen persona. Captivity, on the other hand, is considerably less ambitious and considerably more exploitive, and as such, actress Elisha Cuthbert's participation can be dismissed as just another former TV star paying her dues in the horror genre.

Nancy Drew (2007) - DVD

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras D+
starring Emma Roberts, Josh Flitter, Max Thieriot, Tate Donovan
screenplay by Andrew Fleming and Tiffany Paulsen
directed by Andrew Fleming

by Walter Chaw Andrew Fleming's Nancy Drew isn't just bad, it's fascinatingly bad. From minute one, it's an example of what happens when nobody knows what the hell is going on and doesn't have the wit to hide it. It suffers from the same malady as Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in that it's only confusing if you walk into it believing there's something to figure out--but unlike that picture, this one has so little in the way of internal coherence that it's almost a work of surrealism. When teen sleuth Nancy (a fetching yet robotic Emma Roberts) awakens to find herself abducted in an old projection booth, she doesn't panic and search for exits, she stands up, collects her compass (why does anyone need a compass in the middle of Los Angeles? Dunno), and heads straight for a little window that she promptly opens onto a scaffolding, thus enabling her snickersnack escape. It mirrors an earlier scene in which Nancy discovers a letter pivotal to the picture's central mystery stuck in an old book that, as executed, has all the weight and import of every other indecipherable, non-linear, dada scene in the piece. I'm not suggesting, even, that there's no tension in the film, as there's tension galore in trying to follow, much less predict, its astonishing leaps of baffling, shit-headed incongruity. There are no impulses that make sense, no characters with either a toehold in our reality or a justification for their existence (and the only people who might give a damn about Nancy Drew as an institution are too old to see the film on their own and unlikely to take their baffled children, anyway). As a mystery, in the most literal sense, it's possibly the most mysterious film of the year.

The Butcher Boy (1998) + The Brave One (2007) - DVDs

THE BUTCHER BOY
****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Eammon Owens, Alan Boyle
screenplay by Neil Jordan and Patrick McCabe, based on the novel by McCabe
directed by Neil Jordan

THE BRAVE ONE
***½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt
screenplay by Roderick Taylor & Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort
directed by Neil Jordan

THE BUTCHER BOY

by Walter Chaw Opening with a series of panels from Golden Age comics produced circa the era in which the film is set (i.e., 1962), The Butcher Boy identifies Neil Jordan as a director with a secret yen for superhero fantasies. It certainly jibes with the filmmaker's affection for protagonists who, for whatever reason, live in private worlds, in fairytale dreamscapes populated by emblems of good and emissaries of evil--worlds where the most colourful places are the interiors of churches, where the characters' fears and failings alike are assets. Jordan's films are unfailingly about transformation (though sometimes they're about the failure to transform adequately, or quickly enough) and heavy with the illness of existential introspection--the Judas strain with which the modern superhero pantheon is sick. His heroes are rendered simple by their duality, confronted by the idea that for as hollow as it is to change to fit the demands of a particular time and place, it's equally useless to try to stay the same as the world falls down. Jordan makes the movies Terry Gilliam never quite made until Tideland; far from the compassionate fare many label it, his oeuvre is comprised of harsh little ditties about the voraciousness of the social organism and the bites it takes out of individuals living perpendicular to the absolute mean. For me, all of his films, from The Crying Game to Mona Lisa, from The End of the Affair to Interview with the Vampire, are pointedly concerned with the futility of compensatory measures in the lives of deviants.

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) [Two Disc Special Edition] + The Adventures of Aquaman: The Complete Collection (1967-1970) - DVDs|Justice League: The New Frontier - Blu-ray Disc

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER
*½/****
DVD - Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
BD - Image A+ Sound A- Extras B-
written by Stan Berkowitz with additional material by Darwyn Cooke, based on the graphic novel DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
directed by David Bullock

THE ADVENTURES OF AQUAMAN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
Image C- Sound C Extras D+
"Menace of the Black Manta/The Rampaging Reptile Men," "The Return of Nepto/The Fiery Invaders," "Sea Raiders/War of the Water Worlds," "The Volcanic Monster/The Crimson Monster from the Pink Pool," "The Ice Dragon/The Deadly Drillers," "Vassa, Queen of the Mermen/The Microscopic Monsters," "The Onslaugh of the Octomen/Treacherous is the Torpedoman," "The Satanic Saturnians/The Brain, the Brave and the Bold," "Where Lurks the Fisherman!/Mephisto's Marine Marauders," "Trio of Terror/The Torp, the Magneto and the Claw," "Goliaths of the Deep-Sea Gorge/The Sinister Sea Scamp," "The Devil Fish/The Sea Scavengers," "In Captain Cuda's Clutches/The Mirror-Man from Planet Imago," "The Sea Sorcerer/The Sea-Snares of Captain Sly," "The Undersea Trojan Horse/The Vicious Villainy of Vassa," "Programmed for Destruction/The War of the Quatix and the Bimphars," "The Stickmen of Stygia/Three Wishes to Trouble," "The Silver Sphere/To Catch a Fisherman"

by Ian Pugh Utterly incomprehensible thanks to a deadly combination of rigid adherence to its source material and a discernible lack of vision, the DC Animated Universe's latest stab at the direct-to-video market can only be described as a complete embarrassment for everyone involved. Adapting a graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke that isn't that great to begin with (it's basically a portable art gallery of Fifties-era superheroes, too long by half and tied together by a belaboured treatise on why the decade wasn't all it's cracked up to be), Justice League: The New Frontier doesn't attempt to build on the kernel of an idea therein. Instead, apparently weighing time constraints against the most exploitable elements, it pays lip service to the plot and reduces everything else to a series of biff!pow! pin-ups. I've been a steadfast defender of comic books for years now, but sometimes I wonder if artists and fans really know what has to be done to make them viable as an adult medium. Their long-suffering quest for legitimacy has seen a pronounced downturn since the introspective melancholy of Superman Returns suffered wholesale rejection for not featuring enough people punching each other in the face--and it appears that Bruce Timm and his crew won't be the ones to try to change minds. There's an awful moment in their last animated opus, Superman: Doomsday, in which the Man of Steel laments that he has saved the world a hundred times over but still hasn't cured cancer--shortly before the film pounds its audience with nearly a full hour of mind-numbing violence. The New Frontier contains a similar moment, except that it replaces social issues with political analogies so simplistic and heavy-handed they would make Emilio Estevez cringe. When Lois Lane (Kyra Sedgwick) says, circa 1954, that "whatever party, whatever administration, there'll always be bogeymen like [Joe McCarthy]" in summarizing that "we need a leader"--and then stares directly at the viewer--it's difficult not to see this entire enterprise as just a bunch of kids playing dress-up.

The Wiz (1978) [30th Anniversary Edition] - DVD

*/**** Image B Sound B+ (DTS) B- (DD) Extras C-
starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Richard Pryor
screenplay by Joel Schumacher
directed by Sidney Lumet

by Alex Jackson The Wizard of Oz is a quintessentially American work that could not possibly have been produced by any other culture. Doing a "blaxploitation" version of the story, then, seems considerably less tacky than doing one of Dracula or Frankenstein. Dorothy is a farm girl from Kansas living with extended family in something beyond the traditional nuclear-family structure. There's a strong sense of community in the film as well: in addition to Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, and the hired hands, Professor Marvel, the inspiration for the Wizard of Oz, is there at Dorothy's bedside when she wakes up. Dealing with themes of solidarity among the working class, The Wizard of Oz isn't a film about the black experience, but with just a little tinkering, it easily could be.

The Best of the Colbert Report (2005-2007)

Image B Sound B

by Ian Pugh Speaking strictly as a casual observer of the event, one of the lessons the recent WGA strike taught us was that talk-show scripts are pretty carefully tailored to their hosts' personalities. Consequently, one could finally determine, once and for all, why "The Colbert Report" is superior to its progenitor, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart": When you boil everything down to the bare essentials, it's easier to see that Stewart's treatment of world events, unlike Stephen Colbert's, is primarily composed of sharp chuckles and incredulous reactions. It's a belaboured but valid point that Comedy Central's hour of "fake news" has casually drifted closer to relevance as mainstream news sources continue their downward trend towards pop infotainment and outrageous bias, and by taking on the persona of an ill-informed, blowhard pundit, Colbert merely brings media politics to their logical extreme, presenting news items precisely as they matter to his infallible worldview. His mock inability to detect irony is a sharp, timely condemnation--sharp enough, at least, to send the White House Press Corps retreating to the fossilized, altogether toothless material of Rich Little after Colbert did his thing at their annual Correspondents Dinner. But one of the most important facets of Colbert's act--indeed, one that greatly extends the shelf-life of his shtick--is how he takes the accolades he receives as a satirist and effortlessly folds them to fit the monstrous ego of his onscreen character.

Shirley Temple: America's Sweetheart Collection, Volume 4 - DVD

CAPTAIN JANUARY (1936)
**/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Shirley Temple, Guy Kibbee, Slim Summerville, Buddy Ebsen
screenplay by Sam Hellman, Gladys Lehman, Harry Tugend, based on the novel by Laura E. Richard
directed by David Butler

JUST AROUND THE CORNER (1938)
**/**** Image B- Sound C+
starring Shirley Temple, Joan Davis, Charles Farrell, Amanda Duff
screenplay by Ethel Hill and J.P. McEvoy and Darrell Ware
directed by Irving Cummings

SUSANNAH OF THE MOUNTIES (1939)
*/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Shirley Temple, Randolph Scott, Margaret Lockwood, Martin Good Rider
story by Robert Ellis, Helen Logan, based on the novel by Muriel Dennison
directed by Walter Lang and William A. Seiter

by Alex Jackson I'm thinking the common thread connecting Captain January, Just Around the Corner, and Susannah of the Mounties, the three films that comprise the fourth volume of Fox's Shirley Temple "America's Sweetheart Collection", is the sexualizing of child superstar Temple. There's progress: in Captain January, she's a sexual object; in Susannah of the Mounties, she's a sexual actor; and in Just Around the Corner, she's in transition between the two roles. I promise you, this isn't me projecting onto these blandly innocent children's movies with my filthy little mind, it's right there on the surface. In fact, even when you reflect that they are essentially dealing with child sexuality, all three films remain blandly innocent. They never get at anything that might be genuinely subversive. The Temple persona is so plastic and anaesthetic that adding sex to the mix seems merely a logical extension of her brand.

Chappelle's Show: The Series Collection (2003-2006) - DVD

Image B|B|B+ Sound B+|B+|B+ Extras C|B|B-
episodes 101-112
episodes 201-213
episodes 301-303

by Ian Pugh Dave Chappelle's greatest asset and greatest liability both lie in his desire to be underestimated, which handily encapsulates the brilliance of Comedy Central's "Chappelle's Show" and why it lasted a scant two seasons. The series' wraparound segments consist of stand-up from Chappelle that's almost painful in its modesty--so much so that you never fail to be ambushed by his boisterous impersonations and trenchant observations. The same joke of "A Moment in the Life of Lil' Jon" (2.6) improbably works every time it's subsequently recycled, while Charlie Murphy's "true Hollywood stories" about Rick James add up to one of the greatest half-hours to have ever aired on television thanks to Murphy's dynamic storytelling and Chappelle's volcanic impression of James. But however unintentional it may have been, Chappelle's infectious enthusiasm, his ability to subtly burrow into your brain, also tends to manifest itself as a collection of catchphrases, ultimately distracting from the deceptive simplicity of his social commentary.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007) - DVD

*/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras C+
written by Alec Sulkin
directed by Dominic Polcino

by Ian Pugh Born the year after Return of the Jedi came out, I was left in limbo as far as the behemoth of popular culture that is Star Wars was concerned: too young to have seen the films when they exploded into the public consciousness, I was also a little too old to experience a religious awakening with their "Special Edition" revivals in the late-Nineties. I bore witness to a hundred "I am your father" jokes before any formal viewing of The Empire Strikes Back, and so, like other movie references I was not yet intellectually mature enough to piece together on my own (Rosebud is a sled, the Planet of the Apes is really Earth), I was more apt to laugh because the television kept telling me to laugh. It's a poisonous mentality, this vicarious sense of entertainment, and its infiltration of my generation is manifested in our exaltation of "Family Guy". Though the show brilliantly attacked social mores and narrative conventions, we were more impressed by its far-reaching knowledge of pop culture--mostly the kind of stuff we had only seen on Nick at Nite and the Internet--than by any of the subversive material therein. Ergo, once the fanbase had successfully rescued the series from premature cancellation, Seth MacFarlane and his crew became lazy, too often resorting to facile name-dropping.

The Assassination of Jesse James (2007) + Johnny Suede (1991) - DVDs

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
****/**** Image A Sound A
starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Sam Rockwell
screenplay by Andrew Dominik, based on the novel by Ron Hansen
directed by Andrew Dominik

by Walter Chaw Kiwi director Andrew Dominick's heroically pretentious The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (hereafter Jesse James) is a deflated anti-western in the tradition of Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand and Terrence Malick's Badlands. Broadly, it's a magnification of the Nixonian malaise that infected the early-Seventies, its suggestion that things aren't much worse now than they were then complicated by three decades of cynicism. As a piece, it's almost completely sapped of energy, though it isn't deadpan like Jarmusch's Dead Man. No, think of it as more of a dirge: not ironic, but post-modern; not a death march, but mournful. It's how J. Hoberman once (derisively) described Body Heat, a "remake without an original"--Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid corrupted by McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the whole of it shot through with an autumnal soft focus that looks exactly like the reunion sequence that pushes the third act of Bonnie and Clyde. It vaguely resembles an insect caught in an amber sepulchre. Yet despite its obvious pedigree, it is all of itself, infused with the spirit of the now, suffused with author Ron Hansen's transcendental prettiness (the film is based on his novel), and, as framed by DP Roger Deakins's painterly eye, overwhelmingly beautiful. Deakins is given the keys to the kingdom here and every moment of Jesse James looks like mythology pulled through a cinematic loom, often leaving the edges of the frame lanolin-indistinct as they trail off into history. I hadn't thought it possible to see our current crises of faith cast as romantic, but there it is.

Swamp Thing: The Series (1990-1991) - DVD

Image B- Sound B Extras C
"The Emerald Heart," "Falco," "Treasure," "From Beyond the Grave," "Blood Wind," "Grotesquery," "New Acqaintance," "Natural Enemy," "Spirit of the Swamp," "Legend of the Swamp Maiden," "The Death of Dr. Arcane," "The Living Image," "The Shipment," "Birthmarks," "The Dark Side of the Mirror," "Silent Screams," "Walk a Mile in My Shoots," "The Watchers," "The Hunt," "Touch of Death," "Tremors of the Heart," "The Prometheus Parabola"

by Ian Pugh In many ways the anti-Darkman, Wes Craven's Swamp Thing also saw a comic-book scientist irrevocably transformed into a monster at the hands of hoodlum saboteurs. Alas, unlike Sam Raimi with his masterpiece, Craven is unable to strike a balance between seriousness and silliness, falling too far in the latter direction before the picture finally collapses under its own snarky weight. It is, however, the film that enlightened me as to why B-movie anti-appreciation is such a worthless endeavour, since Swamp Thing never bothers to pretend that it's anything more than a couple of dudes in rubber suits wailing on each other. When you're making a movie in the "MST3K" mindset, as Craven appears to be, you don't really have a movie in mind, per se--you're just positioning actors as they recite lines from a script.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One (1992-1993/1996-1999) - DVD

Image B Sound B Extras B
"My First Adventure," "Passion for Life," "The Perils of Cupid," "Travels with Father," "Journeys of Radiance," "Spring Break Adventure," "Love's Sweet Song"

by Ian Pugh It's important to understand that Indiana Jones didn't make history cool, but even more important to understand that history didn't make Indy cool, either. "The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones" (formerly known as "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" and henceforth "Young Indy") purports to portray the daring archaeologist's early years as he travels around the world with his father (Lloyd Owen), meeting famous figures and going to great pains to teach the young'ns in the audience a thing or two about the artists and revolutionaries of the early twentieth century. Because the attempt to educate binds itself to a down-to-earth approach, the series completely ignores the fact that Indy's franchise appeal lies in a careful collision of the mundane and the fantastic, of reality and fantasy. It's one thing to demythologize the romantic violence often attributed to the Old West but quite another to try to demythologize something so immersed in theology and the supernatural that to abandon them is to lose something inextricably vital to the concept. Imagine if Raiders of the Lost Ark had ended with the Ark of the Covenant revealed to be an ornate box full of dust, sans the wrath of God, and you'll understand the basic problems that plague "Young Indy".

Con Air (1997) [Unrated Extended Edition] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

***½/****
DVD - Image A- Sound A-
BD - Image C+ Sound A- Extras D+
starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by Scott Rosenberg
directed by Simon West

by Alex Jackson The plot is simplicity itself: Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) has just completed his training as an Army Ranger; he goes to a local bar to celebrate with his pregnant wife (Monica Potter), gets assaulted by some thugs, kills one in the ensuing fight, and is convicted of manslaughter. Eight years later, his sentence is up and he hitches a prison flight that happens to be transferring a number of the country's most dangerous and renowned criminals, including Cyrus "the Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich), a brilliant psychopath who murders people just because he can; Nathan "Diamond Dog" Jones (Ving Rhames), a black militant who wrote a book in prison that is now being made into a feature film with Denzel in talks for the lead; William "Billy Bedlam" Bedford (Nick Chinlund), who slayed his wife's parents, brothers, and dog when he discovered the missus in bed with another man; and Johnny 23 (Danny Trejo), a serial rapist with 23 heart tattoos on his arm. ("One for each of my bitches," he explains.) Cyrus leads a revolt on the plane, killing or capturing all of the guards and hijacking the flight. But like Alan Rickman in Die Hard, Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege, or Powers Boothe in Sudden Death, he has no idea that one of the hostages he's holding is a classically-trained ass-kicker!

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Seasons 1 & 2 (2005-2006) - DVD

Image B Sound C+ Extras D+
"The Gang Gets Racist," "Charlie Wants an Abortion," "Underage Drinking: A National Concern," "Charlie Has Cancer," "Gun Fever," "The Gang Finds a Dead Guy," "Charlie Got Molested," "Charlie Gets Crippled," "The Gang Goes Jihad," "The Gang Gives Back," "Dennis and Dee Go On Welfare," "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom," "The Gang Runs for Office," "Hundred Dollar Baby," "Charlie Goes America All Over Everybody's Ass," "The Gang Exploits a Miracle," "Dennis and Dee Get a New Dad"

by Ian Pugh When confronted with the inescapable, unfunny vacuum that is Carlos Mencia, I used to tell people I hated that which was self-consciously controversial. I soon realized, though, that any property that genuinely pushes the envelope has to be aware of its material on some level; it's probably more accurate to say I hate that which features controversy as its only selling point. Hostel Part II's DVD cover may sport an obnoxious stamp guaranteeing that it is "shocking and explicit," but the film puts those qualities to use in a capitalist redux of The Wicker Man. "The Sarah Silverman Program." may touch on taboo subjects, but it does so to question the self-aggrandizing persona of its star. Then you've got "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (hereafter "Sunny"), which parades the horrible actions of its lead characters as if they meant something on their own, believing that its toe-in-the-water venture into forbidden territory exempts it from criticism. Take a long, hard look at the episode list above, and know that just about every teaser sequence in "Sunny"'s first two seasons is followed by a smash cut to one of those titles--and in this brief moment, find everything you need to know about the episode and its comedic trajectory. The quality of the writing itself is ultimately summed up by the subsequent opening-credits montage showcasing the various sights and non-sights of Philly by night. While personal experience dictates that sunny days and dispositions are indeed hard to come by in that city, the fact that the series must directly invert the implications of its name reeks of desperation to have its weak antics seen as darkly ironic.

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.

Metalocalypse: Season One (2006) + The Lair: The Complete First Season (2007) - DVDs

Metalocalypse: Season One
Image B+ Sound A Extras D+
"The Curse of Dethklok," "Dethwater," "Birthdayface," "Dethtroll," "Murdering Outside the Box," "Dethkomedy," "Dethfam," "Performance Klok," "Snakes n' Barrels," "Mordland," "FatKlok," "Skwisklok," "Go Forth and Die," "Bluesklok," "Dethkids," "Religionklok," "Dethclown," "Girlfriendklok," "Dethstars," "The Metalocalypse Has Begun"

The Lair: The Complete First Season
Image B+ Sound B Extras D
episodes 101-106

by Ian Pugh I never understood the appeal of Brendon Small's "Home Movies", a show I've always found more frustrating than anything else. Besides being hard on the eyes (its characters evolving from garish preschool squiggles to sharp-yet-shapeless Flash monstrosities), it gathers together a lot of smart, funny people to meander aimlessly through three or four of the same maddeningly droll scenarios. Teamed with "Conan O'Brien"/"TV Funhouse" alum Tommy Blacha, Small finally has a purpose to go with his aesthetic. Following the daily activities of death metal band Dethklok--idiot vocalist Nathan Explosion (voiced by Small), self-loathing bass player William Murderface (Blacha), balding Midwesterner Pickles the Drummer (Small), "the world's fastest guitarist" Skwisgaar Skwigelf (Small), and Norwegian naïf Toki Wartooth (Blacha)--"Metalocalypse" certainly allows its characters to ramble incoherently, but its premise demands such focus that even the incoherent rambling has to lead somewhere.

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.

Shark: Season One (2006-2007) - DVD

Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
"Pilot," "LAPD Blue," "Dr. Feelbad," "Russo," "In the Grasp," "Fashion Police," "Deja Vu All Over Again," "Love Triangle," "Dial M for Monica," "Sins of the Mother," "The Wrath of Khan," "Wayne's World," "Teacher's Pet," "Starlet Fever," "Here Comes the Judge," "Blind Trust," "Backfire," "Trial by Fire," "Porn Free," "Fall from Grace," "Strange Bedfellows," "Wayne's World 2: Revenge of the Shark"

by Ian Pugh The latest in a long line of television series to track the exploits of a douchebag-genius-misanthrope, "Shark" has a distinct leg up on progenitor "House" and the rest of the competition in its hiring of an undisputed master of such characters to lead the way. In a pantheon of pure indulgence, casting James Woods as the eponymous fast-talking asshole ranks up there with letting Nicolas Cage unleash his inner lunatic--and "Shark" certainly gives Woods a chance to go to town as famous defense attorney-turned-high-profile prosecutor Sebastian Stark. The actor almost completely embodies the pleasures to be found in the show, to such an overwhelming degree that his near-perpetual "step aside, junior" demeanour leaks through the fourth wall, simultaneously wowing the viewing audience and putting pretenders like Hugh Laurie firmly in their place.

Superbad (2007) [Unrated Extended Edition] - DVD

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader
screenplay by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
directed by Greg Mottola

by Walter Chaw Raunchy teensploitation, sexploitation, you-name-itsploitation--it is what it is, and for what it is, Superbad's a fairly decent entry into Judd Apatow's crusade for moral monogamy. What's good about it is unsurprising (Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's script is occasionally brilliant--like when one kid speaks of looking into a kind-hearted rival's eyes as "like the first time I heard The Beatles"), and what's bad about it is unsurprising, too, such as its determination to be beloved beneath the crassness and scatology. I've come to the conclusion that this warm-fuzziness suggests not a heart so much a pulled punch; you compare Superbad to something like Revenge of the Nerds and find the latter's themes of fellowship and family are unobtrusive, whereas the former is pushy to the point of searching glances and lingering goodbyes between its best-chum protagonists Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera). It's terribly insightful on that point, mind you, that boys of a certain age often hold as their truest and deepest love the friendship of another boy they've known through the war years of early adolescence and high school. When college, or marriage, or even serious girlfriends intrude, men are invited to grow old into their new roles as civilians in the civil sense of the word. If you don't, you have Rogen's character in Knocked Up, or Steve Carell's in The 40 Year Old Virgin--but even if you begin there, it seems this cycle of films is mainly interested in pushing them forward into the realm of the conventional.

RoboCop (1987) [20th Anniversary Collector's Edition] - DVD

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B- Extras A+
starring Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox
screenplay by Edward Neumeier & Michael Miner
directed by Paul Verhoeven

by Walter Chaw I feel like I must've seen RoboCop, one of the key films slotted into my moviegoing sweet spot, at least two dozen times one summer on a shitty bootleg I made by hooking two VCRs together--the now-defunct Orion being one of those companies that apparently never adopted Macrovision to discourage such a thing. I watched it in regular rotation with the big movies of 1986¹ (Aliens, Big Trouble in Little China, Highlander, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Manhunter, Cronenberg's The Fly², Blue Velvet) and 1987 (Predator, The Untouchables, Evil Dead II, Angel Heart, Innerspace, Near Dark, The Hidden, Full Metal Jacket, The Princess Bride, Hellraiser, Raising Arizona, The Living Daylights, The Big Easy, and Lethal Weapon). Those years in which I went from thirteen-to-fourteen in a haze of hormonal delirium (9½ Weeks, No Way Out, and Fatal Attraction are in my onanistic hall of fame) I consumed more film than I ever would again until fashioning movie-watching into a pastime resembling a career. I developed the ability to distinguish between popular movies and movies I was supposed to like (Manon of the Spring--the medicine of it going down smoother thanks to the not-shy Emmanuelle Béart) and began keeping journals of my adventures at the cineplex (Union Square Six, Green Mountain Six, Westland Two, Lakeside Two, Cinderella Drive-In--all gone now), carefully stapling my ticket stubs to the page as some tithe to my flickering, twilit devotionals. Movies were the angel/devil at war on my shoulders: morality and venality; virtue and hedonism; good and evil; Apollo and Dionysus; the sun and the moon. I ebbed and flowed with them. It would be another five years before I fully understood the import of cinema in articulating a good portion of my worldview--not to mention almost all of the strategies with which I deconstructed other mediums. I was lulled by the popular opinion of my generation that movies were not worthwhile objects of devotion and so I channelled my attention in formal education into poetry and literature--but the space between mattress-and-box-spring was always stuffed with this secret totem.

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.

The Sarah Silverman Program.: Season One (2007) + Robot Chicken: Volume Two [Uncensored] (2006-2007) - DVDs

THE SARAH SILVERMAN PROGRAM.: SEASON ONE
Image B- Sound B- Extras C-
"Officer Jay," "Humanitarian of the Year," "Positively Negative," "Not Without My Daughter," "Muffin' Man," "Batteries"

ROBOT CHICKEN: VOLUME TWO (UNCENSORED)
Image B Sound A Extras B
"Suck It," "Easter Basket," "1987," "Celebrity Rocket," "Federated Resources," "Dragon Nuts," "Cracked China," "Rodiggiti," "Password: Swordfish," "Massage Chair," "Metal Militia," "Veggies for Sloth," "Sausage Fest," "Drippy Pony," "The Munnery," "Adoption's an Option," "A Day at the Circus," "Lust for Puppets," "Anne Marie's Pride," "Book of Corrine"

by Ian Pugh Sarah Silverman is an all-or-nothing proposition in the most literal sense. Her comedic ability rests squarely on her willingness to subscribe to extremes and your willingness to accept them--helping foster the impression that she is at once completely earnest in her reprehensible behaviour and completely oblivious to the same. Her infamous concert film, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, fails so catastrophically because of the uncrossable chasm between the moviegoer and a live audience, and because of the constant reassurance therein that her act is just that and not some frank discussion with a genuinely horrible person. And yet there are bright spots, few though they are, to be found in several of the movie's lavishly-produced musical numbers, such as "I Love You More," which drops Silverman into a mod-rock video as she exhausts a laundry list of slurs and stereotypes, sharing awkward, uproarious silences with those she offends. It establishes that for her shtick to be truly successful in a broader (i.e., televised/cinematic) sense, Silverman must be taken outside the parameters of what a traditional, straightforward rendition will allow.

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.

Dr. Giggles (1992) [Twisted Terror Collection] - DVD

***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Cliff De Young, Glenn Quinn
screenplay by Manny Coto and Graeme Whifler
directed by Manny Coto

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I have a sentimental attachment to Manny Coto's Dr. Giggles. This was the movie I saw the night I lost my virginity--October 22, 2000. (I kept the receipt from the video store.) That was my third viewing of the film, the first being when I was 10. My mother rented it and we watched it with her boyfriend Johnny, who had already seen it on cable and called it "kind of a B-movie." I loved Dr. Giggles so much I showed it to my dad later that summer. Afterwards, I remember him chanting the "Dr. Giggles" nursery rhyme in jest.

Hostel Part II (2007) [Unrated Director's Cut] - DVD

***/**** Image A Sound B Extras C
starring Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips
written and directed by Eli Roth

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. A continuation of the original film's premise of murder as a commodity available to those who can afford it, death is the only earthly pleasure in the world of Eli Roth's Hostel Part II, not just as a metaphorical substitution but as an active replacement for every other human itch as well. Killing and dying are the only ways to earn respect from your peers--the only ways to pass the time and especially the only ways to get your rocks off. In this sense, the film simultaneously embraces and resists the notion of subtext in the images that seem to most warrant some kind of allegorical interpretation; when some poor bastard has his penis placed in mortal jeopardy, you might see it as an exertion of sexual supremacy--but more likely, the act is simply the last word in torture for a disturbing landscape where mutilation is the alpha and the omega. Where visual suggestions of the Grim Reaper are so omnipresent because the phrase "I am become Death" has become orgasmic in its literality.

Face/Off (1997) [2-Disc Special Collector's Edition] - DVD

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon
screenplay by Mike Webb & Michael Colleary
directed by John Woo

by Walter Chaw Arriving right smack dab in the latter half of a decade in American cinema that saw digital "reality" supplant filmic "reality" (and appearing the same year as James Cameron's Forrest Gump: Titanic), Hong Kong legend John Woo's high-camp Face/Off directly (and presciently) addresses issues of identity theft, terrorism, and the digital corruption of reality and indirectly addresses Woo's émigré influence on the modern action film. It's a key picture in a ten-year cycle obsessed with mercurial personality shifts--with sliding effortlessly in and out of various personae according to expediency and whim. (Michael Tolkin's awesome Deep Cover being the pinnacle of this trend.) Gauge the state of the nation from its most democratic entertainment; for his part, Woo--struggling to translate the heroic bloodshed of his HK work for western audiences and revealing himself in the process to be a starfucker with questionable taste in Hollywood stars (Christian Slater? John Travolta? Nicolas Cage? Seriously?)--went the self-parodic route with Face/Off (is that Joe Bob Briggs as a lobotomizer in a futuristic supermax, by gum?), wisely un-harnessing Cage's and Travolta's intimidating inner hams in turn to roam free-range through the picture's exuberantly ridiculous tableaux.

The Graduate (1967) [40th Anniversary Edition] - DVD

**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross, William Daniels
screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, based on the novel by Charles Webb
directed by Mike Nichols

WATCH IN iTUNES - USA|CANADA

by Walter Chaw Bonnie and Clyde's counter-cultural bridesmaid, Mike Nichols's The Graduate is the "easy" version of Arthur Penn's American nouvelle vague classic. It's too "straight," too deadpan--a safer Harold & Maude (think of it as doing for cradle-robbing what Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? did for miscegenation) with a similarly "hip" period soundtrack of previously-released hits (there Cat Stevens, here Simon & Garfunkel). 'Nuff said that the film failed to offend Bosley Crowther. Bonnie and Clyde is the blueprint for Quentin Tarantino--The Graduate is the blueprint for Wes Anderson; and while both 1967 pictures find a goodly portion of their bedrock in images mined from Truffaut, Godard, Antonioni, and the rest of the film-brat arthouse pantheon, it's only Bonnie and Clyde that speaks at all to the culture in revolt at the close of the Flower Power generation. By the climax of Penn's picture, the rebellious youth, contemplating integration into the society at large, are betrayed by The Father, gunned down in cold blood by The Law. By The Graduate's finale, there's just that old, one-second reconsideration of the wisdom of vowing to spend the rest of your life with an unbelievably beautiful, fresh-faced starlet in the full bloom of her attractiveness.

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.

Wolf Creek (2005) [Widescreen Edition - Unrated Version] - DVD + Hostel (2006) [Unrated Widescreen Cut] - DVD|[Director's Cut] - Blu-ray Disc

WOLF CREEK
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring John Jarratt, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath, Kesti Morassi
written and directed by Greg McLean

HOSTEL
**/****
DVD - Image A- Sound A Extras B+
BD - Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova
written and directed by Eli Roth

by Walter Chaw When I say that I enjoy a nihilistic film on occasion, I don't mean movies that aren't about anything. There are films that adhere to the philosophy that life is meaningless, that there's not much hope, that we might be in Hell or, better, a godless maelstrom of happenstance and entropy. And then there are ostensibly nihilistic films like Wolf Creek and Hostel that are more accurately examples of nihilism. Both inspired by real-life events*, they seem to use their basis in fact as protection against not actually telling a story with gravity or purpose. They're not governed by a prevailing philosophy or buoyed by any artistry--they have nothing beneath their grimy veneers to reward a careful deconstruction (though we'll try). Worse, they know only enough about their genres to (further) discredit them in the popular conversation. I look at these films as though I were observing an alien artifact, an insect with solid black eyes. If there's intelligence to them, it's not a kind I understand.

The Monster Squad (1987) [Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition] - DVD

**/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras A
starring André Gower, Duncan Regehr, Stephen Macht, Tom Noonan
screenplay by Shane Black & Fred Dekker
directed by Fred Dekker

by Bill Chambers Since I caught myself mouthing a portion of the dialogue while revisiting it for the first time in almost two decades, I think it's fair to say I internalized The Monster Squad through multiple viewings in my misspent youth. Still, as that TriStar horse sprouted wings, I realized I had no tactile memory of the film, no real recollection of what it felt like--and the answer is: it feels like 80 minutes, give or take. It's pabulum, albeit pabulum with a pedigree. The latest nostalgia trap to get a nerd baptism (an AICN-sponsored reunion screening at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse is more or less single-handedly responsible for the picture's splashy DVD release), it's at least better than the movie to which it's most often compared, the Steven Spielberg-produced The Goonies, if only because it's a good half-hour shorter and, by extension, comparatively unpretentious. Beneath its own Spielbergian façade, The Monster Squad works like those old horror hosts used to by sanctioning the classic monsters for a younger generation, whereas The Goonies aims only to erect a shrine to itself.

The Reaping (2007) - DVD

*/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, Stephen Rea
screenplay by Carey W. Hayes & Chad Hayes
directed by Stephen Hopkins

by Walter Chaw Brave enough to show a few kid corpses hanging up in a basement but not brave enough to actually be about a tormented woman murdering an adorable antichrist, Stephen Hopkins's The Reaping harvests its share of not-startling jump scares and not-interesting scripture for a frugal repast of mainstream diddle. Neither bad in the way of End of Days nor good in the way of Stigmata, it is instead another millennial picture about sacrificing our children to questionable causes and Old Testament vengeance wrought upon the unholy. I understand why we get films like this in 2007, films full of dead kids and religious wrath, but understanding why isn't the same thing as valuing the picture. Its confusion between being neo-conservative while believing that it's ultra-liberal muddies the final "twist" of the picture, posing the interesting conundrum of whether or not abortion is okay if the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Though it's pretty clear where the film has led its audience, that doesn't make the question any less thorny. (What it does do is make The Reaping's consummate, dedicated emptiness its only lingering aftertaste.) Count as its scattershot sources Rosemary's Baby, The Bad Seed, The Amityville Horror, Alien, I Walked with a Zombie, The Skeleton Key, Exorcist: The Beginning, and so on--the only purpose of composing such a list to point out how much the film allows for masturbatory skylarking, harking back to genre pictures better and worse.

Fracture (2007) [Widescreen] - DVD

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras D+
starring Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike
screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers
directed by Gregory Hoblit

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Although the term "cat-and-mouse" has already become synonymous with Gregory Hoblit's Fracture, it's something of a misnomer in that it implies a clever battle of wits. The film actually hinges on precisely two turnarounds of one-upsmanship between the designated cat and mouse: the revelation of the convoluted, coincidence-dependent plan to commit the perfect murder, and the fatal flaw in said plan (the "fracture," get it?) that eventually brings its perpetrator to justice--and as both are telegraphed far in advance, it's impossible to play along with the expectation for surprise. So inevitable are these conclusions, in fact, that I just gave up and accepted the ending, which sidesteps a first-glance case of double jeopardy with such vague dialogue, recited in such a bland tone of sotto voce, that I only got the basic gist of how we got from Point A to Point B. With Point B such a shrug-worthy certainty, I wasn't nearly confused enough to care besides.

28 Weeks Later (2007) - DVD

****/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras B
starring Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba
screenplay by Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, E.L. Lavigne, Jesús Olmo
directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Walter Chaw It's phenomenal. Where 28 Days Later... was saddled with ambition that exceeded its reach and, in Danny Boyle, a director who not only disdained the genre but has otherwise proven himself a grade-A tool as well, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's sequel 28 Weeks Later is brutally graceful in its vision of a nuclear family's dissolution as the metaphor for a broader, collective unrest. The triumph of the picture, though, is that it's as succinct and eloquent as a heart attack; as a parable of the Iraq War (popularly called "The War in Iraq," a subtle semantic distancing technique particularly trenchant to this discussion), it's all about aftermath and occupation. It's impossible to not compare it to the years and tens of thousands of fatalities since the declaration of "mission accomplished" when the picture begins with the reassurance that everything's peachy in dead-as-a-doornail England. Repatriation and reconstruction have begun six months after the outbreak of the first film's "rage virus," reuniting two kids, Tammy (future superstar Imogen Poots) and Andy (Harry Potter-named Mackintosh Muggleton), with their tightly-wound da', Don (Robert Carlyle). In an end-of-the-world opening in what only appears to be night (it's the first of several brilliant reversals), we see how a fissure develops in Don's marriage to wife Alice (Catherine McCormack), and of how that stress fracture becomes the foundation for the rest of the picture's relationships and politics.

Heroes: Season 1 (2006-2007) + Superman: Doomsday (2007) - DVDs

HEROES: SEASON 1
Image A Sound A Extras C
"Genesis," "Don't Look Back," "One Giant Leap," "Collision," "Hiros," "Better Halves," "Nothing to Hide," "Seven Minutes to Midnight," "Six Months Ago," "Fallout," "Godsend," "The Fix," "Distractions," "Run!," "Unexpected," "Company Man," "Parasite," ".07%," "Five Years Gone," "The Hard Part," "Landslide," "How to Stop an Exploding Man"

Superman/Doomsday
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by Duane Capizzi
directed by Bruce Timm, Lauren Montgomery & Brandon Vietti

by Ian Pugh "Heroes" is perhaps best described as a network-television attempt to recast Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's seminal Watchmen for the mainstream market. It actively reworks that masterpiece's major plot points for mass consumption, yes, but more to the point, it tries to bring superheroes into real-life situations--all the while harbouring, very much unlike Watchmen, an uneducated contempt for comic books. Offering lame turn-arounds and mocking references to superhero clichés without any apparent knowledge of comics published after 1960, "Heroes" believes that the medium is, now and forever, uniformly steeped in silly costumes, fatuous storylines, and unambiguous divisions between good and evil. This contrarian attitude towards its perceived progenitors leads it to pawn off its own superficial characters, scenarios, and rambling diatribes about fate and destiny as infinitely-superior and more complex alternatives. The fact that the final episode of the first season gives us a slightly-tinkered version of Evil Dead II's hilariously downbeat ending should leave no doubt as to the essential falseness of "Heroes" and its pretense of originality: the desire to move what is seen as a cartoonish enterprise into a more mature arena has already been explored countless times by countless artists over the last few decades, often from within the medium itself.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007) - DVD

*½/**** Image N/A Sound C+ Extras C
starring Erica Leerhsen, Henry Rollins, Texas Battle, Aleksa Palladino
screenplay by Turi Meyer & Al Septien
directed by Joe Lynch

by Walter Chaw As the first half is so abominable, colour me surprised that the second half of Joe Lynch's DTV sequel Wrong Turn 2 is actually good in a nominal way, dipping into the backwoods family well in a wonderfully derivative banquet sequence (borrowing from the first and third Texas Chain Saw Massacre pictures) and offering up bits of inventive, comic-book gore along the way. It's never scary and never tense, but it does feature scream queen Erica Leerhsen in another performance that's leagues better than the film she's in deserves. What's missing is that sense of pathos that defines the horror pictures of the '70s: Where the first film replaced it with glib ugliness, this one replaces it with smirking self-consciousness--neither tactic doing much to honour the idea that the family that slays together, etc., making the late-game sparks of brilliance ring suspiciously like glad-handing, happy horseshit. I appreciate that the cannibal hillbillies are given a family structure by the end of the piece--I just wish that that family wasn't the Cosbys. It's not really supposed to feel like a sitcom, is it?

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) [Global Warming Edition] - DVD

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B
starring Walter Pidgeon, Joan Fontaine, Barbara Eden, Peter Lorre
screenplay by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett
directed by Irwin Allen

by Alex Jackson Take a gander at the sleeve for Fox's "Global Warming Edition" of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The title is contained in a downward arrow in drippy, bright-red lettering. It's guiding us towards the main action, a gleaming submarine and lime-green scuba divers fighting off a one-eyed, giant red squid. Dig the curvy brushstrokes, the action lines around the charging submarine, and the flecks of paint signifying bubbles. The cast, meanwhile, is in the top-left corner: there's Walter Pidgeon with a Vincent Price moustache, Joan Fontaine with a face of granite, a gasping Barbara Eden, and behind them all, Peter Lorre pointing up at God knows what. Doesn't it just get your juices flowin'? If I were browsing the video store and happened upon this, I'd be tempted to purchase it sight-unseen, and I'd like to think it's rare that a DVD's mere packaging could encourage me to do that.

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.

300 (2007) [Two-Disc Special Edition] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc

*/****
DVD - Image B+ Sound A Extras B
BD - Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West
screenplay by Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller
directed by Zack Snyder

by Walter Chaw There's an idea in the ancient world about a "beautiful death," achievable for the warrior only in mortal, one-on-one wartime combat--an idea that may have contributed to the length of the Trojan siege, and an idea vocalized by one of the captains serving under Spartan King Leonides (Gerard Butler) in Zack Snyder's 300. Based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name, the film betrays a lot of the same macho aesthetic as Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of Miller's Sin City--but rather than content itself with the literally bestial terms of glory in the masculine psyche, it makes a play for allegory and equivocal morality (of all things) in the valorization of Sparta and the romanticization of a crushing military defeat. It's not that Leonides is seen martyred in the end in a tableau explicitly meant to evoke the passion of St. Sebastian, but that he goes out pining for his wife like a lovesick hamster, thus completing 300's devolution from remorseless Spartan militarism into gushy democratic idealism and all manner of liberal maladies. There's little profit in establishing the rules of this universe as uncompromising and brutal (it opens on a field of infant skulls--victims of a Spartan culling ritual of its own kind) if its intentions split time between justifying, in non-chest-beating terms, the decision to pit three-hundred against thousands while denying the Spartans their individual moments of "beautiful death" in favour of some collective date with pyrrhic immortality. History suggests that the Spartans, having exhausted their arms, died scratching and clawing with their bare hands; 300 suggests they died calling for their mothers and wives.

Going To Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006) [Unrated] - DVD

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
director uncredited

by Alex Jackson My cardinal rule about documentaries: they shouldn't just coast on the gravitas of their subject matter. They have to have some kind of perspective and work on their own terms. With that said, documentaries about movies are a bit of a blind spot for me, as I have a particularly strong difficulty separating my affection for the film and my affection for what it's about. I know that This Film Is Not Yet Rated isn't very good--it's childish and doesn't mount a terribly convincing case against the MPAA. But come on, I could talk for hours about the MPAA if I could find somebody who would want to listen. Cinemania? Yeah, the filmmakers didn't do much more than point and laugh at those guys. God help me, though, I had a little envy for them: I only wish I could theatre-hop in New York City, exclusively watching the films that interest me without worrying about money or having to review them. I could feel that my critical capacities were being tested in these cases, but I survived. However, when you have a documentary that isn't about merely the movies, but about slasher movies specifically--well, shit, any pretense of objectivity on my part has officially gone out the window.

Dexter: The First Season (2006) - DVD

Image B+ Sound A Extras C-
"Dexter," "Crocodile," "The Popping Cherry," "Let's Give the Boy a Hand," "Love American Style," "Return to Sender," "Circle of Friends," "Shrink Wrap," "Father Knows Best," "Seeing Red," "Truth Be Told," "Born Free"

by Walter Chaw "Dexter" sucks in that special Showtime way. It has nothing for the soul--not because it's nihilistic, but because it isn't. It's "The Facts of Life" crossed with "Matlock" starring a good-hearted serial killer; a superhero melodrama along the lines of "The Incredible Hulk" whose self-contained mysteries are held together ever so loosely by a season-long thread involving a manhunt. What I'm trying to say is that it's unbelievably patronizing. It's not nuanced, not laden with depth--it's a quirk machine, facile and shallow. See, a serial killer with heart isn't "deep," it's a sketch. It's the black guy who thinks he's white, the horny old lady, the hooker with a heart of gold. What begins as a really fun-seeming premise is undone utterly by a succession of weak scripts and, with the exception of Michael C. Hall's virtuoso turn as a sociopath working as a blood-spatter expert in Miami, slack performances. He's a lot better than the material deserves, it goes without saying, but like Mary-Louise Parker in the similarly pandering, similarly terrible Showtime series "Weeds", he's just good enough to prolong the show's already-lamentable existence. Maybe the real argument pertains to the wisdom of creating a series about something so heinous in such a way that it trips no sensitivity meters. It's a time bomb hidden in a teddy bear--and then the bomb doesn't go off.

Lucky You (2007) [Widescreen] - DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore, Robert Duvall, Debra Messing
screenplay by Eric Roth & Curtis Hanson
directed by Curtis Hanson

by Walter Chaw Trapped in the doldrums between Robert Duvall doing his elderly, patting people on the hand while he's talking bit and Drew Barrymore enunciating every word as though she's trying not to let the marble fall out, Eric Bana struggles against stardom once again but states a case for it just the same. The vehicle this time is Curtis Hanson's Lucky You, a mainstream poker picture that re-establishes Hanson as a less ambitious James L. Brooks (which isn't altogether a bad thing). Bana is compulsive gambler Huck Cheever, named after an American writer and an antiquated term for a wheeler/dealer, thus neatly encapsulating his character as not only a con-man and a bit of an asshole but also moony and eloquent. There's nothing at all surprising about the way the film moves towards its conclusion, and even its twist loses its lustre beneath the steady drone of its interiors. It's an un-ironic love story featuring a problem gambler, a girl fresh off the bus, and a father/son subplot packing all the subtlety of a heart attack--which makes it, of course, suddenly Pollyannaish when it yearns so mightily for world-weary. Lucky You looks like a gambler, but it acts like a diagram instead of a train accident.

Deadwood: The Complete Third Season (2006) + Rome: The Complete First Season (2005) - DVDs

DEADWOOD: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON
Image A Sound A Extras A+
"Tell Your God to Ready for Blood," "I Am Not The Fine Man You Take Me For," "True Colors," "Full Faith And Credit," "A Two-Headed Beast," "A Rich Find," "Unauthorized Cinnamon," "Leviathan Smiles," "Amateur Night," "A Constant Throb," "The Catbird Seat," "Tell Him Something Pretty"

ROME: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image A Sound A Extras C
"The Stolen Eagle," "How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic," "An Owl in a Thornbush," "Stealing From Saturn," "The Ram Has Touched The Wall," "Egeria," "Pharsalus," "Caesarion," "Utica," "Triumph," "The Spoils," "Kalends of February"

by Walter Chaw HBO is the watermark for televised drama, no question. With "The Sopranos"--which began like high-concept and ended like avant-garde--as their flagship, they've progressed through the psychic devastation of "Six Feet Under" (was there ever a final episode of any series so steeped in existential terror?), the insouciance of "Entourage", the social nihilism of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", and the repugnant popular deviance of "Sex in the City", only to find as their bedrock circa 2007 something so slight (if so brilliant) as "Flight of the Conchords". Two contenders for that crown, "Rome" and "Deadwood", alas received their walking papers, victims of too high a budget, too heavy a burden of viewer investment (can I confess that I didn't like "Deadwood" until I started it from the first episode?), and too niche a viewership. I hesitate to compare even the extraordinarily-similar-feeling "Rome" to the channel's short-lived (equally short-lived, in fact: two seasons) "Carnivàle", but I do wonder whether "Deadwood" and "Rome" weren't nixed because they weren't interested in seducing new lovers and may have seemed, from the outside, like so much dry coming and going, talking of Michelangelo.

The Warriors (1979) [Ultimate Director's Cut] + A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006) - DVDs

THE WARRIORS
***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras C
starring Michael Beck, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, Deborah Van Valkenburgh
screenplay by David Shaber and Walter Hill, based on the novel by Sol Yurick
directed by Walter Hill

A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS
**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Robert Downey Jr., Shia LaBeouf, Chazz Palminteri, Rosario Dawson
written and directed by Dito Montiel

by Walter Chaw Walter Hill's The Warriors adapts a Sol Yurick novel which was, in turn, inspired by Greek soldier Xenophon's Anabasis, the account of a mercenary army stranded in the heart of Mesopotamia circa 400 B.C. that fought its way north to the coast of the Black Sea and then to safety. Accordingly, The Warriors is about the titular New York street gang--based in Coney Island, naturally--fighting its way through enemy territory from The Bronx back to the coast. That they've ventured so far from home has to do with a giant gathering of the city's gangs to a rally/riot called by charismatic kingpin Cyrus (Roger Hill) in the hope of uniting the Big Apple's diverse miscreants under a common flag. Shades of Abbie Hoffman's Chicago Democratic Convention Yippie movement if you squint hard enough, but closer to the truth to locate the shard of revolution eternally sharpened against the promise that if all the minorities were to rise up collectively, they'd be the majority. Luckily for the majority, much of the minority is what it is because of its total inability to stand behind a common cause. Sure enough, once Cyrus is assassinated and the Warriors blamed, our heroes face a midnight odyssey through badlands patrolled by harlequin-painted baseball goons, Amazon/succubi, and overalls-wearing neo-hillbillies.

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.

Unaccompanied Minors (2006) - DVD

ZERO STARS/**** Image D+ Sound B- Extras D+
starring Lewis Black, Wilmer Valderrama, Tyler James Williams, Dyllan Christopher
screenplay by Jacob Meszaros & Mya Stark
directed by Paul Feig

by Walter Chaw The bare bones of it--misfit kids stranded, The Breakfast Club-like, in a relationship pressure-cooker--seems tailor-made for "Freaks and Geeks" co-creator Paul Feig, but the fact that it plays out in a series of deadening, eternally-unspooling pratfalls and Catskills set-ups and payoffs proves that it's possible for good artists to produce bad art. Feig getting work at all (ditto erstwhile partner-in-crime Judd Apatow, who's sadly already used up a good bit of good will) in Hollywood suggests that the same blindness that finds consistent employment for Michael Bay and Brett Ratner will sometimes smile on good, smart people like Feig. That being said, Unaccompanied Minors is appalling. If it's not offensive in any substantive sense, it's bad by almost every measure of quality. People defending things like this children-running-amuck slapstick piece--which demonstrates precious little in the way of focus or restraint (think Baby's Day Out or any Home Alone sequel, but without the depth)--because their children like it would have their kids taken away from them were they to apply this rationale to food, toys, friends, schools, car seats, and so on. The reason we don't let youngsters vote and sign contracts is that their judgment is for shit, and if we want to keep them from setting themselves on fire we ought to be protecting them from this stuff, too, not indulging their affinity for it.

Succubus (1968) - DVD

Necronomicon - Geträumte Sünden
**/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B-
starring Janine Reynaud, Jack Taylor, Howard Vernon, Adrian Hoven
screenplay by Pier A. Caminnecci
directed by Jess Franco

by Alex Jackson Jess Franco's Succubus begins with heroine Lorna (Janine Reynaud) torturing and molesting a man chained to a stake while his similarly bound, bloodied, and partially-nude lover watches. The lover protests, so Lorna tortures her some until she passes out. She then goes to the man and plays with him a bit before skewering him with her ceremonial knife. The lights fade up and an audience applauds. The snuff scene was simulated. It's part of an act Lorna performs at a chic nightclub. This opening is the most eloquent and lucid scene in the film, for it establishes that director Jess Franco no longer has a responsibility to be eloquent and lucid. Succubus is going to be told subjectively through the perspective or Lorna, who is going schizophrenic (or something) and is increasingly unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Thus, whatever we see might actually be happening--and then again it might not be. We never really know.