The Victim

By Iloz Zoc

"Maybe you can reenact the mystery?" said Lawn Gisland. He stretched his unusually long legs out in front of him and yawned. "Like Ting, 'cept less'n the melodrama a mite." He pulled at his cookie duster. "Say, Zoc, squeeze me 'nother one of those cappurinos, por favor."

"Sure pardner," I said, firing up the old cappuccino steam engine. The sound of pent-up steam escaping echoed through the cinematorium.

Zombos continued to look high and low for his eyeglasses, holding up our viewing of the Thai horror film, The Victim. We were halfway through it before Zombos needed to hit the toilet; three large mocha cappuccinos were a record for him. When he came back he realized he misplaced his second pair of eyes.

Lawn stood up, all six feet and three inches of him, and joined the search. Having starred in numerous Westerns on the big screen during the thirties and forties, he and Zombos went way back together. He hung up his spurs in the late fifties and retired to Florida to wrestle gators for the tourists. Getting bored with that, he had an itch and scratched it by touring as a circus cowboy, doing trick shooting and fancy riding. He was visiting the mansion while the Smith and Walloo Brothers three-in-one tent show set up in Long Island. For a man his age, he didn't show it. Zombos often joked that Lawn must have a decrepit-looking portrait in his attic like Dorian Gray.

"Here. Wet your whistle while you search." I handed the cappuccino to him. He downed it in three gulps. Something crunched sharply under his right Black Jack Hornback Alligator boot heel as he handed me his empty mug. Zombos froze, his eyes widened.

"Found them," said Lawn. He stooped to pick up them up and handed the mangled pair back to Zombos.

After I hastily retrieved Zombos' second pair of eyeglasses from the library we continued our viewing of The Victim.

Considering Thailand's strong superstitions about ghostly phenomena, it's a wonder Ghost Hunters Jason and Grant haven't visited that country yet. In The Victim, spirits are everywhere, especially as the sprightly aspiring actor Ting (Pitchanart Sakakorn) goes around reenacting the victim's part in real-life crime scene recreations -- places where bad karma is rife.

One spirit in particular piques her interest, and challenges her acting skills to the fullest as she reenacts the circumstances surrounding the disappearance and death of Meen, a former Miss Thailand. It soon appears that Ting is losing herself as she prepares for the reenactment of the crime, succumbing to violent flashbacks involving Meen, and disturbing, sometimes bloody, visitations by earthbound ghosts looking for help or vengeance.

The ghostly imagery in The Victim, directed by Monthon Arayangkoon, moves between poetically eerie glimpses of a genuinely unnerving twilight world filled with pitiable and vengeful spirits at arm's reach, and the usual shocks we are now accustomed to. The pacing slowly moves the story along, and the interplay of bright colors across light and dark scenes, contrasting with darker-toned scenes earlier in the film, provides visual cuing for the sudden story-within-the-story transition. Just when you think you know what's going on, bingo!, you scramble for the remote to go back and see if you missed something.

In an unusual move for Thai horror, Arayangkoon pulls the rug out from under Ting, Meen, and the whole criminal scene investigation storyline by beginning a new storyline, creating a story you thought was "real" within the real story. While The Victim starts out as a ghost story, it morphs into a "who's the ghost?" story, and even then, not satisfied with changing Ting's role completely, and the principal ghost involved, the reasons for all the vengeful havoc befalling Ting and others is revealed to be entirely different from what it seemed to be.

The Victim is an ambitious, more complex film than usually comes out of T-Horror cinema, and it can be confusing, especially with the little-helpful English subtitles that fail to capture the nuances of the Thai language; but it's still a pleasantly surprising departure from the usually straightforward horror fare we've come to expect from Asia. The cultural oddity, for us, with Thai police reenacting crime scenes using actors and the alleged criminal to provide the press with a photo op, and perhaps the spirits of victims with a modicum of peace, separates us from the business as usual horror shown in American cinema, and puts us off-balance immediately.

Drawing strength from its cultural perspectives, the film draws on real crimes, and was shot on the actual locations where victims met their violent denouement. Building on this unpleasant reality, the film's artificial reality has an earnest sense of its supernatural underpinnings. The carefully accentuated coloration of these locations, Ting's flashbacks, and the ghostly phenomena that befall unsuspecting victims, create stark contrasts against each other, especially the later scenes, using a carefully wrought palette that is artfully above the over-used, blanched fluorescent lighting simplicity seen in Saw, Dark Corners, and other American hard horror endeavors.

With the revelation of the second story, entering on the heels of a revealed lesbian relationship, the film becomes a who's next? more than a whodunit?, and characters are powerless against a malevolent spirit that neither a traditional Thai spirit house or magic-bestowing tattoo inked with a bamboo needle will appease or avert. In one notable scene, framed through a narrow doorway, a pair of ghostly hands, at the ends of stretching ... stretching ... stretching arms, reach out to grab one unsuspecting victim.

Watch this film late at night, when all is quiet and the world is right, and you just may find yourself checking to see if the front door is locked. Again, and again. Just remember that doors don't stop ghosts, especially when you're alone and in the dark.

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Posted by lmckay at 09:56 PM

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Cinema 16: European Short Films

By Glenn Abel

There are works from famed directors in the DVD collection Cinema16: European Short Films -- Lars Von Trier, Nanni Moretti, Ridley Scott, and Christopher Nolan -- but the best stuff comes from artists unknown to most of us.

Producer Luke Morris unspooled the Cinema16 DVD series in Europe a few years back, compiling award-winning British shorts and first films from top directors. His next DVD reached out to European directors. (Neither was region 1). This Cinema16 is tailored for the U.S., and it looks like we got the better deal -- the double-disc set contains the greatest hits from the first two editions and then some.

In the U.S. at least, people who don't go to film festivals rarely see shorts. Cinema16 certainly works as a high-impact advertisement for the art. Every film is worth seeing, no shrug-inducing student films. All have major festival awards as calling cards. Two won Oscars.

Most of the shorts have commentaries; a few do not. This makes for two experiences -- the viewing, and then the director explaining what was what with the film. Some of these films are abstract or just plain odd, so it's interesting to put your perceptions to the test right away.

Here are my favorites. They alone justify buying this DVD.

Je T'aime John Wayne: Fun high-energy profile of a London hipster who fantasizes he's living in Paris as a way-cool Jean-Paul Belmondo clone -- until his mum calls. Filled with visual references to the new wave classics. Our Belmondo's Jean Seberg-muse turns up at a cinema, and they're off to promenade their free spirits. Cool quick epilogue. Directed by Toby MacDonald and produced by Cinema16's Morris. In gorgeous hard-contrast black and white. "London looks how we wish it looked," MacDonald says in the commentary.

Before Dawn: Shot only at dusk, this Hungarian film uses images and no discernible dialogue to tell its tale of refugees hiding in a high wheat field. A truck arrives to carry them to freedom, but state police move in quickly, aborting their hopes for a new life. The place and time are ambiguous, but the evils of the late 1950s in that country come to mind. Equally beautiful and heartbreaking. Directed by Balint Kenyeres, whose commentary is mostly about the challenges of filming Before Dawn.

Wasp: Feels like a Mike Leigh film in a hurry (23 minutes). Won the Oscar for short film in 2005. A young single mom of four yearns to party at the pub, but can't afford to feed her kids, let alone get child care. She cleans up real nice and drags the children to the local bar, where they wait outside while she keeps a date with an old flame. The kids end up eating dumpster food while their mom pleases the guy in a car. The film's magic is in its slightly sympathetic portrait of the lousy mother, who finds some hope before it's all over. Remarkable. Directed by Andrea Arnold.

The Man Without a Head: Everyone needs a head, but our hero is fresh out. A date with a beautiful woman looms; the headless man dances an Astaire number; a golden glowing industrial city awaits outside. For this romantic evening, he decides to splurge on a head. So many to choose from ... A lovely blend of effects and live action. The elegant music sets the tone. Created by Juan Solanas, who says: "Short films are one of the last real places for artistic freedom."

Six Shooter: A man's wife of many years dies at 3 a.m. It's all downhill from there. The businessman boards a train that rails through rural Ireland. His fellow travelers are a couple whose infant has just died and a motor-mouthed punk eager to display his wit and heartlessness. A 27-minute short that feels like a feature film. The deft blend of drama and black humor earned Six Shooter an Oscar. Directed by playwright Martin McDonagh (The Pillowman).

I also admired the live action shorts World of Glory, about a "typical Swiss clock" of a realtor whose gray life includes acts of genocide; Nanni Moretti's film-biz chronicle The Opening Day of 'Close-Up'; Gasman" about some kids who learn their father's domestic secrets; and the animated freakout Rabbit, made with old weird colorful stickers from first grade reading books.

Ridley Scott contributes the tedious student film Boy and Bicycle. Lars Von Trier has a so-so tale of a woman terrified of the sun. Christopher Nolan lends a black and white tale of man vs. bug.

The DVD menu is a work of art in itself, a modular display of the films that seems as if they were competing, calling out to the viewer. The audio loop is strange and compelling, with lines from the shorts that'll soon become familiar.

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Posted by lmckay at 09:37 PM

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Things To Do

By Lisa McKay

It's often said that young adults today experience a protracted adolescence, putting off major life events like marriage and family until well into their 30s and often returning to the family home while navigating the rocky shoals of real life. After all, home is, as Robert Frost wrote, "the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Not surprisingly, young filmmakers are mining the story potential of this trend, and this is one such offering.

Described on the slip case as "Garden State meets My Name Is Earl", Things To Do is the first feature length offering from Canada's Dot Film Company. The 85-minute film was directed by Ted Bezaire and co-written by Bezaire and Michael Stasko, who also stars. This film will evoke memories of adolescence for anyone who grew up in middle class suburbia. The comparison to Garden State is an apt one in that both stories involve homecomings and awakenings of sorts, but they travel slightly different routes to arrive at the same place, with Garden State getting there via a romance while Things to Do travels through buddy movie territory.

This is the story of Adam, a twenty-something office worker who returns to his parents' home to get his head together during a life crisis. We know that Adam has rather precipitously left his office job, the kind of soulless place where people inhabit cubicles and aren't expected to think much, either outside or inside the box. His return to the family home isn't exactly celebrated by his parents. He endures a silent ride home from the bus station with his father, who seems at once disinterested and disappointed in his son. His mother ponders when he'll return to his own place and uses his room at home as storage space even while he's occupying it. Devoid of affect, he sinks obliviously into his suburban surroundings and appears content to while away his days by the pool.

His mother, however, tells him he has to contribute to family life. She inexplicably asks him to do the grocery shopping while simultaneously denying him the use of the car because she needs it to go bowling (his solution is to do the marketing in multiple bicycle trips). At the grocery store, he runs into Mac (amiably played by Daniel Wilson), an old acquaintance from childhood. Mac offers to drive Adam and the groceries home, and an unlikely friendship develops between the withdrawn Daniel and the decidedly offbeat Mac. The pair makes a list of "things to do" and as you might expect, the remainder of the movie chronicles their adventures as they set out to cross things off the list (and therein lies the comparison to My Name Is Earl). Along the way, we learn a bit more about why Adam left his job and came back home and Adam learns something that Mac already knows -- that the best way to deal with life is to live it.

Things To Do was made on a small budget, and while those budgetary constraints are apparent, they in no way detract from the story, which is solidly written and very funny in parts (of note here is a subplot involving a soapbox derby). A few of the minor roles were clearly filled by non-actors (or at least actors with a minimum of experience) but instead of seeming like a flaw, this somehow adds to the film's charms. Stasko is up to the task of portraying Adam initially as someone who's been slapped senseless by a traumatic event, and one can watch his character become more animated as the story progresses and he shakes off his lethargy, while Wilson's take on the flaky but likable Mac is the performance highlight of the film. In short, this sometimes funny and sometimes painful story of young 20-something adulthood rises well above its budgetary limitations with a well-written script, a couple of decent performances, and an abundance of good will.

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Posted by lmckay at 05:04 PM

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Neverwas

By Ray Ellis

It rarely bodes well for a movie when the studio skips the theatres altogether in favor of a straight to DVD release. It’s even more perplexing when such a movie boasts a cast the likes of Aaron Eckhart, Ian McKellen, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, and William Hurt. With such a stellar ensemble, it stands to reason the project would garner at least attention, if not respect.

Neverwas, by writer and first-time director Joshua Michael Stern, valiantly attempts to be a meaningful, uplifting film. Unfortunately, what emerges instead is a movie desperately trying to find its identity. Eckhart plays Zach Riley, a supposedly brilliant Yale researcher who convinces the director of Mill Wood psychiatric hospital (Hurt) to hire him as a staff psychiatrist, a position for which he’s vastly overqualified. Unbeknownst to the Hurt character (since background checks apparently aren’t done at this hospital), Zach’s deceased father (Nolte), an acclaimed novelist best known for the children’s fantasy “Neverwas,” had been a patient there shortly before his suicide. Conveniently enough, Zach encounters a delusional schizophrenic named Cedric (McKellen) during a group session. Cedric insists that Zach is the long-lost savior of Neverwas, which Cedric insists is a very real place, an enchanted land of which he is king.

The problem with Neverwas is everything falls far too neatly into place, without ever engaging the viewer in the story. Zach’s love interest (Britanny Murphy) is conveniently introduced as a childhood friend who’s been enamored of “Neverwas” all these years. Jessica Lange, as Zach’s alcoholic mother, serves only as a bridge between his past and his current state. Sadly, both characters are drawn so broadly that they serve as little more than buoys to keep the plodding story afloat. Only Nolte, seen only in gauzy black and white flashbacks, lends credibility to the premise as the tortured, drug-addled writer of “Neverwas.”

Other movies have blurred the lines between fantasy and reality much more deftly — The Fisher King and Finding Neverland come to mind. But where those films coupled a sense of wonder with an empathy for the mentally ill, Neverwas skirts those facets in favor of sugar-coated melodrama. As a consequence, its potential metaphors are discarded, leaving only a shell of a story rife with obvious clichés. What we’re left with is a film that has the aura of a made for Lifetime TV movie. Even its climax is contrived so as to provide a happy, if ill-advised ending.

Neverwas, with its tagline of “Every fairy tale needs its hero,” held the promise of allegory, and indeed, it could have been. Had Stern focused his story rather than let it slip into pandering, and had the actors involved not called in their performances, and had they perhaps not gone with light and airy cinematography against a droning Philip Glass soundtrack, it might have been a movie that spoke to the human condition. The opposite happened, though, leaving Neverwas as a film more about might have beens than it ever intended.

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Posted by lmckay at 04:55 PM

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The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark

By Sombrero Grande

Since the cancellation of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the masters of mockery behind the cult hit TV show have been finding ways to continue to do what they do best: riff on bad movies. Mike Nelson (who served as head writer of the show and host for the second half of its run) has recently been providing his own sarcastic commentary tracks on DVD releases from Legend Films (such as the colorized Plan 9 From Outer Space) and even started up a website, RiffTrax, to offer up downloadable riffs for newer or more popular films. Occasionally joining him in these endeavors have been Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (who performed MST3K’s robot-puppet hecklers as of the series’ conclusion), but now the three have reunited fully for a new direct-to-DVD series dubbed “The Film Crew.”

Now, the first thing a fan of MST3K is going to want to know is: how does The Film Crew compare to watching Mike and the ‘bots aboard the Satellite of Love? The differences are really pretty minor. First off, there are no robot puppets, silhouettes covering the movie or sci-fi frameworks with The Film Crew. Instead of receiving bad movies from a mad scientist as a kind of experiment, now the trio receives bad movies from an eccentric billionaire and are tasked by him with providing commentary tracks for old films that previously had none. The rest is pretty much the exactly the same.

The Film Crew’s first offering is a bleak, borderline nonsensical 1960s drama about strippers entitled Hollywood After Dark. In the film, a young (but not too young) Rue McClanahan dreams of becoming an actress but is saddled with a lowly stripper's existence. She meets a junk dealing diver who also gets caught up in the seedier side of Hollywood’s nightlife and together they find a brief bit of happiness before everything comes crashing down for both of them. In the meantime there’s a tensionless robbery, goofy scenes of “frolicking” at the beach, and lots of nearly nude “dancing” that involves surprisingly little stripping. It’s just the kind of cinematic turkey that Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett can really sink their teeth into, and their riffing of Hollywood After Dark is easily just as hilarious or even more so than many of their MST3K episodes.

As great as it is to have these guys back verbally assaulting faulty films again, I do have a few minor quibbles with the presentation of The Film Crew on DVD. First off, there’s no chapter selection on the DVD, and the chapters that do exist on the disc are broken into huge chunks. What this means is that when I start the main feature and skip ahead twice, I’m already at the middle of the movie. If I want to skip ahead to a favorite scene I have to manually fast forward to get there. The few chapter breaks that exist on the disc serve only really to scoot the viewer ahead to the “skits” Nelson, Murphy and Corbett perform in the middle and at the end of the feature.

These bland and disappointing sketches are even more of a nuisance when you have to buy a DVD to see them than when you’d get them alongside commercials on free TV, but thankfully they are fewer in number with The Film Crew than with MST3K. Occasionally on MST3K you could run into a pretty funny sketch, but for the majority of them it’s clear that these guys are most adept at pointing out the foibles in others’ works instead of creating original, amusing content of their own. The only “extra” on the DVD is another of these skits, wherein Corbett performs a sonnet he wrote about his sack lunch. Yawn. Several of the MST3K DVDs featured a trailer, interview or even a commentary-less version of the riffed film. This humdrum treatment of the Film Crew’s first feature does not bode well for future installments. Hopefully Shout Factory will beef up their presentation as the further episodes are released.

Minor quibbles with the DVD presentation aside, it’s wonderful to see and hear these guys back together again. The more opportunities given to Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett to mock bad movies the better, I say. Any fan of MST3K will feel right at home with The Film Crew and should thank and support Shout Factory for bringing these guys back into our homes again with all new riffs on more of Hollywood’s worst.

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Posted by lmckay at 09:30 PM

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Night And Fog

By Dan Schneider

Let me get this out of the way. I am not an anti-Semite. And Night And Fog is not a good documentary, assuming it can even be called a documentary.

I say this because the near universal praise for Alain Resnais’s 1955 black and white, and color, film is ill-founded. Most of it has to do with a) the seeming impolitic nature of criticizing anything that displays Nazi butchery, and b) the fact that the 31-minute long film was the first "real" attempt at categorizing the Nazi horrors of World War Two to the world at large. This was long before canonical terms and figures like "The Holocaust" or "six million" dead Jews were prevalent in pop culture. This film, however, is more agitprop than documentary, from the almost facile way it treats its subject matter, with quick edits to the ponderous, and badly written attempts at poetic narration, voiced by Michel Bouquet.

It would be another few decades before the detailed savagery of the Nazis would get its filmic due, with Marcel Ophüls’ 1972 four-plus hour long The Sorrow And The Pity, Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 nine-plus hour Shoah, and the BBC’s 1974 landmark 26-hour long documentary, The World At War. All three of these films, plus many others, have made Resnais’s film look quaint, to be kind.

That’s not to say that Night And Fog is an outright bad film. It’s not. It’s just not that good, both stylistically, and more so, factually. If the style were brilliant, the mangling of history would not be so bad, and if the reverse were true, the same would apply. But, here, a mere ten years after the war, Resnais makes a definitive claim of nine million dead in the death camps. In the years since, Nazi and Holocaust deniers have denied everything, while Nazi fetishists - is there any other word to call those so obsessed with such degradation? - have claimed thirty million or more. Jews have clung to the canonical Six Million figure, to the exclusion of the millions other dead, and the masses killed by Communist regimes, under the likes of Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot, which dwarf even the highest amounts attributed to the Nazis, have been given almost no scrutiny. In recent years, with the release of supposedly classified Nazi archives from Germany, the death tolls have again been claimed higher than the accepted ten to twelve million total, approximately half of which were Jews.

Yet, there is a certain flippancy that one sees with such historically important claims, and, after the seriousness of the Nuremberg Trials, the almost blasé approach of Resnais to this film is a bit unnerving. Of course, stürm and drang is not necessary, merely an incisive look at the reality. That requires no bad poetry and a bit more time. This blame has to fall on writer and minor poet Jean Cayrol, as much as it does Resnais. And yes, they were explicitly making an agitprop film for the French government, which chose to hide its Vichy complicity, as Resnais notes in a radio interview included on the Criterion Collection DVD of the film. There is one still photograph of a Nazi death camp in southern France, where French police can be seen. This was obscured upon the original release but included in the DVD. Yet, if that was done to the film, one can only imagine what other compromises were made, thus effectively nullifying the film’s artistic and historic impact.

If artists and writers in the Soviet bloc countries of the time could figure out ways to outsmart their censors, so should have Resnais. On the positive side, Resnais has claimed he wanted to make the film more than just a look backwards at the Second World War, but a comment on the then current French-Algerian war. Thus he called the death camp inhabitants deportees, not Jews, and used a larger figure for what he believed was the total amount killed (Jews and others) -- nine million people.

Of course, the manifest flaws in the film’s structure, some badly synched images and music, and the bad narration, did not deter those of a Leftist bent from praising the film for its statement rather than its art. French film director Francois Truffaut called Night And Fog the greatest film of all time. Well, no. Often, when dealing with war films, or Holocaust films, there is a tendency to trivialize mass murder, by making patriotic excessiveness a virtue, or dripping the story in melodrama. Night And Fog comes down in the middle, yet still misses its mark, because it seems as if Resnais had no real target, despite his claims about the Algerian Resistance.

Yes, we see bodies plowed into holes, stacks of skulls and mounds of human hair, and while that may have shocked years ago, one must be aware that Bela Lugosi’s original turn in 1931’s Dracula, by Tod Browning, was also considered by some to be far too scary for film. Now it’s hokum, and Night And Fog is the documentary equivalent of Dracula. One might argue he’s not to blame, since time and history have swept by his film, but a truly great artist knows that his work will stand up not only upon first peek, but decades later, centuries after that, and as far into the human future as one can envision. This is why the best of Greek tragedies speak to a reader today, and why Night And Fog fails.

And, a final word on the narration, written by Cayrol and voiced by Bouquet. Aside from the pseudo-poetry, there is a condescending tone throughout. Oftentimes, Bouquet chides a viewer for not believing what is being shown (an unwitting invitation to Holocaust deniers in years hence), and then offers platitudes like, "Words are insufficient." Well, not really, not in great art. And while, at 31 minutes, there was obviously no attempt to be comprehensive about the death camps, much less all of World War Two, there is not even an attempt to distill the experience. This lack of focus and air of flippancy make a strange combination for the viewer to chew on, for there is no reflection, no analysis, and what is presented seems almost parodic.

The film’s score is no great shakes either, often being wildly out of touch with the images onscreen. Hanns Eisler plays flute and woodwinds against horrific images, which only further underscores the film’s seeming California surfer dude approach to the subject matter. Music need not be didactic and ponderous, thus recapitulating a terrible image of the dead, but it need not flounce lightly off the carcasses, as well.

Other than the five minute Resnais radio interview, there are only a few essays on the film. As Resnais was still alive at the time of the DVD’s release, one wonders why there are no interviews with him, nor even a commentary. And, as usual, Criterion really flubs it when they use only black and white subtitles, half of which wash out when the white of the black and white segments are shown. All in all, Criterion really shafted the public on this release.

Night And Fog is an interesting curio from the late post-war period. It was made at the height of the early Cold War, and the beginning of the end of Colonialism. While Resnais’s attempt to link the Nazi genocide with Colonialism’s many genocides was ahead of its time, the actual work of art has to stand on its own. It simply fails on all the counts enumerated. Heavy-handedness cannot replace deftness, purples prose cannot replace spare description, and poor scoring cannot replace the sometimes necessity for just an image and quietude. And while poor critical thinkers might believe criticizing a film like Night And Fog is tantamount to blaspheming the memory of the Nazi victims (Jews and others) I would caution those with that view to cogitate on just what such a facile and flippant representation of the dead, by Resnais, says. I claim not anti-Semitism, just not too good art. Unfortunately, these days, even saying that can get you called a Nazi.

Now, what was that saying of Santayana’s about history and doom?

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Posted by lmckay at 09:21 PM

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The Wolf Man

By Iloz Zoc

Of the three major Universal Studios monster movies, Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, The Wolf Man did not spring from a notable novel. While many legends of werewolves abound in print, it took the skill of screenwriter Curt Siodmak, the talent of makeup artist Jack Pierce, and the acting of Lon Chaney Jr. to tell the story of a man doomed by an eternal curse to kill the ones he loves by the light of the full moon.

The Wolf Man was originally intended as a vehicle for Boris Karloff, but as often happens in Hollywood, intentions change, as well as script ideas. Only the title remained as the movie was eventually assigned to director George Waggner and scriptwriter Curt Siodmak. While Waggner's uninspired and straightforward direction is adequate, it is Siodmak, first drawing on European folklore, then creating his own, who weaves a fairytale spun out of Greek tragedy, blooming wolfbane, moonlight, and a sympathetic, doomed hero.

Lon Chaney, Jr. has the distinction of being the only actor to portray the tragic Larry Talbot, cursed to change into the Wolf Man and kill against his will, in five of Universal's horror offerings, thus making the role uniquely his own. His sympathetic performance as Lenny in Of Mice and Men typecast him as a hulking, sympathetic type, but that proved a perfect fit for his portrayal of the agonized, guilt-ridden Talbot and his demonic alter-ego.

Americanized Larry Talbot returns to his ancestral home in Wales, after eighteen years of estrangement, when his brother dies. His prim and proper father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), hopes that Larry will take over the duties of his family now, and that the two will reconcile their long-standing differences. In the first version of the script, the Mutt and Jeff look — as Tom Weaver describes it in his amusing commentary for the film — of the tall and thick Chaney next to the wispy, more delicate Rains was better explained; Chaney originally played an American engineer visiting Talbot Castle to work on Sir John's telescope. However, as the relationship changed story-wise, the physiques and family resemblance didn't.

That trifling incongruency aside, the red, white, and blue Larry, of course, is more focused on the gorgeous woman (Evelyn Ankers) he spies through the lens of the telescope. Seems like Larry's a bit of wolf before he's even bitten.

When he visits Gwen's (Ankers) antique shop in town, he buys a walking stick decorated with the head of a wolf and the symbol of a pentagram in silver, which prompts a discussion of werewolves and the first recitation of Siodmak's brilliant folklore-sounding poem:

Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

Later that night, as fate would have it, Larry is bitten by a werewolf when he tries to save Gwen's friend from an attack by what he thinks is a wolf. Maleva, the Gypsy crone (the sublime Maria Ouspenskaya) tells him that her son (Bela Lugosi) was a werewolf, and now he, too, is cursed. Lugosi, in his role as Bela the Gypsy, has only seven lines to say, but makes the most of it. Which is kind of ironic when you think that he finally gets a role after Dracula that makes good use of his singular accent. Lugosi originally wanted to play the lead role, but that would have made an even more incongruent relationship between Sir John and Larry, so he was offered the key role of werewolf catalyst instead.

Sure enough, Larry soon succumbs to his curse of lycanthropy, and starts seeing pentagrams — the mark of death — on the hands of those he loves. His father doesn't believe any of this superstitious nonsense, but people start dying when Larry changes into the Wolf Man and goes on the prowl.

Universal, wanting another memorable monster to add to their A-list, changed the initial ambiguity of the script, which left the audience wondering whether Larry was a real werewolf or just thought he was one, and had Jack Pierce take his previous, more human-like makeup for Henry Hull in Werewolf of London and go hog-wild with it here.

Pierce's unique stylization makes the werewolf come alive with a feral humanity sorely missing in today's CGI-generated lycanthropic concoctions. The painstaking lap dissolve process that appears for seconds on screen actually took hours of laborious filming as layers of yak hair were applied to Chaney's face and photographed. During the procedure, Chaney had to lie very still and in the same position, and probably would have loved to take a bite out of Pierce during the process. But the ground-breaking end result is worth it, and the procedure improved in the course of subsequent films.

The mist-enshrouded forest set, designed by Jack Otterson, with its gnarled tree limbs and unnatural, dark landscape, gives The Wolf Man a claustrophobic and surreal tone of brooding isolation, and provides the perfect stage for Larry Talbot as he struggles against his estrangement from the townspeople, his father, and his crumbling peace of mind and normal way of life.

Heightening this feeling of dread and pacing the tension well, the now familiar music — which was subsequently used in many Universal movies including the Sherlock Holmes series — with its ominous, tri-toned opening beat followed by precipitous drum rolls, alarming horns, and emotive strings, is a classy addition to the modest production and enhances the action scenes as well as the quieter moments of impending doom.

Finally meeting his death at the hands of his shocked father, who beats him with the silver-headed cane used to kill Bela the Gypsy, the climax of The Wolf Man stands out in its depiction of a man tragically caught in an evil cosmos with no way out. Lon Chaney Jr. reprised his signature role as the Wolf Man in four more Universal films, but The Wolf Man remains his most poignant performance as Larry Talbot, an ordinary man cursed, through no fault of his own, to walk on padded feet by night, when the moon beckons, with the unquenchable thirst for blood.

Universal's Legacy Collection of The Wolf Man contains Tom Weaver's revelatory commentary, as well as the light, but informative documentary entitled Monster by Moonlight, narrated by John Landis, who directed American Werewolf In London.

Weaver sheds light on the love-not-lost relationship between Ankers and Chaney, though they starred in many films together, as well as the differences between the initial script and the final shooting one. He also points out the bloopers, always an enjoyable, "how'd I miss that moment," and the little behind the scenes tidbits that make for a more informed viewing of this classic horror film.

One thing I was hoping Weaver would touch on but didn't is the perplexing way the Wolf Man invariably wound up dressed in a neatly pressed dark shirt and pants after every transformation into the hirsute terror. That one always perplexed me. Stylish, but still perplexing.

The set also includes the sequel and first Universal Studios ensemble film, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, as well as Werewolf of London and She-Wolf of London. Makes you kind of wonder what's going on over at London, doesn't it? Disappointingly enough, they didn't include 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the enjoyable last hurrah for Universal's era of classic horror.

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Posted by lmckay at 10:28 PM

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Until Death

By T. Rigney

Does anyone else think that Mike Nichols' 1991 Harrison Ford tearjerker Regarding Henry would have been much more effective as a Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle? Instead of having poor Henry stumble around mindlessly for three quarters of the picture, he could have recovered from his brain-busting predicament with record speed, allowing him to dispense a little vengeance upon those who would threaten his fragile mortality. There could have been dozens of sequels, hundreds of action figures, thousands of fast food tie-ins -- the whole Hollywood marketing shebang. God, it would have been beautiful. Don't you agree?

Apparently direct-to-video guru Simon Fellows (7 Seconds, Second in Command), screenwriter Dan Harris (Superman Returns, X2) and the office manager from Double Team feel the same way I do about that dreadful early '90s claptrap. They've essentially taken Regarding Henry's central storyline -- a grumpy guy takes a bullet in the noodle and becomes Mr. Sensitive -- and loaded it with so much gooey action that you may think you've accidentally stumbled across a magical timewarp into the 1980s. Oh, and just for fun, they added a sodomy scene to their winning formula so everyone could have a good time.

Their production was crowned Until Death, and it was good.

Jean-Claude Van Damme changes things up a bit for his first 2007 excursion into obscurity, a decision which may actually work in the big guy's favor if he continues to play his cards right. The former action icon stars as Anthony Stowe, a crude New Orleans narcotics detective who enjoys shooting heroin, frequenting skanky prostitutes, and beating up widowers who blame him for the deaths of their spouses. When he's not busy ratting out his cop buddies or beating the feces out of uncooperative suspects, Stowe can be found lurking in seedy bars or just kind of loafing around the city. In other words, he's a white hot chick magnet.

The only thing that could possibly teach this old dog some new tricks, from what I understand, is a bullet right through the ol' brain pan. Thankfully, Stowe's ex-partner Gabriel Callaghan (Stephen Rea) is more than willing to perform this complex surgery for free. One shot is all it takes for Anthony to slip into a deep life-changing coma, one that requires very little physical therapy to recover from. Which is good, of course, because Callaghan has some unfinished business to attend to once he learns that his old friend can still recite his ABCs. Will Anthony Stowe stop limping around long enough to pick up a gun and prevent his former friend from ruining his brand new life?

If not for an exceptionally lousy performance from none other than Stephen Rea and a few unfortunate plot holes the size of a New York City manhole cover, Until Death would have been a near-perfect Van Damme picture. As it stands, the flick is still his best in years, far surpassing last year's dodgy urban thriller The Hard Corps. Simply put, it forces him to rely mostly on his skills as a dramatic actor, something we don't get to experience often enough. And while Van Damme won't win any awards from folks in the industry, long-time fans will certainly get a kick out of seeing the big guy broaden his horizons a smidge.

For the most part, director Simon Fellows handles the material with a surprising amount of intelligence. His action sequences, on the other hand, are a little on the bland side; they just don't snap, crackle, and pop like they're supposed to. Like a drunken illusionist with more style than substance, Fellows deftly manages to distract you from his clumsy direction by overloading your senses with what could only be described as old-fashioned gratuitous violence. The body count is outrageously swollen, a trait not seen in a Van Damme flick since his thoroughly enjoyable 2004 revenge masterpiece Wake of Death. However, if given the choice, I would have preferred a bit more thrill and a little less spill.

It goes without saying that the majority of the performances from the film's supporting cast aren't the greatest, but, as I said, that's pretty much expected from this kind of low-budget production. Of course, there's no excuse for veteran thespian Stephen Rea to suck quite as hard as he does. I'm assuming his sloppy performance was supposed to be over-the-top and maniacal, not cheesy and completely ham-fisted. It's inexcusable, it really is. When you can't hold your own against someone like Jean-Claude Van Damme, it might be time to re-evaluate your career. Seriously. Get with your agent and talk it over.

Tomorrow.

Though it suffers from some questionable stylistic techniques and more than a few iffy performances, Until Death is still well worth your entertainment dollar. Van Damme delivers one of his all-time best performances, suggesting that there may be more to this fallen star than some would have you believe. Unfortunately, our hero's dedication to his role is overshadowed by all the dodgy talent he's been given to work with. You'll still have a blast, mind you, but you may think poorly of those who ultimately bring down the quality of this otherwise fine motion picture. If nothing else, it gives us hope for future Van Damme outings.

And it's still much better than Regarding Henry.

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Posted by lmckay at 11:31 PM

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Bobby

By Ray Ellis

We don't recognize the days that shape our lives until the moment has passed. They're just days, like any other day, unless some unexpected something comes along with such overbearing force that a particular day becomes seared in our memory -- where we were, what we were doing -- and suddenly takes on an otherworldly significance.

Bobby is a film about such a day. What writer/director Emilio Estevez attempts to do here is present June 4, 1968 as just another day that happens to culminate with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It all takes place at the Ambassador Hotel, where Kennedy would be mortally wounded before the day's end, and focuses on the ordinary travails of staff members and guests at the Ambassador that fateful day. It's an ambitious, if uneven, effort that teeters between melodrama and significance.

At its worst, Bobby plays like a cross between The Love Boat and Crash. The ensemble cast, featuring Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Lindsay Lohan, Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Christian Slater, Elijah Wood, Demi Moore, Freddie Rodriguez, Ashton Kutcher, and a host of other rising and fading stars, often distracts from the intent of the film. Their substories are mostly banal -- the alcoholic diva (Demi Moore) and her cuckolded husband (Emilio Estevez), the philandering hotel manager (Macy) and his silently suffering hairdresser wife (Stone), the reminiscing hotel retirees (Hopkins and Belafonte) -- and don't add to the weight to which the film strives. They serve more as counterpoint to the more interesting stories interspersed with them. Lindsay Lohan is surprisingly good as an idealistic girl marrying Elijah Wood to keep him from having to serve in Vietnam. Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt portray aging liberal socialites representing the passing of more civilized culture, and the interaction between Fishburne and Rodriguez are quiet testaments to the evolving socio-racial awareness among minorities.

The first third of Bobby establishes all these characters and their stories, and it's a bit haphazard at first, more a game of "spot the star" than anything else. But as the film progresses, their stories intertwine in remarkably subtle ways that reflect the timbre of the times. Kennedy himself is more metaphor than character through most of the movie, with archival footage of him punctuating the film's main point of how a single moment can alter the shape of a society.

When it works -- which it mostly does, once the establishing sequences are out of the way -- Bobby is a compelling statement. Estevez doesn't dwell on conspiracy theories or political machinations. By taking the sociopolitical climate of 1968 and viewing it through the eyes of people unaware they were microcosms of the upheaval taking place all around them, he makes the assassination of Robert Kennedy deeply personal and moving. When he was killed, the dreams of many Americans for a more tolerant society were all but shattered. Yet, the senselessness of it, coming so soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King, united us in some ways, if even for a short time.

As a film, Bobby sometimes overreaches its ambitions. But as a snapshot of American life and how we viewed ourselves on the day that RFK was shot, it's a powerful achievement. The DVD release has special features that enhance its significance, including a "making of" documentary and eyewitness accounts by people who were there the night it happened. It's not a masterpiece, but it is a movie that stands repeating viewings.

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Posted by lmckay at 10:09 PM

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Four Eyed Monsters

By Daniel J. Stasiewski

I don’t ever really remember not having the Internet. When working at my day job, I find myself emailing co-workers in other states rather than calling them. It’s my first impulse when I want to communicate, though the older coworkers prefer phone.

I’d recommend Four Eyed Monsters to them for two reasons. First, it’s a damn fine film, intimate and funny. Second, it’s a film so aware of life in the digital age that it, more than any other film I’ve seen on the subject, illuminates the personality behind the impersonal nature of 21st century communication.

The film follows the introverted videographer named Arin (Arin Crumley), who has more to offer in lust than he does in ambition. He spends his days ogling women on the streets and sending messages to girls on social networking websites hoping for a cyber connection. After hundreds of outgoing messages, one from Susan (Susan Brice) finally arrives in his inbox.

The two end up engaging in a peculiar but effective relationship where neither person directly talks to the other. Through notes on paper or video messages, the two form a connection that frees them to create the movie we are watching.

That last sentence makes the film appear more experimental than it really is. While Four Eyed Monsters is an avant-garde, uber-modern romance, it’s still a romance, earnest and affecting. The co-directors Crumley and Brice (also the stars) have big things to say here, but they say it with a passion that makes me think their lives truly depended on this film.

Maybe I’m confusing the characters with the filmmakers, but Four Eyed Monsters is personal, bordering on exhibitionistic. I don’t recall any film committing so much energy to understanding the casual cyber communication, while immersing itself so deeply in it. More importantly, the film succeeds without outright indictment or support of the medium.

I do have one concern. I worry about filmmakers whose first features are visionary works with shoestring budgets. Coming from someone who loves very indie films, I can tell you that few of the filmmakers behind those films make it to the next level.

Four Eyed Monsters may have an advantage as a film nominated, deservedly so, for IFP’s John Cassavetes Award, as well as one featured in the New York Times. There are eyes on Four Eyed Monsters, which is something quite rare.

Of course, Four Eyed Monsters didn’t have even a minor theatrical run and is only available on DVD through the film’s website. It’s appropriate, however, for Four Eyed Monsters to get its major push through the web and not traditional distribution channels. That’s part of the experience. Hopefully even my analog colleagues can appreciate that.

DVD Extra Features:

• Video Podcast Episodes 1 to 8
• All videos about the film festival and self distribution experience of the film
• Humanity Lobotomy Video on Net Neutrality

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Posted by lmckay at 10:01 PM

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Super Troopers

By Kaonashi

Silly, bumbling cops are not a new concept in cinema. In the early 1900s we had the Keystone Kops, while during the '80s we had the Police Academy series. There's just something about watching a group of people goof around in what in reality is a very serious and dangerous profession. In 2001, comedy troupe Broken Lizard threw their hat into the wacky cops genre with Super Troopers, their first major film. And boy, is it funny.

Thorny (Jay Chandrasekhar), Foster (Paul Soter), Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske), Mac (Steve Lemme), and Farva (Kevin Heffernan) are Vermont highway state troopers who spend their days playing pranks on each other and on the hapless folks they pull over. These include covering newbie Rabbit in shaving cream and stuffing him in a locker, and betting that one can say meow ten times with a straight face to a driver (e.g., "All right meow, hand over your license and registration"). In between these bouts of silliness, the troopers get in fights with their rivals, the local police department.

The troopers' fun is disrupted when the county threatens to cut their funding. As their surly boss Captain O'Hagen (Brian Cox) struggles to keep his boys in line, a murder mystery and a drug bust drop in their laps, providing them the opportunity to prove themselves as real cops. However, the local police want nothing better than to see them shut down, and will do what it takes to do so.

It comes as no surprise that Super Troopers has no character development, a story ripped from the Police Academy playbook, and a few plot holes -- but who cares? It is one hell of a funny movie. You'll laugh often and hard throughout. The opening sequence is especially brilliant as Thorn, Rabbit, and Mac mess around with a group of stoned college guys. Yes, much of the humor overall is juvenile and silly, but you'll find yourself catching your breath in between bouts of laughter. What's also great about Super Troopers is the chemistry among the actors. Since the members of Broken Lizard are friends in real life, that friendship extends to their characters in the movie, much like the members of the Frat Pack.

The DVD offers the usual extra fare: deleted scenes, outtakes, and extended scenes. In addition, an alternate ending is included. Unlike the original ending, which was drawn out and predictable, the alternate ending is much shorter and funnier. It's too bad they didn't use that one instead.

If you're in the mood to watch a group of law enforcement officers challenge each other to a maple syrup drinking contest and other shenanigans, check out Super Troopers, and get ready to laugh until tears stream down your face. Go to your local video store and rent it right meow!

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Posted by lmckay at 09:54 PM

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Twitch City: The Complete Series

By Bob MacKenzie

They say that if you're inside something, fully involved with it, you can't really see clearly what it's all about, what it is. You have to stand outside to get that sort of clarity. I've lived in Canada all my life. As an artist and as a reviewer, my vision has been affected by my intimate relationship with my people and our culture. For me to have greater perspective on who we are, perhaps to verify my own conclusions, I need in some degree to rely on the observations of outsiders.

It appears that, to the world, Canadians are a conservative people in most things they - we - do. Whether this derives from our harsh northern climate, our dour Scots roots, our resistance to the rebellious attitudes of our neighbours to the south or other reasons, we appear to think things carefully through and, wherever possible, to take the safe road. Whether our families have been here a long time or just arrived (more Canadians are new immigrants than are not), we Canadians tend to believe this image and to take it to heart. Indeed, at times we seem to revel in the concept.

On closer inspection, our culture reveals great surprises. Our scientists have brought to the world wonderful innovations in medicine, in aviation and space technology, in communications, in energy creation and conservation, in the field of time itself. Our publishers and our manufacturers have become world leaders and leading innovators in many ways. Our political leaders have been innovators in health care and social support systems and the vast distances across our nation have led to fantastic innovations in transportation and communication. Yet we don't celebrate these things as another nation might. Perhaps, more than cautious, we're just humble.

When it comes to the arts and entertainment, it's a whole other matter. While at some level we do celebrate accomplishments in these areas, the world beyond our borders discovers our artists and their creations and celebrates them even more than we ourselves would dare. If we are seen as perhaps over-cautious in other areas, then we are seen in the arts and entertainment as leaders and innovators. Our novelists, our pulp fiction and science fiction writers, our poets, our musicians, our cartoonists and animators, our comics and actors, our television producers and movie makers, all have made a powerful impact, and been influential in nations around the world.

This brings us to Don McKellar. For more than a quarter century, McKellar has been making films and television programs in Canada, early on drawing the interest of critics and other artists around the world. A true renaissance man of his industry, McKellar is writer, director, producer, actor, and whatever else it may take for him to get his work to the screen. His work is original and creative, sometimes breaking down artistic barriers and sometimes simply reaffirming what's already established. As with most brilliant creators, at times McKellar can be erratic and his work uneven, but the end result is mostly interesting and has been an influence to many others in his field.

This is the man who made the Canadian television series Twitch City. McKellar created, wrote, and starred in this quirky series, directed by his long-time colleague Bruce McDonald. Although many talented Canadians were involved in this series, every episode is ripe with the influence of Don McKellar.

The Series

One day I arrived home from work and turned on the television. It was the local affiliate of the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, itself a supposedly conservative organization run by federally appointed bureaucrats. I was tuned into what appeared to be a talk show reminiscent of the worst of Jerry Springer. That was my introduction to Twitch City. I watched that complete show and I was hooked. Every week, I hurried home to see the next episode. If I knew I wouldn't be home in time, I taped it.

Half a century ago, when I was just establishing my own particular perception of the world, I was continually amazed by the programs that showed up on Canadian radio and television, in particular on the CBC. Whether news-based or drama programming, it was often quirky, eccentric, or just plain weird. The ideas, the images, the wonderful use of language and imagination were a tonic to my young mind, urging me to look beyond the obvious and to seek out the unimaginable.

Canadian broadcasting in general lost that wonderful edginess many years ago, taking on more and more the bland sameness endemic to the American media beaming to us across our southern border. Over the past twenty or so years, the CBC appears to have become lumpen and middle aged, with ever-decreasing interest in supporting any programming that might approach seeming innovative or new. To me and to others, this has been a loss and a disappointment. Twitch City restored my joy in the strangeness of the Canadian creative mind and the ability of the Canadian audience to accept this insanity as part of normal life.

Supposedly, or so the promotional materials suggest and a lot of the reviewers buy, this series is a situation comedy about a man who is addicted to television. This is certainly a primary element of the storylines, with McKellar's agoraphobic character homebound and entranced by the characters on his television programs, mostly the Springer-like talk show. However, Twitch City is more controlled by an undercurrent of fantasy and weird science that takes it into the realm of the dime novel and even underground comics. While there's certainly a lot of humour in both the writing and the acting, this is not comedy in the American I Love Lucy sense, and some of the scenes and themes are not really funny at all.

Born in the land of Marshall McLuhan, Twitch City rides a psychological roller coaster that resides just below the conscious, its underlying metaphors and themes undercutting the norms of both society and the unreal world that is television. The stories and characters here derive less from American sit-coms than from the wildly creative animations of Norman McLaren, the innovations of Ralph Bakshi, and the exotic cartoon worlds created by Vaughan Bode and Robert Crumb. Although this series was filmed in real locations with real actors, it is in fact an underground comic come out of the closet and into public view.

Although this series aired for only two seasons totalling only thirteen episodes, and those separated by a two year hiatus, Twitch City has enjoyed considerable critical success and a modicum of audience appreciation not just in Canada but around the world. It's interesting to note that the series has become a cult favourite in several nations, most notably in Australia, where it became a smash hit.

This series features McKellar as Curtis, who pretty much does nothing, but does it very creatively; Daniel MacIvor as Nathan, the murderous roommate; Molly Parker as the precocious and ever-patient, perhaps over-patient, Hope; Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney of The Kids in the Hall both playing talk show host Rex Reilly; Lucky the cat in a recurring role; and a scattering of guests, including Al Waxman of Canada's hit series The King of Kensington and Joyce DeWitt of Three's Company

Here are just some of the elements that contribute to the weirdness that is Twitch City: scary Oriental gangsters apparently selling tainted cookies, a hit man hired by Nathan to kill Curtis, a cult of neo-Nazis who may or may not also be gay, Nathan's murder of a hopeless man by hitting him on the head with a can of cat food, a possibly psychic cat who also talks from time to time, takeover of Earth by a cabal of cats from outer space, a talk show host who completely changes appearance between seasons because he's received a cranial transplant. And there's so much more. The mind boggles.

The Special Features

The somewhat limited special features that come in this two-DVD set include compact biographies of Don McKellar, Molly Parker, and and Bruce McDonald plus a scanty photo gallery that includes only five still photographs. There's also commentary available by Don McKellar and others, but only on two of the episodes, so hardly worth the bother. I'd buy the series on DVD for the programs, not the features. The two-DVD set definitely makes for interesting, mind-stimulating viewing.

Influential Canadian auteur Don McKellar has been involved in a number of important films only some of which include his own Highway 61 (with Bruce McDonald) and Childstar, Atom Egoyan's Exotica, and François Girard's Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. In the process, McKellar been the recipient of many awards, including the Tony and Genie.

Posted by lmckay at 10:02 PM

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Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut

By Ray Ellis

Whatever else might be said of Oliver Stone, he's no quitter. His 2004 epic, Alexander, was a valiant attempt to detail the life of Alexander the Great, but the theatrical release was ultimately a sprawling mess of a film. Part of the problem was that it attempted to pack every detail of Alexander's life into a palatable running time, but the result was almost incoherent in its storytelling. Even at almost three hours running time, the film seemed garbled, with little sense of continuity.

The 2005 DVD "Director's Cut" version didn't fare much better. Running at about 167 minutes, it still struggled with ponderous pacing and uncertain editing. Even Stone's commentary couldn't clarify exactly what story the film was attempting to explore. Was it historical epic? Psychological profile? Cross-cultural study? Whatever Stone was attempting to say was largely lost in an attempt to reach the widest possible audience.

With the DVD release of Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut, Stone makes what he pledges will be his last attempt to get the story of Alexander right. This version is three and a half hours long, and reportedly uses all available footage shot for the original film. It's been completely recut, so that this unrated version is more cohesive as a whole. According to Stone, this is the version he always envisioned, and here, he's unencumbered by box office expectations or social implications. If this is the movie he originally wanted to make, he's come very close to succeeding.

I say "very close" because Alexander Revisited is still fraught with problems, many of which lie in the casting. Angeline Jolie and Val Kilmer, as Alexander's parents, are woefully miscast — she, as a Medussa-like sorceress with a Bond Girl Russian accent, and he, as a sodden buffoon living under delusions of grandeur. Then there's the problem of Colin Farrell in the title role. He lacks the depth to deal with the ambiguities of the monarch's psyche, and resorts to melodrama to underscore the significance of his performance. Taken by themselves, these three performances might be overcome, but they serve more to drag the dialogue, leaving us with the notion that ancient Macedonians spoke with thick Irish brogues. Who knew?

Despite the wooden performances of the principals — which no amount of recutting could have salvaged -- Alexander Revisited is the most fully realized version of what has become Stone's obsession. Now told in rapidfire flashback-flashforward style and laced with Anthony Hopkins' mostly tedious narration, the film can be magnificent at some points, and confounding at others.

Too much is packed in to the movie, with little in the way of exposition to make the viewer sympathize with the characters. Hopkins' droning performance as Ptolemy, Alexander's biographer, serves as nothing more than a framing device that detracts from the epic scale of the picture.

Visually, though, Alexander Revisited is a magnificent achievement, and it's here that the storytelling is most potent. Whether it's long shots of sweeping, foreign vistas or wordless closeups illustrating Alexander's sexual ambiguity or frenetic, claustrophobic, brutal battle scenes, the imagery carries the story to heights the often awkward script never fully realizes. Stone has always been a better director than writer, and his visual sense speaks volumes more than his scripting.

It's unlikely this "final cut" is going to change anybody's mind, pro or con, about Alexander. It's almost equally unlikely that this will be the film's final DVD release. Blue Ray and HD versions are planned for later this year, and will almost assuredly offer all the "extras" that this release omits. Beyond a plaintive introduction by Stone, in which he almost begs us to give the film one last chance, there are no extras on this set. It's handsomely packaged, though, with new slipcover art and attention to technical details. It's presented in a dual layer format, on two discs, complete with an "intermission." (That's what they called them back in the day, before "pause" buttons were invented.) Dolby 5.1 is the only sound option offered, but it's recorded in a way that richly fills all five channels. And it's presented in its original aspect ratio, a necessity, given the scope of the film.

Alexander Revisited is by no means a release that will fully rectify the flaws of the first two versions. The story of Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world before his mysterious death just two months short of his 33rd birthday, is perhaps too complex to be told in a single film, even one three and a half hours long. That being said, this final cut is a valiant effort to recount his life. It won't be remembered as a classic, but it will be remembered.

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Posted by lmckay at 10:41 PM

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