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filmbay's rating
THE first film from Jake Kasdan, the son of famed director Lawrence Kasdan (Pacific Heights, The Big Chill), is a detective comedy that works off a premise so obvious it's surprising it hasn't been exploited more often.
Zero Effect steals the Sherlock Holmes mystery formula and places it into a contemporary context. The problem with Kasdan's film is that it doesn't get much beyond this modestly clever idea. Mixing excessive plot intricacies and broad, quirky comedy, the film ends up as a mildly puzzling sophomoric diversion.
The self-styled "world's greatest detective" is Daryl Zero, played by Bill Pullman (Independence Day). He's a twitchy character, hair askew, eyes glazed and living in Howard Hughes-like isolation. As is often the case, Pullman seems to be in an acting class of his own, experiencing complicated inner surges and thoughts that don't have much to do with his character.
This is hardly the "cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind" of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective, though the parallels are deliberate. Instead of cocaine, Zero imbibes amphetamines; instead of playing the violin, he plays loud, squawky confessional songs on his acoustic guitar. But armed with the latest in information-gathering technology and arcane knowledge -- bylaws governing motel bed placement for the past 30 years -- Zero solves cases with magical precision. The Watson of the story, Steve Arlo, is played robotically by Ben Stiller (Flirting with Disaster). He's a resentful sidekick who gets drunk and complains incessantly about his employer while trying desperately to have an ordinary romantic life after office hours. He works as a front man for Zero, maintaining strict client confidentiality, and collecting big fees.
At the beginning of the film, Arlo is in a meeting with lumber tycoon Gregory Stark (Ryan O'Neal), a client of Zero's who is searching for missing keys to a safety deposit box, but who is also being blackmailed for a secret he will not reveal. In short order, Zero has figured out who is doing the blackmailing: a paramedic (a tough gamine played by Kim Dickens, who makes a strong impression here as she does in Great Expectations) who works at Stark's health club. In his quest to expose her motives, Zero gradually finds himself falling in love for the first time in his life, a fallibility that never afflicted Sherlock Holmes.
The movie then changes directions to concentrate on the love story, while Arlo continues his quest to break free of his boss so he can enjoy a fling of his own. The plot is complicated, relying on Zero's weird knowledge and observational skills. But the momentum is gone long before the movie ends and one is left only with a faint sense of curiosity. Like listening to Frank Sinatra sing Stevie Wonder, it's interesting, but why bother? Benjamin Miller, Filmbay Editor.
Zero Effect steals the Sherlock Holmes mystery formula and places it into a contemporary context. The problem with Kasdan's film is that it doesn't get much beyond this modestly clever idea. Mixing excessive plot intricacies and broad, quirky comedy, the film ends up as a mildly puzzling sophomoric diversion.
The self-styled "world's greatest detective" is Daryl Zero, played by Bill Pullman (Independence Day). He's a twitchy character, hair askew, eyes glazed and living in Howard Hughes-like isolation. As is often the case, Pullman seems to be in an acting class of his own, experiencing complicated inner surges and thoughts that don't have much to do with his character.
This is hardly the "cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind" of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective, though the parallels are deliberate. Instead of cocaine, Zero imbibes amphetamines; instead of playing the violin, he plays loud, squawky confessional songs on his acoustic guitar. But armed with the latest in information-gathering technology and arcane knowledge -- bylaws governing motel bed placement for the past 30 years -- Zero solves cases with magical precision. The Watson of the story, Steve Arlo, is played robotically by Ben Stiller (Flirting with Disaster). He's a resentful sidekick who gets drunk and complains incessantly about his employer while trying desperately to have an ordinary romantic life after office hours. He works as a front man for Zero, maintaining strict client confidentiality, and collecting big fees.
At the beginning of the film, Arlo is in a meeting with lumber tycoon Gregory Stark (Ryan O'Neal), a client of Zero's who is searching for missing keys to a safety deposit box, but who is also being blackmailed for a secret he will not reveal. In short order, Zero has figured out who is doing the blackmailing: a paramedic (a tough gamine played by Kim Dickens, who makes a strong impression here as she does in Great Expectations) who works at Stark's health club. In his quest to expose her motives, Zero gradually finds himself falling in love for the first time in his life, a fallibility that never afflicted Sherlock Holmes.
The movie then changes directions to concentrate on the love story, while Arlo continues his quest to break free of his boss so he can enjoy a fling of his own. The plot is complicated, relying on Zero's weird knowledge and observational skills. But the momentum is gone long before the movie ends and one is left only with a faint sense of curiosity. Like listening to Frank Sinatra sing Stevie Wonder, it's interesting, but why bother? Benjamin Miller, Filmbay Editor.
Film Critic DELIVERED with stinging irony, that lyric is meant as a blanket indictment of empiricism, and of our abiding need to "classify and label," to "banish every doubt." Why? Because a label is a tool that can double as a weapon - what identifies and separates can also isolate and stigmatize. How, then, to describe Zero Patience without falling into the empiricist's, and the critic's, taxonomical traps? A "movie musical about AIDS" is a popular answer - one that's odd enough to be enticing, vague enough to be innocuous. But it doesn't begin to sound the depths of a work that is intriguing, provoking, amusing, offending, demanding, inordinately intelligent, and defiantly resistant of the very thing I'm paid to do.
So let's approach the picture from another angle, from the perspective of writer/director John Greyson. Now Greyson, unlike some artists who happen to be gay, would probably agree that there is indeed a definable "gay culture," an esthetic that goes heavy on irony and camp and outrageous humour and unapologetic theatricality. Clearly, all these ingredients are abundantly evident here. Just as clearly, Greyson (whose background lies in - get ready for a label - experimental video) has positioned his film at a 180-degree remove from a piece like Philadelphia. That movie, a drama about AIDS with a gay protagonist, was the product of mainstream Hollywood culture (unironic, non-outrageous, linear in plot and design), and took enormous pains not to offend a mainstream audience. This one is the product of a gay culture and doesn't give a damn who it offends. This one is smarter and more subtle, but lacks the emotional punch of the other (linear directness has its rewards), and the attendant complexities are hard to grasp at a single sitting.
Perhaps this will help a little: Greyson has reincarnated the Victorian explorer Richard Burton (John Robinson), using him to symbolize the dangers inherent in the empirical approach still taken by the scientific community toward all issues, including the AIDS plague. Burton, who toils in a Natural History Museum, is intent on mounting an exhibit called The Hall of Contagion, with AIDS as the sexy centrepiece. Just as his explorer colleagues once tracked the source of the Nile, he hopes to trace the "cause" of this disease. Causation, of course, is a first principle among empiricists. Rationally, if you find the cause, you may find the solution. Ethically, alas, it's a different matter; there, if you find the cause, you can point the finger - you can affix blame, you can isolate and stigmatize.
Enter another reincarnated soul, a gay ghost known as Patient Zero (Normand Fauteux) - the flight attendant who, in books like Randy Shilts' And The Band Played On, is "blamed" for first bringing AIDS to North America. Much of the film unfolds as an ongoing dialectic between the attitudes embodied in Burton and Zero, between serving a false cause and serving as a false villain. However, the dialectic takes the form of a literal song and dance - zippy production numbers where Glenn Schellenberg's toe-tapping melodies are laid over Greyson's thought- provoking lyrics. Consequently, the decorative fun on the surface (watch, if you dare, for an eye-popping ditty entitled The Butthole Duet) simultaneously competes with and complements the seriousness beneath - it's like tossing a colourful AIDS quilt over a dying AIDS patient. Greyson has refined and desentimentalized that most difficult of genres, the musical tragedy, and with every succeeding tune, he exponentially advances his thesis - other potentially false causes, like the "African Green Monkey" theory, like the HIV virus itself, come under his fire, as does everything from greedy drug companies to grousing AIDS activists. The film spares no one because, well, the disease spares no one.
Philadelphia is American in origin, Zero Patience is Canadian. Each is splendid in its own way, and each reflects the best of the culture (and the industry) that gave rise to it. The former is conventional, straightforward, and all about certainty, including the certainty of death. The latter is quirky, complicated, and all about uncertainty, especially the uncertainty of life. Greyson, and the film he's made, are brave enough to question incessantly, and smart enough to know that "HIV- positive" is a lot more than a medical label - it's a cruel oxymoron. He has zero patience for the blustering apostles of science and even art, and (the ironies abound) has more in common with another eminent Victorian than he might care to admit. Mister Greyson, meet Mister Tennyson: "There lives more faith in honest doubt,/ Believe me, than in half the creeds." Benjamin Miller, Filmbay Editor.
So let's approach the picture from another angle, from the perspective of writer/director John Greyson. Now Greyson, unlike some artists who happen to be gay, would probably agree that there is indeed a definable "gay culture," an esthetic that goes heavy on irony and camp and outrageous humour and unapologetic theatricality. Clearly, all these ingredients are abundantly evident here. Just as clearly, Greyson (whose background lies in - get ready for a label - experimental video) has positioned his film at a 180-degree remove from a piece like Philadelphia. That movie, a drama about AIDS with a gay protagonist, was the product of mainstream Hollywood culture (unironic, non-outrageous, linear in plot and design), and took enormous pains not to offend a mainstream audience. This one is the product of a gay culture and doesn't give a damn who it offends. This one is smarter and more subtle, but lacks the emotional punch of the other (linear directness has its rewards), and the attendant complexities are hard to grasp at a single sitting.
Perhaps this will help a little: Greyson has reincarnated the Victorian explorer Richard Burton (John Robinson), using him to symbolize the dangers inherent in the empirical approach still taken by the scientific community toward all issues, including the AIDS plague. Burton, who toils in a Natural History Museum, is intent on mounting an exhibit called The Hall of Contagion, with AIDS as the sexy centrepiece. Just as his explorer colleagues once tracked the source of the Nile, he hopes to trace the "cause" of this disease. Causation, of course, is a first principle among empiricists. Rationally, if you find the cause, you may find the solution. Ethically, alas, it's a different matter; there, if you find the cause, you can point the finger - you can affix blame, you can isolate and stigmatize.
Enter another reincarnated soul, a gay ghost known as Patient Zero (Normand Fauteux) - the flight attendant who, in books like Randy Shilts' And The Band Played On, is "blamed" for first bringing AIDS to North America. Much of the film unfolds as an ongoing dialectic between the attitudes embodied in Burton and Zero, between serving a false cause and serving as a false villain. However, the dialectic takes the form of a literal song and dance - zippy production numbers where Glenn Schellenberg's toe-tapping melodies are laid over Greyson's thought- provoking lyrics. Consequently, the decorative fun on the surface (watch, if you dare, for an eye-popping ditty entitled The Butthole Duet) simultaneously competes with and complements the seriousness beneath - it's like tossing a colourful AIDS quilt over a dying AIDS patient. Greyson has refined and desentimentalized that most difficult of genres, the musical tragedy, and with every succeeding tune, he exponentially advances his thesis - other potentially false causes, like the "African Green Monkey" theory, like the HIV virus itself, come under his fire, as does everything from greedy drug companies to grousing AIDS activists. The film spares no one because, well, the disease spares no one.
Philadelphia is American in origin, Zero Patience is Canadian. Each is splendid in its own way, and each reflects the best of the culture (and the industry) that gave rise to it. The former is conventional, straightforward, and all about certainty, including the certainty of death. The latter is quirky, complicated, and all about uncertainty, especially the uncertainty of life. Greyson, and the film he's made, are brave enough to question incessantly, and smart enough to know that "HIV- positive" is a lot more than a medical label - it's a cruel oxymoron. He has zero patience for the blustering apostles of science and even art, and (the ironies abound) has more in common with another eminent Victorian than he might care to admit. Mister Greyson, meet Mister Tennyson: "There lives more faith in honest doubt,/ Believe me, than in half the creeds." Benjamin Miller, Filmbay Editor.
As long as there are wars and womenfolk to revere, the feisty spirit of Scarlett O'Hara will never die. The story of a privileged beauty who is transformed by war and sacrifice into a paragon of resilience keeps popping up in film: Catherine Deneuve in Indochine (1992), Sandrine Bonnaire in East-West (1999), Nicole Kidman in last year's Cold Mountain.
Zelary is the Czech version, an old-fashioned character-driven domestic epic which was adapted from an novel by Kveta Legatova. Set in the Second World War against the background of the German occupation, the film was selected as the Czech Republic's Oscar nomination last year. A return to directing for Ondrej Trojan (Let's All Sing Around) after more than a decade as a producer, Zelary is a trite but sturdy offering, a showcase for popular young Czech actress Anna Geislerova, as well as the beautiful Moravian countryside, shot in glowing earthy tones.
Geislerova plays Eliska, a medical student who has been denied a chance to finish her degree because of the German occupation. She works as a nurse, but is also involved in the resistance movement with her lover, a surgeon named Richard (Ivan Trojan). One night a sawmill worker, Joseph (Hungarian actor Gyorgy Cserhalmi), from a rural community is brought into the hospital badly injured. Eliska provides the blood he needs for a transfusion. Shortly after, the Gestapo uncovers the resistance group that Eliska belongs to and she is forced to escape. Joseph, or Jova for short, agrees to take her back to his rural village of Zelary.
Initially the conditions, a dirt floor and no running water, shock her but she has no choice but to stay. She takes on an assumed identity, as Hana, and goes through a marriage ceremony to avoid suspicion from the local villagers.
Hana becomes acclimatized to her new housewifely life surprisingly quickly as she discovers, as women so often do in romance novels, that a hulking, taciturn man can meet nearly all her needs. Jova proves himself both a font of compassion and pillar of strength, providing Hana with a wooden floor and defending her from a rapist before they eventually become lovers.
While Hana bonds with her woodcutter, the script provides some welcome additional village texture. There's that Czech cinema staple, the precocious child (Anna Vertelarova) and her pragmatic widowed mother, as well as a bureaucratic school principal and his friend, a compassionate priest. There's also an ancient midwife (Jaroslava Adamova) who teaches Hana folk medicine. The most trenchant subplot concerns the local drunk who beats his wife and son: Their imprisonment serves as a contrast to the caring imprisonment that Hana faces.
The German army, lurking in the nearby hills, pops up periodically to add a jolt of suspense. Unfortunately, Zelary doesn't end with the war.
Soon the ruthless Germans are replaced by the loutish, drunken, raping soldiers of the Soviet army and Zelary is in for a whole new round of problems. By this point -- well past the two-hour mark -- the endlessly episodic nature of Eliska/Hana's trials begins to provoke fatigue more than sympathy. "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart," wrote the poet William Butler Yeats. And too much history can make any long-suffering heroine overstay her welcome. Benjamin Miller, Filmbay Editor.
Zelary is the Czech version, an old-fashioned character-driven domestic epic which was adapted from an novel by Kveta Legatova. Set in the Second World War against the background of the German occupation, the film was selected as the Czech Republic's Oscar nomination last year. A return to directing for Ondrej Trojan (Let's All Sing Around) after more than a decade as a producer, Zelary is a trite but sturdy offering, a showcase for popular young Czech actress Anna Geislerova, as well as the beautiful Moravian countryside, shot in glowing earthy tones.
Geislerova plays Eliska, a medical student who has been denied a chance to finish her degree because of the German occupation. She works as a nurse, but is also involved in the resistance movement with her lover, a surgeon named Richard (Ivan Trojan). One night a sawmill worker, Joseph (Hungarian actor Gyorgy Cserhalmi), from a rural community is brought into the hospital badly injured. Eliska provides the blood he needs for a transfusion. Shortly after, the Gestapo uncovers the resistance group that Eliska belongs to and she is forced to escape. Joseph, or Jova for short, agrees to take her back to his rural village of Zelary.
Initially the conditions, a dirt floor and no running water, shock her but she has no choice but to stay. She takes on an assumed identity, as Hana, and goes through a marriage ceremony to avoid suspicion from the local villagers.
Hana becomes acclimatized to her new housewifely life surprisingly quickly as she discovers, as women so often do in romance novels, that a hulking, taciturn man can meet nearly all her needs. Jova proves himself both a font of compassion and pillar of strength, providing Hana with a wooden floor and defending her from a rapist before they eventually become lovers.
While Hana bonds with her woodcutter, the script provides some welcome additional village texture. There's that Czech cinema staple, the precocious child (Anna Vertelarova) and her pragmatic widowed mother, as well as a bureaucratic school principal and his friend, a compassionate priest. There's also an ancient midwife (Jaroslava Adamova) who teaches Hana folk medicine. The most trenchant subplot concerns the local drunk who beats his wife and son: Their imprisonment serves as a contrast to the caring imprisonment that Hana faces.
The German army, lurking in the nearby hills, pops up periodically to add a jolt of suspense. Unfortunately, Zelary doesn't end with the war.
Soon the ruthless Germans are replaced by the loutish, drunken, raping soldiers of the Soviet army and Zelary is in for a whole new round of problems. By this point -- well past the two-hour mark -- the endlessly episodic nature of Eliska/Hana's trials begins to provoke fatigue more than sympathy. "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart," wrote the poet William Butler Yeats. And too much history can make any long-suffering heroine overstay her welcome. Benjamin Miller, Filmbay Editor.