Chuck Wilson

(Photos by Kevin Scanlon)

Zombie Vision

Chuck Wilson
It is as you’ve always suspected: Rob Zombie’s house is way cooler than yours. For one thing, the punk/metal god turned filmmaker has a 12-foot stuffed polar bear in his living room. (Zombie to dumbstruck interviewer: “I know, right? How fuckin’ big is that bear?”) The bear, which looks like......
Apocalypse now (Photo by Jim Sheldon)

L.A. Bites the Big One

Chuck Wilson
Citizens of Los Angeles: You are screwed. Three “dirty” bombs have gone off around the city, and from his home near Dodger Stadium, Brad (Rory Cochrane) is frantically trying to phone his wife, Lexi (Mary McCormack). After failing to reach her, Brad follows the advice of frantic radio announcers and......
Chan and Tucker parlez francais with new friend Attal (2007 Glen Wilson/New Line Cinema)

Rush Hour 3: An American (And a Chinese) in Paris

Chuck Wilson
Chris Tucker still believes in Michael Jackson. You can tell, because in the very first scene of Rush Hour 3, the actor-comedian squeals melodically, grabs his crotch and throws his arms up to the heavens. All that’s missing is a giant offstage fan to make Tucker’s shirt billow out behind......
Beach as Hayes

Flag Raiser

Chuck Wilson
For those of us who have long had him in our sights, the fact that Adam Beach is about to become an Oscar front-runner is especially gratifying. (It’s nice for him too.) Beach’s almost shockingly emotional performance in Clint Eastwood’s World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers is a......
Loin (Canal+/Photofest)

Spotlight On André Téchiné

Chuck Wilson
Actors who appear in films directed by André Téchiné better be at the top of their game, because sooner or later, Téchiné, who’s an absolute master of the close-up, will move his camera in tight, and when he does, that actor’s face must be carrying nothing less than the life......
Family portrait: (from left) Pepe

Two by Four

Chuck Wilson
It struck me as a most unusual occurrence: two movies — Quinceañera and Brothers of the Head — opening on the same day, each of them directed by two men working together as a team, men who happen to be partners in life as well. I got to wondering what......
Time traveler (Courtesy Displaced Films)

Soldiers Pay

Chuck Wilson
Sir! No Sir!, director David Zeiger’s revelatory documentary about American soldiers who protested the Vietnam War from within the military itself — a stand that sent many of them directly to the prison stockade — is clearly the film this former protest organizer was born to make. But for the......

A Dog’s Life

Chuck Wilson
A Letter to True, the meandering new documentary by Bruce Weber (who made Let’s Get Lost, the great 1988 film about Chet Baker), is addressed to the youngest of the photographer-filmmaker’s five golden retrievers. The pack, who live like kings, bounces between the New York and Florida homes of Weber......

Night of the Hunted

Chuck Wilson
Why does a man choose, on a given day, to let his life go to hell? In the opening of Red Lights, adapted from a 1953 novel by Georges Simenon, writer-director Cédric Kahn offers hints in a sequence, set to Debussy’s elegantly creepy Nuages, that links together shots of circular......

Been There, Done That, Back for More

Chuck Wilson
BEGIN BY OPENING the Outfest program and circling the movies whose listings are accompanied by a blurry black-and-white photo of entwined, nude lovers — boy-on-boy, girl-on-girl (depending on your bent). Later, to be well-rounded, go back and circle a few documentaries, or even a few of the movies that seem......