Disappearances
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DVD details
Actor: Gary Farmer, Genevi?ve Bujold, John Griesemer, Lothaire Bluteau, William SandersonBrand: GAIAM AMERICAS
Cinematographer: Wolfgang Held
Composer: Jeff Claus
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-07-03
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Screen Media
Product features:
- Forced to smuggle whiskey in an attempt to save his family, Quebec Bill (Kris Kristofferson) and his son will embark on an unforgettable trip. This wild journey through vast reaches of the wilderness will lead them to discover a haunted and elusive past. Disappearances features Kris Kristofferson's greatest performance to date in this beautifully shot western adventure. Runtime: 103 mins
DVD Reviews of Disappearances
DVD Review: I wish this movie would disappear
Summary: 2 Stars
Disappearances is a terrible movie. The acting is average, the pacing... my God, what's up with the pacing? This is supposed to be a family western type film, but it feels so much like a made-for-TV movie that it's honestly hard to put up with the mediocre acting.
The storyline had potential, and the build-up leading to the whiskey-stealing segments were pretty good (along with the part when the actual stealing occurred) but the shooting/action segments were only above average at best.
It's the second half of the film that really made this movie a disaster. What kind of ending was THAT? A terrible ending.
I kept wondering when the teenage boys father was going to kick the bucket because his health seemingly got worse and worse to the point where it appeared like he wasn't going to wake up anymore, but instead, he just kept hangin' in there, hallucinating and uttering nonsense, and making me tense in the process.
The teenage boy kept seeing visions of his... I believe it was his mother he kept seeing, while the boy was far away from home with his father as part of the whiskey-stealing operation. She'd appear to make sure the boy always did the right thing and didn't listen to his foolish father (such as when the father thought it would be okay for his son to taste some whiskey). It was kind of funny though the way the woman would just appear out of nowhere, give some advice, and then disappear.
The bad guys that were after the boy and his father were about as clueless as anybody could possibly be (then again, the bad guys were actually the GOOD guys since they were only the people protecting the whiskey that was stolen from them, and tracking down the boy and the father throughout the movie to make sure the whiskey was returned to their rightful owners). The movie got completely ridiculous as soon as the boy and his father hoped aboard that train. From here, the film turned terrible.
Just not a good movie to me.
DVD Review: Whiskey running and mysticism
Summary: 5 Stars
Kingdom County is still a place of wonders.
Do not expect a straightforward story here. Different realities fade in and out of this movie. People come and go- and death isn't necessarily an end. It is alot like life, or at least life naturally perceived. You have an interwoven fabric of hard natural practicalities and of mystical insights. This is the way native Americans saw life, so too could some of european descent before the mass-brainwashing of the media- and this film is set in 1932 in the north woods before total brainwashing took hold. Kingdom county was disappearing, yet it was still a place of wonders.
This could be a mythic hero tale with William, his father, and their companions travelling North for adventure as much as whiskey- and finding much more than they originally bargained for. In the end some answers are found, some mystery remains, and some things melt away into the beyond.
The character of Cordelia sums up the movie when she instructs young William to never perceive the ordinary without also perceiving the extra-ordinary in it. Many realities exist around us- all of which are ultimately an illusion. And what is life without some mystery to it...
DVD Review: Gone Too Far
Summary: 3 Stars
First of all, this film is not to be confused with "Disappeared," starring Ray Winstone as a father searching for his daughter, who might be lost to the sex trade in the Middle East. And it's not to be confused with "Disappearance," the fairly good supernatural thriller starring Harry Hamlin. No, this is another sort of absence altogether, set in Depression-era New England.
There are great faces here - Genevieve Bujold, Kris Kristofferson, and others. But they are stuck in a muddled, murky plot.
In his commentary, Director Jay Craven admits he was striving for an air of magical realism. He wanted this movie to be a sort of homage to Luis Brunuel, whose filmmaking goal was "the voluntary recreation of a dream." But this sort of imposition of art on nature usually doesn't make for very interesting viewing. At least it doesn't in this case. You are liable to get lost in the melancholy musings, and to get left behind while you try to make sense of certain plot points.
What is Bujold's relationship to Kristofferson in the movie? (She's his sister - maybe.) Why does she appear out of nowhere to spout enigmas? (Don't know.) Why is the young protagonist of the film, a manifestly stable, stolid lad - called "Wild Bill?" (In the DVD commentary, this is explained as a father's wishful thinking - a hope that the name will provoke his son to the same sort of reckless game-of-life that the father and his older generation always enjoyed.) What does the intoned curse of "the lugaroo" (werewolf) have to do with the plot? (Don't know.) And in the end, who has really disappeared, and why?
So you probably won't want to get this film if you're looking for intelligible plot or consistent character development. However, the film does have that one merit common to many projects that fail in substance. It has good looks. You could view it as a cinematic travelogue through the early 1930's of New England, through the backwoods bootlegging enterprises of those years. However, there is one flaw even in this aspect of the dramatic recreation. This flaw is not the fault of the Director or scenic designer. It's the fault of antique car buffs.
As in almost all period films, wide shots of town scenes show only improbably new cars chugging by or parked along the streets. Whenever I attend old car meetings, I try to encourage some members NOT to restore their antique cars - to instead let them show their age a bit, if for no other reason than to make them more believable if booked to appear in movies about bygone eras, such as this one. But of course, old car buffs never heed such advice. The buffs literally have to buff - and buff - until their cars look just as they did when they first rolled off their assembly lines. So here too - the supporting cast of cars are uniformly flawless, nary a dent or ding or scratch among them - sort of like a dream after all.
DVD Review: Worst movie ever. Period
Summary: 1 Stars
Worst movie ever. Period. I could have sworn I was stoned watching this film but I've never touched drugs in my life. Honestly, my 4th grader could have put together a more coherent story line. The horrible edits, sequence, and the worst most incoherent story line in the history of cinema make this fit only as a torture devise. Poor Kris. I feel so badly for him.DVD Review: North Country personified
Summary: 5 Stars
I was delighted to find this movie the other day and snatched it up immediately. DISAPPEARANCES, a book by my favourite author, Howard Frank Mosher, was enough of a draw; and I knew without looking that it had to have been filmed by Jay Craven, who has an innate understanding of the proper way to handle stories by Mr. Mosher in film, having already done a credible job with WHERE THE RIVERS RUN NORTH.
I had the distinct and unique pleasure of working for Jay Craven in the mid-80s and got a taste of the man's style and drive for correctness even back then, though I was but a lowly projectionist and all-around worker at the arts house of which he was the head. He does not go about a project without considering all the angles; he doesn't choose easy projects either, but ones that are filled with quirky, interesting individuals in every sense of that word. In DISAPPEARANCES, he hits the motherlode. As Quebec Bill, Kris Kristofferson plays his role with an enjoyment (dare I say joie de vivre) and energy that shows he was just having a dandy old time. Charlie McDermott, who portrays his young teenage son Wild Bill, brings a poignancy and depth of character that isn't often seen to this degree in an unknown young actor. He is phenomenal in this role, which is very much a father-son journey towards manhood and towards understanding each other, with a firm base to start of love and regard.
Quebec Bill is a fretfully reformed whiskey runner in this far-northern Vermont community known as Kingdom Common. He ran whiskey, his father ran whiskey, his grandfather ran whiskey. Risk and adventure are neither new to him nor against his current principles. In this late point of time, he has apparently been retired from his dubious occupation for some time, but as a farmer he has fallen on poverty, is feeding his cows potatoes in lieu of the barnful of hay that lightning burned down, and he convinces his womenfolk - his barely-seen wife Evangeline and his oddly powerful mother, played with intensity and style by Genevieve Bujold (we don't ever see enough of her, a great actress) - to allow Wild Bill to accompany him on one last whiskey smuggling run into and out of Canada. The supporting cast are fantastic - Gary Farmer (Powwow Highway) as Uncle Henry, and William Sanderson (Deadwood, among a multitude of other excellent character roles)as Rat Kinnison, a permanently uncertain participant in the events that unfold while being indispensible in certain areas of expertise. The chief bad guy, a French-Canadian called Carcajou, seems to be an odd mix of the French taunters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Rasputin, as it seems impossible to kill the guy off - but he fulfills a darker, sinister side, pursuing Wild Bill and his father relentlessly through the cold Northern territory to get his already-purloined whiskey back from them.
I am from this area, and watching this movie was like being there. The settings are superb, the characterizations are great (also loved Luis Guzman as the highly-improbable but hysterically right-on Brother Hilare); the one thing I might have toned back was Kris Kristofferson on fiddle. Even if I didn't play fiddle myself, his time doing so would have seemed contrived. I don't care for people impersonating an actual player but that's a very minor quibble. As far as fully enjoying the movie, I couldn't have been more involved. For the limited budget Jay Craven had, he made a helluva classy little movie.
Description of Disappearances
Forced to smuggle whiskey in an attempt to save his family, Quebec Bill (Kris Kristofferson) and his son will embark on an unforgettable trip. This wild journey through vast reaches of the wilderness will lead them to discover a haunted and elusive past. Disappearances features Kris Kristofferson's greatest performance to date in this beautifully shot western adventure.General DVDs
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