The mukhtar (chief) of an occupied Arab Palestinian village (Ali Mohammed Akili) wants to hold a traditional full-scale wedding for his son (Nazih Akly), but the Israeli military governor will allow it only if he and his officers are the guests of honor. As the ceremonies and festivities gradually unfold over a tense day and night, writer-director Michel Kleifi, who grew up in Nazareth and is now based in Belgium, paints an intimate and multilayered view of the village and its various factions, including the three generations of the mukhtar’s family. Beautifully filmed and edited, and effectively acted by nonprofessionals, the story moves between an alienated grandfather, a group of flirtatious teenage girls, an angry group of young male terrorists, an impotent groom and a resourceful and beautiful bride (Anna Achdian) who are expected to offer proof of their marriage’s consummation in the form of a bloody sheet, a horse that has strayed into a mine field, an Israeli woman soldier who changes into Arab clothes, and other diverse centers of interest, with the mukhtar in most cases providing both the narrative linkage and our sense of how the village is run from within. Eschewing propaganda for an in-depth portrait, this is a fluid and lovely film that speaks volumes about a subject–Palestinian life–that most of us know next to nothing about. Read more
Clare Peploe’s accomplished and intelligent first feature is a sunny tale of expatriates set on the Greek island of Rhodes, with a cast of characters and a set of crisscrossing destinies that occasionally suggest Graham Greene in one of his happier moods. The people include a talented professional photographer (Jacqueline Bisset) faced with the possibility of having to sell her house, her teenage daughter (Ruby Baker) and ex-husband (James Fox), an art historian who is her oldest friend (Sebastian Shaw), a tradition-minded Greek peasant (Irene Pappas) and her rebellious son (Paris Tselios), and an English couple on holiday (Kenneth Branagh and Lesley Manville). Many of these characters are not who they initially seem to be, and there are various forms of comedy in how they relate (or fail to relate) to one another. For spectators who recall Mazursky’s Tempest of a few years back, this is a much better and smarter handling of many of the same elements, but done this time for grown-ups–pleasurable and diverting throughout. (Chestnut Station, Oakbrook) Read more
For once, a Hollywood entertainment that lives up to all of its advance hype. Set in Tinseltown in 1947, this zany detective story follows the efforts of gumshoe Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to clear the name of cartoon character Roger Rabbit when the latter becomes the main suspect in a murder case. The movie, which combines live-action and animation with breathtaking wizardry, was coproduced by the studios of Disney and Spielberg, and although Robert Zemeckis is the director, and the script is by Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman (based on a novel by Gary K. Wolf), another way of interpreting the title is to read it in cartoon terms as an inquiry into how one makes an old-style studio blockbuster without an auteur. In this respect, the “framer” of Roger Rabbit is a platoon of committed and talented individuals united by their love for both film noir and the Hollywood cartoon. As a tribute to the lost splendors (and characters) of both forms, this labor of love is deeply moving: in the world of the film, cartoon characters are treated like a repressed minority threatened by genocide, and gumshoes out of Raymond Chandler (or even Robert Towne) are almost equally archaic. Read more
My favorite Czech film, and surely one of the most exhilarating stylistic and psychedelic explosions of the 60s, Vera Chytilova’s madcap and aggressive feminist farce explodes in any number of directions. Featuring two uninhibited young women who are both named Marie–whose various escapades, which add up less to a plot than to a string of outrageous set pieces, include several antiphallic gags, and a free-for-all with fancy food rivaling Laurel and Hardy that got Chytilova in lots of trouble with the authorities–this is a disturbing yet liberating tour de force from a talented director showing what she can do with freedom. A major influence on Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating, this is chock-full of female giggling, which might be interpreted in this context as the laughter of Medusa: subversive, bracing, energizing, and rather off-putting (if challenging) to most male spectators (1966). (Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Monday through Thursday, June 20 through 23, 7:00, 281-4114) Read more
One of the more delightful things about this sharp baseball comedy is that you don’t have to be a sports fan to have lots of fun with it. Written and directed by rookie Ron Shelton, the movie evokes Howard Hawks (in spirit if not in letter) in its tight focusing on a snug, obsessive world of insiders and camp followers where the exchanges between buddies and sexes both have a euphoric stylishness and a giddy sense of ritual. Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon make an appealing triangle: an overlooked, smarter, and older catcher (Costner) is hired by the Durham Bulls mainly to coach a more successful, dumber, and younger pitcher (Robbins); Sarandon is a groupie who believes in “the church of baseball” and is drawn to both of them. On the level of plot, this movie somehow loses itself before the final inning, but there’s loads of laughter and enjoyment on the way to the lockers. (Starts Wednesday, Golf Glen, Biograph, Water Tower, Ford City East, Deerbrook, Yorktown) Read more
This is an intriguing mix of materials drawn from Video Data Bank’s What Does She Want series, which centers on art by women. Julie Dash’s Illusions, the only full-size film (as opposed to video) in the bunch, is an effective narrative about racism in 1942 Hollywood. The videos include Cecilia Condit’s nightmarish fairy tale fantasy Possibly in Michigan, Max Almy’s SF fever dream with fancy graphics Leaving the 20th Century, and Martha Rosler’s rather humorless Semiotics of the Kitchen. Rounding out the program are a TV ad for Kleenex and a promotional short for General Motors, both from the 1950s, and Carole Ann Klonarides and Michael Owen’s deadpan parody John Torreano: Art World Wizard, which incorporates some jazzy special effects. This is a mixed bag, like many such collections, but one that jingles. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Wednesday, June 8, 6:00, 443-3793) Read more
The conceit of Ken Russell’s version of Oscar Wilde’s Salome is that Wilde’s favorite London brothel is staging a version just for him (Nickolas Grace) in 1892, with his male lover Bosie (Douglas Hodge) playing John the Baptist and the brothel keeper (Stratford Johns) Herod. (Glenda Jackson plays Herodias, Imogen Millais-Scott is the rather unexciting Salome, and Russell himself turns up in an uncredited cameo as a photographer who helps with the sound effects.) Perhaps the biggest problem with this rather static (if mainlyand, for Russell, uncharacteristicallystraightforward) version of the play is that it tries too visibly to be outre, what with Jewish midgets cavorting, one character belching or farting whenever the action flags, and everyone else straining hard to be lewd and decadent. (In that department, as well as lushness, the unfortunately unexported Day-Glo version of the play by Italian avant-garde director Carmelo Bene in the 70s makes Russell’s efforts look even more feeble.) The tacky score, which runs the gamut from Schubert to Satie to Hollywood schmaltz, seems emblematic of the overall uncertainty. (JR) Read more
The mukhtar (chief) of an occupied Arab Palestinian village (Ali Mohammed Akili) wants to hold a traditional, full-scale wedding for his son (Nazih Akly), but the Israeli military governor will allow it only if he and his officers are the guests of honor. As the ceremonies and festivities gradually unfold over a tense day and night, Belgian-based writer-director Michel Khleifi, who grew up in Nazareth, paints an intimate and multilayered view of the village and its various factions, including the three generations of the mukhtar’s family. Beautifully filmed and edited, and effectively acted by nonprofessionals, this 1987 feature moves between an alienated grandfather, a group of flirtatious teenage girls, an angry group of young male terrorists, an impotent groom and resourceful and beautiful bride (Anna Achdian) who are expected to offer proof of their marriage’s consummation in the form of a bloody sheet, a horse that has strayed into a minefield, an Israeli woman soldier who changes into Arab clothes, and other diverse elements, with the mukhtar in most cases providing both the narrative linkage and a sense of how the village is run from within. Eschewing propaganda for an in-depth portrait, this is a fluid and lovely film that speaks volumes about Palestinian life. Read more
Kenji Mizoguchi’s first postwar film (1946), made under the censorship pressure of the American occupation, might be interpreted as a story about the director’s own artistic confinement as well as that of the great 18th-century wood-block printmaker Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806). (A less offensive and more accurate translation of the title would be Five Women Around Utamaro, which is what the film is called in England.) The film isn’t without its difficulties — a plot with no easy identifications due to a virtual absence of close-ups, a large cast of characters, and a periodic displacement of narrative centers — but these are all intimately related to the its uncommon achievements. Significantly, Utamaro’s artistry only becomes visible at any length in the film’s final shot, and many of the moments of greatest beauty and power take place in the margins of the story proper. A neglected and important film by one of the supreme masters. With Minosuke Bando and Kinuyo Tanaka. In Japanese with subtitles. 94 min. (JR)
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This awkward title is attached to a new Japanese feature by a 26-year-old director, Kaizo Hayashi, that sounds quite fascinating. An intricate detective story involving a mysterious couple’s kidnapped daughter leads the two heroes toward and apparently into a silent sword fight scene that was shot in 1915 but that can only be completed with their involvement. Hayashi created the silent footage himself. The film also features one of the few surviving benshisthe live, offscreen commentators of silent films in Japan who were often more popular than the films they accompanied, and whose influence delayed the coming of sound in Japanese cinema (1986). (JR) Read more
Juzo Itami’s third featureafter The Funeral (1984) and Tampopo (1986)follows the fanatical efforts of a dedicated tax official (Nobuko Miyamoto, Itami’s wife, who also played the female lead in Tampopo) to catch a variety of individuals who cheat on their tax forms, ranging from middle-income businessmen to big-time crooks. Although the action covers about a year and is partially a string of vignettes, much of it concentrates on the official’s attempts to nail down a ruthless real estate speculator who runs a clandestine adult hotel (Tsutomu Yamazaki). Lacking most of the comic gusto of Itami’s previous films, this one has a pretty icy objectivity, and whether the director sympathizes more with his determined heroine or with her various antagonists remains an open question; there’s a fair amount of unpleasantness on both sides. The result is a thoughtful film about a lively subject in Japanso successful in its native country that a sequel was madethat is still less compelling than Itami’s previous features (1987). (JR) Read more
A group of seven scuzzy Vietnam vets, including Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Pollard, have taken over an old B-29 bomber, dubbed it Uncle Slam, and jammed the nation’s airwaves with their own anarchic brand of dissidence, S and M TV. The principal target of their irreverence is Willa Westinghouse (Nigel Pegram), a right-wing female impersonator running for president as a womanfooling the entire American public with his impersonation, but not the viewer of this inept and offensively misogynistic movie, who should be able to spot the disguise in about four seconds. With a pigheaded script (by Scott Roberts) and direction (Maurice Phillipswho gets everyone in sight to overact), this 1986 throwaway production, originally known as The American Waya would-be SF satire that is so inattentive to the American yahoo subjects it tries to tackle, such as TV evangelists and Pentagon pontificators, that it inadvertently builds up sympathy for themmight be taken as camp if you’re stoned enough not to see or hear more than a fraction of what’s in front of you. I found it torture from beginning to end. (JR) Read more
Like Esther Williams in the 50s, Arnold Schwarzenegger seems fairly auteur-proof as a star, automatically trampling underfoot any director with a personal style and/or visionin this case, Walter Hill. But thanks to a fairly good script (by Harry Kleiner, Hill, and Troy Kennedy Martin), this thriller about a Soviet cop (Schwarzenegger) sent to Chicago to apprehend a Soviet drug dealer (Ed O’Ross) is a respectable enough star vehicle. (James Belushi plays Schwarzenegger’s American partner, and Peter Boyle plays a police commissioner, but the show really belongs to the Soviet hero and villain; Belushi is more or less assigned the Gabby Hayes part.) Lurking in the background is a cross-cultural comparison of Soviet and American attitudes that, for once, seems to give the Soviet characters the edge. (JR) Read more
The 1,400-acre military compound located at the base of Golden Gate Bridge is the partial setting for this mystery thriller, in which the army and the San Francisco police join forces to investigate a murder. Sean Connery is the military detective, and Mark Harmon plays his police partner; the strained relationship between the two is exacerbated when Harmon starts an affair with Connery’s daughter (Meg Ryan). At first, this promises to be a somewhat-better-than-average formula thriller; but the director, alas, is Peter Hyams (Outland, 2010)better equipped as a cinematographer here than as a tight storytelling craftsmanand Larry Ferguson’s script rarely moves beyond the shopworn. It’s a pity that an actor as talented and as likable as Connery seems routinely called upon to perform those mechanical mugging gymnastics that are widely applauded as Oscar performances; Jack Warden is enlisted here to pluck a few extra heartstrings. The San Francisco locations are serviceable. (JR) Read more
A singular virtue of the French cinema compared to our own is the use of well-known actors in low-budget, offbeat projects. Michel Deville’s very theatrical adaptation and direction of a whodunit novel by Franz-Rudolf Falk isn’t especially compelling as storytelling, but it allows one to see eight of the best movie actors in FranceFanny Ardant, Daniel Auteuil, Richard Bohringer, Philippe Leotard, Jeanne Moreau, Michel Piccoli, Claude Pieplu, and Jean Yanneacquitting themselves honorably; Ardant and Piccoli are particularly delightful. Better yet, it permits the neglected and prolific Deville to forge an interesting stylistic exercise in mise en scene, restricting most of the action to a cavernous bar resembling a warehouse. The dialogue bristles with breezy wordplay that is not easily translated (the title means the nonentity, and refers to Piccoli’s ambiguous role as bartender), but Deville’s ingenious use of ‘Scope framing in charting out the space keeps things lively, fluid, and unpredictable (1986). (JR) Read more
