Not having read Thornton Wilder’s 1973 novel Theophilus North, it’s difficult for me to guess why this adaptation by Danny Huston (son of John) seems as pointless as it does, although on the basis of Wilder’s earlier Heaven’s My Destination, I suspect that satiric aspects in the original have somehow eluded the filmmakers. Janet Roach (Prizzi’s Honor) coscripted with the late John Huston, who was executive producer. John Huston also acted in the film, but after his death his scenes were reshot with Robert Mitchum as his replacement. The setting is Newport, Rhode Island, 1926, and the eponymous hero (Anthony Edwards) is a young man mistaken for a healer because of the electricity his body contains; he changes the lives of many around him, particularly the well-to-do in Newport. Despite an all-star cast including Lauren Bacall, Harry Dean Stanton, Anjelica Huston, David Warner, Virginia Madsen, Tammy Grimes, and Mary Stuart Masterson, the film falls rather flat. The director seems interested in a respectable literary adaptation in the tradition of many of his father’s films, but his technique regrettably isn’t up to it; the pacing is sluggish, and although nice use is made of the sumptuous period settings, all that results is a vague sort of Pollyanna story, with Edwards especially weak in the lead part. Read more
A must-see for all Rainer Werner Fassbinder fans. Radu Gabrea’s campy 1983 biopic about the late director stars the very talented Eva Mattes in drag in the title role, manipulating his Munich stock company in a variety of perverse ways while coming on as a slob enfant terrible. Funny, insightful, and packed with inside references that enthusiasts of the director and his myth will particularly enjoy, this is good, decadent fun even for spectators with only a casual acquaintance with Fassbinder; Mattes’s hallucinatory performance has a fascination all its own. (JR) Read more
Billy Wilder’s celebrated adaptation of the Charles Jackson novel about an alcoholic (Ray Milland) going off the wagon on a frightening weekend binge. The film won a whole slew of Oscars when it came out in 1945; today it’s less impressive but not without its virtues, including the location photography of lower Manhattan, the performances (by Milland, Jane Wyman, and Frank Faylen, among others), and a chilling sequence devoted to the DTs. 101 min. (JR) Read more
A new feature-length documentary by Michael Goldman about the revival of klezmer musica form of Jewish eastern European music that originated about 500 years ago and that has incorporated Gypsy, Greek, and other Balkan influences along with a Yiddish beat. Unlike most such documentaries, this one gives a welcome amount of technical and cultural information without ever seeming esoteric; in many respects, this is a film about rediscovering Jewish and Yiddish roots, but the general appeal of the music is also emphasized. Included are performances by New York’s Kapelye Band and the Boston Klezmer Conservatory Band. (JR) Read more
A rather affectless (and feckless) low-budget comedy by experimental filmmaker Werner Nekes about a no-talent rock singer (Helge Schneiderthe Johnny Flash of the title), which might be enjoyed if one is in a sufficiently giggly mood. Set in Mulheim (in the Ruhr district), the movie features one actor, Andreas Kunze, in multiple parts ranging from theater manager to music store clerk to delivery man to doctor to the hero’s mother; there are also some occasional flashes of Nekes’s avant-garde background: successive takes of the same shot, jump cuts, achronological double exposures. A healthy contempt for both the rock scene and narrative film in general seems to lurk behind this curiosity item; unfortunately, Nekes is no Frank Tashlin, and his technique lacks even the dry wit of a Luc Moullet; the film does, however, feature the breasts of Heike Melba-Fendel (as a glitzy TV impresario) whenever it gets a chance. (JR) Read more
Film editor Bud Smith makes his directorial debut with this comedy about a spectacular high school quarterback having to fend off unscrupulous college recruiters, written by Revenge of the Nerds’s Jeff Buhai and Steve Zacharias. Robert Downey Jr., Paul Gleason, Seymour Cassel, newcomer Uma Thurman, Howard Cosell, and Jim McMahonthe latter two playing themselvescostar. Read more
Lilyan Sievernich’s intimate documentary about John Huston at work on his last film, The Dead, is unusual as a production account in the degree to which it actually shows a director working (as opposed to talking about working, which this film also shows). Affectionately and judiciously put together, it is an affecting tribute. (JR) Read more
Professionally made, quite entertaining, and disappointingly hollow. In a mythically rendered early 60s, city kid Matt Dillon gets a job as a cabana boy at a posh Long Island resort for the nouveau riche, and falls under the influence of a slick, self-confident car dealer (Richard Crenna) while ignoring the counsel of his poor but honest father (Hector Elizondo). Though the director is TV sitcom king Garry Marshall (Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days), the film doesn’t have a television feel: the 60s details are dense and wittily chosen, and the large cast of accomplished character actors makes this world seem fully populated. But TV technique creeps in in the way Marshall lightens and diffuses the class and psychological conflicts that are at the center of the script, replacing dramatic substance with plot tricks and pat moral lessons. Crenna, in the late phase of a long career, is superbly meticulous and imaginative, and Jessica Walter is as sharp as a tack in a brief appearance as his wife. (JR) Read more
One of the most underrated of all children’s musical fantasies and conceivably the most interesting movie Stanley Kramer ever produced (1953). Dr. Seuss wrote the screenplay (with Allan Scott); his wartime buddy Carl Foreman was originally supposed to direct, but the Hollywood witch hunts soon made this impossible, and Roy Rowland took Foreman’s place. The plot basically consists of the florid nightmare of a ten-year-old boy (Tommy Rettig) about his authoritarian, prissy, and vaguely foreign piano teacher (Hans Conried), who forces 500 boys to play his monotonous exercise on a continuous keyboard located in his gargantuan palace, while the boy’s mother (Mary Healy) is locked, hypnotized, in a gilded cage. A very inventive form of delirium, with songs by Frederick Hollander and choreography by Eugene Loring; the use of Technicolor is especially impressive. If you’ve never seen this, prepare to have your mind blown. 88 min. (JR) Read more
Charles Crichton, the veteran British director who made his biggest mark with The Lavender Hill Mob in 1950, teams up with actor, writer, and executive producer John Cleese in a madcap caper comedy (1988) about another large-scale robbery that’s every bit as funny as its predecessor. Like many of the best English comedies, much of the humor here is based on character, good-natured high spirits, and fairly uninhibited vulgarity (a speech impediment and dead dogs supply the basis for some of the gags). The superlative cast includes Americans Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis (at her sexiest), as well as Michael Palin and Cleese; Crichton keeps the laughs coming with infectious energy. 108 min. (JR) Read more
Bruce Willis plays a New York cop visiting Los Angeles to see his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia), an ambitious executive working for a Japanese company; he arrives at her company’s Christmas Eve party in Century City just as a band of a dozen terrorists, headed by Alan Rickman, are taking over the building. A serviceable if rather overextended and overblown adventure thriller (1988), with Willis stripped for action like Rambo and doing his best as the only hope of the hostages held captive, this features a spectacular Cecil B. De Mille-like conclusion and makes good use of its skyscraper set (portions of which exhibit a Frank Lloyd Wright influence), but the script by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, adapted from Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever, is fairly routine, and most of the wit consists of showing the naivete of police and FBI officials outside and characters calling one another dickhead. John McTiernan, who directed, manages to keep this monolith moving. With Reginald Veljohnson, Paul Gleason, and Hart Bochner. (JR) Read more
Penelope Spheeris’s feature-length promo devoted to heavy metal groups (1988) is essentially an hour and a half of dross featuring Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and various members of Aerosmith, Kiss, Motorhead, and Poison, with truncated performances by Faster Pussycat, Lizzy Borden, London, Odin, Seduce, and Megadeth. There’s so little respect for the music that we never see or hear a number from beginning to end, and we rarely hear any of the musicians speak more than a few seconds at a time. Spheeris mainly encourages them to talk about how much sex and money they have, and to broaden things out a little, she interviews Chris Holmes while he’s guzzling vodka in a swimming pool next to his mother, gets a probation officer to describe demetaling, and devotes a lot of footage to some strip acts at Bill Gazzarri’s rock club. Overall the glibness and self-contempt are so thick you can cut them with a knife. R. (JR) Read more
Beyond the Valley of the Color of Money might be a more appropriate title. Tom Cruise plays a flashy bartender on Manhattan’s Upper East Side who falls in love with an artist (Elisabeth Shue) and begins to doubt the wisdom of his ways. Cruise prances behind a bar, flips bottles, and knocks over a couple of expensive sculptures in order to prove his macho credentials. Directed by Roger Donaldson (No Way Out) from a script and book by Heywood Gould; with Bryan Brown as Cruise’s mentor (the Paul Newman part). Very, very stupid. (JR) Read more
This directorial collaboration between Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer, working from an original screenplay by Wurlitzer, yields a quintessential road movie that moves from New York City to the eastern edge of Canada. A young musician (Kevin J. O’Connor) is hired to track down a legendary guitar maker named Elmore Silk, who has been missing for about two decades. Encountering a series of characters (including Silk’s younger brother, a daughter living in a trailer park, and a former lover) and adventures on the road, he gradually comes closer to solving the mystery of his prey’s disappearance, a process that is eventually completed by the enigmatic Silk himself. Ambling along like a wry, laid-back Heart of Darkness, this likable and touching film makes good use of Frank’s remarkable photographic eye and Wurlitzer’s witty, acerbic, and quasi-mystical handling of myth that has served him well in his novels. The results are a resonant reflection on the music business and a memorable ode to wanderlustwith lots of good music (by Dr. John, Joe Strummer, David Johansen, Tom Waits, and others) on the sound track. With Tom Waits, Harris Yulin, Bulle Ogier, David Johansen, Dr. John, Rita MacNeil, Wayne Robson, and Mary Margaret O’Hara (1987). Read more
A promiscuous luxury-car salesman (Robin Williams) in New York finds himself in the middle of a crisis when the hysterical, demented husband (Tim Robbins) of the lot’s secretary holds the entire dealership hostage, and the salesman has to use his special skills in order to save everyone’s life. Theoretically, the setup has some possibilities, but virtually none of them are realized in Ken Friedman’s hackneyed script (which even pilfers one of the corniest ideas in Rebel Without a Cause for its climax) and Roger Donaldson’s extremely poor direction. There’s nothing worse in movies than inauthentic regional flavor, and somebody’s decision to turn all the characters into screaming, strident caricatures makes this a pain to sit through; it’s a comedy-thriller only in aspiration. The material cries out for the Sidney Lumet of Dog Day Afternoon, and what it gets instead is so crude and swaggering that all the actors, including Williams and Robbins, are bent grotesquely out of shape. With Pamela Reed, Fran Drescher, Zack Norman, Annabella Sciorra, Lori Petty, and a brief cameo by Elaine Stritch. (JR) Read more
