Another of Henry Jaglom’s let-it-all-hang-out gabfests, this one set in a beautiful, about-to-be-destroyed Los Angeles theater, where Jaglom invites his friends on Valentine’s Day. It certainly has its momentsmost of them provided by Orson Welles (in one of his last extended film performances), his vivacious long-time companion Oja Kodar, and the venerable Sally Kellermanbut most of this largely improvised movie, as critic Elliott Stein has pointed out, is pretty much the equivalent of the Donahue show, with all the strengths and limitations that this implies, and Jaglom’s own earnest inquiries about what makes so many people lonely can get a bit cloying after a while. However, Welles, as the equivalent of a talk-show guest, is very much in his prime, and his ruminations about feminism, loneliness, drama, and related subjects certainly give the proceedings an edge and a direction that most of the remainder of this floundering movie sadly lacks. Among the other participants in this encounter session are Jaglom’s brother Michael Emil, Andrea Marcovicci, Ronee Blakley, and Monte Hellman. (JR) Read more
The rather crazed conceit of this rock ‘n’ roll fable by writer-director Chris Columbus (Adventures in Babysitting) goes something like this: in a small town in Ohio in 1972, teenager Johnny Wolfe (Charlie Schlatter) decides that the only way he can straighten out the lives of his sister (Angela Goethals), his single mother (Tuesday Weld), and himself is to bring together his mother, a passionate Elvis fanatic, and Elvis himself (David Keith). So with the help of some friends, he kidnaps the King after a Cleveland concert, brings him home, and sure enough, after a bit of irritation, Elvis turns into a Capra hero and brings a bit of light into the lives of everyone: he teaches the little girl how not to be afraid of the dark, romances the mother, fixes the lawn mower, gets Johnny’s rock group into his high school talent show, improvises a fully choreographed version of Ready Teddy in the local cafe, punches out a villain, redecorates the family’s hotel (appropriately called Flaming Star), and dispenses his patriarchal country wisdom to everyone in sight. Most movies, of course, are supposed to be fantasies, and one would like to think that Tuesday Weld was in on the absurdity of this enterprise, but this one treats it all straight, with a solemnity that may have you rolling in the aisles. Read more
Flawed but fascinating, Nicolas Roeg’s direction of an original script by Dennis Potter (Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective) yields a provocative and multilayered depiction of American infantilism. In a North Carolina town Theresa Russell plays a bored, alcoholic, and frustrated housewife married to a doctor (Christopher Lloyd) who prefers playing with his model railroad to dallying with her. Into the picture comes an enigmatic young English stranger (Gary Oldman)possibly the long-lost son forcibly taken from her at childbirth who, like much else in the film, may or may not be real. Roeg and Potter’s grasp of Americana may be flawed in certain details, but the overall drift of their parable carries an undeniable charge. Russell’s southern accent works only intermittently, and it’s a pity to see actors as interesting as Sandra Bernhard and Seymour Cassel wasted (Colleen Camp fares somewhat better as Russell’s best friend). But Roeg’s talent as a stylist, purveyor of the bizarre and kinky, and poet of disturbed mental states (as experienced from within) keeps this alive and humming. This is definitely worth a visit (1988). (JR) Read more
Errol Morris’s third documentary feature (after Gates of Heaven and Vernon, Florida) is an absorbing but problematic 1988 reconstruction of and investigation into the 1976 murder of a Dallas policeman. As an investigative detective-journalist who spent many years on this case, Morris uncovered a disturbing miscarriage of justice in the conviction of Randall Adamswho came very close to being executed. Morris goes so far in his talking-head interview technique that he eventually goads David Harris, Adams’s companion the night of the murder, into something very close to a confession. But Morris’s highly selective approach also leaves a good many questions hanging. The issue of motive is virtually untouched, and the quasi-abstract re-creations of the crime, accompanied by what is probably the first effective film score ever composed by Philip Glass, give rise to a lot of metaphysical speculations that, provocative as they are, only obfuscate the issues. The results, while compelling, provide an object lesson in the dangers of being influenced by Werner Herzog; the larger considerations and film noir overtones detract too much from the facts of the case, and what emerges are two effective half-films, each partially at odds with the other. (JR) Read more
Multiple superimpositions and double exposures create ghostly effects in Victor Sjostrom’s 1920 masterpiece. The story, told through a complex flashback structure, resembles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol: a self-destructive and irresponsible man has a brush with the carriage of death, which allows him to review his life. With Sjostrom, Hilda Borgstrom, Tore Svennberg, and Astrid Holm; also known as The Phantom Chariot. (JR) Read more
Ruy Guerra’s attempt to do a kind of version of The Threepenny Opera, set in Rio de Janeiro in the 40s and adapted from a play by singer-composer Chico Buarque (Bye Bye Brazil), is surprisingly slickvisually striking, but on the whole a disappointing effort from an important director. (JR) Read more
Director Harvey Keith and producer Stuart Shapiro take a walk on the wild side through the seamier byways of New York life in this documentary inspired by the 1963 Mondo Cane. It features cockfights, junkies, street hookers, habitues of S and M clubs, and a number of outre performance artistsAnn Magnuson beating a dead horse, Karen Finley decorating herself with raw eggs and glitter, Joe Coleman biting the head off a mouse while nearly exploding himself with firecrackers, and Dean Johnson performing in drag with his band, the Weenies (1988). (JR) Read more
When the bank forecloses on their famous and once-prosperous farm in Iowa, which Nikita Khrushchev visited and praised in 1959, Frank Roberts (Richard Gere) and his younger brother Terry (Kevin Anderson) burn the place to the ground and become fugitives from the law. While Frank continues to be full of violence and rage about their fate, Terry begins to think about cutting loose and settling down with a woman he loves named Sally (Penelope Ann Miller). Seemingly as slow-witted and as sincere as its semiarticulate characters, this movie draws on a lot of talent from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatredirector Gary Sinise, and such actors as Anderson, Terry Kinney, Francis Guinan, Laurie Metcalf, John Malkovich, and Randy Arneybut despite the earnestness and conscientiousness of their efforts, the script by Chris Gerolmo never gives them quite enough to work with, and the heaviness of Gere’s performance sinks this movie like a ton of beef. Elliot Davis’s cinematography makes the most of the midwest settings, and the actors (also including Helen Hunt, Judith Ivey, and Brian Dennehy) mainly acquit themselves admirably, but the ponderous pacing of the action and the thinness of the materialdespite the potential resonance of the subjectregrettably dissipates most of the interest. Read more
In this 1983 English comedy, directed by Richard Eyre from a script by Maggie Brooks, three women custom-build the car they plan to drive to Munich, where one of them, Sally (Lindsay Duncan), plans to attend a feminist convention. When the two other women have to drop out of the trip, Sally advertises for a female, vegetarian driving partner, and the only worthy candidate proves to be Harry (Stephen Rea), a working-class man from Liverpool who claims to be gay, vegetarian, and a car expert. This is a reasonably pleasant and intelligent picture that never gets very far beyond a feature-length sitcom; the location work is attractive, and both of the leads are good, but despite a large number of plot twists, none of it adds up to very much. A gentle depiction of class and sexual warfare, the movie has a few things to say, but is pitched too squarely at a middle-class audience to dig very deep into its material. If you’re not expecting too much, you might find this worth a look. (JR) Read more
Alternately distressing, instructive, contestable, and fascinating, Juliet Bashore’s 1986 documentary about a lesbian couple working in the porn industrya cynical older woman (Sharon Mitch Mitchell), who is a seasoned porn star, and her lover (known as Tigr), who is an uneasy newcomer to this world, where drugs play a significant roleoffers a disturbing glimpse of the modification of bodies, feelings, and lives. The camera’s presence has a shifting role in the film, moving from seemingly impartial witness of certain events to stimulus and catalyst for certain others, and this tends to confuse and change one’s relationship to both the film and its characters. Rarely has the alienation implicit in the porn business been so tellingly exposed, but in the process of exposing the film raises a few questions about its own tactics and complicity. And it isn’t only porn that gets deconstructed; the central relationship between Mitch and Tigr seems to have been figuratively and literally taken apart. (JR) Read more
The first part of Claude Berri’s two-part adaptation of a Marcel Pagnol novel, with Gerard Depardieu as a noble hunchback trying to start a new life as a farmer in southwest France, Yves Montand as a wily local peasant out to cheat him out of his property, and Daniel Auteuil as the latter’s naive nephew. Not really a complete work without Manon of the Spring, the sequel, but Bruno Nuytten’s cinematography and Berri and Gerard Brach’s script keep things moving along pleasantly and professionally (1986). (JR) Read more
The earliest surviving film by Swedish director Victor Sjostrom is his sixth feature, also known as Give Us This Day (1913). A controversial attack on the welfare system of the period that separated mothers from their children and required forced labor from both, the film follows the widow of a grocer (Hilda Borgstrom) whose bankruptcy leads her and her children through a series of tragedies. (JR) Read more
This first feature by Catalan director Agustin Villaronga, which made the top of Village Voice critic Elliott Stein’s 1987 ten-best list, may not be for everyone, but it is certainly disturbing, powerful, and accomplished in what it sets out to do. The plot focuses on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former concentration camp doctor, who has retired to Spain in an iron lung, and the obsessive and ultimately murderous male nurse who takes care of him. A somber mixture of suspense, grim humor, and baroque perversity, it builds to a frightening conclusion. (JR) Read more
Producer David Wolper, director and cowriter Andrew Solt, and cowriter and coproducer Sam Egan assembled this 1988 profile of John Lennon from over 200 hours of footage, focusing on the superstar’s public and private lives. No totally uninteresting film could be made with this amount of material to choose from, but the absence of both intelligence and integrity in most areas makes for a perfunctory and often tacky hodgepodge. The chronology of Lennon’s career is handled so confusingly that viewers unacquainted with it are likely to be misled or confounded; Lennon’s books and his own films aren’t even mentioned, much less cited in the credits, and the frequent dubbing of records over concert footage is symptomatic of a general refusal to respect the documentary materials available. Overall this is better than nothing, but not by much. 103 min. (JR) Read more
Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones from Night of the Living Dead) is a black anthropologist who develops a taste for blood after he’s accidentally stabbed with a dagger from an ancient civilization. Ganja (Marlene Clark) becomes infected as well, and the two become lovers and mutual tormentors in their joint journey toward death. Certainly the most original and intellectually ambitious of all the blaxploitation films of the 70s, Bill Gunn’s uneven and seldom shown but thought-provoking 1973 horror film is better known in Europe than here; the ritualistic phantasmagoria it creates — aided and abetted by James Hinton’s cinematography — lingers in the mind. 110 min. (JR)
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