The best thing about this glossy musical biopic of 1952 is the Frank Loesser score, which includes such tunes as Wonderful Copenhagen, Inch-worm, Thumbelina, and the title song. Purists might object to the Hollywood treatment of the author’s life, but at least we can see Danny Kaye (as the lead), Jeanmaire (who performs several dance sequences with Roland Petit), and Farley Granger; Charles Vidor directed. (JR) Read more
Elegant but tedious, this Masterpiece Theatre-like mounting of Evelyn Waugh’s famous (and partially autobiographical) novel about upper-class adultery in the 30s reunites the producer (Derek Granger) and one of the directors (Charles Sturridge) of Brideshead Revisited. Eileen Diss’s production design is certainly handsome, as are the main actors (James Wilby and Kristin Scott Thomas as Tony and Brenda Last; Rupert Graves as John Beaver, Brenda’s layabout lover), and the transposition of Waugh’s satirical nastiness seems reasonably faithful, but as cinema this is for fans of Merchant-Ivory’s congealed if polished miniaturescompetent and intelligent, but also rather passionless and remote. With Judi Dench. (JR) Read more
Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez) joins an Englishman (Terence Stamp) and a group of young renegade hired guns to fight the hoodlums terrorizing their town in New Mexico. Other young hombres include Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, and Lou Diamond Phillips. Christopher Cain directed this western from a script by John Fusco, and on the whole seems much more comfortable with the scroungy and scatological dialogue than he does with the action sequences. Full of odd notions and interludesa Brian Keith cameo, a peyote session among the young guns overseen by the Navajo in the group, a lot of gratuitous grinning from villain Jack Palancethe movie never really comes together, but fitfully suggests a cross between Boys Town and Greaser’s Palace. (JR) Read more
The first feature directed by the excellent English cinematographer Chris Menges, based on a sensitive autobiographical script by Shawn Slovo, is set in Johannesburg in 1963. A white, middle-class antiapartheid activist (Barbara Hershey) is arrested for her activities after her husband has had to leave the country for related reasons, and her 13-year-old daughter (Jodhi May), through whose eyes much of the story is told, has to adjust to the breakup of her home. In many respects, this film succeeds admirably in everything that Cry Freedom tried with much awkwardness to achieve; while the focus is once again on the sacrifices and dedication of committed whites to the struggle against South African racism, there is never any sense of inflated melodrama or displaced emphasis in the story the filmmakers have to tell, and the performancesby Hershey, May, Jeroen Krabbe, Paul Freeman, and David Suchetare especially powerful. (JR) Read more
The first theatrical feature of James Deardenson of British filmmaker Basil Dearden and author of Fatal Attraction’s original screenplayis adapted from Barry Unsworth’s novel of the same name and set on a small Greek island in 1908, when the Ottoman Empire is crumbling. Basil Pascali (Ben Kingsley), an alienated Turkish spy, offers to lend his assistance as an interpreter for a British gentleman (Charles Dance) in negotiating a lease so that he can conduct archaeological studies on the pasha’s land. Nothing, however, is quite what it seems to be, and other figures on the islanda painter who lives in the Turkish quarter (Helen Mirren), a German munitions supplier, an American yachtsman, and othersthicken the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity. Kingsley is at his best as the unhappy Pascali, through whose viewpoint the whole story is told in a rather Jamesian fashion; Roger Deakins (Stormy Monday) is the able cinematographer; and Dearden does a very effective job in telling this story with maximal impact. (JR) Read more
John Sturges’s 1958 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s famous short novel encountered a lot of technical difficulties on its way to the screen, and while Spencer Tracy provides a solid performance in the title role and Dimitri Tiomkin won an Oscar for his score, the overall effect of trying to film this rather unfilmable novel is a bit like an illustrated slide lecture. With Harry Bellaver and Felipe Pazos. (JR) Read more
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