Long before Henry Jaglom ever dreamed of such a thing, Paul and Danielle Gegauff scripted a movie about the breakup of their own marriage and decided to play the roles themselves; Claude Chabrol, the director for whom Paul Gegauff wrote all of his major scriptsin which sexism and boorishness were often a kind of specialityagreed to direct. The results are nasty, shocking, and singular: the tyrannical husband begins by insisting on an open marriage, is appalled after his wife starts taking advantage of this opportunity, and winds up being imprisoned for nearly killing her; and, as often happens in Chabrol films, it is the offspringin this case the couple’s little girlwho winds up bearing the brunt of the tragedy. Chabrol and the late Gegauff always made a rather interesting teamthe former’s ironic distance on the latter’s cultivation of megalomania and swinishness always gave their collaborations a fascinatingly ambiguous edge in such films as Les cousins and This Man Must Dieand this film represents in some ways the apotheosis of their work together, for better and for worse. Rarely has such unpleasantness been so compulsively watchable (1976). Read more
Following on the heels of his 1972 masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Luis Buñuel’s penultimate feature, made two years later, struck many critics at the time as a disappointing tapering off for the old master. But time has treated this puzzling provocation well, and today Buñuel’s episodic procession of mini plots may seem even more daring—less immediately accessible to be sure, yet perhaps closer in its radicalism to L’age d’or than any other of Buñuel’s late works. The challenging lack of a narrative center doesn’t prevent this film from having a great deal to say about the modern world and its ambivalent grasp of freedom. With an all-star cast featuring, among many others, Monica Vitti, Jean-Claude Brialy, Adolfo Celi, and Michel Piccoli. In French with subtitles. 104 min. Read more
Sincere, interminable treacle about a high school rock musician and composer (Alan Boyce) who commits suicide for obscure reasons, and the problems of his best friend (Keanu Reeves) and others in his crowd in carrying on afterward. A lot of talented people, ranging from Eraserhead’s cinematographer (Frederick Elmes) to Choose Me’s costume designer (Tracy Tynan), contributed to this muck, and the saddest thing about it is the fact that a film directed and partially written by women should be so unabashedly sexist in its uncritical treatment of all the major female characters as groupies and dutiful camp followers (played by Michelle Meyrink, Jennifer Rubin, and Pamela Gidley, among others), who need validation from the lead louts (Boyce and Reeves) simply in order to exist. Marisa Silver directed, Joe Strummer (formerly of the Clash) supplied the ho-hum score, and Jarre Fees, Alice Liddle, and Larry Ketron are credited with the lugubrious script. (JR) Read more
While far from being Wim Wenders’s best film, this 1984 collaboration with Sam Shepard, about a speechless wanderer (Harry Dean Stanton) returning from the desert and trying to resume relationships with his abandoned and scattered family, has an epic sweep (with superb color photography by Robby M Read more
George Romero’s 1978 quasi-comic movie about a teenage vampire (John Amplas) remains his artiest effort, and in some respects his most accomplished work. To some extent, the film is as much about the boredom of living in a Pittsburgh suburb as it is about anything else. It is also about the death of magic that this banal existence brings about. Despite the usual amounts of gore, this is a surprisingly tender, ambiguous, and sexy film in which Romero’s penchant for social satire is for once restricted to local and modest proportions. With Lincoln Maazel, Tom Savini, and Sarah Venable. (JR) Read more
Juan Antonio Bardem’s 1956 adaptation of a popular Spanish play, La senorita de Trevelez, with Betsy Blair, constitutes a grim critique of Spanish machismo and sexism, and is considered by many to be Bardem’s best film. Read more
Ray Bradbury appears to be the presiding influence over this nostalgic fantasy-thriller about childhood and ghosts, written, directed, produced, and scored by Frank LaLoggia (Fear No Evil). Set in a small town in the early 60s, the plot centers on the apparition of a little girl to the ten-year-old hero (Lukas Haas) while he’s locked in the school cloakroom during Halloween. Although a bit overextended, the results are something rare: an evocative, poetic horror film without a trace of gore (and in this respect closer to a Val Lewton 40s B, like The Curse of the Cat People, than to contemporary models). The Italian-American family detail is nicely handled, and much of Russell Carpenter’s photography is exquisite. With Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, and Katherine Helmond. (JR) Read more
Mickey Spillane, in an extreme act of self-aggrandizement, played his own hero Mike Hammer in this 1963 adaptation of his own penny-dreadful mystery, shot in England. Costarring Lloyd Nolan, and directed by Roy Rowland. Read more
Frank Capra comes to the Ozarks might serve as a loose description of this quirky and watchable comedy, whose heart and accents are in the right place; it’s a first feature by Arkansan Jay Russell. The Southland Railroad is shifting over to air freight, and a couple of old-time railroaders in Clifford, Arkansas (Wilford Brimley and Levon Helm), decide to steal a train and take it to Chicago to discuss the matter with Southland’s chairman of the board (Henderson Forsythe). Bob Balaban is the company’s president; Barbara Barrie, Mary Steenburgen (who doubles as executive producer), and Holly Hunter are the womenfolk back in Clifford; and Kevin Bacon and Michael Beach are younger railroad workers who double as bookiesall of whom help to keep this pleasant, despite Andy Summers’s terrible music score and a rosy-eyed finale that even beats Capra at wishful thinking (1988). (JR) Read more
When it was first shown back in the mid-60s, this experimental feature with a prelude and four sections was widely regarded as Stan Brakhage’s magnum opus, although it has surely been superseded by many major works since then. Following a cycle of seasons as well as the stretch of a single day as a man slowly makes his way up a mountain, the film features multiple superimpositions and includes traces of splice marks, painting, and scratches on the film emulsion as some of its densely woven textures. Mythological, cosmological, and physiological, like much of Brakhage’s work during this period, it can be seen as one of the most ambitious lyrical films ever madeand also one of the most pretentious, for those who are inclined to view Brakhage’s macho poetics as a trifle self-regarding. Whatever one thinks, and however much the film may seem dated now in relation to Brakhage’s subsequent output, it is an achievement to be reckoned with. 79 min. (JR) Read more
Luis Bu Read more
This 1983 documentary by Ismail Merchant, known mainly as the producer of James Ivory’s films, describes a large, traditional Bombay community where the business of temptation by the local courtesans is being threatened by movies and television. Read more
Fans of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1985) will undoubtedly recall the character Charleen Swansea, the filmmaker’s friend and former teacher, and will be pleased to discover that McElwee devoted an entire feature to this memorable woman back in 1977. An unorthodox fifth-grade teacher, small publisher, and poet who at one point was a protege of Ezra Pound, Charleen is an exuberant and outspoken southern eccentric, and McElwee’s affectionate portrait (which, unlike Sherman’s March, doesn’t do double duty as a portrait of the filmmaker) gives her plenty of opportunities to show her special qualitieswhich she takes full advantage of. Much of the film focuses on her inspired methods of teaching poetry and the difficulties of her relationship with a man who’s much younger. Larger than life and bursting with energy and intelligence, Charleen makes a fascinating film subject and indirectly gives us a glimpse of certain southern virtues that most accounts of the south gloss over. (JR) Read more
This started out as a three-song skit written and performed by Wendy Goldman and Judy Toll for the Groundlings in LA, and was later expanded into a play. Producer Ivan Reitman and his wife, director Genevieve Robert, decided to turn it into a film, getting Goldman and Toll to rewrite the play in light of the impact of AIDS, and adding a question mark to the title for good measure. The setting is a swanky health resort, though the film periodically returns to the dark space of a cabaret stage and the two female leads occasionally address the camera; Lea Thompson and Victoria Jackson star, with Stephen Shellen, Jerry Levine, Mary Gross, and Andrew Dice Clay also in the cast. Definitely a lightweight movie, without any heavy ambitions, but for the most part a likable one; with script and direction by women, it’s considerably less arch and dehumanized than the usual sex comedy. (JR) Read more
This 1987 documentary by Australian Dennis O’Rourke shows the homogenized, packaged tours being offered to Westerners who want to see the Sepik River region of New Guinea. Its tribal dwellers try or pretend to be what the tourists expect from them, though there hasn’t been a cannibal in the region since the turn of the 20th century. The result is a series of ironic commentaries. 77 min. (JR) Read more
