Kevin Bacon plays Jake Briggs, a young man terrified of marriage and even more frightened by the fact that his wife Kristy (Elizabeth McGovern) is pregnant. This John Hughes comedywritten, produced, and directed by the individual probably most responsible for bringing complacent sitcom sensibility to moviesbranches out from previous efforts by including a good many fantasy sequences and flashbacks. The problems faced involve career, meddling in-laws, keeping a house in the suburbs, and overextended credit. One could play a depressing little game matching this movie with Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend as an indication of how low ordinary movies have sunk since the early 50s. The viewpoint of the older generation (Spencer Tracy in the earlier films) has been supplanted by that of the nerdy young husband (Bacon), but the conformist middle-class context and the undercurrents of castration anxiety (revealed in dream sequences) remain basically the same; the main difference is that the earlier model had some vestiges of soul and wit beneath its reactionary humor. Even though Kristy is seen mainly through the uncomprehending eyes of Jake, McGovern manages to fare better with the cliches thrown at her than Bacon does; but neither has a prayer of scoring at a game whose rules and players might have been dreamed up by a computer. Read more
Victimized by a rather insensitive reception at the time of its release (1959), Nicholas Ray’s epic film about Eskimo life and its remoteness from civilized values represents his firstand, in many ways, most ambitiousattempt to break free from the Hollywood studios and forge an independent route. Scripted by Ray himself, and shot on location and in studios in several different countries, the film contains one of the few bearable performances of Anthony Quinn; the Japanese actress Yoko Tani plays his wife, and a dubbed Peter O’Toole plays a government official. Couched in the form of a parable, this is one of Ray’s most powerful films about honor and alien folkways, and the icy landscapes are hauntingly beautiful. 109 min. (JR) Read more
Set in New York’s Metropolitan Hospital, Frederick Wiseman’s feature-length documentary of 1969 is one of the most powerful in his continuing series of investigations of various American institutions. Most of the emphasis in this setting is given to the emergency ward and outpatient clinics. 84 min. (JR) Read more
English performance artists Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore, who have been appearing in tweed suits and making bizarre forays into the art world since 1968mysterious appearances and performances that are somewhere between dry social analyses and deadpan put-onshave made their own film about their activity, shot by German cinematographer Martin Schafer (1980). On the same program, Helene Klo<-daw<-sky's U.S. documentary about the controversial political collage painter Sue Coe, Painted Landscapes (1986).
Read more
Like Alex Cox’s previous films (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy), this delirious fantasy about William Walker, the American who ruled Nicaragua from 1855 to 1857, is all over the place and excessive, but as a radical statement about the U.S.’s involvement in that country it packs a very welcome wallop. The witty screenplay is by novelist Rudy Wurlitzer (Nog, Slow Fade), whose previous screenwriting forays include Two-Lane Blacktop and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; Ed Harris plays the crazed Walker, Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God) is his deaf-mute fiancee, and Peter Boyle is Cornelius Vanderbilt. Deliberate and surreal anachronisms plant the action in a historical version of the present, and David Bridges’s cinematography combined with a liberal use of slow motion creates a lyrical depiction of carnage and devastation. Significantly, most of the film was shot in Nicaragua, with the cooperation and advice (but without the veto power) of the Sandinista government, and Edward R. Pressmanwhose previous credits include Badlands and True Storieswas executive producer. One can certainly quarrel with some aspects of the film’s treatment of history, but with political cowardice in commercial filmmaking so prevalent, one can only admire this movie’s gusto in calling a spade a spade, and the exhilaration of its anger and wit. Read more
One of Roberto Rossellini’s supreme masterpieces, and perhaps the greatest of the TV films that mark his last period. Made in 1966, the film chronicles the gradual steps taken in the Sun King’s seizure of power over 21 years; the treatment is contemplative, wise, and quietly humorous, and Rossellini’s innovative trick shots to integrate the real decor of Versailles are deftly executed. The color photography is superb. (JR) Read more
It lacks the range and analytical bite of his Images of Germany (1983), but Hartmut Bitomsky’s 1986 feature documentary about the highway system built by the Nazis does create some interesting reflections on the massive project. Alternating archival footage of the construction, contemporary interviews with some of the workers, and kitschy propaganda films made by the Third Reich (which attempted to sell the Autobahn to a recalcitrant public), Bitomsky puts together a kind of cultural history that may be long-winded and dry in spots but still adds up to an absorbing document about a monument designed to provide not the shortest but the noblest connection between two points. (JR) Read more
Carole Langer’s explosive and shocking documentary about radioactivity in Ottawa, Illinois, and the 65 years the town’s inhabitants worked for the Radium Chemical Company. A large number of workersspecifically women who filled in the numbers on clock dials with luminous paintdied of cancer, but the story doesn’t end there; the high school building where the women worked was eventually dismantled, with pieces from it distributed all over town, and the whole environment became radioactive. Langer’s approach to this subject is patient, thorough, and profoundly human; she lets the facts emerge from the material and follows the complex ramifications of the story right up to the present. The result is something more than powerful investigative journalism: one comes to know a great deal about the inner workings of this community and the frightening degree of irresponsibility and callousness on the part of the government, but Langer’s approach is anything but preachy, and the sympathetic rapport that she achieves with many of the town’s inhabitants creates a multidimensional portrait. (JR) Read more
James Toback’s fourth feature translates the macho/manic obsessions of the previous three (as well as The Gambler, which he scripted) into a light and fairly innocuous youth picture. At once easier to take and easier to forget than his more feverish efforts, this romantic thriller set in New York and environs (with a side trip to Atlantic City), nicely shot by Gordon Willis, is all sweetness and light compared to the pseudo-Dostoyevskian bombast of Fingers and Exposed. Molly Ringwald, Bob Downey, Mildred Dunnock, Danny Aiello, and even scroungy Dennis Hopper and sinister Harvey Keitel come across like charming refugees from a John Hughes teenpic. It’s hard to know exactly how this came about, but apparently Warren Beatty, the ghost producer, had the final cut. (JR)
Read more
One of the most remarkable and innovative documentaries ever made, this hour-long film made by Francoise Romand for French TV (1986) follows the famous true story of two English women who as babies got switched in the hospital and 20 years later discovered that they’d been raised by the wrong sets of parents. Romand enlists all the surviving family members in her haunting and bizarre investigation, which involves not only a recounting but a reenactment of all the significant events in the two daughters’ emotional histories. Composed in an elaborate visual form that involves parallel shots, diptych compositions employing windows and mirrors, home-movie footage, stylized group portraits, and striking use of the families’ homes and possessions, and featuring inventive work with sound and music, the movie burrows so deeply into the subject and its ramifications that one emerges with enough material for a 500-page novel. The mix-up of the title refers not only to the putative subject but to many stylistic and formal collisions: fiction versus fact, French versus English, memory versus imagination. An astonishing film debut. (JR) Read more
One of the better documentary compilations about Nazi Germanya German/Swedish production, directed by Erwin Leiser in 1961, and narrated by Claude Stephenson. (JR) Read more
French hack Pierre Granier-Deferre directed this World War II thriller (1973) about a French radio repairman (Jean-Louis Trintignant) fleeing with his family from the German invasion and meeting Romy Schneider en route. Read more
Nicholas Ray’s 1961 retelling of the story of Jesus for producer Samuel Bronston may have spelled the beginning of his downfall as a commercial director, and Orson Welles, who narrates, was so offended that he didn’t want his name on the credits. Yet this quirky ‘Scope biblical spectacular is a lot more thoughtful and interesting than most. Jeffrey Hunter’s Christ wears a red cloak that calls to mind James Dean’s jacket, and Ray’s conception of the Sermon on the Mount as a series of personal exchanges is arresting to say the least. Philip Yordan (Johnny Guitar) signed the script, and Robert Ryan, Siobhan McKenna, Hurd Hatfield, Rip Torn, Viveca Lindfors, and Rita Gam figure in the cast. In some ways this blockbuster, simple and emotional, might be regarded as Jesus Christ Superstar avant la lettre. 168 min. (JR) Read more
Polly (Sheila McCarthy), the organizationally impaired heroine of Canadian writer-director Patricia Rozema’s whimsical first feature (1987), gets a secretarial job at a chic Toronto art gallery and becomes infatuated with Gabrielle (Paule Baillargeon), the sophisticated curator, while taking everyday photographs and indulging in eccentric daydreams in her spare time. Her rude encounters with the corruption and hypocrisy of Gabrielle’s world form the main substance of the story, which caters to middlebrow cultural insecurities even more doggedly than Woody Allen does. While it’s refreshing to find lesbian sensibilities represented honestly in a mainstream context (the performances are adept, and the conclusion is intriguingly open-ended), the cutesy style tries to promote the heroine’s dimwitted innocence in such anti-intellectual fashion that the movie’s self-righteousness may set your teeth on edge. The very title of the film, which misquotes a line from Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, is symptomatic of the pretensions in store. (JR) Read more
A stirring and informative account of the Sandinista struggle, made up almost exclusively of personal testimonies from Sandinistas, this documentary by Deborah Shafferwho won an Oscar in 1985 for her Witness to War: Dr. Charlie Clementsis loosely based on Omar Cabezas’s book about his own training as a guerrilla fighter in response to the Somoza dictatorship. The physicality and mythical dimensions of the guerrillas’ experiences in the mountains are an important part of the story here, but the film includes much more: newsreel footage and Nicaraguan witnesses speak of American invasions throughout this century, and the commentaries of Cabezas (then vice minister of the interior of the Nicaraguan government) and others are intelligent and pointed, moving beyond slogans to give a detailed portrait of their history, problems, and aspirations. Music is provided by bassist and composer Charlie Haden. Fernando Cardenal, the minister of education of Nicaragua, will speak after the film. Read more
