A strong, disturbing picture (1988) in which Meryl Streep’s beauty and talent and director Fred Schepisi’s intelligence are both shown to best advantage, without easy points or grandstanding. Streep stars as Lindy Chamberlain in the true-life story of a bereaved mother of a nine-week-old daughter in Australia who was tried for her child’s murder, despite the absence of a body, weapon, motive, or clear evidence. Sam Neill costars as Chamberlain’s husband Michael; the script was written by Schepisi and Robert Caswell, based on the book Evil Angels by John Bryson. 121 min. (JR) Read more
One of the most striking Soviet films thawed out by glasnost, this 1967 feature by Aleksandr Askoldov was apparently controversial because it expresses overt sympathy for the Jews who were persecuted during the Russian civil war and because the lead character is a pregnant woman who challenged traditional stereotypes. As a first feature, the film is in many respects remarkable, if not an unqualified success. The black-and-white ‘Scope images are often clearly influenced by the silent Soviet masters, and the use of subjective camera is especially striking, but the film is only intermittently effective as a narrative. Still, anyone with an interest in the subject or in Soviet cinema shouldn’t miss it. In Rusian with subtitles. 108 min. (JR) Read more
One of the likely prototypes of the 1987 pastiche Amazon Women on the Moon, this low-budget effort from 1953 was originally shot in 3-D and also released under the title Rocket to the Moon. Written by Roy Hamilton and directed by Arthur Hilton; with Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory, and Marie Windsor. Elmer Bernstein, of all people, supplied the music. 64 min. (JR) Read more
A tedious English feature based on the real-life big train robbery of 1963 that made off with over two and half million pounds, directed by David Green from a script by Colin Shindler. Rather than work this material into a thriller, the filmmakers choose to focus on the domestic problems of one of the robbers (rock star Phil Collins) and his wife (Julie Walters), including their protracted, unhappy stay in Acapulco. The cinematography has the ugly, overlit look of British TV commercials, and the corny pop score is even more alienating; a few approximate stabs are made at social commentary, but to little avail. With Larry Lamb, Martin Jarvis, Sheila Hancock, and Anthony Quayle. (JR) Read more
As the ultimate middle-class comedy director, Paul Mazursky had a grand time in the late 60s and early 70s toying with the titillations offered by the counterculture without ever really succumbing to them, and this movie, about mate swapping, was one of his most successful (at the box office) ambivalently pitched forays in that direction. The results are pretty obnoxious and only intermittently funny, but certainly characteristic. Mazursky and Larry Tucker scripted, and the foursome are played by Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould, and Dyan Cannon. (JR) Read more
One certainly can’t accuse German filmmaker Percy Adlon (Celeste, Sugarbaby) of opting for the tried and true in his first American effort (1988). A hefty Bavarian tourist (Sugarbaby’s Marianne Sagebrecht) splits from her husband and finds herself stranded at a truck-stop motel near the Mojave Desert, run by a black woman (CCH Pounder) who has just broken up with her own husband. Gradually, the hausfrau brings some light and magic into the lives of all those around her, and even gets a nightclub magic act going. With the help of cinematographer Bernd Heinl and some occasional oddball editing, Adlon gives his film a rather distinctive look. Unfortunately, the film’s curious conceits remain implausible even on a fantasy level, and most of the satirical possibilities are either sidestepped or fumbled; despite some superficial resemblances to Werner Herzog’s Stroszek, there is almost none of that film’s cantankerous charm. The film is actually closer to Pollyanna, and Pounder’s stagy performance seems especially out of sync with everyone else’s. With Jack Palance, Monica Calhoun, George Aquilar, Darron Flagg, G. Smokey Campbell, Alan S. Craig, Ronald Lee Jarvis, and Christine Kaufmannvery much of an all-weirdo cast by design, but it doesn’t really get the movie moving. Read more
Woody Allen’s 18th feature (1988) gives us more Scandinavian gloom and culture vulturism about guilty, well-to-do non-Jews in Manhattan, shot by Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist in suitably drab weather and loosely patterned after Wild Strawberries. The intellectual protagonist, well played by Gena Rowlands (she’s a philosophy professor, natch), is suffering a midlife crisis, focusing on her love life and her decision not to have children; she’s also trying to write a book, and her imagination and memories are stimulated when she overhears the psychiatric sessions of a pregnant woman (Mia Farrow) in the flat below. Allen has assembled a sterling cast that also includes Philip Bosco, Betty Buckley, Blythe Danner, Sandy Dennis, Gene Hackman, Ian Holm, John Houseman (in one of his last performances), Martha Plimpton, David Ogden Stiers, and Harris Yulin, but at best they can only make the self-flagellation marginally more bearablethey can’t really transcend the aura of glitzy, suicidal chic that makes this an insult to intellectuals and a piece of posturing phoniness designed to awe spectators who like their psychodramas third-hand and upscale. To Allen’s credit, however, at least one of the laughs in this film is intentional. (JR) Read more
The distinctive and unusual talents of French filmmaker Leos Carax have relatively little to do with story telling, and it would be a mistake to approach this, his second feature, with expectations of a “dazzling film noir thriller,” which is how it was described for the Chicago Film Festival last year. Dazzling it certainly is in spots, but the film noir, thriller, and SF trappings–hung around a vaguely paranoid plot about a couple of thieves (Michel Piccoli, Hans Meyer) hiring the son (Denis Lavant) of a recently deceased partner to help steal a cure to an AIDS-like virus–are so feeble and perfunctory that they function at best only as a literal framing device, an artificial means for Carax to tighten his canvas. The real meat of this movie is his total absorption in his two wonderful lead actors, Lavant and Juliette Binoche (The Incredible Lightness of Being), which comes to fruition during a lengthy attempt at the seduction of the latter by the former, an extended nocturnal encounter that the various genre elements serve only to hold in place. The true sources of Carax’s style are neither Truffaut nor Godard but the silent cinema–its poetics of close-ups, gestures, and the mysteries of personality, its melancholy, its silence, and its innocence. Read more
David Mamet’s second feature as a director, coscripted with Shel Silverstein, is a little bit of a letdown after House of Games, but as a Mafia fairy tale with a tour de force performance by Don Ameche (soft-pedaling all the way), it is certainly watchable and enjoyable enough in its own right. Over a weekend, a low-ranking Chicago mobster on probation (Joe Mantegna) is asked to coach and chaperone an elderly Sicilian shoe-shine man (Ameche) who, in exchange for money, has agreed to take the rap for a murder he didn’t commit. He decides to take the old man to Lake Tahoe for a final fling before he goes to prison, at which point a series of misunderstandings leads to the Sicilian being mistaken for a big-time Mafia chieftain. Basically a low-key comedy, this exhibits some of the same tart, triple-distilled flavor of Mamet’s dialogue in earlier efforts; what disappoints after the darker and harder edges of House of Games is a slight veering toward slickness and a touch of sentimentality. Despite some attempt to be “cinematic” here, Mamet’s talk is still his strongest suit. With Robert Prosky, J.J. Johnston, Ricky Jay, and Mike Nussbaum, all effective (as is Mantegna). (Chicago Ridge, Golf Mill, River Oaks, Woodfield, Yorktown, Evanston, Fine Arts, Hillside Square) Read more
If this country’s electorate cared more about honesty and truth, this film would be getting more attention in the media than the Bush-Dukakis debates. Unfortunately, stylish cover-up is the name of the game, and this straightforward account of how our country and Constitution are being sold down the river will only interest that portion of the populace that cares about one of the major international political scandals that the presidential campaign and the national media have been virtually ignoring, if not suppressing. Of course this is nothing new: enough of the Watergate story was already apparent before Nixon was reelected to have affected that election if the public had wanted to hear about it. Considerably more of the Iran-contra affair is apparent (including the Reagan-Bush administration’s heavy involvement in the hard-drugs trade) in this first-rate, compulsively watchable documentary–directed by Barbara Trent, scripted by Eve Goldberg, and narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery, with music by Ruben Blades, Richard Elliott, Pink Floyd, and Lou Reed. But from the looks of things, the American public won’t be interested until it’s too late to make a difference. Spectators who feel differently are urged to take a look at this, and to bring their friends. (Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Read more
The 24th Chicago International Film Festival, running from Monday, October 24, through Sunday, November 6, promises fewer programs this year — a little less than 100 versus last year’s 131 — with a good many more repeats; and the screenings occupy a much wider geographic spread, with films showing on the University of Chicago campus and at the Three Penny as well as at the two standbys from last year, the Biograph and the Music Box. Although some countries are unrepresented–including the People’s Republic of China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Korea, Mexico, and most of Africa and the Middle East–the overall international spread (or sprawl) is as far-flung as ever, including such unlikely coproductions as Rowing With the Wind (Spanish/Norwegian in English) and Consuelo, an Illusion (Chilean/Swedish). The festival is also broadening its plans for question-and-answer sessions with directors after their films; specifics will be announced at the relevant screenings.
Like last year’s selection, the films on offer, taken as an unwieldy whole, make up an indigestible hodgepodge, reflecting neither a critical position nor an all-purpose cornucopia. (A total absence of retrospectives — apart from an Alan Parker tribute, which is surely the last thing that we need — is especially striking and unfortunate.) Read more
Something of a first, this is a serious movie about rape, and as such might be said to represent penance of a sort for the crude milking of antifeminist sentiments in the previous film of producers Sherry Lansing and Stanley R. Jaffe, Fatal Attraction. Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) is gang-raped in a bar, and Deputy District Attorney Katheryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) agrees to take over her case. A courtroom drama with certain faint echoes of Anatomy of a Murder and the more recent Nuts (the latter of which had the same screenwriter, Tom Topor), this attention-holder explores such issues as the public’s received ideas about rape and the question of ultimate responsibility without ever stacking the deck or being unduly preachy; and director Jonathan Kaplan, who previously gave an edge to Over the Edge, guides things along capably. Not a brilliant film, but an intelligent and thoughtful one that builds to an effective climax, with an exceptional performance by Foster. (Evergreen, Hillside Square, Webster Place, Old Orchard, Norridge, Hyde Park, Forest Park, Woodfield, Water Tower, River Oaks, Plaza, Orland Square, Ridge) 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 (Sid and Nancy’s Gary Oldman) who may or may not be her long-lost son, who was forcibly taken from her at childbirth and 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 only works 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. If you’re looking for something different, this is definitely worth a visit. (Fine Arts) Read more
Henry Jaglom’s latest let-it-all-hang-out gabfest, 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 moments–most 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 Kellerman–but 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 awhile. 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. A Chicago premiere (1987). (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Friday through Sunday, October 7 through 9, 6:00 and 8:00, 443-3737) Read more
On the whole, a disappointing episodic feature of seven shorts by women filmmakers, commissioned by German television. Perhaps the best parts are Ulrike Ottinger’s Pride with Delphine Seyrig and Chantal Akerman’s appropriately unassuming (though slight) Sloth. Maxi Cohen’s Anger is certainly striking and provocative, but also highly questionable and exploitative; Laurence Gavron’s Envy, Valie Export’s Voluptuousness, and Helke Sander’s Gluttony are relatively forgettable; and the worst of the lot, alas, is Bette Gordon’s feeble Greed. Certainly this is worth seeing if you want to keep up with the work of these filmmakers, but don’t go expecting any major revelations. (JR) Read more
