Jerzy Stefan Stawinski adapted his own novel, Piszczyk’s Sad Destiny Continued, for Andrzej Kotkowski’s film about a hard-luck hero in postwar Poland. Early in his adult life, Piszcyk gets thrown in prison by postwar communist authorities for supposedly not adapting to the new ways of life; later, his girlfriend hails him as a victim of Stalinism and a revolutionary activist, which leads to another arrest. Where are you going? Right or left? asks a stranger toward the end of the film, after the hero has related all his mishaps in flashback formthe tragicomic misadventures of a man who usually gets in trouble for doing what he thinks is expected of him. I don’t know, Citizen P. replies, and the film’s wry position is not to know either. Watchable if predictable, as well as bit contrived in spots, this dark comedy is certainly Polish to the core in its caustic ironies. (JR) Read more
It’s possible that Marco Bellocchio’s second feature, La Cina e vicina, a lively comedy about sex, class, and politics, is still his best film. Two scheming working-class lovers contrive to get themselves married into the same wealthy family, which includes a professor running for a municipal office as a socialist, his promiscuous sister, and a 17- year-old Maoist. Comic sparks fly out in every direction, pushed along by an exciting camera style. With Glauco Mauri, Elda Tattoli (who also serves as art director and collaborated with Bellocchio on the script), and music by Ennio Morricone (1968). (JR) Read more
A docudrama about Pedro J. Gonzalez (Oscar Chavez), the first Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. and a former revolutionary who defended his fellow Mexicans from racial attacks during the Depression and who was eventually sent to prison on trumped-up rape charges as a means of silencing him politically. Written and directed by Isaac Artenstein, the film, which is largely in English, benefits from its careful attention to period detail (including an interesting use of color archival footage). There’s some awkwardness in the two-dimensionality and declamatory acting style of the gringo villainsan unsavory bunch headed by LA district attorney Kyle Mitchell (Peter Henry Schroeder), who bears a striking resemblance to George Bushbut the interest of the story keeps the film watchable. With Maria Rojo, Tony Plana, and Pepe Serna (1988). (JR) Read more
Set in a future New York City that ideologically and practically bears a close resemblance to the present (the film’s budget was minuscule), Lizzie Borden’s radical feminist feature focuses on two clandestine radio stations and the announcers who speak for thema black woman named Honey, who espouses cooperation and community, and a white punk anarchist named Isabel, whose message is more negative and divisive. For all their differences, both women and both radio stations wind up seeming united in relation to the repressiveness of the mainstream media, which also figure substantially in the plot. Made piecemeal over a number of years and first released in 1983, this 90-minute comic fantasy has lost little of its radical edgein contrast to Borden’s subsequent Working Girls, which accommodated itself to a wider audience. (JR) Read more
Not connected with the nonfiction book of the same title, this is a low-budget, black-and-white independent feature (1987) written and directed by three UCLA film-school graduates (Allison Anders, Dean Lent, and Kurt Voss) about the rock scene in Los Angeles. After cutting a new album, a rock star named Jeff Bailey (Chris D.) steals some money owed to him and heads for his trailer in Ensenada. Most of the story concentrates on the efforts of his wife (Luanna Anders) to fend off the press and find out her husband’s whereabouts, as well as her involvement with Bailey’s roadie (Chris Shearer); various documentary-style interviews with a groupie (Iris Berry) and other hangers-on, which appear to be improvised, are periodically intercut with the relatively lax narrative flow. The movie has a good feel for the LA rock milieu, and some of the arty effects of the cinematography and editing are striking. But there’s very little sense of narrative rhythm, and the overall pacing seems needlessly sluggish. With Texacala Jones, John Doe, and the music of Dave Alvin, the Divine Horsemen, Green on Red, Los Lobos, the Lazy Cowgirls, and Chip Kinman. (JR) Read more
Michael Douglas plays a rude New York cop who penetrates the Japanese underworld in order to return a murder suspect to the Osaka police. Ridley Scott directed this 1989 feature, and while there’s a lot of his characteristic atmosphericssmoke, fog, neon, yellow light, rain, and squalorto fill all the dead spaces, he’s still a long way from the splendors of Blade Runner. The script by Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis doesn’t give him or Douglas very much to chew on, apart from a lot of unpleasant xenophobia about Japanese gangsters, and the plot never gets far beyond the formulaic and the forgettable, hammered into place by Hans Zimmer’s pounding and numbing score. With Andy Garcia, Kate Capshaw, and Ken Takakura; produced by Sherry Lansing and Stanley R. Jaffe (Fatal Attraction, The Accused). (JR) Read more
A 1989 adventure story about bears, produced by Claude Berri, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (Quest for Fire), and adapted by Gerard Brach from James Oliver Curwood’s novel The Grizzly King. Closer to the realities of animal behavior than what you generally find in Disney films, and aided by stunning scenery (the Bavarian Alps doubling here for British Columbia), the movie still aims for and intermittently achieves a certain anthropomorphism in the male bonding of an orphan cub and a huge grizzly, but at least they haven’t learned how to ham like their Hollywood counterparts. Jack Wallace, Tcheky Karyo, and Andre Lacombe play the humans, and Annaud doesn’t seem very comfortable with them; the movie is generally best when the bears are calling the shots. (JR) Read more
Andre Forcier’s whimsical 1982 curiosity from Quebec follows the unusual nurturing friendship between an albino street person (Michel Cote) and a former bowling champion with arthritis and a sandwich board (Guy L’Ecuyer) during an exceptionally cold winter in Montreal. Tinged with a sense of fantasy as well as an unsentimental pathos, this oddball comedy about outsiders is distinctive in both its quaintly theatrical look, decked out with snow and bright neon colors, and its loose, episodic narrative. It certainly creates a world of its own, but whether you respond to the film’s poetry and magic depends a great deal on how you respond to the two leading characters. I felt excluded. (JR) Read more
A decade in the making, this flaky Walter Mitty-like satire from Canada, by Michael and Andy Jones, follows the dreams of a minor and mouselike functionary (Andy Jones) in Newfoundland’s department of educationa revolution has transformed the province into a benign dictatorship, with Jones as the benign dictator. Jumping back and forth between ersatz TV news reports, humdrum humiliations, and assorted delusions of grandeur, the film seems both spurred along and ultimately undone by its highly fragmented structure. With Greg Malone, Robert Joy, Brian Downey, and Maisie Rillie (1986). (JR) Read more
