In 2002, 20 black seventh graders from Baltimore’s inner city, many of them from troubled homes, were sent to Baraka, an experimental boarding school in Kenya. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady spent three years following four of them, and the resulting documentary is sensitive, intelligent, enlightening, and sometimes surprising. Ewing and Grady give us a nuanced sense of these boys’ options, and it’s typical of their attention to detail that during a long-distance phone call, cameras in Baraka and Baltimore record both sides of the conversation. R, 85 min. (JR) Read more
If the Philip K. Dick story this was based on made sense, director John Woo and screenwriter Dean Geogaris have reduced it to gibberish in their eagerness to cut to the chase as frequently as possible. The eminently forgettable Ben Affleck plays a consultant who gets his memory erased periodically in order to protect the secrets of his employers; Uma Thurman plays his forgotten (yet paradoxically cherished) girlfriend. Armed with an esoteric collection of objects he bequeathed himself before his mind was wiped, the professional amnesiac must piece his past together while dodging a boardroom’s worth of corporate villains, led by a glowering Aaron Eckhart. The silliness only slows down for a few hokey romantic interludes. But if you like to see stuff crash or blow up, this is your movie. PG-13, 110 min. (JR) Read more
As a documentary, this sounds like a natural: a year in the life of a rural one-room schoolhouse where a dozen students, ages 3 through 11, are taught by a single teacher. Because the teacher appears to be very good and the filmmaker is Nicolas Philibert, whose earlier In the Land of the Deaf and La Moindre des Choses (about a psychiatric clinic) showed tact and sensitivity, this 2002 feature partly fulfilled my high expectations. But the sometimes intrusive role played by Philibert and his small crew seems inadequately dealt with, and I wondered if the segments showing the kids outside school mythologized country life, never alluding to such tokens of the outside world as TV. This is seductive storytelling and good investigative journalism, but I wasn’t always sure which mode I was in. In French with subtitles. 104 min. (JR) Read more
This low-budget independent feature is supposed to be a comedy about stand-up comics, but I didn’t hear a single laugh at the press screening. Writer-director Pete Schwaba stars as a longtime comedy contender in LA who’s told he can audition for the Tonight Show at a roadside bar in northern Wisconsin, where a talent scout returns annually for the Rocktoberfest. He winds up romancing a former high school teacher (Lauren Holly, the film’s only bright spot), who’s been dating a drug dealer, the title thug (Tony Goldwyn). Schwaba’s uncertainty as a director is underlined by the almost arbitrary jump cuts, freeze-frames, and sped-up action. R, 90 min. (JR) Read more
This international program of 17 animated shorts isn’t quite as strong as some previous years’, although a fair number of the selections are worth anyone’s time. Highlights include John Lasseter’s Knickknack (in 3-D, complete with glasses); Arnie Lipsey’s Canadian Jewish anecdote The Crow and the Canary; Steve Goldberg’s computer-generated Locomotion; Erica Russell’s cubist and semiabstract dance film from England, Feet of Song; and Brett Thompson and Ian Gooding’s hilarious time-travel tale, The Housekeeper. There’s also work from Holland and the Soviet Union, an irreverent experimental work by Cathy Joritz, and a full-blown studio cartoon from Steven Spielberg’s production company called Family Dog, made by Brad Bird and Tim Burton. (Music Box, Monday, December 25, through Thursday, January 4) Read more
Kenneth Branagh’s superb version of the Shakespeare play, which he directed and adapted as well as stars in, presents a distinctly different view of this work from Laurence Olivier’s 1945 movie. While the earlier film, made during the war, was intended to whip up patriotic sentiment, Branagh’s version has a much darker view of England’s defeat of France, more relevant in certain respects to World War I. (The climactic battle is muddy, gory, and marked by the looting of corpses, and after it’s over, Henry’s face is streaked with blood and grime like a Jackson Pollock painting.) Another way of reading the difference would be to follow the argument that Henry stood at the crossroads between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; while Olivier’s vantage point was more that of the Renaissance, Branagh’s, like Orson Welles’s in Chimes at Midnight (1966)–an obvious influence and reference point–is closer to the Middle Ages. It should be added, however, that Branagh is no more a creative filmmaker like Welles than Olivier was; the value of this film, apart from the strength and confidence of its interpretation, lies in the degree to which it makes Shakespeare’s language and meanings lucid and accessible. The cast–including Derek Jacobi as the modern-dress chorus, Paul Scofield as the French king, Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly, Ian Holm as Fluellen, Emma Thompson as Katherine, and Robbie Coltrane in an effective cameo as Falstaff–is uniformly fine without any grandstanding, The only hint of occasional excess occurs in Pat Doyle’s score. Read more
From the Chicago Reader (December 8, 1989). Reseeing this about a quarter of a century later, on an Olive Films Blu-Ray, I was struck by how much it qualifies as Tashlinesque — stylistically if not thematically, insofar as you can’t find real villains (or very much malice) in Frank Tashlin’s movies, whereas the villains here, even if they’re ultimately redeemed, satisfy every possible requirement in a feminist and working-class revenge fantasy. Otherwise, the cartoon characters, the loud and vulgar colors, and the overall cheerfulness are very Tashlin-like. [P.S. You can animate the second still here by hitting it with your cursor.] — J.R.
Susan Seidelman’s funniest film since Desperately Seeking Susan is a feminist revenge comedy, adapted from Fay Weldon’s novel The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, and delivered as a broad farce starring Roseanne Barr as an abused housewife and Meryl Streep as the wealthy and famous romantic novelist her husband (Ed Begley Jr.) leaves her for. Considering the potential bitterness of the story line, the movie is surprisingly upbeat, high-spirited, and even inspirational, with lots to say about the empowerment of exploited women and the neglect of old people in this culture without ever being unduly preachy about it. Read more
Christopher Guest’s hilariously accurate and canny satire about contemporary filmmaking in Hollywood was one of David Puttnam’s last projects at Columbia, made with the support of Steve Martin’s production company. Needless to say, it’s getting dumped rather quickly, so this will probably be the last week you’ll be able to see it. If you want to have a better idea of how dopey decisions get made in the film industry, you should rush off to it without delay. Admittedly, the movie turns mushy and conventional whenever it tries to become serious (which fortunately isn’t too often), and ends with a querulous cop-out, but otherwise it’s pretty clear sailing, and few movies this year have made me laugh quite as much. A prizewinning graduate (Kevin Bacon) of the National Film Institute (read: American Film Institute) gets courted by the studios, and winds up getting a chance to direct a big Hollywood movie, but the bright ideas of the studio head (J.T. Walsh)–whose office, incidentally, is said to be modeled directly after Spielberg’s–quickly make hash of his script, and other complications, personal as well as professional, follow. Director Guest collaborated on the screenplay with Michael Varhol and Michael McKean; Emily Longstreth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Martin Short (at his absolute best as the hero’s agent), and McKean costar, and Roddy McDowall and Elliott Gould, among others, offer cameos. Read more
It’s not normally our practice to feature screenings scheduled in advance of our Friday cover date, but William Klein’s Mr. Freedom rates an exception for the sake of those readers who pick up their papers on Thursday afternoon. An over-the-top fantasy-satire made in 1968, it’s conceivably the most anti-American movie ever made, though there’s no doubt that only an American (albeit an expatriate living in France) could have made it. Despite Klein’s well-deserved international reputation as a still photographer, his films are almost completely unknown in the U.S., so his spirited and hilarious second feature which inaugurates a small retrospective of his works at the Film Center–offers an ideal introduction to his volatile talent. Filmed in slam-bang comic book style, Mr. Freedom describes the exploits and adventures of a heroic, myopic, and knuckleheaded free world agent (Playtime’s John Abbey) who arrives in Paris to do battle against the Russian and Chinese communists, embodied by Moujik Man (a colossal cossack padded out with foam rubber) and the inflatable Red China Man (a dragon who fills an entire metro station). Donald Pleasence is the hero’s sinister LBJ-like boss, and Delphine Seyrig at her giddiest plays the sexy, duplicitous double agent who shows him the ropes and then some. Read more
Danny DeVito’s second feature (1989), a marked improvement over Throw Momma From the Train, focuses with dark humor on the ferocious war between a divorcing couple (Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas), with DeVito himself playing a family friend and lawyer who narrates the tale in flashback to a prospective client. Adapted by Michael Leeson from Warren Adler’s novel, and aided by a first-rate production staff (including producers James L. Brooks and Arnon Milchan and executive producer Polly Platt), this is a compellingly watchable, suspenseful, and often funny treatment of a grim subjectthe hatred that can build up in a long-term marriagethat also becomes an indirect commentary on yuppie materialism. (The principal point of contention in the battle is the couple’s house, and their principal weapons against each other are its furnishings and other cherished possessions.) Overall, the film’s grasp of this painful subject tends to be wise and understanding rather than cynical. Apart from a single cutaway shot to the family dog at a crucial juncture, it is also uncompromising in its relentlessness and extremely well told as a story. DeVito’s taste for unorthodox camera angles and striking camera movements occasionally verges on overreaching but for the most part admirably serves the action. Read more
A camp porn item (1975) in black and white with noirish undertones, rarely screened but well worth checking out; directed by the late Curt McDowell, and scripted by George Kuchar. 150 min. (JR) Read more
William Klein’s epic 1974 documentary about Muhammad Ali, aka Cassius Clay, at the height of his glory is an expansion and updating of his Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee (1965). The first section chronicles the subject’s activities and statements before, during, and after his celebrated fight with Sonny Liston; the second focuses on his match with George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. Shot in color and black and white, the film also concentrates on the media hoopla surrounding the fighter and the ramifications of his being made an American hero. A fascinating portrait even for those who aren’t interested in boxing, sustained throughout by Klein’s striking visual sense and intelligence. 110 min. (JR) Read more
William Klein’s 1985 feature takes on the world of French fashion design. Split into 13 separate sketches, each of which is done in collaboration with a well-known designer (Kenzo, Lagerfeld, Daumas, Lacroix, Gaultier, Alaia, Castelbajac, Montana, Thomass, etc), this semisatire generally goes after glitzy excess, which is Klein’s usual stock-in-trade. The Thomass segment, which is probably the most interesting, offers interviews with various foreign models as if they were porn in peep-show arcades; the Kenzo episode offers models in a police lineup, film noir style; Alaia’s section features Grace Jones and Linda Spierring reading aloud from Marivaux and giggling, with a costume change every few lines. Although Klein’s eye is as sharp as ever, his feeling for narrative is somewhat fuzzy, and most of these sketches come across as rather shapeless. Yet the pronounced Frenchness of this film gives it a certain exoticism: unlike most French pictures of the period, this offers a pretty accurate portrait of Parisian pop culture in the 80s. (JR) Read more
This 1975 feature is the best of John Waters’s movies prior to Hairspray and his ultimate concerto for the 300-pound transvestite Divine, whose character will do literally anythingincluding commit mass murderto become famous. As in all of Waters’s early outrages, the technique is cheerfully ramshackle, but Divine’s rage and energy make it vibrate like a sustained aria, with a few metaphors about the beauty of crime borrowed from Jean Genet. With Edith Massey and Mink Stole, as well as some doubling on the part of Divine that allows the star to have sexual congress with himself, giving birth to . . . guess who? 90 min. (JR) Read more
This disappointing 1989 second feature by writer-director Ron Shelton (Bull Durham) stars Paul Newman as onetime Louisiana governor Earl Long and Lolita Davidovich as Blaze Starr, a stripper who was Long’s mistress. Shelton still shows some flair for dialogue, and the materialmostly drawn from Starr’s as-told-to autobiographyis certainly ripe and colorful (Long was both an eccentric and a genuine visionary, as we know from A.J. Liebling’s The Earl of Louisiana). But both Newman and Davidovich seem miscast, and despite their honorable efforts neither character registers with the punch that the story warrants. Shelton’s uneven script and fitful direction make much of the pacing sluggish, and while the movie draws some authenticity from its secondary castJerry Hardin, Gailard Sartain, Jeffrey DeMunn, and Garland Buntingand cinematographer Haskell Wexler’s feel for southern locations, the story itself seems to be taking place in a void. The sad irony is, although most of the major events in this movie actually happened, one never quite believes in them as they’re articulated here. (JR) Read more
