Art Carney stars as Harry, a septuagenarian sitcom version of Lear who sets out on a cross-country journey with his aging cat Tonto, in this sentimental and reflective comedy of Paul Mazursky. Carney won an Oscar for his work here, and the secondary castincluding Ellen Burstyn, Larry Hagman, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Josh Mostel, and Arthur Hunnicuttis unusually fine, but you may find much of this, despite the apparent sincerity, too cutesy and self-satisfied for its own good (1974). (JR) Read more
Writer-director Istvan Szabo and actor Klaus-Maria Brandauer, who previously joined forces on Mephisto and Colonel Redl, reunite in a muddled allegory about an Austrian sergeant in World War I who becomes a magically endowed clairvoyant and hypnotist in Austria and Germany during the rise of Nazism. As in Mephisto, Szabo’s handling of period detail is often sloppy (some scat singing heard at a decadent party is a good two decades ahead of its time) or silly (there’s a rather unconvincing character based on Leni Riefenstahl named Henni Stahl), and the dubbing of some of the secondary roles is clumsy. But Brandauer’s command as a performer and the movie’s incidental glimpses of European high life in the late teens and 20swhich apparently had something to do with this film getting an Oscar nominationmake it intermittently watchable. Erland Josephson, Walter Schmidinger, and Grazyna Szapolowska also star; it was cowritten by Peter Dobai. (JR) Read more
Music video parodist Weird Al Yankovic stars in this satirical 1989 farce about a bumpkin who takes over a run-down TV station; after he enlists a retarded janitor (Michael Richards) to take over the kiddie show, the station’s ratings soar, but the owner of a competing station (Kevin McCarthy) tries to put him out of business. Gamely running through parodies of TV commercials and shows, not to mention Spielberg, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Selznick, and Gandhi, this is awful by any standardfeeble, corny, and labored in script as well as directionalthough the Capracorn of the basic premise occasionally manages to convey a certain sweetness. Jay Levey directed; with Victoria Jackson, David Bowe, and Stanley Brock. PG-13, 97 min. (JR) Read more
Marlon Brando stars in one of his more likable (if minor) mid-career performances as an American ambassador to a mythical Asian country called Sarkhan, which resembles Thailand, in a very loose adaptation by Stewart Stern of William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick’s novel. An earnest if muted and halfhearted attempt to say something about U.S. foreign policy in Asia, directed only adequately by George Englund. Kukrit Pramoj, who plays the premier of Sarkhan and served as the film’s technical consultant, later went on to become Thailand’s real-life premier. With Eiji Okada, Pat Hingle, Sandra Church, and Jocelyn Brando (1963). (JR) Read more
Tom Hanks is a compulsively fastidious detective who winds up with a large, ugly, drooling, and destructive dog that happens to be the only eyewitness to a murder. Needless to say, it proves to be a match made in heaven, and dog slobber enthusiasts (as well as fans of dog farts) will have a field day. Everyone else will have to settle for a formulaic cop comedy that has Hanks but little else. Roger Spottiswoode directed from a screenplay by many hands (Dennis Shryack, Michael Blodgett, Daniel Petrie Jr., Jim Cash, and Jack Epps Jr.), and Mare Winningham and Craig T. Nelson costar. (JR) Read more
Marleen Gorris’s controversial Dutch radical-feminist film from 1981 describes what happens when three otherwise unconnected women spontaneously conspire to murder the male owner of a boutique. The overall polemical thrust of this story may be as didactic as an Ayn Rand narrative, but it contains a number of provocative ideas and challenging insights, and Gorris’s handling of the material is compelling and assured. In Dutch with subtitles. 92 min. (JR) Read more
This first feature (1988, 96 min.) by Anne-Marie MievilleGodard’s major collaborator since the mid-70s, whose short The Book of Mary played in tandem theatrically with his Hail Maryconcerns three generations of women and their relations with men as well as each other. Loosely plotted but highly structured it’s in some respects a reply to Godard’s First Name: Carmen (there’s one direct allusion in the dialogue), and the carefully constructed sound trackparticularly in a striking sequence devoted to a voice lessonevokes some of the formal concerns of Godard’s work as well. But on the whole, it’s a disappointment; there’s hardly more substance here than in the much shorter The Book of Mary. One is also reminded once again that certain sectors of French feminism are still at a fairly rudimentary stage of development: the usual sexism of Godard’s work (to take one example) deserves more of a response and an alternative than is proposed here. In French with subtitles. (JR) Read more
Akira Kurosawa’s slimmest feature, running only an hour, is also one of the best of his early period. Made in 1945 but not released until 1953, it’s about a celebrated Japanese general fleeing another general who happens to be his brother. Based on Kanjincho, a Kabuki drama that’s said to be as well-known in the East as Robin Hood is in the West, this film is pitched as a parody of Kabuki, meant to undermine the feudal values of the original. (JR) Read more
Shot in Johannesburg and Soweto by Oliver Schmitz, a white South African, this radical 1988 feature offers a grittier view of the antiapartheid movement than Cry Freedom or A World Apart, both from the same period. A petty thief (Thomas Mogotlane) winds up in jail, meets other blacks involved in protesting racism, and gradually becomes politically aware. Banned in South Africa upon release, the film conveys a volatile sense of both time and placeaccording to the South African censor, it had the power to incite probable viewers to act violently. In English and subtitled Afrikaans, Sotho, and Zulu. 102 min. (JR) Read more
One of the more respectable Ernest Hemingway adaptations, based on The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and set on an African safari, starring Gregory Peck and Joan Bennett as a troubled couple; Casey Robinson wrote the script, and the underrated Zoltan Korda directed. With Robert Preston and Reginald Denny, and a score by Miklos Rozsa (1947). (JR) Read more
After a long and successful career in day care, Ruby L. Oliver made this, her first feature, originally known as Leola, in her late 40s (1989). It’s a remarkable debut: assured, tightly focused, surprisingly upbeat considering the number of problems it addresses without flinchingand the best low-budget Chicago independent feature I’ve seen. Set in contemporary Chicago, it concerns a 17-year-old girl from the ghetto whose plans for the future are jeopardized when she becomes pregnant. Her brothers are gradually drifting into a life of crime, her mother is having difficulty maintaining a day-care center without a license, and her stepfather is an alcoholic and philanderer. The plot line is concentrated and purposeful, and the castincluding Carol E. Hall, Audrey Morgan (particularly impressive as the mother), Earnest Rayford, Andre Robinson, and Kearo Johnsonis uniformly fine. In addition to writing, directing, producing, and financing the film, Oliver is credited with the casting, served as set decorator and location manager, and sang as well as wrote the lyrics to the film’s theme song. (JR) Read more
Andy Warhol’s last feature as a director (1967) is one of his campiest, but not one of his best; it features Taylor Mead, Viva, and Joe Dallesandro in a western setting (the film was actually shot in Arizona), and the superstars lend it whatever life it has. (JR) Read more
James Bond (Timothy Dalton) goes after a mean drug dealer (Robert Davi) south of the borderthis time on a personal vendetta, which means that he isn’t working for the English government, although the usual attributes of the Bond cycle are otherwise preserved. Carey Lowell (more plucky and interesting than the usual Bond bimbos) and Talisa Soto form part of the Bondish decor, Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum wrote the script, and John Glen directed. Despite some shaky narrative continuity and muddled motivations, this manages to move pretty briskly, and the action sequences are generally well handled, especially at the climax. (JR) Read more
During roughly the last year of jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker’s life, fashion and art photographer Bruce Weber (Broken Noses), a passionate fan, followed Baker and his entourage with a film crew, interviewed some of his former wives and lovers, and came up with a two-hour black-and-white documentary (1989) that’s much more attentive to Baker as an emblem and iconfrom a pretty boy of the early 50s to a wasted junkie in the 80sthan to his music, which is almost never heard except as dreamy background. A gripping and affecting film with a striking noirish look (well photographed by Jeff Preiss), but also a rather dumb one that’s both enhanced and limited by Weber’s pie-eyed adoration of his subject. 119 min. (JR) Read more
Possibly the movie most responsible for Ronald Reagan’s success in politics. (He loses a leg and winds up in a wheelchair in this one, declaring Where’s the rest of me?; according to polls at the time of his first gubernatorial election, some Californians voted for him out of pity for this handicap.) Set in a midwestern town prior to World War I, this adaptation by Casey Robinson of Henry Bellamann’s best-selling novel describes the crisscrossing destinies of several localsincluding Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Betty Field, Charles Coburn, Judith Anderson, and Claude Rains; Sam Wood directed (1942). (JR) Read more
