First-rate agitprop about the ruthlessness of South African apartheid, directed by Euzhan Palcy (Sugar Cane Alley) and adapted from Andre Brink’s novel by Palcy and Colin Welland. Like Cry Freedom and A World Apart, this 1989 film concentrates on white rebels in South Africa, but it goes substantially further in its depiction of black oppression, and of violence in particular, which makes it the most powerful of the three. Donald Sutherland stars as a liberal but blinkered schoolteacher who gradually becomes radicalized after a series of brutal events affecting his gardener that eventually splits his family apart. Susan Sarandon plays a sympathetic journalist, and Marlon Brando, in a juicy comeback cameo that evokes Orson Welles’s Clarence Darrow impersonation in Compulsion, plays an antiapartheid lawyer. The relentless plot is effectively set up and expertly pursued, and Hugh Masekela makes some striking contributions to Dave Grusin’s musical score. With Janet Suzman, J Read more
Oliver Hockenhull’s experimental documentaryinspired by the arrest and sentencing of the Toronto Five, members of the Vancouver Direct Action anarchist groupcalls to mind the multifaceted questioning of media information and language in general in some of Godard’s more radical works of the late 60sparticularly Le gai savoirthat featured different forms of collage. All sorts of elements are woven into the mixture, including documentary footage, interviews, dialogues, punk rock, images from TV, performance art involving slides and silhouettes, and many different kinds of image processing. Alternately thoughtful and chaotic, it gives one a lot to chew overalthough some viewers may feel that they’ve already been here before, in spite of the sincerity and urgency of the expression (1988). (JR) Read more
A father and daughter (Peter Falk and Emily Lloyd) with a volatile relationship are pitted against both the mob and the cops in a comedy directed by Susan Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan) from a script by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. Also on hand are Dianne Wiest, Michael V. Gazzo, Brenda Vaccaro, Ricki Lake, Lionel Stander (as a Mafia chieftain), and Jerry Lewis (as an Atlantic City real estate developer). While the cast as a whole makes this intermittently likable (though both Stander and Lewis are unaccountably wasted), the film is defeated by an inadequate script that makes both the convoluted plot and most of the characters (particularly the title heroine) thin and inadequately motivated. Falk, Wiest, and Vaccaro are especially deft at using their talents to make us overlook this deficiency, but eventually the bum script catches up with them (1989). (JR) Read more
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
Perhaps the most neglected of all the major French directors, at least in the U.S., Jean Gremillon (1901-1959) was a figure of such versatility that it’s difficult to make generalizations about his work. (One can, however, speak about its close attention to sound and rhythm–he started out as a musician–and its frequent focus on class divisions.) White Shanks (Pattes blanches), made in 1949, is not one of his very best efforts–I prefer Lumiere d’ete (1943) and Le ciel est a vous (1944). But this moody melodrama of adultery set on the Normandy coast is still full of punch and fascination, and shouldn’t be missed by anyone with a taste for the classic French cinema. Coscripted by Jean Anouilh (who originally intended to direct), it’s a noirish tale about a promiscuous flirt from the city (Suzy Delair) who marries a local tavern keeper and becomes involved with a plotting local malcontent (Michel Bouquet) and a faded aristocrat (Paul Bernard), nicknamed “White Shanks” because of his spats, who is the target of a revenge plot. A sensitive maid with a hunchback who loves the aristocrat rounds out this odd quintet, who are regarded with a caustic compassion that recalls Stroheim. The lovely camera work is by Philippe Agostini, and the great Leon Barsacq is in charge of the sets. Read more
Two hippies from the 60s (Eric Roberts and Cheech Marin) emerge from a Central American jungle, where they’ve been smoking dope and hiding from the feds, come to New York, and discover what the U.S. in 1989 is all about. Aaron Russo (Bette Midler’s former manager) and David Greenwalt codirected this comedy from a script by Neil Levy and Richard LaGravenese; Julie Hagerty and Robert Carradine play the heroes’ now-yuppified friends who are gradually inspired to return to their former values. As disheveled in some ways as its leading characters are, this movie is still something of a rarity: a sincere, somewhat nuanced, relatively uncliched, and actually judicious look at both the 60s and 80s and what they mean in relation to each other. A far cry from the more reductive treatment of these issues in various sitcoms, this movie is genuinely interested in the question of what happened to 60s ethics, and in spite of an occasionally awkward plot that weaves in and out of comedy, it manages to come up with a few answers. The costars include Louise Lasser, Cindy Williams, Cliff De Young, Andrea Martin, and Buck Henry; the latter two are especially funny in the one extended sequence in which they appear. Read more
The virtues as well as the limitations of this bizarre fantasy from New Zealand, winner of half a dozen Australian Oscars, stem from its literary conception. Though the story is an original (by director Vincent Ward), and Ward’s use of both black and white and color gives it a very distinctive look, it feels like an idea translated into cinematic terms rather than a cinematic conception. In a remote English mining village threatened by the Black Death in 1348, a visionary boy (Hamish McFarlane) has a troubled dream that spells out possible salvation, which involves digging through the center of the earth to a celestial city and placing across on the spire of a cathedral. He sets out with four miners to fulfill this mission, and they eventually wind up in a modern (i.e., 1988) metropolis. Rather than play this conceit for satire, Ward and his cowriters Kely Lyons and Geoff Chapple stick pretty close to the funereal rhythm and doom-ridden mood that they establish at the outset. What emerges is not entirely successful; the switches between black and white and color often seem more mechanical than integral, and the hallucinatory atmosphere is occasionally diluted rather than enhanced by the blocky narrative continuity. Read more
