Described as a beatnik movie for the 80s, this new feature by writer-director Gregg Araki concerns an alienated gay performance artist named David, a video artist named Alicia, and a would-be actor and photographer named Craig who is ambivalent about his sexuality. Set in Los Angeles locations and made on a shoestring budget, this first feature was recently acclaimed at the Locarno Film Festival, and will be receiving its first U.S. showing here, with director Araki present to answer questions. Read more
A coffee-shop waitress (Susan Sarandon) and a beleaguered housewife (Geena Davis) in the southern sticks take off for a weekend holiday and eventually find themselves fleeing the law and society in a buoyant feminist road movie (1991) directed by Ridley Scott from a script by Callie Khouri. Scott, who usually offers a style in search of a subject, makes the most of the southwestern landscapes in handsome ‘Scope framing and shows an uncharacteristic flair for comedy in fleshing out Khouri’s script with a memorable cast of male rednecks (including Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brad Pitt, and Timothy Carhart); his eye may get a little fancy and fussy in spots, but this is still one of his better pictures after Blade Runner, and Sarandon and Davis bring a lot of unpredictable verve and nuance to their parts. R, 129 min. (JR) Read more
The second of three movie versions of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, directed by George Pollock in England in 1965. (Rene Clair did the first version in 1945; Peter Collinson did the third in 1975.) This one stars Hugh O’Brian, Shirley Eaton, Fabian, Leo Genn, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Daliah Lavi. Read more
MGM’s opulent version of ancient Rome circa 1951, with Peter Ustinov at his most whimsical doing honors as the mad Nero. A lot of Christians are persecuted too. With Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, Patricia Laffan, and a Miklos Rozsa scores, one of his better ones as I recall. Directed with some pizzazz by Mervyn LeRoy. (JR) Read more
High allegory in the icy north from Robert Altman; I haven’t seen this 1979 drama, but practically everyone except Altman’s diehard fans seems to find it a grueling slog. Set in a frozen city of the future, it takes its title from a board game using dice that Paul Newman, seeking to avenge some family deaths, winds up playing. With Bibi Andersson, Fernando Rey, Brigitte Fossey, and Vittorio Gassman. 110 min. (JR) Read more
Joshua Logan directed this Lerner-Loewe musical about the California gold rush, casting largely nonsingers and nondancersLee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, Jean Sebergand some people accused him at the time (1969) of helping to kill off the movie musical in the process. Paddy Chayefsky, of all people, was put in charge of the script; Harve Presnell and Ray Walston costar. Read more
A lonely Chicago cop (John Candy) who lives with his widowed mother (Maureen O’Hara), a female Archie Bunker type who dominates his life, falls in love with an introspective funeral parlor worker (Ally Sheedy) and tries to break free of his mother’s hold. A loose 1991 remake of Marty by writer-director Chris Columbus (Home Alone) that proves that Candy is no Ernest Borgnine and Columbus neither a Paddy Chayefsky writer nor a Delbert Mann director, this mechanical piece of emotional manipulation is phoniest when it is making the biggest show of being sincere. While it’s nice to see O’Hara back and in fine form, the film insists on reminding us of the worst aspects of her performances with John Ford rather than allowing her to work independent of this legacy. Typically, this movie is brave enough to indicate that the hero and heroine have premarital sex but too gutless to show them in bed together, and shameless enough to work in a product placement for Florsheim shoes in the midst of Candy’s most emotional speech. Also on hand, and meant to be as cute as bugs, are Anthony Quinn, Jim Belushi, Kevin Dunn, Milo O’Shea, and Bert Remsen. (JR) Read more
A lot of claims have been made for this campy bloodbath concerto (1989) by Hong Kong director John Woo, and I must admit that he’s even better than Brian De Palma at delivering emotional and visceral excess with staccato relentlessness. The gun-battling hero (Chow Yun-fat) struggles to raise money to restore the sight of a nightclub singer he was responsible for blinding (Sally Yeh); meanwhile, he forms an even more amorous bond with a cop (Danny Lee). The world being celebrated and exercised is essentially a ten-year-old boy’sthe loving epithets shared by killer and cop are Dumbo and Mickey Mousewhich makes it a pity that this will be seen mainly by cynical older folks. But Woo is certainly no slouch when it comes to orchestrating mayhem. In Japanese and Cantonese with subtitles. R, 110 min. (JR) Read more
Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita are back again as the young martial arts specialist and his Oriental teacher, and, for the third time around, John Avildsen (Rocky) directs them. Unfortunately, the pattern has so calcified that Gene Autry westerns seem like models of moral complexity by comparison. For the plot to work this time, Daniel (Macchio) has to be dumb enough to believe in an evil environment-polluting millionaire (Thomas Ian Griffith) who poses as a karate instructor. The villain mistrains the hero so that he’ll be hurt and humiliated in a match with nasty Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan). Robert Mark Kamen, as usual, is responsible for the script, with heaping spoonfuls of pseudoprofundity. (JR) Read more
Though it won a 1990 Oscar for best foreign film, this isn’t too bad. A family of Kurds tries to emigrate from Turkey to Switzerland for a better life, but border hassles grow into an ordeal worthy of The Grapes of Wrath or The Wages of Fear. Swiss director Xavier Koller broaches the issues of racism and xenophobia in western Europe but dilutes his own message with a kindly Swiss trucker (Mathias Gnadinger) so good-hearted that he can make up for the gruff laws and attitudes of his compatriots. Koller collaborated on the script with Feride Cicekoglu; with Necmettin Cobanoglu, Nur Surer, Emin Sivas, and Yaman Okay. In Turkish and German with subtitles. 114 min. (JR) Read more
Pamela Berger, screenwriter and producer on Suzanne Schiffman’s Sorceress, wrote and directed this first feature about Jewish immigrants in Boston at the turn of the century; it is based on a story by Abraham Cahan, and was shot cheaply and independently. Worrying about the fate of his soul, a wealthy widowed landlord (Second City’s Eugene Troobnick) imports a Talmudic scholar (Avi Hoffman) from Poland to marry his Americanized and recalcitrant daughter (Greta Cowen), and various comic complications ensue. The movie’s strongest suit is Troobnick’s robust performance; less endearing is the tinny sound track, including a pounding and nudging piano score. (JR) Read more
This pre-Cabaret adaptation of John van Druten’s playbased in turn on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Storiescaused a minor flutter in 1955 when it was condemned by the Legion of Decency for the following line, delivered by Julie Harris: What do you want to do first, have a drink or go to bed? Otherwise, it’s fairly tame stuff, reasonably well directed (if memory serves) by Henry Cornelius; Laurence Harvey, Shelley Winters, and Patrick McGoohan costar. (JR) Read more
Silly but energetic, this feature-length music video by Adrian Lyne with a Giorgio Moroder score stars Jennifer Beals as a welder who spends her nights wowing blue-collar customers with her fancy erotic dances. Glitz with no mind and lots of fancy visuals, edited with a pounding beat. With Michael Nouri, Lilia Skala, and Sunny Johnson (1983). (JR) Read more
A fascinating and masterful melodrama from Japan, written by Goro Nakajima and directed by former independent Shunichi Nagasaki, that may remind you in spots of both Vertigo and Lilith, although the treatment is strictly Japanese. A Tokyo psychiatrist (Masao Kusakari) who’s engaged to his receptionist (Kiwako Harada) becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with a beautiful tour guide (Kumiko Akiyoshi) who claims to have been beaten by her lesbian lover; further events reveal that this lover is dead and that her identity is being schizophrenically re-created by the tour guide. A film that juxtaposes two kinds of obsession and implicitly asks the spectator to determine which is sicker (or healthier); it’s all done with effective plot twists and a sure storytelling hand (1989). (JR) Read more
As usual, Peter Greenaway, helped by Sacha Vierny’s cinematography, offers an eyeful, as well as a series of conceptual brainteasers, in this odd 1988 tale about three womena grandmother, mother, and granddaughter, all named Cissy Colpittswho drown their respective husbands. But beyond a certain point, this English black comedy becomes so reductive and predictable it might as well be called Filming by Numbers. Greenaway’s fascination with numbers and his obsession with sagging middle-aged male flesh proceed as if by rote. Not even the talents of actors Joan Plowright, Bernard Hill, Juliet Stevenson, Joely Richardson, and Jason Edwards can breathe life into the film’s smarmy conceits, informed here by a hint of misogyny that makes the banter seem especially heartless. 118 min. (JR) Read more
