Minimalist and highly formal in its unorthodox use of sound and color, extremely dry and brittle in its comedy, Kenchi Iwamoto’s first feature follows the stupefyingly empty existence of a lonely and repressed young laundry worker (Jiro Yoshimura) who spends his nights following and spying on a supermarket checkout girl. The results are arguably more admirable than enjoyable, though Iwamoto is clearly someone to watch (1990). (JR) Read more
Another serial-killer thriller, this one set mainly in the wilds of northern California, that pits an obsessive cop from LA (Andy Garcia) against a psycho who seems to have it in for blind women (including Uma Thurman, whom the cop is dating). No film with Kathy Baker in even a secondary role is entirely dismissable, but this gets less and less tenable as it proceeds, and a hammy, over-the-top performance by John Malkovich just about puts it out of its misery. Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I, How to Get Ahead in Advertising) wrote and directed, and perhaps he had something on his mind at the outset; if so, it all leaks out by the end, leaving one with hard-to-accept characters and a plot full of holes. With Lance Henriksen, Graham Beckel, and Kevin Conway; Conrad Hall is the cinematographer (1992). (JR) Read more
Two teenage girls (Fairuza Balk and Ione Skye) growing up in Laramie, New Mexico, with their waitress mother (Brooke Adams) provide the theme of this sometimes touching but uneven independent feature by Allison Anders (who cowrote and codirected Border Radio), which she adapted from Richard Peck’s novel Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt. Though the characters and plot details are quite different from The Last Picture Show and Texasville, the film aims for some of the same emotional effects and ambienceand reveals Peter Bogdanovich’s strength in dealing with such material. Anders’s direction of actors fluctuates wildly from powerful and indelible to awkward and unconvincing; she’s most assured creating clips from imaginary black-and-white Mexican movies seen by the narrator heroine. This film certainly has its strong moments, but it has a hard time sustaining them. With James Brolin, Robert Knepper, David Lansbury, Jacob Vargas, and Donovan Leitch (1992). (JR) Read more
Part two of Australian writer-director John Duigan’s trilogy about teenage life in the 60s (which commenced with 1987’s The Year My Voice Broke) follows Danny Embling (Noah Taylor) to a ritzy boarding school, where he becomes involved with Thandiwe Adjewa (Thandie Newton), a beautiful and precocious black girl from Uganda, at a nearby girls’ school. Not only worthy of its fine predecessor, this tender, perceptive, and gorgeously acted memory piece (1992) may even surpass it in subtlety, feeling, and depth of characterization. (Nicole Kidman is also very fine as one of the black girl’s classmates.) A winner of many prizes in Australia, this lovely feature deserves them all. (JR) Read more
I’m usually a sucker for courtroom dramas, but Rob Reiner’s highly mechanical filming by numbers of Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of his own cliched and fatuous Broadway play kept putting me to sleep. A glib rookie navy lawyer (Tom Cruise) who has grown up in the shadow of his celebrated navy-lawyer father is assigned to defend two marines against charges of murdering a member of their platoon; Demi Moore plays a member of his defense team, and Jack Nicholsonwho gets costar billing for walking through three short scenesplays the hard-nosed colonel ultimately responsible for the death. With Kevin Bacon and Kiefer Sutherland (1992). (JR) Read more
A winsome little Australian comedy (originally known as Spotswood) set in the mid-60s, this evokes the optimism that typified some of the cheerily humanist British comedies of that period, and ends up alternately charming and tepid. An uptight efficiency expert (Anthony Hopkins) gradually becomes humanized while investigating an inefficient but endearing family-run shoe factory for its benign but naive owner (Alwyn Kurts). There are various romantic subplots, and the storytelling is fairly leisurely and digressive even without them. More or less aiming to nuzzle at your shins like a cocker spaniel, it’s a movie that expects a certain amount of affectionate indulgence. Directed by Mark Joffe from a script by Max Dann and Andrew Knight; with Ben Mendelsohn, Toni Collette, Dan Wyllie, Bruno Lawrence, and Rebecca Rigg. (JR) Read more
Also known as Urga, this 1991 Mongolian-Russian-French coproduction by Nikita Mikhalkov (Slave of Love, Dark Eyes) involves the bittersweet incursions of civilization and the modern world on a young Mongolian who raises sheep and horses, as well as his friendship with a Russian truck driver. Visually striking, especially for its uses of landscape, this often recalls Nicholas Ray’s wonderful film about Eskimos, The Savage Innocents, though it isn’t nearly as good. (JR) Read more
Stuart Marshall’s three-part videotape made for Britain’s Channel 4 examines the historical and social factors influencing current reactions to AIDS and homosexuality. To be shown with Stasiu Kybartas’s video short Danny, a personal documentary about an AIDS victim. Read more
Jean Negulesco directed this cornball melodrama in ‘Scope, a multicharacter omnibus that at times suggets an urban Peyton Place, about young women trying to get ahead in the New York publishing world and encountering mainly sexnot to mention Hollywood’s punitive sexual morality of the period. Adapted from a Rona Jaffe novel; with Hope Lange, Stephen Boyd, Suzy Parker, Diane Baker, Martha Hyer, Joan Crawford, Brian Aherne, Robert Evans, and Louis Jourdan (1959). (JR) Read more
Adhering religiously to the formula that made megabucks on The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, this 1992 cartoon Disney feature, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements from a script they wrote with Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, can probably be plumbed for ideological notations on nuclear power in the Middle East and other aspects of the New World Order (I’m inclined to take a parrot named Iago, dubbed by Gilbert Gottfried, as a stand-in for Israel), but it’s also a fairly straightforward fairy tale about an American-looking street urchin who marries into wealth with the help of a genie not only dubbed by but conspicuously patterned after Robin Williams. The animation seeks to dazzle, but with a self-consciousness that’s relatively new to the Disney studio. The results are fun and fast moving, but far from sublime. (JR) Read more