Woody Allen returns to his Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters mode, albeit with many fewer laughs and a completely different filmmaking stylewhich just goes to show how superficial his style usually is. The story concerns the vicissitudes of two married couples who are friends (Allen and Mia Farrow play one couple, Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis the other), and the pseudodocumentary style, which occasionally suggests certain aspects of 60s Godard, includes handheld camera movements, many jump cuts, monaural direct sound, and interviews with most of the major characters by an offscreen narrator (Jeffrey Kurland). Allen’s conception of character is as banal and shallow as ever, but the lively performances of some of his actorsmainly Davis, Pollack, and Juliette Lewis (as a creative writing student of Allen’s who has a brief flirtation with him)and the novelty of the film’s style make this more watchable than many of his features. With Liam Neeson, Blythe Danner, Lysette Anthony, Cristi Conaway, and in a cameo, fiction writer Bruce Jay Friedman (1991). (JR) Read more
If you liked the demystification of the hero in Unforgiven, you might enjoy this comedy with the same general theme written by the same screenwriter, David Webb Peoples, from a story he authored with Laura Ziskin and Alvin Sargent, directed with appropriate speed and cynicism by Stephen Frears. A small-time crook (Dustin Hoffman) on his way to the clink saves the lives of 54 passengers trapped inside a crashed plane, and a homeless derelict (Andy Garcia) decides to impersonate him in order to collect a million-dollar reward. Basically this is enjoyable Capracorn with a few dashes of Preston Sturgesthree parts Meet John Doe (with Geena Davis taking over the Barbara Stanwyck part of caustic star reporter) to two parts Hail the Conquering Heroand Hoffman extracts all the juicy ham he can out of it. The scattershot satire about the media suffers from overkill (though Chevy Chase is effective in an unbilled part as a hard-nosed editor), the movie as a whole has a slightly archaic feel (not surprising inasmuch as it’s largely built on situations and characters half a century old), and in spots there’s an irritating sentimentality and complacency about its own attack on sentimentality and complacency. But the basic messagethat heroism is a kind of role-playing created by the media for the gulliblecertainly comes across, and there’s lots of fun as well as bitter wisdom extracted from the premise. Read more
An uptight junior executive (Bill Paxton) moves into a new home, and either he’s being driven out of his mind by a grotesque vagrant (Marshall Bell) or he’s blanking out and committing horrible murders while he’s unconscious. Unfortunately, Chris Walas’s direction of this Richard Jefferies script is so ham-fisted and hysterical that we aren’t likely to care even when we find out. With Michael Ironside, Mitzi Kapture, Colleen Camp, Patrika Darbo, Stuart Pankin, and Teddy Wilson. (JR) Read more
Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1991 film, set in Warsaw in 1939, stars Crispin Glover as a 30-year-old who suddenly starts being treated by those around himhis former professor, a nymphet, a female cousinas if he had regressed back to childhood. Closer to a curiosity than to a successthe English dialogue and the period Polish setting make for an odd mesh at timesbut a curiosity by Skolimowski certainly isn’t like anyone else’s. (JR) Read more
An admirable if frequently soporific 1992 adaptation of Norman Maclean’s account of life in Missoula, Montana, between 1910 and 1935, with particular concentration on the importance of fly fishing to the young Maclean (Craig Sheffer), his dissolute brother (Brad Pitt), and their father (Tom Skerritt), a Presbyterian minister. Though it’s made as a labor of love, with a carefully fashioned script by Richard Friedenberg and attentive direction by Robert Redford that takes full advantage of the area’s beautiful scenery, none of this ever quite compensates for the lack of a strong story line. Much better than Redford’s The Milagro Beanfield War though not quite as dramatic as Ordinary People, this may work for you if you settle at the outset for a nostalgic, all-American mood piece. With Brenda Blethyn, Emily Lloyd, Edie McClurg, and Stephen Shellen. PG, 123 min. (JR) Read more
Directed by Barbara Trent and written by David Kasper (Trent was the director-coproducer and Kasper the editor-coproducer of the excellent 1988 Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair), this 1992 film about the U.S. invasion of Panama during the 1989 Christmas season is an even more persuasive exposition of governmental corruption, of the murderous and callous behavior of this country toward the third world, and of the collaborating deceitfulness of the media than Coverup was. Most of the well-researched and carefully documented information speaks cogently for itself, though one wishes at times that the analysis of the media coverage went further. Shot on video and transferred to film. (JR) Read more
Under two tons of unconvincing makeup and three tons of schmaltz, Billy Crystal treats us to half a century in the life of a borscht belt comic who’s a cross between Milton Berle and Don Rickles, focusing on his complex relationship with his manager brother (David Paymer). In the process, Crystal surprisingly reveals that he may have more gifts as a director and writer (collaborating here with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) than as an actor. The main dramatic subtext is that the title hero isn’t very nice, and despite a few sentimental retreats from this premise, it’s still what we’re left with. Crystal and company are especially good in handling the various Jewish details (a scene in which both brothers slurp glasses of tea is a near classic), and if they never seem to be entirely sure where their story is leading them, they’re pretty adroit at ducking the usual show-biz cliches. With Julie Warner, Helen Hunt, Jerry Orbach, and Ron Silverand watch for a brief but enjoyable cameo by Jerry Lewis. (JR) Read more
Not being much of a fan of either Tom Selleck or baseball, I wasn’t looking forward to this comedy about a major league ballplayer who finds himself on a Japanese team, but it’s surprising how honestly and directly it handles American and Japanese attitudes colliding with each other. (Could this be the first instance of Japanese ownership of Hollywood studios affecting content? If so, the influence seems benign.) The producer-director, Fred Schepisi, already showed a lot of feeling for cultural clashes in his early Australian feature The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith; unlike that film, this one is no masterpiece, but it sustains interest on its own modest level. Selleck is used intelligently for what he is rather than asked to be someone he isn’trather as Howard Hawks used Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo. Written by Gary Ross, Kevin Wade, and Monte Merrick; with Ken Takakura, Aya Takanashi, Toshi Shioya, and Dennis Haysbert. (JR) Read more
Visually impressive and intellectually provocative, though at times emotionally uninvolving, Chen Kaige’s tale about two blind musicians in northwest China, master (Liu Zhongyuan) and apprentice (Huang Lei), is in part a reflection on the power of music and the libido, individually and in competition with each other; the relation of the two musicians to a feud between two clans and the younger musician’s affair with a village woman (Xu Qing) are also important elements in the plot. Somewhat self-conscious as spectacle and multifaceted parable, the film certainly offers a lot of food for thought, though the allegorical meanings are at times difficult to read. Outside the work of Douglas Sirk, blindness as a spiritual metaphor probably hasn’t been explored as exhaustively as here, and the metaphoric use of the banjolike sanxian and a kite flown by the master musician are equally suggestive. Adapted by Chen from a short story by Shi Tieshing (1991). (JR) Read more
In his first featurea cut-rate effort shot in only twelve days for $38,000writer-director Nick Gomez, the editor of Hal Hartley’s Trust, catches the surface behavior of Italian-American hoods in Bensonhurst so perfectly that you may not even care that you already know this material like the back of your hand. The inconsequential plot involves the efforts of a couple of petty criminals (Peter Greene and Adam Trese) to unload an illegal stash of handguns; what really matters are the dead-on performances and the overlapping dialogue with its compulsive four-letter words (Chill fuckin’ out is a typical remark) and the even more compulsive characters. It’s an impressive debut, though it would be nice to see what Gomez can do outside of Scorseseland. With Edie Falco, Arabella Field, Paul Schulze, and Saul Stein. (JR) Read more
A more apt title might be The Good Man of Brisbane. It seems that 43-year-old Australian filmmaker Dennis O’Rourke was hurting so bad when his long-term marriage ended that he went to Thailand with the express purpose of hiring a prostitute, making a documentary about her, and falling in love with hernot necessarily in that order. Setting a new low in both exploitation and self-deception, his film constantly uses the alibi that it’s honest about what it’s doing. Then why does O’Rourke film the prostitute, her mother and aunt, and many obnoxious male tourists and strip joints at great lengthand keep himself out of frame entirely? We learn a bit, none of it surprising, about the prostitute’s unhappy life, despair, and hatred of men, but thanks to some Mozart arias, printed titles, and O’Rourke’s offscreen voice expressing concern for her, we learn even more about the filmmaker’s bleeding heart and unavailing generositythe film’s true subject. There’s a school of thoughtlet’s call it a primary schoolthat believes that if you’re up-front about paying a prostitute to record her pain on camera you’re making a profound social/aesthetic statement. That school’s students should have a ball with this atrocity (1991). (JR) Read more
Werner Herzog’s 1990 documentary about the bloody 13-year reign of Jean Bedel Bokassaself-proclaimed emperor of the Central African Republic, subsequently sentenced to life in prisonproceeds mainly through indirection. The soft-spoken Michael Goldsmith, a journalist once arrested and tortured by the dictator for arbitrary reasons, questions one of Bokassa’s wives, talks to some of his 50-odd children, and tours his former headquarters; these loping stretches are intercut with archival footage, and various pieces of classical music are effectively employed. Herzog’s fascination with mad tyrants is no more analytical here than in Aguirre: The Wrath of Godhe seems more concerned with gaping than with understanding. But he joins his visionary style, his sense of offbeat details and anecdotes, and his taste for romantic excess with a masterful and seductive sense of film rhythm. 91 min. (JR) Read more
When a self-centered, rakish, and somewhat dandyish French writer is jilted by his lover, an older friend persuades him to hatch a revenge plot against women in general by hiring a young typist, getting her to fall in love with him, and then leaving her. But the typist he selects is a lot more than he bargained for. In his first feature (1990) Christian Vincent shows a remarkable flair for handling his talented castFabrice Luchini, a veteran of many Rohmer films, is especially impressive as the writerand, with the help of Jean-Pierre Ronssin, offers them a well-measured script to deliver his bittersweet observations. Apart from a few well-placed 17th- and 18th-century references, this is too barbed to qualify as Rohmer-esque, but it’s certainly literate and funny. With Marie Bunel, Maurice Garrel, and Judith Henry. (JR) Read more
Made between The Peddler and Marriage of the Blessed, this 1989 Iranian feature by the highly talented Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a filmmaker comparable in some ways to Martin Scorsese, follows the exploitation of an Afghan refugee who embarks on a bicycle marathon in order to raise money for his wife’s medical expenses. A searing expressionist work about man’s inhumanity, filmed in a hypnotic and feverish style. With Moharram Zaynalzadeh and Esmail Soltanian. (JR) Read more
Nicolas Echevarria’s 1991 Mexican epic is based on the memoirs of Alvar Nu Read more
