From the Chicago Reader (August 1, 1992). Having recently seen or reseen the “complete” Twin Peaks to date, in the splendid Blu-Ray box set (subtitled The Entire Mystery and The Missing Pieces), I no longer agree with this review. I was obviously part of the backlash consensus that was still recovering from the gradual deterioration of the series during its often lamentable second season (only part of which I’d watched at the time), and though I still regard this prequel feature as uneven and at times uncertain — an impression confirmed by the 90-odd minutes of deleted or initially trimmed sequences found in the box set’s extras, some of which are superior to many of the scenes included in the original release version — it clearly deserved more respect and attention than it got from me and most other reviewers at the time.
So I’m happy to learn that Lynch and Mark Frost are now preparing nine new Twin Peaks episodes — all of them to be directed by Lynch, to be set in the present, and to air on American cable TV’s Showtime in 2016. — J.R.
The 1992 prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s famous but short-lived TV series, this deals with the events leading up to the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in a Pacific northwest town that suggests a somewhat funnier and kinkier version of Peyton Place. Read more
Noel Black’s odd, creepy thriller came out of nowhere in 1968 and almost dropped out of sight shortly thereafter, though it’s built a small but solidly deserved cult reputation in the years since. Anthony Perkins is a nice young man who once liked to set fires and was incarcerated as a result; Tuesday Weld is the squeaky-clean cheerleader who understands and then some. With Beverly Garland and Dick O’Neill. 89 min. (JR) Read more
Shot with camera equipment and film stock furnished by Jon Jost, the third feature from radical independent writer-director-cinematographer-editor Gregg Arakiafter the award-winning Three Bewildered People in the Night and The Long Weekend (o’ Despair)is a talky but potent doomed-couple-on-the-run picture in which both leads are desperate young men who’ve recently tested HIV positive. Jon (Craig Gilmore) is a sometime film critic who lives in LA, and Luke (Mike Dytri) is a cop killer; in a rough parallel to Godard’s Breathless, Gilmore plays Jean Seberg to Dytri’s Jean-Paul Belmondo. After opening episodes involving Luke’s flight from murderous women (including Mary Woronov) that seem more misogynistic than satirical, the film settles down to something more serious and affecting, though not always more lucid. The main postmodernist references Araki has in mind are plainly Godard and Antonioni, and the sincerity and purity of his rage often give this 1991 film more bite than its verbose and raw dialogue; a sharp sense of camera and editing rhythm helps. 92 min. (JR) Read more
A 1991 Dutch documentary by Hans Hylkema about the highly talented jazz reedman and flutist Eric Dolphy, who played memorably with Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane as well as in groups of his own, and who died at the age of only 36. The film’s cowriter, Thierry Bruneau, traveled to New York and Los Angeles to document Dolphy’s beginnings; footage of Dolphy performances in Oslo and Stockholm is included. (JR) Read more
Essential viewing. Anna Magnani plays the head of a commedia dell’arte troupe touring colonial Peru in the early 18th century who dallies with three lovers (Paul Campbell, Ricardo Rioli, and Duncan Lamont) in this pungent, gorgeous color masterpiece by Jean Renoir, shot in breathtaking images by his nephew Claude (1952). In fact, this filmic play-within-a-play, based on a Prosper Merimee stage work, is a celebration of theatricality and a meditation on the beauties and mysteries of actingit’s both a key text and pleasurable filmmaking at its near best. Though generally regarded as a French film, the original and better version is in English, which is almost invariably what gets shown in the states. With Odoardo Spadaro, Nada Fiorelli, and Jean Debucourt. 101 min. (JR) Read more
A man threatens to jump off a skyscraper ledge in a documentary-style thriller directed by Henry Hathaway in 1951. I haven’t seen it, but the other Hathaway thrillers of this period are certainly fun. With Richard Basehart, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Debra Paget, Howard da Silva, Agnes Moorehead, Robert Keith, Martin Gabel, and Grace Kelly in her film debut. 92 min. (JR) Read more
Nicolas Roeg’s tenth featurerather freely adapted by Allan Scott, who also produced, from a novel by Brian Mooreis characteristically portentous and provocative, beautifully edited and lyrically enigmatic. Roeg’s wife, Theresa Russell, plays the adulterous wife of a doctor (Mark Harmon) having an affair with another doctor (James Russo) while they’re attending a conference in Mexico. Her husband apparently dies in a boat accident, but his body mysteriously disappears from a local hospital; back in California, the wife reencounters her husband, and investigates a vision that may be connected with his apparent death and resurrection. If you like thrillers with tidy denouements, this may not be your cup of tea. But Roeg’s grasp of his material never ceases to be serious and suggestive, and it carries echoes of such transcendental art movies as Stromboli and Vertigo. With Talia Shire, Richard Bradford, and Will Patton (1991). (JR) Read more
Not exactly a lost film or an uncovered masterpiece, but still a pretty good indication of what Frank Capra (and some of his most talented collaborators, including writer Robert Riskin and cinematographer Joseph Walker) could do during his prime. Made shortly after the runaway success of It Happened One Night, but before the little man bromides of Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith took over, this horse-racing comedy drama starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy is a damned sight better than Riding High, the lugubrious 1950 remake with Bing Crosby. In both its brighter and its darker moments, it summons up some of the desperation that underlines both the movie’s Depression context and Capra’s boom-or-bust personality. The racial attitudes toward the hero’s black servant (Clarence Muse) are dated, but the other starsespecially Walter Connolly, Raymond Walburn, and Margaret Hamiltonprovide unalloyed pleasure (1934). (JR) Read more
A fascinating time capsule-shot in 1968, released in 1970–this is a filmed performance by three angry, talented black poets. Gylan Kain, Felipe Luciano, and David Nelson recite their rhythmic, passionate work to Afro-Cuban percussion (with occasional flute and guitar) on a rooftop and other urban ghetto settings, working out a highly politicized poetics that anticipates rap while conveying much of the essence of black-power rhetoric of the late 60s. More than a simple objective rendering of an event, this film is interspersed with cutaways and found footage in a very effective fashion by director Herbert Danska, probably best known for his 1967 jazz feature with Dick Gregory, Sweet Love, Bitter. To be shown on video; the run will extend through August 13. (Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Thursday, August 6, 7:00 and 9:00, 281-4114) Read more
A visually impressive ‘Scope “western” from mainland China, reportedly the first, directed with flair and economy by He Ping. It may occasionally suggest Sergio Leone in aspects of its spare, confrontational plot, but its subject (Gao Wei as a young hero protecting his child fiancee from bullies) and its style of presenting action (slower and faster than what we are accustomed to in westerns) seems more Asian than European or Hollywood, which is entirely to this picture’s benefit. Whether you take it as pure Chinese or ersatz American or both, it certainly packs a wallop (1991). A Chicago premiere. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, July 25, 6:00 and 8:00, and Sunday, July 26, 4:00, 443-3737) Read more
A powerful and highly informative feature-length documentary by the Testing the Limits collective (Robyn Huff, Sandra Elgear, and David Meieran) about AIDS activism and, more specifically, the self-empowerment of people with AIDS and AIDS-related diseases. Two of the more eye-opening subjects broached here are discrimination against women with AIDS and the drug profiteering that is promoted and protected by the Bush administration. Many people tend to be scared away from documentaries of this sort because of the unpleasantness of the subject matter, but the passion and determination of the activists seen here (including quite a few, such as Vito Russo, who are no longer alive) make this inspiring rather than hopeless–if only because we see that these activists have been far from ineffectual (1990). (Music Box, Sunday through Wednesday, July 19 through 22) Read more
The first feature by the underrated writer-director Cy Endfield to attract much attention was this pungent noir item, socially corrosive in the best Endfield manner. The plot, based on a story by Craig Rice, follows the ruthless, cynical machinations of a newspaperman (Dan Duryea) taking over a small-town newspaper and boosting circulation by exploiting various aspects of a local murder case, including false accusations made against the victim’s black maid. Herbert Marshall plays a corrupt tycoon, and Howard da Silva is sensational as a cheerfully creepy hood. This isn’t quite on the same level as Endfield’s next feature, Try and Get Me, but it’s still essential viewing (1950). (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Friday, July 17, 6:00, 443-3737) Read more
An efficient little thriller that imparts loads of queasiness and reasonable amounts of suspense while serving as an excellent corrective to the shameless celebrations of LA police power and brutality in Lethal Weapon 3. The LA cop in this case (effectively played by Ray Liotta) is a psycho who falls for an attractive yuppie housewife (Madeleine Stowe) after helping her and her husband (Kurt Russell) install an elaborate security system in their house. The movie runs through several changes on the different meanings that police power can have and the ways that burglar alarms can make homes resemble prisons. Neither Lewis Colick’s script nor Jonathan Kaplan’s direction is quite as streamlined as it could be, but you certainly get a run for your money; with Roger E. Mosley and Ken Lerner. (Bricktown Square, Broadway, Burnham Plaza, Golf Glen, Ford City, Esquire, Old Orchard) Read more
Extending the episodic construction of his four previous features and the principle of simultaneity underlying the last of these, Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch creates a comic sketch film out of five taxi rides and existential encounters occurring at the same time: a teenager (Winona Ryder) driving a Hollywood casting agent (Gena Rowlands) in Los Angeles at dusk; a former circus clown from Dresden (Armin Mueller-Stahl) chauffeuring–or being chauffeured by–a streetwise hipster (Giancarlo Esposito) from Manhattan to Brooklyn, with the hipster’s sister-in-law (Rosie Perez) getting corralled en route; an angry driver from the Ivory Coast (Isaach de Bankole) picking up a self-reliant blind woman (Beatrice Dalle) in Paris; a speedy cabbie (Roberto Benigni) in Rome delivering an obscene confession to an ailing priest (Paolo Bonacelli); and a morose driver (Matti Pellonpaa) in Helsinki recounting a hard-luck story to three drunken passengers (Kari Vaananen, Saku Kuosmanen, Tomi Salmela) at dawn. Although the hints of homage (to Cassavetes, Spike Lee, Benigni himself, and the Kaurismaki brothers) usually promise more than they deliver, and the movie peaks rather early (in the second episode), Jarmusch gets a fair amount of formal play from the sameness of and/or differences between the five episodes, which helps to sustain interest in the minimalist concept. Read more
A visually impressive ‘Scope western, reportedly the first from mainland China, directed with flair and economy by He Ping. It may occasionally suggest Sergio Leone in a few aspects of its spare confrontational plot, but its subject (Gao Wei as a young hero protecting his child fiancee from bullies) and its style of presenting action (slower and faster than what we are accustomed to in western cinema) seems more Asian than European or Hollywood, which is entirely to this picture’s benefit. Whether you take it as pure Chinese or ersatz American or both, it certainly packs a wallop (1991). (JR) Read more
