An exemplary and entertaining history of a crucial decade in North American social dancing, roughly from the time of Arthur Murray ballroom lessons and the lindy hop in Harlem (both circa 1953) to freestyle dancing and the arrival of the Beatles in the U.S. in 1964. Ron Mann–the Canadian documentarist whose former features include investigations into free jazz (Imagine the Sound), poetry (Poetry in Motion), and comic books (Comic Book Confidential)–combines a collector’s zeal for exhaustive inventories (all the ephemeral dance steps are duly noted) with a sharp sense of social history, so apart from the pleasure of watching all sorts of 50s and 60s film and TV clips and recent interviews with major participants (dancers as well as singers), one gets a sense of how dance styles developed and were merchanidised. Among the provocative highlights are a white couple explaining how for their appearance on American Bandstand as teenagers they were coached to claim credit for the Strand, a dance developed by blacks, and an interview with Marshall McLuhan, who expounds on the twist being “like conversation without words.” A dry-cleaned version of this film has shown on the Disney Channel, shorn of certain lurid steps and ideological points; you owe it to yourself to see it on the big screen without cuts (1992). Read more
With the help of screenwriter Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands), director Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa) turns Frances Hodgson Burnett’s rather gothic children’s book of 1911 into a splendid, evocative, beautifully realized picture. I haven’t seen the 1949 MGM version since my childhood, but it’s hard to believe it could be as effective as this one. The plot concerns three very different lonely and neglected children (Heydon Prowse, Kate Maberly, and Andrew Knott) in a remote part of rural England who discover a locked and equally neglected garden, and in the course of befriending one another slowly bring it back to life. Maggie Smith plays the somewhat Dickensian and unfriendly housekeeper who blocks their way to freedom, and the lovely musical score is by Zbigniew Preisner; Francis Ford Coppola served as executive producer. As a children’s movie with a fine sense of magic (without fantasy) and a great deal of feeling (without sentimentality), this beats the usual Disney junk hands down, and it can also be recommended wholeheartedly to adults as an expert piece of story telling. Ford City, Wilmette, Biograph, Lincoln Village, Golf Glen, Norridge, Esquire. Read more
One of the craftiest and most satisfying pieces about gender politics to come along in ages–all the more crafty because audiences are encouraged to see it simply as a movie about a seven-year-old chess genius, based on Fred Waitzkin’s nonfiction book about his son Josh. Very well played (with Max Pomeranc especially good as Josh), shot (by Conrad Hall), and written and directed (by Steven Zaillian), it gradually evolves into a kind of parable about how a gifted kid learns to choose–and choose what he needs from–his parents, teachers, and other role models. The part played by gender in all this is both subtle and complex, relating not only to chess strategy (i.e., when to bring your queen out) and the personality of Bobby Fischer, but also to the varying attitudes toward competition taken by his parents (Joe Mantegna and Joan Allen) and two teachers (Laurence Fishburne and Ben Kingsley). It makes for a good old-fashioned inspirational story, easily the most absorbing and pointed since Lorenzo’s Oil. Water Tower, Lincoln Village, Old Orchard, Webster Place. Read more
Writer-director-actor Robert Townsend hits paydirt with the first black superhero. An equivalent of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne (Townsend), the hero is a mousy inner-city schoolteacher and part-time musician in Washington, D.C., who assumes extraordinary powers after being hit by an emerald green meteor and proceeds to do battle against a big-time drug syndicate that’s menacing the ghetto. The results are very funny, delightfully stylized, and euphorically energetic–also a bit slapdash in the manner of Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, though I didn’t mind at all. With Robert Guillaume, Marla Gibbs, Eddie Griffin, James Earl Jones, Marilyn Coleman, Another Bad Creation, and loads of cameos–by Big Daddy Kane, Bill Cosby, Nancy Wilson, and Frank Gorshin, among others. Bricktown Square, Burnham Plaza, Golf Glen, North Riverside, Plaza, Ford City, Bel-Air Drive-In, Double Drive-In, Esquire, Hyde Park, Pipers Alley. Read more
Technically speaking, this feeble effort is the ninth Pink Panther or Inspector Clouseau comedy, but only the third without Peter Sellers. Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful) does what he can as Inspector Clouseau Jr. (which isn’t much, given the degree of prominence accorded to a hackneyed kidnapping plot), and Blake Edwards, the presiding auteur of all the previous installments (apart from the 1968 Inspector Clouseau), directs from a script that he wrote with Madeline and Steve Sunshine; with Herbert Lom, Burt Kwouk, and Claudia Cardinale. (JR) Read more
A sensitive and worthy if long (145 minutes) and occasionally dull account of a young Jewish woman (Karen-Lise Mynster) in Copenhagen at the end of the 19th century, Liv Ullmann’s directorial debut is her own adaptation (cowritten by Peter Poulsen) of Henri Nathansen’s 1932 Danish novel Mendel Philipsen & Son. The title heroine falls in love with a Christian painter (Jesper Christensen) who paints her parents’ portrait, but her family frowns on the match and forces her into a marriage with her cousin (Torben Zeller), a dull Orthodox Jew. After a move to the Swedish countryside, she has a son and her husband gradually descends into madness. The most interesting and accomplished performance here is given by Erland Josephson as Sofie’s father, but Ullmann does a creditable job with all the actors and the period settings are well handled (1992). (JR) Read more
Screenwriter Caroline Thompson and director Agnieszka Holland have turned Frances Hodgson Burnett’s rather gothic 1911 children’s book into an evocative, beautifully realized picture (1993). Three lonely and neglected children (Heydon Prowse, Kate Maberly, Andrew Knott) in a remote part of rural England discover a locked and equally neglected garden, and in the course of befriending one another they slowly bring it back to life. Maggie Smith plays the unfriendly, somewhat Dickensian housekeeper who blocks their way to freedom, and the lovely musical score is by Zbigniew Preisner. As a children’s movie with a fine sense of magic (without fantasy) and a great deal of feeling (without sentimentality), this beats the usual Disney junk hands down, and adults will find it an expert piece of storytelling. G, 102 min. (JR) Read more
Max von Sydow brings a great deal of elegance and wit to his part as the devil — posing as the proprietor of a nostalgia shop that he establishes in a small town in Maine– in this adaptation by W.D. Richter of the Stephen King novel. (Fostering feuds between the townspeople in exchange for magical goods that remind people of their pasts, he eventually goads the populace into outright warfare.) Unfortunately, the film’s elegance and wit more or less begin and end with this performance, and the pulpiness of the material, even when it veers into Christian parable, is never really transcended, despite a promising cast that also includes Ed Harris, Bonnie Bedelia, Amanda Plummer, and J.T. Walsh. The director is Fraser Heston, son of Charlton; this is his first theatrical feature. (JR)
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Four San Francisco bus passengers (Charles Grodin, Alfre Woodard, Tom Sizemore, Kyra Sedgwick) perish in an accident in 1959, then watch over the growth of a baby born at the same instant, who becomes an adult played by Robert Downey Jr. With his assistance, the four are given one last chance to straighten out their lives on earth before they go to heaven. There’s enough whimsy and Capracorn here to choke a horse, and things get even more complicated when the four dead people enter the body of Downey in turnto help him help them. Fortunately the talents of the actorsespecially Downey and Woodardsometimes make this effective (i.e., funny or moving) in spite of all the goo. Ron Underwood (City Slickers) directed from a script by Erik Hansen, Gregory Hansen, S.S. Wilson, and Brent Maddock. (JR) Read more
The inauspicious U.S. debut (1993) of violent Hong Kong action director John Woo, starring Jean-Claude Van Dammeless amusing as a showcase for Van Damme than Universal Soldier and decidedly less balletic than Hard-Boiled, Woo’s previous picture. The setting is New Orleans and environs, where Van Damme is pitted against a group of sadists who hunt down homeless men for the fun of it. Aficionados of explosions and baroque mutilations may be appeased by the bones (not to mention ears, eyes, and groins) thrown their way by the childish script of Chuck Pfarrer (who plays the movie’s first victim), but the relative absence of homoeroticism and extended virtuoso action choreography, Woo’s two staples, places an inordinate burden on the sort of nasty one-liners only preteen boys are likely to find very enjoyable. With Lance Henriksen and Yancy Butler. (JR) Read more
A young Taiwanese businessman living in New York with his physical therapist boyfriend decides to marry a Chinese artist who needs a green card; the next thing he knows his parents from Taiwan, not knowing he’s gay, have decided to come to the wedding. Director Ang Lee collaborated on the script with Neil Feng and producer James Schamus; this 1993 feature, his second, is a very adroit and entertaining social comedy. Satire about and for the middle class with more heart than edge, it’s pitched mainly at liberal straight people, though the Chinese cultural details should be fascinating to all non-Chinese viewers. With Winston Chao, Mitchell Lichtenstein, Sihung Lung, May Chin, and Ah-leh Gua. In English and subtitled Mandarin. R, 106 min. (JR) Read more
An exemplary and entertaining history of a crucial decade in North American social dancing, roughly from the time of Arthur Murray ballroom lessons and the lindy hop in Harlem (both circa 1953) to freestyle dancing and the arrival of the Beatles in the U.S. in 1964. Ron Mannthe Canadian documentarist whose former features include investigations into free jazz (Imagine the Sound), poetry (Poetry in Motion), and comic books (Comic Book Confidential)combines a collector’s zeal for exhaustive inventories (all the ephemeral dance steps are duly noted) with a sharp sense of social history, so apart from the pleasure of watching all sorts of 50s and 60s film and TV clips and recent interviews with major participants (dancers as well as singers), one gets a sense of how dance styles developed and were merchandised. Among the provocative highlights are a white couple explaining how for their appearance on American Bandstand they were coached to claim credit for the strand, a dance developed by blacks, and an interview with Marshall McLuhan, who expounds on the twist being like conversation without words. A dry-cleaned version of this film has been shown on the Disney channel, shorn of certain lurid steps and ideological points; you owe it to yourself to see it without the cuts (1992). Read more
Writer-director-actor Robert Townsend hits pay dirt with the first black superhero (1993). An equivalent of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, the hero (Townsend) is a mousy inner-city schoolteacher and part-time musician in Washington, D.C., who assumes extraordinary powers after being hit by an emerald green meteor and proceeds to do battle against a big-time drug syndicate that’s menacing the ghetto. The results are very funny, delightfully stylized, and euphorically energeticalso a bit slapdash in the manner of Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, though I didn’t mind at all. With Robert Guillaume, Marla Gibbs, Eddie Griffin, James Earl Jones, Marilyn Coleman, Another Bad Creation, and loads of cameosby Big Daddy Kane, Bill Cosby, Nancy Wilson, and Frank Gorshin, among others. 100 min. (JR) Read more
Woody Allen’s welcome return (1993) to straight-ahead entertainment, after 15 years of slogging through art-house hand-me-downs, happily coincided with a return to Diane Keaton as his leading lady, and she deftly steals the show. (Cowriter Marshall Brickmanwho hadn’t worked with Allen since Manhattanprobably makes a difference as well.) Allen and Keaton play Allen’s standard bored, upscale Manhattan couple; they get a jolt of adrenaline when they hear that the older woman next door has implausibly died of a coronary. As Keaton begins snooping compulsively around the woman’s husband (Jerry Adler), two friends (Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston) get drawn into the amateur sleuthing, and finally so does Allen. PG, 104 min. (JR) Read more
A fascinating 50-minute compilation of fragments of fiction and nonfiction films made in various parts of the world between about 1905 and 1915, drawn from the collection of an Amsterdam movie-theater owner by Peter Delpeut. A lot of gorgeous stuff is on view heresome of it black and white, some of it tinted, and a little of it, believe it or not, in full or partial color (1990). (JR) Read more
