Peter Jackson charts new highs (or lows) in free-flowing gore and nonstop, torrential splatter with this modestly budgeted comic horror extravaganza (1993), originallyand more appropriatelyknown as Braindead. The standard-issue plot unfolds from the poisonous bite of a Sumatran rat monkey in a New Zealand zoo circa 1957. Yet the only meaningful bill of fare here is deliberately stomach-turning showstoppers involving dismemberment, disfigurement, disembowelment, gallons of spewing blood and bile, and related gross-outsmore the stuff of animated cartoons than live action. Ordinarily I don’t care for this kind of thing at all, but something must be said for Jackson’s endless reserves of giddy energy, which are clearly meant to be silly. Written by Jackson, Stephen Sinclair, and Frances Walsh; with Timothy Balme, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin, and Diana Pe Read more
The late Sergei Paradjanov’s greatest film, a mystical and historical mosaic about the life, work, and inner world of the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, was previously available only in the ethnically dry-cleaned Russian versionrecut and somewhat reorganized by Sergei Yutkevich, with chapter headings added to clarify the content for Russian viewers. This superior 1969 version of the film, found in an Armenian studio in the early 90s, shouldn’t be regarded as definitive (some of the material from the Yutkevich cut is missing), but it’s certainly the finest we have and may ever have: some shots and sequences are new, some are positioned differently, and, of particular advantage to Western viewers, much more of the poetry is subtitled. (Oddly enough, it’s hard to tell why the new shots were censored.) In both versions the striking use of tableaulike frames recalls the shallow space of movies made roughly a century ago, while the gorgeous uses of color and the wild poetic conceits seem to derive from some utopian cinema of the future, at once difficult and immediate, cryptic and ravishing. This is essential viewing. (JR) Read more
Winner of the best-documentary prize at Sundance, this 1992 feature by Andrew Young and Susan Todd updates a 1961 documentary shot by Robert Young (Andrew’s father) and Michael Roemer (The Plot Against Harry, Nothing but a Man) in a slum in Palermo, Sicily, that followed the struggles of a local family plagued with problems. The original black-and-white film was shot for the NBC White Papers series, but was never shown because it was deemed too gritty; this color sequel shows the persistence of many of the problems in the same family. The film is always interesting and often moving, though I was frustrated that it didn’t offer more than passing glimpses of the original. (JR) Read more
Elliot Caplan’s sensitive and agreeable collection of sound bites and dance bits from the collaborations of the late composer-Zen philosopher John Cage and dancer-choreographer Merce Cunningham over the span of many decades. The sound bites (from Cage, Cunningham, and many collaborators and acquaintances) vary considerably in interest, but the clips from performances are invariably pungent and commanding. Caplan’s methods of organizing the material seem quite compatible with the methods of his subjects (1991). (JR) Read more
A pretty good thriller of the creepy sort, set in rural Arizona, this loses its steam when it turns into a mechanical cross-country chase but works fairly well up till then thanks to the two leads, Amy Irving and Donald Sutherland. Sutherland plays Irving’s father, just out of prison after a 22-year incarceration for killing her mother, which he still denies doing. His daughter’s testimony at age 12 was pivotal in convicting him. Certain ambiguities and ambivalences keep us guessing about the characters for a while. Jonathan Heap does a routine job of direction, working from a script by Jeffrey Polman and Christopher Keyser; with Rider Strong, Christopher McDonald, Graham Greene, and Theodore Bikel. (JR) Read more
Another takeoutuntidily slapped into a Styrofoam containeris more like it. Aimed at less discriminating viewers, this sequel to the 1987 Stakeout, again directed by John Badham, isn’t too bad if you’re looking for nothing more than good-natured silliness, low comedy, gratuitous tilted angles, and protracted dog jokes. Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez are reunited as buddies and veteran cops, this time working under the thumb of an assistant DA (Rosie O’Donnell); they’re assigned to spy on a key witness in a mob trial (Cathy Moriarty) who’s hiding out with friends (Dennis Farina and Marcia Strassman). Coproducer Jim Kouf wrote the script to allow for action special effects (explosions at the beginning, a collapsing dock toward the end) and long stretches of affectionate bickering between the three principals. (JR) Read more
A satisfying if small-scale 1991 love story, written by and starring Monty Python regular Michael Palin and inspired by his great-grandfather’s unpublished travel diaries. Not really a comedy, though it has its share of humor, this is about a senior tutor at Oxford’s Saint John’s College (Palin), a middle-aged bachelor who takes a holiday in Switzerland in 1861 and meets two American women, a philanthropic Bostonian (Connie Booth) and her 18-year-old niece and ward (Trini Alvarado). Some romantic stirrings pass between him and the niece, but this is the 19th century and he’s an Oxford tutor, unable to keep his job unless he’s singlea lot more has to happen before the two can deal with their mutual attraction, even after the two women make the daring move of visiting him in Oxford. The director is English TV veteran Tristram Powell, son of the novelist Anthony Powell, and he does a fine job. (JR) Read more
One hundred and five minutes of spontaneous talk from a homosexual named Jeffrey Strouth, seated in the back of a 1957 Cadillac in Columbus, Ohio, may sound like thin fare for a feature, but Reno Dakota’s 1992 moviea tribute to his wild and uninhibited friend, who subsequently died of AIDSkept me mesmerized and entertained. Recounting various episodes in his difficult lifebouts with his alcoholic and abusive father; being kept at age 14 by a 400-pound drag queen; hitchhiking to Hollywood with a campy boyfriend, a tiny dog, and a caged bird; numerous tragicomic scrapes with the police; and much, much else involving sex and drugsStrouth often calls to mind some of the comic gross-outs of William Burroughs (whom he openly imitates at one point) and the picaresque hard-luck stories of Nelson Algren, not to mention the road adventures of Kerouac. This has more of the flavor of an epic American narrative than most conventional features, and it certainly offers a more comprehensive look at our national life. (JR) Read more
The best new experimental work I’ve seen in ages, Bill Viola’s hour-long video (1991), shot in ravishing black and white, is like a string of epiphanies generated by lush and ambiguous encounters between the natural world (basically the American southwest) and the world of dreams and sleep. The minimal stereo sound track consists chiefly of Viola’s own breathing while he sleeps and the ticking of a clock; the haunting images encompass the death of Viola’s mother and the birth of his children as well as a good many surreal events that transpire underwater and in slow motion. If I had to come up with parallels, it would be necessary to grope in contrary directions–to the works of Stan Brakhage on the one hand and to Eraserhead on the other. But the musical pulse and flow of the images and their mesmerizing beauty throughout don’t deserve cross-references–they sing and vibrate with maximal intensity on their own. This gave me much more pleasure than any Hollywood movie I’ve seen this year. Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Belmont, Saturday, June 26, 8:00, 281-8788. Read more
As a truthful account of the life of Tina Turner or as a faithful adaptation of her as-told-to autobiography I, Tina, this can’t be taken too seriously. But as a powerhouse showcase for the acting talents of Angela Bassett (who plays Tina Turner) and Larry Fishburne (who plays her abusive husband Ike Turner, the musician who discovered her) and as a potent portrayal of both wife beating and the emotions that surround it (in this case, professional envy on his part and stoic acceptance of abuse on hers), it’s quite a show. As with the even sillier Lady Sings the Blues two decades ago (Diana Ross’s ridiculous depiction of Billie Holiday), which harked back to a still earlier model of musical biopic, show-biz instincts tend to triumph here as common sense and fidelity to fact disintegrate, though the handling of place and period is slightly better than what one usually finds in such enterprises, and the slant of a woman screenwriter (Kate Lanier) is also highly welcome. Directed by Brian Gibson; with Vanessa Bell Calloway, Jenifer Lewis, Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, and Khandi Alexander. Old Orchard, Ford City, Chestnut Station. Read more
A sincere, intelligent, and effectively acted independent feature from 1964, about a black worker (Ivan Dixon) and his wife (Abbey Lincoln) struggling against prejudice and trying to make a life for themselves in Alabama. Directed by the able Michael Roemer (who made The Plot Against Harry five years later) from a script written in collaboration with Robert Young, who served as cinematographer; with Gloria Foster, Julius Harris, Martin Priest, and Yaphet Kotto. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, June 4 through 10. Read more
One of the last of Yasujiro Ozu’s silent films, which he remade toward the end of his career, this 1934 feature has a fairly standard soap-opera plotthe lead actor in an impoverished acting troupe returns to a remote mountain village to meet his illegitimate son for the first timebut, needless to say, the Japanese master works wonders with it. Like other Ozu films of the period, this has a great deal of camera movement; stylistic purification would later lead him to eliminate such expressive devices. 86 min. (JR) Read more
An interesting, albeit not entirely successful, feature by Jean-Charles Tacchella (Cousin, cousine), based on Elvire Murail’s novel, about the neighbors in the back of a Paris apartment house, among them a tormented, cynical male-chauvinist art critic (Robin Renucci); a solitary, middle-aged, half-Jewish and half-Arab woman; and a young gay man recovering from the physical abuse of his lover. Eventually the focus narrows to the story of the art critic’s spiritual regeneration, which isn’t entirely convincing. Still, the events leading up to this hold one’s interest. With Jacques Bonnagge, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Catherine Leprince, Jacques Weber, and Claude Rich (1985). (JR) Read more
Tom Hanks plays a lonely widower and architect who moves with his little boy (Ross Malinger) from Chicago to Seattle; Meg Ryan plays a newspaper reporter in Baltimore who’s preparing to get married. One night she hears the architect on a radio call-in show, falls madly in love with him, and writes him a letter; his son tries to encourage a match between them. Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed this, repeatedly alludes to the 1957 An Affair to Remember as her principal point of reference, yet at no point does she indicate any awareness of what makes that tragicomic love story sublime and this one merely cutesy. If one can ignore all the straining for lightness here, this is watchable enough, though hardly anything resembling a tearjerker. With Bill Pullman, Rosie O’Donnell, and Rob Reiner (1993). PG, 105 min. (JR) Read more
An accomplished and provocative first feature by writer-director Michael Lessac, built around the proposition that, as Lessac puts it, children see things we don’t. A six-year-old (Asha Menina) returns fatherless to North Carolina from an extended stay with her family in Mexico, where she’d come under the influence of an Indian archaeologist who steeped her in Mayan folklore. Now she displays both autistic behavior and visionary artistic giftsthe former according to a child psychologist (Tommy Lee Jones), the latter according to her mother (Kathleen Turner), an architect with a virtual-reality computer program who tries to reproduce one of her daughter’s visions. Difficult to describe, this well-constructed drama of ideas will seem pretentious if you don’t get into it, exciting and compelling if you do; either way, the performances of the three leads are very, very good. Robert Jay Litz collaborated on the original story. (JR) Read more
