Even though Henry Fonda and Vera Miles are the stars, this somber 1957 black-and-white drama, shot in and around New York City, is the closest Alfred Hitchcock ever came to making an art film. It’s based on the true story of a bass player working at the Stork Club who was falsely arrested for holding up a liquor store because of his physical resemblance to the guilty party, which led to a series of grim mishaps that culminated in his wife going insane. This is a highly personal and even religious expression of Hitchcock concerning the vicissitudes of fate, predicated on his lifelong fear that anyone can be wrongly accused of a crime and placed behind bars. The result, as Hitchcock himself warns in a prologue, isn’t a Hitchcock picture in the usual sense, but it’s still one of his most potent and memorable works from the 50s, his richest period. With Anthony Quayle, Harold J. Stone, and Nehemiah Persoff. 105 min. (JR) Read more
When it comes to TV commercials, I’m not sure what best means: so good that you forget the product, or so good that you remember? Anyway, both kinds appear among the nearly 100 international examplesgood, bad, and indifferentincluded here. Many if not all of the foreign entries are dubbed or retitled in English, which tends to minimize the cultural differences, though a few of the differencessuch as the anticlericalism in the grand-prize winner, a cutesy Spanish ad for gluestill come across. I find most of this as tedious as the commercials I normally see on TV, though a few ads are aesthetically striking (above all the English one for Ariston) and many more have the virtue of telling us how people elsewhere in the world get cajoled into buying things. Still, I would have preferred a wider sampling; most of what we see here is from the U.S., western Europe, Japan, and Australia. (JR) Read more
Connie Francis sings the title tune and makes her film debut in this OK 1960 movie about teenagers taking their spring break in Fort Lauderdale. Directed by Henry Levin; with Dolores Hart, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Hutton, Barbara Nichols, Paula Prentiss, Frank Gorshin, and Chill Wills. (JR) 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 1993 film can’t be taken too seriously. But as a powerhouse showcase for the acting talents of Angela Bassett (who plays Turner) and Laurence Fishburne (who plays her abusive husband, Ike) and as a potent portrayal of wife beating and the emotions that surround it (in this case, Ike’s professional envy and Tina’s stoic acceptance of abuse), it’s quite a show. As with the even sillier Lady Sings the Blues (Diana Ross’s ridiculous depiction of Billie Holiday), which harked back to a still earlier model of musical biopic, showbiz instincts tend to triumph as common sense and fidelity to fact disintegrate, though the handling of place and period is slightly better than 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. (JR) Read more
A rather feeble, cutesy romantic comedyan independent first feature shot in Providence, Rhode Island, that often suggests an update of Pollyanna with a few mordant overtones. After his wife leaves him, a hapless landscaper (Mark Evan Jacobs) accidentally burns down his house, including the downstairs apartment that’s occupied by Beatrice, a French immigrant (The Double Life of Veronique’s Irene Jacob), and her adopted Cambodian daughter. Guilt stricken, he moves them into the troubled household of his parents and grandfather, where Beatrice brings a ray of sunshine, or something like that, into all their lives. You can imagine the restor at least try to, which is what writer-director Cindy Lou Johnson did. With Charlotte Moore, Pat McNamara, Leonardo Cimino, Nady Meas, and Steve Buscemi (1992). (JR) Read more
An ode to fanatical French cinephilia in 1948the generation immediately preceding the New Wave, to which writer-director Jean-Charles Tacchella (Cousin, cousine) belongedthis is a must-see charmer not only for crazed film buffs and Francophiles, but also for anyone wanting to follow the adventures of a passionate romantic trio of scruffy bohemians in their early 20s in a Paris that no longer exists. Like the New Wave figures who followed them, the young men in this milieu write about movies and aspire to be directors; as critic David Overbey put it, they live through film references: They even take girls to bed talking about Howard Hawks’s women and wake up feeling like Bogart. Much of the idealistic effort they display goes toward setting up a cineclub that shows rare films, though there’s also a certain amount of suspense involving a treasure trove of old movies the characters steal. Conventionally made, though potent and heartfelt in its feelings of personal nostalgia, this movie makes effective use of its cast of young unknowns: Thierry Fremont, Ann-Gisel Glass, and Simon de la Brosse (1987). (JR) Read more
The best 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 directionsto 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-referencesthey sing and vibrate with maximal intensity on their own. (JR) Read more
Life on the road with a trio of rock musicians calling themselves Popdefect is the subject of this low-budget (less than $10,000) documentary by Brad Vanderburg, who climbed into a van with the musicians and filmed a whole lot of what they did and said. Which isn’t very interesting, though at least it’s filmed and edited with a certain amount of energy. The biggest problem is the usual historical shortsightednessthe differences between Popdefect and other struggling rock bands on the road and the differences between this movie and other movies about touring rock bands are never really broached, and most of what we see is pretty familiar stuff. But on a modest level it’s all pretty easy to take. (JR) Read more
Michael J. Fox plays a former sitcom child star who with his brother (Nathan Lane) now runs a low-rent talent agency specializing in child actors. Desperate to find a kid to star in a cookie commercial, he discovers a streetwise but talented little girl (Christina Vidal) who picks his pocket. Vidal herself and a bunch of secondary actors give this some intermittent charm and pizzazz, though less than there is in Broadway Danny Rose, one of its possible inspirations. Unfortunately, neither the script (by coproducer Marc Lawrence) nor the direction (by James Lapine) does much with the basic material. Cyndi Lauper costars. (JR) Read more
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a movie action hero in Los Angeles, joined on the screen by an 11-year-old fan (Austin O’Brien) in New York; when the movie villains exit the screen for New York in the real world, the boy and his hero follow. This is less successful as streamlined merchandise than Jurassic Park or Cliffhanger, but it gave me more pleasure, at least for its imagination and goofy ideas. The performances of both Schwarzenegger and O’Brien are labored, the pacing uneven, and maybe only half the gags work, but there’s a certain amount of creative energy and audacity mixed in with all the confusion. Among the many writers with a hand in this $80 million blockbuster are Shane Black, David Arnott, Zak Penn, and Adam Leff; John McTiernan (Die Hard, Medicine Man) directed, and the secondary cast includes F. Murray Abraham, Art Carney, Charles Dance, Tom Noonan, Robert Prosky, Anthony Quinn, Mercedes Ruehl, and Joan Plowright. (JR) Read more
Clint Eastwood plays a Secret Service agentactually Dirty Harry in disguise (with minor variations)emotionally devastated by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, who gets a shot at redeeming himself 30 years later when a loony assassin (John Malkovich) also trained by the Secret Service menaces the president and baits Eastwood about it, for no discernible reason except to keep Eastwood working. If you don’t care about such motivations, this is a pretty good thriller, though not one you’re likely to remember for very long. Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot) directed from a script by Jeff Maguire; with Rene Russo. (JR) Read more
A chilling, informative 1993 video documentary by Peter Kuttner, Cindi Moran, and Eric Scholl about police brutality in Chicago, emphasizing the prolonged effort to get police commander Jon Burge suspended. The many testimonies given here are cogent and to the point, though one may regret the occasional use of actors. On the whole, a terrifying and useful document about some of the ways everyday racism functions locally. 43 min. (JR) Read more
One of the key writer-directors associated with the upper-middle-class and middle-aged French, Claude Sautet has never had a strong impact in this country. This feature, A Heart in Winter, his 13th, gives a fair sense of his craft and his limitations; I find it ably made but a bit on the dull side. Loosely inspired by The Princess Mary story in Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time, the plot concerns two violin makers played by Daniel Auteuil (Jean de Florette) and Andre Dussollier (Melo, Le beau mariage), who work as partners, and the changes wrought in their lives by a young violinist (La belle noiseuse’s Emmanuelle Beart) preparing to record a Ravel trio. Other significant characters include a music teacher (Maurice Garrel) and the older woman (Brigitte Catillon) the violinist lives with. A major thematic interest is the wintry heart (lack of feeling) of Auteuil’s character, and what makes the presentation of this theme relatively novel for American tastes is the lack of psychology underlying it. The performances are all quite good, Beart’s in particular, but whether one really cares about these characters is another matter (1991). (JR) Read more
Billed as a lesbian love story with a rare happy ending, this 1992 feature by writer-director-producer Nicole Conn pairs a popular satirist (Trisha Todd) and a psychotherapist and author (Karen Trumbo) who specializes in sexual behavior at an annual women writers’ retreat on the Oregon coast. The psychotherapist is openly gay; the satirist is straight but fascinated with, if skeptical about, her cabin mate. Their prickly relationship gradually becomes a testy friendship before gravitating toward love and sex. Despite the obvious sincerity of this project, the stilted acting by most of the secondary cast and the generally undistinguished direction give the script little chance to take root or take flight; the issues are certainly there, but by and large the characters are not. Particularly regrettable is a straight southern writer of steamy best-sellers named Tara O’Hara; the character’s name alone tells you what’s wrong with the conception. By contrast, Faith McDevitt does an interesting job as an older lesbian character who helps run the colony. (JR) Read more
A fascinating documentary directed by Michael Blackwood (and shot by his brother Christian) about butoh, the Japanese avant-garde dance movement born in the late 50s out of radical street theater in protest against Western incursions into Japanese culture (although Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud, and German expressionist dance all exerted some influence on its founder Tatsumi Hijikata). This subtle and complex movement, as much a philosophy as a style of dance, emphasizing introspection and primal experience and featuring scantily-clad dancers (as well as intricate impersonations) is described and illustrated with great detail and lucidity. (JR) Read more
