This 1993 sequel starts off with the same sort of hard-sell blackout gags as its predecessor, most of them built around the premise of Gomez (Raul Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) having another baby. But once Joan Cusack enters the picture as a nanny-cum-serial-killer/gold digger with her eye trained on Fester (Christopher Lloyd) things get livelier, and by the time the movie reaches its centerpieceWednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are being shipped off to summer campthe comedy has moved into high gear and become one of the funniest, most mean-spirited satirical assaults on sunny American values since the salad days of W.C. Fields. Paul Rudnick wrote the script, Barry Sonnenfeld directed, and Carol Kane costars as Granny. (JR) Read more
An entertaining if somewhat uneven departure by Mohsen Makhmalbaf–perhaps the most versatile contemporary Iranian director, and certainly one of the most talented, prolific, and controversial–this 1992 film can be regarded in part as a kind of peace offering to the Iranian government after the banning of his two previous features (loosely comparable as a gesture to The Story of Qiu Ju as a follow-up to the banned films of Zhang Yimou). A fantasy and comedy about the birth of Iranian cinema, full of whimsical special effects and wacky magical-realism conceits, this is centered on an early cinematographer (Mehdi Hashemi)–modeled loosely and rather awkwardly on Chaplin’s tramp figure–who introduces movies to the Persian court, gradually winning over the shah (Ezatollah Entezami) to the new medium once the ruler falls for an actress (Fatemeh Motamed-Aria) who literally drops from the screen into the palace. Quirkily inventive and unpredictable, the film concludes with a sentimental anthology of clips celebrating the history of Iranian cinema that calls Oscar night to mind; before this, much more interesting uses are made of a silent film identified by Makhmalbaf as the first Iranian movie, Ebrahim Khan’s Hajagha, the Film Actor. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Friday, October 1, 6:00, and Sunday, October 3, 7:00, 443-3737. Read more
Robert De Niro’s honorable directorial debut takes on Scorsese material–Chazz Palminteri adapting his own play about growing up Italian in the Bronx during the 60s–without copying Scorsese’s style; the results may be soft in spots, but it’s encouraging to see De Niro going his own way. The narrator-hero, seen at the ages of 9 and 17 (when he’s played by Lillo Brancato), oscillates between two father figures, a local gang boss (Palminteri) and his law-abiding, bus-driving father (De Niro). Once local racism comes into the picture, the moral distinctions between these parental guides become a lot more ambiguous and complex than one might initially suppose. Despite some sentimentality and occasional directorial missteps, this is a respectable piece of work–evocative, very funny in spots, and obviously keenly felt. With Francis Capra, Taral Hicks, and Katherine Narducci. Hyde Park, Norridge, Old Orchard, Webster Place, Ford City, Lincoln Village, North Riverside, Water Tower. Read more
A wonderful tearjerker about four young Chinese American women in San Francisco (Rosalind Chao, Lauren Tom, Tamilyn Tomita, and Ming-Na Wen) and their Chinese immigrant mothers (Tsai Chin, Kieu Chinh, Lisa Lu, and France Nuyen). Adapted from Amy Tan’s best-selling novel by the author and Ron Bass, and directed by Wayne Wang, it is a story (or more precisely, four interwoven stories) told mainly in flashbacks. Wang, whose previous work has reflected the influence of both Ozu (Dim Sum) and Godard (Life Is Cheap), seems to have fallen under the spell of Mizoguchi here, and this model serves him well. At once fascinating for its detailed lore about Chinese customs and legacies and very moving in its realization, the film builds into a highly emotional epic about what it means to be both Chinese and American. Fine Arts. Read more
Not surprisingly, this 1961 epic about the Spanish national hero, the Castilian warrior Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, is often static as drama (with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren used mainly as icons) and pretty dubious as history. But thanks to Anthony Mann’s splendid eye for landscape, composition, and spectacle–in particular his striking use of the edges of the ‘Scope frame, a facet (among others) that is totally lost on TV and video–this is a rousing and often stirring show. Scripted by Frederic M. Frank and Philip Yordan, scored by Miklos Rozsa, and costarring Raf Vallone, Genevieve Page, and Herbert Lom, the film has been rereleased under the auspices of Martin Scorsese. It runs about three hours, and there is an intermission two-thirds of the way through. Fine Arts. Read more
A subtitled print of the fascinating German-language version of Greta Garbo’s first talkie (1930), shot at the same time and on the same MGM sets as the more familiar English version of the Eugene O’Neill play–a procedure carried out with several other pictures during this period, before dubbing was invented. The German version has a different director (Jacques Feyder instead of Clarence Brown) and a different supporting cast (Hans Junkermann, Theo Ball, and Salka Viertel instead of Charles Bickford, George F. Marion, and Marie Dressler). The film is something of a relic in both versions–with periodic cuts from long shots in sharp focus to close-ups of Garbo in soft focus, and O’Neill’s lifelong obsession with alcoholic male carousers and their suffering, neglected women getting full play. But Garbo is electrifying, and, if memory serves, she may actually be a little tougher and more soulful in the German version. See both versions back-to-back (as you can on Wednesday) and decide for yourself. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, September 3 through 9. Read more
A pretty good German comedy by Helmut Dietl, nominated for an Oscar, that satirizes Germany’s relation to its Nazi past, with particular reference to the Hitler diaries hoax. It chronicles the exploits of a charlatan who starts out as an art forger, then takes up counterfeiting Nazi relics, including Hitler’s diaries and even his (and Eva Braun’s) ashes, in collusion with a puffed-up, greedy Hamburg journalist who’s restoring one of Goring’s ships and romancing one of his nieces. The title is a nonsense word derived from Chaplin’s splutters in The Great Dictator; the tone is cheerfully irreverent, though this is hardly a patch on The Nasty Girl. (JR) Read more
Frank Capra and Robert Riskin’s reductive, relatively conformist version of the Kaufman and Hart farce about an eccentric family (Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur, Mischa Auer, Spring Byington) coming into contact with a rich one (Edward Arnold, Mary Forbes, James Stewart) won best-picture and best-director Oscars in 1938. There are still some laughs and entertainment to be found here, but forget about fidelity to the original. 127 min. (JR) Read more
An Iranian comedy (1991) by Dariush Farhang about the complications and disasters that ensue when an Iranian director, played by Farhang himself, tries to shoot an American-style action picture. His lead actor refuses to perform a stunt, then becomes injured, reducing the director to finding a slum dweller who resembles him in order to complete the picture. Some of this is funny, but too much comes across as the kind of slick, soulless filmmaking the movie professes to parody. (JR) Read more
Tony Scott (Top Gun) directs a Quentin Tarantino script about a couple (Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette) fleeing from Detroit to Los Angeles with the mob and the police after them (1993). There’s plenty of pizzazz on view but not always a lot of sense; as usual, Tarantino’s sense of fun is infectious but fairly heartless (as in the easy way the movie shrugs off the courageous death of Slater’s father, a former cop played by Dennis Hopper), and Scott’s direction is slick but mechanical, which pretty much seems what’s called for. With Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Walken. R, 118 min. (JR) Read more
I’ve never encountered the poetry of Romanian expatriate writer Andrei Codrescu or his contributions to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. I hope I never have to after seeing this 1992 documentary produced and directed by Roger Weisberg, which follows Codrescu as he drives across the U.S., spouting cliches whenever he can’t find a religious cultist or gun freak or McDonald’s executive to spout them for him. The narrative’s jocular, superficial tone becomes insufferable once it’s apparent that no subject is going to be accorded anything more than a cutesy one-liner. Whatever the limitations of Sherman’s March and Roger & Me, they at least offered some food for thought along with the self-congratulation; this offers little more than smarmy joke cues and poetic platitudes. (JR) Read more
Though it eliminates most of the first chapter and sweetens the ending, this is a fairly literal adaptation (1993) by documentary filmmaker Philip Haas (Money Man) of Paul Auster’s allegorical, parablelike novel about the nature of freedom, scripted with Haas’s wife, film editor Belinda Haas. A former fireman and drifter (Mandy Patinkin) stakes a professional poker player (James Spader) in a game with two eccentric millionaires (Charles Durning and Joel Grey); after going bust the drifter and poker player wind up building a stone wall across a meadow to work off their debts. The acting is engaging and resourceful (Spader and M. Emmet Walsh as a foreman are standouts), but the translation of this highly literary tale into something cinematic never quite takes place; with Samantha Mathis. (JR) Read more
A brash and sprightly Canadian comedy about Indian emigres in Toronto, with musical numbers, erotic dream sequences, exploding airplanes, a blue-skinned Hindu deity who exists mainly on video, a fair amount of farce, and a great deal of satire. In his first feature the young writer-director-star Srinivas Krishna seems less comfortable as an actor than as a filmmaker, but he coaxes rich performances from Saeed Jaffrey, who plays three separate parts (including the Hindu deity), and otherwise keeps things hopping; with Sakina Jaffrey (Saeed’s daughter) and Zohra Segal (1991). (JR) Read more
A pretty good Mexican revenge comedy (1993) by Luis Carlos Carrera about an abused wife (Socorro Bonilla) who has to wait most of her life to dispose of her philandering husband (Alonso Echanove). You’ve seen it all before, but the direction and performances give it some flavor and bite. (JR) Read more
Strangely enough, modern dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer was known throughout the 60s and early 70s as a minimalist. Yet for more than two decades she’s been making experimental quasi-narrative films of increasing density, culminating in this angry, vibrant film of 1985 that, in her words, takes on the housing shortage, changing family patterns, the poor pitted against the middle class, Hispanics against Jews, artists and politics, female menopause, abortion rights. There’s even a dream sequence. Working with the speeches and writings of more than a dozen figures, ranging from Raymond Chandler to Julia Kristeva, Rainer confronts and parodies male theoretical discourse (Michel Foucault in particular, sampled and discussed in extended chunks) as a mode of sexual seduction. Politics has been present in all her features, but usually folded into so many distancing devices it comes out mainly dressed in quotes; here she allows it to speak more directly and eloquently, letting it charge the rest of the filmrightly assuming we could all use a few jolts. (JR) Read more
