A serial killer and rapist is at large in a small college town, but what he does to his prey isn’t much worse than what Aaron Sorkin and Scott Frank’s muddled thriller script and Harold Becker’s klutzy direction do to credibility. The lead actorsNicole Kidman, Bill Pullman, Alec Baldwinare reasonably fun to watch in spite of the escalating silliness, as long as you aren’t expecting to read them as human beings all the way through, and George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft each get a fancy cameo turn that takes up some of the slack; they’re having so much fun they must not have had to watch the rest of the movie (1993). (JR) Read more
Ian McEwan’s original screenplay offers good possibilities for two separate moviesone about a 12-year-old (Elijah Wood) coping with the recent death of his mother and believing that his aunt (Wendy Crewson) is her reincarnation, the other about a 12-year-old spending time with a sadistic cousin (Macaulay Culkin) while his father is away. Unfortunately, despite the occasionally resourceful direction of Joseph Ruben (The Stepfather), each of these promising scenarios winds up getting in the way of the other. And the casting of Culkin is less clever than it initially might have seemed: he’s already been applauded for sadism and cruelty in the Home Alone movies, so asking us to find the same qualities disturbing here seems a bit of a stretch. There’s wonderful use made of a Maine port town, and Ruben gets a dizzying thrill or two out of overhead shots, but the conceptual overload finally prevents this from coming together (1993). (JR) Read more
If Billy Wilder had been hired to rewrite Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner’s script and take over the direction, this might have had a chance of succeeding; unfortunately, the directing job went to The Addams Family’s Barry Sonnenfeld, who’s OK at paying homage to his own work and filling in the background of some shots with arch sight gags, but lacks the light touch needed for the rest. Michael J. Fox stars as the good-hearted concierge of a luxury hotel in Manhattan who dreams of opening his own establishment; a bad-hearted English tycoon (Anthony Higgins) agrees to stake Fox if he can entertain his adulterous mistress (Gabrielle Anwar). Fox is smitten, and winds up having to choose between …you can fill in the blanks. Overproduced, overdirected, and overfamiliar, this is one of those conspicuous-consumption spreads that is trying to tell us that true love is all that really matters. Come again? With Michael Tucker, Bob Balaban, and Isaac Misrahi. (JR) Read more
Belonging to an international trend that might be called the plotless examination of bored teenagers, Richard Linklater’s third feature (1993) begins right after the end of spring term in 1976; a lot of the stupidity it lingers over and criticizes (though nostalgia a la American Graffiti threatens to overwhelm the critique) has to do with the brutal hazing of junior high school kids by juniors and seniors. I enjoyed some performances (especially by Wiley Wiggins and Rory Cochrane) but hankered after the precise sense of place and the elliptical treatment of character that gave Linklater’s Slacker some of its distinction; here one learns enough about the characters to realize how little Linklater knows about them, and so little about the location (despite the Texas license plates) that one often feels stranded in Anywhere, USA. What survives is a better-than-average teen movie but not much more, at least if you aren’t a member of Linklater’s generation. With Jason London and Milla Jovovich. R, 94 min. (JR) Read more
An elaboration of the concept of Annie Get Your Gunnot to mention Doris Day’s tomboy image in On Moonlight Baythis 1953 western musical is perhaps best remembered for its Oscar-winning tune Secret Love; otherwise there’s Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok, direction by David Butler, and all that kinky cross-dressing. (JR) Read more
A bizarre, multilayered, hour-long experimental documentary by Holly Fisher (1992) about the wild west as strained through diverse cultural perspectivesthose of pulp novelist Ryerson Johnson, feminist poet Nancy Nielson, and John Ford (My Darling Clementine), among many others. (JR) Read more
Robert De Niro’s honorable directorial debut (1993) takes on Scorsese materialChazz Palminteri adapted his own play about growing up Italian in the Bronx during the 60swithout copying Scorsese’s style; the results may be soft in spots, but it’s encouraging to see De Niro go 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 workevocative, very funny in spots, and obviously keenly felt. With Francis Capra, Taral Hicks, and Katherine Narducci. (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 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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