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
Mike Newell (Mona Lisa Smile, Four Weddings and Funeral) directed this 1992 comedy drama about two kids in Dublin (Ruaidhri Conroy and Ciaran Fitzgerald) who steal a white pony and ride through Ireland on it. This tries hardtoo hard, in factto be a lighthearted fantasy, though at least it compensates with some pretty scenery. Gabriel Byrne plays the boys’ father, and Ellen Barkinaccorded second billing, but around for barely more than a cameois a Gypsy he meets on his search for the boys. The script is by Jim Sheridan (In America, My Left Foot); with David Kelly. PG, 97 min. (JR) Read more
Though it’s a good half hour too long, this overblown 1993 spin-off of the 60s TV show otherwise adds up to a pretty good suspense thriller. In flight from the law after being wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is pursued over a good many Chicago and rural locations by U.S. marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) while trying to clear up the mystery of who actually did the killing. The mystery itself is fairly routine, but Jones’s offbeat and streamlined performance as a proudly diffident investigator helps one overlook the mechanical crosscutting and various implausibilities, and director Andrew Davis does a better-than-average job with the action sequences. Written by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy; with Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, and Jeroen Krabbe. 127 min. (JR) Read more
A diverting Italian feature (1992) consisting of three sketches (four before Miramax picked it up for distribution), all written by veteran screenwriter Tonino Guerra (Blowup, Amarcord), all set in the Marecchia Valley, and all having something to do with the quirkiness of human passions. The Blue Dog, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso), focuses on the love/hatred of a village shoemaker-barber (Philippe Noiret) for a stray dog that follows him around; the title sketch, directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci (Bernardo’s brother), concerns the edgy efforts of a suave middle-aged man (Bruno Ganz) to seduce a younger woman (Ornella Muti) who’s dating a troubled man her own age; and Snow on Fire, directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, is about a lonely widow (Maria Maddalena Fellini, Federico’s sister) who gets into the habit of spying on the lovemaking of her newly wed son and daughter-in-law. Ennio Morricone supplies a characteristically wistful score. (JR) Read more
As a fan of both writer-director Alan Rudolph (Choose Me) and Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket), I should have loved this dreamy metaphysical thriller, which casts Modine as identical twins separated at birth (one a shy car mechanic, the other a brash gangster). It has so many of the usual Rudolph tics that it often comes across as Rudolph squared, but maybe that’s the problem. Despite a likable cast, the movie drowns in its own stylishly self-regarding mannerisms and New Age pretensions. With Lara Flynn Boyle, Tyra Ferrell, Fred Ward, M. Emmet Walsh, Marisa Tomei, and Kevin J. O’Connor (1991). (JR) Read more
An odd, atmospheric 1947 thriller with a San Francisco setting, adapted by writer-director Delmer Daves from a David Goodis novel and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. We hear but don’t see Bogart for roughly the first third of the movie, which features the subjective camera (a la Lady in the Lake, but handled more successfully) as his character, who’s wrongly accused of murder, escapes from prison and undergoes plastic surgery, only to emerge looking like . . . Humphrey Bogart, before setting out to clear his name. The effective supporting cast includes Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Bennett, Tom D’Andrea, and Clifton Young. 107 min. (JR) Read more
Inspired by a true story, this 1993 feature by Maggie Greenwald is about a woman from the east (Suzy Amis) who’s rejected by her family after giving birth to an illegitimate child and who travels in 1866 to a frontier town disguised as a man to protect herself; she keeps up the impersonation for the remainder of her life, revealing her true sexual identity only to a Chinese servant (David Chung) she takes as a lover. Apart from an impressive performance by Amis and some very capable ones from the secondary cast (which includes Rene Auberjonois, Bo Hopkins, Ian McKellen, Carrie Snodgress, and Heather Graham), this is more skillful than inspired, with an image of the early west that seems largely borrowed from McCabe and Mrs. Miller. (JR) Read more
An unbelievably tiresome attempt to imitate Scorsese for the umpteenth time. It’s a phony movie about upper-middle-class hoods and show-offy camera movesthe usual Sundance jive, only much more hollow and pointless. Written and directed by Rob Weiss; with Steve Parlavecchio, Patrick McGaw, Joseph Lindsey, and Mira Sorvino. (JR) Read more
Martin Scorsese’s ambitious and sumptuous 1993 film version of Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel about New York society in the 1870s manages to be both personal and true to its source, though it never quite comes together. Incorporating chunks of Wharton’s socially knowing prose in the narration (regally spoken by Joanne Woodward), it tells the story of a young lawyer (Daniel Day-Lewis) who’s engaged to marry a debutante (Winona Ryder) but who falls in love with her married cousin (Michelle Pfeiffer), a somewhat disreputable countess, and never succeeds in doing very much about it. As beautifully mounted as this production is, Scorsese has a way of letting the decor take over, so that Wharton’s tale of societal constraints comes through only in fits and starts. But it’s a noble failure, with plenty of compensations, including a fine secondary cast that includes Geraldine Chaplin, Mary Beth Hurt, Stuart Wilson, Miriam Margolyes, and Norman Lloyd. 133 min. (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 movie–a tribute to his wild and uninhibited friend, who subsequently died of AIDS–kept me mesmerized and entertained. Recounting various episodes in his difficult life–bouts 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 drugs–Strouth 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. Music Box, Saturday and Sunday, July 31 and August 1. Read more
While nothing major, this soft-core daisy chain of sexual linkages and loosely connected dramatic sketches about life in contemporary Manhattan, written and directed by Temistocles Lopez, is fun, mainly for its cast and playful form. This form has been compared by some critics to La ronde, but more apt cross-references might be The Leopard Man, The Phantom of Liberty, and Slacker. The cast includes Linda Fiorentino, Elias Koteas, Patrick Bauchau, Angel Aviles, Grace Zabriskie, Malcolm McDowell, Jamie Harrold, Tim Guinee, Dewey Weber, Holly Marie Combs, Seymour Cassel, Sabrina Lloyd, Assumpta Serna, and Suzzanne Douglas; the sexual preferences include straight and gay, diverse forms of adultery, bondage, discipline, phone sex, voyeurism, and masturbation. The New York regionalism–the conviction that the city is the hub of the universe–adds to the energy as well as the unwarranted self-importance; don’t expect too much and you’ll probably be entertained. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, July 23 through 29. Read more
This is the first documentary feature about gentrification I’m aware of, and it’s an uncommonly good one–made by School of the Art Institute graduate Nora Jacobson over eight years in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the neighborhood where she still lives. Alert and lucid without a trace of sentimentality, she focuses on a number of related events, including the torching of rent-controlled buildings (and subsequent condo conversions), and interviews local residents, landlords, developers, activists, and others about what’s going on. This is an eye-opener. (1992) Jacobson will attend both screenings. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, July 17, 7:45, and Sunday, July 18, 6:00, 443-3737. Read more
New highs (or lows) in free-flowing gore and nonstop, torrential splatter are reached in this modest-budget comic horror extravaganza from New Zealand by Peter Jackson, originally and more appropriately known as Braindead. The standard-issue plot, with all the usual steals from Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, emanates from the poisonous bite of a rat monkey from Sumatra in a Wellington zoo circa 1957. Yet the only meaningful bill of fare here is deliberately stomach-turning showstoppers involving dismemberment, disfigurement, disembowelment, countless gallons of spewing blood and bile, and related gross-outs–more 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 the endless reserves of giddy energy and the general absence of the calculated mean spiritedness of more prestigious directors like Spielberg and Renny Harlin (perhaps because this is so clearly meant to be silly). I was also charmed quite a bit by Diana Penalver as the Spanish heroine. This clearly isn’t for everyone, but the preview audience had a ball; with Timothy Balme, Elizabeth Moody, and Ian Watkin; cowritten by Jackson, Stephen Sinclair, and Frances Walsh. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, July 16 through 22. Read more
