Three films by the great experimental dancer-performer-filmmaker-theorist, perhaps the first major figure in the American avant-garde cinema: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, 18 min.), codirected by Alexander Hammid; At Land (1944, 15 min.), possibly her greatest film; and Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1985, 52 min.), her posthumously edited documentary about voodoo rituals. (JR) Read more
Argentinean filmmaker Eliseo Subiela’s disappointing 1992 follow-up to his Man Facing Southeast (1986) and Last Images of a Shipwreck (1989) chronicles the misadventures of a boorish, self-absorbed, and, to all appearances, untalented poet searching for the woman of his dreams in contemporary Buenos Aires. He’s approached mainly by prostitutes, and gets along by reciting lines of his verse to passing motorists in exchange for handouts. It’s hard to sustain much interest in such an insufferable character for 126 minutes. Moreover, Subiela’s magical-realism devices look distinctly shopworn. The light satire of the Argentinean avant-garde, mainly expounded through the film’s treatment of the hero’s artist friends, shares with Woody Allen’s movies and Borges and Bioy Casare’s Chronicles of Bustos Domecq too much contempt for bohemian art, which makes it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff; ultimately this leads to a smirking middle-class complacency about artists that seems flagrantly unearned. (JR) Read more
This highly personal take on the themes of immortality and vampirism, a first feature (1992) by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, may not be your cup of tea, but you have to admire the style, sincerity, and overall sense of craft even if you don’t fancy the comic-book gore. A strange instrument delivering both pain and immortality, developed during the Spanish Inquisition by an alchemist, winds up in the possession of an elderly antique dealer in contemporary Mexico City, but a wealthy invalid has dispatched his goonish nephew to search for it. If this sounds a mite formulaic, del Toro incorporates enough dark camera poetry and authentic feeling (including intense familial affection) to make you periodically forget it; one of his conclusions, incidentally, is that immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The cast is especially fine, including onetime Bunuel regular Claudio Brook, Argentinean star Federico Luppi, U.S. actor Ron Perlman, and a highly expressive little girl (Tamara Shanath). (JR) Read more
After doing something highly personal and more serious in his previous feature (Memoirs of an Invisible Man) and getting slammed as a result, Chevy Chase returns to the anonymous, unmemorable suburban mode that made his earlier movies profitable. And guess what? The results are anonymous and unmemorable. The basic situation is that Chase’s character, an accountant with a wife (Dianne Wiest) and two kids, has to allow the police (including Jack Palance) to take over his home in order to stake out a dangerous criminal (Robert Davi) living next door; you can pretty much guess the rest. The once-interesting Michael Ritchie, well equipped for routine assignments like this, directed from a script by Bernie Somers. With David Barry Gray, Jason James Richter, Fay Masterson, and Miko Hughes. (JR) Read more
It’s interesting to speculate why this ho-hum period sex comedy by Fernando Trueba won the 1993 Oscar for best foreign film (over The Scent of Green Papaya, Farewell My Concubine, and The Wedding Banquet): could it simply be that it’s the most Hollywoodish? The plot, set during the last days of the Spanish monarchy in 1931, bears a distant resemblance to Raoul Walsh’s The King and Four Queens and you may be reminded momentarily of Meet Me in St. Louis, but this picture isn’t within hailing distance of eitheror of one of its conscious models, Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country. Still, it’s fairly inoffensive and intermittently charming. An army deserter winds up in the home of an old painter (Fernando Fernan Gomez, who gives the most likable performance) with four single daughters, all of whom have romances with the young man. Eventually the missing mother, an opera singer, turns up with her lover, and other complications ensue. With Jorge Sanz, Maribel Verdu, Ariadna Gil, Miriam Diaz-Aroca, Penelope Cruz, and Mary Carmen Ramirez. In Spanish with subtitles. 108 min. (JR) Read more
One of MGM’s lesser musicals (1944), about a songwriter whose scheming publisher (Basil Rathbone) is trying to break up his marriage. Director George Sidney has all the oomph and vulgarity required, but he can’t do anything about Red Skelton, who takes up way too much time and space. With Keenan Wynn, Xavier Cugat, and Esther Williams in her first starring role. 101 min. (JR) Read more
It’s the usual combo of high concept and low execution, and not even Jonathan Kaplan’s background as an exploitation director can bail him out. The various problems here include boredom and silliness. Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Drew Barrymore, and Andie MacDowell star as prostitutes who become gunfighters to defend their lives and honor, and while it’s good to see four strong women in a western for a change, it’s not much fun to encounter the hectoring sound track (bad wall-to-wall music and very loud sound effects) and find the screenwriters (Ken Friedman and Yolande Finch) feebly modeling their showdown on The Wild Bunch. But if you’re a sunset buff, this movie has at least three peachy onestwo of them orange red and the last one lemon yellow. With James Russo, James LeGros, Robert Loggia, and Dermot Mulroney. (JR) Read more
This unpretentious account of the Beatles during their first gig, in Hamburg in 1960before painter Stuart Sutcliffe (likably played by Stephen Dorff) left the group, and before Ringo Starr joined ithas been heralded as the best rockudrama since The Buddy Holly Story. It’s a distinction that it probably deserves, though the movie lacks the sensitivity and precision of Christopher Munch’s hour-long The Hours and Times (1991), which effectively cast Ian Hart in the role of John Lennon (a role he plays here as well). English director and cowriter Iain Softley seems to have little on his mind apart from filling in a bit of the Beatles’ prehistory, which includes the romance between Sutcliffe and art photographer Astrid Kirchherr (Sheryl Lee), who more or less invented the Beatle haircut and indirectly inspired the avant-garde aspirations of the group in several other respects. There’s nothing very profound here, but we do at least get a nice handling of period and milieu, and pretty good performances of the songs. With Gary Bakewell, Chris O’Neill, and Scot Williams; cowritten by Michael Thomas and Stephen Ward. (JR) Read more
I wouldn’t call this 1960 picture one of Billy Wilder’s best comediesit’s drab, sappy, and overlong at 125 minutes. But its numerous Oscarsfor best picture, direction, script, editing, and art directionindicate that many disagree with me (including the Coen brothers, who seem to have studied it for The Hudsucker Proxy, just as Wilder studied Vidor’s silent The Crowd for this). Jack Lemmon at his most hyperventilated plays an ambitious clerk who tries to get ahead by lending his apartment to executives for one-night stands, then falls in love with an elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) who’s being mistreated by his boss (Fred MacMurray). Wilder cohort I.A.L. Diamond collaborated on the script of this black-and-white ‘Scope movie; with Ray Walston and Edie Adams. (JR) Read more