A guitar player, guided by the title bird, comes back to life as a superhero in this 1994 action picture based on James O’Barr’s comic book of the same name. Brandon Lee, the lead, died while performing a stunt for the film, and many doubles were used in the remaining footage. Directed by Alex Proyas from a script by David J. Schow and John Shirley; with Ernie Hudson and Michael Wincott. Read more
Derek Jarman’s last feature (1993, 79 min.), made when he was dying of AIDS and losing his eyesight, has only a single, continuous image consisting of the color blue, but the sound track is unusually dense, making use of four separate speaking voices (including those of Jarman and Orlando’s Tilda Swinton), a multifaceted score by Simon Fisher Turner, other pieces of music, and numerous sound effects. (The sound track came out on CD, and the text has been published as a book.) Given Jarman’s previous work, it isn’t surprising that he didn’t go gently into that good night; much of the narration consists of him raging (or simply complaining), poetically and prosaically, about his worsening physical condition and other facets of his daily life. In effect the film becomes his own epitaph and tombstone. (JR) Read more
Some of the precise meanings of this Bill Forsyth comedy eluded me, but the vibes couldn’t have been nicer. What’s off-putting at first is that both the title and the man-through-the-ages formatRobin Williams playing no fewer than five fellows named Hector: a caveman, a Roman Empire slave, a medieval traveler, a Portuguese shipwreck survivor, and a divorced landlord in contemporary Manhattanpromise the worst kind of universalist banality; fortunately, it never materializes. The overall conceit may be arch, but as narrator Theresa Russell periodically points out, this is a story about stories; and this being a Forsyth movie, everythingeven customary overactors like Williams, John Turturro, and Lorraine Braccois scaled down to human proportions. The movie leaves you feeling there’s more to it than meets the eye. With Anna Galiena, Vincent D’Onofrio, Hector Elizondo, and Lindsay Crouse. (JR) Read more
Comparing Zhang Yuan’s relatively big-budget independent mainland Chinese feature (1993) about disaffected youth with his previous effortthe more experimental, low-budget Mama, shot on videois almost like comparing Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused with his earlier Slacker. Here you might have more trouble getting into the rock music, but the same sort of seminarrative drift develops between various miniplots. What this film has to say about contemporary Chinese youth certainly has documentary interest, but the originality and power of Mama are not much in evidence. With Cui Jian, Li Wei, and Wu Lala. (JR) Read more
Henry Jaglom, the let-it-all-hang-out New Age independent who made a movie about women and food (Eating, 1991), now turns his attention to women and having babies. This follows the by-now-standard Jaglom formula of encounter sessions: mechanical crosscutting between improvised declarations and conversations that monotonously adhere to a TV sound-bite format, nostalgic recordings of standards sung by well-known crooners, lots of whiny self-examination. There’s also the usual simple story line designed to frame the open-ended rap sessionsin this case the heroine (cowriter Victoria Foyt, Jaglom’s wife) waiting to find out whether she’s pregnant by a man she may or may not be in love with (Matt Salinger). The southern California ambience is, shall we say, unrelenting. Eric Roberts puts in a cameo, and Zack Norman is around for one of his familiar arias of manic desperation. (JR) Read more
Sacha Guitry’s last solo directing job (1957), the story of one man’s life of crime, told in Guitry’s favored and invariably witty flashback mode; with Michel Serrault and Jean Poiret. (JR) Read more
Reportedly the longest single film ever made, Edgar Reitz’s 13-part, nearly 26-hour “chronicle of a generation” (1992)–set in Munich during the 60s and only nominally a sequel to his 15-hour Heimat (1984)–mainly focuses on the experiences of one young man, a classical musician and composer named Hermann Simon (Henry Arnold) who moves from the small village of Shabbach (where Heimat was set) to find a new life and, echoing the title, a second home. Alternating masterfully between black and white and color, Reitz conveys a novelistic sweep as he deals with artistic and romantic ferment in 1960 and ’61 in the first two episodes, “The Time of the First Songs” and “Two Strange Eyes.” Among the other major characters are the hero’s best friend, a Chilean musician; a beautiful cellist they’re both drawn to; a lonely female law student; a couple of ambitious filmmakers; a jazz drummer; a crazed landlady and former singer; and two avant-garde composers. Reitz’s feeling for period and milieu are so good and his characters so rich and appealing one feels one could climb inside this movie and stay a long, long while. On the basis of the four hours I’ve seen so far, I suspect The Second Heimat offers the most comprehensive and persuasive grasp of the experience of the 60s we have on film, with the possible exception of Jacques Rivette’s nearly 13-hour Out 1, which has never been shown in the U.S. Read more
Adapted from a successful play, this tense and effective Venezuelan political thriller (1992), directed with craft and discretion by Alejandro Saderman, follows the principled decision of a nun to shelter a fugitive from armed rebels during a state of civil war, the ambivalent cooperation she elicits from a fellow nun, and the price they both have to pay for their courage. Saderman sticks to the claustrophobic feeling I assume the original play had, while still conveying a detailed sense of the surrounding community, from mayor to bishop to shopkeeper. And wisely, he tends to veer away from close-ups when he wants certain dramatic points to register; indeed, many of this film’s finest moments–most of them related to the performance of Veronica Oddo, who plays the more committed nun–transpire in long shot. Three Penny, Saturday, April 23, 6:30; also Facets Multimedia, Monday, April 25, 7:00. Read more
It’s a matter of some dispute whether Roman Polanski’s letter to the darker side of the romantic impulse–a French-English production made in 1992–represents him at his best or worst (I’d say the former), but there’s little question that this is his most emotionally complex movie to date. With its American, English, and French characters representing the three cultures Polanski has known since he left Poland, it’s also quite possibly his most personal film–and certainly his most self-critical. The major focus of the plot, told in flashbacks, is the perverse relationship that develops in Paris between a failed, well-to-do American writer (Peter Coyote) who becomes crippled and a young French dancer (Emmanuelle Seigner); their encounter with a British couple (Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott-Thomas) on a luxury liner on the Black Sea forms the present-tense story. This uneasy combination of comedy and tragedy, frank pornography and caustic antipornography, sexual fun and games and mental cruelty doesn’t allow the audience a comfortably detached viewpoint from which to judge the proceedings. Chances are you’ll either love it or despise it. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, April 15 through 21. Read more
Perhaps the most intriguing fact about this clever, touching, and well-directed independent feature is that the script was written by the late Endre Bohem in 1935 and revised by his son Leslie only a few years ago–a form of generational continuity reflected in one of the delayed revelations of the plot as well. The story–set in the present, though one can imagine it set during the Depression–concerns the fate of a single $20 bill that’s dropped on a city street, picked up, spent, given away, lost, and pursued by many people for multiple reasons, always gaining new significance with each new setting. Most of the resulting miniplots are self-contained, but the script also gracefully brings back characters, making a roundelay exercise like the recent Chain of Desire look fairly crude by comparison. Documentary filmmaker Keva Rosenfeld has switched to fiction with a great deal of craft and assurance, never allowing the large number of characters to seem top-heavy or confusing. The able cast includes Linda Hunt, Elisabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd, Steve Buscemi, Brendan Fraser, Gladys Knight, Melora Walters, and Kamal Holloway. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, April 8 through 14. Read more
With the possible exception of Kurosawa, Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) is the greatest living Japanese filmmaker. Unfortunately, the U.S. distributor of most of his early work has made very little of it available on video, which means that most Americans’ knowledge of the modernist Japanese cinema doesn’t include Death by Hanging, Boy, The Man Who Left His Will on Film, The Ceremony, and many other Oshima masterworks. Max Mon Amour (1986), his most recent feature, here receiving its belated Chicago premiere, isn’t as good as those movies, but then what is? This dry drawing-room comedy about an English diplomat’s wife (Charlotte Rampling) who has a “serious” affair with a chimpanzee was produced by Serge Silberman, producer of Bunuel’s last films, and written by Bunuel’s cowriter on the same films, Jean-Claude Carriere. Much of this film’s ongoing humor derives from the human couple’s sense of decorum; in a game effort to preserve his marriage, the diplomat (Anthony Higgins), who has a mistress of his own, arranges to have the chimp moved into their flat. Even for a filmmaker who essentially changes style with each picture–and has a reputation as a taboo breaker–this is uncharacteristic: the poker-faced surrealism of “civilized” people attempting to be mature about a woman’s passion for a chimp seems, not surprisingly, more like Bunuel than Oshima. Read more
It’s a matter of some dispute whether Roman Polanski’s letter to the darker side of the romantic impulsea French-English production made in 1992represents him at his best or worst (I’d say the former), but there’s little question that this is his most emotionally complex movie. With its American, English, and French characters representing the three cultures Polanski has known since he left Poland, it’s also quite possibly his most personal filmand certainly his most self-critical. The major focus of the plot, told in flashbacks, is the perverse relationship that develops in Paris between a failed, well-to-do American writer who becomes crippled (Peter Coyote) and a young French dancer (Emmanuelle Seigner); their encounter with a British couple (Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas) on a luxury liner forms the present-tense story. This uneasy combination of comedy and tragedy, frank pornography and caustic antipornography, sexual fun and games and mental cruelty doesn’t allow the audience a comfortably detached viewpoint from which to judge the proceedings. Chances are you’ll either love it or despise it. (JR) Read more
James Whale’s brilliant and surprisingly delicate 1936 rendition of the Kern and Hammerstein musical, which was based on an Edna Ferber novel, is infinitely superior to the dull 1951 MGM Technicolor remake and, interestingly enough, less racist. The rendition of Old Man River by Paul Robeson, magnificent throughout, is a high point, occasioning a montage sequence that shows Whale at his most expressionistic and inventive. With Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Helen Morgan, and Charles Winninger. 112 min. (JR) Read more
Two wartime propaganda shorts in French, directed by Alfred Hitchcock for the unoccupied French colonies: Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache (both 1944). Neither was shown much at the time, but both are interesting as period pieces and minor Hitchcockian narrative exercises. 57 min. (JR) Read more
A Harvard senior on scholarship (Brendan Fraser) has a rude encounter with a homeless wino (Joe Pesci) camped out in the basement of the campus library. The student and his three roommatesMoira Kelly, Patrick Dempsey, and Josh Hamiltonlearn a lot about how the other half lives, while the hero winds up with a surrogate for the father he never had. A good deal of this can be read as a Clinton-administration update of The Paper Chase (a Nixon-administration movie), with Gore Vidal enlisted to do a rough equivalent of John Houseman’s cameo in the earlier picture; otherwise, it’s a fairly effective tearjerker with a smidgen of social conscience, despiteor is it because of?the compulsive Hollywood gloss. Truth or Dare’s Alek Keshishian directed (with distinction if not honors), which helps explain why Madonna furnishes the movie’s theme song, and the better-than-average script is credited to William Mastrosimone, though both playwright Israel Horowitz and novelist Rafael Yglesias (Fearless) are said to have worked on it. (JR) Read more