Another relatively lightweight sketch film from Eric Rohmer (1994)shot, like the 1986 Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, in 16-millimeter. The three sketches all involve romantic meetings in public places, bridged by a cornball singer and accordion player; their charm lies in the Paris exteriors and the unknown but adept youthful cast. Though the stories are all well crafted, the film seems slighter and a bit more smug than most other Rohmer pictures. In French with subtitles. 100 min. (JR) Read more
George Hickenlooper, codirector of the popular documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, was once quoted as saying that he purchased the rights to Orson Welles’s unrealized script The Big Brass Ring in order to direct it himself, because he was basically an auteurist at heart; I’ve been wondering ever since how an auteurist could be interested in making somebody else’s work. If you want to know what a Hickenlooper movie consists of, there’s this 1995 feature set in Los Angeles. It’s about an aspiring novelist (Rory Cochrane), his roommate (Sean Astin), a father-and-son slumlord team (J.T. Walsh and James LeGros), and one of their tenants (Kyra Sedgwick); John Enborn collaborated on the script. This Generation X exercise doesn’t have much identity of its own, though the cast is pretty good. And I guess it has some minimal bite if your expectations aren’t too high. (JR) Read more
An absorbing, instructive, and entertaining documentary by R.J. Cutler (producer of The War Room) and David Van Taylor about the 1994 Virginia senatorial campaigns of incumbent Charles Robb and his main opponent, Oliver North. In addition to some delicious detailsNorth’s victory speech, for example, was converted with hardly any changes into a concession speechthis offers lots of depressing but useful information about how contemporary political campaigns are masterminded and executed. (JR) Read more
A great movie (1989), but not a pleasant or an easy one. Directed by the transgressive Kira Muratova in her mid-50s, it has been rightly called the only masterpiece of glasnost, though it was banned by the Russian government for obscenity. Beginning as a powerful black-and-white narrative about a middle-aged woman doctor in an exploding, aggressive rage over the death of her husband (who resembles Stalin), the film eventually turns into an even more unorthodox tale in color about a schoolteacher (cowriter Sergei Popov) who periodically falls asleep regardless of what’s happening around him. (The title alludes to a form of disability that encompasses both the doctor’s aggressiveness and the schoolteacher’s passivity.) Though this tragicomic epic has plenty to say about postcommunist Russia, it also deals more generally with the demons loose in today’s world. It may drive you nutsas it was undoubtedly meant tobut you certainly won’t forget it. In Russian with subtitles. 153 min. (JR) Read more
With the possible exception of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, this 1937 drama by Leo McCarey is the greatest movie ever made about the plight of the elderly. (It flopped at the box office, but when McCarey accepted an Oscar for The Awful Truth, released the same year, he rightly pointed out that he was getting it for the wrong picture.) Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi play a devoted old couple who find they can’t stay together because of financial difficulties; their interactions with their grown children are only part of what makes this movie so subtle and well observed. Adapted by Vina Delmar from Josephine Lawrence’s novel Years Are So Long, it’s a profoundly moving love story and a devastating portrait of how society works, and you’re likely to be deeply marked by it. Hollywood movies don’t get much better than this. With Thomas Mitchell, Fay Bainter, and Porter Hall. 91 min. (JR) Read more
A rather tedious kidnapping movie (1996) by writer-director Lisa Krueger, despite the novelty of the kidnappers being sisters, one of whom is pregnant, and the kidnapped person being a nurse (Mary Kay Place) needed to help with the birth. At least Place turns in a lively performance. With Scarlett Johansson and Aleksa Palladino. R, 97 min. (JR) Read more
A lovely and nuanced character study of a once famous World War II fighter pilot named Nadezhda Petrovna (Maya Bulgakova) who becomes a provincial schoolmistress, raising her adopted daughter as a single mother. Larissa Shepitko’s 1966 black-and-white feature is stately and reflective in a way that reminds me of some of the late films of John Ford; its commentary on the pervasive effect of Stalinism on postwar Russia is multilayered and provocative. Written by Natalia Ryazantseva and Valentin Yezhov. In Russian with subtitles. 90 min. (JR) Read more
Natalie Wood is an adolescent who goes from rags to riches as a Hollywood movie star in the 30s. Gavin Lambert wrote the screenplay for this 1965 feature, adapting his own satirical novel; the talented director Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird), apparently engulfed by studio overproduction, falters at times, not always knowing whether to play things straight or for laughs. Andre Previn wrote the sometimes memorable score, and Herbert Ross choreographed the musical numbers. With Robert Redford, Christopher Plummer, Ruth Gordon, and Roddy McDowall. 128 min. (JR) Read more
