Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr’s third feature (1982) is the best of his early forays into Cassavetes-style social realism, summing up the painful, claustrophobic, and heartfelt depictions of marital discord found in his two previous features, Family Nest and The Outsider, and finding even more to say. With Judit Pogany and Robert Koltai. (JR) Read more
Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr’s second feature (1981), 146 minutes long, is a portrait of a restless young male nurse and factory worker (Andras Szabo) who plays the violin and seems unhappy with both the woman who bore him a child and the woman he subsequently marries. The key filmmaking influence here is John Cassavetes, and much of the film is shot in close-ups, making for a stark oppressiveness. (JR) Read more
Bela Tarr’s first feature (1977) and in every respect his rawesta blunt piece of Hungarian social realism about a young couple forced to live with the husband’s parents in a one-room apartment. This is strong stuff, but the highly formal director of Almanac of Fall, Damnation, and Satantango is still far from apparent. (JR) Read more
Pedro Almodovar’s 1995 comic melodrama seems in many ways his most mature work, in theme as well as executionit’s the movie of a professional bad boy who’s finally growing up. The central character is a secret writer of romance novels whose soldier husband has lost interest in her; one of her best friends, a psychologist, is secretly having an affair with him. Things get a lot more complicated, but Almodovar’s control over the material and his affection for his characters never falter. With Marisa Paredes, Imanol Arias, and Carmen Elias. In Spanish with subtitles. R, 100 min. (JR) Read more
Technically, this low-budget, 16-millimeter television film (1986, 76 min.) qualifies as Jane Campion’s first feature, though she didn’t write itthe script is by Australian Helen Garner, who also worked with Gillian Armstrong on The Last Days of Chez Nous. The mise en scene, though clearly Campion-esque in certain stretches of oddball inventiveness, is still some distance from the splendors of Sweetie, An Angel at My Table, and The Piano. Like Kaufman and Hart’s play Merrily We Roll Along and Pinter’s Betrayal, the story proceeds in reverse chronology, starting with the death of a teenage dropout (Kris Bidenko) from a drug overdose, then working through the previous year, with particular emphasis on a friendship with a classmate (Emma Coles). (Part of the point is how similar these friends were when they started school together.) Campion’s work with actors yields plenty of rewards, and the structure is certainly interesting, though one also feels at times that Campion and Garner have bitten off a little more than they can chew. (JR) Read more
An immensely valuable three-hour documentary (1995) by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon about the events in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989what led up to them, what happened, what ensued. One of the most impressive things about this film is that it’s a view from the insideHinton has lived for most of her life in China; another is its refusal to adopt a single partisan position or to assume, as the filmmakers put it, that there is only one correct path for China. Drawing on a wide array of archival materials, the filmmakers have also made good use of expert advisers such as Orville Schell. This film is likely to revise the very terms of your understanding of the pivotal events it considers. (JR) Read more
I haven’t seen A Tribute to Billie Holiday, a one-hour special recorded at the Hollywood Bowl, but the three Duke Ellington shorts that precede itBlack and Tan (1929), Symphony in Black (1935), and Hot Chocolate (1941)are indispensible. (JR) Read more
Tim Robbins’s second feature as a writer-director (1995), adapted from Sister Helen Prejean’s autobiographical book of the same title, has its awkward and square moments directorially, but it’s also uncommonly honest and seriousrare enough qualities these daysand its two powerful lead performances (Susan Sarandon as Prejean and Sean Penn as a rapist and killer she’s trying to save in more ways than one) are ample reason to see the picture. Not the simple polemic against capital punishment one might have expected, this works very hard to see and even honor the viewpoint of the victims’ families, and ultimately respects the audience to make up its own mind. It’s a film about hatred on both sides of the lawthe kind of subject Samuel Fuller has often dealt withand it doesn’t kowtow to easy effects or platitudes. (JR) Read more
I was afraid I’d find this 1994 Swedish period piece by Ake Sandgren cutesy, but I wound up liking it quite a bit. Based on an autobiographical novel by Roland Schutt, it’s set in Stockholm in the 20s. The ten-year-old hero’s mother is a Russian Jew, his father’s a revolutionary socialist, and his older brother, an aspiring boxer, keeps punching him in the nose. The anti-Semitism of Roland’s teacher and schoolmates and the illegal activities of his parentswhich include distributing condoms to workers and attending incendiary political meetingsmake him something of a defiant outcast. All the characters are treated with a fair amount of humor and affection (the father, played by Stellan Skarsgard, is indelible), the period details are well handled, and the episodic story line is fairly engaging. The film doesn’t dig too deep, but it might make you feel pretty good. With Jesper Salen and Basia Frydman. (JR) Read more
Maybe not quite as good as the title suggestsand the great hype proves to be black as well as whitebut this satire directed by Reginald Hudlin about the corruption of the boxing business (and of show business, for that matter) is lots of fun, thanks to a sharp script (by Tony Hendra and Ron Shelton) and juicy comic acting by Samuel L. Jackson, Damon Wayans, Jeff Goldblum, Peter Berg, Jon Lovitz, Corbin Bernsen, and Cheech Marin. I suppose one could argue that this movie is guilty of the sort of hoopla it’s lampooning, and I couldn’t share its amusement at the expense of homeless people, but I enjoyed myself most of the time. (JR) Read more
Bill Murray plays a guy who inherits a circus elephant; hoping to sell it, he takes off on a cross-country safari. Not terribly funny, but the intimations of an older, saltier America in the picaresque plot make this watchable. Humorist Roy Blount Jr. wrote the screenplay, based on a story by Pen Densham and Garry Williams, and is perhaps responsible for both the literary undertones and the absence of a unifying visual style. Howard Franklin directed; with Janeane Garofalo, Linda Fiorentino, Anita Gillette, Pat Hingle, and Lois Smith. (JR) Read more
A 1996 SF action replay of Blade Runner, Batman, Tank Girl, True Lies, and (believe it or not) Casablanca; its main source is a comic book, but it might as well be a computer. Mercenary dominatrix Barb Wire (Pamela Anderson) doesn’t look human enough for actual sex, but she’s ready for violence of all kinds, and there’s plenty of rain, rust, and grime to furnish the proper settings. David Hogan directed a scipt by Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken, and some of the human furniture is played by Temuera Morrison, Jack Noseworthy, Victoria Rowell, Xander Berkeley, Steve Railsback, and Udo Kier. R, 90 min. (JR) Read more
A college graduate (David Schwimmer) who still lives with his mother (Carol Kane) in Brooklyn comes into contact with the high school girl he used to have a crush on (Gwyneth Paltrow); he’s also asked to be a pallbearer and deliver the eulogy for a classmate he can’t even remember. He winds up having an affair with the deceased’s mother (Barbara Hershey, all but unrecognizable in a blond wig). The parallels with The Graduate are blatant, but this is only a fair-to-middling comedy by first-time director Matt Reeves with little sense of visual or satirical style. The actorly presences are pleasant and a few lines in the script (by Jason Katims and Reeves) are funny, but that’s about it; with Michael Rapaport, Toni Collette, and Bitty Schram. (JR) Read more
A crippled schoolteacher (Dennis Hopper) who’s waiting for his cancer-stricken mother (Julie Harris) to die before he marries his widowed childhood heartthrob (Amy Irving) is seduced by a 17-year-old student (Amy Locane), the daughter of a retired major (Gary Busey) and his alcoholic wife. Adapted by Ed Jones from Jim Harrison’s novel Farmer and directed by Bruno Barreto (Irving’s husband), this drama tries to imitate Badlands by using the same cinematographer (Declan Quinn), but it looks nothing like that masterpiece and is of no particular visual interest. Not only does it not do justice to its rural Texas setting, one can’t even be sure just when it’s supposed to be taking place. But the performances are sufficiently well modulated and sincere to inch this a bit beyond Peyton Place territory, and even if I can’t quite buy this movie’s (or is it Harrison’s?) notion of what teenage girls are like, the actors kept me interested; with Hal Holbrook. (JR) Read more
An affectionate, informative, and, under the circumstances, not too drippy Disney documentary (1995) by Theodore Thomas, about two key Disney animators, Frank Thomas (the director’s father) and Ollie Johnston. They first met as art students at Stanford in 1932 and subsequently became roommates, coworkers, and/or neighbors, working on the major cartoon features at Disney from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on. This is an absorbing portrait of their singular collaboration and relationship. (JR) Read more