The French title of Jacques Becker’s 1953 gangster thriller translates as Hands Off the Loot, but a much better English title used for this film is Honor Among Thieves. Jean Gabin wasn’t yet 50 when he starred as a big-time, high-style gangster hoping to retire, but he still looks pretty wasted, and this pungent tale about aging and friendship, adapted from a best-selling noir thriller by Albert Simonin, would be hard to imagine without his puffy features. Jeanne Moreau, in one of her first parts, plays a showgirl who two-times Gabin’s similarly aging partner (Rene Dary), and future star Lino Ventura also puts in an appearance. But it’s Gabin’s show all the way, anticipating the melancholy, atmospheric gangster pictures of Jean-Pierre Melville that started to appear a couple years later. In French with subtitles. 94 min. (JR) Read more
A schoolboy living in the suburbs of London in the 1960s experiments with murder and is packed off to a hospital for the criminally insane for eight years in this black comedy by first-timer Benjamin Ross, who collaborated with Jeff Rawle on the screenplay. I’ve tried twice to get to the end of this glib, formulaic exercise and failed both times. With Hugh O’Conor, Antony Sher, Ruth Sheen, Roger Lloyd Pack, and Charlotte Coleman. (JR) Read more
Ken Loach, perhaps the most accomplished and intelligent Marxist practitioner of social realism left in England, stretches his impressive talents in this 1995 film, depicting the Spanish civil war from the perspective of a young unemployed communist from Liverpool (Ian Hart) who joins the Republican anti-Franco forces. Scripted by Jim Allen, who also wrote Loach’s Raining Stones, this is historically convincing as well as grippingLoach near his passionate bestand, far from offering a standard defense of the communist position, it presents a detailed revisionist critique of the party’s betrayal of other leftist factions in Spain. With Rosana Pastor, Iciar Bollain, Tom Gilroy, and Frederic Pierrot. 109 min. (JR) Read more
After showing himself a master at juggling autobiographical material in Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, both dealing with his childhood in Liverpool during the 50s, Terence Davies adapts a novel by John Kennedy Toole about growing up in the rural deep south in the late 30s and 40sand it’s remarkable how persuasively he handles this milieu while making it wholly his own. Two substantial assists are provided by Gena Rowlands (starring as the narrator-hero’s disreputable aunt, a onetime torch singer) and the ‘Scope format, both of which boost some of the mythological possibilities in the material. Davies’s special gifts as a filmmaker have much more to do with expressing and sculpting passages of pure feeling than with telling a story. Diana Scarwid, as the hero’s fragile mother, is almost as good as Rowlands (both actresses sing in this movie, and Davies turns their songs into incandescent experiences). Neither Toole’s novel nor Davies’s faithful version of it adds up to anything more than a period mood piece, but some of the passages in this movie are so beautiful and potent that you may carry the moods around with you for weeks. With Jacob Tierney, Denis Leary, and Leo Burmester. Read more
A semiabsorbing courtroom thriller, based on William Diehl’s novel, about a poor Chicago altar boy (Edward Norton) accused of murdering an archbishop and defended by a hotshot defense attorney (Richard Gere). Scripted by Steve Shagan (Hustle) and Ann Biderman (Copycat) and directed by first-timer Gregory Hoblit, the movie coasts along reasonably well as a mystery until it gets snarled in some double-talk about psychopathology toward the end. The leading charactersincluding the prosecutor (Laura Linney), the judge (Alfre Woodard), and a corrupt government official (John Mahoney)never quite convince, but this matters as little as characterizations do in most mysteries, and the plot keeps one interested in any case. With Frances McDormand. (JR) Read more
Chazz Palminteri adapts and stars in his own comic play, about a businessman (Ryan O’Neal) who hires a hit man (Palminteri) to bump off his wife (Cher) on their 20th wedding anniversary; Paul Mazursky, who plays the hit man’s shrink, directed, and Robert De Niro served as coproducer. The story has more twists than a rattlesnakeperhaps too many to sustain believability throughoutbut I must say I found at least two-thirds of it enjoyable and funny, and the remainder at least tolerable, thanks to lively performances by Palminteri, Cher, and Mazursky, all of whom shine (as does the cinematography by Fred Murphy); with Amber Smith. (JR) Read more
A disappointing 1990 collaboration between comic actor and writer-director Maurizio Nichetti (The Icicle Thief) and animator Guido Manuli combining animation and live-action. It’s a comedy in which Nichetti plays a sound-effects man working on cartoons who finds himself turning into a cartoon version of himself after the sound studio he works for starts working on porno movies. There’s a fair amount of ingenuity on display here, and there are some laughs, but the conceit never really takes off. With Angela Finocchiaro and Patrizio Roversi. (JR) Read more
An irreverent, politically incorrect 1996 satire about the abortion debate by writer-director Alexander Payne, an independent (at least before he signed up with Miramax) who considers activists on both sides of the debate equally ridiculous. As a comedy, this has its audacious moments, but I was more offended than impressed by Laura Dern’s award-winning performance as a pregnant, glue-sniffing slacker who becomes an unwitting symbol for both pro-life and pro-choice factions, because, like so much else in the movie, it reeks of class condescension. When her character finally musters the gumption to fight for her own interests, she becomes more palatable; but she’s still just another version of Alex in A Clockwork Orangesimply a pawn of the author’s thesis. If you’re alienated from politics and maybe from humanity in general, you might like this. I didn’t. With Swoosie Kurtz, Kurtwood Smith, Mary Kay Place, Kelly Preston, Tippi Hedren, and Burt Reynolds. (JR) Read more
Expecting to die soon from AIDS, a Los Angeles architect (Eric Roberts) decides to end it all with pills, but not before throwing a two-day party for his friends and family. The bash consumes almost the entirety of this powerful comedy-drama by writer-director Randal Kleiser, who drew on personal experience. Among the architect’s party guests are his mother (Lee Grant), his sister (Marlee Matlin), his estranged lover (Gregory Harrison), his estranged father (George Segal), and others played by Olivia Newton-John, Bruce Davison, Roddy McDowall, Margaret Cho, Paul Regina, Devon Gummersall, and Bronson Pinchot. Sally Kellerman and Nina Foch are among the cameos. This may sound like the worst kind of Henry Jaglom movie, but despite a tendency to cut between sound bites it’s leagues ahead of that sort of New Age exercise. It’s My Party is a serious (albeit entertaining) movie about learning to die bravely, and the cast honors the concept with plenty of warmth and intelligence. Biograph. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
Sandwiched between shots inspired by the opening of Sunset Boulevard is a grotesque, unfunny comic version of Fatal Attraction. Martin Lawrence, playing a nightclub promoter who gets into trouble with a scorned girlfriend (Lynn Whitfield), is also credited as director and cowriter, though this looks like a movie written and directed by a committee whose members aren’t even on speaking terms. With Bobby Brown (Panther), Della Reese, Regina King, and Roger E. Mosley. (JR) Read more
Steve Martin takes over the Phil Silvers part from the old TV show You’ll Never Get Rich (also known as The Phil Silvers Show): a philandering con artist on a peacetime army base who’s happily bilking the army of our billions of tax dollars with our affectionate approval and consent. Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny) directs the proceedings with the right amount of bounce, working from a routine but serviceable Andy Breckman script. Overall, this offers a reasonably updated facsimile of a 50s service romp called Operation Mad Ball, a similar celebration of high jinks. With Dan Aykroyd, Phil Hartman, Glenne Headly, Daryl Mitchell, Austin Pendleton, and Chris Rock. (JR) Read more
Though this has its share of silly moments and overdone lampoonery, Dick Shafer’s pseudodocumentary about his stint as Playgirl magazine’s 1992 man of the yearan extended promotional gig complicated by the fact that he’s gayis pretty funny much of the time. The movie combines a certain amount of real-life footage with satiric re-creation and dares you to sort out which is which. Chances are you won’t have too hard a time, but that’ll probably make the movie more fun to watch, not less. With Shafer (as himself), the model Fabio (ditto), Bill Brochtrup, Beth Broderick, Lu Leonard, and Cal Bartlett. 86 min. (JR) Read more
Spike Lee directed (and reportedly did an uncredited rewrite on) this mainly comic script by playwright Suzin-Lori Parks, about an aspiring actress (Theresa Randle) who becomes a phone sex worker to pay the rent. Perhaps because Lee seems less ambitious here than in previous features I found myself enjoying this film more; for all its hit-or-miss quality it offers a dreamy playfulness and stylistic inventiveness as well as a satirical edge that kept me interested. (Lee is particularly provocative when he cuts between film and video in highlighting some of the ideological preconceptions we have about both media.) Lee himself and Isaiah Washington costar; among those in smaller roles are John Turturro, Jennifer Lewis, Debi Mazar, Ron Silver, Peter Berg, Richard Belzer, and, in cameo parts, Naomi Campbell, Halle Berry, Madonna, and Quentin Tarantino. (JR) Read more
Expecting to die soon from AIDS, a Los Angeles architect (Eric Roberts) decides to end it all with pills, but not before throwing a two-day party for his friends and family. The bash consumes almost the entirety of this powerful comedy-drama by writer-director Randal Kleiser, who drew on personal experience. Among the architect’s party guests are his mother (Lee Grant), his sister (Marlee Matlin), his estranged lover (Gregory Harrison), his estranged father (George Segal), and others played by Olivia Newton-John, Bruce Davison, Roddy McDowall, Margaret Cho, Paul Regina, Devon Gummersall, and Bronson Pinchot. Sally Kellerman and Nina Foch are among the cameos. This may sound like the worst kind of Henry Jaglom movie, but despite a tendency to cut between sound bites that supports such a comparison it’s leagues ahead of that sort of New Age exercise. It’s a serious (albeit entertaining) movie about learning to die bravely, and the cast honors the concept with plenty of warmth and intelligence. (JR) Read more
A French boulevard comedy, dubbed into English and distributed by Disney, that should set your teeth on edge. A Paris businessman (Thierry Lhermitte), who needs to divorce his wife (Miou-Miou) after 13 years of separation in order to marry someone else (Arielle Dombasle), ventures to a South American rain forest to get her consent, only to discover that he has an Indian son (Ludwig Briand), whom he winds up bringing back with him to Paris, poisoned blow darts and all. The primitive third-world condescension here is calculated to warm your heart and fill your throat with chuckles; at least that’s what I assume writer-director Herve Palud had in mind. With Sonia Vollereaux; cowritten by Igor Aptekman. (JR) Read more
