If you like basking in the star power of Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani as much as I do, you’ll probably stick it out through this ludicrous and slack remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s nasty but effective 1955 thriller; otherwise you shouldn’t go near this turkey. Set at an improbable boys school in Pennsylvania, where two teachers, one an ex-nun (Adjani) married to the sadistic headmaster (Chazz Palminteri), the other his mistress (Sharon Stone), plot the master’s murder, this at no point shows us any character or situation that seems remotely believable. There’s no evidence of any effort to adapt the story from 50s France to contemporary America. Indeed, thanks to the terrible script by Don Roos (Single White Female) and the floundering direction by Jeremiah Chechik (Benny & Joon), there’s no evidence of any brain whatsoever behind the camera. The three lead actors are resourceful enough to keep us mildly interested anyway, but don’t expect chills, suspense, or coherent narrative development; not even Kathy Bates as a wisecracking detectivea character not found in the originalcan bring this twitching corpse to life. With Spalding Gray, Alan Garfield, and Adam Hann-Byrd. (JR) Read more
If you haven’t seen a film by Wong Kar-wai, one of the most exciting and original younger Hong Kong filmmakers, this charming and energetic two-part comedy is a good place to start. Though less ambitious than Days of Being Wild or Ashes of Time, the Wong films that precede and follow it–Chungking Express is in many ways the most accessible of the three. (Quentin Tarantino selected this film as the first he would distribute through Miramax, though the fact that his name isn’t being featured in the ads and that Miramax is soft-peddling this important release makes one wonder how committed either of them is.) Both stories here are set in contemporary Hong Kong and deal poignantly with young policemen striving to get over unsuccessful romances and having unconventional encounters with other women–a mob hit woman in the first, an infatuated fast-food waitress in the second. Wong’s singular frenetic visual style and his special feeling for lonely romantics may remind you of certain French New Wave directors, but this movie isn’t a trip down memory lane; it’s a vibrant commentary on young love today, packed with punch and personality. With Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung, and Faye Wong (1995). Fine Arts. Read more
Set mainly in the Coen brothers’ native Minnesota and harking back to the sordid themes of their first feature (Blood Simple), this 1996 crime story may be their best picture to date, but if you have the same problems with their movies as I do Fargo won’t brush them all away. Though the Coens combine their usual derisive amusement toward their characters with a certain affection and condescending appreciation for some of the local yokels (in particular a pregnant police chief played by Frances McDormand), their well-honed antihumanist vision remains as bleak as ever. A slimy car dealer (William H. Macy) sunk in debt hires two thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife so they can split the ransom from her wealthy father (Harve Presnell); the scheme leads to a good many pointless deaths that we aren’t expected to care too deeply about. Given the Coens’ taste for hoaxes, their claim that some version of the story actually happened may or may not be specious, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. What mainly registers is the quiet desperation and simple pleasures of ordinary midwestern lives, the fatuous ways that people cover up their emotional and intellectual gaps, and the alternating pointlessness and cuteness of human existence. Read more
I’m probably in a distinct minority, but this 1995 feature struck me as the first halfway bearable feature from Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, A Pure Formality). It’s choppy and unsatisfying but has a certain bittersweet world-weariness that reminds me fitfully of novels about con men ranging from Dead Souls to Elmer Gantry. The central character (Sergio Castellittoalmost a dead ringer for John Turturro) drives around Sicily in 1953 in a van festooned with posters from Gilda and Notorious; he claims to be a talent scout for Universal Studios who’ll film screen tests (which usually consist of key lines from Gone With the Wind) for villagers for a fee. This scam seems a more honest rendering of the meaning of movies in the lives of everyday people than the more sentimental Cinema Paradiso, and though the movie goes nowhereeven after a local beauty (Tiziana Lodato) joins the hero in his travelsit has a nice picaresque sprawl. (JR) Read more
I’ve only sampled this black-and-white fantasythe first live-action feature by the Brothers Quay, the London-based American twins best known for their music videos and Prague-influenced puppet animationand I wasn’t terribly engaged, though if you’re looking for something more recent in the Eraserhead/Guy Maddin school of creepiness, this may be the only noteworthy candidate. Inspired by the novella Jakob von Gunten and other works by Swiss writer Robert Walser and cowritten by Alan Passes, this dark, obscure parable about a moldering absurdist boarding school for the training of servants, seen from the vantage point of a recently enrolled student, may strike you as vaguely Kafkaesque, but only if you haven’t read much Kafka. With Mark Rylance, Gottfried John, Daniel Smith, and Alice Krige. (JR) Read more
Robert Duvall plays an Arkansas cracker in his 60s who discovers that his biological mother was black and drives to Chicago to meet his half-brothera policeman played by James Earl Jonesand other newly discovered relatives. Directed by Richard Pearce from an original script by Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton (who also collaborated on One False Move), this picture is an obvious labor of love that glimmers with feeling and insights at every turn, above all in its performances. Duvall is wonderful and Jones is, quite simply, magnificent (the manner in which he assigns his character a slight stammer is only one example of the perfection of his playing), while Irma P. Hall as one of the relatives isn’t far behind. With Michael Beach, Regina Taylor, and David Keith. (JR) Read more
A moving, informative, and consistently absorbing two-hour documentary by Jon Blair about the famous Jewish teenager who kept a diary while hiding with her family in Amsterdam during World War II and died in a concentration camp at the age of 15. Offering a less mythological view of her than the highly successful play and film based in part on her diary, this also tells us about the rest of her family and the other people who hid in the apartment, as well as what happened to them afterward. The most memorable character is the unassuming Miep Gies, the non-Jewish Austrian employee of Anne’s father, who risked her life daily to protect the Frank family and who is interviewed at length. Kenneth Branagh serves as narrator, and Glenn Close reads aloud passages from the diary. (JR) Read more
Apparently deciding that there still isn’t enough murderous hatred in the world against Middle Eastern Muslimsespecially the kind that’s milked for the purposes of light entertainmentproducer Joel Silver thoughtfully decided to add to the pool. One more evil Islamic terrorist hijacks one more 747, and it’s Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal to the rescue; they actually manage to sneak on board while the planeloaded with enough nerve gas to wipe out half the eastern seaboardis halfway across the Atlantic. The mechanics of what the commandos must do before mounting their attack keep this fairly absorbing as a routine thriller; it’s the concept of what this movie is doing to us that makes me want to throw up. Directed by Stuart Baird from a script by Jim and John Thomas. With Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Joe Morton, and David Suchet. (JR) Read more
Peter Greenaway’s most controversial feature (1993, 122 min.), in part because it’s so unrelievedly unpleasant without ever actually seeming atypical of his work. Set in France during the mid-17th century, it centers on the birth of a baby boy that’s mythologized for various ends, initially because it marks the end of childlessness in a city. The child’s older sister (Julia Ormond), a virgin, claims to be his mother; when she attempts to seduce the bishop’s son (Ralph Fiennes), he’s gored to death by a cow. Ultimately the baby is dismembered, and the sister is raped to death by 217 soldiers, each one pardoned in advance by the church. This being a Greenaway film, no character is shown sympathetically, the action is lushly and rather beautifully filmed (by Sacha Vierny) on a single set, and the whole thing is staged as a play within the film. I watched it to the end out of a sense of duty, not with pleasure or any hope of edification. (JR) Read more
The most popular non-American movie shown at the 1995 Cannes film festival, this fresh and unpredictable comic thriller from Iran is a first feature by Jafar Panahi, a former assistant to the great Abbas Kiarostami (Through the Olive Trees), who’s credited, with Panahi and Parviz Shahbazi, with the screenplay. The film describes in real time the adventures of a seven-year-old girl and her older brother in the streets of Tehran during the 85 minutes that elapse just before the celebration of the Iranian New Year. After convincing her mother she needs another goldfish for the celebration, the girl sets off to buy one, but twice en route to the store loses the banknote she’s been given; most of the remainder of the film is devoted to her efforts to get the money back. If the plot sounds slender, the movie is both gripping and charming, with well-sketched characters and expert storytellingand Panahi’s efforts to redefine our sense of time along the way are remarkable. A masterpiece, one that grows in impact and subtlety over repeated viewings.84 min. (JR) Read more
A mainly routine Hong Kong action film from fleet and floppy-haired action hero Jackie Chanthe number-one box-office hit in mainland China in 1995, released here the following year. It’s light on plot and character, but the stunts are well staged: Chan plays a Hong Kong cop vacationing in New York who tangles with street gangs. This was mainly shot in Vancouver and looks it. Directed by Stanley Tong from a script by Edward Tang and Fibe Ma. 89 min. (JR) Read more
The brutally mauled corpse of a teenage girl is found in a small Massachusetts town, and all the evidence seems to point to her boyfriend (Edward Furlong), the son of a local pediatrician (Meryl Streep) and sculptor (Liam Neeson) who has mysteriously disappeared. The father decides to suppress evidence before he even knows what happened. Adapted by Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) from Rosellen Brown’s best-selling novel, and very well directed by Barbet Schroeder, this movie becomes an absorbing meditation on the separate claims made by family loyalty and social responsibility that both divide and unite the family (which also has a young daughter, played by Julia Weldon, who serves as narrator). Curiously, we are never told why the girl’s corpse is so badly disfigured, though everything else gets explained. Over the course of exploring this troubling all-American subject, the filmmakers do a fine job of fleshing out the major characters (I especially liked Alfred Molina as the son’s defense lawyer), and the New England locations are beautifully integrated. With Daniel Von Bargen, John Heard, Ann Magnuson, and Kaiulani Lee. (JR) Read more
After making a name for himself as a director of postnoirs (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction), John Dahl switches genres to SF thriller, and thanks in part to a sprawling and undisciplined, if not preposterous, script (by Bill Geddie, the executive producer of several Barbara Walters specials), complete with a mad forensic pathologist (Ray Liotta), he hits the skids. Helped by a resourceful neurobiologist (Linda Fiorentino), Liotta discovers that memories are stored in cerebral spinal fluid. He then injects himself with his dead wife’s in order to solve the mystery of who killed her. Maybe this would have worked as a modest trashy thriller compressed to 75 minutes, but Dahl lets it run for almost two hours, punctuated with more flashy flashbacks and sweaty close-ups of Liotta (the poor man’s Jeffrey Hunter) than any one person can take, and it becomes increasingly hard to sustain an interest in the plot, much less in whodunit. One nice dividend, though, is Fiorentino, who seems to have consciously striven to play the reverse of her character in The Last Seductionshe’s klutzy, nurturing, and ethicaland does a charming turn with it. With Peter Coyote, Christopher McDonald, Kim Cattrall, Kim Coates, and David Paymer. (JR) Read more
Highly personal and informative, Helena Solberg’s feature-length 1994 documentary about Brazilian musical star Carmen Miranda and her complex identities–a Broadway and Hollywood icon who caricatured Brazilian traits, a woman who became a campy “bombshell”–is an eye-opener. A Brazilian-American herself, Solberg may have more invested in this subject than she can handle, but most of what she has to say and show is so interesting and intelligent you’re not likely to object. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday, February 16, 7:00 and 9:00; Saturday and Sunday, February 17 and 18, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00; and Monday through Thursday, February 19 through 22, 7:00 and 9:00; 281-4114.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
Like her previous works, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s fifth film, her first in 35-millimeter and her first narrative feature, is both beautiful and difficult (1995). The difficulties begin with the title: this is not a tale, and it doesn’t really concern love–though one of its points of departure is “The Tale of Kieu,” the 19th-century Vietnamese national poem of love. Set in San Francisco, the story focuses on a Vietnamese writer named Kieu who works for a women’s magazine and as a photographer’s model to help support her family back in Vietnam. The beauties include the aggressive music score and the oddly contrapuntal mise en scene, which often seems to have a very different agenda from that of the actors. At times a frankly erotic film that interrogates its own eroticism, it challenges the audience as well with its acting styles and disorienting means of storytelling. Clearly not for everyone, but nothing else around is even remotely like it. Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division, Friday and Saturday, February 16 and 17, 8:00, 384-5533.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
