For the most part, this is a watchable, sexy, and intelligent first feature (1993) by Australian documentarist Susan Lambert, working with a script by Jan Cornall and a Sidney setting, about two best friends in their 30s (Victoria Longley and Angie Milliken) who create adult comic books together. Longley, who lives in the country with her partner and their young daughter, is facing a crisis because she’s pregnant and he’s having an affair with a younger woman; Milliken desperately wants to have a baby but finds herself incurably single. Parts of this movie are irritatingly coy and extraneousthe fantasy interludes stemming from the graphic novel/detective story the two women are working onbut these interruptions take a backseat to the talk and adventures the women have over a single day. (JR) Read more
John Travolta plays a crack fighter pilot who threatens to destroy an American city with stolen nuclear warheads, and Christian Slater is a younger pilot who’s out to stop him; John Woo directed this giddy, mindless jaunt with polish but only a modicum of personal investment from a script by Graham Yost (whose equally mindless script for Speed seems more influential here than any of Woo’s earlier pictures). With Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo, Frank Whaley, Bob Gunton, and Howie Long. (JR) Read more
Highly personal and informative, Helena Solberg’s feature-length 1994 documentary about Brazilian musical star Carmen Miranda and her complex identitiesa Broadway and Hollywood icon who caricatured Brazilian traits, a woman who became a campy bombshellis 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. 92 min. (JR) Read more
A fascinating depiction in shimmering black and white of the last two years in the life of writer-madman-visionary Antonin Artaud (beautifully played by Sami Frey), from the viewpoint of Jacques Prevel, an obscure poet who procured drugs for him and whose diaries served as this film’s source (1993). In a lot of ways Gerard Mordillat’s movie can be read as a deadpan comedy of multiple ironies about the tolerance and respect the French accord unbearable artists. But even if you don’t take it that way, there’s plenty to look at and think about. Coscripted by film critic Jerome Prieur; with Marc Barbe, Julie Jezequel, and Valerie Jeannet. (JR) Read more
Zhang Yimou’s crime melodrama (1995), set in 1930 Shanghai, is far from his best work, but Gong Li is so magnificent in the lead partin what may prove to be the last of her eight collaborations with himthat you may not care. Playing a prostitute-singer who’s the concubine of the city’s overlord (who runs the opium and prostitution business and has links with Chiang Kai-shek), she performs a few stage numbers that call to mind some of Dietrich’s turns for Josef von Sternberg, though in some ways the most plausible filmic cross-reference is Billy Bathgate rather than The Devil Is a Woman. (The story is recounted from the viewpoint of a 14-year-old boy hired to keep an eye on the concubine.) The style is visually eclectic, and the story is as bleak in its allegorical implications about Chinese tyranny as any of Zhang’s previous features. 109 min. (JR) Read more
Like her previous works, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s fifth film (1995), her first in 35-millimeter and her first narrative feature, is both beautiful and difficult. The difficulties begin with the title: this is not a tale, and it doesn’t really concern lovethough 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 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. (JR) Read more
As a follow-up to his comeback performance in Pulp Fiction, John Travolta plays a likable Miami loan shark and movie buff dispatched to Los Angeles to collect on a gambling debt from a sleazy producer (Gene Hackman), in an entertaining comedy-thriller (1995) adapted by Scott Frank from the Elmore Leonard best-seller and directed with bounce (if not much nuance) by Barry Sonnenfeld (Addams Family Values). Coproduced by Danny DeVito, who also costars, this is fairly light stuff; with Rene Russo, Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo, James Gandolfini, David Paymer, and Linda Hart. (JR) Read more
From the Chicago Reader (February 1, 1996). — J.R.
The original Rat Pack movie — a 1960 crime comedy set in Las Vegas, terminally boring if memory serves — though it made a fortune, perhaps because everyone wanted to see the cast, regardless of what they did. With Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson, Joey Bishop, Richard Conte, Cesar Romero, and Akim Tamiroff; directed by the once worthy Lewis Milestone. 127 min. (JR) Read more
A warm and likable chronicle (1995) about growing up black in Mississippi between 1946 and 1962, shortly before the end of jim crow laws, adapted from a memoir by Clifton Taulbert and directed by first-timer Tim Reid. Even as a southerner and near contemporary of Taulbert, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of every detail here, but on the whole this feels right (even the colors employed in the decor smack of the 50s), and it certainly puts to shame the egregious nonsense of Mississippi Burning. The film has its hokey moments but also a good many quiet virtues and strengths, which is perhaps why it was rejected by the trendy Sundance festival: there’s hardly an ounce of hyperbole in it. The excellent cast includes Al Freeman Jr., Phylicia Rashad, Isaac Hayes, Taj Mahal, Polly Bergen, and Richard Roundtree. PG, 115 min. (JR) Read more
Wes Anderson’s 1996 first feature (before Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums) is fresh, character driven, often funny, and unfashionably upbeat (as well as offbeat). And it doesn’t beat you over the headwhich made it a hard sell in industry terms and explains why it was almost completely ignored upon release. But I found its Kerouac-like goofiness both charming and sustaining. Owen Wilson, his brother Luke, and Robert Musgrave play three young, immature friends and aspiring thieves in Texas; another Wilson brother, Andrew, also appears, and the film benefits from its relaxed cast consisting largely of friends and siblings. (The presence of such producer godparents as Polly Platt, James L. Brooks, Monte Hellman, and L.M. Kit Carson probably helped as well.) Written by Anderson and Owen Wilson; with James Caan and Lumi Cavazos (Like Water for Chocolate). R, 95 min. (JR) Read more
Demi Moore plays a sculptor and single mother serving on the jury in a dangerous mobster’s trial who is forced to campaign for a not guilty verdict in order to save her son’s life. Brian Gibson directed this terrible psychological thriller from a script by Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs), based on a book by George Dawes Green; Alec Baldwin costars. While trying to distract myself from everything that seemed cliched, unbelievable, stupid, and/or mean-spirited about this useless exercise, I ruefully reflected that, just as an obviously guilty mobster gets off scot-free, this bad movie probably garnered as many rave blurbs from reviewers as a good one would. The reason isn’t that producer Irwin Winkler threatened to kill anybody’s loved ones, but some miscarriage of justice occasioned by heaps of money. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anne Heche, and Lindsay Crouse. (JR) Read more
I didn’t much take to this humorless, Oscar-winning 1995 feminist fable from the Netherlands by Marleen Gorris (A Question of Silence, Broken Mirrors), set in the Dutch countryside and spanning four matriarchal generations of a single family over the second half of the 20th century. But if you’re looking for a movie that expresses feminist rageGorris’s specialty, to the exclusion of most other concernsyou shouldn’t pass this up. With Willeke Van Ammelrooy, Jan Decleir, and Els Dottermans. In Dutch with subtitles. 102 min. (JR) Read more
Reasonably sincere and decently scripted, this love story between an investment banker (Mary Stuart Masterson) and a florist’s delivery boy (Christian Slater) is such familiar stuff that you probably won’t have sharp memories of it afterward, but it’s not bad on its own modest terms. A first feature by writer-director Michael Goldberg; with Pamela Segall, Josh Brolin, Kenneth Cranham, Ally Walker, and Mike Haley. (JR) Read more
As in his Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, Mark Rappaport offers a trenchant piece of film criticism, revisionist history, and social commentary in the form of a movie star’s fictionalized autobiography–specifically Jean Seberg (Mary Beth Hurt) speaking from beyond the grave about her life and career, as well as the careers of Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, who, like Seberg, have also been associated with radical politics. Rappaport is a highly entertaining raconteur as he speaks through his title character, always justifying his many digressions on such subjects as movies about Joan of Arc, close-ups, expressionless actors, film directors who depict their actress-wives as whores, the Vietnam war, the FBI, and the Black Panthers; he also has a rather chilling story to tell–not only about Seberg but also about what her audience did and didn’t see in her films from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, including Saint Joan, Bonjour Tristesse, Breathless, Lilith, and Paint Your Wagon. Essential viewing; a U.S. theatrical premiere. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Friday, January 19, 6:00 and 7:45, and Saturday, January 20, 8:00, 443-3737. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): . Read more
Made in 1927, Abram Room’s silent comedy about the Moscow housing shortage offers a rare and nonjudgmental look at the free love side of the Russian Revolution, with adultery and abortion both treated as significant issues. Viktor Shklovsky, the father of Russian formalism, worked on the script. 95 min. (JR) Read more
