Another John Grisham adaptation (1996). this one written by William Goldman and Chris Reese and directed by the often interesting James Foley. This time, alas, Foley hits a substantial roadblockmaterial so bereft of plot and insight that all it can provide is actorly turns with no cogent means for tying them together. Chris O’Donnell plays a lawyer who’s trying to get a stay of execution for his grandfather (Gene Hackman), a convicted racist killer. The best turns come from Faye Dunaway as O’Donnell’s alcoholic aunt and Millie Perkins in a smaller part as the widow whose husband and twin boys were killed by Hackman’s bomb; Hackman does the best he can with a character that seems to be constructed out of loose ends. I spent a lot of time waiting in vain for a revelation that would justify the movie’s slow buildup. With Lela Rochon, Robert Prosky, Raymond Barry, David Marshall Grant, Bo Jackson, and Josef Sommer. (JR) Read more
This seems to be a fairly desperate year for the Chicago International Film Festival. What makes me grit my teeth more than lick my lips at the annual prospect, especially ever since the loss of Marc Evans as festival programmer, is the sense of barely contained chaos–chaos in the selections, chaos in the programming, and chaos in determining a coherent vision of why we need this festival in the first place. Operating under an enormous financial deficit, the festival doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when it once again cancels programs that have been announced as confirmed, and reveals, several days after distributing to the public a calendar of events, that ten of the programs at the Music Box were scheduled without the theater’s knowledge or consent. (a fresh press release cheerfully announced, “the Festival is delighted by the opportunity to expand its screening venues to three locations throughout the city’s north side,” with the Three Penny taking over the ten Music Box screenings).
I think it’s a good sign that the festival has shrunk from 18 days to 10, with 80 selections instead of 120-odd. Much as I’d like to say the more the merrier, the festival has a habit of biting off more than it (or we) could chew. Read more
I haven’t read Truman Capote’s early autobiographical novel since my teens, and it’s possible that it was too cute for words in the first place, but this adaptation by Stirling Silliphant and Kirk Ellis, directed by Charles Matthau (son of Walter, who costars), must be even cuter. A lot of welcome if obvious care has been taken with period detail (a small southern town in the 40s), but the difference between this movie and Terence Davies’s The Neon Bible is the difference between plastic and crystal. Despite an impressive castEdward Furlong, Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Nell Carter, Roddy McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, Charles Durning, and Joe Don Baker, and Jack Lemmon in a fancy turneveryone is encouraged either to overact or to resemble a stuffed animal, and the music is as drippy as molasses. (JR) Read more
A charming lightweight comedy, about a young scientist from Wisconsin (Matt Ross) who gets a job as a rice geneticist in New York after being dumped by his girlfriend; he moves in with a ladies’ man (Kevin Carroll) in the East Village, where he begins to pursue a musician (Callie Thorne). This first feature by writer-director John Walsh is helped in no small measure by Benny Golson’s jazz score. (JR) Read more
Geena Davis and her director-husband Renny Harlin crawled out from under the rubble of Cutthroat Island, which at the time was reported to be the costliest flop in Hollywood history, to make an even nastier action thriller, about a housewife with amnesia who discovers she’s actually a trained government assassin (and apparently takes her orders directly from La femme Nikita). Frankly, if I had to see either Harlin-Davis movie again, I’d opt for the klutzy unpleasantness of Cutthroat Island over the efficient if equally stupid unpleasantness of this 1996 release, with its protracted torture sequences and its overall celebration of pain and injury (You’re gonna die screaming, and I’m gonna watch). Still, if you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Geena Davis say Suck my dick, New Line probably deserves your money. Shane Black is the credited writer, and Samuel L. Jackson costars; with Yvonne Zima and Craig Bierko. 120 min. (JR) Read more
Neil Jordan reported that he never lost more sleep over the making of a film than he did with this one; I can’t think of anything that helped me catch up on my sleep more. An epic about the Irish patriot (Liam Neeson) during the last years of his life (1916-’22), it clearly represents a lot of thought on Jordan’s part, yet it’s dramatic and cinematic sludge. With Julia Roberts, Aidan Quinn, Alan Rickman, and Stephen Rea. It won prizes for best film and best actor (Neeson) at the Venice film festival. (JR) Read more
A surprisingly effective action-adventure (1996) set in east Africa in 1896, about a couple of man-eating lions on a rampage that claimed more than 130 victims. Val Kilmer stars as an engineer and bridge builder who joins forces with a famous big-game hunter (Michael Douglas) to catch and kill the lions, which are preventing the engineer from making his deadline. The script is by William Goldman, the direction by Stephen Hopkins, and the cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond. Part of what makes this work so well is the mythicizing of the lions, rather as the leopard was in Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man. This is generally better in the broad sweep of its storytelling than in the jumble of flash cuts depicting the lion attacks, though the final action sequence makes up for a lot of the earlier clunkiness. With Brian McCardie, John Kani, Tom Wilkinson, and Emily Mortimer. (JR) Read more
Tim McCann’s first feature (1995), made at a cost of $27,000 and distributed by McCann himself, bears absolutely no relation to the Jack Kerouac novel of the same title. Come to think of it, this disturbing and persuasive critique of machismo, which refuses to restrict the blame to one or two individuals and ends up indicting a whole milieu, is also very unlike anything else in recent American filmmaking. A young blue-collar worker (Michael Rodrick) returns to Brooklyn after a short trip to discover that his best friend (Peter Bassett) has raped his girlfriend. In the ensuing tragicomic chain of events, everyone behaves badly and foolishly, and McCann’s direction in nailing down this destructive behavior rarely falters. The lack of a clear moral center makes this a challenging film, but also one with an undeniable moral vision. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday, October 4, 7:00 and 9:00; Saturday, October 5, 6:00, 7:45, and 9:30; Sunday, October 6, 6:30 and 8:30; and Monday through Thursday, October 7 through 10, 7:00 and 9:00; 281-4114.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
Unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t regard this three-hour 1995 epic by Theo Angelopoulos as a great film, but it’s certainly something to see, especially for enthusiasts of Angelopoulos and his long-take style. This Greek-French-Italian production stars Harvey Keitel as a Greek filmmaker working in the U.S. who travels home to make a documentary about the pioneering filmmakers the Manakias brothers. Hoping to recover some of their early films about everyday life in the Balkans in a film archive in Sarajevo, he travels through Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and finally Bosnia, a trek that echoes Homer’s Odyssey. Magisterially filmed, this movie demands at almost every instant to be regarded as a masterpiece, though for me it’s too full of itself and its own virtue. Still, I can’t deny it’s an experience worth having. With Maia Morgenstern, Erland Josephson, and Thanassis Vengos. (JR) Read more
A young man in Ho Chi Minh City has his pedicab stolen and is coerced into working for the mob in this troubling and brilliant 1994 feature by Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of the Green Papaya)a film that combines elements of expressionism and surrealism with location shooting in eerie and original ways. Whether you like it or not, this will probably stay with you a long time. With Le Van Loc, Tony Leung, and Tran Nu Yen-khe. (JR) Read more
A work that often appears to be deliberately slapped together rather than composed, this provocative 1973 black-and-white experimental essay film by the late, legendary Guy Debord — adapted from his 1967 book of the same title — fascinates not only as a rebellious statement within a post-1968 French context but as a work that may seem typically French intellectual in a contemporary American context. A theoretical post-Marxist film, it offers extended blocks of text (to be read or heard) about media and spectacle, along with clips of movies that range from silent Russian classics to Johnny Guitar and Rio Grande (both dubbed into French) to The Shanghai Gesture and Mr. Arkadin to soft-core porn. It isn’t put together to entertain or even to go down easily, but it rarely ceases to be stimulating. Debord refused to let any of his films be shown anywhere for nearly a decade after his publisher-producer was assassinated and he himself was denounced in the French press as a terrorist — a self-imposed ban that he removed only a few months before his suicide. This film, apparently his longest, remains a priceless document. (JR) Read more
This 1941 film is one of the few upper-class family dramas by Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, and the domestic furnishings and how they’re framed help make it one of his most visually ravishing works. The events center on the untimely death of the father. In Japanese with subtitles. 105 min. (JR) Read more
A minor Douglas Sirk thriller, better in atmospherics than story logic (1948). Adapted from a Leo Rosten novel, it’s about a man (Don Ameche) who’s trying to drive his wife (Claudette Colbert) crazy and the man (Robert Cummings) who comes to her rescue. Aficionados of esoterica should note that Cy Endfield wrote the Chinatown wedding sequence. With Hazel Brooks, George Coulouris, and Raymond Burr. (JR) Read more
Steven Spielberg’s enormously successful SF tearjerker (1982) remains a veritable manifesto about what it feels like to be ten years old, male, suburban, lonely, and captive to the Spielberg spell. Does that include everybody? No, but the movie’s unusual achievement is to make it seem that way. With Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert McNaughton, and Drew Barrymore; screenplay by Melissa Mathison. PG, 120 min. Read more
Tim McCann’s first feature (1995), made at a cost of $27,000 and distributed by McCann himself, bears absolutely no relation to the Jack Kerouac novel of the same title. Come to think of it, this disturbing and persuasive critique of machismo, which refuses to restrict blame to one or two individuals and ends up indicting a whole milieu, is also very unlike anything else in recent American filmmaking. A young blue-collar worker (Michael Rodrick) returns to Brooklyn after a short trip to discover that his best friend (Peter Bassett) has raped his girlfriend. In the ensuing tragicomic chain of events, everyone behaves badly and foolishly, and McCann’s direction in nailing down this destructive behavior rarely falters. The lack of a clear moral center makes this a challenging film, but also one with an undeniable moral vision. (JR) Read more
