Kull the Conqueror
You can keep your dinosaur romps and your cartoon fairy tales; this is the kind of kids’ movie I treasured in my own youth, sexy, pictorial, and unfathomable. Raffaella De Laurentiis produces her third sword and sorcery fantasy based on the works of Robert E. Howard (the two Conan movies of the 80s were the others). Scripted by Charles Edward Pogue and directed by John Nicolella, this one’s a campy hoot by most standards, and for me a highly pleasurable one–in part because everything from the anachronistic rock score to the simplicity of the story line to the lurid, boyish fantasies about evil and women manages to suggest the clunky innocence of Howard’s original tales. The title hero, played by Kevin Sorbo, a sort of Rock Hudson with longer and greasier hair, inadvertently becomes hunky king of Valusia by being in the right place at the right time, but then meets and is lured into marriage by the evil sorceress Akivasha (Tia Carrere) inside of about 30 seconds. Others in the cast include Thomas Ian Griffith, Karina Lombard, Litefoot, and (believe it or not) Harvey Fierstein, and SF writer L. Sprague de Camp is credited as technical adviser. Read more
Hoodlum
Five years after their powerful collaboration on Deep Cover, director Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem) and Laurence Fishburne pool their talents again, this time on a crime story loosely based on the true-life exploits of Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson (Fishburne), king of the numbers racket in 1934 Harlem–at least until Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth) muscles in on the business while Johnson is away in Sing Sing. Also involved in the intricate power plays are Lucky Luciano (Andy Garcia), Johnson’s partner Stephanie St. Clair (Cicely Tyson), and Thomas Dewey (William Atherton), while the major fictional characters include Johnson’s cousin and best friend (Chi McBride) and his idealistic girlfriend (Vanessa Williams). Clocking in at 142 minutes, this is an ambitious effort to re-create Harlem in the 30s; Chris Brancato’s script supplies a provocative character study of a killer with a Robin Hood streak and only occasionally takes on more than it can handle. The grisly violence (most of it suggested rather than depicted) overwhelms the story in spots, but the interracial politics in divvying up the spoils of a city remain fairly lucid. Duke is a superb director of actors, and, as in Deep Cover, Fishburne manages to suggest a lot with a deft economy of means. Read more
I have a weakness for movies described as pretentious, at least when they appeal to my imagination, but this terminally pretentious first feature by writer-director Alan Wade seems too far removed from reality to carry any sort of allure. I haven’t read the short story it’s adapted from, Branimir Scepanovic’s La mort de Monsieur Golouga, but the French title and eastern European author’s name suggest an attempt on Wade’s part to adapt European material to an American context, which is where I suspect some of the problems begin. The title hero (Christian Slater), a bookkeeper on holiday, wanders into a remote small town that isn’t accustomed to visitors and arouses everyone’s suspicions; when questioned he blurts out that he’s been contemplating suicide, and he’s regarded thereafter as a mythic, messiahlike figure. If this screenwriter’s notion of a townits inhabitants, its buildings, its faded signs (Supersweet Feeds says one of them)bore any resemblance to any real town on earth, the symbolic hardware might be a little more palatable. With Robin Tunney, Michael Parks, Harve Presnell, and LaTanya Richardson. (JR) Read more
In the Company of Men
Don’t tell anyone, but this blistering piece of provocation by independent writer-director Neil LaBute, his first feature, has a lot to do with capitalism and how it alters our notions of masculinity and romance; in short, it’s about how business affects the way we live and think and feel. Two 30ish male execs (Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy) sent to their company’s branch office for six weeks decide to date, flatter, and then humiliate a woman they pick at random. (They settle on a deaf typist, deftly played by Stacy Edwards.) It doesn’t sound like a believable story without the context provided by LaBute’s concentrated minimalist style and the strong performances, but every nuance here counts, and most of them add up to something pretty potent as well as scary. Check this one out. Evanston, Pipers Alley. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
You can keep your dinosaur romps and your cartoon fairy tales; this is the kind of kids Read more
The Organizer
Marcello Mastroianni in one of his best roles, as a late-19th-century labor leader orchestrating a strike at a Turin textile plant. Directed by Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street) with an exquisite handling of period, this powerful film had a sizable impact when it came out in 1963, though it’s been curiously neglected ever since. Arguably one of the great Italian films of the 60s, it cries out for rediscovery. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Thursday, August 21, 6:00, 312-443-3737.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
My Sex Life…or How I Got Into an Argument
Three hours long, filmed in black and white, Arnaud Desplechin’s highly watchable French comedy-drama (1996) about the sex lives of 30ish Parisian intellectuals and academics has been compared to everything from Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore to Reality Bites. For me, it’s a lot better than the latter and not nearly as good as the former. Desplechin undeniably catches something generational and poignant about the various relationships of a part-time philosophy teacher (Mathieu Amalric)–including one with a woman (Marianne Denicourt) who winds up getting engaged to his best friend. The influences here, by the way, are not only cinematic (the aforementioned Eustache) but also literary; novelist Philip Roth is the most overt reference point. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Friday, August 15, 8:00; Saturday, August 16, 1:00, 4:15, and 7:30; Sunday, August 17, 8:15; Monday and Wednesday, August 18 and 20, 6:00; and Thursday, August 21, 8:15; 312-443-3737.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
This ain’t no buddy movie, claims the publicity, but that’s precisely what this crude, antihumanistic action comedy is. Like an updated Bob Hope romp, it offers plenty of cowardice and wild-eyed grimacing from star Chris Tucker, but there’s also a lot of blood and corpses to show how much hipper we are than those 1940s audiences of Hope’s. In line with its smirking sense of superiority, pornographic glimpses of guns, cars, and diamonds are at best equated with but generally valued over intimations of bare ass. Tucker plays a Los Angeles con artist who, falsely accused of leading a prison break, turns to a stuffy TV reporter (Charlie Sheen) to clear his name. A couple of OK action set pieces and goofy conceits (such as Tucker posing as the son of Vic Damone and Diahann Carroll) can’t make up for the overall cynicism and stupidity, unless cynicism and stupidity are what you’re looking for. Brett Ratner directed from a script by Joel Cohen (no connection to the director of Fargo) and Alec Sokolow; with Heather Locklear, Elise Neal, and Paul Sorvino. (JR) Read more
Based on a letter from Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac describing events in Denver in the mid-40s, this independent effort (1996) by writer-director Stephen Kay offers a moderate amount of beefcake (basically Thomas Jane as Neal), some overacting (by Keanu Reeves as a pool hall compadre), a lot of arty lighting, samplings of jazz records made during the 40s and 50s (to provide atmosphere rather than to be listened to, by us or the characters), and at least three dolled-up heroines (Claire Forlani, Marg Helgenberger, Gretchen Mol) who tend to swoon whenever Neal’s around. The period detail is heaped on self-consciously but not really felt, though the beat mystique as experienced through Cassady’s all-American euphoria actually gets evoked in spots, along with the sadness that usually goes with it. (JR) Read more
An adroitly acted though still quite minor Mike Leigh film, about two old college chums (Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman) meeting up in London after six years. As frequently happens in Leigh’s stories, each central character is accorded at least one hyperbolic personal trait: Cartlidge (who played very different roles in Naked and Breaking the Waves) moves in jerky, demonstrative gestures; Steadman’s character has a skin disease that renders her both tense and fragile; and Mark Benton, playing a fellow student who shows some interest in Steadman, stutters relentlessly. What’s most remarkable about the two lead actresses (assisted by makeup designer Christine Blundell) is how much they change over six years in physical appearance as well as modified personal style, a point underlined by periodic flashbacks. Though the film’s theme never comes into sharp focus, there’s still something agreeable about Leigh’s low-key approach, compared to the grandstanding of Naked and Secrets & Lies. (JR)
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The pits. Borrowing liberally and unintelligently from both Alien and Solaris, this space opera, set in 2047, follows a rescue mission near Neptune as it checks out the title spaceship, which has been missing for seven years. (It’s creepy to imagine that the same Hollywood stereotypes and plastic rock music will be with us 50 years from now.) It seems the mad scientist who designed the faster-than-light spacecraft created a black hole in the universe, unleashing some sort of onboard hell where everybody goes bananas; but the storytelling is so clumsy we can’t be sure of that. If you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill duke it out in a vat full of red paint, here’s your chance; personally, my idea of hell would be having to see this stinker again. Written by Philip Eisner and directed by Paul Anderson; with Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, and Jason Isaacs. (JR) Read more
Irma Vep
Olivier Assayas wrote and directed this dark, brittle French comedy (1996), most of it in English, about a film company shooting a remake of Louis Feuillade’s silent Les vampires. An unexpected masterpiece, Irma Vep was assembled so quickly that it has an improvisational feel and a surrealist capacity to access its own unconscious–two sterling traits it shares with Feuillade’s 1916 serial. A once-prestigious French director of the 60s (Jean-Pierre Leaud) casts a Hong Kong star (Maggie Cheung) in the role of head villainess Irma Vep (an anagram for “vampire”), and his sexual infatuation with the actress is matched by that of the costume designer who escorts her around Paris (Jacques Rivette regular Nathalie Richard). The feverish pace of the shooting seems to unleash everybody’s bad vibes as well as their desire, and Assayas follows the delirium as if he were at the center of a hurricane. What emerges is not only a memorable look at contemporary life in general (and international low-budget filmmaking in particular), but also a mysterious set of notations on how Feuillade’s hallucinatory masterwork might be translated into modern terms. An absolute must-see; with Lou Castel and Bulle Ogier. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Tuesday, August 12, 6:00 and 8:00, 312-443-3737. Read more
Flaming Creatures
Forget everything you might have heard about the late Jack Smith’s legendary bisexual, orgiastic, superlow-budget, experimental 1963 masterpiece–a lot more is going on here, artistically and otherwise, than either Jonas Mekas or Susan Sontag has ever suggested. This jubilant, celebratory 45-minute film holds up amazingly well; despite its notoriety and censorship during the 60s, it’s more than just an orgy of nude and seminude bodies–male, female, and transvestite. The camera and even the cheap, hothouse decor participate in the joyful free-for-all, suggesting both the privacy of a Josef von Sternberg wet dream and the collective force of a delirious apocalypse. But the simplest way to describe it is to call it a vision. Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont, Thursday, August 14, 6:00, 773-327-5252. –Jonathan Rosenbaum Read more
The exploitation title tells it all. New York underground filmmaker Joe Christ, appearing in the flesh, dares you to be interested. On the same program, some of Christ’s earlier short films, such as Sex Blood & Mutilation. (JR) Read more
A streamlined, sometimes affecting Hollywood studio version of a maverick independent script by the late John Cassavetes, this 1997 film offers a fascinating glimpse at what Cassavetes was from the vantage point of what he wasn’t. Sean Penn (his choice for the lead ten years ago) stars as a crazy low-life city brawler deeply in love with his pregnant wife (Robin Wright Penn). One of his jealous rages gets him committed to a mental asylum for ten years, and by the time he gets out his wife has married John Travolta (who’s the best reason for seeing this movie), had a couple more kids, and moved to the suburbs. Nick Cassavetes (John’s son) is the director, though without the luxury of final cut enjoyed by his father on all his own features, and the brassy in-your-face music and ‘Scope framing both seem antithetical to the father’s style. Most of the characters (also including Harry Dean Stanton, Debi Mazar, and James Gandolfini), irrational and ineffable, are recognizable denizens of John Cassavetes’s world, though the way they’re sometimes pressed into sitcom routines robs them of some of their potential density. Not really a Cassavetes movie, but worth seeing anyway. (JR) Read more
