After running off the rails in Mallrats, writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks) not only returns to form but surpasses himself in this touching romantic comedy about comic book artists. The immature hero (Ben Affleck) falls in love with a bisexual woman (Joey Lauren Adams) with a promiscuous past, then struggles to come to terms with his own hang-ups. Neither PC nor crudely anti-PC, this tough and tender movie, like its characters, is prepared to take emotional risks, and the comic book milieu is deftly sketched in. With Jason Lee, Dwight Ewell, Jason Mewes, and Smith himself, who recounts an anecdote near the end explaining the film’s title. Evanston, Golf Glen, Lake, Norridge, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Uncredited photo of “Chasing Amy”. Read more
Inspired by history, writer-director Bruce Beresford’s story about European, Australian, and American women who try to flee from Singapore during World War II but wind up as POWs of the Japanese in Sumatra is worthy but rather pedestrian stuff. Frances McDormand gets to show off by playing a German Jew, and Glenn Close, Pauline Collins, Cate Blanchett, Joanna Ter Steege, and Wendy Hughes do creditable jobs of their own. But the inspirational aspects of the talewhich mainly has to do with the determination of Close to form a vocal orchestra at the camp, despite the class divisions between the womennever quite carry the dramatic impact they’re supposed to. 114 min. (JR) Read more
After running off the rails in Mallrats, writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks) not only returned to form but surpassed himself with this touching 1997 romantic comedy about comic book artists. The immature hero (Ben Affleck) falls in love with a bisexual woman (Joey Lauren Adams) with a promiscuous past, then struggles to come to terms with his own hang-ups. Neither PC nor crudely anti-PC, this tough and tender movie, like its characters, is prepared to take emotional risks, and the comic book milieu is deftly sketched in. With Jason Lee, Dwight Ewell, Jason Mewes, and Smith himself, whose anecdote near the end explains the film’s title. 111 min. (JR) Read more
If snakes give you the willies, and big snakes even more of them, and having the willies is a desired state, this 1997 adventure about a documentary film crew doing battle with a 40-footer in the Brazilian rain forest may be just what you’re looking for. But you’re going to have to put up with a lot of silly characterizations and labored plot turns, not to mention some fast cutting that doesn’t mesh well with the picture’s ‘Scope format and a ridiculous shot looking out through the snake’s jaws. Jon Voight, the all-purpose villain, does a pretty good job of imitating Marlon Brando imitating a Paraguayan snake expert, but the rest of the playersincluding Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Vincent Castellanos, Jonathan Hyde, and Kari Wuhrerseem to be in a hurry to pick up their checks. Luis Llosa directed the makeshift script by Hans Bauer, Jim Cash, and Jack Epps Jr. (JR) Read more
One reason I prefer this mystery thriller about murder in the White House to Absolute Power is that its politics are liberal rather than neocon, and there’s no gratuitous Hillary bashing. But hey, it’s also a better mystery and a better thriller toonothing that makes undue claims for itself, but entertaining and put together with craft and economy. Wesley Snipes (a D.C. homicide detective) and Diane Lane (a dissident Secret Service agent and former Olympic sharpshooter) team up to solve the mystery; others in the cast include Alan Alda, Daniel Benzali, Ronny Cox, and Dennis Miller. Dwight Little directed the script by Wayne Beach and David Hodgin. (JR) Read more
Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Minnie Driver, and Joan and John Cusack star in this 1997 comedy directed by George Armitage (Miami Blues), about a hit man who returns home for a high school reunion. The odd premise is promising, but despite some early indications from the two Cusacks and Arkin that it’s going to be funny, it winds up an unholy mess that becomes steadily more incoherentmorally, dramatically, and conceptually. Alas, not even an ace like Armitage can save it. Written by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, and John Cusack, who also coproduced; Barbara Harris appears in a cameo as the hero’s mother. 107 min. (JR) Read more
That Old Feeling
The underrated Carl Reiner (All of Me) directed this carnivalesque romantic farce, written by Leslie Dixon expressly for Bette Midler. The form and style are traditional Hollywood–closer to Hollywood of the 30s and 40s than to that of today–but the film comes across as positively rebellious in the present conservative climate. The long-divorced and feuding parents (Midler and Dennis Farina) of a straitlaced bride (Paula Marshall) desert their spouses at the wedding party to go off on a fling, and before the picture’s over, bounds of propriety concerning marital fidelity, class, and age have all been joyously crossed. This celebration of middle-age sex and paean to irresponsibility has its share of broad characterizations and predictable plot turns, but Reiner and his actors know what they’re doing every step of the way–and they have a ball with it. With Gail O’Grady, David Rasche, Jamie Denton, and Danny Nucci. Ford City, Gardens, Lake, Lincoln Village, 900 N. Michigan, Norridge, Webster Place. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
A rarely screened and reportedly faithful adaptation of a Preston Sturges play, directed by John Stahl in 1931, with Paul Lukas, Sidney Fox, and Lewis Stone. Read more
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s shortened 1973 version of Ibsen’s A Doll’s Houseshortened to the extent that the heroine (Margit Carstensen) no longer leaves home at the end, a change Fassbinder defended as more realistic. As in Martha (also 1973), Carstensen seems to elicit a baroque mise en scene from Fassbinder; despite a bleached-out look from having been shot on video, it’s still an eyeful. (JR) Read more
Kathleen Quinlan is kidnapped in the southwest, and Kurt Russell, playing her yuppie husband, maniacally pursues the abductors. Jonathan Mostow directs from his own script (written with Sam Montgomery), and J.T. Walsh costars. At first this comes across as an atmospheric and efficient thriller that might have been a B film back in the 40s or 50s, and it’s certainly well crafted in terms of individual sequences. But plot and characterinitially spurred by class resentmentbecome less and less interesting or even relevant as stunts and action crowd them out. In the end the mean-spiritedness of today’s generic action picturein which most people are viewed as scumbags and the only kind of conflict worth following is the grudge matchreigns supreme, and story logic counts for nothing. If you harbor homicidal fantasies you might get a chuckle or two out of this; otherwise it might just make you sick. (JR) Read more
A reported 600,000 people turned up at the 1970 Isle of Wight rock festival (only about a tenth of whom were paying customers), making this a bigger event than either Woodstock or Altamont. Murray Lerner’s belatedly edited 1995 BBC documentary of that event, synthesizing some of the countercultural exhilaration of Woodstock with some of the political disillusionment of Gimme Shelter, is less dramatic than either of those films, but given the awesome lineup of pop stars, it’s still quite a show: Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who, Free, Taste, Tiny Tim, John Sebastian, Ten Years After, Donovan, the Moody Blues, Kris Kristofferson, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Leonard Cohen, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Joan Baez, and Jethro Tull. This is a movie constructed for shorter attention spans, so numbers tend to be brief or curtailed, and the clash between idealistic-anarchistic and capitalistic agendas at the festival, though absorbing, is never spelled out as clearly as it might have been. But it’s nevertheless a precious and exciting historical document. 120 min. (JR) Read more
The earliest and by far the worst feature by Mohsen Makhmalbaf that I’ve seen (1984)though it’s a long way from the least interesting and, as far as I’m aware, the only one in ‘Scope. A muddled religious and metaphysical parable about the temptations of evil as played out among five men on a remote island, it has little plot or drama, but its sincerity is never in doubt. Not previously screened outside of Iran, it was recently recut by the director and subtitled. Two of the lead actors, Majid Majidi and Mohammad Kasebi, are also featured in Boycott, Makhmalbaf’s subsequent film (see separate listing). (JR) Read more
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s fourth feature (1985, though recently reedited by him) was reportedly the first to be widely noticed. It’s a highly energetic and troubled account of a leftist guerrilla’s arrest in Iran prior to the Islamic revolution and his experience in prisona story that has many points in common with Makhmalbaf’s own during the same period (though he was much younger). Surrealistic in some spots, didactic in others, the film records Makhmalbaf’s disenchantment with politics as well as his growing confidence as a craftsman; an early shootout and a car chase following a prison escape could both come out of a Hollywood thriller. With Majid Majidi, Mohammad Kasebi, and Zohre Sarmadi. (JR) Read more
Anita Yuen plays a determined mother and deal maker who strikes a bargain with Death, trading ten years of her life for the survival of her sick second child. Peter Chan directed this 1996 Hong Kong comedy. With Roy Chiao and Alan Tam. Read more
An enjoyable, serviceable first feature (1996), writer-director Greg Mottola’s independent comedy follows a quarrelsome Long Island family into Manhattan to get to the bottom of the marital infidelity of the husband of one of the daughters; in tow are the parents and the daughter’s younger sister and her boyfriend. Fleet and entertaining as narrative but inconsequential, this was coproduced by Steven Soderbergh and shot in 16 days. With Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Parker Posey, Pat McNamara, Anne Meara, Liev Schreiber, Campbell Scott, and Marcia Gay Harden. R, 87 min. (JR) Read more
