An expert ladies man in Harlem who’s riddled with financial woes (Andre Blake) sets about teaching his technique to his brother (Mekhi Phifer), an upstanding journalist who has less luck with women. The premise periodically threatens to become slick and misogynistic, but this fairly serious 1997 independent comedy, written, produced, and directed by Mandel Holland, manages to wind up both modest and likable. With Michele Morgan and Tangi Miller. (JR) Read more
An illustrated lecture by Chris Berry, lecturer in cinema studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, and one of the best scholars we have of contemporary Chinese cinema. Berry will emphasize independent film and video that shows contemporary Chinese reality and explain how it differs from the period allegories directed by such filmmakers as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. (JR) Read more
Writer-director Bertrand Blier, a specialist in politically incorrect sex comedies, offers us a prostitute with a heart of gold (Anouk Grinberg) who takes in a homeless tramp (Gerard Lanvin), offers him food and sex, and invites him to become her pimp. He accepts and winds up wooing a manicurist (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) to turn her into a prostitute as well, until he gets arrested for pimping. There are further developments in this 1996 feature, and even such familiar faces as Sabine Azema, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Jean-Pierre Leaud turn up briefly, but I found it increasingly difficult to stay interested. Barry White’s offscreen songs make the tedium a little more pleasant. (JR) Read more
D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 record of Bob Dylan’s 1965 English tour is a genuine blast from the past, evoking the 60s like few other documents; Dylan’s relentless heaping of scorn on the mainstream press, before the coercive tentacles of creative management made such things virtually impossible, is especially telling. But I’m entirely with Andrew Sarris when he writes, Don’t Look Back makes me want to fill in on Dylan’s recordings, but not Pennebaker’s movies; the raw cinema verite look bears fruit only when its subject does, and as with Truth or Dare (1991), the pretense of confidentiality is merely that. But the music is great, and the film would be memorable for its goofy, syncopated opening sequence alone (a quirky illustration of Subterranean Homesick Blues). With appearances by Joan Baez (Dylan’s steady at the time), Donovan, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, and Alan Price. 96 min. (JR) Read more
It’s all the more grotesque because of its evident sincerity. This misguided Hollywood remake of Wim Wenders’s 1988 Wings of Desire, said to be the swan song of the late Columbia Pictures president Dawn Steel, is about angels in Los Angeles watching over human lives; one of them (Nicolas Cage) falls in love with a heart surgeon (Meg Ryan) and decides to become human. Wenders’s angels were derived from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke; the only literary reference this film makes is to Hemingway’s mean-spirited memoir A Moveable Feast, which is celebrated here for its sensual descriptions of taste. If you’ve never seen the lovely Wenders film, maybe you’ll be charmed by this low-grade variation, all of whose best qualitiessuch as the airy crane shots poised over city vistas and freewayscan be traced back to the original; otherwise you might run screaming from the theater. (Reportedly the film made more sense before some of the actors decided to improve the script with their own dialogue.) Directed by Brad Silberling (Casper) from a script by Dana Stevens (Blink); with Dennis Franz and Andre Braugher. (JR) Read more
Chronicle of a Disappearance
Palestinian independent Elia Suleiman returned to Nazareth after many years in New York to make this 1996 first feature, an intriguing, highly sophisticated, and often very funny combination of fiction, documentary, diary, essay, and home movie. Armed with irony, absurdist humor, and a handsome visual style, Suleiman offers a surprisingly comprehensive portrait of middle-class Palestinian life in Israel and a complex understanding of Arab identity within that world that encompasses both family and friends. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, March 28, 4:00, and Sunday, March 29, 2:00 and 6:00, 312-443-3737.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
Reflecting on the death of his beloved grandfather (Robert Loggia), a fifth-grader (Joseph Cross) in a Catholic school experiences a crisis of faith. Though I wouldn’t call this comedy-drama especially memorable, it can at least be lauded for its sincerity. The actorswho also include Denis Leary, Dana Delany, Timothy Reifsynder, and Rosie O’Donnellall do respectable jobs. Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. (JR) Read more
Automatic Writing
Canadian filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, a child of Chinese and Australian parents, directed this intriguing and original 1996 film about her Chinese great-great-grandfather. An orphan in 19th-century Hong Kong, he was kidnapped, put to work in a brothel, and taken to San Francisco; there he converted to Christianity, worked as a servant to a Jewish family, and returned to Hong Kong, where he worked for a doctor and eventually became a surgeon. Fleming’s approach to this colorful material is extremely playful and ironic, mixing fiction and documentary as she uses both actors (including Kwok Wing Leung, George Chiang) and herself to recount the story in a highly stylized manner. Fleming will attend the screening. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Friday, March 20, 8:00, 312-443-3737. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
Michael Paxton’s 145-minute documentary portrait of the Russian-born novelist (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and philosopher is absorbing but not entirely trustworthy about what it chooses to include and omit from her life. (Her 14-year affair with her young acolyte and intellectual heir, Nathaniel Brandena relationship that ended in acrimonyis accorded only three and a half minutes.) What this film chooses to concentrate on, however, it handles potently: her lifelong hatred of communism and collectivism, her worship of Hollywood (and early acquaintance with Cecil B. De Mille), her romantic predilections, her careers as screenwriter, playwright, and eclectic guru. Paxton ably incorporates original animation, contemporary interviews with friends and associates, and a great deal of archival material (mainly film clips and footage of Rand speaking). Don’t expect any critical perspectives on the woman, however; this is hagiography all the way. (JR) Read more
The plot of the film delivers a number of satisfying twists and turns, claims Columbia Pictures in a press handout for this crime story set in the Florida Everglades. To ensure that audiences can fully enjoy these surprises, we ask that you please not disclose the events and ending. So let me concentrate, rather, on disclosing the philosophy of the movie, which John McNaughton directed from a screenplay by Stephen Peters. What I’m supposed to find satisfying is predicated on the idea that almost everyone in the world is trash. Unfortunately, when one goes along with this premise, who does what and to whom doesn’t matter a whole lot. Maybe the film will keep you amusedand maybe not. Despite the castKevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Theresa Russell, Robert Wagner, and Bill MurrayI found it preposterous. (JR) Read more
Maybe I’m just a sucker for backstage stories about theater people as well as for Thandie Newton (Flirting, Gridlock’d), but this English picture kept me absorbed, happy, and occasionally amused despite its dubious details. Lambert Wilson plays a celebrated London playwright having an affair with an emerging actress (Newton) who’s cast in his latest play. As he tries (with little success) to cope with the rage of his wife (Anna Galiena) and the ambivalence of his three children, the play’s lead actor (Jon Bon Jovi), a notorious womanizer from the States, offers to seduce the neglected wife. Eventually the playwright is brought face-to-face with his double standard. The dubious details include the play itselfwhich seems awful, but apparently isn’t supposed to beand some trumped-up melodramatics toward the end. The uneven John Duigan (The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting, Wide Sargasso Sea, Sirens) directed from a screenplay by his sister Virginia; with Barry Humphries and David Warner. (JR) Read more
The only other adaptations I’ve seen of the Alexandre Dumas novel (which I haven’t read) are the Classics Illustrated comic book and the 1939 James Whale potboiler, both of which I prefer to this vulgar and overwrought 1998 free-for-all, which makes you wait interminably for the story’s central narrative premise. (The Whale version spills the beans right away.) Written and directed by Randall Wallace (best known as the screenwriter of Braveheart), this starts off as a Three Musketeers sequel, trusting that its hefty cast and fart jokes will keep you interested. But to be fair, the story is close to foolproof once it finally gets going. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Gerard Depardieu, Gabriel Byrne, Anne Parillaud, and Judith Godreche. 132 min. (JR) Read more
I’ve only skimmed the best-selling novel that this is based on, so I can’t say precisely how much Elaine May’s screenplayproduced and directed by Mike Nicholstakes from it. But something resembling a Brechtian comedy about the Clintons and scandal-ridden politics in general has emerged from the adaptationsomething witty, thoughtful, timely, grandly entertaining, and ultimately very serious about the way presidential campaigns are run. It’s no surprise to learn that outside the movie the filmmakers support the Clintons over their enemies; what is surprising for a mainstream movie is that final moral judgments are basically left up to the viewer. (By comparison, Wag the Dog seems like a bit of flip arrogance.) John Travolta is wonderful as Clinton stand-in Jack Stanton, a southern governor running for president, and Emma Thompson as his wife is only a shade less convincing; Adrian Lester adeptly plays the idealistic black political strategist who goes to work for them and leads us into their world. Matching up the others with their real-life (and sometimes not-so-real-life) counterparts is part of the game this movie invites one to play, but whether one recognizes their characters or not, Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, and Larry Hagman give May’s dialogue all the color and nuance it deserves. Read more
Not so much a sequel to The Fugitive as a lazy spin-off that imitates only what was boring and artificially frenetic about that earlier thriller; the little that kept it interestingTommy Lee Jones’s Oscar-winning inflections, better-than-average directionis nowhere in evidence. Once again Jones plays a marshal bent on capturing a wrongly accused fugitive from justice (Wesley Snipes this time around), though why we’re supposed to be interested in or diverted by this fascist bully terrorizing whole sections of Chicago and New York in order to track down his innocent prey escapes me entirely; the character is equally dull as hero and villain, and it’s not clear much of the time which he’s supposed to be. The usually interesting Robert Downey Jr. is miscast as another government agent, and Irene Jacob as Snipes’s lover isn’t around long enough to ameliorate the motion sickness. Written (very badly) by John Pogue and directed (if that’s the word) by Stuart Baird; with Joe Pantoliano, Daniel Roebuck, and Tom Wood (deputy marshals back from The Fugitive), LaTanya Richardson, and Kate Nelligan. (JR) Read more
Playing a widow devoted to the grown son (Johnathon Schaech) who brings his fiancee (Gwyneth Paltrow) back to his family’s Kentucky estate, Jessica Lange establishes a spark of interest in this psychological thriller with her giggly demonic performance. But the film never adds up to anything more than an elaborate tease; the writing and directing of Jonathan Darby, a British TV veteran and Hollywood executive, make the proceedings neither believable nor compelling, so what might have been another Rosemary’s Baby isn’t even a halfway decent genre exercise. With Nina Foch, Debi Mazar, and Hal Holbrook; cowritten by Jane Rusconi. (JR) Read more