Another virtual-reality SF movie. The main thing that distinguishes this one from the others is the fact that several of the people behind it (including director and cowriter Josef Rusnak, coproducer Roland Emmerich, executive producers Michael and Helga Ballhaus, and actor Armin Mueller-Stahl) are Germanthough a flat boilerplate English is spoken by everyone throughout. Mueller-Stahl and Craig Bierko play inventors who have simulated 1937 Los Angeles on a computer chip; when one is murdered in present-day LA shortly after returning from 1937, the other enters the same simulation to get to the bottom of things. But of course the bottom in this ponderous romp is more simulation: simulated past and present in terms of metaphysics, poorly simulated Blade Runner and Vertigo in terms of story structure and style, and simulated human beings instead of charactersa simulated movie, in short. When the hero finds himself doing the lindy hop in 1937, you don’t know whether the anachronism belongs to Mueller-Stahl or to the screenwriters (adapting Daniel Galouye’s Simulacron 3), and you’re not likely to care. With Gretchen Mol (a pale simulation of Kim Novak), Vincent D’Onofrio , Dennis Haysbert, and Steven Schub. (JR) Read more
Activist-filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West got so tired of being stared at and harassed on the street that she decided to fight back and started filming as well as interrogating the men bugging her. Usually she held one camera while behind her a camerawoman held another, and she carried out this counteraggression in several American cities, meanwhile recounting the experiences of other women who didn’t have cameras at their disposal. To the filmmaker’s credit, she doesn’t always select the confrontations in which she comes off best and the men come off worst; just about everything she shows, however, is fascinating, revealing, and provocative. The encounters are also interspersed with some striking experimental and free-form interludes about city street life, and fragments of an autobiographical statement are subtly woven into the mix. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday, May 21, 7:00 and 9:00; Saturday and Sunday, May 22 and 23, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00; and Monday through Thursday, May 24 through 27, 7:00 and 9:00; 773-281-4114. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
If you’re interested in learning what the Star Trek craze is all about, this facetious cheap-shot documentary by Roger Nygard isn’t the place to go; it’s merely a freak show that invites the audience to ridicule the show’s fans and fanatics. The flavor of a daytime TV talk show is so thick that even some of the show’s creators and stars are slimed in the process. Denise Crosby serves as hostess. (JR) Read more
New York actors moonlight as violent money collectors. One (Barbara Hershey) is the ex-wife of a gang leader (Robbie Coltrane) who wants to stage a production of American Buffalo. I assume writer-director Amos Poe, an independent associated with Manhattan’s SoHo and Lower East Side, must have thought this was a funny and not simply ridiculous premise, and that someone else liked the idea enough to finance itor maybe the gore and sadism reminded somebody of Tarantino and somebody else needed a tax write-off. Go figure. A lot of good actors get wasted heretypes as diverse as John Leguizamo and Taylor Mead in a cameoand so does the time anybody spends watching this. PS: The title music is a bad reorchestration of Elmer Bernstein’s main theme for The Man With the Golden Arm; I hope that at least Bernstein received a royalty. (JR) Read more
A tender and sometimes very funny romantic comedy set in a New England seaside town, this is also something of a parable about what overheated summers can do to romantic imaginations. An unsigned love letter falls into the hands of various individuals who make creative assumptions about the author and intended recipient; many of them work at a secondhand bookstore. I suspect that a fair amount of the wit derives from Cathleen Schine Read more
An intelligent and informative feature-length documentary by Canadian filmmaker Nettie Wild about the Zapatista movement and uprising in southern Mexico, concentrating on events that occurred between 1994 and 1997. The film focuses mainly (and cogently) on the struggles of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Mexico and in cyberspace, but it also allows the government-allied, paramilitary group north of Chiapas, which calls itself Peace and Justice, to speak on its own behalf (when it isn’t assaulting the film crew). This is sturdy as well as stirring political filmmaking that asks all the right questions, including ones about the role of the U.S. in the outcome. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Friday, May 14, 8:15; Saturday, May 15, 6:00 and 8:00; Sunday, May 16, 4:00 and 6:00; and Tuesday and Thursday, May 18 and 20, 6:00 and 8:00; 312-443-3737.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
In his bunker but outside of historical time, Adolf Hitler (Norman Rodway) dictates his memoirs, ruminates on his life while screening various documentaries and home movies, chats with Joseph Goebbels (Joel Grey) and Hermann G Read more
Wu Tianming (Old Well)the former godfather of mainland China’s Fifth Generation filmmakers when he headed the Xian film studio and green-lighted such innovative pictures as The Horse Thief, Red Sorghum, and King of Childrenreturned to filmmaking in 1996 after an extended stint in the U.S. This beautifully inflected and wholly accessible tale, set in Sichuan in the 30s, concerns an aging street performer (Zhu Xu) who unknowingly purchases and adopts a little girl (Zhou Ren-ying), thinking she’s a boy, with the intention of training an heir. Though the premise sounds hokey, the storytelling and performances are so expressive that one might not even notice the subtle and detailed commentary being offered on gender politics. An actor and female impersonator (Zhao Zhigang) plays a pivotal role in the proceedings. In Mandarin with subtitles. 101 min. (JR) Read more
A very far cry from the Franz Kafka novel of the same title, this faux populist Australian comedy, Miramax to the max, is a prime example of how readily that country’s intermittent self-hatred can be translated into box office: it reportedly grossed more than any other Australian movie in 1997. A sweet-tempered and terminally dim tow-truck driver and family man (Michael Caton) refuses to sell his house to allow for an airport extension, fights his cause all the way up to the supreme court, and guess what? The little man triumphs. Director Rob Sitch is no Capra and none of his three writers comes close to Robert Rifkin, but if what you’re looking for is another opportunity to feel simultaneously superior to and affectionate about hicks, then I guess this is your movie. With Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Sophie Lee, Anthony Simcoe, and Charles Bud Tingwell. 84 min. (JR) Read more
Jafar Panahi followed his debut feature, The White Balloon, with this 1997 story of a little girl in downtown Tehran who waits for her mother to pick her up from school and eventually decides to make her way home alone; finally Panahi shifts his focus to the making of the film itself. If you haven’t seen any Iranian pictures this may seem fresh, but if you know Abbas Kiarostami or Mohsen Makhmalbaf it’s likely to seem familiar. Kiarostami furnished the story for The White Balloon, and without his input Panahi seems stuck for a resolution to the narrative, though his documentary-style handling of both actors and everyday street life remains acute. (JR) Read more
An intelligent and informative feature-length documentary (1999) by Canadian filmmaker Nettie Wild about the Zapatista movement and uprising in southern Mexico, concentrating on events that occurred between 1994 and 1997. The film focuses mainly (and cogently) on the struggles of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Mexico and in cyberspace, but it also allows the government-allied paramilitary group north of Chiapas, which calls itself Peace and Justice, to speak on its own behalf (when it isn’t assaulting the film crew). This is sturdy as well as stirring political filmmaking that asks all the right questions, including ones about the role of the U.S. in the outcome. 89 min. (JR) Read more
Tom Cudworth’s script about the lives and loves of theater and music hopefuls working at a Hoboken restaurant is pretty familiar stuff, but the performancesby Adrien Brody, Elise Neal, Simon Baker-Denny, and Lauryn Hillare relatively fresh and sincere. The main strand of the story involves a relationship between a white playwright (Brody) and a black singer (Neal), but the secondary characters are as well-defined as the leads. Eric Bross directed this 1998 independent feature.107 min. (JR) Read more
Activist-filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West got so tired of being stared at and harassed on the street that she decided to fight back and started filming as well as interrogating the men bugging her. Usually she held one camera while behind her a camerawoman held another, and she carried out this counteraggression in several American cities, meanwhile recounting the experiences of other women who didn Read more
A daydreaming teenager (Donald Adeosun Faison) nearing graduation is the hero of this feeble and routine African-American comedy, a sort of Secret Life of Walter Mitty reconfigured for the teen market. Written by Gary Hardwick and directed by David Raynr; with Maia Campbell, Deon Richmond, and Guy Torry. (JR) Read more
From the Chicago Reader (May 1, 1999). — J.R.
Not just a remake of the Boris Karloff-Karl Freund classic but an Indiana Jones spin-off with dollops of Jason and the Argonauts, George Romero’s zombie series, Land of the Pharaohs, Samson and Delilah, and even Apocalypse Now (Arnold Vosloo’s mummy bears a certain resemblance to Brando’s Kurtz). Writer-director Stephen Sommers does a pretty good job of zipping things along and occasionally scaring us, and the digital effects are fun; Brendan Fraser, John Hannah, and Jonathan Hyde do what they can with one-dimensional parts but tend to be outshone by the almost two-dimensional Rachel Weisz. Kevin J. O’Connor is mainly embarrassing as a conniving Arab, but then all the Arabs in this 1999 film, set during the 1920s, are accorded roughly the same respect, affection, and humanity as black people in The Birth of a Nation. Thanks to the example of Lucas-Spielberg, guiltless colonialism backed by endless gun power is still the name of the game. PG-13, 124 min. (JR)
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