A mannerist thriller (1990, 114 min.) that doesn’t begin to work despite the number of talented hands involved: Donald E. Westlake adapting a Jim Thompson novel, Stephen Frears directing, Martin Scorsese coproducing, and a more than capable cast. A small-time con artist (John Cusack) in Los Angeles meets up with his mother (Anjelica Huston), a hardened criminal working for a sadistic big-timer (Pat Hingle) who despises the crooked tart (Annette Bening) her son has as a lover; many double crosses later, the incestuous underpinnings in this uneasy triangle come to the fore. While the filmmakers manage to keep things interesting (sexy, kinky, and ambiguous) much of the time, the self-conscious piety that Frears lavishes on this material places it in an uncertain netherworld that prevents it from ever becoming fully convincing, even as a stylistic exercise. The time is apparently the present, but the style nudges us so insistently back into the 40s and 50s that the characters seem cut adrift, without a stable world to support them. Nevertheless, if one can overlook Elmer Bernstein’s irritating ricky-tick score and forget After Dark, My Sweet (a much superior Thompson adaptation), there are plenty of compensations: sleek cinematography by Oliver Stapleton, and, in addition to the aforementioned actors, nice turns in smaller roles by Henry Jones and J.T. Read more
From the March 2019 issue of Found Footage. — J.R.
As a critical commentary on cinematic depictions of San Francisco, Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog, conventional match cuts that approximates Scotty’s tailing of Madeleine as various cars follow various other cars down assorted San Francisco streets, sometimes passing locations that are familiar from Vertigo or other movies, we’re getting the bare bones of thriller and mystery mechanics without any of the thrills or mysteries, in contradistinction to all the musical signals. And when we see Karl Malden enter a florist shop, and converse (again wordlessly) with the florist, it seems appropriate that the piece of paper that the florist shows to him shows us the green fog yet again, Maddin’s signifier of the genre’s rhetoric of mystification.
For some of the Hitchcock aficionados who helped to replace Citizen Kane with Vertigo in the last ten-best poll of Sight and Sound, the affectionate ridicule of The Green Fog may seem like an act of sacrilege, especially when we get a panoply of San Francisco cathedrals that are treated as interchangeably as all the cars and streets. But it might also be argued that Maddin’s apparent scorn is in fact a kind of impious critical appreciation for all the tricks of romantic mystification that he and Hitchcock have in common. Read more
From the June 7, 1991 Chicago Reader. Try hitting the second and fourth photos here with your cursor. — J.R.
THELMA & LOUISE
*** (A must-see)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Callie Khouri
With Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brad Pitt, Timothy Carhart, and Lucinda Jenny.
I’m not quite sure precisely when Thelma & Louise kicks into high gear. Does it happen when Thelma (Geena Davis) holds up a convenience store, or much earlier, when Louise (Susan Sarandon) shoots a rapist (Timothy Carhart)? Does it happen when Thelma’s tyrannical husband (Christopher McDonald) steps on a pizza, or when Louise divests herself of her watch and jewelry in exchange for an old coot’s sun hat?
Whenever it happens, something starts to click, and the movie becomes mythical — mutates into a sort of classic before one’s eyes. This isn’t to say that it can thenceforth do no wrong; the flashback shots that punctuate the final credits are lamentable, a cheap attempt to add uplift to an ending that doesn’t need it. But the movie does take on a certain charmed existence, persuading one to forgive such lapses. After a rather slow beginning, this prosy film turns poetic; and when that happens, we’re no longer passive bystanders but active participants, along for the ride morally as well as physically. Read more
