What ever happened to movie plots? This 1987 first feature by celebrated English horror writer Clive Barker starts off with a potentially viable one, and shows some flair with cutting and framing that bodes well for the future. But at the point where the characters in this magic box/haunted house tale should be turning into something more than cardboard, Barker turns them into chocolate puddingpulling out all the stops, letting Bob Keen’s jazzy special effects take over, and asking plot, character, and logic to take an aimless walk around the block. None of this is the fault of the actors: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, and Sean Chapman are uniformly good for the little they’re asked to do. Minor grisly fun, but don’t expect the movie to linger when it’s over. R, 94 min. (JR) Read more
The three critical questions to be asked of any movie are (1) what does it try to do? (2) does it succeed? and (3) is it worth doing? This film tries to make a conventional, apolitical combat story out of one of the most brutal battles fought in Vietnam, and succeeds impressively. Writer/coproducer Jim Carabatsos, drawing on his own Vietnam combat experience, trots out most of the cliches we remember from 40s and 50s war films and still manages to give them some ring of truth; director John Irvin leads 14 unknown actors through gritty action sequences and deft ensemble playing (Courtney B. Vance’s angry black medic is a particular standout). The question that remains is whether it’s worth doing another uncritical war-is-photogenic-hell excursionaccommodating the Vietnam experience to the same unquestioning, grunt-level perspective that sustained us through World War II and Korea while priming us for still more noble sacrifices by steadfastly refusing to look any further. Less pretentious than Platoon and more attentive to the Vietnamese than The Deer Hunter, this picture proposes with a great deal of skill and sincerity that we honor and respect the men who suffered on our behalf without even beginning to consider why they did so, or to what effect. Read more
The wolf in question is painter Paul Gauguin, played by Donald Sutherland, and director Henning Carlsen is at pains to make him something of a stud. This French-Danish coproduction shot in English restricts its focus to Paris and Copenhagen, 1893-’94, between Gauguin’s two extended sojourns in Tahiti, when he is trying unsuccessfully to sell his work, hanging out with other Parisian artists (including August Strindberg, played with owlish wit by Max von Sydow), and coping with four womenhis former and present models (both of whom he is sleeping with), his unforgiving wife, and a 14-year-old neighbor with a powerful crush on him. Thoughtful and occasionally thought provoking, despite a rather patronizing treatment of the women, the film examines Gauguin’s jaundiced views of civilization and the high price paid for his own bohemianism. With Valerie Morea, Sofie Graboel, Fanny Bastien, Merete Voldstedlund, and a virtually unrecognizable Jean Yanne. (JR) Read more
