Jonathan Rosenbaum

Judging from what I sampled, this is a silly but enjoyable Hong Kong camp romp (1994), directed by Jeff Lau and with the same basic cast (Leslie Cheung, Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, Jacky Cheung, Maggie Cheung) and story as Wong Kar-wai’s much more serious Ashes of Time, which was made around the same time. It’s full of swordplay, pratfalls, and other kinds of acrobatics, and the fantasy details include jet-propelled silver boots, a crystal ball, and a magic drum. The decor is gaudy, and the speed is delirious. (JR) Read more

This documentary by Jonathan Blank about contemporary Dutch tolerance regarding prostitution and soft drugs is a video that’s been transferred to film, so the image quality is terrible (the sound-bite and image-bite format is also fairly monotonous). But you may find the content engaging if you aren’t already familar with the commonsensical, humane laws in contemporary Holland and how successful they seem to be. As a commentary on a functioning welfare state with little poverty or extreme wealth, this may ultimately be more a film about this countryor at least a film addressed to the U.S.; there’s a pointed segment, for instance, about the relative scarcity of guns. (JR) Read more

This 1980 romantic comedy, set in Pasadena, Texas, and loosely inspired by an Aaron Latham article in Esquire, was supposed to have been a John Travolta vehicle, but its lasting importance is arguably more its function as a showcase for the unbridled sensuality of Debra Winger, his costar. Undoubtedly dated in terms of sexual politics, it remains one of her most memorable efforts. Directed by James Bridges, who scripted the movie with Latham; with Scott Glenn and Madolyn Smith. 135 min. (JR) Read more

Appropriately and suggestively, the title of Francoise Romand’s first feature (1994), based on Frederic Dard’s thriller The Executioner Weeps, translates as Past Imperfect. Like her inventive documentaries Mix-up and Call Me Madame, it deals with the construction of personal identity. On the Mediterranean coast of Tunisia a gloomy Jewish war photographer fleeing his past saves the life of a mysterious woman suffering from amnesia and carrying $300,000 (Helas pour moi’s heroine, Laurence Masliah). In helping her discover who she is and how she came by the money, he enters a metaphysical labyrinth that produces more questions than answers. This movie doesn’t offer many of the satisfactions of a conventional thriller, and the action flags a bit toward the end, but it’s a provocative, troubling, and haunting spellbinder just the same, beautifully shot and originally conceived. The sound track is especially striking. (JR) Read more

Sam Raimi tries to do a Sergio Leone, and though this 1995 feature is highly enjoyable in spots, it doesn’t come across as very convincing, perhaps because nothing can turn Sharon Stone into Charles Bronson. Gene Hackman runs a western town like a decadent Roman emperor, obliging various inhabitants to perform shoot-outs with one another, and Stone turns up thirsting for revenge. Raimi has a lot of fun with certain Leone conventions (huge close-ups, hokey flashbacks, hyperbolic lines and gestures), and adds a few of his own (like some morphing effects out of Death Becomes Her), but he flubs some moments (most noticeably by cutting away from several gunfights at climactic junctures) and generally seems hamstrung by Stone’s determination to play simultaneously the most and least macho character in the story. Written by Simon Moore; with Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobin Bell, Roberts Blossom, Kevin Conway, Keith David, Lance Henriksen, Pat Hingle, and Woody Strode (whose talents are wasted). 105 min. (JR) Read more

Gregg Bordowitz’s deconstructive autobiographical essay (1993) about his discovery in 1988 that he was HIV positive and about his subsequent life, including his decision to quit drugs and drinking and to come out to his mother and stepfather. Making semi-ironic use of Jewish music and diverse kinds of silent and sound footage, Bordowitz speaks about his late father and his sex life; he also includes his own documentary footage of AIDS rallies, conversations with friends (including filmmaker Yvonne Rainer), a tour of his bookshelves, and a sarcastic parody of the way the media have treated AIDS. Nothing in this work is taken for granted, and Bordowitz’s bracing anger and inventive playfulness are both life enhancing. 54 min. (JR) Read more

Insofar as Tsui Hark’s lively and epic (if familiar) original was already something of a twice-told tale, his 1992 sequel, which literally starts off with a reprise of the acrobatic sequence that ended its predecessor, should perhaps be called Thrice Upon a Time in China. It continues the saga of surgeon and martial-arts master Wong Fei-hong in China around the turn of the century; with Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan. 112 min. (JR) Read more

Billed as the first Japanese cartoon attacked for violence, this feature-length SF animation about two kung fu schools doing battle in World War Four for control of the planet will be shown with another banned Japanese SF cartoon, M.D. Geist (Most Dangerous Ghost). Sponsored by the Psychotronic Film Society. Read more

Directed by Robert Lieberman from a script by Tracy Torme, this picture is based on the account by one Travis Walton, played here by D.B. Sweeney, of his own alleged abduction by extraterrestrials in a UFO in 1975. Not a bad job of storytelling, as it turns out, though most of the story to be told hinges more on the relationship between Walton and his best friend (Terminator 2’s Robert Patrick) than on the SF elements. With Craig Sheffer, Peter Berg, and James Garner. (JR) Read more

No characters here, and a miserable excuse for a plot. But plenty of big boobs, leather boots, crisp editing, bad acting, and a couple of drooling hillbillies anticipating the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family conspire to make Russ Meyer’s violent black-and-white 1965 quickie something faintly mythic for future generations more interested in images than in people or ideas. (To be fair, the precredits sequence is pretty daring and original, but after that it’s all downhill.) If mean-spirited dominatrices are your thing, make tracks to this; with Tura Satana, Lori Williams, Haji, Stuart Lancaster, Paul Trinka, and Sue Bernard. 83 min. (JR) Read more

A gritty, powerful first feature by Lee Tamahori, a director with a Maori father and a European mother, adapted by Maori playwright Riwia Brown from a popular novel by Alan Duff. The film focuses on a contemporary Maori family living in urban New Zealand and steeped in violencethe family includes an abusive but passionate father, a volatile but devoted wife, and, among the children, one gang member, one son at reform school, and an intellectually ambitious teenage daughter. Reportedly the original novel is stream of consciousness, switching between family members in the manner of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Brown was brought in to tell the story mainly from the viewpoint of the wife. At once upsetting and highly involving, it packs an undeniable punch. With Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison, Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell, and Julian Sonny Arahanga. (JR) Read more

To my ears at least, writer-director John Sayles does an impressive job of impersonating traditional Irish storytellers in this sweet-tempered if slightly dull piece of magical realism (1994, 103 min.), which he adapted from Rosalie K. Fry’s 1957 novella Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry and filmed on Ireland’s west coast. A little girl is sent to live with her grandparents; her grandfather tells her a story about the disappearance of her baby brother when a wave carried away his cradle, and after her 13-year-old cousin suggests that the boy is still sailing in it around the remote island Roan Inish, the girl gets an opportunity to explore the island, finding a few traces of human habitation. This is all rather low-key and uninsistent, but the settings are gorgeous, and Haskell Wexler’s cinematography makes the most of them. With Jeni Courtney, Mick Lally, Eileen Colgan, Richard Sheridan, and John Lynch. (JR) Read more

In addition to being a good many other things, Francoise Romand’s first three feature-length films are poetic and highly original meditations about personal identity. Neither as dense nor as inventive as Mix-Up (1985), the film that preceded it, and without the degree of experimentation and lyricism that makes Past Imperfect (1994) such a haunting experience, Call Me Madam (1986) is nonetheless a provocative and memorable work. (Starting with this one, the Film Center is showing all three films with Romand in attendance, offering an invaluable introduction to a major filmmaker.) It’s a multifaceted portrait of Ovida Delect–a communist poet and novelist living near Rouen who’s published close to 40 books. Tortured by the Gestapo at 17 as a member of the French underground and honored by Paul Eluard, she’s a 60-year-old who had a sex-change operation at the age of 55. Formerly known as Jean-Pierre Voidies, she continues to live with her former wife and 20-year-old son, both of whom reveal some of the difficulties they’ve encountered living with such a singular and egocentric individual. As with Mix-Up, Romand labels this film a “fictional documentary” because its subject and style relate to Delect’s self-image as well as her objective reality. Indeed Delect controls Call Me Madam just as she controls her own persona, depriving the film of the free-ranging imagination of Romand’s other two features. Read more

A reflective autobiographical film (1985) about filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien’s youth in the late 40s and early 50s. Largely filmed in the same places in Taiwan where the events originally happened, this unhurried family chronicle carries an emotional force and a historical significance that may not be immediately apparent. Working in long takes and wide-screen, deep focus compositions that frame the characters from a discreet distance, Hou allows the locations to seep into our own memories and experience, so that, as in Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs and Tian’s The Blue Kite, we come to know them almost as intimately as touchstones in our own lives. Yet paradoxically, the unseen Chinese mainland carries as much weight in the film as the landscape of Taiwan: Hou’s Christian family left in 1948, and the revolution that followed made it impossible for them to return. Subtly interweaving everyday details with processes and understandings that evolve over years, the film conveys a density of familial detail that we usually encounter only in certain novels, and a sense of the tragic within hailing distance of Ozu. This was the first film by Hou I ever saw, and it provides an excellent introduction to his work as a whole. Read more

In the first of his independent features as producer-director (1953) Otto Preminger adapts his most successful stage production, a light romantic comedy by F. Hugh Herbert that ran for over 900 performances. Released without production code approval and condemned by the Legion of Decency for its use of such taboo phrases as “virgin,” “seduce,” and “pregnant,” none of which bothered anyone in the stage run, it’s regarded today mainly as a curio. Yet for all the movie’s staginess and datedness, it’s a more personal and ambiguous work than it initially appears to be. Architect William Holden ogles and picks up “professional virgin” Maggie McNamara at the Empire State Building and brings her back to his apartment, where his next-door neighbors–his former girlfriend (Dawn Addams) and her playboy father (David Niven)–quickly involve this potential couple in various intrigues. A certain prurient (as well as analytical) curiosity in Preminger’s distanced and mobile camera style makes McNamara seem slightly corrupt and Holden and Niven slightly innocent, despite all appearances to the contrary, and the sour aftertaste to this frothy material is an important part of what keeps the picture interesting. Incidentally, Preminger simultaneously shot a German-language version of the same film, the stars of which have cameos in the last scene of the American version. Read more