Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jackie Chan, director Samo Hung, and Yuen Biao costar in this sprightly ecological action thriller from Hong Kong centered on a chemical plant that turns out to be a front for a drug-processing operation. The plant’s pollution of local fish farms and Chan and Hung’s infatuation with the local farmers’ star witness form part of the interest, but most important, of course, are the choreographed fights and stunts (1988). (JR) Read more

Albert Brooks’s 1991 feature is something of a departure from its predecessors (Real Life, Modern Romance, and Lost in America) because of its fantasy premisea recently deceased adman (Brooks) has to defend his life (screened in the form of movie rushes) before a small tribunal in a sort of theme-park resort called Judgment Citybut it’s every bit as funny and serious. Meryl Streep plays the saintlike woman Brooks meets and falls in love with in this plastic purgatory while they pursue their separate trials, and the depth of feeling uncovered by their relationship works hand in glove with the daily examination sessions: the twin evils in this metaphysical netherworld, which has more than a passing resemblance to contemporary American society, are fear and stupidity, and over the course of the movie we and Brooks learn a great deal about both. Rip Torn (at his juiciest) plays Brooks’s defender, Lee Grant plays his prosecutor, and Buck Henry has a nice comic turn as another defender. A wonderful movie not only for its satirical richnessJudgment City is imagined in copious detailbut for the seriousness of its comedy. 111 min. (JR) Read more

John Lundin’s short, which adapts the same story (Le Fanu’s Camilla) that served as the basis for Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr, registers in part as an eerie homage in color to that classic; the visuals are often effective, and only the uncertainty of some of the performances occasionally breaks the spell. (JR) Read more

Not only is Jane Birkin at her best in this low-key, realistic 1990 drama, she’s also the element that ties the whole thing together. Directed by Bertrand Tavernier from a script by his ex-wife, Colo Tavernier O’Hagan, it’s basically a chamber piece for three voices about a Parisian screenwriter (Birkin), separated from her husband, who visits her ailing English father (Dirk Bogarde) and her French mother (Odette Laure) in a small villa on the Cote d’Azur, trying to create a closeness with her father that she has never felt (she speaks mainly English with her father and mainly French with her mother, from whom she feels even more remote). The characteristic strength of Tavernier’s direction is its capacity to take these unexceptional people as he finds them. A few fleeting flashbacks and snippets of offscreen narration barely intrude on the relatively eventless but finely nuanced action. Contributing to Antoine Duhamel’s score is jazz pianist Jimmy Rowles, and Birkin herself and Rowles sing These Foolish Things. In English and subtitled French. 112 min. (JR) Read more

Jacques Rivette’s first foray into professional filmmaking was this very uncharacteristic and relatively conventional half-hour 35-millimeter short. The plot, which involves the complex trajectory of a fur coat, dimly suggests Max Ophuls’s Madame de . . . ; Rivette himself narrates the anecdote in terms of chess moves, one of which serves as the film’s title. Claude Chabrol, who coproduced, also collaborated on the script with Rivette, and in some respects it now looks more like part of his work than Rivette’s; Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut put in cameo appearances (1956). (JR) Read more

Possibly the best of Paul Schrader’s filmsa dubious distinctionbut there’s still more windup than delivery (1990). The screenplay is Harold Pinter’s adaptation of an Ian McEwan novel, about what happens when an English couple (Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett) vacationing in Venice, trying to rekindle their relationship, fall under the baneful and kinky influence of an older resident couple, an Italian (Christopher Walken) and a Canadian (Helen Mirren). All four leads are effective, with Walken a particular standout (though Mirren seems more subdued than usual); cinematographer Dante Spinotti works very attractively with the local light and color; and Schrader integrates these blessings with resourceful mise en scene. But as with some of the earlier Pinter and Joseph Losey projects (which this often resembles), arty ambience with S and M trimmings is the basic bill of fare: it’s a vehicle designed to tease more than edifymore fun to watch than to think about afterward. (JR) Read more

A minor film from Max Ophuls, but minor Ophuls still has so much filmmaking energy that it makes even the major work of figures like Spielberg and De Palma shrink to virtual nothingness. Ophuls was effectively imported to Holland to make this 1936 feature and thereby beef up the lackluster Dutch film industry. Based on an original Ophuls story (and coscripted by Walter Schlee, Alex de Haan, and Christine van Meeteren) and featuring songs and commentary from a neo-Brechtian clown who stands outside the plot, the film describes the misadventures of a bank courier (Herman Bouber) who is robbed of bank funds and fired, only to be appointed as head of a finance company by crooked businessmen who believe that he has the stolen money. Rather light and on the cutesy side as narrative, this comedy is worth seeing mainly for the inventive mise en scene (with the great Eugen Schufftan as cinematographer); it’s full of unexpected camera angles and Ophuls’s usual delight in camera movement (watch for an especially giddy dream sequence). With Rini Otte and Cor Ruys. (JR) Read more

A wacky, absurdist 1988 Soviet satire by Karen Shakhnazarov, also known as Zerograd, about a Moscow engineer who finds himself trapped in a provincial town. Odd and irrational events take place around himhe meets a nude secretary when he visits an air-conditioning company, a chef commits suicide after he refuses to eat a cake modeled after his own head, and he is asked to assume the identity of the chef’s son in a complex local intrigue involving the chef’s reputation as a rock ‘n’ roll rebel many years earlier. None of this exactly goes anywhere, but Shakhnazarov manages to keep it amusing and watchable. This won a Gold Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival in 1989. (JR) Read more

A genuine oddity from 1963 Czechoslovakia, long banned because of its satirical and antiauthoritarian tendencies, this fantasy in ‘Scope and color by Vojtech Jasny describes what happens when a magic show featuring a cat with a pair of eyeglasses turns up in a fairy-tale town. When the eyeglasses are removed, people are obliged to show their true colorsfolks in love turn red, liars purple, thieves gray, betrayers yellowand the local schoolchildren see through the duplicity of the adults for the first time. To complicate matters, the magic show and cat are described in advance by a salty local layabout (Jan Werich) who serves as a sort of narrative equivalent to the stage manager in Our Town and who entertains schoolchildren with his tales while serving as their art-class model; when the magic show and cat arrive in the town, the magician is played by the same actor. Whimsical, likable, and inventive, if never wholly successful, this colorful cross between the Pied Piper and Bye Bye Birdie qualifies as one of the best early examples of the Czech New Wave; significantly, Ivan Passer worked on it as an assistant. Also known as That Cat . . . and One Day a Cat; with Vlastimil Brodsky and Jirina Bohdalova. Read more

Four years after his hilarious satire (Hollywood Shuffle), writer-director-actor Robert Townsend returns with an impossibly ambitious movie about an African American R & B singing group (Townsend, Michael Wright, Leon, Harry J. Lennix, and Tico Wells) between 1965 and the present, scripted with Keenen Ivory Wayans (I’m Gonna Git You Sucka). The results are a long and unevenly realized chronicle of friendship that is teeming with subplots, unusually candid about the harshness of the music business, and generally packed with energy. The women in the cast (including the commanding Diahann Carroll, as well as Troy Beyer, Theresa Randle, Tressa Thomas, and Deborah Lacey) unfortunately aren’t given much to do, but there are striking performances by John Canada Terrell as a singer who replaces one of the original members, Chuck Patterson as the Heartbeats’ manager, Harold Nicholas (one of the celebrated Nicholas Brothers) as their choreographer, and Hawthorne James as the villainous record executive “Big Red.” (Biograph, Burnham Plaza, Chestnut Station, Golf Glen, Lincoln Village, Hyde Park, Norridge, Ford City, Harlem-Cermak) Read more

Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg play a well-to-do southern lady and her servant in Montgomery, Alabama, during the bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement in the mid-50s; Richard Pearce directed from a script by John Cork. Thanks to good dialogue and meticulous research involving the place and period, this is a much more creditable and authentic job than either Mississippi Burning or Driving Miss Daisy, and the self-congratulatory tone of the aforementioned films is kept to a relative minimum–although one regrets the degree to which the focus gradually shifts from Goldberg’s character to Spacek’s, a well meaning white liberal. The only flaw in the otherwise fine casting and handling of southern accents is in Pearce’s direction of some of the black actors, including the otherwise effective Goldberg, who curiously are made to seem less southern than the white folks. With Dwight Schultz, Ving Rhames, Dylan Alexander, Dylan Baker (who’s especially good), Erika Alexander, and narration by Mary Steenbergen. (Esquire, Wilmette) Read more

This 1927 silent vehicle for Greta Garbo, which costars John Gilbert, doesn’t make too much sense as an adaptation of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy’s great novel about adultery. At least half of the plot–everything involving the character Levin–is pared away in Frances Marion and Lorna Moon’s script, and the direction, by Edmund Goulding, is more serviceable than inspired. The real reason you should see this, apart from Garbo’s imperishable radiance, is that Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Arnold Brostoff has composed a lovely original score for the film that members of the CSO will play while he conducts. If you’ve never seen a silent film with live orchestral accompaniment, it’s a galvanizing experience, perhaps the only one that can approximate the excitement of seeing such a film when it premiered. I haven’t seen the new print that will be shown on this occasion (the version with a happy ending–an alternative prepared at MGM after Tolstoy’s original ending proved too distressing to some audiences), and while I’ve heard Brostoff’s score, I haven’t been able to hear it in sync with the images. But I’ve little doubt that this presentation–which has already been given in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Moscow–will do things to your appreciation of both Garbo and silent film that will be indelible. Read more

Begun by the stylish Hong Kong director King Hu (who also did the production design), completed by producer Tsui Hark, and worked on intermittently by four other directors (Ann Hui, Ching Siu-tung, Lee Wai-man, and Kam Yeung-wah), this fast-paced action fantasy, set during the Ming dynasty, features an agile swordsman (Sam Hui) with a young female sidekick in male disguise (Cecilia Yip); Jackie Cheung costars (1990). (JR) Read more

Harmless nonsense from Lucas Reiner, the son of Carl and the younger brother of Rob (both of whom put in brief appearances). Three time travelers from the year 2176 (David Cassidy, Olivia d’Abo, and Geoff Hoyle) en route to 1776 accidentally find themselves in the year 1976, where they discover that they have only 12 hours to locate the documents, tools, and artifacts needed to save the nation’s future (in 2176 all history and memory have been wiped out by a magnetic war, and they need a copy of the U.S. Constitution to make a fresh start). A lot of this comes across like Earth Girls Are Easy without Julien Temple’s sense of style, but the mood is amiable enough, as long as one can put up with some hyperbolic mugging. Reiner directed this comedy from a script that he wrote with executive producer Roman Coppola; Leif Garrett, Jeff and Steve McDonald, and Liam O’Brien costar, and among the other celebrities who appear in cameos are Julie Brown, Tommy Chong, Devo, and Moon Zappa. (JR) Read more

Conducting us on a tour of her own life in Bavaria, Sonja (Lena Stolze) recounts how her prizewinning high school essay, Freedom in Europe, won her a free trip to Paris, and how her next attempt in an essay contest, My Hometown in the Third Reich, landed her in big trouble. Michael Verhoeven’s crowd-pleasing 1990 comedy begins hilariously and develops entertainingly: he makes jokey use of the heroine’s narration as a kind of ersatz TV reporting, and there’s a certain stylistic flair in the artificial moving backgrounds. But by the time this serious comedy about Germany’s Nazi past is over, a certain moral as well as stylistic monotony has set in; Verhoeven has something to say and an engaging way of saying it, but he winds up glutting us as well as himself on his discoveriesrather as if he were a fly that landed in a pot of honey and invited us to dive in as well. Before he hits overdrive, however, this is a good movie, and the cast is adept and sprightly. In German with subtitles. PG-13, 92 min. (JR) Read more