Jonathan Rosenbaum

If your idea of a good time is watching a lot of stupid, unpleasant people insult and brutalize one another, this is right up your alley. Bruce Willis is back as detective John McClane, an off-duty cop who once again turns into a civilian Rambo and single-handedly defeats a slew of terrorists. (This time they’re causing planes to crash at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., and making unwitty wisecracks before they shoot people.) This protofascist, violent, and gory nonsense was directed by the talented Renny Harlin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), but I wonder if even D.W. Griffith could have transcended a script as insulting, as mean-spirited, and as dehumanizing as the one concocted by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson. Bonnie Bedelia is again playing McClane’s wife, this time stuck in a plane that can’t land; others include William Atherton, Reginald Veljohnson, and Franco Nero. (JR) Read more

In 1990 the people who brought you Top GunTom Cruise, director Tony Scott, and producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimerfigured out a way to take more of your money, and it involved stock-car racing. With Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Nicole Kidman, and Cary Elwes; scripted by Robert Towne from a story he authored with Cruise. (JR) Read more

This ironically titled 1971 comedy-drama may be Ivan Passer’s best American film after Cutter’s Way. George Segal gives one of his finest performances as a former New York hairdresser with a $100-a-day heroin habit, and the remainder of the cast, which includes Karen Black, Paula Prentiss, Jay Fletcher, Hector Elizondo, and a pre-Mean Streets Robert De Niro, shines as well. David Scott Milton’s script makes the rather subversive suggestion that junkies’ lives are purposeful and even fulfilled in a way because they’re so highly motivateda provocative alternative to the usual wisdom on the subject. Check this one out. (JR) Read more

As writer-director-actor, Alan Alda isn’t remotely the equivalent of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Vincente Minnelli, or Spencer Tracy, but this is still an attempt to update Father of the Bride 40 years later. The setting is once again comfortable suburbia, and the father’s headaches concerning his daughter’s upcoming wedding are still the main focus, but there’s a world of difference between, say, the genuinely disturbing nightmare in the Minnelli movie and Alda’s embarrassing experiments with dry ice to simulate anxiety. The young couple this time is a New Age pair played by Molly Ringwald and Dylan Walsh; the father this time (Alda) is a building contractor from an Italian background married to a Jew (Madeline Kahn), which paves the way for some extremely broad ethnic caricatures, particularly when it comes to the wife’s brother (a slum landlord played by Joe Pesci) and his Mafia business associates (Burt Young and Anthony LaPaglia) who become involved with a building project the father is working on to pay for the big-scale wedding. To complicate matters, the crook charmingly acted by LaPaglia happens to be smitten with the bride-to-be’s sister (Ally Sheedy), a cop. This is a fairly decent comedy about contemporary mores if you aren’t looking for too much; with Catherine O’Hara, Julie Bovasso, Nicolas Coster, and Bibi Besch. Read more

If it matters, this is also known as Bop Girl Goes Calypso. Judy Tyler and Bobby Troup star; the musical groups include Lord Flea, the Goobers, the Cubanos, and the Titans. Ed James wrote the script; Howard Koch directednot the Howard Koch who scripted Casablanca and certainly not the director of The President’s Analyst or the 1978 Heaven Can Wait, as the Psychotronic Film Society claims in its publicity (1957). (JR) Read more

A sequel to 48 HRS. (1982) that reunites director Walter Hill with overzealous cop Nick Nolte and convict and reluctant ally Eddie Murphy in San Francisco, joining forces again to crack another case. The portraiture of macho biker lowlifes, the infernal atmospherics, and the violent action (with tons of shattered glass) all seem very characteristic of Hill, and it’s a minor pleasure to see Murphy slightly subdued. What seems more problematic is the virtual exaltation of Dirty Harry vigilantism, the storm trooper mentality and behavior on Nolte’s part that the film breezily takes for granted; if there’s any irony about it, it’s carefully designed to wash over the storm trooper types in the audience and not give offense to themonly to the rest of us. Larry Gross, who helped to script the original, collaborates here with John Fasano, Jeb Stuart, and Fred Braughton; the backup cast includes Brion James, Kevin Tighe, and Ed O’Ross. (JR) Read more

Chantal Akerman’s compendium of Jewish jokes, filmed in English in a vacant lot in Brooklyn, with a cast that includes Eszter Balint (Stranger Than Paradise), Judith Malina, and Max Brandt. It’s not as visually striking as most of Akerman’s work, and the jokes often don’t come across as funny, but it’s steeped in the brooding melancholia and the nocturnal, insomniac ambiance of Toute une nuit, one of her best films. Fans of Akerman’s work won’t want to miss this; its distinctive bittersweet taste lingers (1989). (JR) Read more

Although I haven’t read the Phillip K. Dick story (“I Can Remember It for You Wholesale”) that this is derived from, this loud, fast, bone-crunching SF action thriller has at least two of the virtues of much good SF in print: the creation of a foreign (if vaguely familiar) landscape and the alienated sensation of displacement. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker in the year 2084 who discovers that he’s been implanted with both false memories and a false identity; he has to make it to Mars–now colonized and controlled by greedy capitalists who create and abuse mutants through their control of the air–in order to clear things up. A worthy entry in the dystopian cycle of SF movies launched by Blade Runner (including The Terminator and Robocop), this seems less derivative than most of its predecessors while being just as accomplished as straight ahead story telling, with plenty of provocative satiric undertones and scenic details. Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) directs from a script by Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon (Dark Star), Gary Goldman, and Jon Povill; with Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Mel Johnson Jr., and Ronny Cox, not to mention 68 stunt people, some swell production design, and Rob Bottin’s gory makeup. Read more

Thankfully, the first commercial feature about AIDS doesn’t follow the obscene Reagan-Bush approach–saving all its tears for children, with the unmistakable implication that other AIDS victims don’t count. It follows a group of adult friends and acquaintances, including a few who work for television, who spend their vacations on Fire Island and who are all struck directly or indirectly by AIDS. Though it contains some useful information, this is not really a preachy film–it is simply a very human and compassionate one about a tragedy that affects us all. Written by Craig Lucas (author of the recent play Prelude to a Kiss) and directed by Norman Rene. With a good cast that includes Stephen Caffrey, Patrick Cassidy, Brian Cousins, Bruce Davison, John Dossett, Mark Lamos, Dermot Mulroney, Mary-Louise Parker, Michael Schoeffling, and Campbell Scott. (Music Box, Friday through Thursday, May 25 through 31) Read more

Prizewinning film and video shorts in four categories–experimental, animation, documentary, narrative. Because I was one of the five judges in this year’s competition, I’ve seen them all, and they’re certainly a far ranging bunch. The first-prize winners are Francois Miron’s visually intoxicating What Ignites Me, Extinguishes Me (experimental), Ian Fowler’s intriguing In Passing (animation, although the film features live action as well), Thomas Almada’s moving and powerful Chicago House: A Community Together (the first AIDS documentary I’ve seen that dares to be positive and upbeat), and Josef Steiff’s highly original and evocative narrative film Borders. The honorable mentions include two narrative films (James Chia-Min Liu’s A Scent of Incense and Steiff’s Catching Fire), two documentaries (Peter Kuttner and Kartemquin Films’ talking-head video Power to the People about the Black Panthers, and Wing Ko’s totally different Surfaces, a lyrical piece about skateboarding), and Susan Anderson’s witty and cerebral experimental film Lusitania, which recalls the work of Werner Schroeter. (Music Box, Friday and Saturday, May 18 and 19) Read more

Michael Niederman’s hour-long Chicago-made documentary about the 1968 murder trial and conviction of Dr. John Branion Jr. The film does an excellent job of persuading us that Branion was convicted of killing his wife on the basis of insubstantial, inconclusive, and even contradictory evidence, largely because of an inadequate defense and the various racial tensions that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King (Branion is black). The fact that Branion skipped bail and fled to Africa for many years has dissuaded various judges from retrying his case, in spite of the fact that virtually no one now believes that Branion was guilty as charged. Although this is much more simply made than, say, The Thin Blue Line, the facts and implications are equally disturbing, and Niederman does a fine job of juggling interviews (including one with Oscar Brown Jr., the first cousin of Branion’s murdered wife) with other elements in building his case. A Chicago premiere. (Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Belmont, Saturday, May 12, 8:00 and 9:15, 281-8788) Read more

Though very polite and British, this feature-length documentary about German filmmaker Wim Wenders offers the most penetrating insights and the best overall critique of his work that I have encountered anywhere. Paul Joyce, who directed it, has also made documentaries about Nicolas Roeg, David Cronenberg, Nagisa Oshima, and Dennis Hopper, and he knows the conventional format well enough to get the most out of it. There are good clips and interesting commentaries from the interviewed subjects, who include Wenders himself, cinematographer Robby Muller, filmmaker Sam Fuller, novelist Patricia Highsmith, musician Ry Cooder, actors Harry Dean Stanton, Peter Falk, and Hanns Zischler, and critic Kraft Wetzel, who is especially provocative. A must-see for Wenders fans, highly recommended for everyone else (1989). (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Thursday, May 17, 6:00, 443-3737) Read more

To the editors:

J. Rosenbaum’s laudatory review of Sweetie, Jane Campion’s first feature film (March 30 issue) contained a crucial and almost offensive blindspot. He describes Sweetie as a “compulsive flirt” writing that “even when she bathes her own father, she’s quite capable of dropping the soap into the tub as an excuse for groping him.” His easy “when she bathes her own father” makes it seem as if such an act were a normal part of any father/daughter relationship. Excuse me?

Sweetie’s “madness” and pain come from somewhere, are rooted in some past events or state that Jane Campion never shows us directly. I believe that the scene Mr. Rosenbaum so superficially describes is, in fact, the biggest hint: that Sweetie is a victim of incest. The scene is important because of how it is shown to us in relation to Kay (Sweetie’s sister). Kay witnesses this bath scene (we see it through her eyes); the next cut is of Kay lying on her bed, troubled and pensive, obviously deeply affected by what she just saw. It is the first time Kay sees this act of bathing but by the familiarity between both Gordon (the father) and Sweetie (indeed, by the very fact of her bathing him) we see — as Kay does — that this has happened before. Read more

A watchable and interesting personal documentary by James Klein, the codirector (with Julia Reichert) of Union Maids and Seeing Red, about the current lives and values of students at Kent State University and how these differ from those of Kent State students at the time of the killings 20 years ago. While none of the discoveries made by Klein are startling, the honesty and thoughtfulness of his investigation and his probing intelligence are apparent throughout. Not content with a simplistic contrast between the political commitments of the 60s and the preoccupations with business and self-interest of the present, he digs deeper and comes up with some interesting observations, including some ideas about how and why historical events are remembered or forgotten. He also finds that freshmen and sophomores at Kent State today tend to be more politically involved than juniors and seniors. A Chicago premiere. (Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday and Saturday, May 4 and 5, 7:00 and 9:00; Sunday, May 6, 5:30 and 7:30; and Monday through Thursday, May 7 through 10, 7:00 and 9:00; 281-4114) Read more

A soporific road movie about a runaway girl (Greer Robson) and a rebellious worker in flight from the law (Peter Phelps) who team up during the Depression, this New Zealand film, despite some picturesque locations, is essentially defeated by colorless acting and a mediocre script. Directed by Sam Pillsbury, with a screenplay by Grant Hinden Miller which adapts his owen novel, The Dream Monger. (JR) Read more