DOG DAY AFTERNOON
****½
USA
A pair of incompetent robbers
hold up a Brooklyn bank.
An absorbing, gripping recreation of a real-life melodrama.
dir: Sidney Lumet
wr: Frank Pierson
cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Sully Boyar,
James Broderick, Chris Sarandon
FAREWELL, MY LOVELY
*****
USA
A tight, atmospheric remake of the 1944 noir based Raymond
Chandler's novel, this time with a wise, weathered and delightful Robert
Mitchum as Marlowe and the exceptionally sexy Charlotte Rampling as the
femme fatale.
One of the rare great Technicolor noirs, it retains the original's time and
setting and evokes the period with no visible strain but much
gorgeousness, as well as a strange, subtle and rather sweet sense of
melancholy.
dir: Dick Richards
wr: David Zelag Goodman
ph: John A. Alonzo
m: David Shire
pd: Dean Tavoularis
cast: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland,
Sylvia Miles
GREY
GARDENS
***½
USA
The Maysles were playing right into the Commies' hands with this portrait
of the Edith Bouvier Beales - Jackie Kennedy's maladjusted aunt and
cousin. You want to watch Western values and capitalism festering and
decomposing? Behold. Try and look away.
dir: David and Albert Maysles
INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS
***½
France
Yet another variation on the "Postman
Always Rings Twice" plot, this time with impotence, nudity and a
load of twists piled on. It has its ludicrous aspects, certainly, but it's
handled with style - the opening sections are particularly tight: in just
over ten minutes, the young lovers' plans to get rid of the rich old
bastard are well underway. The majority of the shots are structured to
showcase Romy Schneider's face and figure - though her hair is bleached platinum blonde, she is,
as ever, tantalising. (During
filming, Schneider and Rod Steiger read their lines in English, while the
rest of the cast delivered them in French, so the picture exists in both
English and French versions, each of them dubbed accordingly.)
wr/dir: Claude Chabrol
cast: Romy Schneider, Rod Steiger, François Maistre, Paolo
Giusti, François Perrot
JAWS
****
USA
A shark terrorizes the Long
Island coast.
An intense, phenomenally successful thriller, even if, once finally
glimpsed, the monster is a little underwhelming.
dir: Steven Spielberg
wr: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
ph: Bill Butler
ed: Verna Fields
m: John Williams
cast: Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss
LOVE
AND DEATH
****½
USA
Possibly the best thing to come out of Woody Allen's daffy, pre-Annie Hall
phase. It's a bit like if the Marx Brothers in their prime took on the
past couple of centuries of earnest Russian literature (along with the
past couple of decades of earnest Ingmar Bergman). As the village coward
who is forced to fight Napoleon's army, Allen is terrific (though
technically he does nothing here he hadn't already done and wouldn't go on
to do many times over), but as the woman he loves, Diane Keaton is
downright revelatory. Seen here years before she adopted and grew
suffocated under her neurotic affectations, she is fresh, energetic and
completely adorable for her unflappable commitment to the picture's
lunacy.
wr/dir: Woody Allen
cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton,
Alfred Lutter, Harold Gould, George Birt, Tony Jay, Jessica Harper
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
***½
USA
In 1880s India, a duo of
British ex-soldiers convince a remote tribe one is a god.
Though somewhat lacking in production values, for the most
part this Kipling-adapted adventure is highly entertaining, with a playful
sense of humour as its chief strength. As the comedy turns
scarce towards the end however, the picture grows tedious.
dir: John Huston
ph: Oswald Morris
cast: Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer
THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH
**½
USA
Three nicely drawn but completely dull Winnie the Pooh shorts sold
together as a Disney feature classic.
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL
***
UK
A broad and beloved parody of the King Arthur legends, with several hilarious
jokes as well as several more that barely raise a chuckle or simply fall flat.
dir: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry
Jones, Michael Palin
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NASHVILLE
****½
USA
The paths of 24 characters
intertwine during a Nashville political rule.
Altman's famously sprawling, kaleidoscopic multi-character melodrama with touches
of satire and social comment. It's a rich, daunting achievement that
really makes you wish sound recording techniques were more advanced in the
mid-70s.
dir: Robert Altman
wr: Joan Tewkesbury
ph: Paul Lohmann
ed: Sidney Levin, Dennis M. Hill
cast: Michael Murphy, Ned Beatty, Henry Gibson, Ronee Blakley,
Keith Carradine, Lily Tomlin, Geraldine Chaplin, Barbara Harris, Allen
Garfield, Karen Black, Gwen Welles, Barbara Baxley, David Hayward, Keenan
Wynn, Shelley Duvall, Christina Raines, Allan Nicholls, Timothy Brown,
Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, David Arkin, David Peel, Robert Doqui, Elliott
Gould, Julie Christie
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
****½
USA
A rebellious rapist is
transferred to a mental institution.
A detailed, compelling and generally extraordinary account of an
individual up against a repressive and bureaucratic society, with three
indelible performances.
dir: Milos Forman
wr: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman
ph: Haskell Wexler, William A. Fraker, Bill Butler
cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Will Sampson, Brad
Dourif, William Redfield, Christopher Lloyd, Danny De Vito
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
****½
Australia
In 1900, three school girls and
a teacher disappear during a picnic.
Arguably the greatest of all Australian films, this ambiguous, unsettling
puzzle without a solution prods matters of budding sexuality and its
repression with great subtlety.
dir: Peter Weir
wr: Cliff Green
ph: Russell Boyd
m: Bruce Smeaton
cast: Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse, Jacki Weaver,
Vivean Gray, Kirsty Child
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
***½
USA
In the middle of a storm, an
innocent couple stumbles upon the castle of a transvestite transsexual.
A B-movie parody with a huge and devoted cult following. Very much an
acquired taste.
dir: Jim Sharman
cast: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien,
Patricia Quinn
SHAMPOO
**½
USA
A hairdresser shares a unique
relationship with his customers on election eve 1968.
An uninspired sex comedy, often given way too much credit because of its
political backdrop.
dir: Hal Ashby
cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack
Warden, Carrie Fisher
THE STEPFORD WIVES
***½
USA
A photographer moves to
Stepford, Connecticutt and she is struck by the local wives' uniformly
bland, submissive nature.
A drawn-out adaptation of a notorious best-seller feeding off the more
paranoid aspects of women's lib. It misses grand opportunities for satire
and social commentary, but entertains consistently and proves
effective as a thriller.
dir: Bryan Forbes
cast: Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson, Nanette
Newman, Tina Louise, Carol Rossen
THE
STORY OF ADÈLE H.
*****
France
The story of Adèle Hugo is riddled with the clichés of
melodrama, yet Truffaut's adaptation of it ranks among cinema's sharpest.
He builds a portrait of a ferocious, unwieldy mind novelistic in
its detail and complexity. In an eerily auspicious screen debut, Isabelle
Adjani is bewitching.
dir: François Truffaut
wr: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Frances Vernor
Guille, Jean Gruault
ph: Nestor Almendros
cast: Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, Sylvia Marriott,
Joseph Blatchley, Ivry Gitlis, Louise Bourdet, Cecil De Sausmarez, Ruben
Dorey
THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR
***½
USA
A Hitchcockian, rarely plausible
but generally entertaining thriller with political and psychological
pretensions as well as a fashionably pessimistic ending. Robert Redford
was never more photogenic than he is here but he isn't very convincing as
a bookish low-level CIA employee targeted by some corrupt heavyweights.
Faye Dunaway plays an even less convincing hostage he makes horny when he
analyses her gloomy photography. There's also a funky, confounding score
lifted straight out of a 70s porno, perhaps to compensate for the lack of
comic relief and counteract the earnest nature of everything else that
goes on. On the plus side, the picture - which was quite popular in its
day and remains relatively well-regarded - does boast a compulsive,
larger-than-life conspiracy plot, from which Sydney Pollack does
consistently manage to wring out tension.
dir: Sydney Pollack
cast: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von
Sydow, John Houseman, Addison Powell
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