ALIEN
****
USA
Astronauts inadvertently allow
for an alien being to come aboard their ship and start to systematically
destroy them.
A fast-moving, tense and spectacular update of "The Thing"
(1951) - but don't tell anyone it's a rip-off - in a gloomy, intimidating outer space setting.
dir: Ridley Scott
ph: Derek Vanlint
pd: Michael Seymour
cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt,
Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm
ALL
THAT JAZZ
****
USA
A mixture of kitsch and inspired kitsch, Bob Fosse's personal, musical,
inevitably self-indulgent 8½ works better than most other Fellini
rip-offs precisely because he doesn't stop where any rational filmmaker
ought to.
dir: Bob Fosse
cast: Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer,
Cliff Gorman, Ben Vereen, Erzsebet Foldi, Michael Tolan, Max Wright
ANGI VERA
***½
Hungary
A naïve nursing aide becomes a
Communist worker.
A paranoid, slightly underdeveloped account of
political indoctrination, though the lead performance keeps you absorbed.
dir: Pál Gábor
cast: Veronika Papp, Erszi Pásztor, Eva Szabó, Tamás Dunai,
László Horváth
APOCALYPSE NOW
****
USA
A disillusioned Vietnam captain
is sent to kill a colonel gone insane and into the jungle.
A pretentious and overblown, though regularly brilliant Vietnam war epic,
worshipped by many (maybe a bit too many for comfort).
dir: Francis Coppola
ph: Vittorio Storaro
cast: Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest,
Marlon Brando, Sam Bottoms, Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne
BEING THERE
***
USA
An intellectually challenged
gardener is mistaken for a genius.
A strange, slow, potentially funny but overstretched satire.
dir: Hal Ashby
cast: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas,
Jack Warden, Richard Baseheart
BREAKING AWAY
***½
USA
In Bloomington, Indiana, an
idealistic high school graduate dreams of becoming an Italian champion
bike racer.
Rites of passage in a small town, popular in its day and generally
enjoyable, if slight.
dir: Peter Yates
cast: Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern,
Jackie Earle Haley, Barbara Barrie, Paul Dooley, Robyn Douglass
THE CHINA SYNDROME
***½
USA
Authorities attempt to cover up
a potential nuclear disaster.
A compelling, convincing attack on television and nuclear power.
dir: James Bridges
cast: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas,
Scott Brady, Peter Donat
CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI
*****
Italy/France
A lengthy, slow-burning adaptation of writer/painter Carlo Levi's
memoirs, covering the two years he spends in exile in an impoverished,
isolated Italian village in the 1930s. Here the residents remain steeped
in outdated traditions and superstitions, and they turn to New York in
their dreams and aspirations - at times it seems closer than their own
government. With Levi's
guidance however, they learn to demand proper health care from their
Fascist mayor. But beyond a
committed Marxist, Rosi is an artist with a remarkable visual sense. The
picture is one masterful, painterly composition after another, and a shot
that consists of 20-seconds worth of trees can come off as the most moving
thing ever. In a stark, arid landscape, Rosi knows how to bring out a
timeless, breathtaking beauty.
dir: Francesco Rosi
wr: Francesco Rosi, Tonino Guerra, Raffaele La
Capria
ph: Pasqualino De Santis
m: Piero Piccioni
cast: Gian Maria Volonté, Paolo Bonacelli, Alain
Cuny, Lea Massari, Irene Papas, François Simon, Luigi Infantino,
Francesco Callari, Antonio Allocca, Enzo Vitale
THE
IN-LAWS
***½
USA
A flamboyant man of international intrigue and a nebbishy dentist are
forced together in an elaborately contrived farce that barely comes out
alive from its first act, but gradually picks up and is positively buzzing
by the time Richard Libertini turns up as a phenomenally disturbed South
American dictator.
dir: Arthur Hiller
cast: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Richard Libertini, Nancy
Dussault, Penny Peyser, Arlene Golonka, Michael Lembeck, Paul L. Smith,
Carmine Caridi
KRAMER VS. KRAMER
****
USA
After his wife leaves, an
advertising executive must look after his young son.
Intelligent, incisive and affecting divorce drama, with excellent
performances.
wr/dir: Robert Benton
cast: Dustin Hoffman, Justin Henry, Meryl Streep,
Jane Alexander
LOVE
ON THE RUN
*****
France
The misadventures of Antoine Doinel are resolved as a kind of giddy
melodrama. Clips from the previous four films make up his memories.
Maybe because the middle chapters were a tad under-nourished
or maybe because the resolution is kept low-key and the ever-self-involved
Doinel isn't forced to endure any kind of warmed-over epiphany, people
lost their patience and the final of the series has the lowest
reputation of the five. But in truth, it's the densest, most honest and
subtly heartbreaking since The 400 Blows.
With the weathered casualty of a parent who has learned to
swallow the pain and make the best of constant disappointment, Truffaut
excavates and re-buries Doinel's erratic demons. He looks into the roots
of his alter-ego's instability as a husband and father, and though he
doesn't by any means justify it, he comes to terms with it.
He does finally allow Doinel a happy reunion of sorts, with a
kiss and a pop tune. But seconds before the credits roll, there is a flash
of an uncharacteristically joyous moment from Antoine's soon to be stunted
childhood. It's enough to bring across the life-altering hurt of the
myriad flippantly tossed aside but nevertheless searing tragedies that
have compromised this 'happy' ending.
dir: François Truffaut
wr: François Truffaut, Marie-France Pisier, Jean Aurel,
Suzanne Schiffman
ph: Nestor Almendros
m: Georges Delerue
cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie-France Pisier, Claude Jade, Dorothée,
Dani, Daniel Mesguich, Julien Bertheau
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MAD MAX
***½
Australia
In the near-future, a biker gang threatens the family of a cop who plays
by his own rules.
Initially no one was supportive of this picture on home soil, but then it raked in
international box office, which in turn established it as a national
treasure. Though clearly derived from Hollywood genre conventions (there's
even an elaborate orchestral score that particularly jars with the no-budget
aesthetic) it also bears several arty pretensions: George Miller has
spoken of editing it in the style of silent cinema, and later
experimenting with the sound. Technically this approach should have gotten
rid of a few of the clunkier dialogue scenes, but there are several
brilliant, memorable sequences.
dir: George Miller
wr: George Miller, James McCausland
ed: Tony Paterson, Clifford Hayes
cast: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne,
Steve Bisley, Roger Ward, Vincent Gil, Tim Burns
MANHATTAN
****½
USA
A neurotic comedy writer
carries on an affair with NYC and a seventeen-year-old girl.
One of Allen's most celebrated films and one of his best. A loving and
bittersweet ode to New York, shot in radiant monochrome and scored with
evocative Gershwin tunes.
dir: Woody Allen
wr: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
ph: Gordon Willis
m: George Gershwin
cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel
Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Michael Murphy
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
****
Germany
When her husband is reported
dead at the Russian Front as WWII comes to an end, a penniless German
woman acquires career ambitions.
Fassbinder's most accessible and widely distributed work. A
layered, cynical,
compelling portrait of a coldly resilient woman, with a tempestuous
lead and symbolic parallels to its post-war West-German setting.
dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
wr: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Marthesheimer, Pia Frohlich
ph: Michael Ballhaus
cast: Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan Desny, Gottfried
John, Gisela Uhlen
MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN
***½
UK
A Jesus-look-alike is
continually mistaken for the Messiah.
The bravery is to be applauded, as are several chunks of the comedy.
Unfortunately, it often gets tired and confused. It would have worked much
better at about half the length.
dir: Terry Jones
cast: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael
Palin, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
MOONRAKER
**½
UK
Bond but boring.
THE
MUPPET MOVIE
***
USA
Kermit & co. are so irresistibly cute in their first movie showcase
that you laugh uncomfortably even at the gags that don't really come off
(a hefty portion) and are absolutely on the floor with the ones that do
(most of them involving Miss Piggy).
dir: James Frawley
cast: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Dave Goelz,
Charles Durning, Austin Pendleton, Scott Walker, Mel Brooks, Orson Welles,
Carol Kane, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor,
Edgar Bergen, Milton Berle, James Coburn, Dom De Luise, Elliott Gould, Bob
Hope, Telly Savalas, Paul Williams
STALKER
****
USSR
Andrei Tarkovsky's second unconventional foray into science fiction
concerns a mysterious 'Zone' in an unnamed small country, which scores of
villagers have entered, never to be seen again. A superstition persists
however, that the Zone contains an inner chamber referred to as the Room,
which holds the power to grant the committed pilgrim's deepest wish. So a
trained 'Stalker' can make a living by dodging the heavily armed patrol
that guards the Zone (though is too terrified to enter it) and serve as
tour guide to the faithful and sceptical alike as long as they are eager
to brave the threat of doom in their committed search of things like
inspiration and Truth.
This is a dense, often oblique, sometimes awkward but never
less than fascinating meditation on matters of what the viewer is
encouraged to independently interpret as either faith or superstition.
It's easy enough to infer that Tarkovsky himself is certain that God
exists and the fault behind everything that is wrong with your life lies
with You and not with Him. But he gives you ample room to participate in
his dialectic even as you doubt his convictions. He ends the piece on an
atypically trite note, but along the way, he offers up regularly
entrancing imagery as well as enlightening pointers into some of the
darker, more desperate impulses lodged in humanity's core.
dir: Andrei Tarkovsky
wr: Arkadi Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Andrei Tarkovsky
ph: Aleksandr Knyazhinsky
cast: Aleksandr Kajdanovsky, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Nikolai
Grinko, Alisa Friendlich, Natasha Abramova
THE TIN DRUM
****
Germany
A three-year-old boy stops
growing as the Nazis take over.
A weird, darkly comic and profoundly disturbing account of the
Nazi era.
dir: Volker Schlöndorff
cast: David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela
Winkler, Daniel Olbrychski, Katharina Thalbach, Charles Aznavour
VENGEANCE
IS MINE
***½
Japan
Shohei Imamura explores the mind and history of a real-life serial
killer, ostensibly in search of a tangible motive or explanation behind
his behaviour, though wisely in the end, choosing not to narrow it down to
a single, comfortable one. At his clumsiest, Imamura does insist that a
scarring incident with unsubtle Freudian overtones in the [anti-]hero's
childhood be considered closely. It's entirely possible however that
Imamura doesn't want you to concentrate on the personal, Freudian aspects
of said incident, rather than its banal nature - the fact that it's the
kind of scar bound to be common throught a population coming out maimed
and thwarted from a brutal war. This reading would fit much more
comfortably within the overarching presentation of the killer as chiefly a
concrete, more honest manifestation of the unwholesome impulses bubbling
beneath the most arbitrary of disguises in the outwardly booming post-war
Japanese society.
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