THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA
*****
Japan
Shohei Imamura won his first (belated) Palme d'or for this bawdy, sticky,
sharp and eager look into death and man's baser instincts, which he treats
with a focus, concentration and articulation they are rarely afforded.
Delightful and haunting.
wr/dir: Shohei Imamura
cast: Ken Ogata, Sumiko Sakamoto, Aki Takejo, Tonpei Hidari,
Seiji Kurasaki, Kaoru Shimamori, Ryutaro Tatsumi
THE BIG CHILL
***½
USA
Old friends gather for the
funeral of another.
A warm ensemble piece about the nostalgia-filtered
memories of a generation then going through a mid-life crisis. It's
generally more enjoyable than the many many rip-offs it spawned, even if
it is very self-centred.
dir: Lawrence Kasdan
wr: Lawrence Kasdan, Barbara Benedek
cast: Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, William Hurt, Mary Kay Place,
Tom Berenger, Jeff Goldblum, Meg Tilly, Don Galloway, JoBeth Williams
CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS
***½
France
A secretary sets out to clear
her boss of murder.
A very light, very entertaining Hitchcock knock-off. Truffaut's final film.
dir: François Truffaut
wr: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Jean Aurel
ph: Nestor Almendros
m: Georges Delerue
cast: Fanny Ardant, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Philippe
Laudenbach, Caroline Sihol, Philippe Morier-Genoud
THE DARK CRYSTAL
***
USA
A fantasy with a cast exclusively made up of Jim Henson creations. The
story is thin, but the creatures are engaging.
dir: Jim Henson, Frank Oz
voices of: Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw, Percy
Edwards, Barry Dennen
DARK
HABITS
***
Spain
A schizophrenic, gravely disturbed and thoroughly straight-faced farce,
where a nightclub singer hides out in an under-funded convent, where the
nuns show perfectly earnest compulsions towards cocaine, acid, lesbianism,
masturbation, self-harm, bodice-rippers and jungle animals. The
movie is unfocused and overlong, but even in his early days Almodóvar
could elevate camp to moments of exaltation.
dir: Pedro Almodóvar
cast: Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Marisa Paredes, Mari Carrillo,
Lina Canalejas, Manuel Zarzo, Carmen Maura, Chus Lampreave, Cecilia
Roth
EDUCATING RITA
***½
UK
An alcoholic professor tutors a
hairdresser eager to better herself.
Yet another variation on
Shaw's "Pygmalion". The leads are the only reason this one works
so well.
dir: Lewis Gilbert
wr: Willy Russell
cast: Michael Caine, Julie Walters, Michael Williams,
Maureen Lipman
THE EVIL DEAD
***
USA
Five youths visit a haunted
cabin in the woods.
A gruesome, ultra-low-budget gore-fest. First-time writer-director Sam
Raimi displays an efficiency that is reminiscent of
Ed Wood, but far more knowing. There are several effective patches that signal a talent in need of money
and a competent cast.
wr/dir: Sam Raimi
cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Hal
Delrich, Sarah York
THE FOURTH MAN
****½
Netherlands
A flashy, flamboyant comedy, where most of the jokes are about people
getting horribly violated in some way. The plot is largely made up of
contrivances and coincidences that you feel were overbaked with a sense of
knowingness and relish, so it's OK for you to enjoy them.
The hero is a gay writer who sleeps with an attractive young widow in an
effort to seduce her toned and tanned boyfriend. He is also prone to
blasphemous, surrealist visions, where blood oozes and spurts out of
unexpected places and he gets to do things like take off Jesus'
underpants. These lead him to suspect the widow of shady misdemeanors (and
premeditations). They also lend creepy connotations to the colour red,
which is in turn predominant in most shots and you get the sense this
wasn't by accident.
In his macabre wit and fear of cool, blonde women, the as yet untarnished
by Hollywood Paul Verhoeven recalls Hitchcock. In his gaudy colour palette
and relaxed depiction of fluid sexualities, he anticipates Almodovar. The
dialogue, by Gerard Soeteman, is perfectly pitched and devilishly clever.
dir: Paul Verhoeven
wr: Gerard Soeteman
ph: Jan De Bont
ed: Ine Schenkkan
cast: Jeroen Krabbé, Renee Soutendijk, Thom Hoffman, Dolf De Vries,
Geert De Jong, Hans Veerman
THE KING OF COMEDY
****
USA
An aspiring comedian kidnaps
his idol and ransoms him for a spot on his talk show.
A dark, biting pitch-black treatise on America's obsession with fame,
completely untypical of Scorsese. It isn't pleasant, but it is very clever
and still a tad undervalued.
dir: Martin Scorsese
wr: Paul Zimmerman
cast: Robert de Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard,
Diahnne Abbott
LOCAL HERO
***½
UK
An American executive is sent
to a Scottish village to buy the area for the building of a refinery.
A likable fantasy-tinged comedy. It seems to have impressed many
people in its day - more than seems appropriate - maybe quirky, low-key British
humour was still a new thing.
wr/dir: Bill Forsyth
cast: Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson,
Peter Capaldi, Fulton Mackay, Jenny Seagrove
NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN
***
USA
A Bond movie made by people other than the ones who ordinarily make them.
It restores Sean Connery to his most famous role and is entertaining
generally, if a little half-assed.
dir: Irvin Kershner
cast: Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max von Sydow, Barbara
Carrera, Kim Basinger, Bernie Casey, Alec McCowen, Edward Fox
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RISKY BUSINESS
**
USA
A teenager becomes a pimp.
A tedious teen comedy that sadly became a big hit and made a star out
of someone who certain people wish never became one.
dir: Paul Brickman
cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Joe Pantoliano
RUMBLE FISH
*½
USA
A Tulsa teenager gets involved
in local violence.
A self-indulgent, self-serving gangster picture with mood piece
pretensions.
dir: Francis Ford Coppola
cast: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, DIane Lane, Dennis Hopper
THE RIGHT STUFF
***½
USA
Test pilot experiments lead to
Project Mercury and America's first astronauts.
Aside from a drawn-out and costly opening hour concentrating on test
pilot acrobatics, a warm and mature account of the early years of the
space program, rich with humour and character.
dir: Philip Kaufman
cast: Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid,
Fred Ward, Barbara Hershey, Kim Stanley, Veronica Cartwright
SANS SOLEIL
***½
France
A series of images
set in far-flung locations, punctuated
by the letters of a world traveller in voiceover. It isn't always
sufferable but it has pretty bits and interesting
ideas.
dir: Chris Marker
SILKWOOD
***
USA
A restless, unfocused melodrama based on the plight of Karen Silkwood, the
Oklahoma factory worker who realised the way her bosses expose their
workers to plutonium isn’t terribly considerate. Meryl Streep plays her
as a slut, who is separated from her children, makes good against odds,
coughs and dies. She doesn’t rest. At least one part of her face is
twitching at every moment. In the way the picture ends up so completely
structured around her, she serves as a latter-day Susan Hayward. And her
performance here is very reminiscent of Hayward’s style: all surface
tics and affectations without a sign of common humanity to tie them down
to a character. The first half of the film works relatively well in spite
of this. Director Mike Nichols goes to a significant effort to establish a
community around Karen Silkwood that is familiar but likable. You’ve
heard their jokes before, but they're cute so you still laugh. In the very
least, they distract you from Streep’s Oscar-baiting. As the plot
becomes more and more centred around Silkwood’s solitary plight however,
all the little character sketches that were the best part of the movie
begin to feel more like detours. In time the pace speeds up abruptly - you
get the feeling Nichols realised he’s 90 minutes into a movie and the
story’s barely beginning. The final reels turn into something altogether
different, more airless and based-on-a-true-story than the first few.
dir: Mike Nichols
wr: Nora Ephron, Alice Arlen
cast: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson, Diana
Scarwid, Fred Ward, Ron Silver
STRANGER THAN PARADISE
****½
USA
A young small-time con-man
living in New York is left to look after his cousin arriving from Hungary.
There is a veneer of amateurishness to this picture, what with its
loudly low budget and bleached-out monochrome. But Jarmusch treats it as a
weapon and not a liability, and he makes it terribly charming. He creates a stark, unique and paradoxically engaging world of bored lives and
awkward silences. It's his second feature - the first is still difficult
to track down - and you can already sense the low-key existentialist sensibility that
would mark his entire career in full force.
wr/dir/ed: Jim Jarmusch
ph: Tom DiCillo
cast: John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson, Cecilia
Stark
TENDER
MERCIES
***½
USA
Restraint and understatement can prove heavy-handed and oppressive when
underlined as aggressively as they are at times in Bruce Beresford's arty
portrayal of a formerly abusive and alcoholic country star's plight
towards redemption. But for the most part, the approach pays off.
dir: Bruce Beresford
cast: Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Betty Buckley, Wilford Brimley,
Ellen Barkin, Allan Hubbard
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
***½
USA
The temperamental relationship
of an eccentric mother and daughter.
An entertaining soap opera, with solid characterizations.
dir: James L. Brooks
wr: James L. Brooks, Larry McMurtry
cast: Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Debra Winger,
Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow, Danny de Vito
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
**½
USA
Why fiddle with one of the greatest comedies put on film? So much is
copied from the original that the only purpose in remaking it seems to
have been to bring garish colours to it. The opening joke is the only new
one that works. The actors were obviously having a good time - presumably until they saw what
they'd done - but the entire project seems to have served only to point out
the finesse of Lubitsch and his own inimitable cast.
dir: Alan Johnson
cast: Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Tim Matheson, Charles
Durning, José Ferrer, Christopher Lloyd, James Haake
ZELIG
****½
USA
Woody Allen's ambitious, ingenious and innovative
mockumentary treatise on the life of a human chameleon,
who gained notoriety during the 1920s. It's a pleasure to watch him pull
off a concept, which, although undoubtedly - and strikingly - original, is
also an unwieldy one at its core. The recreation of newsreel footage of the Jazz Age
looks and feels remarkably authentic.
dir: Woody Allen
cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Stephanie Farrow,
Ellen Garrison
voice of: Patrick Horgan
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