ALIENS
**½
USA
In this James Cameron-helmed sequel to Ridley Scott's "Alien"
(1979), Sigourney 'Ripley' Weaver is brought back to
Earth, then sent back to a distant planet to explore the potential
destruction of human colonies by aliens.
The symbol of a humanity that has managed to master
inter-galactic travel
without evolving beyond 80s' hairstyling, a heavily weaponed Weaver
demands of a mother alien: "Get away
from her, you bitch!" and ensures the film's longevity. For as long
as the tendency exists in cinema studies faculties to inflate glimpses of feminism in film beyond
their context, this title will not go out of print.
In terms of impact and
craftsmanship however, its inflated gloss cannot begin to compare to the
original's tight pace and stark, chilling atmosphere.
wr/dir: James Cameron
cast: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Hehn, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser,
Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein
AN AMERICAN TAIL
**
USA
A second-rate cartoon feature (the decade was full of them). Wanna-be
Disney. Produced by Steven Spielberg.
THE ASSAULT
***½
Netherlands
Towards the end of WWII, a
child witnesses the execution of his innocent family by the Nazis.
A gripping, affecting account of a man struggling to come to terms
with a traumatic past.
dir: Fons Rademakers
cast: Derek de Lint, Mark Van Uchelen, Monique Van de Ven, John
Kraaykamp, Hub Van Der Lubbe
BETTY BLUE
**½
France
A handyman with a literary
talent falls for a self-destructive waitress.
An intermittently entertaining character study, with a notorious amount of
unnecessary nudity and explicit sex scenes.
wr/dir: Jean-Jacques Beineix
ph: Jean-François Robin
cast: Béatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Consuelo de Haviland
BLUE VELVET
****
USA
Possibly David Lynch's quintessential work - not necessarily
his greatest but the one his reputation largely rests on. A cultural phenomenon
of its time, it’s ostensibly an exposé of the seamy underside that
thrives in a sleepy, American Everytown where the hairstyles stem from the
1980s, but the lawns and picket fences strongly evoke a TV version of the
1950s.
Baby-faced Kyle MacLachlan returns home after his father
suffers a heart attack, and in his free time, he gets involved in a web of murder and sexual perversion.
"You're either a detective or a pervert," announces golden-haired,
shiny-skinned Laura Dern - the girl who would make a perfect [house]wife,
but doesn't excite him quite as intensely as tainted, mistreated Isabella
Rossellini.
The characters are thoroughly hollow, and this isn't a
miscalculation on Lynch's part. His movie isn't at all about human beings,
it's about walking self-parodies. It's about the dark things that hide
behind glossy veneers - not of suburban households, but of sensational
Hollywood schlock. It isn't about the erotically thrilling in MacLachlan's
lurid adventures, it's about the grotesquely, sadistically comical in
them. Hence the heightened dramatics of the Bernard Herrman-derived score;
the impossibly wholesome sheen of Laura Dern; the aggressively purple lust
of Isabella Rossellini; the incongruously harebrained dream vision of a
flock of robins showering the world in light and love; and finally, the
visibly mechanical robin pecking at a worm on the window sill in the
confounding, rigidly sunny finale.
wr/dir: David Lynch
ph: Frederick Elmes
m: Angelo Badalamenti
cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura
Dern, Hope Lange, Dean Stockwell
CARAVAGGIO
***
A highly stylised biopic of
the mysterious 17th century Italian master, told entirely in London-studio-set vignettes.
Jarman seems to be trying to emulate
Caravaggio's visual style - in this he is not entirely successful, but
this isn't a problem since the
picture is still great to look at. More worrying is his tendency to linger on
the majority of his shots a touch
longer than necessary, often to the point where the picture veers from
evocative to self-satisfied.
wr/dir: Derek Jarman
ph: Gabriel Beristain
cast: Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, Tilda Swinton, Garry Cooper,
Spencer Leigh, Michael Gough
DOWN BY LAW
***½
USA
A meandering, gently amusing, unmistakably Jim Jarmuschian comedy, where A DJ and a pimp, both
wrongfully accused, escape from jail with an energetic Italian, whose
English is limited.
There is a certain charm to Jarmusch's insistence on building a picture
around scenes which would normally be dismissed as banal or superfluous to
the narrative, even if at times you wish he left in some of the fun bits
of the plot.
wr/dir: Jim Jarmusch
ph: Robby Müller
cast: Tom Waits, John Lurie, Roberto Benigni, Ellen Barkin,
Nicoletta Braschi
FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF
***
USA
A much-loved above-average teen-comedy.
THE FLY
***½
USA
In this David Cronenberg remake of a cheesy 50s Vincent Price chiller,
Jeff Goldblum plays the scientist working on a new
invention, who accidentally transfers the genetic pattern of a fly into his
own.
Cronenberg struggles with Hollywood's popcorn-oriented impositions and his own seemingly
uncontrollable fetish for gore, but he infuses what was likely OK'd as a
gruesome, brainless cash enterprise with unlikely human drama. That and
lots of gore.
dir: David Cronenberg
cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, David Cronenberg
GINGER
AND FRED
***½
Italy/France/West Germany
Part grotesque satire of television and contemporary urban decay, part
poignant screen reunion between Fellini and his beloved Marcello
Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina. They play a dance team moderately famous
for imitating Astaire and Rogers in the 1940s, and reuniting for the first
time since then for a TV special swimming with circus-friendly faces.
Fellini's bile at the TV industry isn't very grounded, since
the show he ridicules is really just an aggressive, unrealistic update of
the kitsch that Masina and Mastroianni's characters would have taken part
in 40 years earlier (which is itself held in vague, fuzzy nostalgia).
Where he used to focus on the joy and camaraderie of these things, here he
emphasises the bitterness and vulgarity.
All the same, much of the movie is made up of predictably
lovely sequences and bears an organic warmth that was generally absent
from Fellini's late career output.
dir: Federico Fellini
ph: Tonino Delli Colli, Ennio Guarneri
m: Ennio Morricone
cast: Giulietta Masina, Marcello Mastroianni, Franco Fabrizi,
Frederick von Ledenberg, Martin Blau, Toto Mignone, Augusto Poderosi
THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE
**½
USA
Second-rate Disney. It feels more like a cheap rip-off of Disney, though
it's not necessarily the worst thing to come out of the studio this
decade.
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HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
*****
USA
Woody Allen probably made a couple
of better films but none of this scope and none with this multitude of
brilliantly observed characters - like the hypochondriac who jumps into denial when his brain scans reveal a menacing
growth, or the failed actress who asks her sister for a $2,000 loan and
casually reasons she hasn't touched drugs in a year. Everybody's timing is
flawless, New York is at its warmest and most romantic and the music -
ranging from Cole Porter tunes to Puccini - intoxicating.
wr/dir: Woody Allen
ph: Carlo Di Palma
ed: Susan E. Morse
cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Michael Caine, Barbara Hershey, Maureen O'Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Max von Sydow,
Carrie Fisher, Julie Kavner, Sam Waterston
HEARTBURN
***½
USA
Two people enter into marriage
for the second time and find bliss temporary.
Marriage breakdown dissected in vignettes, with a strained - if
admirable - attempt at freshness under Hollywood impositions. Some of the
comedy though is unexpectedly sharp and inventive.
dir: Mike Nichols
wr: Nora Ephron
cast: Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, Maureen Stapleton,
Stockard Channing, Richard Masur, Catherine O'Hara, Miloš Forman, Kevin
Spacey, Mercedes Ruehl
HEY BABU RIBA
***½
Yugoslavia
Four men recall being in love
with the same girl as teenagers in 50s Yugoslavia.
Sensitive, nostalgic and enjoyable memories of adolescence.
wr/dir: Jovan Acin
cast: Gala Videnovic, Dragan Bjelogrlic, Goran Radakovic, Nebojsa
Bakocevic, Srdjan Todorovic
JEAN DE FLORETTE
***½
France
In rural France in the 20s, an
aging farmer and his simple-minded nephew secretly sabotage their new
neighbours' water supply.
A detailed, patient and powerful tragedy, though not as consistently
compelling as its sequel: the same year's "Manon des sources".
dir: Claude Berri
cast: Yves Montand, Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil,
Elisabeth Depardieu
MANHUNTER
**
USA
An FBI agent thinks like a
killer in order to track down a serial one.
Cinema's introduction to Hannibal Lecter plays like an amateurish self-parody,
with inept direction and risible performances. Remade as "Red
Dragon" (2002), which wasn't much of an improvement.
dir: Michael Mann
cast: William Peterson, Dennis Farina, Kim Greist, Joan Allen,
Brian Cox, Stephen Lang, Tom Noonan
MANON DES SOURCES
****½
France
Jean de Florette's beautiful
but reclusive daughter is bent on revenge.
Berry found the ideal way to structure his Pagnol adaptation in two
separate parts, allowing for two spectacular emotional pay-offs. Arguably
this second one is even more effective.
dir: Claude Berri
wr: Claude Berri, Gérard Brach
cast: Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart
MATADOR
***
Spain
In the opening five minutes of his film, Almodóvar provides you with
about a dozen decapitations, graphic masturbation and an act of
necrophilia. The plot eventually turns out to concern a confused Catholic teenager (played by a
young Antonio Banderas) with a guilt complex and a mysterious, out-of-body
connection to a pair of death-obsessed lovers - his bullfighting
instructor and his public defender. Almodóvar's fifth feature, it's
technically more
polished and assured than his earlier efforts, though parts of it lack
energy.
wr/dir: Pedro Almodóvar
cast: Assumpta Serna, Nacho Martínez, Antonio Banderas, Eusebio
Poncela, Eva Cobo, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Carmen Maura
PLATOON
***½
USA
The experiences of a young
soldier in the Vietnam War.
As far as films about war's corruption of
innocence and humanity in general, this one ranks among the more gruelling
- partly since it tackles all the ugliest bit of the human condition and
partly because Oliver Stone has no respect for levity.
wr/dir: Oliver Stone
cast: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Williem Dafoe, Forest
Whitaker, Francesco Quinn
RIVER'S EDGE
*
USA
Teenagers react passively to
the discovery that a friend has raped and murdered another.
A potentially harrowing premise is wasted through pathetic preaching,
wooden dialogue and embarrassing performances. Lacking any hint of insight or
plausible character development, it's an ugly but fitting example of
Hollywood's conception of arty-gritty issue movie.
dir: Tim Hunter
cast: Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck,
Dennis Hopper
THE SACRIFICE
***
France/Sweden
A writer dreams of a nuclear
war and attempts to strike a deal with God.
A slow parable of death, made up of lengthy, brooding
silences, interminable shots and flashes of earnest, elliptical dialogue.
All of it is reportedly artful and full of spiritual connotations but also
maybe just plodding and
self-involved. Tarkovsky borrowed Bergman's cast and
crew (and locations) for this one. It proved to be his final film.
wr/dir: Andrei Tarkovsky
cast: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Valerie Mairesse, Allan
Edwall
SALVADOR
***½
USA
The experiences of real-life
journalist in El Salvador in the early 80s.
Not subtle but compelling and quite powerful political
melodrama torn from headlines.
dir: Oliver Stone
wr: Oliver Stone, Richard Boyle
cast: James Woods, James Belushi, Michael Murphy, John
Savage
STAND BY ME
***½
USA
People more responsive to cuddly Americana and childhood memoirs than
yours truly tend to carry a morbidly intimate attachment to this cuddly
Stephen King adaptation. A lot of it is enjoyable enough. The four
school-aged leads are wonderfully natural.
TOP GUN
*½
USA
A smooth, sleek, tedious star vehicle. People today enjoy it by trying
to uncover homoerotic undercurrents.
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