ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN
***½
USA
How Woodward and Bernstein came
to uncover the Watergate scandal.
Reportedly truthful and certainly convincing but dry and not always involving.
dir: Alan J. Pakula
wr: William Goldman
cast: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards Jnr,
Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jack Warden, Jane Alexander
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
***½
USA
Gang members attack a police station that has no contact to the outside world.
"We're running out of time," observes one mannequin doll.
"I was born out of time," our jaded anti-hero quips back. And
later, there's heart beats on the soundtrack. It's that kind of movie,
with the kind of idiocy and ineptitude that carries its own charm.
wr/dir/m: John Carpenter
cast: Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, Martin West
BAROCCO
***
BOUND FOR
GLORY
****½
CARRIE
***½
DONA FLOR
AND HER TWO HUSBANDS
***
F FOR FAKE
****
France/Iran/West Germany
In a sense, it's not surprising that Welles chose the documentary
format to stage his most elaborate meditation on fakery. "Everything
you will see in the next hour will be true," he announces early on.
He's lying, but you're only barely comfortable to conclude that in
retrospect.
dir: Orson Welles
wr: Orson Welles, Oja Palinkas
ph: Gary Graver, Christian Odasso
m: Michel Legrand
THE FRONT
**½
USA
A restaurant cashier becomes a
front for black-listed writers in the McCarthy era.
A message melodrama that jams every obvious point down the throat -
generally more than once - without fully exploring what either of them
essentially stands for. The 50s
setting far more resembles the 70s.
dir: Martin Ritt
cast: Woody Allen, Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Michael Murphy,
Andrea Marcovicci
HARLAN
COUNTY U.S.A.
*****
USA
Part-time sound recordist Barbara Kopple went to live among the coal
miners on strike in Harlan, Kentucky in 1972 and over the next few years directed,
produced and did her own sound recording on one of the canonical documentaries.
In tracking the ardour, the wrenching and the violence of the coal miners'
battle - it's a war more than a battle - she is neither objective nor
impartial (could you be when you're being shot at?). But in many ways she
manages to take herself out of the set-up, so that her presence behind the
camera feels less like a filter and more like a channel. Continually
referring to similar and reportedly much bloodier struggles in the 1930s,
she locates the union workers' then-contemporary strife within a tragic,
unyielding historical cycle, which she accepts as something infinitely
denser and more forbidding than hers or any individual perspective could
be. In this sense, the coal miners - and their wives (who at least match
and often surpass them in terms of zeal and backbone) - take on a
collective, timeless image of the downtrodden but unquenchable
fighter-worker. But in portraying them this way Kopple doesn't water them
down or turn them into anonymously noble, spreadable stand-ins for the
grand cause. They are each permitted their individual
faces and voices and afforded their own temperaments and dignities,
which brings across all the more vividly the intimate impact and urgency
of their war.
dir: Barbara Kopple
ph: Kevin Keating, Hart Perry
ed: Nancy Baker
IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES
***
France/Japan
A former prostitute begins a
mostly sexual affair with the master of the house where she is employed.
The most highly acclaimed hardcore porn film of all time. Many have
found artistic merit among the explicit and pretty constant screwing going
on, and certainly the photography is accomplished.
wr/dir: Nagisa Oshima
ph: Hideo Ito
cast: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda
THE INNOCENT
****½
KINGS OF THE
ROAD
***
MARATHON MAN
***½
THE MARQUISE
OF O
***½
MIKEY AND
NICKY
**½
NETWORK
***½
USA
After discovering he is to be
fired, a veteran newsman announces his suicide on live television and
ratings go through the roof.
A dark, hysterical attack on the media, more concerned with
making a point than with accurate or convincing representation.
dir: Sidney Lumet
cast: Peter Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Robert
Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, Beatrice Straight
|
1900
***½
Italy
After Marlon Brando caused a
sensation sodomising Maria Schneider in "Last Tango in Paris" (1972), Bernardo Bertolucci was able
to secure the many millions needed to produce this communist fantasia. A
poorly dubbed, rambling political allegory, it revolves around the rise
and fall of the extended family of an aristocrat and that of his head
farmer against the backdrop of some 70 years of Italian history.
The aristocrat has a grandson
who grows up to be a cowardly Robert de Niro, while his worker has one who
grows up to be a heroic Gerard Depardieu. The latter is so unremittingly
noble that he gets to deliver his own Tom-Joad-style sermon: "Where
is the party, you ask? It is right here where you stand! The party is no
one by you! And me! And Enzo, and Eugenia! And the Azzalis across the
river!..." and on he goes, accompanied by a rousing Ennio Morricone
score.
The villain, on the other hand, is a perpetually sneering fascist played
by Donald Sutherland. From the way he slants his eyebrows and wrinkles his
nostrils, you can instantly tell he's the Evil one - and this is long
before he is called on to rape a child and then to crush that child's
skull. It's a savage scene, and Bertolucci makes sure to sprinkle the
picture with several others that are equally as savage so that it doesn't
stick out too much.
He is nothing if not ambitious. He conceives his folly
on the scale of a 19th century historical novel, pitches it in the mode of
grand opera and executes it in a manner that requires five hours worth of
celulloid. And despite his utter disregard of basic tact and subtlety - or
perhaps because of it - he gets a hold over your attention span and
doesn't lose his grip for a minute. This is partly because he frames each
shot so masterfully, and partly because he instils a sense of dread in
you early on, and trains you to anticipate something unmissably horrific
to happen at any minute.
dir: Bernardo
Bertolucci
wr: Franco Arcalli, Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe Bertolucci
ph: Vittorio Storaro
m: Ennio Morricone
pd: Maria Paola Maino, Gianni Quaranta
cast: Robert de Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Donald
Sutherland, Laura Betti, Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Alida Valli,
Stefania Sandrelli
OBSESSION
**
THE OMEN
***
USA
Earnest but fast-moving
dumb fun - presumably part of the Exorcist-rip-off craze - with a
memorably chilling decapitation scene.
dir: Richard Donner
cast: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw, Leo
McKern, Harvey Stevens, Patrick Troughton
ROBIN AND MARIAN
***½
USA
Robin Hood returns to Sherwood
in his middle age.
An odd, bitter and squalid re-imagining of the old legend which ends up
becoming unexpectedly affecting.
dir: Richard Lester
cast: Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Ronnie
Barker, Richard Harris
ROCKY
*½
USA
A dumb Philadelphia boxer fights
against all odds.
A spectacularly and bafflingly successful sleeper. Overstretched,
dazed, shamelessly overblown. It has a distinct straight-to-video
sensibility - the type where you laugh in all the wrong places. You won't
be shocked to find Stallone wrote it in three days.
dir: John G. Avildsen
cast: Sylvester Stallone, Burgess Meredith, Talia Shire, Burt Young
SEVEN BEAUTIES
**½
Italy
A small-time crook is sent to a
concentration camp, determined to survive at all costs.
A fragmented, muddled and largely repellent study of a fascinating
creature.
wr/dir: Lina Wertmüller
cast: Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, Shirley Stoler
THE SHOOTIST
***½
USA
At the turn of the century, a
legendary gunfighter arrives in a small town to die in peace.
Wayne's final film, this was a mature and unusually contemplative but uneven
Western, far less revisionist than was the style at the time.
dir: Don Siegel
cast: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, James Stewart, Ron Howard
SILENT MOVIE
***
USA
A movie producer decides that a
silent movie would make for a great comeback.
And the mime gets the only word of dialogue in the picture. An
energetic but uneven and far too often dull gimmick.
dir: Mel Brooks
cast: Mel Brooks, Marty Feldman, Dom de Luise, Bernadette Peters,
Sid Caesar, Anne Bancroft, Paul Newman, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza
Minnelli, Marcel Marceau
SMALL CHANGE
***½
THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT, PART 2
***½
USA
A sequel to the 1974 hit compilation, this time not limited to musical numbers
- it also includes comedy sketches. Not quite up to
its predecessor's standard but consistently entertaining all the same.
dir: Gene Kelly
TAXI DRIVER
****
USA
A Vietnam vet,
anti-social, insomniac NYC taxi driver protects a 12-year-old prostitute.
Bleak, vivid, disturbing and resonant.
dir: Martin Scorsese
wr: Paul Schrader
cast: Robert de Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey
Keitel, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks
THE TENANT
****
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