THE AMERICAN
FRIEND
****
ANNIE HALL
*****
USA
The relationship between a
Jewish comedian and an aspiring nightclub singer.
A witty, inventive,
perceptive and now-iconic comedy about the more neurotic aspects of
romance. It's the quintessential Woody Allen package and arguably he never surpassed it. At the very least, it is
unquestionably his most quotable picture: "Hey, don't knock
masturbation - it's sex with someone I love." Genius.
dir: Woody Allen
cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane,
Paul Simon, Shelly Duvall
THE ASCENT
****
CEDDO
***½
Senegal
An African tribe tries to
preserve its culture against an Islamic onslaught.
The basic shoddiness of the acting, cutting and production
values undercuts the
potentially Shakespearean power of the story, though even in a diluted
form, it packs a punch.
dir: Ousmane Sembene
cast: Tabat Ndiaye, Moustapha Yade, Ismaila Diagne, Matoura Dia,
Omar Gueye
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
***½
USA
UFO's are spotted around
Indiana.
The less financially successful though otherwise more accomplished of the year's two landmark
space epics. A warmed-over 50s sci-fi throwback, like Lucas' saga, it's
also overlong, but less
trashy and more genuinely awe-inspiring.
dir: Steven Spielberg
cast: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon
EQUUS
***
ERASERHEAD
**½
Henry Spencer undergoes a
bizarre courtship with a disturbed young woman and ends up caring for
their mutant offspring.
Lynch's notorious first feature. A landmark in experimental
horror, it's nightmarish and undeniably unsettling but primarily
pretentious and vomit-inducing to little effective purpose.
dir: David Lynch
cast: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates
THE GOODBYE GIRL
***½
USA
A young actor and a divorcée
share an apartment and an unlikely friendship.
A well-acted, enjoyable comedy on matters of parenting. It's
often surprising in terms of the glaringly obvious plot developments it
chooses to avoid. One of the biggest surprises however, is that it isn't based on a stage
play.
dir: Herbert Ross
wr: Neil Simon
cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason, Quinn Cummings
THE
HILLS HAVE EYES
***½
USA
Wes Craven pits a family of sunny Republican-voters against one of mutant cannibals
in a remote stretch of Californian desert. It's only his second feature,
but he's already built up the perfect sensibility for this kind of thing.
It's cheap, it's gory, it's nerve-racking and sometimes funny in a very
nasty way.
wr/dir/ed: Wes Craven
cast: John Steadman, Janus Blythe, Arthur King, Russ Grieve,
Virginia Vincent, Susan Lanier, Dee Wallace, Robert Houston
MAN OF
MARBLE
****
MARTIN
****
USA
George A. Romero screws around with vampire folklore in this odd,
disquieting tale about a teenager with a blood-sucking fetish, who is sent
to live with a half-crazed grandfather bent on curing him of what he
believes is a family curse.
There's a strand of black humour running through the picture.
It kicks in from the beginning when the Eastern-European-accented grandpa
stares at his offspring and repeatedly hisses out "Nosferatu!"
And you do laugh, but for the first couple of reels you're still not sure
if the comedy is intentional or not. The score is misguided and poorly
recorded, the actors are catatonic and the hacksaw cutting reeks of
student filmmaking. But the script is rather exceptional and in due time
you do pick up on this. The picture isn't at all the cheap, exploitative
slasher flick you initially mistook it for being. On the contrary, it's a
mature, probing look at the point where superstition blurs with psychosis
and the kind of social context that allows for this to happen.
dir/ed: George A. Romero
wr: George A. Romero
ph: Michael Gornick
cast: John Amplas, Lincoln Maazel, Christine Forrest, Elayne
Nadeau, Tom Savini
PADRE
PADRONE
*****
|
PUMPING
IRON
**½
USA
The competitive bodybuilding exposé that introduced the future Governor
of California to a disbelieving world. His grotesque physique is one
thing, but the analogy he draws between flexing and perpetual orgasm is
quite another, and almost definitely the highlight of George Butler and
Robert Fiore's marketable, faintly condescending documentary.
dir: George Butler, Robert Fiore
THE RESCUERS
***
USA
A likable but unexceptional animated Disney feature. The best of the bad ones.
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
**½
USA
A Brooklyn youth loves dancing
in discos on Saturday nights.
A time capsule high on unintentional humour, it loses interest
after the first twenty minutes, so that what you're left with is a
painfully dated vehicle for a star who is far more convinced of his own
charisma than a contemporary viewer would be.
dir: John Badham
cast: John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller, Joseph Cali
SLAP SHOT
***
THE SPY WHO
LOVED ME
***
STAR WARS
***½
USA
A farm boy goes to fight evil
around galaxies.
The box-office phenomenon that
spawned all sorts of overpriced merchandise, geek cults and lame sequels, prequels and imitations. In
itself, it's a sci-fi throwback to pulpy cowboy features, with bland dialogue and
performances ranging from the embarrassing to the embarrassed. It makes
for solid dumb fun for the most part, but it far outstays its welcome and a lot of
it is surprisingly ugly to look at.
dir: George Lucas
cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec
Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Dave Prowse
STROSZEK
****
SUSPIRIA
***½
Italy
The most famous of Dario Argento's horrors is as much about a
Satan-possessed German dance academy as it is about his pungent, psychedelic
colour schemes and soundtrack. Charges of all-style-and-no-substance would
be missing the point.
The cast includes Joan Bennett in regal mode, a perpetually
sneering Alida Valli, as well as American import Jessica Harper in the
lead, who is amazingly wooden even within the campy slasher context. You
want her dead early on, especially since you can never get enough of the
ludicrous, wonderfully grotesque killings.
dir: Dario Argento
cast: Jessica Harper, Joan Bennett, Alida Valli, Udo Kier, Flavio
Bucci, Stefania Casini
THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE
***½
France/Spain
Buñuel's swansong is probably one of his more famous pictures, though
not necessarily one of his best. Not for the first time, he is
concentrating on the obscurity of human nature and desire as he tells the
story of a rich widower who becomes obsessed with his maid and is
subjected to much humiliation as a result. The picture is never less than fascinating
and none of the jokes fall flat, but it's hard to decipher the point
behind casting two actresses as the maid and interchanging them liberally.
You could come up with multiple theories but none of them adds enough
meaning for the gimmick to appear necessary.
dir: Luis Buñuel
cast: Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet, Angela Molina, Julien Bertheau,
Milena Vukotic
THREE
WOMEN
****½
USA
Just under 25 years before David Lynch delivered "Mulholland
Drive" - and just over 10 after Ingmar Begman conceived
"Persona" - Robert Altman came up with this confounding study of
a pair of eccentric women (the third one doesn't really get much screen
time) with fluid personalities.
The first hour is a small masterpiece of subtle, careful
introspection. Gangly, google-eyed Shelley Duvall plays a devoted disciple
of women's magazines, who is cheerfully oblivious to her status as pariah
among her neighbours and workmates. Duvall is that rare and wonderful
breed of actress that doesn't betray any awareness of being watched.
Numerous convictions and insecurities can register across her face and
figure without fuss. You have to wonder at times if she is at all
conscious of all the wonderfully intricate things she is projecting -
she's brilliant, but she's adorably casual about it. Sissy Spacek's
performance as the child-woman bizarrely enthralled with Duvall is more
studied, though no less perfect.
The first rupturing of the narrative occurs around the
one-hour mark, though it doesn't disrupt the flow of the picture. The
dynamic in the central relationship starts to deviate rather drastically
for reasons that aren't overtly explained but can be instinctually
grasped. Duvall and Spacek appear to have undergone a rapid personality
shift, but it doesn't detract from their characterisations. If anything, it adds
layers.
It's a shame therefore, when Altman decides at the last
minute that the film is actually about something he didn't remember to
hint at in the first two hours. He dumps in a portentous, purportedly
symbolic but essentially underbaked coda that plays like an anticipatory
parody of Lynch.
wr/dir: Robert Altman
cast: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert
Fortier, Ruth Nelson, John Cromwell, Sierra Pecheur, Craig Richard Nelson,
Maysie Hoy, Belita Moreno
|