AMADEUS
****½
USA
In the 1820s, dying composer
Salieri claims to have murdered Mozart.
An intelligent, compelling, beautifully crafted biopic.
dir: Milos Forman
wr: Peter Shaffer
ph: Miroslav Ondricek
pd: Patrizia von Brandenstein
cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge,
Simon Callow, Jeffrey Jones
BEVERLY HILLS COP
***
USA
A Detroit cop who goes by his own rules investigates the murder of his
friend in L.A.
The quintessential 1980s fast-paced foul-mouthed action-comedy star
vehicle. A harmless 105 minutes of Eddie Murphy grinning and
wise-cracking his way through a familiar plot. You won't remember much of
it afterwards - if you happen to randomly catch that opening car chase on
TV, you'll probably think it's one of the "Lethal Weapon"
movies.
dir: Martin Brest
cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Lisa Eilbacher, Ronny
Cox, Stephen Elliott, Bronson Pinchot, Paul Reiser
BLOOD SIMPLE
***½
USA
A Texas saloon owner hires a
hitman to kill his wife and her lover.
The Coens' debut feature was this bloody, stylized low-budget neo-noir. Though occasionally heavy going, it has
its tense, viciously funny highlights.
dir: Joel Coen
wr: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
cast: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh
BROADWAY DANNY ROSE
****
USA
A small-time booking agent
falls in trouble with the Mafia.
Slight, but warm, witty and fast-moving.
wr/dir: Woody Allen
cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte
CARMEN
****
Italy
Francesco Rosi's gutsy,
remarkable adaptation of George Bizet's most enduring opera was one of
four variations on the story to be released within a two-year period. This
is probably the most highly regarded and the easiest to track down in a
video store. Presented in a half-realistic style on real locations, there
is an overload of gorgeousness in it; Rosi and regular collaborator
Pasqualino De Santis match the beauty of the music with the way they
photograph the majestic Andalusian landscape. The cast is made up of
peerless performers.
dir: Francesco Rosi
ph: Pasqualino De Santis
cast: Julia Migenes-Johnson, Plácido Domingo, Ruggero Raimondi,
Faith Esham, François Le Roux, John-Paul Bogart
GHOSTBUSTERS
**½
USA
Ghosts invade NYC and only a
trio of paranormal investigators can help.
The first and definitive comedy-horror-blockbuster from this particular
era. Only Murray's deadpan deliveries occasionally relieve the
tedium when you watch it these days. But they don't even fit in.
dir: Ivan Reitman
cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver,
Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, William Atherton
NAUSICAÄ
OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND
***½
Japan
Considering it arrived at international screens precisely around the time
that Walt Disney animation hit its nadir, cinemagoers hungry for an
imaginative cartoon would have done well to turn to Hayao Miyazaki's first
feature (which he adapted from his own . It's far from perfect, featuring
as it does some hilariously misguided 80s' J-pop synth scoring. But it's
conceived on a grand scale, with rich and wondrous imagery. Try however,
hard as you can, to avoid the Hollywood dub with its glitzy big-name
voices, in favour of the original Japanese one.
wr/dir: Hayao Miyazaki
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
***
UK
In a bleak totalitarian world
of the future, one of the workers entertains notions of subtle rebellion.
A valiant conceit that was never going to satisfy anyone. It does
warrant some praise however for its steady build-up of a gloom vaguely
reminiscent of Orwell's. The
production design is the star (in lieu of the mannered, miscast one
playing Winston).
dir: Michael Radford
ph: Roger Deakins
m: The Eurythmics
pd: Allan Cameron
cast: John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril
Cusack, Gregor Fisher, James Walker
|
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
*****
USA
Five decades in the lives of
four gangsters.
A long, sprawling, engrossing gangster epic. Often
under-appreciated thanks to a butchered-beyond-logic 147 minute version.
dir: Sergio Leone
ph: Tonino Delli Colli
m: Ennio Morricone
cast: Robert de Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Treat
Williams, Tuesday Weld, Burt Young, Danny Aiello, Joe Pesci
PARIS, TEXAS
****½
USA
A man missing for four years is
found in the desert, his memory gone.
An enigmatic, hypnotic meditation on family, loss and redemption.
Deliberately paced and ultimately heartbreaking.
dir: Wim Wenders
wr: Sam Shepard
m: Ry Cooder
cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean
Stockwell, Aurore Clément, Hunter Carson
REPO MAN
**½
USA
A punk kid starts working as a
repo man.
Cheap-looking, tongue-in-cheek noir fantasy.
dir: Alex Cox
cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Tracey Walter
ROMANCING THE STONE
***½
USA
Few things are as quintessentially 'eighties' as a
Michael-Douglas-Kathleen-Turner pairing. Like the others, this one makes for
solid dumb fun.
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
THE TERMINATOR
***½
USA
Ah-nold
Schwarzenegger plays the titular cyborg, who comes from a future
where the world has become a murky soundstage with giant, funny-looking
tanks squishing piles of human remains and just generally annihilating the
place. The Terminator is sent back in time to hunt down and kill poor old
Sarah Connor, with a photogenic concentration-camp survivor following
straight after to protect her. Delivering one clipped line after another,
Arnie sounds uncannily like a robot. Fancy make-up and light effects
ensure his face looks eerie more often than vacant. The picture is silly,
predictable fun, and it’s impossible not to get a kick out of things
like the future Governor of California smashing his fist through a
windshield or running his car through a police station.
dir: James Cameron
cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn,
Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Bess Motta, Earl Boen, Rick Rossovich
THIS IS SPINAL TAP
***½
USA
The chronicles of a British
heavy metal band.
A broad, hardly revelatory but generally funny mockumentary. Legendary now.
dir: Rob Reiner
wr: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner
cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob
Reiner, Fran Drescher, Billy Crystal, Anjelica Huston THE
TIMES OF HARVEY MILK
***½
USA
The Academy-Award-winner of its year, this documentary on the gay San
Francisco councillor (whose assassin coined the Twinkie
defence) is as much a portrait of the man himself as it is a loose essay
on the gay rights frontier in the US in the late 1970s. The swarm of
talking heads that take up the bulk of the screentime are notably lucid
and paint a vivid picture of a time when homosexuality was a political
statement and deep-seated ignorance bore a morbidly sunny exterior. If you
were to take out the cheesy synth score and tone down a couple of the
hairdos, you could still sell it as a contemporary summary of the gay
rights struggle. What once may have served as an almost militant call to
asserting your freedom, today plays like an eerie reminder of the
sluggishness of progress.
dir: Rob Epstein
WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?
****
Spain
Reportedly this is the picture that first brought Pedro Almodóvar to
international attention. It’s the first time he exhibits signs of
self-discipline, though unless you’ve giggled and squirmed through his
earlier, shaggier features, you wouldn’t know it. After all, this one
revolves around a pill-popping, glue-sniffing dirt poor matriarch, with a
14-year-old son who deals heroin and a younger one who seduces his
schoolmates’ fathers. She lives in a decrepit apartment block, with her
impotent
husband forging Hitler’s memoirs in his free time and her best friend
performing S&M favours for clients upstairs. The signs of real genius
beneath the quirk come from the sense of dignity and vitality awarded to
characters who would ordinarily come off as kinky nutjobs.
In some way
this
can be seen as a rough draft for “Volver”, where a somewhat younger and
randier Carmen Maura plays a dysfunctional mother who undergoes a bizarre
journey towards an unlikely state of grace.
wr/dir: Pedro Almodovar
cast: Carmen Maura, Angel de Andres Lopez, Chus Lampreave,
Veronica Forque, Kiti Manver, Juan Martinez, Gonzalo Suarez, Amparo
Soler Leal, Cecilia Roth |