FATAL ATTRACTION **/**** Image
B+ Sound B Extras A starring
Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Stuart Pankin
screenplay by James Dearden
directed by Adrian Lyne
INDECENT PROPOSAL ½/**** Image C+ Sound B Commentary C- starring Robert Redford, Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Oliver Platt
screenplay by Amy Holden Jones
directed by Adrian Lyne
by Walter Chaw
Adrian Lyne films live and die by the success of their moments of
poignant epiphany. It's why 9½ Weeks and Jacob's
Ladder work and Flashdance and Indecent
Proposal do not--why his obvious and constant pandering to
cultural stereotypes and softcore eroticism identifies him as the
premiere commercial director of his time (more so than even Ridley
Scott, who sometimes tries not to be a ponce), trafficking in easy
images and the kind of strained tableaux you'd
expect to see in a first-year photography classes (explanation as well
for why his films are almost invariably blockbusters): a pair of
Converse sneakers on a lonesome, foldout kitchen table; seagulls on a
fog-shrouded pier; long shots down cluttered, penthouse-suite
corridors; rubbing off to a slideshow1; dogs and bunnies... Adrian Lyne
flicks are about what happens when dicks slip into chicks, oops; it's
not possible to make fun of them, because how do you make fun of an
artifact that has no intrinsic weight, tells no compelling tale, and
imparts no particular insight?
***/**** starring Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Yuko Kotegawa screenplay by Kon Ichikawa, based on the novel by Junichiro Tanizaki directed by Kon Ichikawa
by Angelo Muredda "So
many things have happened in this house," middle child Sachiko (Yoshiko
Sakuma) tells her older sister Tsuruko (Keiko Kishi) near the end of The Makioka Sisters, an expansive period piece in miniature that could be churlishly
described as a film about the sorts of mundane things that happen in houses. In
settling down to adapt Junichiro Tanizaki's 500-page tome about prewar Japan in
a state of profound social and economic transition, glimpsed only through the
intersecting marital and financial crises of the titular siblings, writer-director Kon Ichikawa
inherited a difficult task, best appreciated by pausing to consider that there's
no English equivalent of George Eliot's Middlemarch (though Sam Mendes keeps trying). If historical
epics are hard to translate to a medium that doesn't allow for marginal notes
and flow charts to keep track of the minor players, the cloistered setting of
domestic ones are doubly tricky. Consider that Joe Wright's recent and thoroughly
rotten stab at Anna Karenina adapts the first part of the novel as a
self-reflexive essay about how difficult it is to dramatize tragedies that take
place in drawing rooms, and the rest as an utterly banal dramatization of a
tragedy set in drawing rooms. Ichikawa's solution, after his own flirtation
with hyper-theatricality in the first reel (which unveils the ensemble in a
series of spatially disconcerting close-ups, then medium shots establishing the siblings' relatives ages), is largely to mine the charismatic reserves of
his all-star cast.
KOYAANISQATSI (1983) ***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+ directed by Godfrey Reggio
POWAQQATSI (1988) **/**** Image A Sound A Extras B directed by Godfrey Reggio
NAQOYQATSI (2002) ½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B- written and directed by Godfrey Reggio
click any image to enlarge
by Bryant Frazer There's nothing quite
like Koyaanisqatsi. Some six or seven years in the making, the mid-1980s
arthouse favourite was a genuine screen spectacle that gave audiences a taste
of the avant-garde and elevated Philip Glass to the status of popular
musician. It's the 1970s brainchild of Godfrey Reggio, a progressive activist
and community organizer who lived in New Mexico and took a dim view of
industrialization in general and the information revolution in particular.
Accordingly, it exalts the natural landscape, recoils from the computer-chip
gridwork of the modern city, and wallows piteously in the human condition.
½*/**** Image
B Sound D
starring Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean, Kathryn Walker, Colleen Camp
screenplay by David Ambrose & Allan Scott and Jeffrey Ellis
directed by Simon Wincer
by Walter ChawD.A.R.Y.L.
is nigh unwatchable mid-Eighties fantasy dreck--toss this one on the
scrap pile with Condorman and Krull.
Its main character, a "Data Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform"
acronymistically nicknamed Daryl (Barret Oliver), is lost in an opening
helicopter chase like the dog in John Carpenter's The Thing
before the film proceeds to rip-off every other '80s sci-fi flick that
preceded it (Starman, E.T., The
Last Starfighter, War Games, Firefox,
and on and on). Daryl is discovered by a kindly elderly couple (the
requisite Superman steal), placed in the foster
care of preternaturally sunny Mr. & Mrs. Richardson
(Michael McKean and Mary Beth Hurt), and then goes on to be really good
at Atari, baseball, and picking up bad habits from his chubby,
sewer-mouthed little pal Turtle (Danny Corkill). Then the MIBs come
a-knockin', natch.
THE FOX AND THE HOUND
***½/**** Image C- Sound B Extras C uncredited screenplay, based on the novel by Daniel P. Mannix directed by Art Stevens, Ted Berman, Richard Rich
THE LITTLE MERMAID
*½/**** Image B- Sound C Extras A written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements
by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With The Fox and the Hound
and The Little Mermaid bookending an especially
turbulent decade for a studio mortally locked in a struggle to
reconcile its animation pedigree with its crass commercial instincts,
the former has come to be regarded in the Disney mythology as the Good
Friday to the latter's Easter Sunday. It's therefore fitting that the
two films they most emulate are 1942's Bambi and
1950's Cinderella, respectively, as the Forties
marked the last time the Mouse House was on the brink of foreclosure. (The
Fox and the Hound goes so far as to recycle cels from Bambi.)
Much like The Little Mermaid represented a somewhat
cynical reboot of the fairytale default, so, too, was Cinderella
a glorified salvage operation following the
money-/audience-hemorrhaging pro bono work Uncle Walt did on behalf of
FDR's Good Neighbor policy. Alas, the Good Friday and Easter Sunday
analogy applies to not just Disney's phoenix-like resurrection but also
the tonal and moral disparity between the two pictures: one is the sad
truth; the other is wishful thinking.
THE HOBBIT
**/**** Image B- Sound C
screenplay by Romeo Muller,
based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.
THE RETURN OF THE KING
**½/**** Image B- Sound C
screenplay by Romeo Muller,
based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.
by Walter Chaw There are a couple of ways to tackle screen adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel, The Hobbit. One is to do as Ralph Bakshi did with his 1978 animation The Lord of the Rings and present a sexualized and disturbing vision of Middle Earth; the other is to make a film for children that omits the more troubling elements of Tolkien (the racism, homoeroticism, religiosity), as with Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.'s two feature-length television specials: The Hobbit (1978) and The Return of the King (1979).
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965) Image A Sound B+ Extras C "It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown" (1992)
"It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (1966) Image A Sound A Extras C "It's Magic, Charlie Brown" (1981)
"A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" (1973) Image A Sound B Extras C "The Mayflower Voyagers" (1988)
by Jefferson Robbins I defy you to ingest the first minute of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (***½/****) and not yearn for the idealized childhood nobody ever had. It's not merely nostalgic, it's made of nostalgia. Traversing the quiet streets of your tiny snow-painted town, cracking the whip on a frozen pond, singing a Christmas carol that seems to have lived in your heart long before it was ever written--it's enough to turn a guy Republican. Then, the poison pill, in the very first line of dialogue: "I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus."
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol, Julian Glover
screenplay by Richard Maibum and Michael G. Wilson
directed by John Glen
by Ian Pugh Already something of a dinosaur in a season that saw Indiana Jones explode onto the cinematic landscape, For Your Eyes Only was the first 007 film that found Roger Moore looking too old to be a roguish, oversexed secret agent. Having played Bond four times previously over the course of eight years, it was readily apparent that Moore aged well, better than most--which clearly accounted for his longevity in the role. I have to wonder, then, if his suddenly-elderly appearance here is a reflection of the fact that he's so clearly out of his element. He found his footing in the part once the powers-that-be realized he could succeed where Connery had failed: The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker were overblown and more than a little silly, but they were legitimized in part by their star's sly grin and complete comfort in tackling the largest, most preposterous schemes possible--something to which the admirably analog Connery could never entirely adjust. For Your Eyes Only was intended to bring the series back to its down-and-dirty roots, but it only managed to remind that Moore was a square peg unfit for the round hole his predecessor occupied.
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max Von Sydow, Edward Fox
screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr.
directed by Irvin Kershner
by Ian Pugh After decades of legal wrangling, producer Kevin McClory had finally won the right to make an autonomous James Bond flick out of Ian Fleming's Thunderball, and 1983 seemed like the perfect time to capitalize on it, what with resident Bond Roger Moore's age catching up with him and the original series running out of steam as a consequence. A household name, the character of Bond has enough cultural heft and influence that he warrants interpretations from independent sources besides, and given that Sean Connery was lured out of a twelve-year retirement from the character--hence the title, Never Say Never Again--as well as the room for improvement left by the original Thunderball, the film had the potential to be more than just a cynical cash-in.
***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A starring Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson, John Vernon screenplay by Charles Chiodo & Stephen Chiodo directed by Stephen Chiodo
by Walter Chaw Boy, you know, I
really like the Chiodo Brothers' Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I can't
help it. I like it more than Night of the Creeps, more than Matinee, more
than any other film that would see 1950s creature-features
resurrected, be it through homage or farce or satire. I like it because it's
unapologetic, and because its high concept is broad enough that there are sufficient gags to peanut-butter across the entire runtime. I like, too, that they don't end
a scene without a groaner, meaning they're unerringly true to their stated
mission of erecting a shrine to Irvin S. Yeaworth's The Blob (truer, even, than the contemporaneous remake of The Blob) and doing it
with a relentlessly light touch. It's never scary (unless you're a true
coulrophobe), but it is often uproarious--like when one of the titular alien Bozos squirts angry Officer Mooney (John Vernon, just fantastic) with gag
flowers, to which Mooney, out of proportion to the affront, responds, "I oughta
shoot you right now." I also appreciated the moment when head girl Debbie
(Suzanne Snyder) asks why they're being shot with popcorn and her
boyfriend Mike (Grant Cramer) replies, "Popcorn? Because they're clowns!"
Well, no shit, Debbie, try to pay attention.
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