For Spring 2006
Gawain and the Green Knight (1991, 76 min, NR) *** - Directed by John Michael Phillips, starring Jason Durr, Malcolm Storry, and Valerie Gogan. It was made for BBC television—but don’t let that fool you. Hardly anyone talks in this hypnotically low-key and subdued adaptation of the 14th century poem. The land is hushed and largely empty as King Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gawain (Durr), rides out to keep a bargain he made with a mysterious stranger (Storry). The bargain begins when fresh-faced and boyish Gawain takes off the man’s huge head, at which point the man picks his head back up and insists that Gawain keeps his word. Gawain keeps his word and travels to a lonely and eerie castle the following Christmas. The locations are lush, desolate, and green, and framed like tapestries.
Home Alone (1990, 103 min, PG) ** - Directed by Chris Columbus, starring Macauley Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, and Catherine O’Hare. I remember the huge splash “Home Alone” made when it first came out. Months after being on top and winning the acclaim of everyone, I finally saw it, and my reaction was “that’s it?” A boy (Culkin) is forgotten at home by his parents on a Christmas vacation and finds himself pitted against a pair of bumbling burglars (Pesci and Stern, suffering numerous wounds to the crotch). The result is a middle-of-the-road nothing movie and, as if to add insult to injury, young star Culkin was unable to live up to his young promise.
The Jazz Singer (1927, 88 min, B&W, NR) **1/2 – starring Al Jolson. An important movie, even if it’s not a great one, and something of a necessary chore for any well-educated moviegoer. “You ain’t heard nothing yet!” Al Jolson chimes after a musical number, making those the first words spoken in a talking picture, and forever damning silent films to the status of a primitive anomaly in the public’s perception. Still, “The Jazz Singer” has life to it, even if it’s chief importance is historical. Jolson, as the son of a Jewish cantor who gradually sells his heritage for success, has undeniable screen presence, even if his movements and makeup sometimes make him downright creepy. And then when we see him after he’s sold everything of himself, he’s in blackface, which is just so unintentionally unnerving I don’t know where to begin. The film begins silently and has only one real dialogue scene, in which he yammers to his mom about what he’s doing in the big city. Most of the dialogue is ad-libbed, evidence by the way mom does nothing but coo and say “oh.”
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 80 min, B&W, NR) ***1/2 – Directed by Don Siegel, starring Frank McCarthy and Dana Wynter. Straightforward B movie nightmare that uses a covert alien invasion to unspokenly crystallize so many of the fears of 1950s America: Communism, McCarthyism, mindless conformity. Siegal is as lean and mean as his eventual protégé, Clint Eastwood, shooting in crisp black-and-white, with looming low angles and efficient storytelling. People are replaced with alien pods because, let’s face it, wouldn’t we all be happier freed from our pesky human emotions and placated by consumer products? As the SoCal man who begins to figure out what’s going on, Frank McCarthy (no relation to Joe) chews some scenery, which is all right by me. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” isn’t so much a great movie artistically as it is an enormously important and influential one (the converse can be said of a film like, say, “The Great Escape,” which displays a supreme mastery of filmmaking techniques, but which cannot be described as especially influential because it broke ground in neither subject matter or artistry).
More Reviews in a Hurry for Spring 2006.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986, 94 min, PG13) ** - Directed by Frank Oz, starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and Levi Stubbs. A great idea for a movie that, with a few exceptions, struck me as dead in the water. A slow nebbish (Moranis) brings home a peculiar flytrap that learns to speak and eat people (voiced by Stubbs), and combines these two practices in bellowing demands of “Feed me!” There’s a girl (Ellen Greene), of course, and the movie’s moments of brilliance involve her abusive dentist boyfriend and his craziest patient. They’re played, respectively, by Steve Martin and Bill Murray. Murray is addicted to pain and Martin has no compunctions about distributing it. Martin’s song, in which he describes his masochistic leanings and throws in the line “I wasn’t fit for the priesthood,” climaxes gloriously with him hopping off his motorcycle and watching it park by himself. But the rest of the movie, with all its “doo-wop” songs, is oddly inert.
Miss Congeniality (2000, 109 min, PG13) *1/2 – Directed by Donald Petrie, starring Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, and William Shatner. Tedious and unfunny TV situation comedy dragged pointlessly out to feature length—no, wait, let me rephrase, it’s the scene where the ugly girl takes off her glasses and pulls down her hair, revealing a beauty—it’s that scene dragged out to a whole movie! A tomboy learns the value of being a real girl. In this case, it’s a grungy FBI agent (Bullock) going undercover in a beauty pageant. Is it anti-feminist, pro-women, or what? Frankly, I don’t care, I just want to laugh more than once a half-hour. The gags are obvious and tired, although the presence of Michael Caine, William Shatner, and the always affable and often misused Bullock throws a few rays of light. Shatner gets the movie’s best line; “Miss Congeniality” mistakes falling down a lot for humor, even though it’s not, but Shatner’s tossed off remark when Bullock falls down for the 15th time is priceless. Incidentally, in case you care, the best falling down gag I’ve ever seen is in “Dr. Strangelove” when George C. Scott does an unscripted and accidental collapse in mid-rant and keeps spewing vitriol until he’s back on his feet.
The Presidio (1988, 97 min, R) *1/2 – Directed by Peter Hyams, starring Sean Connery, Mark Harmon, and Meg Ryan. Ferociously blah “two-cops-who-don’t-get-along” movie that’s little more than a glorified episode of some two-season cop TV show. One guy is the security chief at a military base (Connery) and the other guy is a former subordinate, now a cop who plays by his own rules (Harmon). Harmon falls for Connery’s daughter. Initially the two men don’t get along. Then they do and they shoot some guys in a factory. Whoop-dee-doo.
The Punisher (1989, 92 min, R) *1/2 – Directed by Mark Goldblatt, starring Dolph Lundgren, Louis Gossett Jr., and Jeroen Krabbe. A sluggish ooze through a delirium of badness, improbably written by Boaz Yakin, who went on to write and direct the infinitely better “Fresh.” Everyone involved in “The Punisher” seems to have spoken a different language and no one brought a translator. No one seems all that interested in the movie anyway. The result is a low-budget haze of stunted plot points and sporadic spurts of violence. The only possible explanation is that the movie hopes to reflect the mood of the vengeful and heavily armed Punisher (Lundgren), who seems perpetually stoned or drunk over the loss of his family; it’s a wonder he can work himself enough out of his stupor to follow the web of intrigue that’s got him trapped.