Brilliant, savage comedy. Not really a parody of Christ or the gospels so much as a parody of organized religion and religious fanatacism. A little heavy-handed in this respect at the end. [886]
TERRY GILLIAM, TERRY JONES, JOHN CLEESE, GRAHAM CHAPMAN, ERIC IDLE, MICHAEL PALIN, CAROL CLEVELAND
This is Allen's homage to true love, a paean to the sweetness and innocense of youth, and a wistful memoir of self-defeat. Mariel Hemingway is Tracey, a teenager in love with Isaac Davis (Allen), who tutors her in the magnificent history and culture of Manhattan. When Isaac begins to wonder if the relationship is right for him, Tracey's emotions run the gamut from crushing disappointment to resentment, to the a nascent self-confidence that allows her to finally make a break with him--- just as Isaac begins to wonder if he did the right thing. Hemingway is a real find. Her heart breaks on screen, in that stuttery, breath-taking way it does in real life for people her age. Keaton is wonderful as Allen's new romantic interest, klutzy and charming and shy, a characterization she recycled in Annie Hall for an Oscar. The city itself is a central character, filmed richly in black and white, triumphant in architecture and affluence, and beset by the chaos of traffic and cultural diversity. Most of Allen's films are good or very good, but this is one of Allen's two or three really great films (the others being Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors). [461]
MICHAEL MURPHY, ANNE BYRNE
Somewhat self-indulgent Chaplin with characteristic existential moments. [448]
Not one of Chaplin's best, but still an entertaining attack on technology, conformism. [422]
Good drama about seamstress at Southern U.S. sweatshop helping unionize the place, falling for union organizer, who moves on. Field is sexy and authentic: rare achievement. [411]
One of the most wonderful, compact little films ever made, by one of the most under-rated Hollywood stars, Buster Keaton, Mr. Stoneface. Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a locomotive engineer, who is in love with Annabelle Lee. When the civil war begins, she expects her hero to march off and join, and he tries, but the army turns him down because the trains are necessary to the war effort. When his beloved locomotive, the General, is stolen by Yankee sabatoeurs, he gets his chance to contribute to the war effort. He pursues the train, and Annabelle- who has been kidnapped-- and rescues both, in some of the most hair-raising stunts ever committed to film. The General is an elegant, tightly focussed, marvelous piece of work. [380]
BUSTER KEATON, MARION MACK, CHARLES SMITH, JOE KEATON
A strange black obelisk appears one day before a tribe of primitive cavemen. Through some mysterious process, the obelisk stimulates imagination or creativity, and man invents tools. Millions of years later, the same obelisk is found on the moon. Scientists interpret it as evidence of intelligent life forms. When a signal is intercepted, they trace it to a particular star system and arrange an expedition to visit the source. The rest of the movie traces the experiences of the crew as they encounter hazards both personal and technological, on their way to... what? Enlightenment? The ending is deliberately opaque, allusive, even baffling. The problem is, how do you conceive of an unknown ecstatic revelation when, by your own definition, is something way, way beyond present human comprehension. The only solution was Kubrick's solution: poetry and special effects. Sometimes slow-moving and ponderous, but visually stunning and richly suggestive. This is one of the most optimistic films of its era, with it's faith in human progress to eventually achieve some kind of amazing spiritual consciousness, using the obelisk as a device, perhaps to suggest that the human race is also capable of devolving into primitive barbarians again, without the stimulus of something outside ourselves. The ending is controversial. You could make a good case for the argument that Kubrick's reach exceeded his grasp. When queried about it, Kubrick seemed to retreat into some kind of deliberate obscurantism, as if that justified the experiment. The truth is, I don't think it worked. But it is also true that 2001 is still a terrific film. [264]
Serious drama about a near meltdown at a nuclear reactor incredibly released about the time of Three Mile Island. Unfortunately, the plot contrivances require rather extensive suspensions of disbelief, in astonishing coincidences and convenient plot twists leading to big, splashy ending. [172]
Musical based on the Isherwood period pieces about decadent Berlin in the 1930's. Peter York plays the alter ego, struggling with his ambiguous sexuality (which is not ambiguous in "I Am a Camera" or "Sally Bowles", the source material) while dealing with a number of eccentric and ambivalent social climbers. Wonderful atmospherics and occasionally illuminating. I like Fosse and I like his direction, and this film does a better job than most of explaining the attraction of Nazism to a demoralized German population. York is weak, and Minnelli's performances are right out of Las Vegas, but the rest of the cast--especially Joel Grey-- is sparkling, and the music is kept in context: as performances in the Kit-Kat club, or a beer garden. Note: in 2021-08-04, I watched the movie "The Damned", ("La caduta degli dei"). It was immediately obvious where Bob Fosse had lifted many elements from, particularly the eccentric link of archaic eroticism (the black lingerie), rigid German homeo-eroticism, and Nazi culture. You can't miss it. In addition, one of the actors, Helmut Griem, is in both movies, playing a similar character. [156]
Moderately funny comedy about a real life heist. [145]
From book by Jerzy Kosinski. Funny satire of American life, television, with Sellers as an isolated gardener who only knows reality through television, is suddenly evicted from virtual Eden, and cast out into the world. Surprisingly, important people meet him and he becomes a powerful advisor through his naive, twisted, good-natured wisdom. Does stretch the device at times, but Sellers is good, and Maclaine does an entertaining turn as a sophisticate who falls in love with him (She: What do you want to do? He: I like to watch.). [113]
Brilliant but erratic film, suffers from undue self-absorption near the end, as if the fact that it thought it was important was enough to be important. Sheen plays a military officer assigned to locate a Colonel Kurtz, an army intelligence agent who has organized his own army in the interior and is conducting campaigns of unprecedented savagery against the enemy. Dramatic incidents on the journey highlight the corruptibility of man and the insanity of war. Somewhere lurking in the mess is the idea that evil can only be confronted with evil, but it appears that Coppola realized that the simple articulation of this idea doesn't necessarily involve a huge epiphany. The problem is that the Sheen character, the focus of the audience's interest in Kurtz, doesn't tell us what he thinks when it really matters. And Kurtz, mumbling vaguely allusive semi-poetic phrases, doesn't illuminate very much either. The filming itself, in Thailand, became a major story after Sheen suffered a heart-attack and the sets were plagued with natural disasters. [103]
Brilliant movie about a lone juror who tries to convince the rest of the jury that a teenaged boy might be innocent of his father's murder inspite of compelling evidence. Twelve superb actors in a well-crafted, honest story. Lee J. Cobb has never been better. [100]
Mildly scary mythology about haunted house in the town of Amityville, Long Island. Surprisingly good cast is wasted, especially Steiger. [99]
Nah. Don't remember much about it. Zany, I suppose. [27]
All Contents Copyright © Bill Van Dyk 1985 All Rights Reserved
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