If you're merely looking for a whodunit, The Obsessed will disappoint you. There's no suspense in it. What I think is funny about this movie is the way that Gregory Black (David Farrar) and Elizabeth the housekeeper (Geraldine Fitzgerald) are always yelling at each other when they're not having sex. At least I THINK they have sex; maybe they yell ea…
This untidy, overlong potboiler didn't do much for Jon Voight's career; in fact, except for 1976's End of the Game, he vanished from the big screen until his Oscar-winning performance in 1978's Coming Home. Frederick Forsyth wrote the best-selling novel (about a 1963 Nazi conspiracy based in Hamburg) that inspired it and Ronald (The Poseidon Adventu…
Slow-moving coming-of-age comedy on the rich kid-poor kid friendship theme.
Let me preface this by mentioning that House of Games, Things Change, and Homicide are among my favorite movies of 1987–91. And then there's…Oleanna. When I was in my first year at UCD, I was stuck with a professor who couldn't stand being a professor. And I couldn't stand him. He wrote nice things on my papers and he spoke well of me to others, but whenever we w…
Filmgoers today mainly remember Jackie Coogan for two roles: 1921's The Kid with Charlie Chaplin and 1964's Uncle Fester on The Addams Family television series. Coogan, however, made many movies as a child and even more as an adult character actor. Until its rediscovery some years back, one of his earliest and best silent files was long feared lost. Coogan was barely eight when Olive…
This rare jewel of a film gives us a chance to see Tony-winning Beatrice Lillie (1895–1989) at her sparkling best. How does she manage to play a character who's simultaneously insufferable AND endearing? As rich Maria Wislack in On Approval, Lillie is a social brute who doesn't know she's a social brute. There's no individual malice behind her verba…
Canadian theatrical director Andre Brassard's little-known movie debut was one of the most enjoyable entries at 1974's San Francisco International Film Festival. Transvestites, an alcoholic, a hash slinger, a down-and-out singer, a troubled pregnant girl, and others share their lives and make the best of what they can get from their respective situations. The ending is a downer, as i…
One False Move represents a promising directing debut for Carl Franklin and a chance to see some fine actors at work, notably Cynda Williams and Bill Paxton. The film begins with an extended and quite graphic bloodletting sequence, but nothing else in the narrative, not even the climax is anywhere that explicit. Paxton plays Sheriff Dale “Hurricane” Dixon, seemingly an eager beaver s…
This beautifully photographed tribute to youthful romance in a summer camp is lovely to look at.
Agnes Varda pays tribute to the centenary of the cinema with 101 Nights.
Do you ever wonder what might happen if an international critic decided to make a movie? Okay, we all know whatever became of François Truffaut.
One Sings, the Other Doesn't is a so-so look at a pair of feminists who stay in touch over a 15-year period. Apple, the singer (Valerie Mairesse), repeats the same dumb lyrics over and over: “I am woman, I'm me,” as her quiet friend Suzanne (Therese Liotard) works at a family planning clinic to support her two fatherless children. Charlie Van…
The Only One provides a compassionate look at a marital breakup, seen from the husband's point of view.
Sometimes films play at festivals and are never seen again, unless the filmmaker makes a deal with a cable network or a video distributor. Open Season poses the rather esoteric question: what would happen if all the television shows we THOUGHT had low ratings (like the ones on PBS) suddenly were declared THE top-rated shows? Bet you've really stayed awake nights worrying about…
Dedee Truitt is a Bitch with a Capital B. Christina Ricci, on the other hand, is an enormously likeable actress, no matter who she's playing (Kate Flax in Mermaids, Bonnie in The Hard Way, Wednesday in The Addams Family/Values, Jessica in The Cemetery Club, Kat in Casper, Roberta in Now and Then, Beth Easton in Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain, Dee Dee in Bastard Out …
The Orders is directed with thought and care by Michel Brault, who also did the screenplay. It's about the unjust suspension of civil liberties in Quebec during 1970. Told entirely from the viewpoint of the victims, The Orders stars many of the people who were actually arrested, although they take on different roles. Acting by the nonprofessionals, though low-key, is heartbreakingly affecti…
This unique adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel is about the title character (Tilda Swinton), who lives for 400 years. Orlando starts out as a man and, “in the fullness of time,” becomes a woman. The conceit allows us to see how women are treated over the centuries, courtesy of Orlando's extraordinary perspective. There are many treats in store for W…
Nikolai Goubenko made an extraordinary U.S. debut as a director with The Orphans, partly based on his own childhood experiences after World War II. The picture introduced little A. Tscherstvov, the best child actor at the San Francisco International Film Festival since six-year-old Ana Torrent appeared in 1973's Spirit of the Beehive. Young Tscherstvov grabs our attention so completely that…
For Orson Welles’ fans, this movie is a MUST. It opens with the credit “A Film Made Possible by Oja Kodar.” Kodar lived with Welles from the mid-'60s until his death at age 70 in 1985 and she appears with him in his swan song, Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love. As this documentary makes clear, Welles was constantly busy making movies during his last 20 years, even i…
Four years before Tay Garnett made MGM's The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain's grim tale of adultery starring Lana Turner and John Garfield, Luchino Visconti directed Clara Calamai and Massimo Girotti in 1942's Ossessione. The film ran into censorship difficulties in fascist Italy and copyright problems everywhere else. A key element in the Visconti version is the er…
1934's Our Daily Bread was King Vidor's most direct statement to date on how he perceived the American dream. Never again would he be as self-revealing about his personal solutions to the grim realities of life. He cast Karen Morley, a sensitive and deeply political actress, in the role of Mary Sims, a young woman grappling with poverty. For the co-starring role of Mary's husb…
Perhaps you have to be a dedicated follower of Chicago's independent rock scene to make head or tails out of Out of the Loop. From my perch in San Francisco's Laurel Heights, I saw and heard the following: (1) Musicians in Chicago don't think much of rock critic Bill Wyman. (2) A female rock singer thinks that the business practices of indie labels …