FILM LIST
' involving peace on earth and goodwill to all men. Glasgow; GET
0 Commando (18) (Mark L. Lester, US, 1985) Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong. 90mins.
Big Arnie races against the clock to free his daughter from the clutches of some really evil men. A pure action adventure told with zest and the saving grace of gallows humour.
' Edinburgh;Cameo 0 Conan the Barbarian (18) (John Milius, US. 1981) Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sandahl Bergman, 123 mins. Vengeance-seeking Arnie ripples his torso and flashes his giant blade when a cult leader enslaves him and massacres his entire village. Bloody. heavy-handed comic strip epic with pretensions. Edinburgh; Cameo
O The Conlormist (18) (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy. 1970) Jean-Louis Trintignant. Stafania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda. 108 mins. On a mission to kill one of his former professors. now a prominent anti-fascist in Paris, an agent for Mussolini reminisces about his past.
Studied period recreation and evocative photography. the brilliant Trintignant and the by-now classic set piece ofthe murder in the snowy forest make this one of the greatest films ofthe Seventies. Edinburgh; Cameo
0 Critters (15) it (Stephen Herek. US, 1986) Dee Wallace Stone. M. Emmet Walsh, Billy Green Bush. 85 mins. See panel. Glasgow; Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Edinburgh; Cannon
0 Crocodile Dundee (15) (Peter Maiman, Australia. 1986) Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski. 98 mins. Slight but engaging comedy-romance starring Hoges as a legendary croc hunter at large among the sophisticates of downtown Manhattan. Edinburgh; Dominion
Critters (15) a (Stephen Herak, US, 1986) Dee Wallace Stone, M. Emmet Walsh, Billy Green Bush. 95 mins. OK, let's get this straight from the start, Critters is unashamedly a B-movie piss-take olJoe Dante's overblown and
; overrated Gremlins. This time the little creatures, lovable balls oi iluii with a lerocious bite, have escaped lrom a penal colony on a tar-oil planet and
crash-landed in Middle America, intent on chomping their way through a
? Splelbergian nuclear lamly resident on a homely local ranch. Hot on theirtrail though is a pair oi unscnipulous alien bounty hunters, armed with enough lirepower to blast the teensy monsters back whence they came and pick up a
: bundle at interstellar moolah iortheir
. pains.
What lollows is more or less ninety
minutes oi rootin’ tootin’ shoot-em-up
celluloid asthe separate extra-
terrestrial parties vie lor ascendancy, and the folks vie to keep their homestead from turning into a pile oi ashes belore their very eyes. M.
: Emmet Walsh turns in his usual cameo
0 Death in Venice ( 15) (Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1971) Dirk Bogarde, Bjorn Andersen. Silvano Mangano. 130 mins. Sumptuous adaptation of the Thomas Mann Novella with Bogarde superbly inhabiting the skin of an elderly composer who is smitten with the perfect beauty of a young boy. A ravishing film with music by Mahler. and Bogarde at the peak of his screen artistry. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
0 Desert Bloom ( 15) (Eugene Corr. US. 1985) Annabeth Gish. Jon Voight. Jobeth Williams. Ellen Barkin. 106 mins. 1950. In Las Vegas near the Nevada nuclear test area, family tensions run high when the visit of a vivacious aunt for a 42-day quickie divorce settlement sparks off further confrontation between a 13 year-old daughter and her disturbed war veteran father.
Solid domestic drama with fine performances from the young Miss Gish and the impressively curmudgeonlyVoight. Honest and satisfying but never worthy. Desert Bloom is the sort of high-quality independent production our screens could do with more of. Glasgow; GET
0 The Devil is a Woman (PG) (Josef Von Sternberg. US, 1935) Marlene Dietrich. Cesar Romero. Lionel Atwill. 82 mins. ln 1890s‘ Seville a fascination with the beautiful and alluring Concha Perez is the down fall of many a good man. Sumptuous hypnotic directorial tour de force. Edinburgh; EUFS
0 Diner ( 15) (Barry Levinson, US, 1982) Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon. 110 mins. Baltimore, 1959. A group of teenagers spend their last days of adolescence in and around a local eaterie. Affectionate and anecdotal character comedy, engagingly played and tinged with a note of regret for lost innocence. Crammed
CRITTERS
as the redneck Sheriii vainly trying to keep order, and Dee Wallace Stone reprises her harassed mother routine lrom Cuio. Damned entertaining nonsense this - a succession oi natty sight gags interlaced by a rattling script — with utterly wizard touches including subtitles tor the badass mutha alien cursing, and a truly majestic sequence
with the sort of snappy dialogue the Americans do so well, this is quite inescapably enjoyable stuff. Edinburgh; Cameo
0 Down By Law (15) (Jim Jarmusch. US.1986)Tom Waits, John Lurie. Robert Benigni. 106 mins. Two abrasive hepcats with women trouble and a haplessly innocent Italian tourist with a penchant for American poetry in translation are thrown together in a New Orleans prison cell. but miraculously manage to shamble their way out of confinement and across the Louisiana swamps.
A singularly seedy fairytale with luscious monochrome visuals. a script peppered with moments of wayward comic invention, and three lazily charismatic players, this milestone of American film comedy could only fail to be enjoyed by the utterly humourless. Very highly recommended indeed. Glasgow; GFT
o Duetioane (15) a (Andrei Konchalovsky. US. 1986) Julie Andrews, Alan Bates, Max Von Sydow. 107 mins. See panel. Glasgow; Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Edinburgh; Cannon
0 84 Charing Cross Road (U) (David Jones. US. 1986) Anne Bancroft. Anthony Hopkins. Judi Dench. 99 mins. Mild-mannered but effective depiction of the twenty-year affectionate correspondence between brassy. garrulous American Anglophile Helene llanff and the stiff-upper-lip English bookseller Frank Doell. A fragile creature but quite a little charmer. Glasgow: Grosvenor
0 Les Eniants du Paradis (PG) (Marcel Came. France, 1944) Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault. Pierre Brasseur. 195 mins. Paris in the 18405. Amid the seething milieu of the French capital‘s ‘theatre street‘ a mime falls in love with the delicious
1;. f (I >
involving a singularly unlucky critter, a stick at dynamite, and severe indigestion. in the end, it’s as lastand lunny as it’s megabudget big brother really ought to have been; sick and slick as a good Tom And Jerry cartoon brought to glorious lite. (Trevor Johnston)
but flirtatious Gamace. One ofthe cinema‘s most extravagantly enjoyable productions. this gorgeous. elephantine wallow of a film is crammed with incident and compellingly curious Gallic comic characters. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
O The Evil Dead ( 18) (Sam Raimi. US. 1982) Bruce Campbell. Ellen Sandweiss. Betsy Baker. 85 mins. Five unsuspecting youngsters head off to a healthy weekend in a mountain cabin only to fall foul of wicked demons whose purpose is wholesale slaughter. Stylish. cheapo schlocker-shocker made with imagination by an inventive young team. Raimi and co are at loose in the aisles again next month with Evil Dead I I : Dead By Dawn. You have been warned. Glasgow; Grosvenor 0 Flash Gordon (PG) (Mike Hodges, UK. 1980) Sam J. Jones. Max Von Sydow. Brian Blessed. 115 mitts. Once more unto the breach as our dashing hero has to save Earth from the somewhat less than alluring clutches ofthe quite inordinately evil Ming The Hairless. sorry Merciless. Sounds like another Election Broadcast. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
o The Fourth Protocol (15) (John Mackanzie. UK. 1986) Michael (‘aine. Pierce Brosnan. Joanna Cassidy. 119 mins. Old-fashioned and lukewarm cold-war thriller with iconoclastic agent Caine out to stop Soviet superspy Brosnan assembling and detonating a nuclear device in dear old Blighty.
0 Free Radicals: Experimental Animation (15) 95 mins. The fifth programme in the ‘Art In Cinema‘ series turns our attention towards the most radical and experimental filmmakers working on ‘the fringes ofthe animation industry.‘ Edinburgh; Filmhouse
0 Ginger and Fred (15) (Federico Fellini. ltaly-France-W Germany. 1986) Giuletta Masina. Marcello Mastroianni. 127 mins. Amelia and Pippe two ageing cabaret stars who once imitated the peerless Rogers and Astair. are reunited fora tasteless television cabaret. Overlong but likeable satire of the gross excesses of Italian TV. The targets may be obvious and the pace a mite leisurely but this is Fellini‘s most accessible and enjoyable film in years. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
o The Green Bay (PG) (Eric Rohmer, Frnace. 1986) Marie Riviere. Lisa Heredia, Vincent Gauthier. 98 mins. The latest in Rohmer's increasingly insubstantial ‘Comedies and Proverbs‘ series tells of the lonely Delphine trying to pass her summer holidays without the benefit of a boyfriend. Travelling with a suitcase ofselfpity through Normandy and on to the mountains of Biarritz she finds a companion when she least expects to.
Rohmer‘s lean, observational style is still distinctive and admirable but Delphine as a character is irksome and one longs for a bit ofspit to go with the French polish. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
0 Haunted Honeymoon (PG) a (Gene
Wilder. US. 1986) Gene Wilder. Gilda Radner. Dom DeLuise.
‘16 The List 29 May — 11 June