FILM LIST
Jonathan Pryce. 84 mins. The variable Wilder plays ‘305’ radio star Larry Abbot whose forthcoming marital bliss is marred by his paranoic tendency towards bouts of near-hysterical. irrational fear. As a remedy his psychiatrist suggesrs a weekend party at a haunted estate where his family will provide him with an overdose of fear; a kill or cure measure.
Scrappy. inconsequential minor squib which shamelessly plunders gags and routines from genuine comedy thrillers ofthe ’305 and ‘405 like Murder, He Says, Ghost Breakers and The Car and the Canary. Tired. flat and plagiaristic to boot. Glasgow; Odeon. Edinburgh; Odeon o Heavenly Pursuits ( 15) (Charles Gormley. UK. 1986) Tom Conti. Helen Mirren. David Hayman. 92 mins. Conti is the caring teacher caught up in his remedial school‘s miracle fever. who must determine the plausibility ofdivine intervention in modern day Glasgow. Engaging lightweight comedy-drama told with some wit and charm. Glasgow: OFF 0 High Season (15) it (Clare Peploe, UK. 1987) Jacqueline Bisset, James Fox, Irene Papas. Kenneth Branagh. 90mins. A sun-drenched seaside village on Rhodes becomes a battleground for the locals and tourists during the annual holiday season. Caught in the middle are the village expatriates including Bisset’s impoverished photographer. her estranged sculptor-husband Fox, their astute teenage daughter and an elderly art historian with a few political skeletons in his English broom cupboard. Chaos erupts when an inept Foreign Office underling and his wife arrive on the scene.
Sight unseen, this undoubtedly beautifully photographed drama has been dismissed as confusing and overplotted but Films and Filming called it ‘one of the most entertaining films-that-didn‘t work I‘ve ever seen.‘ Edinburgh; Dominion 0 House II: The Second Story ( 18) (Ethan Wiley. US. 1986) Ayre Gross. Royal Dano. Jonathan Stark. 90 mins. A young artist inherits an old dark house and finds his 175 year-old grandfather alive and kicking in the cellar. miraculously preserved by a magic skull that is much coveted by a rum bunch of barbarian warriors. Aztec high priests and wild west gunslingers!
Outrageous. preposterous comic horror schtick with a twist or two of energetic invention. Glasgow: Odeon o Jagged Edge (18) (Richard Marquand, US. 1985) Glenn Close. Jeff Bridges. Peter Coyote. 109 mins. Bridges stands accused of the brutal slaying of his wealthy wife. Close is the defence lawyer whose involvement with her client dangerously mixes business with pleasure. Old-fasioned, unremarkable courtroom whodunnit. Glasgow: OFF 0 Jumpin' Jack Flash (15) a (Penny Marshall, US, 1986) Whoopi Goldberg. Stephen Collins. John Wood. 105 mins. See panel.
Ouet For One (15) (Andrei Konchalovsky, US, 1986) Julie Andrews, Alan Bates, Max Von Sydow. 107 mins. Julie Andrews is an internationally renowned, virtuoso conen violinist who is diagnosed as suffering from Multiple Sclerosis. As the disease lays siege to her nervous system, herability to effefviely function as a world-class musician is severely impaired and she is forced to retreat from the public spotlight and confront her private demons.
Music has been the prime constant in her life, embodying work, pleasure and even, at times, her sole reason for being. Now unable to perform she is leftseeking solace and some reason to go on living. Those nearest to her offer little comfort; composer husband Alan Bates cannot handle the situation and merely abandons her, and her star pupil Rupert Everett heads of to Las Vegas to play Flight OfThe Bumblebee at breakneck speed and earns pots of filthy lucre. However, passing through the darkest of despair and a failed suicide attempt, she fights back by embarking on a life-affirming fling with the local rag and bone man and through a combatltive relationship with her psychiatrist Max Von Sydow. Ultimately, she discovers the inner strength to face an unknown future.
Duet For One began life in 1980 as an
Glasgow; Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Edinburgh; Cannon
0 Local Hero (PG) (Bill Forsyth, UK, 1983) Burt Lancaster, Denis Lawson. Fulton Mackay. 111 mins. A lyrical. melancholy examination of the foibles and eccentricities of mankind with some delightful
:1 I,” Riva. 1.5.73. ' . intense two-handed play by Tom Kempinski sharply and exclusively focusing on the relationship between the violinist and her shrink. lt subsequently won a mantelpiece full of drama awards including Best New Play. This long-planned film version, originally developed for Faye Dunaway, is a ludicrous travesty that performs major surgery on the original, without the benefit of anaesthetic, removing the heart and brain of Kempinski's work.
Director Andrei Konchalovsky has chosen to disastroust ‘open out' the play, relegating the psychiatrist to a
moments. An ambling, discursive treat. Glasgow: GET
0 Manhattan (15) (Woody Allen, US, 1979) Woody Allen. Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway. 96 mins. Woody wanders through the female jungle of New York in search of a perfect soulmate after the demise of his marriage. Sublime. Edinburgh; Cameo
minor status in the cavalcade of friends, agents, domestics and lovers. Unfortunately, this generally ill-advised process fails to respect or enhance the source material. The result is a horribly antediluvlan perspective on contemporary London with Andrews’ lover, an incongruous Steptoe And Son-style Belgravia rag and bone man, his understanding wife, a plucky Eastender with a heart of gold etc.
The performances are uniformly undistinguished —Von Sydow is given little room for maneouvre, the generally reliable Bates seems adrift as the husband and Everett is wretched as her wide-boy spiv prize pupil. Julie Andrews gives it the old college try but musters little depth of feeling to illuminate her suffering. Multiple Sclerosis seems but a minor, niggling inconvenience in the smooth flow of her life, met by petulant outbursts of frustration rather than exhaustive soul-searching.
Kempinski has declared the core of Ouet For One to be about the loss of an artist’s means of self-expression which would seem a particularly aposlte theme for Russian director Konchalovsky here on his third western project. Duet For One is a singular failure.
(Allan Hunter)
0 Mary of Scotland (U) (John Ford. US. 1936) Katharine Hepburn, Fredric March, Florence Eldridge. 123 mins. Occasionally stodgy but generally well-mounted historical epic detailing skullduggery in the British Royal Courts and a celebrated battle of wills between rivals Mary and the jealous Elizabeth ofEngland. An
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The List 29 May —11June11f