FILM LIST
The Lonely Passion Of Judith l-learne (15) a (Jack Clayton, UK, 1987) Maggie Smith, Bob Hoskins, Marie Kean, Ian McNeice, Wendy Hiller. Booker Prize winner Brian Moore's first novel was published in 1955, and Jack Clayton’s sensitive film version features Maggie Smith as the eponymous protagonist. While the setting has been shifted from Belfast to Dublin, Judith Hearne remains a middle-aged but still single woman of modest means, an occasional piano teacher adrift in a series of boarding houses, who longs for the security and
. affections of marriage. Enter James Madden (Bob Hoskins), the brother of her latest landlady (Marie Kean), who has just returned from ‘the hotel business right on Times Square’ in New York, and as the pair apparently enjoy each other’s company, Judith begins to believe that her years of lonely hope could be about to end.
However, the relationship is not quite the love match Miss Hearne would like to think it is, for Madden, never an affluent hotelier but in fact an ex-doorman, is merely looking for a prospective business partnerto finance his dream of a Dublin hamburger restaurant. When the misapprehension at the heart of their liaison is revealed, and Madden finds out that she is almost penniless, his hasty retreat is a heartbreaking disappointment to her, and she seeks solace in the bottles of
the two stars on a mission from Godto financially salvage the imperilled fortunes ofan orphanage. Lots of guest stars. musical numbers and automotive destruction in a typical product of over-emphatic contemporary American humour. Glasgow: Grosvenor. Edinburgh: Cameo.
I Blue Velvet ( 18) (David Lynch, US. 1986) Kyle MacLachlan. Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rossellini. 120 mins. Lumberton. middle-America. Would-be boy detective Jeffrey Beaumont finds a severed car on some waste ground and when the police shoo him away he decides to do some investigating of his own.
A singular fusion of the cosy and the terrifying which blends kitsch and nightmare. B-movie detection and brutal sexual perversion to deconstruct our complacent vision of what passes for normal society. This is filmmaking of remarkable imagination and skill that places its director in the front rank of contemporary American cinema. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Bringing Up Baby (PG) (Howard Hawks. US. 1938) Cary Grant. Katharine Hepburn. Charles Ruggles. 102 mins. Zany gal Hepburn causes timid zoology professor Grant to lose a valuable dinosaur bone and mislay a pet leopard within the course of one screwball evening. Archetypal Thirties crazy comedy with one outlandishly hilarious scene following another within the progression of an unerringly logical narrative. Both stars at their charismatic best. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Cat People ( 18) (Paul Schrader, US. 1982) Nastassia Kinski, Malcolm McDowell. John Heard. l 18mins. Visceral. obsessive and occasionally rather stylish remake of the Val Lewton classic. with Kinski and McDowell brother and sister from an ancient caste who turn into felines when sexually aroused. Glasgow: GFI‘.
THE LONELY PASSION 0F JUDITH HEARNE
cheap whisky that are soon to dissolve the fabric of her pathetic existence and call her faith into question.
A recent reading of the novel has undoubtedly shaped this reviewer’s responses but the most obvious point about the film is the constant quality in depth of the performances. Maggie Smith does capture the essence of the woman whose superficial poise serves to hide a soul wracked by alcohol- fuelled doubt, while Hoskins combines his dodgy grafter character with his phony American accent. Yet, the support of Marie Kean as the genteel, conniving landlady, and an excellent Ian McNeice as her obese, poetic, mollycoddled schemer of a son,
I Cobra Verde (PG) (Werner Herzog, W. Germany. 1986) Klaus Kinski, Kingf Ampaw. Jose Lewgoy. 111 mins. Famous bandit Cobra Verde offends the Brazilian land baron who had hired him and is packed off to West Africa, quite possibly to be murdered by mad King Ahadee, who slaughters all white men to cross his path.
Patchy version of Bruce Chatwin's novel The Viceroy of Ouidah, with moments of genuine pain in the location shooting almost overcoming the sense of déja vu with the whole Herzog/Kinski routine. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Film Societ .
I Cocktail (15) (Roger Donaldson. US. 1988) Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown, Elizabeth Shue. 95 mins. Cruise plays a greenhorn inducted into the mysteries of all-action bartending by master cocktail shaker Brown. and before long they are pulling in the punters at a top New York club before being signed up to grace a swanky poolside bar in the Caribbean. However. a failed romance with poor little rich girl Shue soon has him questioningthe vapidity of his entire life.
Unintentionally hilarious glossy soaper. whose pretensions to social comment have been laughed off the screen by preview audiences. That‘ll probably not stop the film taking money, but consideringthe talent involved it has to be regarded asa considerable disappointment. Glasgow: Cannon Clarkston Road, Grosvenor. Odeon. Edinburgh: Odeon. Central: Caledonian, Cannon. Strathclyde: AMC Clydebank 10, Cannon, Kelburne, La Scala, Odeon Ayr. Odeon Hamilton, Rialto. WMR.
I Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (PG) (Robert Bresson. France. 1946) Maria Casares. Elina Labourdette. Lueienne Bogaert. 90 mins. A young Parisienne revenges herself on her bored lover by arranging for him to marry a prostitute. A collaboration between Jean Cocteau and Bresson has to be an intriguing one,and
substantially contribute to the beautifully-observed milieu of the boarding-house, which attests to Clayton’s assurance behind the camera.
Although the hard edge of despair has been slightly softened, and the central couple made a good deal more likeable than in Moore’s profoundly unsentimental original, the revisions of Peter Nelson's script do attempt a wider emotional appeal, and one that is reliably sustained by the affecting rapport between Smith and Hoskins. (Trevor Johnston)
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this occasionally irritating effort is interesting for the manner in which Bresson‘s characteristically austere manner copes with his scenarist's emotional flourishes. Edinburgh: Filmhouse. I Death Japanese Style (18) a (J uzo ltami. Japan, 1984) Tsutomo Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto. Kin Sugai. 124 mins. The Tokyo funeral of a 69 year-old patriarch. recently the victim ofa fatal heart attack. is a catalogue of confusion and disarray as the contemporary Japanese have much difficulty in mastering the complex etiquette and rituals oftraditional ceremonies.
ltami's debut feature. released here on the back of 'I‘ampopo but much more successful in Japan. shows the familiar scattershot humour much in evidence, yet at the same time manages to touch a genuinely elegiac note amidst the frenzied satire. Edinburgh: Filmhouse. I Die Hard (18) fi (John McTiernan. US. 1988) Bruce Willis. Allan Rickman. Bonnie Bedelia, Alexander Goudnov. 131 mins. See panel. Glasgow: Cannon Clarkston Road. Salon. Edinburgh: Odeon. Strathclyde: Kelburne. Odeon Ayr. Rialto. . I Dirty Harry ( 18) (Don Siegel. US. I971) Clint Eastwood. Andy Robinson, Harry Guardino, John Vernon. 102 mins. Iconoclastic cop Harry Callaghan will stop at nothing to track down a deranged psycho. even if he has to bend the rule of law himself. Brilliantly put-together star vehicle with Clint in his most legendary form. and director Siegel also managing to explore the moral ramifications of his actions. Excellent. Edinburgh: Cameo. I Don Juan (PG) (Marcel Bluwal. France, 1965) Michel Picoli. Claude Brasseur. 198 mins. Lengthy but well east mid-Sixties screen adaptation of the Moliere classic. Edinburgh: French Institute. I Dune (PG) (David Lynch, US. 1985) Kyle MacLachlan. Sting. Kenneth
McMillan. 133 mins. lncomprehensible attempt by an unsuitable film-makerto come to terms with Frank Herbert’s Sprawling sci-fi bestseller. Spectacular production design and a few moments of characteristic perversity only do so much to distract the attention from story-telling of numbing ineptitude. Edinburgh: Cameo.
I Easy Rider ( 18) (Dennis Hopper, US. 1969) Peter Fonda. Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson. 94 mins. Artless. archetypal road movie in which two dope-loving bikers travel the highways and by-ways of America. Dated cult attraction with Nicholson stealing the show as a boozy lawyer persuaded to join up for the trip. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Film Society.
I Elli Briest (15) (Rainer Werner Fassbinder. W. Germany. 1974) Hanna Schygulla. 93 mins. Fassbinder‘s adaptation of the Fdntane novel is filmed in icy black and white. and its leisurely pace replicates the narrative form of the original. Schygulla is fine as the woman married to an older man , who finds herself taking a lover out of boredom. though discovery leads to a duel between the two men. Well-made. faintly unapproachable. Glasgow: GFT.
I Family Viewing (18) (Atom Egoyan. Canada, 1987) David Hemblen, Aidan Tierney. Gabrielle Rose. 86 mins. Alienated youth Van (Tierney) lives with his father and step-mother in hi~tech surroundings and while he concocts a scheme to have his grandmother secretly removed from care. his father has a private eye put him under electronic surveillance.
Atom Egoyan’s second feature , winner of the Canadian Film Of The Year. isa complex investigation of the possibilities of alternative family groupings, and at the same time a study of mediated experience in the computer age. Fascinating stuff, announcing the arrival ofa talent of significant cinematic vision. Glasgow: GFI‘.
I A Fish Called Wanda (15) (Charles Crichton, UK, 1988) John Cleese.Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline. Michael Palin, Tom Georgeson. 108 mins. Stuffy English lawyer Archie Leach (Cleese) gets unwittingly involved with a gang of diamond thieves, including brash American Kline and stammering animal lover Palin, because he has access to information that will help them lay their hands on the swag. Glamorous Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) steps in to romance him into talking, but love is to rearits head.
Remarkably effective comedy. with the absurdly black humour of the Python generation given a narrative control and sense of timing that only a veteran‘s steady hand could provide. And it makes a wonderful romantic lead out of the rather unlikely Mr Cleese. Glasgow: Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Edinburgh: Dominion.
I Flesh And Blood (18) (Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands/US, 1985) Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh. 126 mins. Verhoeven’s first English language picture before the success of Robocop isa lusty medieval epic that more than lives up to its title. Leigh is the fair maiden abducted by Hauer‘s band of marauders, whose nefarious activities are depicted in occasionally repellent detail. Edinburgh: Cameo.
I For Queen And Country ( 15) t: (Martin Stellman, UK/US, 1988) Denzel Washington. Dorian Healy, Amanda Redman, George Baker, Bruce Payne. 106 mins. See panel.
I Frantic (15) (Harrison Ford, US,1988) Harrison Ford, Betty Buckley, Emmanuel] Seigner. 120 mins. Cardiologist Ford and wife Buckley travel to Paris for a conference, but en route manage to exchange one of their cases for a high precision electronic detonator. The
14 The List 27 January — 9 February