FILM LIST
INDEX
I Angel Heart ( 18) (Alan Parker. US. 1987) Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro. Charlotte Rampling. 113 mins. Scruffy. unshaven private eye Harry Angel is hired by the mysterious Louis Cyphre totrack down a missing Forties crooner who has renegcd on a life-or-death deal. His investigations lead him to a seedy New Orleans dominated by voodoo cults and extremely dead bodies in this uncomfortable mating of visceral gore and moody film noir. Glasgow: GFT.
I Anna (PG) (Yurek Bogayevicz. US. 1987) Sally Kirkland. Paulina Porizkova. Robert Fileds. 100 mins. Middle-aged Czech actress Kirkland. once a star in her homeland but unrecognised in New York. takes a young immigrant under her wing and teaches her the tricks of survival in the promised land. Rather mawkish drama which is never quite as affecting as it would like to think it is. though Kirkland certainly tries her damnedest and won a surprise Oscar nomination for her troubles. Glasgow: GFT.
I Arthur II: On The Rocks (PG) (Bud Yorkin. US. 1988) Dudley Moore. Liza Minelli. John Gielgud. 113 mins.Whi1c loveable drunken millionaire Arthur and his girlfriend (Moore and Minelli) contemplate starting a family. their fortune is suddenly swept away from under them and our Dud actually has to go out and look for work.
The original cast return, with Gielgud‘s butler popping in as a ghost. but the little charisma the original had to offer is here replaced by an entirely resistible sentimentality. Glasgow: Cannon Clarkston Road. Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Grosvenor. Edinburgh: Cannon. Central: Caledonian. Strathclyde: AMC Clydebank 10. Cannon. Rialto. WMR Irvine.
I Al Close Range ( 15) (James Foley. US, 1986) Sean Penn. Christopher Walken. Christopher Penn. 115 mins. Brooding drama of two teenage half-brothers who are re-united with their ne'er-do-well father and soon come to realise what a mean mutha he really is. Surprisingly well-acted domestic tensions. with Penn in particular making a quite visceral impact. Edinburgh: Cameo.
I L'Aventura (PG) (Michelangelo Antonioni. ltaly. 1960) Monica Vitti, Lea Massari. Gabriele Ferzetti. 145 mins. When a group of wealthy people visit a Sicilian island by yacht. one oftheir number disappears. but in the resulting search Vitti and her architect boyfriend Ferzetti begin to rebuild their troubled relationship. A'ntonioni‘s breakthrough movie adeptly displays his sensitivity to the mood of the landscape as he daringly extends shots much longer than previously thought possible and so distillsthe poignant malaise of the island atmosphere. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Bagdad Cafe (PG) (Percy Adlon. US/W. Germany. 1988) Marianne Sagebrecht. C.C.H. Pounder. Jack Palance. 108 mins. The wonderful Sagebrecht stars as a redoubtable German lady who leaves her husband in the middle of the desert and soon settles down with the folks at a nearby rundown motel. where proprietrcss Pounder has also recently lost a spouse. Before long. the two women re-invent themselves through their friendship. and transform the Bagdad Cafe into the bargain.
Director Adlon displays a warm and rather charming sympathy with the all too human quirks his oddball but convincing characters manifest. and so manages to shape a quite beguiling tale from the most basic of materials. Glasgow: GFT. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Betty Blue (18) (Jean-JacquesBeineix,
— SALAAM, BOMBAY
Salaam, Bombay! (15) (Mira Nair, lndia/France/UK, 1988) Shafiq Syed, RaghubirYadev, Aneela Kanwar. 95 mins. Salaam, Bombay! does not fit comfortably Into our received version of Indian cinema, whether that is filtered through Satyajit Bay, the Hollywood pastiche of popular Indian film, or the Anglo perspective of Lean, Attenborough. Ivory, et 31. Shot on location in the streets of Bombay in a grittlly realistic style and with non-professional actors, itself a radical departure from studio-bound Indian practice, the film records the lives of the city’s lhronging street urchins, condemned by their poverty to live a life of hustling and petty crime on the fringes of the city.
The central character, Krishna, is a ten year-old boy who has been abandoned by a travelling circus, and is looking to earn enough money to go home to his mother in their native village, where he disgraced himself by setting fire to his brother’s bike. He
: "'1 y g. ,7 Ufa .r ’
finds a job as a chaipau or teaboy, but is inevitably sucked into the vortex of the city’s harsh street life, with its colourful but seedy drug and prostitution underworld. Eventually, Krishna is picked up by the police on a totally unjustified charge of stealing, and sent to a reform home.
What could be a conventional account of a squalid decline is redeemed by the director’s obvious sympathy for her subjects, but above all by the indomitable spirit shown by the children themselves. Despite their conditions, they retain a genuine optimism combined with a fatalistic acceptance of adversity; Krishna’s escape from the institution back into the streets comes as a genuine liberation. An auspicious debut for the director, and all the more so given the extra difficulties facing a woman in a traditional society like India's, she allows the film to make its moral points in an entirely unforced way.
(Kenny Mathieson)
France. 1986) Jean Hughes Anglade. Beatrice Dalle. 120 mins. Tempestuous love gone mad as an older handyman and a free-spirited woman embark on a passionate. peripatetic fling that ends in tragedy. Filmed with a dazzling technique and an irritating emptiness by the maker of Diva. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Big (PG) (Penny Marshall. US. 1988) Tom Hanks. Elizabeth Perkins. Robert Loggia. 104 mins. 12 year-old Josh (David Moscow) has no luck with the school beauty because of his diminutive stature. However. upon discovering a neglected fairground wishing machine. he jumps out of bed the next morning to find his boyish, selfnow wrapped in an adult packaging (Tom Hanks).
Of all the role-reversal movies out last year. Big has been by far the most successful. because Tom Hanks offers a most appealing characterisation as the dopey innocent at large. and because it treats the situation with a little intelligence. Josh is at times lost and bewildered in the adult world. for instance. but his unspoilt ideas triumph when he gets a job with a toy company. Good mainstream fare. Glasgow: Cannon Clarkston Road.
I Bigfoot and the Henderson: (PG) (William Dear. US. 1987) John Lithgow. Melinda Dillon. Don Ameche. 111 mins Disneyesque family adventure in which the all-American Henderson family crash into the legendary Bigfoot and adopt the suprisingly genial beastie as a domestic pet with predictable complications from the
neighbours and blood~hungry hunters. Strathclyde: Cannon.
I Bleak Moments (15) (Mike Leigh. UK. 1971) Anne Raitt. Sarah Stephenson, Eric Allan. 110 mins. Mike Leigh‘s first feature is a typical slice of life set in drab South London. and remains as full ofobservant characterisation and truthful dialogue as the television work that sustained his career through the rest ofthe Seventies. Edinburgh: Filmhousc.
I Les Carabiniers (18) (Jean-Luc Godard. France. 1963) Marino Mase. Albert Juross. 80 mins. Two young peasnts leave home to join the army. but their bravery is betrayed when a peace treaty is signed.
. Although seemingly about the horrors of
any war. the Gaulliste authoritiestook exception to this impassioned piece of Brechtian cinema and promptly banned it. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Film Guild. 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 have graced the top bars in Manhattan and been signed up to work in the Caribbean. However. a failed romance with poor little rich girl Shue. soon has ourTom questioning the vapidity of his experience. Glossy soaper with risible pretensions to social comment. A disappointment from the talents involved. Glasgow: Odeon. Edinburgh: Odeon. Central: Caledonian. Cannon, Regal. Strathclyde: AMC Clydebank 10, Cannon. Kelburne. Odeon
Ayr. Odeon Hamilton. Rialto.
I Colors(18) (Dennis Hopper. US. 1988) Robert Duva11.Sean Penn. Maria Conchita Alonso. 121 mins. Buddy eop movie set amongst the drug-related gang warfare of LA's ethnic street gangs has old hand Duvall and greenhorn Penn. differing in their approaches to law enforcement in an almost impossible situation.
Benefiting from a steely documentary approach that captures with disturbing authenticity every aspect of a brutal street culture. llopper‘s return to 1 lollywood credibility finds his bleak world-view of non-communication somewhat deadened by formulaic narrative excitements. Edinburgh: Cameo.
I Come and See (18) (Elim Klimov. USSR. 1987) Alexei Kravchenko. ()lga Mironova. 142 mins. Klimov's epic account of an atrocious Nazi massacre in Byelorussia in 1943 is one of the genuinely great films of the decade. The horrific events are seen through the eyes ofa young boy. Florya. who ages before our eyes in what is a remarkable performance from Alexei Kravchenko. The film is not simply a meditation on Russian history. but an epic about mankind. at once harrowing and visionary. which demonstrates that film can still take on the most monumental of issues in a serious fashion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Film Guild.
I Le Corbeau (The Raven) (PG) (Henri-Georges Clouzot. France. 1943) Pierre Fresnay. Pierre 1.arquey.(iinette Leclerc. 92 mins. a small French provincial community is disrupted by the effects of a spate of poison pen letters from someone who appears to know what most ofthe inhabitants are getting up to. Telling character melodrama. which was at one time mistakenly regarded as Nazi anti-French propaganda. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Film (iuild.
I Corps A Coeur( 15) (Paul Vecchiali. France. 1978) Nicole Silberg. Helene Surgere. 93 mins. This well-observed tale of adolescent sexuality follows a young garage mechanic’s passion for an older woman. Glasgow: French Cine Club.
I ‘Crocodile' Dundee 11 (PG) (John Cornell. Australia. 1988) Paul 1 logan. Linda Kozlowski. John Meillon. 1 11 mins. Not entirely unexpected sequel has Hogan's Dundee retracing his steps from Manhattan to the Aussie bush to protect his girlfriend journalist Kozlowski from the unwanted attentions of a gang of Colombian drug pedlars.
A lame script and Hogan‘s catatonic underplaying mar this antipodean comedy-adventure to the extent that what will undoubtedly be one of the year's most profitable releases unfortunately also has to go down as one of the most tedious. Strathclyde: AMC Clydebank 111.
I Cry Freedom (PG) (Richard Attenborough.17S. 1987) [)enzel Washington. Kevin Kline. John Thaw. 158 mins. Although not without its flaws. Attenborougb's biographical re-creation ofthe friendship between black civil rights activist Steve Biko and white liberal newspaperman Donald Woods is his best film to date; an epic. moving drama that also stands as a vigorous condemnation of the obscenity ofapartheid. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Film Society.
I Culloden (15) (Peter Watkins. UK. 1964) 73 mins. Watkins' first full length piece for television was an attempt to film a period conflict in the manner of a present day newsreel. and on the spot interviews blend with an impassioned and committed commentary. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Dead Ringers ( 18) er (David Cronenberg. Canada. 1988) Jeremy Irons. Genevieve Bujold. 115 mins. See panel. Glasgow: Odeon. Edinburgh: Odeon.
I The Diary Of Anne Frank ( PG) (George Stevens. US. 1959) Millie Perkins. Joseph Schildkraut. Shelley Winters. 17(lmins. Like much of the later Stevens canon, this
12 The List 10 — 23 February