FILM LIST
(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. Predictable complications ensue . involving the neighbours and blood-hungry hunters. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Black Rain (18) (Ridley Scott. US. 1989) Michael Douglas. Andy Garcia. Ken Takakura. 125 mins. Not so much the land of the Rising sun as the land ofShiny Surfaces as adman extraordinaire returns to a set not unlike Blade Runner. However. some promising ideas are shunted to the sidelines by Douglas‘s sour and rather uninspiring heroics as the New York cop sent to Osaka to counter a counterfeiting ring. The whole perhaps confirms Scott as a master decorator hired to tart up a very obvious formula. Glasgow: Cannon The Forge. Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Edinburgh: Cannon. Strathclydc: Kelburne, UCI Clydebank. UCl East Kilbn'de. WMR Film Centre.
I The Blood of a Poet (15) (Jean Cocteau. 1930, France) Lee Miller. Pauline Carton. Enrique Rivero. 53 mins. Semi-autobiographical study of the pain of being an artist. in many ways the overture to poet/author/director C octeau‘s later, richer work. Rougher and less sophisticated than films such as Orphee upon which his reputation mainly rests, it is. consequently, more bearable forthose who find him too precious. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Blue Velvet ( 18) (David Lynch. US. 1986) Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper. Isabella Rossellini. 120 mins. ln small-town Middle America, would-be boy detective MacLachlan finds a severed car on some waste ground. 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 sex to deconstruct our complacent vision of normal society. This is film-making of remarkable imagination and skill. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I Le Boucher ( 15) (Claude Chabrol . France/Italy, 1970) Jean Yanne, Stephane Audran. 93 mins. [n a small French provincial town, a timid butcher courts an equally unassuming schoolmistress as a series of brutal slayings shocks the local community. Part Hitchcockian thriller, part character study, this is C habrol at his exquisite Gallic best. Edinburgh: French Institute.
I The Boy Who Could Fly (PG) (Nick Castle, US, 1986) Lucy Deakins, Jay Underwood, Bonnie Bedelia. Colleen Dewhurst. 114 mins. New to her neighbourhood. Milly (Dcakins) befriends the kid next door (Underwood). an autistic boy who hangs out of his bedroom window, believing he can fly. But the best efforts of understanding teacher Dewhurst can‘t keep the authorities at bay. A potentially charming , but ultimately disappointing movie, in which strong performances are marred by sentimental script and direction. Strathclydc: UCI Clydebank.
I The Brood (18) (David Cronenberg, Canada, 1979) Samantha Eggar, Oliver Reed. 91 mins. Eggar‘s maternal instincts run wild as she devours her own afterbirth and spawns dozens of midget clones, who turn very nasty if she‘s upset. Pretty unstomachablc horror but according to the director it‘s his version of Kramer vs Kramer. Edinburgh University Film Society.
I Casualties of War ( 18) (Brian De Palma, US, 1989) Michael J. Fox. Sean Penn, Thuy Thu Le. 120 mins. De Palma‘s contribution to the ever increasing pile of ’nam films concentrates on the dilemma of the new ’cherry‘ recruit (Fox) when confronted with his comrades’ gang-rape of a Vietnamese girl. The candy coated
SEA OF LOVE
Sea of Love (18) {2 (Harold Becker, US, 1989) Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin, John Goodman. 118 mins. Ellen Barkin for many people will forever be identified with the seduction scene she shared with Dennis Duaid in Jim McBride's 1986 New Orleans policier The Big Easy. As big Den’slaissez-faire cop finally beds Barkin’s prim DA, although she manages to retain her clothing, the pair’s committed writhing and panting ensure that eroticism and acres of exposed flesh need not always remain intertwined. Maybe it's something about policemen, but in this latest release Sea of Love, she tangles with Al Pacino’s worldweary NY homicide detective, in a bedroom incident of remarkable ingenuity that’s become one of the movie’s big talking points.
Barkin, one hesitates to add, is no wedge of cheesecake with bimbo topping. She may be possessed of a slack-jawed squinting manoeuvre that's as affecting off-screen as it is on film. But her skilled performance in Harold Becker’s Sea of Love looks set to deservedly establish her as one of Hollywood’s most bankable female leads. She’ll cheerfully admit that she took the part for the chance to work with Pacino, who plays a burnt-out and lonely veteran cop on the trail of a murderer whose crimes appear to be connected with the personal columns. In the course of his investigations he sets up a bogus date with single mum Barkin through the lonely hearts, and while the two are attracted to one another he suspects that she may be the killer.
Overcoming her initial reservations about ‘what kind of character would get involved in the singles scene’ when she discovered that it was, in fact, ‘mosily women who didn’t have the time for active social lives, either professionals or single parents really’, the graduate of the New York High School of The Performing Arts found that she ‘spoke a
common language with Al Pacino. We both like to rehearse a lot, and talk about the work. It’s what you guys in Britain call the Method.’
Indeed, Ell and Al found that their mutual thespian understanding was handy when it came to the crunch outpouring of lust. ‘You know we don’t see too many great sex scenes around, because actors and directors tend to forget that the scene needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end, as well as a driving emotion all the way through. "you’re doing it right the lovemaking is frighteningly real and that's what makes it work. AI and I weren’t choreographing or simulating sex, we were doing a scene where our characters were affecting and opening up to one another.’
Whatever the intellectual game-playing required by their particular version of the craft, it’s Pacino and Barkin’s carefully drawn and entirely believable performances that lend Sea of Love (the title comes from an obscure Fillies doowop hit by Phil Phillips and The Twilights left playing at the murder locations) its main interest. Forwhile Scorsese collaborator Richard Price’s script scores with its authentically slang dialogue, the contrived and mechanical thriller plotting sits uncomfortably with the gritty characterisation. Still, there's a feeling throughout that all concerned were looking to lift the material out of the formula rut, and there’s enough suggestion of real mid-life pain to indicate that they have at least partially fulfilled their intentions. (Trevor Johnston)
From Fri 16. Glasgow: Cannon The Forge, Cannon Sauchiehall Street, Grosvenor. Edinburgh: Cannon. Central: Cannon. Strathclydc: Cannon, UCI Clydebank. UCI East Klibride.
finale somewhat destroys the film‘s impact, as if it were merely a bad dream in the American conscience. An intriguing contribution to the pile, even if it doesn’t make it to the top. Glasgow: Cannon The Forge, Odeon. Edinbur h: Odeon. Strathclyde: UCI Clyde ank. UCI East Kilbride.
I The Cook, The Thief. ills Wife and ller LDVBf(l8) (Peter Greenaway, UK. 1989) Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard, Tim Roth. 120 mins. Greenaway has made a film guaranteed to offend everybody. Though
beautifully art-directed, photographed. produced and acted, it deals with the kind of subject matter normally only found under the counter at video nasty stores. Compulsive and unforgettable but you‘d be hard pressed to like the thing. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
I The Cranes Are Flying (PG) (Mikhail Kalatozov, USSR, 1957) Tatiana Samoilova, Alexei Batalov. 94 mins. A young hospital worker learns that her fiance has been killed in the war, and subsequently marries a man she does not love. Unpretentious and lyrical love story
. midnight meetings. A sensitive, tense and
which saw the beginning of a thaw in the post-war Soviet cinema‘s institutionalised austerity. Edinburgh: Film Guild.
I Dead Poets Society (PG) (Peter Weir, US, 1989) Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke. 129 mins. lna staid private boys‘ school in Fifties New England, an unconventional teacher (Williams) interests his charges in literature and philosophy to such an extent that they form a secret club to investigate them (along with booze and girls) further. Though Williams is on good form, the film focuses mainly on the boys‘ emotional development and crises, and on the mystery and beauty surrounding their
moving study of the conflict between passion and authority, even if the plot is something of a cliche. Edinburgh: Dominion. Central: Regal.
I Dead Ringers ( 18) (David Cronenberg, US, 1988) Jeremy Irons. Genevieve Bujold, Heidi Palleske. 115 mins. Extraordinary examintion of sexual jealousy on identical twins. lrons plays gynaecologists, arrogant Elliot and the more studious Beverly Mantle, who fall in love with fading actress Claire Niveau when their clinic treats her infertility. As the emotional tunnoils mounts up, the trio become involved in a frightening downward spiral of drug-induced mania. Deeply melancholic, irrationally powerful exercise in wayward psychology, which boasts magnificent and carefully differentiated characterisation from lrons. Edinburgh University Film Society. I The Delinquents (12) (ChrisThomson, Australia, 1989) Kylie Minogue, Charlie Schlatter, Angela Punch McGregor. 90 mins. Our Kylie gets a lot off her chestand gets away from her ultraclean image in this powerful tale of Antipodean adolescent amour. Cuddly Kylie plays Lola Lovell, the girl who breaks the conventions of small town 1957 Australian life by running off with her boyfriend (Schlatter). Beset by a high cliche quotient, it is hardly the shocker it has been painted. Glasgow: Cannon The Forge. Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Edinburgh: Cannon. Central: Caledonian. Strathclydc: Odeon Ayr, Odeon Hamilton, La Scala, UCl Clydebank.
I Distant Voices. Still Lives (15) (Terence Davies, UK, 1988) Freda Dowie, Pete Postlethwaite, Angela Walsh, Dean Williams. 85 mins. In the Liverpool of the late Forties and early Fifties, a working class household perseveres through domestic violence, death and marriage. A brilliantly made tribute to the Davies family's experience, and a requiem for a way of life now past, by one of the most gifted cinematic artists this country now possesses. Glasgow: GFT.
I Do The Right Thing ( 18) (Spike Lee, US, 1989) Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, John Turturro. 119 mins. New York‘s deprived Bedford-Stuyvesant district on the hottest day of the summer, and racial tension escalates between Italian-American Sal (Aiello), histwo sons and the mainly black local community who make up the bulk of his customers. As the situation worsens and violence looks a possibility, Sal's black delivery boy Mookie (Lee) ponders how to do the right thing. A forceful exploration of the socio-economic and cultural causes behind white racism, Lee‘s film also operates as a tightly controlled multi-character drama. Edinburgh: Filmhouse. Central: MacRobert Arts Centre.
I The Draughtsman's Contract (15) (Peter Greenaway, UK, 1982) Anthony Higgins, Janet Suzman. 103 mins. Sumptuous, seductive enigma in which a young artist accepts a commission from a country manor and also accepts payment in sexual favours. But is there more to thisthan meets the eye? Edinburgh University Film Society. I The Dream Team (15) (Howard Zeiff.
The List 9- 22 February 199015