wants to know
Private Parts (18) 109 mins t * t it
Now here's a surprise. Not knowing anything about America's leading 'shock-jock’ DJ Howard Stern, you'd be forgiven for expecting the worst from a mowe based on his autobiography. Brady Bunch director Betty Thomas’s mowe is certainly as abrasrve, loud and raunchy as you might have anticipated, but it's also highly intelligent, ironic, downright hilarious at times, and burns With an anti-censorship fervour that’s really cheering to see.
Stern plays himself, and the movie sets out to tackle all our assumptions. The first thing we see is his live-show skit 'Fartman' and some Visual trickery giVing us a Stern's eye-View of a mega-
Radio daze: Howard Stern in Private Parts
breasted female passer-by. Crass? Absolutely, but by the end of the movie, we’ve rooted for him in his struggle against airwave bureaucracy and the repressive network powers- that-be, and seen his liberating attitude to satirical programme material change the voice of US radio. Engaging supporting work from sundry real-life cohorts and a consistent vein of humour at the expense of his own diminutive genitalia make it much more than just the usual White-washed biopic. Some of the rudery is pushing it a bit, but frisbee-throwing Will surely never be the same. Trust us, one smart dude. (Trevor Johnston) I General release from Fri 20 Jun.
Taking stock: Whoopi Goldberg hits Wall Street in The Associate
The Associate (15) 113 mins 1*
Wall Street financial analyst Laurel Ayres in‘oopi Goldberg) is smart and diligent, but also female and black After being passed over for a promotion she deserved, she quits and tries to set up her own company Despite a good track record, no one and her career looks like (rashin Then she hits upon the idea of inventing a business partner, Robert Cutty, who is male and White — and suddenly doors start opening for her
Not :nterested in examining the ethics of money-making, director Donald Petrie and writer Nick Thiel focus their attacks on chauVinism in the
workplace, an idea which has its merits, however the strokes are so broad that there is little satisfaction when they hit The men involved are all venal brown-nosers and so markedly discriminatory that any half decent equal opportunities board VVOUld have a field day With them, making Laurel's revenge not as sweet as it could have been
Any scraps of pleaSure are purely down to Goldberg, whose comic. abilities shine through the feeble script Dianne Wiest as her formerly downtrodden secretary is also good value, but both are let down by Bebe NeuWirth, who should shoot her agent for landing her With the part of a bimbo stockbrocker (Simon Wardell)
I Selected release from Fri 73 Jun
new releases FILM
Intimate Relations (15) 99 mins first
With an appropriate choice of title for a tale about sidestepping the offensive, this black comedy charts the dangers of keeping up appearances. ‘Based on a true story, and set in a 19505 English community, Philip Goodhew's debut centres on one family and the shocking events which take place behind their immaculate net curtains.
Middle-aged and dowdy, Marjorie (Julie Walters) is a model housewife, keeping home for her escapist war veteran husband Stanley (Matthew Walker) and inquisitive teenage daughter Joyce (Laura Sadler). However, her strict adherence to family values begins to falter when she takes in the handsome Harold (Rupert Graves) as a Iodger. Attempting to seduce him, she relies on sexual and emotional blackmail in order to sustain and silence the affair.
Stealing the screen as this atrooously desperate houseWife, Walters combines both comedy and realism in her portayal of the alarmineg destructive Marjorie. A natural at playing the fussy female role, she is perfect for the part of this manipulative woman who unWittingly Whips up a domestic cocktail of repressed emotions. Claustrophobic and dark, but laced With a humorous frill, lntimate Relations is a powerful satire of English reserve. (Beth Williams)
I Selected release from Fri 20 jun
Julie Walters in Intimate Relations
Mother Night
(15)113 mins ****
Adapted from the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night pitches some big ideas at its audience but in a way that fascmates rather than alienates. At the outbreak of World War II, Howard W. Campbell Jr (Nick Nolte) is a successful American playwright resident in Germany, His cosy world is threatened, however, When he is recrUIted by his COuntry to send coded transatlantic radio broadcasts back to America While posing as a rabid Nazi , Sympathiser. He reluctantly agrees, but ‘ ‘ ‘ back home his name is a hateful Nick Nolte and Sheryl Lee in Mother Night symbol of treachery and deceit,
leading to problems after the war. While he lives a discreet eXistence in New York, it's only a matter of time before someone discovers who he is and attempts to bring justice to bear upon this most curious of heroes A beautifully layered, constantly surprismg story, Mother Night establishes all these moral, ethical and human dilemmas in an entertaining and intelligent way, causing you to question your own prejudices and assumptions as it does so (Anwar Brett)
I Edinburgh Fi/mhouse, Mon l6-Wed l8JL/n.
Tokyo Fist
(18) 87 mins at ‘k t
HaVing marked out his own vein of techno-horror pervo-grunge with tWisted metal diptych Tetsuo The /ron Man and its follow-up Boclyhammer, Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto heads into ~ mad carnage of an altogether fleshier kind With his new rnowe The hyperactive hand-held camera is still there, but this time it's the pummelling frenzy of the boxing ring that inspires the writer-director's ongoing psycho—sexual ferment He also plays the mild-mannered salaryinan who gets deep into training after a chance encounter With an old school-chum turned pro-boxer leads
to a three—way tussle for the affections of his girlfriend The more the lies/.8 '101 into beating the liVing daylights out of each other, the further she gets into body- pierc‘ing. Occasionally perplexuig and definitely not for the squeamish, TSukamoto's film dances along the serrated edge of ("Oilt ised violence Punchy is not the word, though it doesn't quite manage the undertov; of desolation that made Body/trimmer one of the key genre niowes of the 90s I Edinburgh Film/rouse Fri 73 Mon 76 Jun
:Trevcir Johnston)
13~?(i Jun 199/ THELIST25