To the best of my knowledge, this 1985 feature is writer-director Mike Leigh’s only foray beyond the confines of Englanda look at two Irish couples in Belfast, one Catholic and one Protestant, both about to have their first children. Aficionados of Leigh’s work for British TV consider this one of his finest works. With Brid Brennan, Des McAcleer, and Stephen Rea. (JR) Read more
Richard Elfman directed this 1980 collection of flaky fun and games, vaudeville style. Herve Villechaize and Susan Tyrrell rule the underground Sixth Dimension, which is mainly a campy black-and-white concoction of old Betty Boop cartoons and grade-Z musicals. Marie-Pascale Elfman and Viva are also around to perform their expected cult duties. More fun to think about than to watch. 76 min. (JR) Read more
Paul Robeson gives one of his greatest film performances in this arty, dated, but interesting 1933 adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play about a former Pullman porter who escapes from a chain gang to become king of a Caribbean island. The underrated Dudley Murphy directed; with Dudley Digges, Frank Wilson, and Fredi Washington. 72 min. (JR) Read more
Mike Leigh’s auspicious first feature focuses on the painful gaps in communication between a lonely accountant’s clerk (Anne Raitt) and an uptight schoolteacher she halfheartedly tries to seduce. Kitchen-sink realism with a vengeance, punctuated by painful and awkward silences, this was made before Leigh formed a fully coherent social and political view of his material, but his feeling for the characters never falters. One can find a glancing relationship with Cassavetes’s first feature, Shadows, but the style and milieu is English to the core. This might seem overlong, and the drabness and emotional constipation may drive you slightly batty, but the film leaves a powerful aftertaste. (JR) Read more
Giuseppe De Santis’s belated neorealist effort about the exploitation of women working in the Po Valley rice fields (1948) was sold to the American public using shots of a nubile Silvana Mangano wading in the water with her skirt hiked up. The movie went on to make Mangano a star, and if memory serves, it’s a lot more substantial than the cheesecake ads made it appear. With Vittorio Gassman, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling, and Lia Corelli. 108 min. (JR) Read more
A videotaped version of a Mike Leigh stage play (1977) that is one of his most scathing and extreme works, aptly described by one commentator as a cocktail party from hell. A highly insensitive, aggressive, and garish housewife (Alison Steadman) entertains three neighbors (Janine Duvitsky, John Salthouse, Harriet Reynolds) while bickering with her uptight husband (Tim Stern). (The title party isn’t her own but that of the teenage daughter of one of the guests; we hear it off-stage but never see it.) A ferocious portrayal of the English middle class, this might be termed Leigh’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; it provides an interesting contrast to his other TV films by showing how his dramaturgy works onstage. Highly recommended, but you should go prepared to squirm along with the host, hostess, and guests. (JR) Read more