In this low-budget independent comedy from 1992, writer-director John O’Brien gives us a young, quarreling couple from New York who drive up to rural Vermont to get married. Unfortunately, O’Brien’s idea of a good laugh is playing a jazzy version of The Farmer in the Dell every time he shows a cow or a goose. Shot cinema-verite style with impromptu zooms and jump cuts, this is an uneasy blend of folk documentary and romantic comedy in which the authentic locals are in effect invited to upstage the petulant, fictional couple. Part of the intention is clearly to celebrate old-time American lifestyles on the verge of extinction, but the cuteness and the contrivance keep getting in the way. With George Thrush and Marya Cohn. (JR) Read more
Jean Renoir’s uncharacteristic free adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with the great Jean-Louis Barrault (1959). Shot in black and white for French TV, this oddball horror comedy allowed Renoir to experiment with TV techniques, using multiple cameras and microphones to follow his actors from different angles at the same time. Barrault’s performance in the title rolea retiring middle-class professor who, after inadverently releasing the fury of his own id, delights in such activities as abusing cripples on the streetis one of the most sublime, disturbingly funny, and complex actorly creations ever committed to film, and it illuminates many corners of Renoir’s oeuvre in provocative ways: Cordelier’s shambling walk can be traced all the way back to Michel Simon’s Boudu, and, as Dave Kehr and French critic Jean Douchet have noted, the film is the dark mirror of the Dionysian fantasy of Picnic on the Grass, made the same year; here liberation from repression leads to nightmare rather than utopia. (JR) Read more
Ken Loach’s first theatrical feature (1969), adapted from a novel by Barry Hines, focuses on an alienated working-class schoolboy in Barnsley, England, and his pet kestrel, which he trains to hunt. Widely applauded at the time of its original release, the film did much to establish Loach’s international reputation; like most of its successors, it was shot cheaply on location using a nonprofessional cast. With David Bradley and Colin Welland. 113 min. (JR) Read more
Writer-director Woody Allen mounts a lively farce (1994) set in Manhattan in 1928in a milieu that interfaces prohibition gangsters with Broadway theaterand has a number of amusing things to say about the interactions between art and commerce, both seen here in their crasser forms. Like Husbands and Wives and Manhattan Murder Mystery, though to somewhat less effect, this shows a certain improvement in Allen’s work; the material is certainly lively, though the plot becomes a bit mechanical toward the end. The performances, however, are very enjoyable, with first honors going to Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest. Most of the othersJohn Cusack as the playwright-director hero, Jennifer Tilly as a gangster’s moll forced into Cusack’s production as an actress, Rob Reiner, Jack Warner, Mary-Louise Parker, and Harvey Fiersteinaren’t too far behind. 99 min. (JR) Read more
Just as The Ten Commandments (1956) was the apotheosis of Eisenhower conservatism, this 1960 blockbuster, which broke the Hollywood blacklist by crediting screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, seems the quintessence of Kennedy liberalism. Anthony Mann directed the first sequence but then was replaced by Stanley Kubrick, who said he enjoyed the most artistic freedom in the scenes without dialogue. Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons are appealing as the eponymous rebel slave and his love interest; no less juicy is the Roman triumvirate of Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Laurence Olivier, playing one of the first bisexual characters in a major Hollywood film (unfortunately one also has to put up with the embarrassing accents and performances of Tony Curtis, John Dall, and Nina Foch, among others). This may be the most literate of all the spectacles set in antiquity. This restored version, including material originally cut, runs 197 minutes, including Alex North’s powerfully romantic overture. (JR) Read more
