Boxoffice-June.1989

More documents

Recommendations

Info

— rank Sdlazar (C^oibin Hcinseii), a veteran bank robber, has set his sights on a small bank in a remote Montana town. He has mapped out his plan and has sent out "invitations" to the four hoodlums whom he needs to help him, but immediately after dropping the letters into the mail, he is arrested by two bumbling cops (Ed O'Neill and Daniel Roebuck) who have been tailing him for a previous offense. Unaware that their leader is behind bars, the four other crooks — played by Ed Gwynne, Ruben Blades, Lou Diamond Phillips and William Russ — show up at a desolate mountain ranch as instructed by Salazar, and then try to figure out why they were summoned. Salazar, meanwhile, has escaped from his two captors, and the story fractures clumsily into three separate sub-plots: the robbery of the bank by the four crooks; Salazar's trek across through the Montana wilderness as he tries to reunite with his four cohorts; and the pursuit of Salazar by the two cops. Each of the stories is laughless and gracelessly executed, all converging in a conclusion which is abrupt, ponderous, and morally bizarre. There isn't room to list all the places where "Disorganized Crime" goes wrong. First and foremost, the casting is awful: Blades and Phillips really can't act (at least Blades has the "But I'm really a singer" excuse to fall back on); Gwrynne is a terrific actor, but has no business in a movie this trite; and Russ, while being perhaps the funniest element in the picture, is stuck in a stock dimwit role. There is absolutely no rapport between these four, when their falling into league together should form the core of the story. Elsewhere, Bemsen has exactly two lines of dialogue ("How did you find me?" and "These are my footprints") before completely vanishing from the movie, while O'Neill and Roebuck prove once again that that most rancid movie cliche — the stupid cop — can always be made more rancid (Touchstone's fondness for raw language is particularly glaring here, seeing as there is no good writing to leaven the vulgarities). The photography is washed out and ugly, making even the wilds of Montana look unattractive, and the editing is a shambles. "Disorganized Crime" has all the elements of an action-comedy hit. But even those who made Touchstone's marginal "Three Fugitives" a modest success won't be fooled by this one. Rated R for language. Tarn Matthews SCANDAL Starring Juhn Hurt, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Ian McKelkn, Bridget Fonda, Jeroen Krahhe, Britt Ekland, and Roland Gift. Produced by Stephen WooUey. Directed by Michael Caton- Jones Written by Michael Thomas A Palace Production Drama, Rated R Running time: 105 mms In 196.3 revelations in the British press under the headline "The Minister, The Model and the Russian Spy" blew up into a political scandal that made Teapot Dome look like a tempest in a teacup. "The Profumo Affair," as it came to be known, took its name from Her Majesty's Minister for War, John Profumo, who had an affair with 18-year-old Christine Keeler at the same time she was sharing her bed with Soviet Naval Attache Eugene Ivanov. By the end of the year Profumo had resigned, his promising political career in tatters; Christine Keeler was in jail; Ivanov was summarily recalled to Moscow; and Stephen Ward, benign, beauty-loving chiropractor — and panderer to half the House of Lords — took the fall. Within months Prime Minister Harold MacMillan resigned, and in 1964 the Conservative government fell from power, disgraced and exhausted by the scandal. "Scandal" is the sleek, racy name of a confidently made new movie from England about the Profumo affair. It dowsed a lot of ink recently for its controversial orgj' scene, which f earned it an unwelcome Valentine kiss from the Motion Picture Association of America before a tamer version finally secured the needed "R". Ironically, the orgy is one of the less erotic sequences in the picture, and probably only raised eyebrows because of its brief, comic treatment of sado-masochism Outside of the naked nobleman who wears a "Please beat me if 1 fail to satisfy" sign around his neck while serving tea, the scene plays very much like a cocktail party with people having sex instead of talking. "Scandal" is not, however, one of these movies about sex that go out of their way not to be sexy. Unlike, say, "Star 80," which all but implicated voyeuristic filmgoers in Dorothy Stratten's murder, "Scandal" revels in the attractiveness of Christine and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies, who when told in the dock that an influential Member of Parliament had denied his liaisons with her delivered the immortal testimony, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" The wordless scene of the two girls girding up for their first night out in London, set to a lurid bossa nova of the period, is a classic celebration of lipsticks, lingerie, and the female form. Peter Fonda's daughter Bridget plays Mandy, and it's in dealing with her character that the movie threatens to stumble. She never comes fully alive the way Joanne Whalley's Christine does, yet unlike Ian McKellen as the needy Profumo, she can't coax a coherent impression out of a few underwritten scenes. It's a star turn in a supporting part, calibrated for more screen time than she gets, at least in this cut. John Hurt's performance as Dr. Ward presents no such problems. He's a genuinely tragic figure, shot through with the film's nostalgia for a time when Ward's frankly promiscuous credo of "There's no harm in it; we're all flesh," was still possible. His face the texture of a turtle's neck, Hurt makes an unlikely but dignified romantic, and he's what holds this ambitious if occasionally shaky piece of social history together. (^ Rated R for plentiful nudity. — David Kipen ^ JACKNIFE Starring Robert De Niro, Kathy Baker and Ed Harris Produced by Robert Schaffel and Carol Baum Directed by David Jones Written by Stephen Metcalfe A Cmeplr\ (klfnn release Drama, rated R Running time: 102 min Screoinig ihite .'. 27/89 A brilliant cast is not quite enough to outweigh a stodgy and rather familiar story. The film opened big in major markets, but after six weeks it had only grossed $1.6 million. There is something disturbingly unbalanced about "Jacknife:" slight, small-scale and essentially dull, the story is far outweighed by the prodigious talents of actors Kathy Baker, Ed Harris and (especially) Robert De Niro. "Jacknife" is another "is there life after Vietnam?" tale about vets caught in the emotional crossfire of the past and dealing, more or less effectively, with the present. David (Harris) — and yet pitiable — David's alcohol consumption is out of isn't dealing with life too well; belligerent, truly unlikable control, and so is his life. His dependency extends to his sister Martha (Baker), a spinsterly biology teacher whose own life has been subtly subsumed into her role as caretaker. When Megs — aka Jacknife (De Niro) — enters the siblings' lives, he blows their precariously balanced existence apart with humor, a lively vulgarity and joie de vivre. An Army buddy of David's, Megs has dealt with the emotional detritus of war, which threatens the still-burdened David enormously. Even more threatening to him is the burgeoning, somewhat improbable romance between Megs and ^ Martha; when they chaperone a high school prom, David v^ crashes the party in a haze of boilermakers and amphetamines. But we finally get to the root of his resentment: In a skirmish in Vietnam, David had advised their mutual buddy to forget about saving the heavily wounded Megs. The film's R-33 BOXOFFICE
— — resolution occurs in a moving scene in which Megs lets David know that he's forgiven. Yes, "Jacknife" is predictable and prosy. The film's stilted dialogue is not helped by the direction; with the exception of outdoor shots, this movie has the box-y, enclosed look of a stage production. The good news is that the actors so far transcend the TVmovie quality of "Jacknife" that they actually elevate it, lending it integrity and grit. Baker, the ultimate anti-glamour heroine, is a chameleon of a performer; she appears to physically metamorphose in the film, her features softening and relaxing. A beefier, beer-bellied Harris creates a moving character out of the basically unsympathetic David, but the film really belongs to De Niro. He is an endlessly fascinating performer, and his work in "Jacknife" reveals acting unlike any he's done before. An intellectual quality has always come through in his work (even as Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull"). But in "Jacknife," his accustomed air of slight detachment is gone; we're not watching him think, we're watching him feel. If you want entertainment, look elsewhere; if you want to see acting, see "Jacknife." Rated R for language and sexual situations. DEAD CALM Lesa Sawaha- Starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. Produced by Terry Hayes, Doug Mitchell and George Miller. Directed by Phillip Noyce. Written by Terry Hayes. A Warner Bros release Thriller, rated R Running time: 96 min. Screening date: 4/5/89 Just as the "Mad Max" trilogy was essentially a series of chase pictures taken to obvious yet glorious extremes, so then is "Dead Calm" essentially the "Max" team's intelligent and wildly entertaining exploration of the suspense genre. Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman play John and Rae Ingram, a melancholy Australian couple who take to the high seas to heal after the sudden and tragic death of their son. Alone and thousands of miles from land on their small boat, they encounter a smkmg, derelict party schooner, the Orpheus, and its lone survivor, a frightened, exhausted young American named Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). Hughie claims that his crew died of a terrible shipboard disease, but John — a Navy man — finds that Hughie's story doesn't quite wash. Just as John discovers the grisly truth about Hughie's antics aboard the Orpheus, Hughie escapes from his cabin and makes off with John's boat and wife, stranding John alone on the crippled, sinking schooner.Can lithe Rae overcome the brawny maniac Hughie in time to turn the boat around and rescue her husband? In the isolated environment of the high ocean, a miscalculation can spell disaster; a few seconds can literally mean the difference between life and death. Writer/producer Terry Hayes, who co-authored the "Max" saga with series producer/director George Miller, brings a characteristically humorous and propulsive mixture of twists and spills to the adventure, alternating between Rae's battle of wits and muscle with Hughie, and John's desperate battle to keep what's left of Hughie's doomed schooner afloat. The handsome but loutish Hughie makes for a particularly loathsome boogeyman, with his unctuous pretensions of beatnik intellectualism and smarmy ersatz cocktail banter alternating smoothly with bouts of raging violence and sadism He's the new archetype of the would-be junior California businessman, his second-hand hipster charisma masking desperate, weak-minded selfishness. He's a villain audiences can truly despise. By contrast, John begins the movie as square and dour, far less handsome and flashy with his military bearing and bad Sam Donaldson haircut. It's doubly gratifying then that when the chips are down, John proves himself a better man than Hughie in almost every way. Miller has surrendered the director's chair to Phillip Noyce, but there's still an awful lot of that great pseudo-punk "Road Warrior" ambience in the air. Besides Hayes, refugees from the "Max" movies include cinematographer Dean Simler and production designer Graham "Gracie" Walker, and even Miller takes a credit as second-unit director. Rated R for sexual situations, gore, violence, nudity and language. Jim Kozak DEAD-BANG Starring Don Johnson, Bob Balaban, William Forsythe and Tim Reid Produced by Steve Roth Directed by John Frankenheimer Written by Robert Foster. A Warner Bros release. Crime drama, rated R Running time: 100 min. Screening date: 3/25/89 One could forget that Don Johnson was the reigning TV hunk just a year or so ago, based on how few people turned out for this familiar actioner. Four week gross: a weak $7.4 million. "Dead-Bang" is a taut but thoroughly routine cop drama which is not without its merits on a pure exploitation level. There are flashes of intelligence where it seems that the filmmakers are trying to do something different with the material, but for the most part it's hard to tell why anyone with the stature of the people involved here — primarily Don Johnson and John Frankenheimer — were drawn to it. Johnson plays real-life LA. homicide cop Jerry Beck, whose personal life has bottomed out at the beginning of the film He's going through a very ugly divorce, he has a very unglamorous drinking problem, and worst of all, the Santa Ana winds have kicked up on Christmas Eve day, bringing out all the crazies. A storeowner and a cop have been shot in an apparently random outburst of violence and Beck, who has no one to share the holidays with and who seems to welcome the case as a diversion, becomes obsessed with finding the killer. Beck's investigation ultimately uncovers a mthless neo- Nazi gang, which is on a shooting spree throughout the westem United States. The rough-edged cop tracks them from LA. to Oklahoma to Colorado, uncovering a huge and alarmingly well-organized and well-financed group of white supremacists. And yet for reasons which are not made clear in the story, no one — not his superiors back in LA., nor the humorously square-jawed FBI man who dogs Beck's trail (William Forsythe) — will believe him. Finally, accompanied only by a small group of black sheriffs. Beck storms the Nazi compound on his own and engages in a very predictable fire fight. The best parts of "Dead-Bang" come early, as Frankenheimer and writer Robert Foster flesh out Beck's character with some terrifically gritty color. There is a hilarious sequence early on, when the cop, still hungover from the previous night's bender, drags a yuppie parole officer (Bob Balaban) away from his family on Christmas morning, and
Page 1 and 2: :lte • on '^iZ*if
Page 3 and 4: 1 EDITOR AND ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Ha
Page 5 and 6: THE MOTION PICTURE SEEN BY OVER 50
Page 7 and 8: Congratulations, Ray and loan From
Page 9 and 10: A NOTICE TO ALL INDEPENDENT FILMMAK
Page 11 and 12: his movie. Equipped with a 16mm cam
Page 13 and 14: I I NATO ShoWest Independent Distri
Page 15 and 16: ments from our readers, but there w
Page 17 and 18: tain date. Here's what I love the m
Page 19 and 20: Guide to Independent Distribution I
Page 21 and 22: 1 1 CONCORDE PICTURES t woo San Vic
Page 23 and 24: MIRAMAX FILMS 18 East 48lh Street.
Page 25 and 26: i : Suite REELTIME DISTRIBUTING COR
Page 27 and 28: Boxoffice P.O. Box 226 Hollywood CA
Page 29 and 30: ioK you go lo the box oilke, you mu
Page 31 and 32: . " tan and foreign independent pro
Page 33 and 34: ,isv 1 hanges ^ NEW PRODUCTS The Di
Page 35 and 36: . FOR THE RECORD THE TV BROADCAST o
Page 37 and 38: " the ... lOCO 11 NATIONAL NEWS The
Page 39 and 40: " "Suspect," " such as the accessib
Page 41 and 42: Reviews days when baseball was the
Page 43: — — — "Say Anything" is feath
Page 47 and 48: — and their unique problems. Owen
Page 49 and 50: SNEAK PREVIEWS The following films
Page 52 and 53: E^' ^1 II 8 II •osl 3 = i ol 5o«
Page 54 and 55: QnanaConcepts - _ iatrc Service Com
Page 58: WOW M*«S.«^«*'' Movieslore Enter

Boxoffice-June.1989

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?