Boxoffice-December.1992

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than a writhing human backdrop against which well-heeled white liberals have their crisis of conscience; despite the clarity of their sympathies for the oppressed, the white South African director James Darrell Roodt and scripters William Nicholson and Ngema address the implications of political violence in an unflinching style the earlier South African dramas never approached. "Sarafina!" hasn't much in the way of a conventional story—just the barest outline of a coming of age saga, coupled with the inherent drama of an oppressive social structure. The luminous Leleti Kliumalo repeats her stage role as Sarafina, a schoolgirl in the process of political awakening, with Whoopi Goldberg doing her bit for the cause as Sarafina's inspirational schoolteacher, Mary Masembuko. After Goldberg is arrested and several of her students are shot down by the venomous South African security forces, all hell breaks loose. In a protracted and viscerally wrenching sequence, the students rampage through the streets of Soweto, matching violence for violence. The narrative takes on the logic of hallucination— we move through a delirium of rebellion and police brutality that is almost as difficult to watch as it is impossible to turn away from. While clearly on the side of the insurgent students, Roodt and Ngema don't glamorize their actions, but rather point to the cost to their humanity of the repressive system they live under and react against. After watching her schoolmates burn a police informer to death, the light seems to go out in the effervescent Khumalo's eyes; even when she regains something of her sparkle for the film's musical finale, we don't quite believe it. As the film's radiant icon of a better future, Khumalo's psychological defilement becomes, at the level of symbol, "Sarafina!"'s central tragedy. Her childhood is another casualty of Apartheid, and the film grieves for her; those young eyes have simply witnessed too much to ever see with innocence again. Rated PG-13 for violence and mild language.—Kaiy Greene. Overall, "Mr. Baseball" is a likable, funny and well-ci film —one that can appeal to general audiences, giv< production merits and Selleck's pleasing screen per Baseball fans will find even more to like about Baseball's" manifestly accurate handling of the sport ai players. Rated PG-13 for language. — George T. Chronis RESERVOIR DOGS Starring Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Produce Lawrence Bender; co-produced by Harvey Keitel A Miramax Films release. Crime melodrama, rated R. ning Time: 99 min. Screening date: 7/23/92. The year 1992 has turned out to be great for a los form— the B-movie, film noir crime drama. First there Bill Duke's savvy, streetwise "Deep Cover," with I Fishburne as an updated version of the kind of gravel-vo: seen-it-all cop that used to populate four out of five c movies in the '50s, but which disappeared in favor of detta-crazed supermen in almost every Hollywood cop since "Dirty Harry." Now comes Quentin Tarantino's "R« voir Dogs," an exhilarating if somewhat derivative caper in the pessimistic tradition of Stanley Kubrick's "The Kil and John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle." Terse, excessively violent and blackly comedic, "Resei Dogs" achieves the sort of ironic demystification of small gangsterism Martin Scorsese couldn't pull off on abot times the budget in his overpraised "Goodfellas." The s behind the story is almost as dramatic as the film itsel actor frustrated by his inability to land a decent role, antino wrote "Reservoir Dogs" so he'd have somethin perform in (he has a cameo in the finished film as one o robbers). MR. BASEBALL Starring Tom Selleck, Ken Takakura, Aya Takanashi, Denms Haysbert and Toshi Shioya. Directed by Fred Schepisi. Screenplay by Gary Ross, Kevin Wade and Monte Merrick. Produced by Fred Schepisi, Doug Clayboume and Robert Newmyer. A Universal Pictures release. Comedy. Rated PG-13. Running time: llOmin. Sound: Dolby A. Projection: Scope. Screening date: 9/24/92. Although his motion picture career has had more than a fair share of critical and boxoffice disappointments, Tom Selleck has maintained that his films have made money for his producers. Even so, waiting for the curtain to go up on a new Selleck movie is a by now an unnerving experience as we wait to see whether what follows will be worth the price of admission. Luckily for all, "Mr. Baseball" joins "Three Men and a Baby" and "Quigley Down Under" as a solid vehicle for this likable and attractive actor. Selleck is Jack Ell iot, an aging major-league baseball player whose game is off due more to lack of interest than a lack of skills and who is forced to realize that his career as a player in North America is over. Although he doesn't like the idea. Jack's only option is an offer to play with a league team in Japan, The Dragons. As expected, everything— including baseball — is played differently in Japan, and Jack is cast along upon his own personal odyssey of humbling redemption. Everywhere he goes, everything he does, doesn't fit in or sit well with his host country. With the help of a female ad executive (Aya Takanashi), a fellow American on the team (Dennis Haysbert) and his hard-line coach (Ken Takakura), this perennial misfit begins to turn around. Selleck's role as the often surly and uncouth jock suits his physical qualities perfectly, and the character is equally well suited to his on-screen persona. Underneath it all. Jack is a likable rogue, and that's exacdy the way audiences like to respond to Selleck the actor. Takakura and the rest of the mainly Japanese supporting cast, while not portraying characters in a stereotypical fashion, do fall completely in line with the way American audiences expect the Japanese to act-stoic, honorable, gracious and intense. The result is staggering for a first time writer-director, only is "Reservoir Dogs" one of only a handful of truly g American releases so far this year, it's also quite possibly most auspicious American filmmaking deljut since Ste Soderburgh's "sex, lies, and videotape" in 1989. Except for a brief and hilarious pre-tide sequence, the : is set in the aftermath of a robbery gone wrong. As the bro and battered survivors of a police shootout arrive in t post-heist hideaway, the true nature of their situation da' on them: The cops were waiting; somebody snitched. The a betrayer in their midst. It would be unfair to spoil Tarantino's plot-twists by cussing them, since each is delivered for maximum dram effect. The violence in the film is excessive but never gr itous; a scene in which a chillingly downbeat Micl Madsen (last seen as Susan Sarandon's beau in "Thelma Louise") tortures a kidnapped police officer is almost watchably sadistic, but the sadism is the character's, not director's. Violent as "Reservoir Dogs" often is, the real drama of story isn't in the spilling of blood but in Tarantino's assu telling ofhis tale. The film's unconventional structure, wl flashes back and forth between the crime and it's pun ment, is a classic example of turning economic limitation advantage — it both neatly allows Tarantino to avoid el; R-89 BOXOKFICE
; one ' ;ed R for language and violence. — Ray Greene IGLES rring Matt Dillon, Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, itten and directed by Cameron Crowe. Produced by Richard imoto. Warner Bros, release. Comedy-drama, rated PG-13. Runtime 120 min Sound: Dolby A. Projection: Flat. Screening 9/15/92. meron Crowe is a very clever fellow, and his heart is in ight place. There's a winning gentleness about his movnd he has a way with precise comedic details— both in rst film, "Say Anything," and in his current one, "Sinthat gives his wittily observed but essentially two-disional characters the appearance of three nsionality. Hollywood movies nowadays, there's rarely anything nbling a random detail— everything is either a set up or -off, so that when the obviously off-kilter Jennifer Jason buys a puppy in "Single White Female," the audience aces, knowing the creature's cuteness amounts to a al death sentence sometime in the next 40 minutes of n time. Crowe is certainly a state-of-the-art practitioner 5 modern screen story— he can plant and pay off with est of them, and he's not above throwing two seemingly oncilable ex-lovers into each other's arms merely beof them recognizes the other's character tag (she a man to say "God bless you" when she sneezes). But 's something so acutely observed about the mundane ts Crowe invests with emotional resonance (as when Sedgewick's garage door opener becomes the symbol of ears about "opening up"), that it makes the lives he's ing us onscreen seem lived-in as a consequence. e accumulation of shaggy and amiable marginalia s the viewer unprepared for the moment when Crowe Dack on melodramatic plot twists which show us that his icters really are just movie constructs, albeit lovingly rved ones. Crowe starts trading in hoary, soap-opera es at just the point where another burst of imagination t have transformed his Film into something even rarer nore precious than just a well-above-average entertainted PG-13 for language and sexual situations.— Rai/ HOOL TIES rring Brendan Fraser, Cody Conklin and Matt Dillon, ected by Roben Mandel. Screenplay by Dick Wolf and yl Ponicsan. Produced by Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing Paramount Pictures release. Drama, rated PG-13. Running 105 mm. Sound: Dolby A. Projection: Flat. Screening date: /92. though it might not at first glance seem obvious, "School is of a kind with this year's "1492" and "Christopher mbus." Amidst all the hub-bub about the European cont of the Americas and the subsequent enslavement and cide of the native peoples, one could easily forget that is in that landmark year that another paradise of sorts destroyed by European racism and prejudice. 1492 was /ear that the advanced culture of Moorish Spain was ,y conquered; the Moslems and Jews were subsequently lied from Spain. It is fitting, then, that this 500-year versary also be the occasion for the release of "School story about anti-Jewish prejudice. ;hool Ties" is, like the Columbus stories, a work of >rical fiction. This film, however, takes place in 1958, I here in the United States. It details the encounters a tear-old working-class Jewish boy has with his Christian lemporaries. "School Ties" begins with David Green's indan Fraser) last day in his home town of Scranton, Pa. lias been recruited as a football star to play for the St. Shews School of Cabot, Mass. (deftly portrayed here by Concord, Mass.' Middlesex School). St. Matthew's has a very anxious group of blue blood alumni willing to countenance the admission (for senior year only) of this proletarian Jew, if it will help them to finally defeat their arch rival. The condition, of course, is that all is kept discrete— no one is to know "the truth" about the new quarterbnrk. We follow David in his bewildering initiation into this rarefied world of St. Matthews-the strangeness (andbruta' ity) of the traditions of the wealthy. The genius of "School Ties"— the factor that makes it more than an exposition of American parochialism— is that the inevitable revelation o' David's religion/race is paralleled by the gradual narrowing of the class and cultural differences between him and the otherboys. As the film progresses. Green becomes more and more driven. His desire for the same comfortable status of his peers— the kinds of opportunity not normally available to the son of a steel worker— leads him into conflict as his "difference" is revealed. "School Ties" almost entirely escapes the considerable dangers inherent in portraying contemporary bigotry. Most importantly, it avoids painting its protagonist as victim Green's rapid transformation from outsider (lay class) to insider (through his sharing of the school's hegemonic ideology) to outsider again (by religion) reveals the wrongs of this upper class enclave without turning its characters into cardboard cut-outs. Although a world apart from 1492,"School Ties" is a fitting mark of how far American society has come— and how far its has yet to go. Rated PR-13 for serious themes.— /e)>i Axelrod. CAPTAIN RON Starring Kurt Russell, Martin Short, Mary Kay Place, Benja min Salisbury and Meadow Sisto. Directed by Thom Eberhardt. Screenplay by John Divyer and Thorn Eberhardt. Produced by David Permut and Paige Simpson Ȧ Buena Vista release. Comedy, rated PG-13. Running time. 95 min. Sound: Dolby A. Projection: Flat. Screening date 9/14/92. Maybe it's coincidence , or maybe it's karma, but comedies set and shot on location in the Caribbean seem to suffer from sloppiness in execution-"Water" and "Club Paradise" are but two examples of films with some wonderful moments separated by longer stretches of semi-comic tedium. "Captain Ron" is no exception to this phenomenon. The plot centers around a well-to-do suburban family-the Harveys— that inherits an elderly yacht, supposedly once owned" by Clark Gable, and drops everything to go to some obscure Caribbean island and take possession of this new prize. Although Martin and Katherine (Martin Short and Mary Kay Place) disagree about putting their careers on hold, both recognize they are losing control of their children (Benjamin Salisbury and Meadow Sisto) and decide that a three-week family adventure on the ocean may be the perfect way to keep the family unit together. Enter Kurt Russell as Captain Ron, the random element that threatens both to bring the Harvey family together and tear it apart. Possessing dubious nautical skills, Captain Ron December, 1992 R-90
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Boxoffice-December.1992

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