Boxoffice-July.1995

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SPECIAL FORMATS WINGS OF COURAGE •• Starring Craig Sheffer, Tom Hulce, Elizaberii McGovern and Val Kilmer. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Written by Alain Godard and Jean-Jacques Annaud. Produced by Antoine Compin and Charis Norton. A Sony Classics release. Drama. Rated G. Running time: 40 min. The biggest little picture to come along in a while, "Wings of Courage" lasts under an hour and will set you back nine bucks. But Mamma Rose knows "you gotta have a gimmick," and this^the first narrative film to be shot and presented in the IMAX 3-D format—has them in spades. If a stereoscopic image measuring 100 by 80 feet isn't enough, there's also IMAX's Personal Sound Environment to add individualized 3-D audio enhancements. Such a Brave New Cinematic World is fraught with danger: Dismiss it and fear being haunted by the specter of "The Jazz Singer"; embrace it and run the risk of "Entertainment Tonight" promotion. In all the Duzz about the creation of a "new" format for the telling of stories and Sony Entertainment's hope to have a 3-D IMAX at every multiplex in the lend, the actual movie tends to become lost. Throughout film history, most movies that launch technical innovations have been below snuff artistically; wrestling with a slew of new practical problems on-set leaves less time to attend to creative matters. Here, director Jean-Jacques Annaud ("Quest for Fire") and his team fore well. Considering their camera is refrigeratorsized, weighs a ton and holds only a threeminute film load, some passages of "Wings of Courage" are remarkable. Set in the early days of aviation, the drama tells the true story of pilot hlenri Guillaumet ("Roommates' ' Craig Sheffer), one of the first fliers for Aeropostale, the company that invented airmail. Guillaumet is taking over the dangerous Andes route pioneered by Jean Mermoz (new "Batman" Vol Kilmer), a daredevil who founded the airline with Antoine de Soint- Exupery ("Amadeus'" Tom Hulce), best remembered for his book "The Little Prince." Though the tale is fairly predictable, Annaudliondles it and the actors well, giving nice rhythm to the narrative despite the short running time. Even some risky conceits—grainy black-and-white flashbacks and hallucinations—work most of the time. (One is shift-in-your-seat dreadful.) There's not much room for character development or nuance, but the principals—especially Sheffer— turn in solid performances. (Except for Kilmer; his take on a cocky 1 930s flyboy would have seemed overplayed even in that era.) The story itself is a good choice for this maiden voyage, simple enough to fit in 40 minutes a length that seems dictated by the limits of headset wearability as much as by the economics of audience turnover. Even with its self-referential aspect (pioneers getting off the ground a perilous venture based on unproven technology), "Wings of Courage" is full of the things that IMAX movies, even 3-D ones, do well. There are plenty of aerial shots, breathtaking vistas and moments of rollercocster vertigo; in fact, most of the movie deals with one man's battle against nature, which is fortunate given tfiat this format has great trouble depicting interiors. In the realm of IMAX 3-D, a plane crash atop a frozen mountain is cake compared to four people talking around a table, and therein lies the crux of the matter. Sony (via its Sony Pictures and Sony Theatres wings) is attempting to lure the VCR-habitated public back to moviehouses by making the moviegoing experience an experience Val Kilmer in Sony Classics ^^Wings of }} Courage again. Along with stressing courteous customer service, providing Tree mints and reviving aspects of movie-palace decor, rescuing the IMAX format from ho-hum nature documentaries and delivering it to the domain of the vastly more popular (and profitable) narrative film is a crucial part of the corporate strategy. The one thing standing in the way is the IMAX format itself. The hugeness of its image, on asset when the lens is capturing the great outdoors, is a liability for an enclosed set. Because it's almost impossible to frame a human actor in a conventional closeup, scenes are played in medium to wide shots; as a result there's literally too rr.uch information onscreen too much of the time, with nowhere else for the director or editor to go. At first, the fact that so much of everything is so plainly visible seems cool, but once you get over that infatuation witfi "the thingness of things" then (for example) the crisply focused cubes of cheese on a trey just become meaningless clutter. Conventional cinematography can moke a place for such level of detail on occasion, but in IMAX it's part and parcel. The whole concept of artfully framing and orchestrating the action—constructing a scene, not merely recording it— is nearly rendered moot. But Annaud, a skillful filmmaker, uses careful framings that mask large sections of the image in shadow, plus two well-designed camera moves that play with scale and the amount of information revealed. But the Achilles heel of "Wings of Courage" in close, "narrative" settings is the 3-D effect. Bluntly, it often doesn't work. That's not due to any technological crudity—the system relies on sophisticated headgear with independent, infrared-activated shutters in each eyepiece—but because, in limited fields of view, there are simply too many discrete objects on which to focus. For example, a restaurant scene with all the key players is a visual nightmare; When the angle of view is adjusted to accommodate one character, someone or something on the other side of the screen splits in two. And that isn't the only chronic distraction, because almost every cut (indoors or out) requires fine tuning of viewers' head placement. As for the IMAX Personal Sound Environment (essentially a small set of speakers mounted in the 3-D viewing helmet), the only use made of it is to send Guillaumet's "inner thoughts" into your left ear. It would seem lame if it weren't so annoying. In choosing to wed IMAX and narrative and 3-D, Sony might hove created on unworkable menage a trois. Humans don't like change, so anything but the tried and true is often greeted with catcalls. The Talkies doubtless seemed as gimmicky as the Tingler. In the long run, though, what determines the fate of an innovation is whether it enhances filmmakers' ability to tell stories. Sound did. Color did. Sensurround and Odorama didn't. With 3-D, the jury seems to hove been in quite a while; in fact, it came in twice, both times with verdicts of guilty. In the '50s, 3-D come, fitfully, and went; in the early '80s, it worked fairly well and still died—as if, after "Jaws 3-D," the possibilities of a ViewMaster-like cinematic experience had been exhausted. That's a joke, but it's not for from the truth. No representation of sensory experience, from painting to still or motion photography is really "like" reality. A narrative film is a complex and artificial construction that is especially "unlike" it, but the form has the power to seduce and render its own machinations transparent, delivering an experience that engages and envelops. Even when "successful," 3-D has always worked against that closure and against the narrative because it constantly calls attention to itself. When on IMAX-sized image and space
REVIEWS REVIEW DIGEST«*««« panic; in any case, cinematic schemes to enslave our species have lost the fearful impact they had during the Red Scare. Insights into what the aliens' home culture is like would have added interesting facets. Though the offspring are creepily well-played and we care enough about the main characters, if the filmmakers— particularly a horror veteran like John Carpenter—had used more imagination rather than settling for what is (aside from some '90s feminism and gore) a straight facsimile of the original, this thriller could have Plus, been more thrilling. any contemporary release in which an angry mob of townsfolk is actually depicted brandishing torches immediately incurs some demerits.— C/irisriHC James SISTER MY SISTER *••* Stan-ittg Julie Walters, Joely Richardson and Jodhi May. Directed by Nancy Meckler. Written by Wendy Kesschnan. Produced by Nonna Hcyman. A Seventh Art release. Drama. French -language; subtitled. Unrated. Running time: 89 min. The true story of incestuous sisters driven to madness and murders in 1 930s provincial France forms the basis of this stunning film from firsttime director Nancy Meckler. A cauldron of psychological instability seething with repressed sexuality, "Sister My Sister" plays like a cross between ""The Remains of the Day" and "Rosemary's Baby" — a claustrophobic, class-conscious exercise in domestic horror executed with an uncannily balanced blend of dramatic restraint and stylistic flourish. Adapted by Wendy Kesselman from her play, the Channel Four production stars Joely Richardson ("I'll Do Anything") and Jodhi May ("A World Apart") as sisters Christine and Lea, workingclass French girls fortunate enough to secure jobs together as maids in the home of Madame Danzard ("The Wedding Gift's" Julie Walters and her foppish daughter Isabelle ("The Summer House's" Sophie Thursfield). Beneath the sisters' meek personae lie curiously tormented souls, products of a repressive upbringing that's left them psychologically scarred and dangerously prone to obsessive sexual deviance. Unlike Jean Genet's acclaimed play "The Maids," which first popularized the sordid tale, "Sister My Sister" revels in a minimalism rarely seen onscreen. Set almost entirely within the confines of the Danzard home and featuring no speaking parts other than those of the four principals, the film gives little due to the outside world, instead focusing on the inner sides of its characters and the tenebrous fates they chart. Together with producer Norma Heyman, Meckler and Kesselman have revisited a real-life feminist nightmare whose modern-day parallels and considerations will leave lingering impressions on many a discriminating filmgoer for a long time to come. — Wade Major BLACK IS... BLACK AIN'T •••1/2 Directed and produced by Marlon T. Riggs. A Tara release. Documentary. Unrated. Running time: 87 mirt. This California Newsreel documentary masterfully splices archival footage, personal experiences, music and interviews (among the notable names are activist Angela Davis and poet Essex Hemphill) in a way that rewrites what was assumed to be true about black America. Such stereotypical outlooks and supposed facts along with homophobia and black identity are dealt with in a no-holds-barred style. "Black Is. ..Black Ain't" teaches more about black history and what black really is than virtually any book or college course. Marlon T. Riggs ("Tongues Untied") weaves this story of his people's history with a recounting of his own struggle with AIDS. Riggs died in April 1994, but his co-producers, Nicole Atkinson and Christiane Badgley, were able to finish the film— named best documentary at Sundance— from Riggs' notes and footage. —Dwayne E. Leslie H S Story-type key: (Ac) Action: (Ad) Adventure: (An) Animated; (C) Comedy: (D) Dnima: (Doc) Docmnentciry: (F) Fantasy; (Hor) Horror: (M) Musical: (My) Mystery; (R) Romance; (SF) Science Fiction: (Siis) Suspense: (Th) Thriller; (W) Western. 3 g .t e t. U w b 0. > U-* ^ t*l fS — a
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Boxoffice-July.1995

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