This earnest essay on apartheid in South Africa recalls a dictum often attributed to Sam Goldwyn: "If you want to send a message, go to Western Union." Adapted from Bryce Courtenay's novel and directed by John (Rocky, The Karate Kid) Avildsen, the film documents the life of a South African orphan of English descent (Dorff takes on the character at 18) around World War II. Persecuted by Afrikaaners who hate the white English as much as the blacks, the lad defends himself by boxing. His mentors are inmates of a prison he visits for training, a white (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and a black (Freeman). Repelled by their brutal Afrikaaner guards, and taught democracy in the ring, Dorff tries to bridge the racial gap by teaching blacks to be teachers.
Dorff and Freeman are strong, the intentions are honorable, and Power is topical. It is also, however, too obvious for adults and too sophisticated for youngsters. (PG-13)
Carol Burnett, Michael Caine
Well, you had to see it onstage. Snooty as that put-down is, it applies to this frantic movie version of the 1983 Broadway farce Noises Off. What worked onstage—slamming doors, deft timing, bug-eyed takes—doesn't translate to the screen.
Written by British playwright Michael Frayn, Noises Off is a clever play-within-a-play about a ragtag group of actors performing a cheesy sex farce called Nothing On. As the troupe's cross-country tour progresses, backstage sniping and lovers' quarrels intrude comically into the onstage production. What made all this work in the theater was watching actors slam doors with only seconds to spare, drop their pants at the least opportune moment, or scramble to make scripted Nothing On entrances. In the movie, the comic suspense is missing. You know that if an actor in the film blew a cue, director Peter Bogdanovich reshot the scene.
There are chuckles, thanks to Caine, who, as director of Nothing On, brings snap to a snapless movie. The other actors—Burnett, John Ritter, Marilu Henner, Nicollette Sheridan, Christopher Reeve, Denholm Elliott, Julie Hagerty—flounder. (PG-13)
Danny Aiello, Sherilyn Fenn
Ollie, we hardly knew ye.
With the hysterical, paranoid wheedling of Oliver Stone's JFK still echoing through the theaters, assassination reconstructionists are treated to this new conspiracy fest.
The lone director theory is obviously history, in any case. This film, directed by Briton John (The Long Good Friday) Mackenzie, is less of a letter to the editor disguised as a movie than JFK is. But it indicts not only the Mafia, CIA and FBI for complicity in the murder of the President, it also indirectly tosses into the plot a Frank Sinatra-like singer named Tony Montana, who entertains a mob summit by singing "Day In, Day Out."
Most of the film, though, traces the life of Jack Ruby (Aiello), the Dallas strip-club owner renowned for killing suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Mackenzie and British screenwriter Stephen Davis try to make a case that Ruby, acting for both the CIA and the Mafia, was a subcontractor who killed Oswald, though the reason is never clear.
Their theory makes for neither a convincing argument nor an involving movie. For one thing, they portray Ruby as so ineffectual—a slimy pimp in his most successful moments—that he seems incapable of such a big-time crime. He is totally unsympathetic, even when Mafia hoods or Arliss (For the Boys) Howard, a CIA representative, menace him. And Aiello (Do the Right Thing) never gives the character a human dimension, relying on his main acting technique: braying, in-your-face New York City attitude, which is disconcerting in a guy who's supposedly from Chicago.
Fenn (Twin Peaks) seems to be doing a Marilyn Monroe imitation as a naive stripper Aiello hires and then ""introduces to" Montana and to Kennedy, among other lusting sorts. Once Mackenzie trots out news footage of the Kennedys in Dallas, the end of his movie is a foregone conclusion and events drone to their inevitable end, with Aiello dying of cancer in prison. (R)
Steven Waddington, Andrew Tiernan
When Edward II, crowned King of England in 1307, shows more devotion to a male pal than to his Queen, she asks a courtier, "Is it not queer that he is thus bewitched?" "Queer" is one way of pulling it. This is history with a twist—or twisted history, depending on your viewpoint. Nothing if not audacious, this movie is based on playwright Christopher Marlowe's 1594 tragedy, as filtered through the 1992 sensibilities of British director and gay rights advocate Derek (Caravaggio) Jarman. By mixing old (Marlowe's text) and new (actors in modern fashions, scenes of gay protests, Annie Lennox singing Cole Porter), Jarman has made a movie that speaks eloquently—and loudly—about the love that once dared not speak its name.
The film is obviously not for everyone (Jesse Helms, this means you), but it sure makes history seem relevant. (R)
- Contributors:
- Mark Goodman,
- Leah Rozen,
- Ralph Novak.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
