Cinema
Ten of the • less bad
Mark Amory
Ascamper through the year's best films can at least pretend now that it serves a practical purpose by helpfully pointing out to the discerning reader what he should be getting on video, instead of simply reminding him that he missed everything that was any good. I award marks out of ten, no halves allowed; the whole point is the simplifying crudity of the verdict.
Full marks would be a life-changing, almost mystical experience; it has not happened yet. No nine either this year and not many eights but Goodfellas, surely the popular choice for best film, and Jesus of Montreal got theirs. It was particularly brave of the latter to show parts of the passion play that the Canadian group were performing, as if it had been anything less than remarkable the point of the whole film would have been removed. Enemies was likable and made me think yet again that I must read Isaac Bashevis Singer; Glory, about a black regiment in the American Civil War, was a considerable achievement and nearly much more. The Sheltering Sky compelled admiration. War of the Roses was lively, impressively un- compromising apart from one shot: it appears that Michael Douglas has killed his wife's dog and turned it into pâté which he has then given her on a biscuit. Then the cop-out, a glimpse of a frisky pooch still alive, he was just tricking her.
Down here it is beginning to get embar- rassing. Fellow Traveller seemed to me tricky and complicated in an enjoyable way without losing sight of its subject, which was the plight of a black-listed Hollywood writer who came to England and wrote about Robin Hood. Others liked it less. Tremors was a B-picture like they do not make any more, scary without being un- pleasantly violent. Total Recall really was unpleasantly violent, especially the im- aginative crunching of bones and dislo- cated jaws on the Dolby sound track, and it was strange to have the plot concern Arnold Schwarzenegger's multiple perso- nality when it is not clear that he has as many as one; the new box-office champion is almost as bizarre a hero as the slipping Sylvester 'Some people paint flowers, I paint what the flower is thinking' Stallone. It did, however, deliver the exhilaration and state-of-the-computer spectacle it promised.
Born on the Fourth of July was a string of scenes each one more painful than the last. Training for Vietnam, Vietnam, wounded in Vietnam are sure to be rough, but hospital after Vietnam was the worst yet and being a crippled hero nobody wants was harrowing too. Tom Cruise deserved an Oscar, but then so did Daniel Day Lewis. Little Michael Fox, however, in Casualties of War did not and his implausi- bility and the utter banality of the plot defeated all Brian de Palma's technical aplomb.
Milou in May was not particularly in- teresting about its subject, what was hap- pening in provincial France during les evenements of 1968, but it was a great pleasure as a story of a country family. That is over the statutory ten and and no mention of two decent thrillers, the hand- some Presumed Innocent and Sea of Love which was raised about its tacky plot by the intensity of Al Pacino. Then there was Wild at Heart which blew me away, as they say, at the beginning, especially when we suddenly got an Elvis Presley number, but now seems rather less impressive not to mention clumsy and uninspired. Time of the Gypsies and Metropolitan were both original and likable: And When Harry met Sally.
Still it was a weak•year at the top. Many films that succeeded on some level left me tepid: the big money-maker, Pretty Woman, was a tame little fairy story; the charm of Cinema Paradiso evaporated with the disappearance of the little boy and his replacement by a gawky adolescent; Crimes and Misdemeanours was two films stuck together, one of them bad; Driving Miss Daisy aspired only to the pleasant, Sweetie was odd but not interesting, Dick Tracy brought to mind the question, 'But Mummy, what is that man for?' Most shameful of all, I was a bit bored by the new, fuller version of Vigo's established masterpiece L'Atalante. No zero has ever been awarded but a comedy called Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure through which I sat frozen-faced and with mounting gloom got 1. A sequel is planned.
Previous page
