D: Marleen Gorris; with Willeke Van Ammelrooy, Els Dottermans, Jan Decleir,
Veerle Van Overloop, Marina De Graaf, Mil Seghers, Thyrza Ravesteijn.
VHS Home Video
Vulcan Video, 609 W. 29th
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European rural life after World War II. The story coaxes us to admire and love
Antonia (Van Amelrooy), a woman who “knows when enough is enough,” and lays
down to die at 88 with three generations of her descendents surrounding her
bedside. It’s easy enough to love formidable Antonia and her line of prodigy
children, but the film itself is a little harder to embrace. Leaning heavily on
voiceover narration to push forward a complex and overburdened plot, the film
sometimes fails to hold interest from one delightful remembrance to the next.
Inexplicably quirky and silly magical vision sequences, such as stone angels
knocking over priests with a flap of their wings, come out of nowhere. Yet
themes of family, community, life, and death will charm you out of noticing
these shortcomings. Antonia’s Line took home the Oscar for best foreign
language film last year because it leaves its audience thoughtful and
meditative on the epic, cyclic qualities of life. — Kayte VanScoy
Blow Out
D: Brian DePalma; with John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, DennisFranz.
VHS Home Video
Riding high on the success of Saturday Night Fever (1977),
Grease (1978), and Urban Cowboy (1980), John Travolta hit the
skids with Blow Out (1981) and continued his Eighties downhill slide —
Two of a Kind, Stayin’ Alive (both 1983), and Perfect (1985) — until Look Who’s Talking in 1989. Still, Travolta is fine as
the B-picture soundman who accidentally tapes a Chappaquidick-type political
scandal, and Franz is perfect as a sleazy photographer. Writer-director DePalma
(Dressed to Kill, Mission: Impossible) has never had an original
idea in his life, however. This one is a swipe of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966
classic, Blowup, and includes the doomed notion of casting his then-wife
Allen in the female lead. Totally unbelievable, yet the film’s self-deprecating
take on Travolta’s slasher-film kingpin boss and the sullenly ironic ending are
memorable.
— Raoul Hernandez
Angels and Insects
D: Philip Haas; with Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, Patsy Kensit,Jeremy Kemp, Douglas Henshall, Annette Badland, Anna Massey.
VHS Home Video
Vulcan Video, 609 W. 29th
Opening with a sequence depicting what tradition would have us believe was the
furthest thing from the Victorian mind, this stunning English heritage film
progresses at a pace some may find frustratingly slow. But rest assured, the
plot packs more punch than the typical action-adventure film. The protagonist
is an Australian naturalist circa Darwin; shipwrecked and in dire need of help,
a wealthy English benefactor offers him aid and eventually one of his
daughters. Based on A.S. Byatt’s novella Morpho Eugenia, the film seems
to dawdle in precious dialog until the viewer realizes that the story is inlaid
with as much visual as verbal panache. Paul Brown’s costume design alone should
clue the alert viewer into precisely what this tale has to tell. This is a
film, however, about aristocratic Victorians, so have patience with characters
who tiptoe on eggshells to avoid speaking the truth. The plot steadily but
surely reveals all. — Clay Smith
War Wind
PC CD-ROMSSI/Mindscape
At first glance, many people will assume that this is just a Warcraft
II or Command & Conquer knockoff. War Wind does indeed
have many similarities to those wildly successful real-time strategy games, and
drawing upon some of the best ideas in both, it attempts to go a whole lot
further. It almost makes it. War Wind is played with four totally unique
races, each featuring radically different strengths and weaknesses. But the
game falters in several areas, one of which is that, visually, it is often hard
to figure out — the different characters for a particular race can be
difficult to distinguish on screen. Another weakness is in War Wind‘s
unnecessarily awkward interface. The game should appeal to avid fans of the
genre, but new fans take heed: There’s better stuff out there. — Kurt Dillard
Swimming to Cambodia
D: Jonathan Demme; with Spalding Gray.VHS Home Video
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excuse to revisit his masterwork, the highly acclaimed Swimming to
Cambodia. If you aren’t familiar with Gray, he is a singularly unique
entertainer — a monologist whose films and live performances consist of his
“raving, talking head” behind a desk for 90-plus minutes, and they are always
completely enthralling. In Cambodia, Gray relates his experiences during
the filming of The Killing Fields, in which he had a minor role. Along
the way he speaks ostensibly about the malignancy of the early 1970s: Vietnam,
the Kent State massacre, and the genocide committed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge,
on which Fields is based. However, it is through Gray’s subtle parallels
with the evils of today — our urban strife, sex parlors, drugs, and deviants
— that his message illustrates our collective loss of innocence . Laurie
Anderson’s tribal score and Demme’s perfectly executed direction take us right
inside the mind of this eccentric genius. And it’s one hell of a visit. — Christopher Null
This article appears in January 31 • 1997 and January 31 • 1997 (Cover).