Scanlines

D: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro; with Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork,
Judith Vettet, Dominique Pinon, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Genevieve Brunet, Odile
Mallet, Mireille Mosse, Joseph Lucien.
VHS Home Video
Waterloo Video, 1016 W. Sixth

From the makers of the quirkily convoluted French film Delicatessen comes this dark fairy tale which, like its predecessor, is also somewhat taken
with the concept of cause and effect. One, a soft-spoken midway strongman
(Perlman) teams up with the leader of a band of orphans after his petit
frere is abducted from the dinner table by the henchmen of an evil
scientist who kidnaps children so he can make their dreams his own. Better
suited for the big screen, the best thing about The City of Lost
Children is the way the film looks and sounds, a melange of quality
components — outrageously industrial costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier, score by
Angelo Badalamenti with vocal tracks by Marianne Faithfull, and cinematography
by Darius Khondji, whose credits include Seven and, most recently,
Bertolucci’s picturesque Stealing Beauty — which outshine the story
line completely. Still, the timeless, placeless quality of the set, grand
special effects, and bizarre characters, who could each hold their own in a
circus sideshow, make this a worthwhile video viewing experience, nonetheless.
— Jen Scoville

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Bob Marley Soul Almighty; The
Formative Years Vol. 1

Last year, after nearly three decades of relative silence, Danny Sims finally
started collecting on an investment he made in 1967: Bob Marley. In the liner
notes of the Soul Almighty CD, Sims stated, “I’ve got 49 songs that
nobody’s ever heard yet. We’re going to keep putting them out until that
treasure trove is exhausted. We have contracts for CD-ROM and CD-Plus
projects…” Milk it, baby, milk it. After all, the CD was only half
vile. The CD-ROM is mostly vile, even if it does excerpt nine of the best songs
from the CD. Still, the CD-ROM has little to do with Marley. Instead, there’s a
Rasta glossary with no mention of kaya, the temple of Haile “Selassie in
the Chapel” (sung to the tune of “Crying in the…”), and instructions on how
you, too, can get the brand-new Marley trading cards. They’re collectable!
Somebodychase those crazy baldheads outta the yard.

— Raoul Hernandez

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Reds

Somehow, watching Warren Beatty’s Academy Award-winning epic about American
journalist Jack Reed (Beatty) feels luxurious and decadent during these steamy
summer days. Perhaps it’s because most of the film takes place in the bleak
winter landscapes of the United States and the former Soviet Union, resulting
in lavish winter wardrobes and plenty of fur. A dramatic chronicle of Reed’s
involvement in the Russian Revolution and the equally tumultuous relationship
he shared with Louise Bryant (Keaton) during the second decade of this century,
Reds is part love story and part (romanticized) history lesson. Jack
Nicholson appears as the playwright Eugene O’Neill, and Maureen Stapleton pulls
no punches as the feminist and anarchist Emma Goldman. As much about the
trajectory of Reed’s involvement with the Communist party and the American
labor movement as about Reed and Bryant, Reds explores, ultimately, on a
number of levels, the theme of commitment.

—Alison Macor

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S.F.P.D. Homicide — Case File: The Body in the Bay

It’s Monday morning and a fisherman at Pier 91 just reeled in a 150-pound, 50
year-old Caucasian male tied to 60 pounds of concrete. You have 10 days to
discover who took his last swim in the bay and prove who put him there,
assisted by two CDs of multiple database searches, witness interviews, lab
reports, and phone messages. A clean interface neatly organizes your data into
Autopsy, Physical, Document, and Witness Interview files within your detective
casebook. Despite being filmed exclusively in close-ups, the acting is good
enough to make up for lip-syncing that’s off by a third of a second, but not to
overcome one or two seconds of upfront “rolling” time that should have been
trimmed from many clips. The interface also has two glaring weaknesses: You
cannot Interview witnesses (or suspects) about non-Interview forms of evidence;
for example, I couldn’t ask Dave, the hot-tempered husband of the adulterous
lover of the deceased, to explain how his fingerprints got in the victim’s
apartment. And, inexcusably, you cannot save a game midway. Meanwhile, this
isn’t bad for a first entry in the crime genre. It was a real case, and the
real detective who cracked it is available onscreen for (admittedly wooden)
Help interludes — better than watching ex-LAPD police chief Daryl Gates any
day. — Jim Cooper

This article appears in August 23 • 1996 and August 23 • 1996 (Cover).