Dances with Wolves (1990) [PG-13] ****/*****

A film review by James Berardinelli.


There was a time when the western was one of Hollywood's most popular genres. Whether it was Gary Cooper standing tall in High Noon, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas taking out the Clantons in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Wayne fighting the Apaches in Rio Grande, or Clint Eastwood looking more bad than good or ugly in Sergio Leone's trilogy, the Old West was a sure way to break into the black at the box office. But that was during the '50s and '60s. Since then, another cinematic generation has taken over and the western has gone the way of the musical. In 1990, while it wasn't yet as extinct as the Saber tooth Tiger, it was definitely on the endangered species list - until Kevin Costner came along and singlehandedly breathed new life into the genre. Suddenly, in the span of three years, two westerns had captured the Best Picture Oscar (Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven). And, while this newfound popularity didn't come close to challenging what had once been, film makers could take solace that they would not be summarily denied funding the moment they mentioned the words Old West.

When Kevin Costner made Dances with Wolves, he was at the height of his popularity. The debacles of Waterworld and The Postman were still years in the future. As an actor, he was riding the crest of a motion picture wave that included Silverado, No Way Out, The Untouchables, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams. Dances with Wolves, which gave Costner the triple hat of performer, producer, and director, was one of the most ambitious and impressive debuts of any novice film maker in the past three decades. In the '90s, it is only one of two films lasting longer than three hours to have grossed more than $100 million domestically (the other being Titanic), showing that the public loved it as much as the critics.

Dances with Wolves has been called a revisionist western - a movie that reversed the traditional roles of Cowboys and Indians. In fact, it's nothing of the sort. While it is true that the Sioux tribe is portrayed with the kind of balance and sensitivity rarely accorded to Native Americans in any movie, the Pawnee do not fare as well (as Sioux enemies, they are presented in much the same fashion that Indians were back in the '50s and '60s). And the American soldiers are depicted as genuine, imperfect human beings, not as thoughtless, vicious brutes. We mourn the death of Lieutenant Elgin as much as that of Stone Calf. So, although Dances with Wolves makes a conscious attempt to set the historical record straight, the role reversal is not complete. This is not meant to minimize Costner's achievement in presenting an epic motion picture from the Native American perspective, but to note that Dances with Wolves did not subvert the entire genre; it just twisted a few of the conventions. Areas that were once presented in graphic black and white have been blurred by the inclusion of many shades of gray.

Dances with Wolves opens with a brief Civil War prologue in which the protagonist, Lt. John Dunbar (Costner), establishes himself as a hero by providing a diversion so that a group of Union soldiers can overcome an entrenched Rebel position. Dunbar's reason for his actions - he preferred losing his life to living without a leg (the doctors were planning an amputation) - are unimportant. All that matters are the results, and, because of his bravery, he is offered a station anywhere he wants. He chooses the frontier, so he can see it before it is gone. Soon, he has been dispatched to the small South Dakota post of Fort Sedgewick. But, when he arrives there in the company of the wagon-driver Timmons (Robert Pastorelli), he finds the place deserted. Nevertheless, he resolves to obey his orders, and, after dismissing Timmons, he sets about putting things to right and solving the mystery of where everyone went.

For over a month, Dunbar is alone at Fort Sedgewick. His only companions are a friendly wolf that he names Two Socks and his faithful mount, Cisco. Gradually, over time, he becomes comfortable with his peaceful surroundings - some of the most beautiful country he has ever seen. The sequences with Dunbar alone at Sedgewick are some of the best in the movie. There is a kind of quiet cinematic poetry in these scenes as we grow not only to learn about the character of Dunbar, but about the land itself - not as it is today, but as it was 135 years ago. The first hour of Dances with Wolves is setup, but the gorgeous visuals, lush score (by John Barry), and reflective tone makes it a pleasant introduction.

The story moves into high gear with the arrival of the Sioux, led by the thoughtful Kicking Bird (Graham Greene) and the tempestuous Wind in His Hair (Rodney A. Grant). At first, there is mutual distrust, but, as Dunbar and the Sioux interact and begin to communicate (each learning a few words of the other's language), they form a truce, then a bond. With every passing day, Dunbar finds himself more and more infatuated with the Sioux way of life. And his interaction with them becomes even easier when Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman who has lived with the Sioux since childhood, is able to act as an interpreter. Eventually, Dunbar leaves Fort Sedgewick and moves into the Sioux camp. He falls in love with Stands with a Fist, becomes a respected member of the tribe with his own Sioux name (Dances With Wolves), and is able to forget the life he left behind - until the day when Fort Sedgewick is garrisoned and the soldiers find him: an out-of-uniform officer gone Injun.

Dances with Wolves works on many levels. It's a rousing adventure, a touching romance, and a stirring drama. While Dunbar's story is fictional, the background surrounding it is real, from the Sioux beliefs to the take without asking policy of many frontiersmen. Costner was determined to make the film as authentic as possible. He did most of his own stunts. Instead of using a half-breed for Two Socks, he used a full wolf. The Sioux speak their own language, Lakota (with subtitles), instead of English. And Costner cast only Native Americans as Indians.

The characters populating Dances with Wolves are strongly written and effectively portrayed. While no one is going to place Costner alongside Laurence Olivier in the acting department, he brings likability to Dunbar that many better performers might not have been able to match. The film works in large part because we identify so thoroughly with Dunbar. In fact, we know nothing of his past - he comes to us as a clean slate, born through his act of suicidal courage. We never learn anything about his family or childhood, but we see the frontier and the Sioux culture through his eyes, and it quickly becomes apparent that for him, the past is irrelevant. The reality of his life begins when we first meet him.

To say that the Sioux defy traditional stereotypes is to understate the matter. As portrayed by Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Tantoo Cardinal, and others, these are a group of compelling, diverse characters who show no hint of caricature. Mary McDonnell plays an effective love interest for Dunbar. Like him, Stands With A Fist is caught between two cultures. Costner should be applauded for this casting choice. McDonnell has the maturity to make certain scenes work when a younger actress might have struck a false note (McDonnell is three years older than Costner). The director was determined that Stands With A Fist should be portrayed by a woman, not a girl.

Although Dances with Wolves contains several well-executed battle scenes, there's little doubt that the most breathtaking sequence is the buffalo hunt, where the Sioux riders race alongside thousands of rampaging buffalo and bring several of them down. It's a high adrenaline sequence that marks the moment when Dunbar finally rejects his old culture to embrace his new one. From a technical and logistical perspective, this is probably the year's single most memorable scene, and the adroitness with which Costner directed it explains (at least in part) why he won the Best Director Oscar.

For several years after Dances with Wolves, expectations were high about Costner's next project. Sadly, when it finally materialized in late 1997, The Postman was a colossal disappointment. Will Costner ever direct again? At this point, that question cannot be answered, but, even if he never makes another film, he can be proud of the singular achievement on his resume. For three hours, Dances with Wolves transports us to another world, and that's the mark of a great motion picture.

Labels: adventure, drama, period, romance, western
Internet Movie Database 81/100
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Quigley Down Under (1990) [PG-13] ****

A film review by Roger Ebert, October 19, 1990.

Here is a Western much like many others, with the difference that it is the first new Western I've seen in a long time -- since Silverado in 1985, I think, unless you count last year's Back to the Future, Part III. A generation of moviegoers, now in their teens, have grown up never having seen a Western in a movie theater. Cowboy movies are too genteel, maybe, or the violence follows a code instead of being mindless, or maybe the kids today just can't see themselves riding horses.

Quigley Down Under stars Tom Selleck, an actor who with his height, authority and natural ease might have been a major Western star in the old days, as an American sharpshooter who sails to Australia in search of work. A man named Marston (Alan Rickman) has advertised for a long-distance marksman, and Selleck is the best, able to hit targets so far away the camera can barely see them. Selleck is appalled, however, when he discovers that Marston wants to pay him to kill Aborigines. He throws the villain through the window, and starts a vendetta that only ends, of course, with an obligatory showdown in the corral.

One of the first people Quigley meets down under is Crazy Cora, played by Laura San Giacomo as a misplaced American with a tragic past that has driven her mad - but not so mad that Quigley cannot slowly fall in love with her. Sex, lies and videotape (1989) is the movie that made San Giacomo an overnight star, but this may be the movie that proves her staying power. She isn't just another pretty face and a great set of eyebrows. She has an authority, a depth of presence, that is attractive, and her voice is deep and musical. She and Selleck create a chemistry that is real enough; it's a shame the screenplay hardly notices it.

The film itself is not up to the contributions of its stars. A little more thought would have helped. From the quilting-bee music that plays during the fight scenes to the Fallacy of the Talking Killer [F.T.K.], this is a movie that has been created by the numbers. The fallacy I refer to, of course, is the frequent mistake of allowing the bad guy to talk too long. He has his enemy trapped. There's no way out.

All he has to do is plug him between the eyeballs and order lunch. But no. He talks. And talks. And sets up some kind of dumb test of manhood, which he is sure to fail. Because the climax of such a scene is a foregone conclusion, the F.T.K. almost always results in dead screen time.

Other elements in the film are more interesting. The use of the Aborigine characters, for example. The night San Giacomo must save a baby from the wild dogs. And Alan Rickman's performance as the villain. He has a polished grace that serves here to suggest evil dimensions just beneath the surface.

I also enjoyed, in a visceral way, the pleasures of seeing the visual beauties of a Western. The choreography of a gunfight in rocky foothills. The excitement of a chase on horseback. The ambushes and close calls and treks through the desert land. Quigley Down Under is a handsome film, well-acted, and it's a shame the filmmakers didn't spend a little more energy on making it smarter and more original. [Ebert's rating: **1/2 out of 4 stars = 62.5]

Labels: adventure, drama, period, romance, western
Internet Movie Database 69/100 
MetaScore (critics=51, viewers=73)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=56, viewers=76)

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The Hunt for Red October (1990) [PG] *****

Russian submarine Captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) is a career naval officer; despite being Lithuanian he's risen through the ranks, and has also trained most of the fleet's attack submarine officers. Now he's been given command of the motherland's newest achievement, the Red October, a ballistic missile submarine featuring a magnetohydrodynamic, or caterpillar, drive - a nearly-silent propulsion system designed to allow the Red October to approach by stealth and shower its target with multiple warhead missiles with little or no warning - a submarine which can have but one purpose, to start a war. This is the taut, exciting story of how CIA agent Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) comes to the conclusion that Ramius and his officers want to defect to the U.S. with the Red October, and then figures out how Ramius plans to do it. Ryan manages to contact Ramius on the North Atlantic high seas despite the fact that both the U.S. and Russian navies are trying to hunt down and destroy the Red October, and then Ryan puts into motion a dangerous and risky plan to help Ramius succeed in defecting with the submarine.

The intricately plotted screenplay is very faithful to Tom Clancy's novel, the sets are realistic, the musical score is thrilling, the casting is perfect and the acting by Connery and Baldwin is inspired. There are also outstanding supporting performances by James Earl Jones as Ryan's CIA boss Adm. James Greer, Richard Jordan as National Security Advisor Jeffrey Pelt, Fred Dalton Thompson as Admiral Joshua Painter on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, Scott Glenn as Commander Bart Mancuso on the attack submarine USS Dallas, Courtney B. Vance as Sonarman Ronald Jones on the Dallas, Sam Neill as Executive Officer Vasily Borodin on the Red October, Tim Curry as Dr. Petrov on the Red October, Joss Ackland as Russian Ambassador Andrei Lysenko, Stellan Skarsgard as Captain Victor Tupolev on the Russian attack submarine Konovalov, and Jeffrey Jones as submariner Skip Tyler. If you enjoy exciting, classic military/political action thrillers, don't miss this one.

Labels: action, adventure, spy, thriller
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 58/100
Tomatometer (critics=86, viewers=89)
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Cocktail (1988) [R] **/***

An edited and revised film review by Roger Ebert on July 29, 1988.

Cocktail tells the story of two bartenders and their adventures in six bars and several bedrooms. What is remarkable, given the subject, is how little the movie knows about bars or drinking.

Early in the film, there's a scene where the two bartenders stage an elaborately choreographed act behind the bar. They juggle bottles in unison, one spins ice cubes into the air and the other one catches them, and then they flip bottles at each other like a couple of circus jugglers. All of this is done to rock 'n' roll music, and it takes them about four minutes to make two drinks. They get a roaring ovation from the customers in their crowded bar, which is a tip-off to the movie's glossy phoniness. This isn't bartending, it's a music video, and real drinkers wouldn't applaud, they'd shout: Shut up and pour! The bartenders in the film are Brian Flanagan, played by Tom Cruise, a young ex-serviceman who dreams of becoming a millionaire, and Doug Coughlin, played by Bryan Brown, a hard-bitten veteran who has lots of cynical advice. Doug advises Brian to keep his eyes open for a rich chick, because that's his ticket to someday opening his own bar. Brian is ready for this advice.

He studies self-help books and believes that he'll be rich someday, if only he gets that big break. The movie is supposed to be about how he outgrows his materialism, although the closing scenes leave room for enormous doubts about his redemption.

The first part of the movie works the best. That's when Brian drops out of school, becomes a full-time bartender, makes Doug his best friend and learns to juggle those bottles. In the real world, Brian and Doug would be fired for their time-wasting grandstanding behind the bar, but in this movie they get hired to work in a fancy disco where they have a fight over a girl named Coral (Gina Gershon) and Brian heads for Jamaica.

There, as elsewhere, his twinkling eyes and friendly smile seem irresistible to the women on the other side of the bar, and he lives in a world of one-night stands. That's made possible by the fact that no one in this movie has ever heard of AIDS, not even Bonnie, (Lisa Banes) a rich female fashion executive who picks Brian up and takes him back to Manhattan with her.

What do you think? Do you believe a millionaire Manhattan woman executive in her late 30s would sleep with a wildly promiscuous bartender in his 20s she’s picked up in a resort on Jamaica? Not unless she was seriously drunk. And that's another area this movie knows little about: the actual effects of drinking. Sure, Brian gets tanked a couple of times and staggers around a little and throws a few punches. But given the premise that he and Doug drink all of the time, shouldn't they be drunk, or hung over, at least most of the time? Not in this fantasy world.

If the film had stuck to the relationship between Brian and Doug, it might have had a chance. It makes a crucial error when it introduces a love story, involving Brian and Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth Shue), a vacationing waitress from New York. They find true love, which is shattered when Jordan sees Brian with Bonnie late one night.

After Bonnie takes Brian back to New York and tries to turn him into her boy toy, he realizes his mistake and apologizes to Jordan, only to discover, of course, that she is pregnant - and rich.

The last stages of the movie were written, directed and acted on autopilot, as Jordan’s millionaire daddy tries to throw Brian out of the penthouse. But love triumphs! There is not a moment in the movie's last half-hour that is not borrowed from other movies, and eventually even the talented and graceful Cruise can be seen laboring with the ungainly reversals in the script. Shue, who does whatever is possible with her role, is handicapped because her character is denied the freedom to make natural choices; at every moment, her actions are dictated by the artificial demands of the plot.

It's a shame the filmmakers didn't take a longer, harder look at this material. The movie's most interesting character is the older bartender, superbly played by Bryan Brown, who never has a false moment. If the film had been told from his point of view, it would have been a lot more interesting, but box-office considerations no doubt required the center of gravity to shift to Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue.

One of the weirdest things about Cocktail is the so-called message it thinks it contains. Brian is painted throughout the film as a cynical, success-oriented 1980s materialist who wants only to meet a rich woman and own his own bar. That's why Jordan doesn't tell him at first that she's rich. Toward the end of the movie, there's a scene where he allegedly chooses love over money, but then, a few months later, he is the owner and operator of his own slick Manhattan singles bar.

How did he finance it? There's a throwaway line about how he got some money from his uncle, a subsistence-level bartender who can't even afford a late-model car. Sure. It costs a fortune to open a slick singles bar in Manhattan, and so we are left with the assumption that Brian's rich father-in-law came through with the financing. If the movie didn't want to leave that impression, it shouldn't have ended with the scene in the bar. But then this is the kind of movie that uses Brian's materialism as a target all through the story and then rewards him for it at the end. The more you think about what really happens in Cocktail, the more you realize how empty and fabricated it really is. [Ebert’s rating: ** out of 4 stars]

Labels: comedy, drama, romance

Internet Movie Database 59/100 

MetaScore (critics=12, viewers=24)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=42, viewers=70) 

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"Kokomo" by the Beach Boys with scenes from "Cocktail"

Always (1989) [PG] ***/****

Dorinda Durston (Holly Hunter) is, in the words of her friend and father-figure Al Yackey (John Goodman): the toughest little fire-fightin' babe you'll ever meet. Dorinda, Al and Dorinda's boyfriend Pete St. Clair (Richard Dreyfuss) are part of an aerial fire-fighting tanker detachment, dropping rust-red fire suppressant on forest fires out of a remote base in the mountains of Idaho. Dorinda knows that Pete loves danger, but it isn't until he overestimates his fuel reserve and is forced to land dead-stick, that she realizes he really could die in his airplane.

Then, during a dangerous drop, one of Al's engines catches fire. In an act of self-sacrifice, Pete turns his own tanker into a dive-bomber, and dumps his load of suppressant on Al's burning engine, to put out the fire. Tragically his own plane catches fire and explodes. In the aftermath of Pete's death, Al moves to Colorado to run a training school for fire-fighting tanker pilots, and Dorinda takes an air traffic controller job in L.A.

Because of his selfless act, Pete, now a spirit in the after-life is recruited by Hap (Audrey Hepburn) an angel, to provide unseen inspiration to Ted Baker (Brad Johnson) who wants to train at Al's school to become a tanker pilot. How Ted and Dorinda meet and fall in love, how Pete deals with this turn of events, and how he eventually matures into a true angelic guide form the third act of this wonderful story.

Screenwriting, directing, acting, cinematography, sets and music are all excellent. Holly Hunter has great chemistry with both Richard Dreyfuss and Brad Johnson. If you love romances with a supernatural element, films like Heaven Can Wait, Chances Are and Heart and Souls, then you won't want to miss Always. 

Labels: drama, fantasy, flying, romance, tragedy
Internet Movie Database 64/100
MetaScore (critics=50, viewers=65) 
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=57, viewers=70)
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Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (The Platters, 1957)

Not well known is the fact that Always is a faithful remake of A Guy Named Joe (1943) starring Spencer Tracy as Pete, Irene Dunne as Dorinda, Van Johnson as Ted, and Ward Bond as Al. Set in England early in WW II, Pete dies while dive-bombing a German aircraft carrier, and his spirit provides inspiration to Ted, who's a rookie pilot in training at Luke Field in Phoenix, AZ. Many of the scenes and much of the dialog in Always, has been taken directly from A Guy Named Joe.

Field of Dreams (1989) [PG] *****

Field of Dreams is the classic baseball-themed romantic fantasy, and the second in Kevin Costner's trilogy, following Bull Durham and preceding For Love of the Game.

Field of Dreams is a story of rebellion and reconciliation, of a young man and his father finding a way back together again. How many of us, growing up, said things to our fathers, hurtful things born out of childhood frustration with parental authority against which we rebelled? How many of us left home, angrily slamming the door behind us, vowing never to return? And how many of us grew into adulthood wishing we could find a way to take back the things we said, to reconcile with our fathers while they were still alive? And how many of us never got the chance?

Field of Dreams is a wonderful film about one of life's ultimate dreams, a dream as powerful as the dream to being able to fly or to move mountains. 

Labels: baseball, drama, family, fantasy, space-time
Internet Movie Database 7.5/10
Metacritic 57/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=78, viewers=84)
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Movie Quote Database

Why Field of Dreams is the worst baseball film of all time

You know, we just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they're happening. Back then I thought, well, there'll be other days. I didn't realize that that was the only day.
Dr. Archibald Moonlight Graham

Cousins (1989) [PG-13] ****

Larry Kozinski (Ted Danson) is, in the words of his Uncle Phil: a failure at everything except life. Larry's currently a ballroom dance instructor, but he's been a real estate agent and a securities analyst. He changes careers every three years or so, whenever he feels he might become successful. Larry's been married for two years to Tish (Sean Young) a lovely but scatterbrained young woman with low self-esteem whom Larry describes as the Bride of Bloomingdale's. And living with Larry and Tish is Mitch, Larry's rebellious teenage son from his first marriage.

When Uncle Phil marries Edie (Norma Aleandro), Larry meets her lovely daughter Maria (Isabella Rossellini), and when Maria's husband Tom (William L. Petersen), an inveterate womanizer, seduces Tish at the wedding, Larry and Maria find themselves becoming friends, confidants and potentially much more, as they try to deal with their spouses' affair.

Sadly, Uncle Phil dies of a heart attack, and when his brother Vince (Lloyd Bridges), Larry's father, meets widowed Edie after the funeral, the stage is set for Vince and Edie to fall in love and marry, thus making Larry and Maria kissing cousins. This is a wonderful romantic comedy. The screenplay is inspired, with some memorable dialogue, and the casting is brilliant. Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini have incredible romantic chemistry; their eyes sparkle and they can hardly keep their hands off one another as they struggle to honor their wedding vows and not imitate their cheating spouses. If you enjoy warm, character-driven, light romantic comedies with an extended family feeling and a happy ending, films like 27 Dresses, Valentine's Day and The Wedding Date, then you will probably really enjoy Cousins.

This is a far better romantic comedy than many film critics gave it credit for. And, there's a deliciously subtle irony in this film. Isabella Rossellini's mother, Ingrid Bergman had a series of real-life affairs, in many respects like the on-screen affair between Maria (Isabella) and Larry (Ted Danson). And the fact that Isabella resembles her mother not only in physical appearance, but in mannerisms as well, adds to the irony. To prove this to yourself, I invite you to see the 2015 documentary Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words, on DVD and Blu-ray.

Labels: comedy, drama, reunion, rom-drama-faves, romance, wedding
IMDb 63/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=60, viewers=74)
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Roger Ebert's 3.5/4 star review

Old Gringo (1989) [R] ***

Based on a novel by prize-winning Spanish-language author Carlos Fuentes, Old Gringo gives us a possible explanation for what might have happened to aging journalist Ambrose Bierce (Gregory Peck). Bierce vanished into Mexico just as the Mexican Revolution was erupting in 1913. At the same time Harriet Winslow (Jane Fonda), the spinster daughter of a Spanish-American War hero, traveled to Mexico to become a governess for the Mirandas, one of the country's wealthiest families. And, finally, one of Pancho Villa's generals, Tomas Arroyo (Jimmy Smits) was about to lay siege to the Miranda hacienda just as Winslow and Bierce arrived on the scene. Adding complexity to the story are revelations about both Winslow and Arroyo's fathers, both of who betrayed their children.

This film asks a number of questions: How can one arrive at the end of one's life and make a statement about its significance? How can one survive being abandoned by one's father? How can a country with only very wealthy and very poor avoid a violent class struggle? How are justice and mercy balanced during a revolution? This is a tragic love story. There is a fair amount of violence, and life seems to be reduced to its essentials. But in the end we understand that Bierce, Winslow and Arroyo gave meaning to one another's lives, and achieved what they desired. Peck, Fonda and Smits all give strong, believable performances. If you enjoy historical dramas set in the West, perhaps films like The Alamo, The Big Country, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Dances with Wolves, Giant, How the West Was Won, Little Big Man, The Searchers, or The Wild Bunch, this film may appeal to you.

Labels: adventure, history, period, romance, tragedy, western
Internet Movie Database
Tomatometer (critics=45,viewers=47)

When Harry Met Sally... (1989) [R] *****

When Harry Met Sally... is a wonderful, hilarious film about relationships, which asks us to consider several important issues such as what it means to be high-maintenance, and what it means to be a transition person. The film also poses a number of important questions. For instance, after a man and woman make love, how long does he have to hold her before he can get up and go home? Harry (Billy Crystal) says: Somewhere between thirty seconds and all night. Another question concerns whether she's ever faked an orgasm, and, if so, would he know it? Sally (Meg Ryan) says: It's just that all men are sure it never happened to them, and most women, at one time or another have done it, so you do the math. Sally's logic is lost on Harry, so she has no choice but to give him a practical demonstration. Her fake orgasm scene in Katz's Deli is one of the most famous comedy scenes ever filmed, finished by a nearby customer's request to her waiter... I'll have what she's having!

The screenplay by Nora Ephron is wonderful, direction and supporting cast are superb, and the DVD has several extras, including director Rob Reiner's audio commentary and a revealing behind-the-scenes documentary with cast and crew. Don't miss this classic, great date movie.

Labels: college, comedy, drama, reunion, rom-com-faves, romance
IMDb 76/100
MetaScore (critics=76, viewers=87)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=80, viewers=84)
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Sally fakes an orgasm at Katz's Deli

sex, lies, and videotape (1989) [R] *****

A film review by Roger Ebert, August 1, 1989.

I have a friend who says golf is not only better than sex, but lasts longer. The argument in sex, lies and videotape is that conversation is also better than sex - more intimate, more voluptuous - and that with our minds we can do things to each other that make sex, that swapping of sweat and sentiment, seem merely troublesome. Of course, this argument is all a mind game, and sex itself, sweat and all, is the prize for the winner. That's what makes the conversation so erotic.

The movie takes place in Baton Rouge, La., and it tells the story of four people in their early 30s whose sex lives are seriously confused. One is a lawyer named John (Peter Gallagher), who is married to Ann (Andie MacDowell) but no longer sleeps with her. Early in the film, we hear her telling her psychiatrist that this is no big problem; sex is really overrated, she thinks, compared to larger issues such as how the Earth is running out of places to dispose of its garbage. Her husband does not, however, think sex is overrated and is conducting a passionate affair with his wife's sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), who has always resented the goody-goody Ann.

An old friend turns up in town. His name is Graham (James Spader), and he was John's college roommate. Nobody seems quite clear what he has been doing in the years since college, but he's one of those types you don't ask questions about things like that, because you have the feeling you don't want to know the answers. He's dangerous, not in a physical way, but through his insinuating intelligence, which seems to see through people.

He moves in. Makes himself at home. One day he has lunch with Ann, and they begin to flirt with their conversation, turning each other on with words carefully chosen to occupy the treacherous ground between eroticism and a proposition. She says she doesn't think much of sex, but then he tells her something that gets her interested: He confesses that he is impotent. It is, I think, a fundamental fact of the human ego in the sexually active years that most women believe they can end a man's impotence, just as most men believe they are heaven's answer to a woman's frigidity. If this were true, impotence and frigidity would not exist, but if hope did not spring eternal, not much else would spring, either.

The early stages of sex, lies and videotape are a languorous, but intriguing, setup for the tumult that follows. The adultery between John and Cynthia has the usual consequences and creates the usual accusations of betrayal, but the movie (and, I think, the audience) is more interested in Graham's sexual pastimes.

Unable to satisfy himself in the usual ways, he videotapes the sexual fantasies of women, and then watches them. This is a form of sexual assault; he has power not over their bodies but over their minds, over their secrets, and I suspect that the most erotic sentence in his vocabulary is She's actually telling me this stuff! Ann is horrified by Graham's hobby - and fascinated - and before long, the two of them are in front of his camera, in a scene of remarkable subtlety and power, both discovering that, for them, sex is only the beginning of their mysteries. This scene, and indeed the whole movie, would not work unless the direction and acting were precisely right (this is the kind of movie where a slightly wrong tone could lead to a very bad laugh), but Spader and MacDowell do not step wrong. Indeed, Spader's performance throughout the film is a kind of risk-taking. Can you imagine the challenge an actor faces in taking the kind of character I have described and making him not only intriguing but seductive? Spader has the kind of sexual ambiguity of the young [Marlon] Brando or [James] Dean; he seems to suggest that if he bypasses the usual sexual approaches it is because he has something more interesting up, or down, his sleeve.

The story of sex, lies and videotape is by now part of movie folklore: how writer-director Steven Soderbergh, at 29, wrote the screenplay in eight days during a trip to Los Angeles, how the film was made for $1.8 million, how it won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, as well as the best actor prize for Spader. I am not sure it is as good as the Cannes jury apparently found it; it has more intelligence than heart, and is more clever than enlightening. But it is never boring, and there are moments when it reminds us of how sexy the movies used to be, back in the days when speech was an erogenous zone. [Ebert's rating: *** 1/2 out of 4]

Label: drama

Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 86/100
Tomatometer (critics=98, viewers=79)
Blu-ray

Say Anything... (1989) [PG-13] *****

It's graduation day at Seattle's Lakewood High. Diane Court (Ione Skye) is the valedictorian; she took college-level courses and gave up her social life, with the result that most of her classmates don't really know her. One of them, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), was an underachieving student who worshipped Diane from afar. Lloyd has a group of gal pals with whom he shares confidences, and they've tried to convince him that he has no chance with Diane, but he is optimistic. Diane lives with her father (John Mahoney), who runs a nursing home; when he and Diane's mother divorced, she chose to live with him.

When Diane wins a fellowship to study in England her father is thrilled, but when Lloyd calls and convinces Diane to go to an all-night graduation party, her father is less than overjoyed. There's drinking and yearbook signing, and Diane rediscovers the friendships with other students she had lost. She also discovers that Lloyd is a refreshing change. It's clearly a case of opposites attracting, and while Diane knows she's leaving for England in the fall, she and Lloyd find themselves falling in love with one another. And then two IRS agents show up and inform Mr. Court that he's under criminal investigation for tax evasion. Naturally, Diane feels guilty about spending time with Lloyd rather than her father, and so she breaks up with Lloyd, leaving him bitter and disillusioned.

Written and directed by Cameron Crowe this is a true-to-life story about the elation and heartbreak of young love. There's a great screenplay, with some memorable dialogue, and a terrific soundtrack. John Cusack and Ione Skye have wonderful romantic chemistry, and there's an excellent supporting cast including Joan Cusack, Lili Taylor, Amy Brooks, Jeremy Piven, Loren Dean and Pamela Segall. If you enjoyed Singles, Some Kind of Wonderful and The Sure Thing, you won't want to miss Say Anything.

Labels: comedy, drama, high-school, romance, teenager
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 86/100
Rottentomatoes Averages (critics=80, viewers=72)
Blu-ray

Chances Are (1989) [PG] ****

Corinne Jeffries (Cybill Shepherd) and her husband Louie (Christopher McDonald) have the perfect marriage. They're young, in love, and about to have a baby. Louie is an attorney and his best friend Philip (Ryan O'Neal) is a journalist. Then Corinne and Louie's blissful life is shattered when Louie is killed in an auto accident. Desperate to get back to Corinne, Louie agrees to be reincarnated as Alex Finch (Robert Downey Jr.) but, in the process, he doesn't get his memory-erasing injection.

Fast-forward twenty-three years and Alex has just graduated from Yale. While applying for a job at the Washington Post he meets Philip, and through him, Corinne and her daughter Miranda (Mary Stuart Masterson). While in the Jeffries home, Alex begins to see images of Corinne, Louie and Philip together, and his memory of his life as Louie begins to return. Corinne, who has never gotten over Louie, and still cooks for him, is attracted to Alex, but doesn't understand her feelings for him. Philip, who has always been in love with Corinne, is not happy about Alex taking the place in Corinne's heart that he hoped would be his. And Alex realizes that Miranda is falling in love with him... her reincarnated father.

This is a wonderful story about wishing for your soul mate for twenty-three years, and having that wish fulfilled. The screenplay is humorous, fast-paced and inventive; the direction and editing are creative; the cinematography is beautiful, and the soundtrack is evocative. Robert Downey Jr. is brilliant as Louie reincarnated as Alex, and Cybill Shepherd has unique romantic chemistry with each of the three male leads. The casting is inspired, and they all clearly had fun making this film. If you enjoy light romantic comedy about love and destiny, films like Heart and Souls and Only You - both starring Robert Downey Jr., as well as Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, then I predict you will really enjoy Chances Are.

Labels: college, comedy, fantasy, rom-com-faves, romance, wedding
Internet Movie Database
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=57, viewers=68)
Blu-ray

Working Girl (1988) [R] ****

A film review by Roger Ebert, December 21, 1988.

The problem with working your way up the ladder of life is that sometimes you can’t get there from here. People look at you and make a judgment call, and then, try as you might, you’re only spinning your wheels.

That’s how Tess McGill feels in the opening scenes of Working Girl. She is intelligent and aggressive, and she has a lot of good ideas about how to make money in the big leagues of high finance. But she is a secretary. A secretary with too much hair. A secretary who rides the Staten Island ferry to work. A secretary who started talking like a little girl when she was 11 because it was cute, and is still talking the same way, except now she is 30. There is no way anybody is ever going to take her seriously.

One day Tess (Melanie Griffith) gets a new job and a new boss in the mergers and acquisitions department of a Wall Street firm. The boss (Sigourney Weaver) is a woman of almost exactly Tess’s age, but with a different set of accessories. For example, she talks in a low, modulated voice, and wears more businesslike clothes, and has serious hair. If you want to get ahead in business, Tess muses, you’ve got to have serious hair. Tess gets along fine with her boss until the boss goes on a skiing holiday and breaks her leg and is supposed to be in traction for six weeks. Then Tess accidentally sees a file in her boss’s computer and finds that the boss was about to steal one of Tess’s brilliant suggestions and claim it as her own.

This makes her fighting mad, and so she begins an elaborate deception in which she masquerades as an executive at the firm, and figures out a way to meet a guy named Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford), who is the right guy at another firm to make the deal happen. She meets Trainer at a party and gets drunk and ends up in bed with him, even though she explained to him, I have a head for business and a body for sin. Will he ever take her seriously now? Yes, it turns out, because he likes her, and because he thinks her idea really is pretty brilliant.

That’s the setup for Working Girl, the new Mike Nichols film, which is one of those entertainments where you laugh a lot along the way, and then you end up on the edge of your seat at the end.

Structurally, the film has some parallels with The Graduate, Nichols’ 1967 classic - including a climactic scene where an important ceremony is interrupted by the wrong person bursting in through the door. But Working Girl is the other side of the coin. The Graduate was about a young man who did not want to make money in plastics. Working Girl is about a young woman who very definitely wants to make money in mergers.

This is Melanie Griffith’s movie in the same way The Graduate belonged to Dustin Hoffman. She was not an obvious casting choice, but she is the right one. And in an odd way, her two most famous previous roles, in Body Double and Something Wild, work for her. Because we may remember her from those sex-drenched roles, there is a way in which both Griffith and her character are both trying to get respectable - to assimilate everything that goes along with serious hair. Supporting roles are crucial in movies like this. Weaver’s role is a thankless one - she plays the pill who gets humiliated at the end - and yet it is an interesting assignment for an actor with Weaver’s imagination. From her first frame on the screen, she has to say all the right things while subtly suggesting that she may not mean any of them.

If she is subtle, so is Ford, an actor whose steadiness goes along with a sort of ruminating passion. When he’s in love with a woman, he doesn’t grab her; he just seems to ponder her a lot. Weaver and Ford provide the indispensable frame within which the Griffith character can be seen to change.

The plot of Working Girl is put together like clockwork. It carries you along while you’re watching it, but reconstruct it later and you’ll see the craftsmanship. Kevin Wade’s screenplay is sort of underhanded in the way it diverts us with laughs, and with a melodramatic subplot involving Griffith’s former boyfriend (Alec Baldwin), while all the time it’s winding up for the suspenseful climax.

By the time we get to the last scenes, the movie plays like a thriller, and that’s all the more effective because we weren’t exactly bracing for that. Working Girl is Nichols returning to the top of his form, and Griffith finding hers. [Ebert’s rating: **** out of 4 stars]

Blogger’s comment: Sigourney Weaver's character, Katharine Parker, is definitely a sociopath. She's all about control and winning, and she is willing to lie, cheat and steal while feeling no guilt, shame or remorse. And when she's finally caught, she plays the helpless woman. Classic! There's also excellent supporting role work by Joan Cusack as Tess’s best friend Cyn, and Philip Bosco as CEO Oren Trask. And Carly Simon's iconic Let the River Run, is heard frequently throughout the film.

Labels: comedy, drama, romance

Internet Movie Database 68/100 

Metacritic 73/100 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=68, viewers=64) 

Blu-ray 

Let the River Run (Carly Simon)

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) [PG] ****

A film review by Roger Ebert, August 12, 1988.

The car itself is the star of this movie, the low-slung, bullet-nose that looks like a discreet cross-breeding of the postwar Studebaker and the Batmobile. And the most amazing fact about the Tucker automobile is that Preston Tucker did actually succeed in building 50 of them, just as he said he would, before he was shot down by the Big Three from Detroit and their hired guns in Washington.

Would automotive history have been different if Tucker had put his dream into mass production? Probably not. The Tucker would probably have thrived for a few late-1940s years and then joined the long, slow parade of the Hudson, the Kaiser, the Nash, the Studebaker, the Packard, the Willys and all the other makes that your dad always warned you couldn’t get parts for.

And yet Francis Ford Coppola’s new film is not so much about the car as about the man, and it is with the man that he fails to deliver.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream paints for us a Preston Tucker who is a genial, incurably optimistic dreamer, a man who gathers a small band around him and inspires them to build a great car, and yet all the time he lacks an ounce of common sense or any notion of the real odds against him. And since the movie never really deals with that - never really comes to grips with Tucker’s character - it begins as a saga but ends in whimsy.

Tucker is played by Jeff Bridges with a big, broad smile and a knack for finding hope even in the ash heaps of his dreams. He lives in the center of a large, cheerful family, with a wife (Joan Allen) and a brood of kids who seem cloned directly from those late-1940s radio sitcoms where somebody was always banging in through the screen door and announcing that he smelled fresh apple pie.

Tucker made his fortune during World War II by inventing and manufacturing the Tucker Turret for Air Corps bombers. Now he thinks the American public is ready for a truly modern automobile - one with great design and good mileage and safety features like pop-out windshields and seat belts. His master touch is a third headlight in the middle of the front grille that will turn in the same direction as the steering wheel. But Detroit doesn’t much like the idea of seat belts - they might give the public the idea that cars aren’t safe - and they don’t like the idea of Tucker, either.

Tucker applies for the use of a war-surplus manufacturing plant on the Southwest side of Chicago, and gets it. He and his team throw together a prototype automobile out of spare parts scavenged in a junkyard. He’s a master at personal publicity, floats a stock issue to raise money, sets up his assembly line and starts racing against a deadline for introducing his first model.

But it’s about here that the movie really loses its grip. We are never given any real insights into what makes Tucker tick; we see him from the outside, like the public, and he’s all bluff and charm and sideshow pep talks. The problems of the assembly line are also painted without any details. There is no sense here that the movie gives any serious attention to the process.

The worst scene in the movie is the most crucial: the scene where Tucker is scheduled to unveil his new beauty to the assembled American automobile press. We get a passage that’s too long and too confused, a comedy of errors as the workmen try to push the big car up a ramp as a fire starts backstage and Tucker stands in front of the curtain bamboozling the press. A little of this would have made the point; Coppola pushes it to distraction.

It is difficult, by the way, to avoid the notion that, in Preston Tucker, Coppola sees a version of himself. Coppola says he has been fascinated by the Tucker legend ever since he first saw a Tucker car in the late 40s, and he has owned a rare collector’s model during the 10 years he has been trying to get this dream film off the ground.

Many details are the same between the automaker and the filmmaker: the loyal wife, the big family, the close-knit group of friends who pitch in at all hours, the grandiose schemes, the true genius, the peculiar knack of confusing the public with unnecessary explanations and, in particular, the ability to hold a launching - or a premiere - in the worst possible way. Coppola is known for holding secret previews that the press somehow gate-crashes, leading to premature and hostile reviews. And he is known for fiascos like his ill-advised decision to publicly announce that he was having problems with the ending of Apocalypse Now, allowing self-doubt to cast an unnecessary shadow on his masterpiece.

The parallels between Coppola and Tucker are so obvious that it’s surprising Coppola didn't observe one more: He has been as protective of Tucker’s private life as he rightly is of his own.

Tucker does not probe the inner recesses of Preston Tucker, is not curious about what really makes him tick, does not find any weaknesses, and blames his problems, not on his own knack for self-destruction, but on the workings of a conspiracy. And it makes the press into a convenient and hostile villain. This won’t do. If we’re offered a movie named Tucker: The Man and His Dream, we leave feeling cheated if we only get the dream. [Ebert’s rating: ** ½ out of 4]

Labels: biography, drama

Internet Movie Database 

Metacritic 74/100 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=72, viewers=66)