Filmhouse.
o A Nightmare on Elm Street( 18) (Wes Craven, US, 1984) John Saxon. Ronee Blakely, Heather Langenkamp. 91 mins. In smalltown America a quartet of teenagers share a terrifying communal dream in which they are terrorised by a long-dead local bogey man. Reality and illusion grow inextricably intertwined when what you dream is exactly what transpires and sleep can literally be murderous. Polished. professional shocker, quite imaginative but annoyingly illogical. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy ’s Revenge is on the way.
Glasgow: Salon
0 Pale Rider(15) (Clint Eastwood, US, 1985) Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress. 116 mins. Back in the saddle for the first time in nine years Clint dispenses rough justice as an avenging angel defending the rights ofa community of prospectors.
A classic western . superbly photographed and a tribute to Eastwood‘s multi-faceted talent. Edinburgh: ABC, Dominion. Glasgow: ABC (Sauchiehall St)
0 PeterPan (U) (Wilfred
Jackson. Clyde Geronomi. Hamilton Luske. US. 1952) 76 mins. Typically beguiling Disney magic of the little boy who cannot grow up and three London children who join his adventures in Never Never land. Edinburgh: Odeon. Glasgow: Odeon
0 Pink Floyd The Wall (15) (Alan Parker, UK, 1982) Bob Geldof, Bob Hoskins, Christine Hargreaves. 95 mins. Hysterically overwrought, heavy-handed story of a burnt out rock star and his paranoid self-obsession as he sits in a Los Angeles hotel room watching the Dam Busters. Recommended for the hard of hearing. Glasgow: Grosvenor.
o Prosper-Ebel (PG) (Ruhr Film Zentrum Project, Germany, 1979-1982) Six Hours in Total. In August 1979 a unique project was initiated to capture a film portrait of a mining community in the Ruhr. A production crew spent three years with the people of Ebel and emerged with this series of films. As the film-makers were cautiously welcomed into the close community they filmed the women‘s gymnastic group, enquired into conditions for those who had travelled as families from Upper Silesia and Poland, focused on those above ground and captured the industrial processes below and eventually summed up their experience in a full-scale montage called In the Heart of Germany. What promises to be a unique social document will be introduced by Christof Hubner and Gabriele Voss, two key members of the team. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
o Rambo: First Blood Part II ( 15) (George Pan Cosmatos. US, 1985) Sylvester Stallone. Richard Crenna. 96 mins. Inferior sequel to Stallone’s 1982 hit. His monolithic Vietnam vet is released from incarceration to seek out his buddies still rotting in Vietcong prison camps. On one level this is a simple-minded, taut action
My Beautiful Laundrette (15) (Stephen Frears, UK, 1985) Daniel Day Lewis, Gordon Wamecke, Saaed Jalfrey, Boshan Seth, Shirley Anne Field. 94 mins. Family ties are pulling young Asian Omar every which way but loose. His father’s socialist values bring them a lifestyle of principled impoverishment but his flashy uncle has embraced the do-or-die spirit of Thatcher’s England and made the system pay dividends. In the struggle between conscience and comfort the latterwins hands down and Omar prepares to soil his hands with the dirty dealings of unscrupulous commerce. Omar soon proves himself an equally smooth operator and secures a chance to manage a run-down Iaundrette. When he encounters Johnny, a former school chum whose friendship has grown awkward with the passage of time, he offers him a job and they combine to make their patch the Ritz of laundrettes. Johnny had been lost and listless, drifting along with his National Front friends, and views Omar’s laundrette as a life line on which to salvage his self-respect. When they become lovers the tensions operting on
film directed at an exhilarating pace. It is also 21 Charles Atlas fantasy on a national scale with dramatic liberty restoring the pride of a country irredeemably tarnished by Vietnam and Watergate.
Edinburgh: ABC. Strathclyde: Kelburne
O Scarface (18) (Brian De Palma, US, 1983) Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer. 169 mins. After expulsion from Cuba, Tony Montana (Pacino) lands in Florida and gets involved as a hired thug for drug smugglers. Through ruthless brutality he rises to a position of power, but too many enemies and too much indulgence in his own cocaine lead to his demise. Brian De Palma’s epic reworking of the 1932 Howard Hawks film sets out to examine the dark underside of the American deam, buts ends up as just another ‘crime doesn’t pay’ melodrama. The sheer bloated excess of the thing is simultaneously dazzling and dismaying. Glasgow; GFI‘
0 Screwballs ll- Loose Screws (18)
MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
A. in; ..
both men are stretched to breaking point and unavoidable choices must be faced.
My Beautiful Laundrette isthe most original and refreshing British film to be seen this year, a fact attributable in no small measure to the richly textured and deftly economic script by Hanif Kureishl which reflects a multiplicity of current issues with wit and insight. He stimulates the mind and engages the heart with empathetic characters in unlikely circumstances.
Director Stephen Frears cleverly marshalls the elements of this unpredictable winner and allows his cast the room to inhabit a bevy of well-etched figures. Acting honours are evenly dispersed among the measured subtlety of Daniel Day Lewis’s Johnny, the cocky charisma of Gordon Wamecke's Omar, the wily skills of old masters Saaed Jalfrey and Roshan Seth as uncle and father respectively and the delightful re-appearance of Shirley Anne Field as the mistress. My Beautiful Laundrette is a film worthy of everyone’s attention. (Allan Hunter)
(Rafal Zielinski, Canada, 1985) Bryan Genesse, Lance Van Der Kolk, Alan Deveau. 92 mins. Reputedly dire teen comedy in which the students of Beaver High are in deadly competition to see who can score with the most girls. Strathclyde: La Scala Saltcoats.
o The Sex Mission (15) (Juliusz Machulski, Poland, 1984) Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Jerzy Stuhr. 121 mins. At an unspecified date in the future when the earth’s surgace has been irradiated by nuclear war an all-female society survives underground. Two men awaken from a hibernation experiment to find their necessity questioned and the option of their castration under debate...
Unsophisticated satire which has provoked both mirth and outrage with its futuristic scenario taken as an allegory of the Polish state. Glasgow: Glasgow Film Theatre.
0 Sophie’s Choice (15) (Alan J. Pakula, US, 1982) Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol. 151 mins. In 1947 an aspiring young
writer comes to live in New York, and moves in with eccentric couple , Sophie, a Polish survivor of Auschwitz, and Nathan, a schizophrenic scientist. Hansomely-mounted adaptation of William Styron’s semi-autobiographical novel manages to effortlessly sustain tension as the revelations pile up. Kevin Kline’s erratic bonhomie almost steals it from the miraculous, Oscar-winning Streep. Finally quite harrowing. Edinburgh; Filmhouse.
0 Trading Places (15) (John Landis. US. 1983) Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Don Ameche. Jamie Lee Curtis. 116 mins. Two elderly members ofPhiladelphia’s Heritage Club indulge in a wager that black down-and-out can make it as a commodities broker and instal him in a partnership, while the former broker he has replaced (now reduced to vagabond status himself) decides to fight back. Superb comedy is intricately scripted and beautifully timed, with Eddie Murphy almost stealing the show from Denholm Elliot‘s plucky butler and Ameche and Ralph Bellamy’s curmudgeonly old codgers. Worthy of comparison with 305 models, and you even come out having learned something about the commodities market. Strathclyde; cinema
0 Witness ( 15) (Peter Weir. US. 1985) Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Alexander Godunov. 112 mins. A young Amish boy is a witness to a murder. The investigation leads a cop into a brush with another culture, a little romance and the expected police corruption.
Atmospheric, impeccably acted and beautifully constructed. One of the year‘s best films. Edinburgh: Dominion.
LISTINGS
This section gives details of programmes showing at cinemas in central Scotland over the next fortnight. Readers are advised that many cinemas in the Strathclyde and Lothian regions are unable to provide The List with details of their programming for both weeks covered by each issue, as these may not be available at the time of going to press. These listings therefore provide an accurate guide to programmes for one week only, unless further dates are specified. Readers are advised that programmes may be subject to late change at any time.
Cinemas operating a family discount scheme allow an adult accompanying a child to ‘U’ and ‘PG’ certificate programmes to gain admission for the same price as the child up to 6pm. All programme times are pm unless otherwise stated.
EDINBURGH
0 ABC Lothian Road, 229 3030. Bar: 11am—2.30pm, 5-10pm (Mon-Thurs), 11am—11pm (Fri/Sat), 5-10pm (Sun). [D]
32 The List 1-14 November