FILM
LIST
The Witches oi Eastwick (18) (George Miller, US, 1987) Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Preilier. 118 mins. Eastwick is a sleepy, leaiy-gladed New England hamlet oi unchanging tranquility and cherished respectability. Nestllng in this haven oi moral integrity are three restless women in their prime and in search oi a man, someone special; tall, dark, handsome, debonair, willing to lullil their every sexual and intellectual demand. Ah well, one can dream, because nothing momentous ever happens in Eastwick after all.
Sukie Ridgemont (Pieiiter) is a single mother oi six and reporterior a local rag. Jane Spoiiord (Sarandon) is a highly-strung music teacher who should be enjoying the lirst oliicial day oi her divorce. Alexandra Mediord (Cher) is an attractive widow and sculptress still hoping the chance oi another good man hasn’t passed her by. At their regularThursday evening girls' night, inspired by an excess oi alcohol and despair and evoking memories oi Shakespeare’s tamed hags, they set their collective brainpower towards iantasising the periect Mr Right.
The next morning a wealthy, enigmatic single stranger appears in town to take up his residency in one oi Eastwick’s historic mansions. Our gals have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in conjuring up one Daryl Van Home in the shape oi a ripe, randy and rakish Jack Nicholson. ‘Just your average horny little devil,’ gulps Jack the Lad as he makes their iantasies
You‘ll believe a man can
dangle. Strathclyde; Odeon Hamilton Glasgow;Grosvenor
010 Hillington Place (18) (Richard Fleischer. UK. 1971) Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson. John Hurt. 111 mins. Reasonable recreation of the nefarious exploits of 5(ls’ mass murderer John Christie aided by atmospheric location filming and able performances. Edinburgh; EUFS
O Tess (PG) (Roman Polanski, UK-France, 1979) Nastassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson. 170 mins. A tragic story ofill-fated love set in Victorian England where social circumstances conspire with unforseeable misfortunes to break the spirit of an innocent heroine. Handsome, evocative and absorbing. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
O Therese (PG) (Alain Cavalier, France, 1986) Catherine Mouchet. 90 mins. Therese Martin was a young Carmelite nun wo died in 1897 and was declared a saint in 1925. Cavalier‘s film won the jury prize at Cannes in 1986 and later swept the board at the French CesaTs. Far from drowning in cloying religiosity it depicts her life as a fairly ordinary one. Mouchet portrays the heroine as a likeable, idealistic figure struggling against doubt and shrugging aside personal suffering. A rigorously disciplined, intensely felt and hauntingly simplistic
THE WITCHES 0F EASTWICK
l l l i l l
reality and liberates their dormant creative energies. However, Mr Nicholson, irresistible silver-tongued charmerthat he is, is the Devil in disguise and there is a price to be paid iortheir pleasures. As the ground rules are laid, and the playiulness turns to painiulness, the technical team gear up ior a monumental, battle ot the sexes.
I am unqualiiied to comment on whether George Miller’s Witches Oi Eastwick is a taithtul screen translation oi John Updike's1984 bestseller. However, Miller’s adults in a Disney-like wonderland do provide an outrageously libidinous, spriter diabolical romp that makes up in energy and vulgarity what it lacks in subtlety and sophistication. Along the way, there are some swipes at the
celebration ofsaintliness. Recommended. Glasgow; GFT O Tin Men (15) 1? (Barry Levinson, US, 1987) Richard Dreyfuss. Danny t De Vito, Barbara Hershey. 112 mins. See panel. Edinburgh; Odeon t 0 Top Gun (15) (Tony Scott, US, 1986) Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis. 110 mins. Hunky Tom proves his worth on the ground and in the air in this patriotic bonanza with splendid aerial sequences. Strathclyde; Odeon Ayr 0 La Trace (15) (Bernard Favre, France, 1983) Richard Berry. 100 mins. 1859. A peasant roams the North of Italy selling his goods and is fascinated by his discovery of the accordion. Glasgow; GFI‘ 0 Trick or Treat (l8 ) (Charles Martin Smith, US, 1986) Marc Price, Gene Simmons, Ozzy Osbourne. 97 mins. Wimpy high-school kid resurrects his fave heavy metal idol to enact his revenge on troublesome college bullies. Edinburgh; Cannon 0 Trouble In Mind (15) (Alan Rudolph, US, 1985) Kris Kristofferson, Keith Carradine, Genevieve Bujold. 112 mins. Rudolph’s phantasmagorical blend of gangster movie, fantasy melodrama and modern day western with desperate characters trying to go straight in the moral playground of Rain City. Edinburgh; Cameo, EUFS 0 True Stories (PG) (David Byrne, US, 1986) David Byrne, Spalding
moral majority as the local citizenryi 0
react with smalltown horror at news 01 the antics at Jack's palatial pad. There is also some lighthearted exploration oi the sex war, with the rampant Nicholson sympathetically purring, ‘Nlen are such cocksuckers aren’t they?’ However, this is basically a crude, highly enjoyable high-energy cartoon iarce with excellent, spirited pertormances and a plethora oi over-used special eiiects. Nicholson makes his periormance in The Shining look understated and is clearly having a ball, and the gross-out bari scenes surpass even those in Stand By Me. Much more entertainineg Faustian than Angel Heart, The Witches oi Eastwick delivers a helluva good time. Take a large bag of cherries with you. (Allan Hunter)
Gray, John Goodman. 88 mins. Writer/director/star and Talking Heads frontman Byrne is our guide
0 the mythical smalltown ofVirgil in
Texas where we are introduced to
he variously charming and
idiosyncratic inhabitants. A lightly ’numourous. endearing mosaic of non-narrative fiction that some may find too ‘previous‘ for its own good. Edinburgh; Edinburgh Film Guild, EUFS
o The Untouchables (15) (Brian De Palma. US, 1987) Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro. 119 mins. Chicago during Prohibition is a city in the pocket ofthe bloated all-powerful gangster Al Capone but youthful. naive treasury officer Eliot Ness, inspired by the true grit of Connery‘s over-the-hill Irish cop, forms an elite squad of incorruptible law officers who vow to put him behind bars or see him in hell first. A blood-drenched morality tale on a grand Shakespearean scale The Untouchables is a film with the look and feel of greatness in every myth-celebrating frame from De Palma‘s assured direction to David Mamet’s cracking script and Connery‘s wise, gruff Oscar calibre performance. Not to be missed. Glasgow; Cannon Clarkston Road, Cannon Sauchiehall Street. Edinburgh; Cannon, Dominion. Strathclyde; Kelburne, Odeon Hamilton
0 Vera (15) (Sergio Toledo, Brazil,
1986) 92 mins. The story of an orphan girl struggling to find a place in a largely hostile world and the internal problems she encounters with an increasingly dominant male- personality-in-a-woman‘s-body. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
O Vertigo (PG) (Alfred Hitchcock, US. 1958) James Stewart. Kim Novak. Barbara Bel Geddes. 126 mins. Agrophobic detective Stewart retires from the force and is engaged privately to follow a woman with whom he falls hopelessly in love. An audacious mystery and a classic study ofmale perversity. Vertigo proved an impeccable swansong for the Stewart-Hitchcock team. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
0 Videodrome ( 18) (David Cronenberg. Canada, 1983) James Woods. Debbie Harry. 88 mins. Woods is a programmer for a pirate cable station who becomes intrigued and then obsessed with a bizarre untraceable channel that triggers hallucinogenic fantasies in this initially intriguing but ultimately unsatisfactory film with eye-popping special effects. Edinburgh; Cameo o The Voyage Home: StarTrek IV (PG) (Leonard Nimoy. US, 1986) William Shatner. James Doohan. 119 mins. The Trekkies journey back to present-day San Francisco to save the whales and protect their endangered homeland in one of their better big screen adventures. Edinburgh; Odeon
0 Who's That Girl? (PG) 1} (James Foley, US. 1987) Madonna. Griffin Dunne, SirJohn Mills. 93 mins. Reputedly unlikely to cause a commotion. Madonna‘s latest stab at a film career finds her energetically plunging into the world ofscrewball comedy as jailbird Nikki Finn who permanently disrupts the straitlaced world of Mr Dunne in a similar fashion to Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in the glorious Bringing Up Baby. A brave back will report from the scene of the crime in the next issue . . .
Glasgow; Cannon Clarkston Road, Cannon Sauchiehall Street, Cinema Edinburgh; Cannon. Lothian; Cannon. Strathclyde; Kelburne, La Scala. Odeon Ayr. Rialto.
o Whoops Apocalypse ( 15) (Tom Bussman, UK, 1986) Peter Cook, Loretta Swit. Rik Mayall. 92 mins. A reworking of the LWT series in which a variety of international incidents escalate towards the brink ofa nuclear holocaust. Dim, frantic, scattershot black comedy where the misses far outweigh the hits. Edinburgh; Cameo
o The Witches oi Eastwick ( 18) (a (George Miller, US. 1987) Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer. 118 mins. See panel
Glasgow; Grosvenor. Edinburgh; Cameo
0 Yellow Earth (PG) (Chen Kaige, China, 1984) Xue Bai, Wang Xequie. 89 mins. Kaige’s extraordinary debut feature centres on the clash between the traditional values and the rituals of a remote mountain tribe and the modernist drive towards Communist industrialisation. Glasgow; GFT
16 The List 16 — 29 October