Advertisement

Boston

the screen

Arrara Budd Boetticher who made a score of fifties Westerns with Randolph Scott and is a favorite of film cultists, spent five years filming this documentary study of the Mexican bullfighter, Boring and brutal.

Butterflies are Free. The Harold Krenz story reduced to the usual Broadway sop and filmed mechanically. With Edward Albert and Goldie Hawn.

Candidate. Art as reportage. An ultimately pointless but very entertaining chronicle of the rise of a liberal no-mind. Peter Boyle, as a wily campaign-manager, steals the show.

Clockwork Orange. John Alcott's colors are impressive, but Stanley Kubrick's film of the Anthony Burgess novel has the tone of a shrill scold, and is a visual and dramatic cheat. Malcolm McDowell as the lead thug has been praised for his performance, but can't help being more interesting than his supporting cartoon figures. No great achievement for director or actor.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. Woody Allen's take-off on Dr. Reuben's already amusing travesty gives us two funny episodes out of 7. Features Allen himself in his ideal role: a frightened Jewish sperm.

Advertisement

Fat City. John Huston has cut the meat out of Leonard Gardner's fictional slice of the life of small-time boxers in Stockton, California. The characters are like the little people of Depression dramas--you see "em and weep, but they're just not complex enough to keep you interested. Huston's attempts at poetry are only intermittently effective. Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges are good. Susan Tyrell is terrible.

Godfather. The best thing around, and one of the best in a long time. Francis Ford Coppola's film doesn't really come clean on the roots and important effects of the Mafia, but its view of upper-level machinations is true enough, and its family saga moving. And the final statement--that the corporate Mafia, like corporate America, is hell--is hard to fault. Impeccably cast and acted.

Marjoe. Hype about a hypester. A punk Gantry tells of all his wicked evangelicizing way in this typical cinema-verite cop-out. (The city slickers seem to love it.)

Rowdyman. Or, Zorba goes to Newfoundland. The dice are naturally loaded in favor of the fun-lover, and the whole affair is amateurish.

Slaughterhouse-Five. An improvement on the Vonnegut novel, directed by George Roy Hill and written by Stephen Geller (who wrote the original novel on which Pretty Poison was based). The structure is cleaned up, the characters sharpened, and the Dresden holocaust sequences are horrifying--if not as devastating as, say, the recent films of the Quang Tri citadel.

Super Fly. The best of the black superhero flicks (that's not saying much). Ron O'Neal plays Priest, a young Harlem coke-pusher who wants to get out of his trade. Gripping, and sociologically interesting though Curt Mayfield's music is the best thing about it.

Wild Bunch. Peckinpah's most influential film, and one of his best. Based on the exploits of the Hole in the Wall gang, it tells the story of the fading bandits last big putsch with unrestrained lyricism and biting ironies.

ABBEY CINEMA I. Butterflies are Free, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.

ABBEY CINEMA II. The Other, call theater for times.

CHARLES. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2, 5, 8.

Recommended Articles

Advertisement