Hamilton.ES@sri-unix (05/14/82)
We're less than half way into '82, and already there are a number
of films that put last year's mediocre output to shame. Last weekend
I saw three very impressive (and very different) films.
"Diner" is an older, slightly more intellectual, more urban, more
Eastern, "American Grafitti". We can look back with a kind of
bittersweet amusement on the naivete of these guys in 1959 Baltimore
trying to get laid and ask ourselves: we talk different, but are
our motivations and ambitions really so different?
"The Long Good Friday" is probably the best gangster flick since
"Godfather II". It takes a little while to sort out the first
ten minutes of confusion -- clandestine deliveries, machine guns
in the still of the night -- it almost looks like it's going to
be a spy flick. And Bob Hoskins as the Godfather with a Cockney
accent takes a little getting used to. But ultimately, this story
of big deals, networks of power, and revenge, is totally compelling.
"Eating Raoul" was the smash hit of Filmex a month ago in LA.
Fox has picked up American distribution rights, and is currently
planning a late fall release. Writer-director-star Paul Bartel
has created a comic masterpiece and a cult film-to-be. A middle
class couple (Bartel and Mary Woronov, probably best known as the
bitchy principal in "Rock and Roll High School") accidently discovers
that the quickest way to get the money to open their own country
restaurant is to advertise for rich folk with strange sexual fetishes,
then bop them over the head when they show up. Raoul ("I'm a hot-blooded
Chicano, man!") is the friendly neighborhood jack-of-all-crimes
who helps dispose of the goods. Made on weekends last year on
a microscopic budget, "Eating Raoul" shows the kind of fresh fearlessness
about dealing with human stereotypes that could never come from
a major studio.
--Bruce