The old country-bumpkin-in-big-city routine. The city, as so often, is New York; the country, this time, is Australia -- the "bush." Paul Hogan, commercial spokesman for Australian tourism and Australian beer, is herein a pitchman for Australian "character" or Australian manhood or just himself. It was the surprise hit of …
Ry Cooder, a lifelong Californian who has cut a sort of musicological path through blues, jazz, Tex-Mex, Hawaiian, and heaven knows where all, is responsible for the (very good) country-blues soundtrack here, and is also a sort of soul mate to the hero. The latter (Ralph Macchio) is a Long …
A free-willed automaton named Beebee, muttering and sputtering like a cousin to Popeye and Donald Duck, gets blown to bits by a reclusive old shotgun-toting hag -- a turn of events comparable to the deaths of Janet Leigh in Psycho and John Wayne in The Cowboys. But the teenage whiz …
A group of French-Canadian academics (History department) get together and talk sex, sex, sex -- all day and into the night. First it's the women by themselves at the workout gym, reminiscing about the sadist, the two blacks in Martinique, the Sicilian cop, the French tennis pro, the wife-swapping club, …
A sex scandal that topples a British M.P. of Leftish persuasion seems to be connected somehow to the death in mysterious circumstances of a black Borstal boy. Just how and where these are connected is a matter of some interest and suspense -- most intensely in the mechanical but well-oiled …
Current events copied and rewritten (and painstakingly explained for those not in the know: "Israel is America's best friend in the Middle East," the command post informs its field officer. "And it's only twenty minutes from Beirut."). There is even less creativity in the rewriting, if possible, than in the …
A sort of lesbian rallying call, based on a novel by Jane Rule. The physical setting is quite good, although the best of it -- a Nevada dude ranch for recuperating divorcées, Western shirts with fancy piping, and so on -- was better in The Women; and the 1950s time-setting …
The novel by Raymond Radiguet shocked some people after World War I. The film of it by Claude Autant-Lara shocked some people after World War II. (Largely for -- of all things -- anti-war sentiments, in both instances.) What could Marco Bellocchio do now, in 1986, to get similar results? …
Based loosely on Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning, this is Paul Mazursky's second attempt at a transatlantic transplant (the first was Willie and Phil, from Truffaut's Jules and Jim) -- and better luck this time. In fact, better luck than the original. The anarchic vagabond and the bourgeois home he …
Losers' Club comedy by Jim Jarmusch, with a befitting small-change budget, about an unemployed deejay and an apathetic pimp who are placed in the same prison cell in Louisiana, soon to be joined by an Italian immigrant with a do-it-yourself English phrase book ("Not enough room here to swing a …
Oversolemn psychological thriller, by Alan J. Pakula. Kristy McNichol is still very much Daddy's Little Girl despite her maturity as a flutist. ("You have the great gift for improvisation," her teacher tells her. "How would you like to turn my trio into a quartet?") She also happens to be "one …
Two unemployed Irishmen, inspired by Elvis Presley's "Wall of Death" motorcycle stunt in Roustabout, endeavor to construct their own (somewhat rickety) version of it on a vacant field of mud. The film, directed by Peter Ormrod, is billed as a Jonathan Demme Presentation, which sounds suspiciously like those "Joan Collins …
The setting is a rundown Los Angeles neighborhood said to be a hotbed of Hollywood hopefuls and hopelesses, and more particularly a rundown apartment house harboring at least two such types. One of the hopeless hopefuls therein, a single mother (Susan Dey) who has been running a classified in the …
Robert M. Young, who thought it was a good idea to film Miguel Pinero's play Short Eyes, makes an even bigger mistake with this William Mastrosimone piece. It begins at the level of the average slasher film: first some cross-cutting between a sinister motorcyclist (opaque visor, snakeskin boot) and his …