SHORT TAKES
LOLLY MADONNA XXX (MGM) This is sort of second-rate Peckinpah, but even third-rate Peckinpah would still have a vitality which is absent from most of Hollywood. The theme is a little awry from what Sam might have made it — it is closer to Deliverance, in fact — but the action and the actors (especially Robert Ryan, who looks even more haunted here than he did in The Wild Bunch) are the sort he might have chosen, even Jeff Bridges as another kind of hero.
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SHORT TAKES
LOLLY MADONNA XXX (MGM) This is sort of second-rate Peckinpah, but even third-rate Peckinpah would still have a vitality which is absent from most of Hollywood. The theme is a little awry from what Sam might have made it — it is closer to Deliverance, in fact — but the action and the actors (especially Robert Ryan, who looks even more haunted here than he did in The Wild Bunch) are the sort he might have chosen, even Jeff Bridges as another kind of hero. In fact, Lolly could also be called a bloody Tennessee hills version of The Last Picture Show. Dark and depressing as it is, there’s probably as much in Lolly Madonna as in any other first-run movie of the moment. It’s tough and where can you get that these days?
THE LONG GOODBYE (UA) - This movie’s characterizations are worse than its dialogue, its dialogue is only slightly less fucked up than its convoluted plot and its plot nearly obliterates the greatest American detective of them all, Philip Marlowe. It isn’t just that Altman has made his usual mediocre movie {McCabe & Mrs. Miller and M*A *S*H seem more like aberrations every time) or that Elliot Gould is completely miscast as Marlowe or even that The Long Goodbye, the most ambitious, least successful of Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe books, has been mutilated beyond belief. This movie is a turkey; unlike Lolly Madonna, and similar semi-trash, which are good for the catharsis they evoke or don’t, The Long Goodbye makes a mockery of a movie tradition. Thank God Sterling Hayden is here to give us something to look at that we don’t want to punch in the mouth.
SLEUTH (20th Century-Fox) — Ordinarily, plays have no business on the silver screen, but what an excuse to see Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine in a battle of wits. A middle-aged detective story writer beckons , his wife’s lover (Caine) in order to check out the youngster’s spine and scare the shit Out of him. The underlying theme — games playing — is tiresome; the dialogue is stagey but the elaborate staging is sensational and the tricky plot is tops. Joseph Mankiewicz’ direction is terrific, of course, but some still say: love it or leave it. Jfph
