SHORT TAKES

SHORT TAKES

SLITHER (MGM) - This one’s a very strange movie about a group of lower middle class wackos running all over Southern California searching for some embezzled funds that got stashed away years ago. Lots of good working class touches: laundromats, tuna fish sandwiches, mobile homes, dinners of Dr. Pepper and corn on the cob. Slither is so in love with, and amused by, its cast of crazies that it’s impossible to .feel any other way about the flick itself. Very, very good cast with James Caan, doing a dumb-funny Dustin Hoffman turn, and Sally Kellerman, as a speed freak, taking the top honors. And to top it off there’s a big put-on ending that blows the whole thing right in your face. Highly recommended, and an auspicious directorial debjat for Howard Zieff* the genius who gave you all those AlkaSeltzer and Benson & Hedges commercials.

Paul Varjack

BAXTER (CRC) — American films in the sixties were over-abundant with sociological/psychological diatribes. (Remember David & Lisal) This British brand is a real tearjerker: The story of a 12 year old with a thpeeth defect, thanks to his divowced newotic pawents. The kid fweaks out (catatonia) leawns hir r’s and finds solace in the Maxim housewife, Patwicia Neal (his undewstanding speech thewapist), beautiful Bwitt Eklund and Bwitt’s galloping gouwmet boyfwend, Woger. Pleasant pan dewing if you care, but a pain in the ass if you aren’t too sensitive.

THE MACK (CRC) — Black movies have almost used up the basic archetypes — Superfly’s dope dealer; Shaft’s private eye; Book of Numbers’ lottery runners. The Mack is the pimp version. It’s fairly mediocre, with only a few good moments, especially some fantasy sequences, which look like Robert Downey might have staged them, including a great Manson/Lyman-oid scene of a Planetarium Hooker Brainwashing. But Richard Pryor’s in it, all the actors dress to kill, and it’s got a certain trashy tension. Only for the truly addicted.

Dave Marsh

IMAGES (Col.) — This film falls loosely in the category of psychological thriller but unfortunately is more confusing than unsettling. Images is adapted from the book, In Search of the Unicorn by Susannah York who just so happens to have the starring role. Susannah plays a disturbed housewife married to an unattentive and bromide jerk. Repressed by her lacklustre life she creates another world of midnight mayhem, orgies, murder and visits from the dead. Why is her first husband lurking behind the refrigerator — he’s been dead for years? Is that body she is gingerly stepping over imagined or not? Soon her sanity is all but shattered by her inability to distinguish between her terrorizing fantasies and the apparent reality. But what’s worse is neither can the audience.

Jaan Uhelszki

CESAR AND ROSALIE (Cinema-5) -Ah, France. Ah, Romy Schneider who grows more beautiful with each movie. Ah, love affairs that never resolve themselves. Ah, French food and soft music and beautiful children and lonely beaches and snazzy sports cars. Ah, bullshit, but still kinda ok in a dumb way.

THE THIEF WHO CAME TO DINNER (WARNER BROS.) - Another one of those gentleman jewel thief caper flicks; not up to the magnificent Thomas Crown Affair or the energetic Dollars but amiable enough in its own slick, glib way. Ryan O’Neal’s the hero this time, and ever reliable Warren Oates is the frustrated insurance man who pursues him in vain. Their relationship is a pleasingly ambiguous cat-and-mouse affair, and Jacqueline Bisset is one of the tastiest bits of cheese Hollywood has produced in years. The script could be sharper, and Bud Yorkin’s direction goes slack from time to time; but it’s always a kick to root for super-cool anti-heroes and if, like me, you’re a sucker for the genre, this’ll do.

LOST HORIZON (Columbia) - This varnished remake of Frank Capra’s venerable schlock epic has just gotta be quaalude pic of the year. The plot’s dated, the dialogue and acting are stilted, the whole thing’s totally static. So you just sit there, slack jawed, watching the Limey truthseekers and yaks and lamas and cute li’l Tibetan pickaninnies wandering around each other and it’d just be great if you hadna paid three bucks to see it. The only mistake they made was not getting Baba Ram Dass for the male lead. It’s unworthy of Ross Hunter.

Lester Bangs

SHAMUS (Col.) — Shamus may look better when it’s the Wednesday Night Movie of the Week sometime next year; on the 1973 big screen it’s an annoyingly derivative second-rate bit of hackwork. Burt Reynolds plays a tough Brooklyn private eye out to solve a murder; he’s improving (slightly) as an actor, but still looks like he’d be more comfortable in the pages of a magazine, since pin-up photos don’t have to recite dialogue. The script tries to prove how hip it is by copping several scenes from The Big Sleep, but all the copying only serves to remind you how good the original was. Dyan Cannon is also on hand to do what is by now her traditional cameo slut appearance.

BOOK OF NUMBERS (Avco-Embassy) — Not bad, not bad at all. Two black ex-waiters take their savings and start a numbers bank in El Dorado, Arkansas, where they come up against various black and white gangsters and the KKK. Sound like a barrel of laughs? Oddly enough, it is for the most part — the best part; it’s when they try to get serious, romantic, racially relevant or violent that it begins to resemble every other piece of junk you’ve seen in the oast year. Raymond St. Jacques produced, directed and starred — all in fine style (sure is nice to see him get out of that Cotton Comes to Harlem shit). The details and settings are rich and real — from a dinner table to a church to a black beauty parlor — and since the film’s set in the ’30s, everybody struts around in snappy clothes (although the whites look strangely anachronistic). But St. Jacques’ co-stars should have been better: Philip Thomas, as the other half of the numbers bank, narrates nicely but acts like a spoiled kid and Freda Payne (yes, the singer) is entirely too vapid until she gets a gun in her hand. The other supporting roles shine in comparison.

Vince Aletti

CRIES AND WHISPERS (New World) — Ingmar Bergman, a lot more interesting without the dense profundities that cluttered things like The House of the Wolf and The Rite and a lot easier to take without Elliot Gould, has turned out a film that’s excellent on practically every level. It’s all beautifully done, marvelously acted, exquisitely filmed, but somehow it doesn’t quite succeed as it ought to. The final impression is that it’s considerably less than the sum of its parts. There’s a religious certainty to the film that’s not very convincing and even somewhat antithetical to Bergman’s usual searching and doubting around similar themes that’s always been so reassuring to us searchers and doubters in the past. Still, in all, it is a disturbing movie and the cries and whispers are hauntingly real. ^

Greg Popek