SHORT TAKES

SHORT TAKES

ADMIT ONE

BLUME IN LOVE (Warner Bros.) — Is that supposed to make you think of Bloom in Love? These stories about Modern people dealing with broken relationships are getting pretty predictable, especially since that pensive guy walking around trying to figure things out is always George Segal (Loving, The Owl and the Pussycat, Where's Poppa). He figures out one thing really quick this time: he's in love with his ex-wife. But she's not in love with him, so the story is one of how she changes. Except he narrates that story and keeps sticking in the part about how he still loves her, keeps wimping his way into her house, visiting her and her new, um, old man, Kris Kristofferson, clinging to her every abusive word. But Karen Anspach has enough to do. What, you want her to tell her own story too? She's busy being a blonde thing, speaking mean words softly from across the room, and learning how to play the guitar — from over there, too. She "becomes her own person" — or so George tells us — ,and comes back to him, the mother of their child — and just in time, cause then the movie's over. Give me something to punch.

Georgia Christgau

EMPEROR OF THE NORTH (20th' Century Fox) — Lee Marvin as A-No. 1, the train-hopping hobo in this part of Shantytown, U.S.A. where Ernest Borgnine plays the maniacal conductor on Engine No. 19, keeping those tramps off his cars by whatever means necessary (he favors a hammer to the head and we know he means business right after the opening credits when a bum gets beat down between the wheels and the rails and winds up neatly bisected). Keith "Aw-shucks" Carradine is a young creep who latches onto Marvin in hopes of learning the ropes of the road and maybe cashing in on the glory that could come from a successful ride on Borgnine's baby. The ethical distinctions of Aldrich's characters are never quite what you expect. Marvin is his charming, cynical self — he ends up axing Borgnine, and booting Carradine off the train because he doesn't have a sense of style. Carradine, in turn, progresses from pompous naivete to a frightening deceit. And while Borgnine projects nothing but hysterical malevolence throughout the film, we feel kind of sorry for him at the end when he loses at his own game. Emperor has its clumsy moments, a putrid score, and a forced, undeveloped storyline but the two stars play it sharp and there are a number of masterfully constructed scenes (an empending head-on collision between trains and the final bashout) that show Aldrich, after 20 years in the industry, still an assured hand at his peculiar violence-dilemma overview.

Tim Jurgens