Room At The Top (And Bottom)

Room At The Top (And Bottom)

WAYNE ROBINS

It’s been a decent year for pix, and that’s just the problem. Unless one tries hard, one rarely stumbles into clear and present skunks anymore. Maybe it’s that the choices in New York are more varied: I know my colleagues in Birmingham get two crypto-Disneys a week to choose from. At the same time, there are few enough great movies, only my first two selections get A plus — but enough good ones to make rating tough. And for lack of money, time, or inclination, there’s a few I haven't seen, which is why The Night Porter didn’t make either list; why Scenes From A Marriage, and Juggernaut weren’t nominated for the top ten, though every indication says they’ve been deserving; and why Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia didn’t hit bottom. But since movies should have some right of due process, we’ll exclude those and talk about the ones I have seen.

THE BEST

Chinatown: Roman Polanski, with knife near the water, goes for the guts as well as Jack Nicholson’s nostrils in this brilliant, complicated Robert Towne story. Faye Dunaway was never better, John Huston biblically fearful, and Jack Nicholson is best as J.J. Gittes, the ’30’s private eye who gets in quite a bit over his head.

Amarcord: Fellini does what he does best: jokes about farts, piss, the world’s biggest tits, large asses, mixed with a little sentiment and lots of wine washing off the tomato sauce on your tie. In this memoir of childhood in 30s early fascist Italy, his rhythm falters about two-thirds through, but he’s already won.

The Conversation: Francis Ford Coppolla’s intense examination of the lifestyle of the professional “surveillance expert,” arrestingly played by Gene Hackman. Timely, compassionate, and more than a little twisted. Strong support from Alan Garfield and Cindy Williams.

The Front Page: Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as another odd couple: star reporter and hard boiled editor in this fast and funny tale of 1930’s Chicago newspapering. Billy Wilder directed and wrote the screenplay (with

I.A.L. Diamond) based on the Ben Hecht play. I’ll take Lemmon and Matthau over Redford and Newman anyday. The latter have the eyes, but L&M take ethnic, soulful chances that almost always work.

Badlands: Martin Sheen and Cissy Spacek in Terrence Malick’s first fea-. ture, a homicidal ballet based on the Charley Starkweather midwest murder binge that made him a mythic hero of the Eisenhower years, for which he fried in the electric chair.

Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob: A brilliant French slapstick with a whirlwind plot about a bourgeoise antiSemite who gets caught up with Arab terrorists, a Hasidic rabbi, and a vat of boiling bubble gum. Louis de Funes is one of the best all purpose comic actorsi and proves it in the movie Blazing Saddles should’ve been.

Lenny: Dustin Hoffman measures up to the legend. Though sometimes shallow, and emphasizing the tragic end rather than the manic beginnings of Lenny the Spritzer, a movie that entertains while it tears your heart out.

Frankenstein: Paul Morrissey’s first great hashish movie, even if the 3-D gave some people headaches. Got blood if you want it.

Phantom of the Paradise: See review this issue.

That’s nine. I can’t make up my mind about ten. Death Wish: if I were younger, I might’ve tried to make a case for it. Don’t Look Now: close, but not' quite. Animal Crackers would make it if we decided it was eligible, but let’s award the ten spot to “That’s Scenes from a Juggernaut!”

THE WORST

The Klansman: It’s reassuring in an era of blase competence to come across a movie where everything is wrong. Richard Burton is an arrogant liberal aristocratic southerner who keeps slipping into his Welsh accent. Luciana Palazzi reads her lines, literally, one syllable at a time. Nobody talks right, dresses right or acts right for the milieu, a redneck-sated Klan-dominated southern town. Lee Marvin is an exception, but the charac-

ter he portrays — a Klan member sheriff with a streak of decency — is too contradictory to be credible. Best/worst line: “I’m the Goddamn Imperial Cyclops.”

Zardoz: Sean Connery is overweight in a role created for Burt Reynolds, who dodged this edsel by claiming a hernia. Makes Battle for Planet of the Apes seem like Citizen Kane.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones: We’ve suspected the magic in the Stones was all in the audience, but never expected them to prove it. For Jagger on film, go see Performance. Uptown Saturday Night: Theoretically, a winner. Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Poitier and Belafonte cutting up in an attempt to show that blacks could make non-violent family entertainment movies. Not funny, however.

Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat: In which the once lovable R. Crumb feline turns out to be an asshole, through no fault of his own.

Parallax View: Not horrible, but confusing. Did something happen to somebody? Not even Warren Beatty seems to know.

S*P*Y*S: How could any MASH-type sequel bomb so bad? Not even Elliot Gould or Donald Sutherland seem to know. ZouZou, stick to French.

Gee, that’s only eight.

•COMEBACK OF THE YEAR: Max Baer Jr., formerly Jethro Clampett, who wrote, directed, financed, and starred in Macon County Line, which was not a bad movie at all. Black gold and Texas Tea for Baer, who keeps a huge share of the profits on an anticipated, what, eight million gross?