Dennis Schwartz' Short Reviews  'K'  11

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A temptuous tabla played by Ustad Khan gives this English speaking film an air of beauty. Kama Sutra (lessons in love) is a 16th century tale of a servant girl who seduces a princess's (Sarita) prospective husband. Maya (Varma) is the servant girl the prince is obsessed with but won't marry. The film is disappointing as a women's liberation film. Its inane message is that a woman must learn how to please her man, or else she should expect to be shunned by the man. It is hard to believe that a film derived from such a great body of work as the Kama Sutra could be so dull and witless. GRADE: C-

WW11 partisans are trapped in the sewers of Warsaw, as they try to escape from the Nazis during the 1944 Uprising. A picture of considerable worth. It tackles as best it could a rather gloomy subject. GRADE: B

Esposito is a guard at a Brooklyn detention center, studying to be a lawyer, interested in helping the prisoners learn about their rights. He believes Isaach, also a Haitian, has been falsely charged with rape. So he bails him out but then finds to his chagrin that Isaah is at his home, asking for a place to live. His wife (Regina) is at first reluctant to have a man accused of rape living in her house, but soon warms up to him to the detriment of her marriage. Esposito becomes very unsure of himself, questioning his Haitian heritage he received from his father's side, and becomes alarmingly jealous of Isaah. The film begins and ends on very powerful notes, but it lacks clear vision to sustain it for its entirety. GRADE: C

A bloody awful mess. It is about the American safecracker Stoltz going to Paris to meet a friend of his that he hasn't seen for 11-years (Anglade). The purpose of the trip is to rob a bank. While there, he falls in love with a prostitute (Julie). She is also a student and works in the bank his heroin pals will violently rob. The only redeeming features to this crazy yarn are its high energy levels and good camera work. GRADE: C

A giant ape is removed from his natural habitat and brought to NYC as part of our need to be voyeurs. In this most enjoyable of Hollywood hokum films we are treated to the memorable scene of the ape holding Fay atop the Empire State Building, while she screams. We have fallen in love with this movie because we distrust our civilization and feel betrayed that we have lost our sense of nature. We want the ape to love Fay; and, we are lulled into believing that beauty can kill the beast. GRADE: B

Some disdainful critics called this movie, "I was a teenage Jesus." In due time, the picture regained respectability and is now considered one of the better Bible pictures. It is told in a simple, straightforward manner. GRADE: B

Atlantic City, as in monopoly, where 2 brothers play a game; one a mind game of withdrawal from worldly affairs; the other is into all sorts of get-rich-quick schemes. An original story, unfortunately it still has not gotten the recognition it richly deserves. GRADE: B

A couple of scam artists murder one of their victims and go on the lam in the outback. An intelligently done character study of the young couple. There are many twists to this tale, and we are left to ponder who is doing the killings. GRADE: B

Everything works out beautifully, in this sugary tale of a 55-year-old cellist (Zdenek). He marries a Russian woman with a five year old son in 1988, during the last days of the Russian occupation. He does it for a chance to get money to pay off his debts and buy a Trabant (model name of a Czech car). She soon deserts him to emigrate to West Germany since she now has Czech papers and a boyfriend there. He gets stuck with the kid, Kolya (Chalimon). The old cellist is really a nice guy. But the film is manipulative. It won an Oscar for best foreign picture. GRADE: C+

Badly acted monster movie, that is fun to watch. The insane scientist (Gough) injects a chimp with a growth serum and starts ordering the chimp to kill people he doesn't care for. Eventually the chimp grows larger than King Kong and the British Army is called in to take him down. In the background we see Big Ben, not the Empire State Building. GRADE: C

On March 13, 1996, the noted Polish film maker, Krzysztof Kieslowski, died of heart failure in a Warsaw hospital. He had been retired since the completion of Red in 1994, but was contemplating a return to work on a new trilogy of films about heaven, hell, and limbo. He has made such memorable features as Camera Buff, Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, and the three colors trilogy (Blue, White, Red). Less than a year before his death, Kieslowski agreed to be the subject of an hour-long documentary by his long- time assistant, Krzysztof  Wierzbicki. It featured Kieslowski's recollections of his life and movies, along with several candid shots of the director relaxing and enjoying his retirement. K. offers insights into why he started out making documentaries. They gave him a chance to make films about "people who lead real lives." The title comes from Kieslowski's belief that people should not lie about how they're feeling just for the sake of polite conversation. As a result, when someone asks him how he's doing, he might say "I'm doing so-so." GRADE: B

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