Our Flick of the Week is the eagerly awaited ”New York Stories,” three short, unconnected films by three celebrated directors. Each film is worthy of its own review.
Martin Scorsese`s ”Life Lessons” is the best of the bunch, a portrait of an artist as a user of paint and women. Nick Nolte plays a successful contemporary painter who faces two crises as the film opens-an upcoming show of his art and the breakdown of his relationship with his live-in assistant
(Rosanna Arquette). Controlling a brush, it turns out, is a lot easier than controlling another person. Scorsese uses his camera artistically in a dazzling display of the grammar of film. (STAR)(STAR)(STAR) 1/2
Francis Coppola`s ”Life Without Zoe” is an updating of the classic story of Eloise, the little rich girl who lived at the Plaza Hotel. In this version, Zoe lives in contemporary luxury in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, catered to by a butler and ignored by her traveling parents. The film is an unfocused fairy tale about how material goods are no substitute for a parent`s attention. (STAR)(STAR)
Woody Allen`s ”Oedipus Wrecks” is a slight comic fable about a New York lawyer (Allen) who can`t overrule his domineering mother. What happens to the mother is an overprotected child`s nightmare in what essentially is a one-joke film. (STAR)(STAR) 1/2
”New York Stories” is playing at the Fine Arts and Old Orchard theaters. Rated PG.
Flicks Picks guide
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New this week
– DREAM A LITTLE DREAM (outlying). A more ambitious but confused body-switch picture, with Corey Feldman playing a high school student whose body is inhabited by the soul of a crotchety old neighbor (Jason Robards). The story is an uneasy mix of adult dreams of immortality and adolescent anguish. PG-13. (STAR)(STAR) 1/2
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– FAREWELL TO THE KING (Water Tower, Webster Place and outlying). Nick Nolte plays a World War II American solider who flees combat for a more tranquil life in the jungle of Borneo where he eventually becomes a king to the natives. John Milius` story is heart-tugging though familiar, but Nolte does not convincingly enter his character. PG-13. (STAR)(STAR) 1/2
– HEART OF MIDNIGHT (River Oaks). Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a young woman who inherits a rundown theater that has been a porno palace. Peter Coyote is a detective investigating a crime at the site. The film is visually striking but otherwise is an empty-headed exercise about the abuse of women. R. (STAR)(STAR)
– LEAN ON ME ( Chestnut Station and outlying). A too simple rendering of the story of Joe Clark, the notorious New Jersey high school principal who used a baseball bat and an iron will to clean up a ghetto school. Morgan Freeman is a powerful presence as Clark, but the movie is more of a cartoon than a credible learning experience. PG-13. (STAR)(STAR) 1/2
– NEW YORK STORIES (Fine Arts and Old Orchard). This week`s Flick of the Week. See above. PG. ”Life Lessons” (STAR)(STAR)(STAR) 1/2; ”Life Without Zoe” (STAR)(STAR); ”Oedipus Wrecks” (STAR)(STAR) 1/2
– SKIN DEEP (Burnham Plaza, Water Tower, Webster Place, and outlying). John Ritter stars as an alcoholic womanizer in Blake Edwards` bittersweet farce about a man taking control of himself. There is one hilarious sight gag involving prophylactics, and one can`t argue with the film`s sobering message, but otherwise Ritter`s character is mostly a bore. R. (STAR)(STAR) 1/2
More flicks
Comments on other films playing locally that have been reviewed in The Tribune and synopses of films not yet reviewed: