Monday, January 12, 1987
'Insignificance' 'Stand By
By Charles Lieurance
Senior Reporter
It's that time again when critics and
would-be critics fall all over themselves
to give movie awards and compile top
10 lists. Whether these lists are
supposed to influence the Motion
Picture Academy's decisions come
March or supplant the need for those
illustrious awards is uncertain. I hope
eventually to set up award ceremonies
in the Cornhusker Hotel for the annual
"Charlies." Pipe dream, I suppose.
So here's the first annual Charlies.
Dress is casual. Because the directors
of these fine films were obligated to
other projects, all awards will be
accepted by me and forwarded to the
stars at my convenience.
1. "Insignificance"
Nicholas Roeg's highly stylized epic
style makes David Lynch ("Blue Velvet")
and Alex Cox ("Sid and Nancy") look
like naive schoolboys. "Insignificance"
hangs a treatise on physics, God, sex,
death, nuclear holocaust and stardom
around the semi-mythical meeting of
Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe in
a posh New York City hotel room. The
filmwork is absolutely cosmic in its
ability to reveal and surprise, and the
message is important on the intimate
as well as the universal level.
Nicholas Roeg has finally made a
film that doesn't bog down in its
pretentions or become too literary for
popular consumption. Although "Insig
nificance" is difficult, it is universally
comprehensible.
2. "Stand By Me"
This is a much smaller film than
"Insignificance," although the themes
are equally important. Taken from a
short story by Stephen King, "Stand By
Me" is a period piece, one part Southern
gothic (four boys in search of another
boy's corpse) and one part sensitive,
classic bildungsroman. The film's
light touch and subtlety are absolutely
refreshing in a year full of artsy self
indulgence. It proves a masterpiece
doesn't have to be dowsed in symbolism,
sporadic angst and fragmented film
work (see "Blue Velvet").
3. "Sid and Nancy"
Alex "Repo Man" Cox exhumes Sid
Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy
Spungen for this sickly dance through
the heyday of punk, heroin addiction,
mutual self-destruction and hellish
dead ends. Whether this story is faithful
to the myth of Sid and Nancy or not,
isn't really the point. Cox is not the sort
of director who can resist the hallucin
ogenic fantasy elements in a story, and
his energy as a creative filmmaker
often takes him off the documentary
path. When Cox and his characters
come unhinged from the documented
side of the story is when the film works
best.
4. "Little Shop of Horrors"
Muppet master Frank Oz has breathed
life into the Hollywood musical with
the help of a madhouse of a cast that
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Two for $18 (Reg. $36)
Perms for $15 (Reg. $30)
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Just North of 56th & Holdrege
1604 N. 56th Street
includes Rick Moranis, Steve Martin,
Bill Murray, Christopher Guest, Jim
Belushi, Vincent Gardenia and the Four
Top's Levi Stubbs as the voice of the
man-eating plant from outer space.
Ellen Greene, the befuddled heroine in
love with Mo.anis but embroiled with
Steve Martin, a sadistic dentist, is the
highlight, offering guilty pleasure after
guilty pleasure in her heart-wrenching
songs.
5. Crimes of the Heart
This riotous black comedy that
parodies Southern gothic as much as it
dwells in that genre, drawls over, around
and through the Tennessee Williams,
Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner
textbook of antebellum ailments. Diane
Keaton, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek
have more skeletons in this closets
than dresses and shoes. You got your
incest, your suicides, your schizo
phrenics, your nymphomaniacs, your
half-wits, your addicts and your mur
derers. The seven deadly sins and one
or two that are normally considered top
deadly to list are revealed one by one by
the three sisters in their casual gossip
and late night gigglefests. Between
every "I declare" and "Y'all" there's a
ferociouly funny revelation.
6. "Brazil"
Terry Gilliam's fantasyadventure
comedyscience-fiction epic about
nothing and everything was the kind of
remarkable thing that film should be.
Like a child given a camera, Gilliam is
primarily excited by how the image
looks. Like the earliest moving pictures
and the film fantasies of Cocteau,
"Brazil" restates brilliantly that the
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Daily Nebraskan
Me' head Lieurance's Top 10 Films
medium is a miracle, capable of
anything. Although this film would be
annoying to anyone who couldn't stand
a tangent here and there, there are so
many miracles along the way that
almost any digression is forgivcable.
7. "Hail Mary"
Although I'm not sure if this is a
comedy or not, I'm willing to recommend
it either way. As a parody of the
nativity, this is a blast in places. Mary's
a foul-mouthed street kid who's fixated
with genitalia and who treats her
sudden holiness like any teenager who
has suddenly discovered she's worth a
lot more than she every thought she
was. The messenger angel is a gangster.
As a mystical meditation on the nativity
the film is a little less interesting, but
it still works if you have enough arcane
knowledge at your fingertips. It's as
annoyingly obtuse as most Godard films,
but at least the central plot is familiar
enough to give the audience a reliable
point of departure.
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8. "Crossroads"
Despite the fact that Ralph Macchio
is horridly miscast, this exploration of
a blues myth (delta blues great Robert
Johnson having sold his soul to the
devil at a Mississippi crossroad so he
could play bottleneck blues guitar) is
still a fascinating adventurefantasy.
Whenever Macchio's "aw, gee whiz"
performance threatens to ruin the film,
the rest of the cast, especially the actor
who plays the old blues harp player
Macchio has sprung from a nursing
home, comes to the rescue.
9. "Aliens"
Sigourney Weaver, who apparently
hasn't had enough of the phallic horrors
that nearly did her in in "Alien," heads
back to the planet with a platoon of
Marines and finds herself in similarly
dire straits. The film is pure excruciating
suspense and Weaver, once again, is
gritty and powerful, a real heroine, not
just a foil for an essentially male
victory.
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10. "Ran"
Though this is a 1985 release, it hit
Lincoln in '86, making it a contender
for the Charlies. "Ran" is a tale of
madness, old age and the horrors of
war. In this way it is not unlike Akira
Kurosawra's other films.
But "Ran" is Kurosawra's magnum
opus. It is not the story, a retelling of
Shakespeare's "King Lear" in dynastic
Japan, that makes "Ran" an undisputed
masterpiece, but how personal the
filmmaker makes this story seem.
"Ran" has the historical sweep of the
cinematic epic but affects the audience
on an entirely personal level. There is
no historian's distance here.
Once again, Kurosawra shows himself
the ultimate master of the battle scene.
His depiction of carnage is somewhere
between hallucination and real-life
grittiness. The effect is a very real
sense of despair, a very real sense of
tragedy.
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