From: plragde@maytag.uwaterloo.ca (Prabhakar Ragde)
Subject: October Princess recommendations
Originator: plragde@maytag.uwaterloo.ca
Organization: University of Waterloo
Distribution: kw
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 16:51:48 GMT

Sorry this is late -- three or four great films have already gone by,
and I hope you caught some of them. These are reviews of films playing
at the Princess in October that I have seen. I will continue to do
this monthly unless someone objects.

---------------

Talk 16: A carefully selected cross-section of Canadian 16-yr-old girls 
(five of them) followed over a calendar year. Amusing at times, but 
nothing unexpected really happens. {7,14,21,28,35}-Up it's not. Still 
worthwhile if you have nothing else to do.

Breaker Morant: Early Bruce Beresford, before he went to Hollywood and lost 
it. This is adapted from a stageplay, and it betrays its origins. 
Manipulative at times but powerful nonetheless. Recommended. 

Too Beautiful for You:  Hopelessly misanthropic. Blier's early black
comic style (Preparez Vos Mouchoirs) gets too dark for me. May be your
cup of tea, if you like watching humiliation.

Death in Venice: An unfilmable book, but the great Visconti does his best 
with it. Slow and stately. Read the book first, by all means.

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens: Art softcore? Russ Meyer is a 
cult favourite, but this could have been cut to half its length and been 
twice as funny.

Delicatessen: Go see this if you haven't already. Highly recommended.

Where Angels Fear to Tread: Howard's End it's not. An amusing social 
comedy before it descends into pathos and melodrama and Judy Davis goes 
completely over the side. 

Meeting Venus: Istvan Szabo (Mephisto) takes money from several countries 
and tries to fashion an allegory about Europe out of the backstage antics 
at an opera. Worthwhile, but could have been better.

The Commitments: Go late so you won't get a seat and you'll have to dance 
in the aisles. Then go read all of Roddy Doyle's books.

Some Like It Hot: Marilyn Monroe can actually act -- even better than 
Tony Curtis or Jack Lemmon. Good fun.

Howard's End:  A Room With A View it's not. Detailed and well-pedigreed, 
yet curiously unmoving. Still recommended.

Europa: Hallucinatory, revelatory, fabulous. For those who care about 
cinema. My favourite film of 1991.

The Good Woman of Bangkok: Out of basically obvious material -- the 
sexploitation of women in Thailand -- O'Rourke fashions a disturbing 
documentary that challenges our complicity in the voyeurism of misery. 
Recommended.

South of Wawa: Good-hearted, quirky Canadian filmmaking. Recommended.

The Player: After seeing Nashville, my opinion of The Player has gone 
down. Still recommended.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: This is really an allegory about 
McCarthyism. Vastly superior to the 70's remake. 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: This German expressionist film was vastly 
influential (your opinion of David Lynch will go down after seeing it). 
Highly recommended. No doubt Reg Hartt's ravings alone will be worth the 
price of admission.

-------
Not seen but well-reviewed elsewhere:

Edward II
American Dream


-- 
Prabhakar Ragde                             plragde@maytag.waterloo.edu
Associate Professor, Computer Science            DC 2119, (519)888-4660
University of Waterloo                 Waterloo, Ontario CANADA N2L 3G1

Newsgroups: kw.eats