An Unmarried Woman (1978)

An Unmarried Woman merited enough respect in 1978 to earn three Oscar nominations, including the Big Kahuna - Best Picture. Although on the surface it is a predictable chick-flick which chronicles one woman's odyssey from happy dependence to emerging independence, it managed to transcend that surface because of two major elements:

1. It managed to tell an interesting story about real people saying real things in real situations. That may not sound so impressive on the surface, but think about it. Very few films manage to stay completely anchored in reality. The writers are sorely tempted by the sirens of profitability, who serenade them with the songs of easy acceptance, tempting them to add zany dialogue, dramatic explosions, ludicrous plot twists, and cartoon characterizations. Name one film where everything that happens is believable. Not easy is it? Now name one film which is both credible and interesting. Virtually impossible. So many people who write about the movies, including me, profess to long for a film completely grounded in reality, only to whine about how boring it is when somebody hands it to us. An Unmarried Woman manages to stay within the known universe without losing our interest except for some short stretches. That alone is pretty impressive.

2. It managed to tap into the seventies "important issues" zeitgeist. The challenges faced by the female protagonist reflected the struggles and concerns of the feminists of that era. Unexpectedly dumped by her husband from what seems like an idyllic marriage, she experiences the horrors of dating, and the uncomfortable process of becoming intimate with strangers. She adapts her traditional thinking to the then-new philosophies about sex and romance. When she finally meets Mr. Right, she refuses to change her life to follow him, thus declaring that she simply doesn't need a man to complete her. As The New Yorker's Pauline Kael wrote in her 1978 review: "He (scriptwriter Paul Mazursky) touches so many women's-liberation bases that you begin to feel as if you'd been passing out leaflets for McGovern."

In addition to those two major positives, the film delivered (and still delivers) a few other minor pleasures along the way. It reminds us of how charming and charismatic Alan Bates was in the prime of his career. It also delivers some surprisingly funny dialogue. Because the story is told through the spurned woman's eyes, it follows her to her lunches with the girls, where the women - liberated from the stifling effect of male egos - raise their consciousness by carrying on raunchy, candid, and totally uninhibited discussions of their sex lives.

Of course, the film will never be as good again as it was in the seventies, because it required both of the elements numbered above to elevate it to the status of a Best Picture nominee. Looking at it today, the woman's journey still seems to be told truthfully, but that trip now produces a shrug of the shoulders instead of a clenched fist and a hearty "right on, sister." The ideas that seemed fresh in 1978 don't seem wrong today, but they do seem trite and obvious, and we just can't muster up all that much sympathy for a beautiful woman living in a gorgeous Manhattan apartment, given that virtually every other woman in the world would willingly exchange places with her, man or no man. Devoid of its emotional context, the film is now stripped of one of the two major elements which made it seem important in 1978. Oh, it still plays out all right. It is still interesting for us guys to eavesdrop on the luncheon conversations, and the overall story still works because it is true and honest, but An Unmarried Woman now leaves us wondering how this solid but unremarkable film could ever have been considered one of the five best in any year.

It's all in the context, lads. 1978 was its time.

Jill Clayburgh

The Green River Killer (2005)

In theory, it should be possible to create an interesting movie about the Green River Killer. This isn't it.

The Killer, Gary Ridgway, killed about four dozen women, mostly prostitutes and teenage runaways, in and around the Seattle-Tacoma area in the 1982-1984 period. The trail went cold, and Ridgway wasn't brought to justice until the police developed the advanced forensic applications of DNA, which led to his 2001 arrest and 2003 conviction.

Two elemenst make the case particularly interesting and unique:

1. It is extremely unlikely that a man would go on a violent killing streak in which he kills a woman every two weeks for two years, and would then just basically lay off and return to a quiet life for twenty years. That's an exaggeration because he did kill a few more victims after the initial outburst, but he had killed something like 48 women in 1982-84 and cut back to just a handful in the next two decades. Did his bloodlust diminish, did he fear being caught, or did he find a way to keep it in check?

2. The police stayed on the case doggedly, waiting for science to catch up with them, and finally cracked it twenty years later.

The movie doesn't really get into those interesting aspects of the case. It basically just pictures a couple of the 1982-84 murders in docudrama fashion and intercuts that with actual police footage of the real Gary Ridgway confessing his crimes twenty years later. Using the real Ridgway tapes does give the film a chilling aspect, because Ridgway is completely without remorse or regret, and describes the murders as casually as you or I might describe a PTA meeting to an absent partner. Unfortunately, those police tapes also introduce an element of confusion since the actor playing Ridgway in the flashbacks looks nothing like the real Ridgway in the cutaways.

Apart from the genuine Ridgway footage, the film is just sensationalist drive-in fare which probably bears no resemblance to real people or events. The connections to reality are tenuous. It pictures Ridgway having sex with and murdering two hot babes. He did have sex with women and then kill them, so there's your connection. Some critics harped on the film's amateur performers and cheap digital video appearance. I'll vouch for the bad acting and total lack of nuance in the characterizations, but I have to disagree on the film's visual aesthetics. Some scenes, it is true, look like home movies filmed in your dad's basement, but the two murder scenes look pretty damned good. They are sharply focused, the lighting is interesting, and the colors are vivid.

 Here's the director's rated filmography.

1. (4.62) - Blank Generation (1980)
2. (4.55) - The Boogeyman (1980)
3. (4.46) - Strangers in Paradise (1984)
4. (4.20) - BrainWaves (1983)
5. (4.06) - Olivia (1983)
6. (3.88) - The Devonsville Terror (1983)
7. (3.50) - Cold Heat (1989)
8. (3.35) - Cocaine Cowboys (1979)
9. (3.00) - Green River Killer (2005) (V)
10. (2.76) - The Big Sweat (1991)
11. (2.69) - Zodiac Killer (2005)
12. (2.55) - The Zodiac Killer (2005)
13. (2.32) - Boogeyman II (1983)
14. (2.21) - Daniel - Der Zauberer (2004) (26th worst of all time)

Should you give it a look? Well, let me put it this way. Overall, this film ranks below the career mean of Ulli Lommel, a director who could present a reasonable case as the worst of all time. So you make the call.

Jacquelyn Horrellr Georgina Donovan

This is an old clip of Heather Locklear at some event or another. I've run across it many times, but I've never bothered with it because I've never been convinced that it reveals what it is supposed to. Anyway, this is supposed to be Heather going commando. Maybe. I guess.

Zipped .mpg

Locklear

A Time to Dance (1992 TV UK)

Here's a bunch of captures from a rarely-seen TV show from Britworld. We have some of these captures in the encyclopedia, but this really expands our coverage, even though the quality is mediocre. (Not my stuff. Not DVD. Probably VHS, because no sign of a TV watermark.)

Dervla Kirwan

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

"Broken Flowers"

Broken Flowers (2005) is an art house film staring a clinically depressed, and equally depressing, Bill Murray. I have some trouble understanding why someone would take a brilliant comedic actor and make him the straight man to a variety of zany characters. At any rate, he slinks through the entire film as if he is on a general anesthesia. He is a Don Juan. I am not sure why this is important, but the film maker has him watching Don Juan on TV, and his neighbor calls him a Don Juan twice. Clearly, we need to know he is a ladies man. Probably a good thing they did this, however, as I saw nothing in Murray's personality that would make him even minimally acceptable to anyone, male or female. We might assume that he has changed, and used to have a personality and a life, but we see no evidence of that, or get any clues what might have changed him.

As his current girl friend leaves him, he receives a letter in a pink envelope, and using red ink, warning him that he has a 20 year old son that he didn't know about that might be looking for him. It is unsigned. His neighbor, who fancies himself a mystery writer, jumps at the chance to investigate a mystery, and has him prepare a list of possible mothers. The neighbor researches all of the names on the Internet, then sets up an itinerary for him to visit all of the candidate women, taking each of them pink flowers, and trying to find out which is the mother. The women he visits are a serious collection of eccentric personalities.

On reading the above, you might conclude that this is a mystery story. However, they give no clues as to who wrote the letter, and never tell us at the end. Thus, it must be something else. Problem is, I can't figure out what. There is no sort of redemption, as Murray is the same depressed aging man from opening title screen to ending credits. He does make a statement about living in the present near the end, but, since he is nearly unconscious throughout the film, he certainly isn't following that advice. Possibly, it was intended as a comedy, as their were some humorous women along his road trip, but the mood was too somber to even consider laughing.

The highlight of the film has a naked Alexis Dziena, as a sexually precocious daughter of one of the women, subtilely named Lolita, calmly walking into the room Murray is in to answer a phone.

IMDb readers say 7.5. It won a grand prize at Cannes. Ebert accurately described the film I saw, but loved it at four stars. This is typical of the critical response. Berardinelli gave three stars, and offers that it is a road trip of self discovery for Murray's Don Juan, and that anyone suckered into thinking it will be a mystery will leave the film unsatisfied. If Murray's character did discover anything about himself on the road trip, he didn't communicate what it was to me, nor did he let it effect his life. I suppose the genre is pointless art house films, and this one is a favorite of genre fans, and therefor a C+.

Alexis Dziena

"Libertarias"

Libertarias (1996), or Freedomfighters, takes place during the early days of the Spanish revolution, and stars Ariadna Gil as a naive young nun who becomes a freedom fighter. The revolution started very well, with Madrid and Barcelona taken quickly. Both men and women, embolden by the thought of freedom, became a gang of self-styled freedom fighters. Government authority and church authority were equal as enemies, and both institutions were attacked. For this reason, Gil and the other nuns were given a small amount of money, and told to return home, as mother superior knew the convent would be destroyed.

Gil didn't make it very far, when she ran into some rather drunken and very irreverent revolutionaries, and sought refuge in a house. It did save her, but ended up being a whore house. A group of female soldiers show up and disband the whorehouse. Gil is taken under the wing of the leader. With the first battles decisively won with the help of the women, the army started forming, and trying to relegate women to important jobs like laundry.

The group Gil was part of would have none of it, and set off for Sargasso for the next battle. Arriving at the front, the now rather revolutionary but still pure Gil meets a priest who, for some reason, was spared. They both have obviously non-pious feelings for the other, but never do anything about it. As we all know, the revolution failed, and clearly things did not go well for our band of freedom fighters.

Gil shows full frontal in the whore house, when they strip her for bed. We also see her buns in a rape scene at the end. Loles León shows her right breast to a fellow freedomfighter.

IMDb readers have this at this at 7.1. It received a number of Goya nominations, but only one for acting (Loles León). While the acting was less than stellar despite a very strong cast, the story was fascinating. You are left wondering if the revolution failed because the "Peoples Army" stopped being a grass roots uprising, and became nearly as Fascist as Franco's troops. This is a C+. Not everyone will enjoy an historical drama with subtitles, but if reading subtitles doesn't put you off, it is an interesting watch.

Ariadna Gil Loles León