David Roddis

Diksturbing, hallucinatory, hilarious by turns, this Cronenberg film takes for its subject Burrough's real life accidental shooting of his wife, his descent into drug induced madness and his final heartbreaking realization of what he has done. Burroughs is portrayed as an exterminator who mainlines his own cockroach powder and, driven by paranoia and following the instructions of giant talking bugs (including mutant typewriters who beg him to rub the powder on pulsating sphincters on their backs as they writhe in ecstasy) travels in a fever dream to North Africa to try to determine if his wife is human or an agent of Interzone. Cronenberg once again portrays human sexual desire as an emotionless compulsion, the body as a locus of pure disgust, and the human condition as a hellscape of hopelessness. Gradually the movie takes us deeper into this nightmare of body fluids and polymorphous perversity, with Burrough's slain wife appearing teasingly as various personas, until, surprisingly, we arrive at a cold, clean winter landscape, a border crossing. He re-enacts the shooting of his wife and finally returns to a horrifying, tragic reality. There are scenes in this movie which are indescribable visions of sexual torment and loss. You may scoff, you may hate it, but you must see it. The musical score by Howard Shore is a masterpiece: it perfectly complements the film with a kind of extreme acid jazz

I love "Saturday Night Fever," and not just because I'm a 65-year-old, gay, former disco bunny (though that nostalgia certainly is a factor). I love it because it is one of the greatest movies of the 20th century. Yes, you heard me right. If you haven't seen it, see it; I guarantee it's not what you expect. What I love about this movie is its rawness, its grit and its sometimes shocking honesty, because the disco dancing and the glitter are not the whole point nor are they just empty set decoration or filling in time. They speak to aspiration, to the sense that "there's gotta be something better, something beautiful in this life, but how to find it?" This movie finds it, or rather, by the time it reaches its tender and moving conclusion—(an ending that refuses to tie up the loose ends, a deft touch), it finds the seed of something that we hope will grow to be beautiful. I love SNF for the way it captures an era, but it does more than that: it perfectly summons up the restlessness, bravado masking fear, and vulnerability of adolescence-on-the-cusp-of maturity, particularly macho male adolescence in all its cockiness and insecurity. Its peerless score by the BeeGees is the essence of disco, a much maligned musical style. Disco above all had romance, it LONGED—for romance, for sex, for connection, it wore its heart, and a few other body parts, on its sleeve, and it held at its core the ache of that longing; even, with hindsight, tragedy, in light of what was to come... this score IS the seventies, forever, in my mind and soul. But the heart and soul of SNF is the character of Tony, in Travolta's break-out star-making performance. Travolta is nothing short of genius in this role; the way he portrays the trajectory of his character—the moral centre of his group of friends, the cock of the walk who realizes how abysmally he treats his sexual conquests, and who is made to reckon with this by a strong woman who, by her refusal to be just another conquest, effects his change from boy to man—is, well, iconic. It's a role that he could never surpass, and doesn't need to. But every single performance in this ensemble movie is pitch perfect. This is Hollywood at its best: touching, funny, real, tragic and ultimately transcendent. Saturday Night Fever is a movie that can change you. Whatever your situation, wherever you live, whatever your age, Saturday Night Fever will speak to you about the possibility of love and self-respect in a world that does everything it can to crush both. I hope they put it in the time capsule for the aliens to find; it's that human.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ken Russell's work, let it be known that during the nineteen sixties through the eighties Russell was the "enfant terrible" of British cinema. His work is characterized by extravagant visuals and theatricality, crazy symbolism, overt sexuality and unflinching, raw emotion, sometimes descending into bathos. His output is extremely uneven and encompasses stunning masterpieces such as "Women in Love" and flops so egregiously bad they defy description ("Lisztomania"). "The Boy Friend" is too lightweight to be a masterpiece, but to me it's an unqualified success. This is a typical crazily extravagant, over-the-top Ken Russell concept of what was originally a sweet, straightforward stage musical with charming songs. His usual repertory of players outdo themselves singing and dancing throughout, and Twiggy, in her film debut, is delightful and exquisitely beautiful. But Ken Russell would not simply take the musical "The Boy Friend" and film it straight; for an artist like Russell, the musical would be too safe and saccharine to stand on its own. He must "do something" with it, namely frame the musical in various ways that both engage and distance us. In doing so he has upped the stakes exponentially. So, instead of allowing us to engage directly with the actual musical, we are invited to step back and witness a second-rate theatre company's earnest, and unintentionally hilarious, performance of the musical, as well as the company's backstage shenanigans and relationships. But let's not stop there. Now add to this an emergency: the star (a tongue-in-cheek cameo appearance by Glenda Jackson) has broken her ankle and can't go on. Polly, the Assistant Stage Manager (Twiggy), must go on in her place and "come back a star!" Also, Polly is crushing terribly on the male lead, played by Christopher Gable, and who, in the course of the performance, appears to be having a fling with another cast member. (But guess what: it all turns out to be a misunderstanding and Polly gets her man by movie's end. Phew!) But - let's not stop there! Arriving fashionably late to the performance is Mr DeThrill, the famous Hollywood director, whose presence sends the cast into a tizzy of professional jealousy, naked ambition and shameless upstaging, even as Mr DeThrill imagines the clunky stage routines as full-out phantasmagoric MGM musical numbers. These include a romantic Fred and Ginger number on a giant turntable, a twee episode of prancing garden gnomes which might be the product of a choreographer on acid, and no end of Busby Berkeley style, shot-from-above kaleidoscope extravaganzas. If you love cinematic excess and/or MGM musicals you'll appreciate the in jokes, gasp with delight at the mind-blowing inventiveness and technical skill of choreography, sets and costumes, cheer the gung-ho cast and wish it might never end. If you're a lover of tautly plotted action flics, you might spend the near two and a half hours checking your watch in tears of boredom. This is a movie you have to surrender to, as idea sparks idea and you think, "no, c'mon - he's not going to - no, he couldn't - oh, I guess he could..." Unlike most of Russell's films, there's no overt sex in this one, and it's suitable for all ages, though it runs too long for the very young. There's some saucy British humor - imagine the "Carry On" films or "Are You Being Served" - but no nudity or what is quaintly termed "language." You know, I think you might really enjoy it.

Two stars for the delightful Leslie Caron. Only Hollywood could turn Colette's beautiful and tender story about coming of age—a subject about which she wrote all through her long life—into sleaze, and though Lerner and Lowe are my favorite American musical creators, there's something about the gung-ho style and the regrettable song, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" that turns something that, in the original, was exquisitely outlined and bathed in mauve into something unspeakable that unfortunately gets spoken. To the outraged reviewers, all I can say is: read Colette, in French or in translation, a great author of wonderful perception and sensitivity who never in her entire unconventional life wrote about pedophilia, and who was the quintessential liberated woman of her time.

Marilyn Monroe, the ditzy blonde... or was she? Like all born comediennes, Marilyn wanted to be taken seriously, and was so insecure, so in need of validation, she didn't realize that she WAS taken seriously: as a comedienne. Does anyone really think that her dumb blonde routine was anything other than a persona? But she can be forgiven for chafing at being restricted to that persona. "The Misfits," which her husband at the time, acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller, confessed was written as a "love letter" to her, proves that she could also be authentic on screen. Her work with Paula Strasberg of the Actors' Studio clearly had paid off (though the film itself, quietly recognized as an important work of art by many critics of the time, barely made back its budget at the box office). Monroe, playing a woman who has come to Reno for a quickie divorce and ends up palling around with three cowboys and Thelma Ritter (in the Thelma Ritter part), is heartbreaking. If you've only seen her comedies, you will be enchanted with her vulnerability and bravery and in awe of her affinity with the camera. It's no stretch to believe that every male character on screen who interacts with her for more than five seconds is filled with a longing that is much more than mere lust. This movie was clearly treated by the studio as a prestige project, bringing together the playwright of "Death of a Salesman", legendary director of westerns John Huston and a supporting cast that was the creme de la creme. Eli Wallach, Monty Clift, Gable and Ritter are all perfection. Gable in particular so inhabits his role, you will accept that pugnacious cowboys speak in a kind of terse, oracular poetry. Rosalyn, Monroe's character, has manifested in their lives to remind them of tenderness, she's like "life itself". The old ways of living in the wild west are disappearing; the film is the ultimate argument for a woman's touch. Rosalyn is like a miracle to them: they've never met a woman who speaks as she does, asks those questions, dares to assert herself. She upsets their orderly, sterile lives, their all-male existence, with a reminder about sensitivity, empathy, even motherhood as she wonders aloud, in a particularly loopy moment, how a seed knows to become lettuce. She is half child, half goddess and the battle about whose worldview will prevail is over before it's begun. One feels that veteran director John Huston could direct this in his sleep, and possibly did. Occasionally - in the crowd scenes at the rodeo, the scenes of the wild horses galloping in a mythic landscape - he pulls out the stops and reveals his mastery. These scenes are gorgeous, technically breathtaking. There's always talk of Monroe's tardiness and difficulty; no one ever mentions that Huston, addicted to gambling, nearly caused the film to be pulled from production when he risked the budget on a drunken spree. But Marilyn's irresponsible. Right. Be prepared for a film which is character-focused, rife with heavy-handed symbolism and portentous dialog, as well as a final scene which ties up the loose ends with unrealistic ease as Monroe and Gable "find their way home in the dark" by "following that star". If you regularly watch "art films", you may just love it, as I did. And you may fall in love with Marilyn Monroe, the real one, all over again.